My class recently used Lucid chart to help organize an essay. Lucid chart is an app that is connected to Google drive that allows the user to create an online flow chart organizer. It has a variety of tools and shapes that can be used to customize a flow chart to fit with unique projects. This seemed like a great fit for my class since they were working on organizing an essay for their endangered species project. I told the class that this was in place of completing a graphic organizer and that they had the chance to be more creative this way.
I told the students that they needed to have five paragraphs laid out and each needed to have the four parts of an ACES paragraph (assertion, citation, explanation, and shift). I showed them how to connect to the app and then they really just ran with it. It is an intuitive program that the students were able to play around with and seemed to have fun using. One of my students even said that, "This is way better than a graphic organizer." My group read an article that described 8 examples using the SAMR model this week. This helped me to better understand what that model is all about and that I have used it several times without realizing it. When I used Lucid chart in my language arts classes I was probably at the modification stage of the model. When modifying a task, technology "allows for significant task redesign." (Walsch, 2015, p.1). Unlike using a graphic organizer, Lucid chart allowed the students to design the layout and organization of their thinking. The students were able to get creative using the different shapes and colors. They can also share their creations with me or other students to get feedback on their work. This is certainly a tool that I would consider using again. Once everyone figured out how to connect the app, it was really easy to use Lucid chart. If something can make writing an essay even a tiny bit more fun, I am all about it.
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Over the last semester I have used tons of instructional strategies. When I am struggling to think of something to do in my class, I look at my lists or charts of instructional strategies for some ideas. Most of them go really well, but some of them haven't. In the last two weeks I've used a chalk talk, goals, a human bar graph (this one was awesome), clear feedback, and a couple others from the list on Canvas. My goal is to make language arts suck a lot less than it did when I was in middle school.
It is super obvious when the students like an activity and when they hate it. in one of my classes, they pretty much hate everything, so I am not going to talk about them. One thing that I tried and I do not feel great about is modeling. I know it's supposed to be great and can really help students, but I have a hard time slowing down and really doing it correctly. I can feel the students' interest fading after a few minutes and I tend to rush through things. I modeled some annotations the other day and it clearly didn't go well. I went back over the students' work when I graded it and realized that a significant number of them didn't even write down the things that I wrote in my modeling. I thought that would be so easy for them, but I guess not. I think I need to slow down a bit more when i recognize that I'm starting to go too quickly through things like that. I'm bad about rushing through things that I think are probably boring even though they are important. I will certainly use modeling again, but I will take my time and really make sure the students are going at the same pace. In Mica Pollock's article on being an equity designer for Teaching Tolerance, she reminds teachers that we really need to think critically about the tech tools that we use with our students (2016). We shouldn't just throw something at kids and hope that it really helps them learn. We need to make sure that the tool is used for its intended purpose. Using videos as a tool, specifically Youtube videos, is certainly a tool that can be used effectively or used in such a way that it doesn't help anyone. Video can be used in many different ways in a classroom. It can be used as a differentiation tool for students to either consume or produce (Voldberg et al, 2017). A group of researchers in Denmark found that students had success in interacting with videos to better understand a topic like the Pythagorean theorem, which can be complicated and take multiple explanations to really understand. Giving that student a chance to repeat the video and watch parts that they considered important turned out to be a valuable tool. Teachers can also use screen cast technology tools to create instructional videos that are specific to their class's needs. Students can also create videos as a way to showcase their understanding of the topic. This can be especially useful as a replacement for a presentation (Voldberg et al, 2017). There are many ways to use video as an instructional tool, but it has to be implemented thoughtfully. I have found that video can be a great tool when it comes to differentiation. It was surprising when I found out that I had several middle school students who are non-readers or have very limited reading abilities. At first I was completely lost because I'm a language arts teacher and my classes are focused on reading and writing. One of the special education teachers suggested using videos to help the students get the gist of our short stories and myths so that they could complete the projects I had planned. That actually worked well! I had a few students plug in headphones and watch a Tedtalk video on The Flight of Icarus and they were able to understand the plot of the myth. Videos can connect to a lot of the ISTE standards and the 21st century skills that students need. Giving the students an opportunity to find videos that help them learn can help them become empowered learners. Creating videos to showcase their understanding can give students a chance to communicate creatively. This tool can also develop learning an innovation skills that help students be better people in the world. Most of the days that I would say were bad have started with some craziness in my third period class. I have a hard time dealing with some of my tough students in that class. It's basically a tie between the day of "The Incident" (That's seriously how my students refer to the class) where a students nearly got into a physical fight in class (Oh and I had my formal observation the next period.) and Thursday when that tricky third period class gave me way too much attitude and then a sixth grader essentially called me trash at the end of class. It's been crazy trying to understand how students could think any of this stuff is acceptable to do at school and I am totally lost about how to solve some of these issues.
On both of these days I do not think I used good self care to recover. This was nearly impossible on Thursday because I had conferences from the time school ended that lasted until six. The other day happened during that week that I had to write my literature review and was totally overwhelmed by the work I had to do. Ideally, I would like to do things differently next time. One thing that always helps me to think things over and relax is running up something really steep. On a day day, I should just put my shoes on at 3:45 and take off. There are some nice switch backy trails to run right by Miller! Doing this would help me to reflect on things that I can do to avoid getting into these hairy situations and ways to help the students to stop being so mean. I've noticed that the weeks where I get outside, talk to friends, and take some time for me are the best weeks. I come up with all sorts of good ideas for lessons and projects and just feel happier. The worst weeks are the ones where I don't get any exersize or talk to people I care about. This summative assessment assignment came up at just the right time because I needed to design one anyway for the unit that I am going to start soon. I wanted to create a unit that is high interest for the students and ended with a fun project. We are going to work on research and persuasive writing skills, which can be kind of daunting for some students so it is important to research something interesting.Most of my students seem to be pretty into animals so that seemed like a natural fit. The endangered species aspect adds some controversy and higher order thinking.
For the most part, I come up with everything that I teach at Miller and that can be really difficult and time consuming. However, for this unit one of the instructional coaches is helping me brainstorm and find some texts and resources to use. We started with the end goal first and worked back from there. Having the summative assessment all figured out before we start the unit is going to give the students something to look forward to as we get into the nitty gritty research bit at the beginning. It seemed more engaging to make this project at the end something that the students could potentially share outside of the school community. That way they feel like they are doing something more relevant and meaningful. The research proposal seems fairly straightforward. Since the summer course, I have been thinking about methods and procedures that will be reasonable to complete as part of my research. Now that I have been in with my students for two months or so I have an even better idea of what I can reasonably complete in the given amount of time that I have. The next step is to make sure it is all written down and makes sense to other people.
The structure that we are following for this assignment is just like all the papers that I read to make my own literature review. The title and abstract are super easy to do. I've done this before so it is not a problem at all! Most of the other parts are all up in my brain, just waiting to be typed out. I anticipate the expected results section to be the second most difficult behind the literature review section. The literature review took me FOREVER to write and I am so happy that it is done now. Sitting at a computer and doing hours and hours of research is certainly not my cup of tea. During my undergraduate experience, I got used to writing papers that just came out of my own head. I wrote about topics like existentialist anarchy and giving animals rights without doing much research at all. This is arguably more difficult that summarizing what other people have said, but it is what I'm used to and it's hard to switch gears. As far as the expected results go, I am not sure what I will come across when I survey students and staff next semester. From what I have heard from other adults, it seems like they have a negative perspective on the current discipline system at Miller. It seems that the people who are trained on restorative practices are all about it, but everyone else feels like there is no discipline in place. The students seem to be reacting in a positive manner to the restorative practices I have used in the classroom so far, but that is just my perception of their perception. That's why I want to survey them and see what they actually think! My goal for this week is to get a super solid research proposal FINISHED. I mean all the way finished. It has been very difficult to get everything done for these classes while figuring out what to do in all my classes, but I am going to do it anyways! Twitter as a Tool for Collaboration Twitter is a well known social media platform that is used all over the world. I have one that I made freshman year of college and haven’t looked at since that shares my thoughts on memes and whatever I was doing as a college freshman. Obviously, some Twitter accounts are useless, but others can be a great tool for educators. When it is used a classroom tool for students, they can learn about different cultures as they connect with classes in other parts of the world. One teacher, Amy Presley, found that Twitter was helpful for learning from other educators from around the world. It became a wonderful tool and PLN for her (Carpenter et al, 2016). Cult of pedagogy also suggests using Twitter for this purpose, but gives teachers more concrete steps to take to get the most out of the site as possible. Once you have created a Twitter account, it’s time to find some people to follow. Using hashtags and the search options, it’s easy to find other educators on Twitter who are also in a similar situation. People share links and ideas as tweets that others can go check out on their own. By following these people instead of doggo memes, educators can get useful links to classroom resources right on their Twitter feed which is fairly easy to check and keep up with. Users are also able to post their own ideas and tag people in them who should check them out. Hashtags can also get people to look at your posts if they are something similar to what that person wants to find. If an educator wants to look up something specific like using QR codes in your classroom, they can look that up in the search bar or find it using hashtags. They could even make a tweet asking others about resources about that topic. If you have enough followers, you might get tweeted at about that topic of interest. This aspect of Twitter is appealing to me because it would allow me to connect with other educators about what they are trying in their classes. Our group article on the benefits of Twitter discussed the importance of getting in touch with others to avoid isolation at school (Carpenter et al, 2016). This is something I could use as I try to plan things in my classes at Miller since we are not expected to collaborate with other teachers much so it does not happen often. I makeup pretty much everything I do and could use as many ideas as I can find. Some educators also use Twitter as a tool in their classrooms that the students can use. I found pages where teachers had posted homework assignments or used Twitter chat to talk to students around the world. This seems a little less practical for my classes since we do not have reliable access to computers. Many of my students do not have access to a computer at home either, so I hesitate to do anything that they would have to keep up with outside of school. A few weeks ago I asked my students what a hashtag does. This was part of a lesson on universal themes and I was trying to get them to make a connection between the way hashtags connect ideas and photos to the way universal themes connect stories. I found out that most of my sixth graders and quite a few of my seventh graders had no idea what a hashtag was or how they worked. If I were to use something like Twitter in my classes, we would have to spend a ton of time learning how to use it before we could use it for anything educational. Here is the link to the Cult of Pedagogy I refer to in this article and the journal article that my group used. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/how-to-use-twitter/ I . Establishing A Respectful Tone
This is one aspect of community building that I do well. The students are hyper aware of the things that I say to them and the way that I address them. Usually, I have a pretty sarcastic sense of humor with adults. I make sure to turn this off when I am with my students. That is one thing that they do not understand and could easily mistake for me being rude to them. I try to model please and thank you a ton like the author of the article does. It may even be rubbing off on the students. I I . Establishing A Bond With And Among Your Students The bond in some of my classes is strong, but in others it is very weak. In my crew class, I have a good bond with the students and the students seem to be getting along well. I even see some hanging out outside of class. We do tons of team building and cooperation activities in this class and I always join in with the students. It's great to get up and moving with them and to show them my fun side at times. Most of my sixth grade classes seem to be getting along pretty well, too. We took the whole first week to play get to know you games and start building community. I also try to get them talking and working with others as much as I can in my language arts classes. At the same time, I have one 7th grade class that seems to be getting worse when it comes to community building. I did all the same things with them at the beginning of the year and did many of the same protocols that my sixth graders did. Yet, they constantly insult each other and put each other down. I am struggling to figure out how to help them get along better and stop being so mean. III. Creating A Community That Values All Students I think a have done a lot of deconstructing my own personal biases throughout this MAE program. Beth's class last fall was almost entirely about that and I fell pretty good about recognizing my own biases. I try to readjust my thoughts and not say things that could bring people down. I have been trying to address all insensitive comments that I hear in my classes, but in that 7th grade class it is really difficult. There are just so many mean things being said that I can't keep up with the students. I have tried to make the whole class aware of this by generalizing and addressing the entire class, too. This usually turns into more disrespectful comments somehow. It works for the sixth graders though! I V . Helping Students Resolve Conflicts I have used restorative conversations to resolve conflicts between students and they usually seem to help students apologize to each other and move on. For example, I had a sub the other day so I could go to a professional development event and an incident occurred between two students. One said something really insensitive when a student mentioned his deceased father. That student responded by breaking some personal property that belonged to the other student. We talked it out and the students were able to recognize that they both did something wrong in this situation. They apologized and things seemed less tense between them afterwards. I would never have heard the whole story if I had not handled this situation like I did. I would have only heard the sub's point of view which made things seem much worse than it actually was. I think it's important to give students the space to solve their own problems and facilitate if necessary to repair harm. This week I tried using a Plickers quiz activity with my students as a new formative assessment, then I also had them complete a Google forms quiz the next day on the same topic. Plickers went alright, but I still had quite a few students ask if we could do a Kahoot instead. I think the main problem is that this activity is a little slower paced, especially in a class with thirty-three students. It takes forever to get everyone scanned in. They also changed the app and I didn't realize that. I certainly pushed a couple wrong buttons which seemed to annoy my class. There were also a few students in that big class who just sat in the back and did not participate. Plickers might be best for smaller classes or very short reviews.
I also tried a Google forms quiz this week. I used some of the exact same questions that were on the Plickers quiz. The students who took the Plickers quiz seriously did well on the quiz and the students who didn't really participate did not do as well on the quiz. This was not surprising. Google forms is great because it cuts down on grading time for the more rote quizzes that are sometimes necessary. It went alright for the students who actually know how to get into the computers, but I had to print a few out for those who could not get into the computers. Yep. They still can't get in and it's almost October. Overall, I think the quiz was a success and I would do it again even if the students have a hard time with the computer lab. Annotated bibliographies and literature reviews are very different, but I think writing an annotated bibliography can help make writing a literature review much easier. The first time I wrote an annotated bibliography was in sixth grade for my national history day project. We had to hand write every citation in MLA format on a note card and write our annotations on the back side of the card. Fast forward twelve years later and that method is just tattooed into my brain. I write down a source or put it into a bibliography on the computer and I automatically want to summarize the article so I can remember it for later. It makes sense to make some notes right away that are connected to the actual citation sense that is the part I am going to keep forever for my literature review references section.
Even though I think annotated bibliographies are great now, I definitely hated them in middle school. In fact, I never appreciated taking notes or writing itself until much later in my educational career. Doing an annotated bibliography and a literature review might seem like more work than just doing the lit review, but for me it actually reduces the amount of work I do overall. Sixth grade Rhea was not aware of this and just thought it was a lot of writing. My plan for this bigger literature review is to annotate my sources in Zotero and then use those annotations to guide my thematic literature review. That way I won't be up until 1 am the night before it is due, scrambling through my sources like I did in sixth grade. |
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