Happy New Year!!

One of my bad habits is to search online for technology tools while I wait for my brain to slow down enough to fall asleep.  Late last night, okay- 3:00 am, I found a mention of the coolest thing since sliced bread.  After some more research I have found several other similar sites that have blown my mind!  Turns out that there are a ton of different ways which information can be organized and my current favorite is PearlTrees.  Check out the list of sites on a Pearl tree I created Info Organizing sites.  

How will this help the educator in me?  I have created a cool way in which students can complete web quests and do their own background knowledge searching as part of the front loading process. 
my Pearltree for "Huckleberry Finn".   The sharing capabilities are massive.  For PrealTrees, I can create a tree on my phone and share it through email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and many more ways.  I can also add my email and find a site, email it to the PearlTrees of my choice and move on.  This cuts out many steps for me who has a folder on all email accounts for web sites and ideas that Iw ant to look into at some point. 

Aside from using one of these apps to coach students through their learning, I can also see using it to organize my often random thoughts.  There are so many other choices out there, it doesn't hurt to have a plethora of ways in which to get organized.  Just another way available so that we can prepare more, perspire less and inspire limitlessly!

Technology and the 21st century teacher

There is so much information out there and so many ways to reach our students.  If you aren't comfortable with 21st century tools, then the chalkboard is still viable.  The only problem is that the kids ARE comfortable with anything that has a touch screen, links, and changing screen savers.

For the past several years, my students and I have been using our smart phones, iPads and pods, and cameras in the classroom.  I have had a "phones on the table" policy.  This meant that I wanted their digital devices out of the table and their job was to learn to be able to complete their tasks and learn- even with their beloved toys were within reach.  I consider this a life lesson.  In the professional world, I have to be able to have my phone and know that a text, email, tweet and phone call will be coming through, and that the info contained may be very important.  Maturity and professionalism meant that I could still complete my task and then check my phone.  This policy served me well and I think the students came to appreciate the life lessons involved.

I found several great links online and thought I would share to get the brains thinking.  12 videos every teacher educator should view.

Smartboards, smart phones, and challenging tech people make for a happy day in the classroom.  Simply getting everything to work is a challenge, but isn't that part of whay we do what we do?  To teach how to deal with challenges?  Trying is half the battle...

A video that spurred a three week video project in all my classes a few years ago is The 21st Century Student.    I polled all of my classes and asked them what they thought their teachers should about them in order to teach them.  It was breathtaking and heart breaking.  Students in general wanted their teachers to listen more and to teach them in the style which they needed.  This allowed for a lot of discussions with me guiding students to the understanding of the plight of teachers.  Just the openness of discourse allowed for all of us to understand one another.  All classes stated that they should have technology involved in each class.  Interesting.  Scary knowledge for the teachers who are not comfortable with the ever changing electronics and ability.  Challenging to incorporate and not leave any teachers OR students behind. 

Just wanted to open the can of worms and state that if we keep teaching students the way we have always taught students, then we are not preparing these very different kiddos for the world they are going to take over.    Taking a deep breath and jumping across the technological divide- join me!!

Revising with a Pro

I have fallen in love with two of Veronica Roth's books, Divergent and Insurgent.   Amazing dystopic societies.  They have almost replaced my constant favorite of the The Hunger Games.    I was shown her web-site, as we are waiting on the third in this series and fell in love.  Her revising and editing tips are awesome!  I just thought I should share a great young adult author and her writing process.  The idea of "mulling"....very cool!

and then the second...

http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/

Children's Books for Concise word choice

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4-4lU_P0OgjWlZ5cjFKMkY2OWc

These are a work in progress. I am afraid that learning to operate our new scanner/copier may be beyond me. Hoping to get this right very soon!

I have one or two more coming in, slowly but surely we're getting it done. I think that once we realized what our work looked like scanned, our work ethic and techniques changed. Those who finished quickly guided others in peer editing. This helped immensely, as we didn't have to take another couple of days to work on editing.

Pre-writing:
We began with a list of values, personal values. I asked everyone to fins the ten that were the most important to them. Then we narrowed it down to five, then three, then two and finally one value that really meant the most to them personally.

Then we did a quickwrite explaining what that value meant to them and how they would explain explain it to someone else. Next, we chose an animal or character we could write about.

On the next step, we worked in our journals by coming up with a beginning, middle and an end.

Final step in pre-writing was taking a regular sheet of paper and folding it into fourths, this gave us eight pages. The brainstormed what their character would do to SHOW a young reader what their value meant.

Drafting and editing:
Students were allowed five days to work their way through the book. I began by saying that we had to have 20 pages, but soon reduced the goal to cover the story. I allowed them lots of creativity and we printed off many coloring sheets to help with the art work.

Wins: Students were challenged to create based on their own understanding of a word, I did not help them in the choosing or in the defining.

Challenges: Many of us were more worried about the art work and less worried about the words. I wanted this whole project to be based on maximizing word choices, guess I will plan for longer to help in the art process and be more specific.

Many of us were more worried about the art work and less worried about the words.

Overall, it was great fun to get away from the multiple essays we've been working on.

Let's bring some Saturday into our weekday classes

  We were working at an EOC Rally this weekend, a last minute push to help students pass their retests on Monday and Tuesday.  Many of the students there had failed the same test twice and were preparing to take them again.  It was impressive to see their determination to succeed on these tests. 
   
    During one of our sessions, one of the students asked "why can't every class be like this?"  Then another chimed in and said, "Yea, I'm learning, why can't we have this much fun every day?"  I asked them to clarify what the difference was and they whole class joined the conversation.  They began talking about the activities and the manipulative's being used in their sessions.  There were four sessions and each had several teachers working together, co-teaching. 

   Our session covered the Literary essay and we began with a bubble wrap background knowledge pop, then a musical gallery walk to select character traits, then we completed their pre-write of a literary essay.  Finally, we created a "fortune teller" style foldable which worked as a rubric to see if their pre-write has the necessary parts. 
   These questions have stayed with me and I am not sure I have an answer that I can live with.  What were the differences between the normal school day and the Saturday rally?  First, a majority of the students present were there because they truly wanted to learn.  Second, the atmosphere was more lenient which lent itself to fully engagement.  That's the biggest difference, the students were engaged.  The activities were geared towards having fun with the information, creating a novelty which helps memory.  Finally, the teachers who were there, were there because they chose to give up a Saturday, to work with students. 
   Back to the main question, "why can't every class be like this?"  The only answer I can come up with makes my stomach hurt.  Teachers can't always have the engaging, active, fun lessons because they are exhausting to plan and execute.  Another point to consider is that at some point the students need to read and work independently.  At the high school level we have to prepare the students for college and the professional world.  I am not sure I am comfortable with either of my answers. 
  I believe I will try to bring some Saturday into my weekday classes.  Adding one active and engaging activity into every lesson.  Perhaps that will help.  My job is to get every student to want to be in my room and to want to learn. 

Musical Gallery walk.  Kids had a limited amount of time, one song, to chose from a list of physical character traits, then rotated to emotional character traits and finally to descriptor of setting.  They were creating their character and setting based on their interests without knowing the prompt.

Step 1- One each dot write something you know has to be in the Literary essay.  Then attach them to the bubble wrap.  As a group you discuss what you have written and then we share.  As each part is shared, conflict, then everyone who has written that down gets to pop the bubble wrap under their dot.

Final check- Fortune teller rubric that I had to get help folding.

The students paired up and one asked questions based on the questions in the rubric  and the other answered based on their own writing.

   Let's all bring some Saturday into our classes. 

Insurmountable changes and challenges

Along with the almost insurmountable changes and challenges that have arrived in education, there is also a generation of kids that need caring teachers more than ever.  I have spent many, many hours trying to discover and implement the balance between truly caring for my students by getting to know them as people and really being intentional by knowing where they are based on their formative and summative data.  For me, it is a delicate balance.  I call myself the student profiler, as I get in depth with their data and get to know them.  This generation has immense amounts of pressure on them in many ways, especially when we look at test scores. 

I had wanted to add an educational blog for awhile, but have felt compelled to do so this year.  I currently teach juniors in the state of Texas and this means that the STAAR/EOC test hasn't hit our grade level yet.  The scores for the freshman EOC test, reading and writing, were disheartening.  We have spent this year working hard to help these kids to pass their retests.  This same group of kids also have another round of reading and writing EOC tests this year as sophomores.  My fear is that many of this same group will come to me next year with multiple re-tests on their lists and multiple failures on their heart. 

Now is the time to get over my fears for these kids and prepare.  These kids need the best I can give them and I invite you to join me.

 I will be sharing links, sites, ideas, problems and any solutions I come across in this venue.  Please feel free to share and comment and join in the conversation.  ileana