Teaching in the 21st Century

The "So What" of What We Are Learning

For both my Social Studies class and my current Business Law class, I want the students to see the connection between what we are learning and how it impacts many different facets of life. We discussed it, took notes on it, reviewed it, and ultimately tested on it.

For Business Law, we analyze each topic and how it impacts the government, citizens/consumers, businesses/artists, and employees. For each group of people, the students need to state the impact and then explain it.

For Social Studies classes, we discussed the impact of the topic on the government, economy, environment, and foreign affairs. Since I taught both 7th and 8th grade Social Studies to the same students, we were able to carry this concept through both years of studies.

A great introduction to this topic is the Star Wars movie. Yes, it too can be analyzed for impact on the government, economy, environment, and foreign affairs. They could even 4 square their summer break!

Almost every student is successful in identifying the correct connections, and explaining them as well. The 4 Square is embedded in the unit's daily work, so we discuss it almost daily. Additionally, this format gives us a consistent way to organize information from unit to unit, which benefits student learning.

Here is an example of some of the 4 squares we created in 7th grade geography. Note: it does not include the explanations.

Real Life Decision Making and an Argument Essay

A lot of what we learn in class does not directly impact the students or someone they know. There were two instances when current events had a direct impact on someone they knew. One was the civil unrest in Syria as we had a Syrian family with relatives there. The mom came to talk to me about the horrors going on, and asked me to make sure we discussed the positive things about the people in that country as well as the negativity in the news - which we did.

A second situation involved our former Superintendent. He had been doing mission work in South Sudan for a few years, and was debating returning for another visit. However, the political climate there was uncertain as well. Since all the students knew him well being that it was a very small school district, we spent two weeks learning about South Sudan and the civil unrest going on, learning about his mission work and how it benefited the people there, reading his blog and inviting him in for a visit.

Throughout all of this, students took notes with the essential question in mind: should he return for another trip.

All year we had been learning how to write argument essays, and this was another perfect opportunity for them to practice their writing with a real-life situation on the balance. While we had done meaty outlines of argument writing, we hadn't fully fleshed one out and this gave us a good chance to do so.

We moved through the steps of research, writing an introduction, using text evidence, deciding on a thesis and organizing information, transition sentences, body paragraphs, counter arguments, and conclusions. We did peer editing and sent them on to the superintendent to help him make a choice.

He did ultimately return to his mission work in South Sudan, though I believe it was a year later after things had settled down. In the end, the students took part in real-life decision making.

Book Connections

In Middle School, I loved the fact that each student had an independent reading book for Language Arts class, or at least had a book they were reading in Language Arts class. That meant I could require they bring a book to class. While this was helpful for "I'm finished" time, it was also a way to help make connections between our current unit of study and other situations.

What kind of questions did I have the students answer to make connections? Here are a few examples. Some were easier than others to answers, and some really took some stretching. In one case, the student's parent even emailed me. It turns out the character never left her bedroom, so how could she experience her environment? We improvised and had the student write about the environment of her bedroom, or what she saw out the window.

Sample questions and unit in discussion:

United States Economics

Find an example of economics in your book and explain it.
Analyze this example for how it affects the character - explain.
Is this a positive or negative impact on the character? Explain
How will this affect the character’s future? Explain

Europe (which has had many different types of governments over the years):

Explain how government/rules affects your character(s)
Is this positive or negative? Explain
If your character could change something about this, what would they change and why?

India Caste System

Are the characters in your book rich or poor? How do you know? Give details
Explain and examine: How can you be rich without money? What do most people think?

Africa - Decision Making (Our Superintendent was planning to do mission work in Sudan and we were discussing if he should go or not given the political climate there.)

In your book, find a situation where a character has to make a decision.
Explain the plot that is going on around this situation and what decision they need to make.
Tell me about the character involved, what is their role in your story?
How do they make their decision? What steps do they take?
Could you have predicted the decision they make based on past events or your character’s motivations? If so, explain, if not, explain.

Analyze a Picture

One of the critical thinking activities I enjoy using is analyzing a picture. There are pictures to match just about any unit you are studying.

Europe has many forms of government, and I wanted the students to think about the "so what" in regard to governments. What do governments do for us, how do they affect our daily lives?

Here is the teaching picture I used in class:

Here is an example of student's work for this assignment. You'll notice that we are using a shared Google Slide Show. I like the ability to put this out for students to edit and combine their work. Once everyone has finished their part, the rest of the class benefits from increased view points. We use it not only to show learning, but to record inquiry as well.

Symbaloo - Easy Way to Share Classroom Links

I loved the ability to share all our classroom links on one page, and Symbaloo offers a visually appealing, easy to use format for doing so. Students can quickly find links. Because I posted many links in the daily notes section of our class website, I used Symbaloo for links that we would use more often, so the students did not have to scroll backwards through the daily notes.

Here is the live link if you would like to use some of these resources.

Flipped Classroom Lesson Example

In order to create more time in the classroom for learner-centered activities, once in awhile I like to post a "lecture" lesson as homework - sometimes called a flipped lesson. For this lesson, I have used some sort of Web 2.0 technology to record my lesson, and have then posted it to our class website or Google Classroom depending on which is available for our class.

The students access the directions and link, and take notes as instructed. This offers a great opportunity for them to pause and review the video as desired. No need to try and keep up with the teacher. It also freed up class time to work more in depth with the information presented.

Not all students, however, have the time to do this at home due to activity schedules and family responsibilities, or internet access. To accommodate those students, I build in time during the week where they can access it and takes notes in class.

Below is what they see on our class website, here is a link to the video.

Taking Risks

We want our students to take risks, yet are we as teachers willing to take risks? This was a question set forth on Twitter one day and our principal challenged us to accept.

If we want our students to take risks, calculated or not, we as teachers really need to learn to take them as well. I rose to the challenge and decided my risk would be the chance of chaos, or it could be the chance for fun and learning.

The Civil War was a big risk for America and that also provided two great opportunities for me to add in some kinesthetic learning so to speak. I had already devised a team game for the entire unit. Each team would be part of the North or South. As their group completed activities, they earned points. Now I had a couple of groups who were not as motivated academically and almost always scored the lowest points. One day I brought in a tug-of-war rope from gym class and told them they could challenge any team they wanted, and the winning team would earn points.

Not only was this motivational for them, but really reinforced the tug-of-war between the North and the South for battles, land and freedom. It was so successful, that we kept the rope in the room for two weeks and any team could challenge any team. No, nothing broke, no one got hurt and we only disturbed one class once - the risk was worth it!

The second risk I took happened after reading Henry's Freedom Box - a picture book about a slave who mails himself north to freedom. We didn't have a box, but we did have the nice white cabinets you see in the picture above. The bottom right cabinet was a pretty good size, and we had a contest between the classes to see who could stuff as many people in the cabinet as possible. While loosely related to the book, it emphasized the tight quarters of slave ships and the sense of being stuck in a box for what seems like eternity. One of our students receiving special education services, who usually would not participate in anything, was so intrigued he had to try it himself, but by himself.

Technology in the Classroom for the Student and Teacher

As I look at my blog, I am embarrassed that I haven't posted anything since (gasp) June of 2012. Eeek! It isn't that I haven't been using technology, I have; I am just really busy learning a new curriculum. In fact, this month I am finally teaching everything for the second time and can evaluate the lessons, tweek them, improve them etc.

In the meantime, I did present the following presentation at the Wisconsin WEMTA conference last Spring. At the time, I decided to use that as a portfolio for keeping track of the neat things we do in the classroom. That hasn't worked, so I am returning to my blog.

My presentation included using technology as a teacher with a class website, Google Docs and other resources, along with the technology the students use in my class. We are a 1:1 district and this year every student has a Chromebook that loads in 8 seconds, so we tend to take technology for granted. But I remain steadfast in using technology when it improves a lesson, not just to replace pencil and paper. Therefore, we use it sporadically and usually with a choice of non-tech use also.

Enough rambling, please enjoy browsing through my presentation.

New Position - How Will I Integrate Technology?

Unfortunately as with many districts, mine has eliminated my position as a K-8 Technology Teacher and Coach. Fortunately, I had the foresight to see that this was coming and returned to school to get my 1-8 Teaching License. My school was therefore able to move me into a middle school social studies position for next year. I am very excited about this opportunity for growth. I am also apprehensive because now it is time to "put my money where my mouth is" and incorporate technology into my class the way I have been demonstrating to our teachers.

How will I do this? First, a little background information on our school. We are going into our 4th year as a 1:1 school from 5th-8th grade. Our 6th (soon-to-be-7th) graders have Chromebooks, and if all goes well, next year's 6th graders will also, allowing for 1:1 in the 4th grade as well. This is awesome, when technology works. Our middle school students are starting to get tired of being required to use the technology that is not as fast as they would like, nor as reliable. Thus said, I am not going to require they use it 100% of the time. Instead, I plan on giving them lots of choices, including paper and pencil.

My goal for myself is to use the technology for teaching, all the neat Web 2.0 sites and other websites I have been collecting. My soon-to-be-developed website will have all my resources that we use in class so that students can see examples of how I use technology with the hopes that they may want to try some of them out when given the choice. During class group work, I have some activities like backchanneling that will require technology, while others will not. The menu of choices I offer them will not require a particular product, but will give them the choice of how they want to demonstrate their learning. The key here is I am motivated to use technology, find it intriguing and want to challenge myself to use it. If the kids feel likewise fine, otherwise it will be their choice.

Analogies

I found the following video and really liked it because it did a good job explaining how to "read" an analogy by determining the relationship between the sets of words.

Here is the YouTube link.

Additionally, I found some great poems written from analogies by a fifth grade class. Below are some analogy examples.

Research with Varied Reading Levels

Yesterday I received an email from a listserv that I belong to regarding the use of Slideshare for research. This email reminded me of some good advice I found reading through the Buck Institute's book PBL in the Elementary Grades. The book suggested using Power Points found online as resources for lower level readers. Of course you would want to preview these to be certain the information is correct and appropriate, but there are really a lot of good Power Points on the web to choose from. I did a quick search for Wisconsin invasive species in Slideshare and found one that was done by a UW Madison scientist which would have been an excellent resource for our third graders when they did their Invasive Species PBL last year.

Some other ways to find websites that are easier to read include using the Advanced Search feature on Google. When doing a Google search, on the bottom, left side you can find "More Search Tools". When you click on that, you can select reading level. Sweet Search 4 Me is a search engine geared specifically for elementary students with every web site evaluated by their research experts.Twurdy is another search engine that rates its articles by reading level.Teaching students to "read" pictures can also provide them with some of the information they need.

In Wisconsin, your local library card will gain you access to Badgerlink, which includes the Elementary version of Encyclopedia Britannica. The articles in this encyclopedia are easier to read and also allow the viewer to listen to them. Some schools have direct access to Badgerlink when at school. Finally, check with your school's librarian to see what resources are available through your library catalog. Ours lets us search for both books and online material by reading level. Hopefully at least one of the above suggestions will help you support all reading levels in your classroom.

Choose Your Ending Story

Currently, I am working with a class of first graders to create a story that allows the reader to choose their own ending. We are beginning by creating a simple web of our story, something we have done before. The students need to web the beginning, middle and two possible endings to their story. Creating two endings to their story has caused many to stop and think. They are very capable of creating an ending, but creating two possibilities is a challenge which is why I started with the graphic organizer.

Once they finish their web correctly, they will open a Power Point I sent to them with the mechanics of the story already created (the links to each page) as it did not work as smoothly as I had anticipated. Detailed instructions for the Power Point can be found here. My pre-made Power Point and a sample story can be found here. After we are finished, we will do a gallery walk so all the students can share their stories and pick their endings!

Collaborative Story Writing

In discussing our upcoming lesson plans, one of our first grade teachers had an idea for a collaborative story where each child wrote a page for a story and they were all combined to create the entire story. After discussing the best way to do this so that she could print it if she wanted to and also send it home to parents, we decided to use Power Point and Flipsnack. She emailed the students a three page Power Point that had the title page, beginning of the story and then a blank page. The students wrote and illustrated their page and saved it.

After all the students finished their page, she copied them all into one large Power Point. We have the ability to pull documents from student files, but if you did not, you could have the student email it back to you, or save it on a flash drive as you walk around the room. If your school has access to Google Docs, a single presentation could be created for all to create their page on.

Her original idea was to have the students rearrange the pages so the story made sense, but in this case she was able to leave them in random order. She only picked one page to precede the ending, which she created. For older students who may write more on a page, allowing them to go through the entire story and rearrange the pages to make sense would be a wonderful exercise. Once the story was completed, we saved it as a PDF and uploaded it to Flipsnack.com to look like a real book. The PDF could be printed as she wished, and the Flipsnack book link could be emailed home to parents. I was really impressed with how it turned out! You can view it here.

Fractured Fairy Tales

As we are working through our Fairy Tales Extension unit, some students are ready to move on and will be writing their own fractured fairy tale. A trip to our school library netted me quite a few examples of fractured fairy tales and here is the lesson the students will complete. Here are some student examples that I was able to find online.

As I was preparing my lesson, I realized that it would be difficult for the students to understand the different point of view change. This lesson that I found will help them prepare to think about points of view. I remember my own children writing some very creative fractured tales and I am looking forward to reading the stories my students write.

Creative Writing Prompts

Technology allows us to find so many creative writing prompts that we were previously unable to access. I especially love the ones that allow for student customization. One of our first grade teachers used just such a site yesterday by having his students make themselves into dancing leprechauns with this website. After creating their leprechaun, he showed them how to do a screen print, insert it into Word and then crop it. Each student then wrote about themselves as a leprechaun. What an engaging activity!

Fairy Tale Extension Project

As I work with our third grade team during our Response to Intervention time, I develop extension projects for the universal students. Currently, we are working on a Fairy Tale extension project. After showing a video of Little Red Riding Hood, the students used this website to read through and pick their favorite fairy tale that they would like to use for this project.

Once they pick a fairy tale that they like, they work through a list of activities at their own pace. While we are using computers, these activities could easily be done on paper depending on your access to technology. While I have a couple of collaborative activities, peer feedback can be included in almost all the activities.

Depending on time, I may add to this project and have them create their own fractured fairy tale as our last extension project had them writing a story about a character, their problem and solution. Writing fratured fairy tales would connect the two projects nicely.

Which One Appeals to You Most?

For our Digital Learning Day challenge to try something new, I decided to have my 8th grade students create a Voki and then share them with a high school Social Media class in another city whose teacher I had connected with through our Business Education List-serv. To create a little excitement, I offered it out as a contest to my students explaining that the high school class would pick the Voki that met the requirements and appealed to them the most.

We were just beginning our unit on Photo Editing and I like to begin that unit with a discussion on the ethics of editing a photo that results in altering the truth. In the past, I would have my students write an email to a co-worker explaining the possible outcomes and consequences of altering the truth through photo editing, and persuading them not to do it. Using a Voki to communicate this message seemed like an engaging, yet still practical way to accomplish the same purpose.

The students had a great time using Voki. Although they were all over thirteen, could create their own account, and I had notified all the parents we were using this website, I found out that we did not need to have an account to create a Voki (although they still need to be over thirteen). Once the Vokis were created, I sent all the links to the other teacher. He did a great job of using a Google Form to have his students answer questions about the effectiveness of the Voki, and then choose their favorite. I did all my grading prior to receiving these comments as I only wanted the high schoolers to provide authentic feedback to my students - an opinion other than mine as to the effectiveness of their message. Additionally, I hoped that the topic we covered added to the high school student's awareness of the ethics involved with photo editing.

My students were eager to find out what the high school students thought of their Vokis and who the winner was. It was a neat experience for me to connect with another teacher and bounce ideas off of him, and we ended up being able to share some great resources on ethics with each other. In the end, both classes of students and both teachers gained from this experience.

What to do When You are Done

No matter what subject you teach, you will always have some students who finish before others. If they finish with only a short amount of time left in class, I usually have a filler activity, such as typing practice for younger and older students, and reading a book or finishing other homework for my middle school classes. However, there are times when a student will finish a whole class period before the rest of the class, and most importantly, they have met the quality requirements for the project. In this case, I want them to spend the next class period on something worthwhile that challenges them and is not just a filler.

While discussing this with my administrators during my ILP meeting, I remembered an example of a Bingo card I had seen in another teacher's classroom. Since my ILP is about differentiation in my classroom, I committed myself to creating a choice card for my students to use when they complete a project early. Looking at my plans for the month, my second grade lesson would offer the opportunity for me to try this choice card out. I came up with sixteen choices of things to do based on what we had already learned throughout the year or things I felt they could do independently. Here is my example.

As I predicted, I had students finish a whole class period before the others and it was a great feeling for me to be able to have something meaningful for them to work on. At the same time, they were thrilled to be able to have the opportunity to chose something to do in class. While some of the tasks were a little easy for my third graders, I was able to use the same choice card with them. Overall, it was a win-win situation!

Our Elf Exchange

While this post is a bit late for talking about elves, the concept can be used with many other topics so I felt it still worthwhile to share. One of my first grade teachers wanted to do a collaborative, descriptive writing project similar to the Monster Exchange, but on a smaller scale. As it was the end of November, together we came up with the idea for doing an Elf Exchange during December. I contacted @shannonmmiller at Van Meter School in Iowa, who was very excited to be a part of this exchange and invited @mrshureads from Brook Forrest School in Illinois to participate as well.

The general idea was for each student to try and redraw another student's elf using their written description. We ended up with both first grade and second grade classes participating in this project. It was a great lesson in descriptive writing as the students couldn't just tell us about their elf, but had to describe what the elf looked like. Beforehand, the teachers did a min-lesson in descriptive writing to help the students know what to write. After posting their descriptions, the students were very excited to find out what the other student's posted on the Wiki, and at the end were very surprised to see what the original elves looked like! This was a very authentic and engaging lesson to teach the importance of accurate, descriptive writing.

We used a Wiki to organize our elves - each pair of students had their own page. The steps we followed were as follows:
1. Draw your elf.
2. Looking at your drawing, write a detailed description of the elf.
3. Post only the description on your Wiki page.
4. After all schools had a chance to do #1-4, the student's returned to their wiki page.
5. Using the other student's description, draw their elf and post it on the Wiki.
6. After all schools had a chance to do #5, the students posted their original elves for comparison.

Creating eBooks

One of my second grade teachers would like to have her students create eBooks to publish their country studies learning. She would also like to have them record themselves reading the story as they so enjoy using the website Tumblebooks where they can listen while they read. We brainstormed a bit and came up with the following ideas for both recording and not recording voice. Additionally, I showed her the options in this website which include having the students create a real eBook that can be read on portable reading devices. I hope this spurs some ideas in your classroom.

Create eBooks

1. Use Power Point (our students are secure in this software)

a. Show them different page layouts

b. Clip art has many good pictures of both the country and general pictures

2. From here, to create an eBook that you can listen to, see #3. To create an eBook that you just read, see #4

3. Add voice

a. Save the Power Point slides as .jpgs

b. Insert them in Photo Story

c. Have the students record themselves reading it (parent volunteer?)

d. Save them as a wmv file

e. Combine all the wmv files into Movie Maker to make one movie (or you can make multiple smaller ones)

f. Upload this movie to the internet

4. Without Voice

a. Save the Power Point slides as .pdfs

b. Upload them to Flipsnack

i. You can keep them each separate and have 20 books

ii. You can upload three at a time to create one Flipsnack, so that would be about seven for your class

iii. Use a website to combine all of them into one .pdf to create one book

Using Excel in Your Literacy Block

As I was discussing teaching our third graders graphing in Excel, one of the teachers mentioned that it is hard to fit it in the curriculum without contriving a situation since we are such a literacy based school. This got me thinking, and I came up with a few situations in which we could incorporate Excel meaningfully in our literacy blocks as a whole class and/or on an individual basis.

Good readers ask questions. As such, it would be fairly easy to collect data that we could graph around these questions. For example, if you are modeling a particular question during a group read aloud, students could brainstorm some possible answers. Once five or six answers are written down on the board or a flip chart, a quick survey could be done on the answers and summed up in Excel. The survey can either be done by hand, or if it is a question asked after reading, could be put into a Google Form and during independent reading time, students could come up to the computer and submit their answer.

The graph can be displayed once everyone has submitted their response and could continue to be displayed the next day at group read aloud time before reading as discussion, or during reading to see what the answer turns out to be. This would engage the students even further as they look at the graph, remember their choice and then pay attention during the reading to see what happens in the book. Depending on the age of the students, each day a different student or group of students can be in charge of creating the graph from the information provided.

Other examples include students voting for their favorite character, then discussing why a certain character won. Comprehension questions work well here, as do analysis questions that require students to brainstorm ideas/solutions. I found an excellent list of questions that are organized by Blooms Taxonomy and many of them would work well with a graph.