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.

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!

Work at Your Own Pace

My middle school classes are structured so that I see them once every four days. Keeping every student synchronized on the same activity is a challenge. Since I don't mind students working on different things at the same time, I decided to reread a website and book that really opened my eyes to doing things differently in the classroom, Layered Curriculum, by Kathie Nunley and implement some of her ideas. I had worked with this concept years ago on some selected activities, but now I decided to apply it to an entire unit.

My lessons always begin with the basic information and skills needed for our topic. From there, I assessed what the students really needed to know and then added activities and projects that worked their way up the Bloom's Taxonomy scale. Once I had done that, I looked over all the components again to determine what I felt all students needed to complete, which was everything except a final project. Additionally, if some students complete that before the rest of the class finishes the basic assignments, I am prepared for them to develop an independent course of study. 

 The entire unit is posted on Moodle so that as students complete one item, they move right on to the next. Each morning, I go through my log sheet and meet with small groups of students to instruct them on what they need for that day, having three to four groups come up. I am able to provide smaller, more individualized instruction and the students are more focused because they know this is their task for the day. I make sure that I stay on top of my grading so that they receive timely feedback, and can look in their online gradebook to see what assignment they should be working on next. If needed, I will also have students redo assignments that were below average.



For the final project, the students will have a choice of an "A grade" project, a "B grade" project and a "C grade" project. If they don't have enough time in class to finish the "A grade" they may still do it, but as homework. This is still a work in progress, and it is taking some adjustment for the students to pay attention to where they are at on their own instead of me telling them what to do. However, I feel like I am meeting the needs of the students better to reach them where they are at now, instead of treating them as one large group.

Flipping a 6th Grade Math Class

My student teaching experience was an excellent experience for me as it afforded me the opportunity to work with a great teacher @jgbluedevil as we strived to provide the best possible learning opportunities for a group of struggling math learners. From the beginning, we collaborated on ideas to help the students and from there we laid the framework for a flipped classroom. The concept behind a flipped classroom is that the students watch an instructional video for homework and class time is spent on what would be traditionally considered homework. This allows for the teacher to spend class time working with the students instead of doing whole group instruction. This website is a great resource for information on teaching with a flipped classroom.

To begin with, we quit demonstrating problems from the workbook as the students would tend to tune us out and continue with other workbook problems, and we switched to notetaking. This is a process you need to teach the students, both how to take notes (write down steps with examples, not just random math problems all over your page) and then how to use the notes (leave them open on your desk as you do your math workbook). Using Flipsnack.com, I created a website where I posted these notes  along with links to online manipulatives, videos and also surveys for formative assessment. That way, if a student forgot to bring their notebook home or didn't understand their notes, they could access them at home. Additionally, the online manipulatives and videos provided extra reinforcement for the day's lesson.

 

Once we had established a routine of notetaking and helped the students become secure in using the notes, I created a screencast for one lesson. To scaffold the experience of a flipped classroom, we began on a day the students took a quiz. As they finished the quiz, they were to go to the website and watch the screencast video, then do two pages of their workbook. The video I created was also scaffolded to help them with the experience as I talked them through how to learn from a video. I told them when to stop and write something down and when to stop and do a practice problem. Students worked on this in class and then continued it at home. 

The next day, we corrected homework and all students who scored 80% or above on their homework worked independently to complete the remaining workbook pages in the lesson. The other students met with me for re-teaching. It turned out that over half of the students I met with were secure in the day's lesson, but had forgotten to simplify their fractions. The other half needed anywhere from five to fifteen minutes of individual teaching to become secure in the lesson. As they became secure, they independently worked on the remainder of their homework.


About a week after this experience, I surveyed the students about notetaking, notes posted on the website and the video lesson. The majority of the students felt it beneficial to have the notes posted online and half felt the video lesson was preferable to a lecture. Unfortunately, our school technology systems did not support the continuation of the flipped lesson. We had many difficulties finding a way to host the video in a manner that the students could consistently view it without errors occurring. Despite those problems, which we continue to work through, the students and I felt the lesson a success and one I would definitely continue to use.

Vote with Your Feet

 How often do we offer students choices? When I plan a lesson, there are some things the students "need to know" and then there are areas where I am very comfortable offering choices. Today I read a great blog post about letting students vote with their feet. Often we feel like we have come up with some really great ideas, when in reality, the students have no interest in them. 


While I have almost always offered some individualization of products in my class, and I am getting much better at offering different ways at obtaining the content (the process part of differentiation), I am still working on offering choices in content. I have no trouble with different students working on different things at the same time, so my next goal is to differentiate the content a little bit more and when possible, letting them choose which content they would like to learn more about. In the meantime, I will continue to try to hold true to letting the student's voice be an integral part of my classroom.

Our Pets

This morning I had the opportunity to help with another great Van Meter Merton connection! Our second grade teacher recognized the need for differentiation of her math unit. Three students who knew the material well and did not need to sit through the lesson again were instead assigned an alternative math project. These students created a survey about the pets students have both in their class here at Merton and their friend's class at Van Meter. Each class completed the survey and the three students used the information to create a game for their class to play.

Once the information was collected, the three students created a column graph showing their data results. Using this graph, they then created questions such as "How many more dogs does Van Meter have than Merton?" Each question also had an answer written on the bottom of the card. The rest of the class will be given a copy of the column graph and the questions to play a math game. I came in and helped the three students use Excel to create the column graph and then use Power Point to make question cards. All three students were very engaged and excited about this project! What a great way to make another connection between the two classes!