Category Archives: Literacy

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The STEM Missile (really MSTL)

In my job as STEM Learning Facilitator I travel hundreds of miles each month around the 6 counties in my region, but at times all around our state. One of the toughest challenges we face is the technology integration piece.  Many (way too many) educators still possess minimal skills or knowledge in integrating technology, have limited access to technology, are blocked from most online collaboration enabling applications, are unaware of what is available (since it’s blocked) and misinterpret laws protecting students from online dangers. In addition, any use of technology (“We go to the computer lab for 30-45 minutes a week.”) is perceived as implementing the “T” in STEM effectively.

Furthermore, each school district has it’s own network, protected by their own security systems, and they tend to not relinquish access to those networks easily, even for someone coming in to train their educators.

So to enable us to do a much better job of delivering quality professional development (PD) we came up with the idea of a mobile lab to control for many more of the variables of access and hardware that have frustrated us and the participants in the PD sessions we offer.

I’m not going to spend time here explaining fully what led to the choices we made, but know there was thought that went into those choices. Cost was a big factor.

We chose to go with 21 Acer Chromebooks. The lab also contains 3 Verizon Mobile Hotspots so we have connectivity almost everywhere we take the lab that isn’t filtered, and 21 waterproof digital cameras so we can model integration and archive teachers’ learning to their own free Flickr accounts which we set up during trainings. The wireless hubs also enable showcasing and utilizing applications like blogs, wikis, Twitter and more during trainings and presentations so educators and administrators can perceive their education value. Thankfully, this also tends to foster discussion about safety and other issues that we can then deal with in an open way based on at least this initial experience.

MSTL Chromebooks

 

Right now the lab sits in plastic tubs, but part of our plan is to develop a cheap, light transportation system that will also keep the components of the lab in good shape. We already have some ideas for that that I plan to share later.

 

(Below right) 21 Fuji digital cameras being charged for the first time – we chose these because they have fewer moving parts (the lenses don’t open and shut like most point and shoot cameras do these days), they are waterproof to 10 meters deep and are purported to survive being dropped from 5 feet … so hopefully they will take a bit more rough handling and if the opportunity arises could be used underwater … we’ll see. MSTL Cameras

 

 

We’ve already had some success, even before obtaining the MSTL (Mobile STEM Technology Lab), in persuading one reluctant school district to open up blogs, wikis and Flickr on a trial basis to one school. We had discussions with teachers, administrators and school board members and demonstrated the educational value they were missing and explained that they would not be losing their E-Rate funding (a common misconception) if they allowed access to any social networking applications.

That promising experience actually helped us secure the funding for the MSTL.

We tried out the MSTL in a training last week in a classroom in the center of a high school with a very low, heavy metal ceiling and lots of suspended metal ductwork. We suspected in advance that that would slow connectivity, and it did, but we also know that most of the training sites we utilize don’t have that issue (and we’ve used the hubs in these locations and achieved good connectivity), so we are confident. I’ll keep you apprised of how things go!

Learning is messy!

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Close Reading? OK, How About Close Doing?

Reading

 

 

 

 

 

 “Reading” Sebastien Wiertz

Close reading is one of the “strategies du jour”.

From the Common Core State Standards in ELA:

1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

In addition from the Harvard Writing Center:

The second step is interpreting your observations. What we’re basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to.

In pretty much all trainings and presentations I deliver about STEM learning, I stress how STEM is language intense. I go so far as to state that it is one of the most powerful language arts interventions available. But that is only true if you take advantage of the language learning (and loads of other learning possibilities) that STEM provides.

STEM learning is somewhat its own enemy because often the activity or experience involved is so interesting, intriguing or engaging (or all 3) that the students get excited and talk about it excitedly (and often parents voice how excited their child was when they came home) and teachers assume everything (or enough) important was learned. What is probably more often the case is that the lesson/learning experience was just about the STEM learning and integrating the language arts either isn’t part of the plan, the time to integrate isn’t perceived as important, or the usual issue of not feeling there is time rears its head.

This is a powerful learning opportunity missed. Really opportunities missed. Let’s focus on just one. Instead of “close reading,” we’ll refer to it for lack of a better name as “close doing” (but we could call it “close making” or “close observing” or other possibilities).

I point out repeatedly how too often field trips or major hands-on activities (doing or making activities) are planned to be experienced  as either stand alone experiences or end of unit experiences with little to no emphasis on how they tie to the overall learning plan. Will the learning be integrated into all subjects or are those connections just assumed to be made? What if instead these experiences were provided early on in the unit? Example: Students are learning about animals- adaptations, habitats, and so forth. After a bit of learning about what adaptations and habitats are, we take a trip to a zoo or wildlife park to observe and learn about animals. Students are required to take notes and ask questions about the animals habitats and adaptations and take digital photos and video clips of animals, but also information displays and more.

Trips like these are usually exciting for students and even lead them to wonder and wanting to learn more. But often (as stated above) this also marks the end of the unit; “That was fun kids, next week we start learning about the planets!” Here’s where I propose “close doing” comes in. Using students memories, notes and photos (which I always archive somewhere like Flickr (free) so students, families and collaborators have access to them) we make close observations about each animal – what were some of the characteristics of each animal that helped them adapt (claws, fur, shells, eye size, … ) – colors, but more – not just white, but creamy white and white like a cloud or milk – even emphasize really what color white was it, cloud white? Pearl white? Cream white? Which is the best descriptive color, or texture, or simile to something man-made for example.

All the senses should come to bear: What did animals, their parts, their habitats, etc. look like, feel like (or look like they feel like if you couldn’t really touch them)) smell like, sound like … go deep! This takes time AND should probably happen during your language block, not just a science period (but could be both) because this is language study as much as it is science. Students should be taught and challenged to be close observers and inferrers. Just as close as they have to be when they are close reading.

The same is true for the hands-on activities- the doing and making experiences the students have. What did you observe during that experiment or construction/engineering piece? What were all the happenings, colors, actions, reactions and so on that you saw and explain what each one had to do or didn’t have to do with the overall result?  Thinking “close” about how you observe and do and problem solve and more, about any of these aspects of a project or unit. (NOTE: You wouldn’t do the super intense “close doing/observing” with every part of the project – that’s as stifling as overdoing close reading – I’m saying consider picking some part of the learning or doing and do it every once in a while – a couple/three times a year maybe – then you have built and practiced those essential skills and have those “close doing” schema experiences to relate to in other subjects as well).

Just like it takes many readings and lots of probing questions to facilitate “close reading” skills and thinking, the same is true of observing and noting all of what was observed and/or done in “close doing.” Getting students to note all the meaning is the goal here too.

The vocabulary that comes from these experiences is amazing … and because it is based on schema all the students build together, and have in common, it becomes a valuable reading instruction resource later; “Remember when we saw that bear at the zoo and he seemed both scary and cuddly at the same time? How does this character remind you of that? Or how is this character different than that?” OR “Remember how we noted that the bear’s fur was brown like the bark on a redwood tree?” Why do you think this author chooses the colors she uses to describe the buildings and streets in this chapter?”

Then, because students have thought and taken notes about not only facts, but color, texture, actions, behaviors, and much more, they are scaffolded to write incredible descriptive poetry, stories, captions for the photos they took, narrations for videos that share and assess their learning and so much more.

“The second step is interpreting your observations. What we’re basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to.”

Remember this quote about close reading above? Re-read it and note how it fits with STEM learning. Ingesting  that motivating, hands-on learning and taking the time to “interpret” it – then sharing through text or video, or podcast, or any number of other publishing portals … and preferably shared online to promote and obtain the benefits of connected and collaborative learning as well – emphasizing that “close” idea, just not only with text.

Let’s change out some of the words from the definition of close reading from above:

“Think about and do closely to determine what the research, experience, investigation and inquiry says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific _ evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the research, observation, collaboration, inquiry and experience.”

So what I am saying is, is that STEM or inquiry learning is just as important and valuable a language arts learning opportunity as reading text, if the vocabulary and writing and research are emphasized and connected to close thinking and inferencing skills. And it provides another avenue or method to connect students struggling to interpret text to thinking about and explaining meaning and learning. Not saying it takes the place of reading text, just that it is as important to do because students are just as weak at interpreting, citing and inferring from other inputs, and articulating from them is just as important.

And if you build students “close doing” skills, the next time you are doing “close reading” – you have built schema for being successful at that as well: “Remember how long it took us to come up with “redwood bark” as a great description of the bear’s fur? How frustrated we were for awhile? But then when we came up with that and saw how near perfect it was as a description … how excited and motivated we were? That’s what we have to do now as we think about this text passage.”

Also note – if you are trying to jam STEM learning into a crowded schedule (STEM is a culture, not a time of day or day of the week), here is your valid reason and method to truly integrate it.

Learning is messy!

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Nevada Tahoe Teacher STEM Institute

3 weeks ago we participated in the Nevada Tahoe Teacher STEM Institute. Over 50 K – 9 teachers from all over Nevada came to the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Lake Tahoe, for a week of STEM learning. The funding was based on a Math/ Science Partnership Grant we wrote and received through the Nevada Department of Education. The event was put on by the Nevada’s Northwest Regional Professional Development Program, Washoe County School District, TERC, along with help and support from others mentioned in this post. BELOW: We started off with a group photo.

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Sunday evening we started them off learning the science of tie-dye (covalent bonds and all) and made the case for STEM learning. We also set up a STEM notebook for each teacher as well as a digital notebook (blog).

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The next day started at 6:30 am for breakfast and a day of Project WET, GEMS (Great Explorations in Math and Science), background in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a trip on the TERC research vessel on Lake Tahoe, stream studies and training on and set-up of blogs, wikis and a Flickr photo account – all of which we added to all week.

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GEMS – Great Explorations in Math and Science

 

 

Out on the TERC research vessel

 

 

 

ABOVE: Field Lab Director Brant Allen explains the use of a Secchi disk in reporting out the clarity of the water in Lake Tahoe. The clarity has degraded from over 100 feet to about 70 feet since the 1960’s. BELOW: Secchi disk being lowered into the lake.

 

A couple of past visitors to the TERC research vessel you might recognize: DSC02702

 

 

 

 

BELOW: Stream monitoring and benthics.

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During following days all teachers learned geology, aquatic habitats, space science, ocean science, food webs, the ethics of teaching outdoors – and the middle and high school teachers also worked in the Soluble Reactive Phosphorous Lab solving a mystery about pollution sources ala CSI. The grant provided experts from GEMS, TERC the USGS and others to teach classes and lead labs.DSC02753 DSC02758

 

 

 

 

 

In the Soluble Reactive Phosphorous Lab

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BELOW:Food webs

 

 

 

 

Ladybugs!

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Participants loved the “Digital Sandbox”

DSC02766 Geoff Schladow – Director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center explains the “State of the Lake.”

 

 

 

 

 

We also got to visit the lake at sunset:

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Besides the more than 40 hours of training, participating teachers each received lessons, supplies and other resources to take back to their classrooms and students so they can use what they learned right away. In addition teachers will have monthly follow-up sessions to share their progress, ask questions, share resources they have developed and make connections through the classroom blogs, wikis and Flickr accounts they set-up. It was an intense and rewarding week of learning and sharing in one of the most beautiful locations on Earth!

FLICKR Set from the institute

NTTSI Wiki

Learning is messy!

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Unleash the Learning Power of Blogs By Actually Using Them Consistently!

Blogs are an incredible learning tool. But like an exercise bike, having one does not lead to self improvement unless you use it. And using it sporadically is only barely helpful. You have to invest time to get the great results … imagine now the sculpted/toned bodies of the models they use in ads for any exercise equipment … then imagine the sculpted/toned brains of your students using blogs. That doesn’t happen without consistent use.

Now that I think of it though, blogs are not like an exercise bike, blogs are like one of those pieces of fitness equipment that include multiple exercises – weight lifting, sit-ups, pull-ups, leg lifts and so on. Blogs are certainly writing spaces, but they lend themselves to not just publishing writing, but also response and discussion which is that higher level thinking we are vying for. But wait! There’s still more. Blogs also include, publishing photos, videos, podcasts, spreadsheets, slide shows, art work, and much more. AND all of those pieces can be written about and discussed. AND note its not even all writing, notice in my partial list it can be oral language and media … and of course it involves reading. So multiple exercises for the brain! AND all of that is archived and it is then easy to see improvement over time – you can see it, your students can see it and their parents can see it.

Did I mention the family connection? Not only is the blog available for student collaborators to see and interact with, the students’ families can as well. Students can go home and show parents what they did today, family members can comment … see what I mean? Oooh, and I’ve had experts like scientists and athletes and the like leave comments and interact as well.

Here’s the thing though, getting back to my initial point, that doesn’t happen if we don’t use them consistently. Blogs are powerful, engaging, motivating, learning tools. So use them consistently, and use all their possibilities. Otherwise it is like doing one or two writing projects a year that you turn into published books … “My Poetry Book” and/or “The Day I Was My Dog” – great stuff, but imagine doing that all the time and you (the teacher) doesn’t have to find the special paper and laminate and so forth.

Oh, and couple your class blog with a wiki and a photo sharing service like Flickr … it only gets better.

So if you have your students blogging because you want them to learn. Then really have them blogging all the time!!!! The initial time it takes to get them up and going will pay big dividends!

Learning is messy!

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Sharing Real-World Projects Sharpens the Literacy Skills of Connected Students

I have a new post up over at the Powerful Learning Practice Blog entitled: Sharing Real-World Projects Sharpens the Literacy Skills of Connected Students. Head over and give it a read … and comment as well. 🙂

I’ve been making the point in my STEM trainings that part of the appeal, to me at least, of STEM and Maker learning, is how language intense it should be. Teachers react well when I point that out and make the case for not leaving the language experiences “on the cutting room floor,” so to speak. There are so many deep, thoughtful, and especially, creative language possibilities that are too often not realized or wasted in the rush to do an interesting, engaging activity and then move on.

Learning is messy!

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A Whole ‘Lotta Shaking Goin’ On

I recently happened across this piece I wrote in 2002 for a writing class, in fact my Northern Nevada Writing Project class,  about my experiences during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and its aftermath. (Side note – Corbett Harrison who is co- genius behind Writingfix.com was one of my instructors)

I was teaching 6th grade in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of the earthquake. I was home in the East Bay getting ready to watch a World Series game, but my wife of 2 months was on the 38th floor of an office building in downtown San Francisco. Today, October 17, 2013, is the 24th anniversary of that event, so I thought it fitting to post this today. A bit different from most posts here. Think how different this experience would be today with changes in technology.

A Whole ‘Lotta Shaking Goin’ On

         I settled into the couch, a crisp fall apple clenched in my teeth, and with a quick double poke on the remote I turned the TV on and selected the World Series channel. Nancy wouldn’t even start her ninety-minute commute home for another half-hour, so I could relax, watch some of the game and still have plenty of time to prepare dinner.

         As the game coverage faded in on the set, I took my first bite of apple and immediately felt strangely disconnected and disoriented. The feeling only lasted a second or two but when my senses realigned, I realized I was experiencing an earthquake. A constant shaking sensation like traveling over slightly uneven pavement was joined by intermittent sharp bumps. My eye caught a hanging light fixture swaying so it almost smacked the ceiling. Dishes rattled and clanked in the kitchen. A splashing sound had me glance outside at the source. The top two feet of water from the swimming pool was being sloshed out onto the surrounding deck and plants.

         Car alarms sounded, windows rattled and the whole townhouse moaned. Then stillness. No pictures had fallen, or walls cracked. No dishes had fallen out of cupboards, no apparent damage. The quake had lasted about 15 seconds, but it seemed much longer.

         “This is great!” I thought. “Many of my students must have felt that! What a great discussion we can have tomorrow. What did they feel? Did they follow the earthquake procedures we’d covered? Had they watched the news to find out the Richter scale reading of the….wait a minute. If that quake was epicentered near here then no big deal – but if that was centered far away that was a big quake!”

         It was then that I noticed the TV was dark. I got up and confirmed the power was off. I dashed to the garage and turned the car radio on… nothing but static…bad sign. The garage light came on. I ran back into the house, turned the downstairs TV on and flipped through the channels of static until I found Channel 5 in San Francisco had a station identifier on. I bounded upstairs, shoved a blank tape into the VCR in our bedroom and pushed record. “This way I’ll get a tape of how they deal with an emergency,” I reasoned.

         I returned to the living room to find channel 5 coming on live. Dave McEllhatten appeared from a darkened newsroom looking flustered but talking calmly. “You felt it,” he reported, “and it was a big one, or at least the biggest one I’ve felt.” He explained they were on generator power, hence the dim lights, and that they would get us information as quickly as they could.

Seeing the newsroom intact made me feel better since Nancy’s office was on the 38th floor of a building  just across town from there.

Within 5 minutes I was seeing scenes of a bridge collapse, which initially they reported as the Carquinez Bridge, but was really the Bay Bridge, and smoke pouring from a collapsed freeway and buildings here and there.

But what I also saw was not much other damage. I tried the phone but it was dead. I figured the only way Nancy would still be in her office was if everything was OK anyhow. 

I walked through our townhouse to inspect for damage but found none.

Now I got antsy. “Is there something I should do?” I thought. “But what? Getting in my car was the wrong thing to do – and where would I go? The bridge was down and finding Nancy would be next to impossible.”

         “The last Bart train is out of the tube which is good news,” Dave reported, “and no more trains will be running until they can check the tube for damage.” “No Bart!? But that’s Nancy’s way home,” I moaned.

Now there were scenes from San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Cruz of building collapses and fires. Then a report came from The Marina section of San Francisco that showed apartment buildings off their foundations, on fire and a general chaos of people shouting, sirens blaring and bleeding people being carried off in stretchers.

I tried the phone again…nothing. I hung it up only to have it almost immediately ring. I answered and heard a strange voice speaking in Spanish. I answered in my best college Spanish but as soon as they heard my voice they hung up. So the phones were working!

I hung up and tried the phone…nothing. As I held the phone in my hand thinking about what to do next I heard the dial tone click on. “Great it works!” I thought, “But who to phone?” I tried Nancy’s office but the call didn’t go through.

My Mom answered my next call on the second ring. My parents only lived about 4 miles from me. Mom informed me that she had not heard from my sister who worked in the same building as Nancy. We reassured each other that they were probably fine and hung up so as not to tie up the phone line during an emergency.

Now the reports from the TV were coming in fast and furious. Scenes from Candlestick Park where the World Series had been cancelled, and then from the Cypress Freeway that led onto the Bay Bridge came reports that the upper deck of the freeway had collapsed onto the lower deck, a gruesome image to be sure.

I decided to try the phone again. It had by now been about 2 hours since the quake and it was dark. I reasoned that Nancy may have gone to her sister’s apartment in San Francisco. Before I could get to the phone, it rang. It was my Mother telling me that Nancy was all right. She had met up with my sister and they had hired a limo to take them and another woman to Nancy’s sister’s apartment.

I called Nancy. It took several minutes but the call went through. Nancy said they were hunched over a transistor radio with a dying battery, trying to hear what was going on. Helicopters were landing and taking off from the park next door, ferrying National Guardsmen around the city. Otherwise, she said it was pitch black and eerily quiet.

She explained that she had had to walk down 38 flights of stairs after the quake and that she had picked up some pieces of her building that had crumbled on the ground in case I wanted to show my class. I filled her in on what I knew and that she could probably catch a ferryboat home the next day. Knowing we were each all right, we hung up.

Soon afterwards I got several calls from friends and relatives from other states checking on us, asking me what I knew, and could I contact someone they couldn’t and let them know if they were OK. This took some time, but I found out in doing so that my phone service was working better than seemingly anywhere in the Bay Area. I was able to get through every time and get back to people and let them know things were fine.

About 9:00pm Nancy’s boss called to see if everything was OK and report that she knew Nancy was fine. She was calling from the office! She had no lights but the phone worked so she was calling employees’ families and letting them know how things were.

“Um, they’re reporting that there might be large aftershocks, Laurie!” I reported, “don’t you think you might want to get off the 38th floor!?” In true type A personality fashion she assured me she was fine. Her husband was driving the 80 or so miles from their house in the East Bay to come down the peninsula and across the Golden Gate Bridge to get her. The bridge was closed but might reopen.

“Laurie, they’re saying on the news that they really don’t want people coming into the city right now. Maybe you should get out of there and get to Laura’s house (Nancy’s sister),” I suggested.” She’d have none of that. She had more calls to make so she signed off.

Tim was knocking on the door soon after Laurie hung up. Tim was Nancy’s sister’s husband, and he worked on this side of the Bay Bridge so he couldn’t go home. I filled him in on what I knew and we stayed up pretty late and watched TV.

I was struck by the fact that when you watched the network coverage that most of the country was seeing you were led to believe that the Bay Area was decimated. While in truth the damage was mainly concentrated in isolated pockets. The Marina section of San Francisco where some of the most severe damage had occurred, was built on sand that had been dredged in and filled an area that used to be part of the Bay. The sand had “liquefied” during the quake and that had caused foundations to fail and buildings to collapse.

The rush of adrenaline from an evening of excitement made it hard to go to sleep, and yet I knew that 5:30am was fast approaching and tomorrow would be a big day at school. We were warned that some students might be traumatized and that we should be on the lookout for any students that might need help coping.

The stories from my students the next day ranged from those that hadn’t felt anything to the soccer players that ended up on the ground riding out the shaking. I got letters from a few parents thanking me for the earthquake preparedness unit we were doing. They noted sons or daughters that were usually helpless that put water in the tub in case the water went out and questioned whether they should turn off the gas in case the pipes had ruptured. Easily the toughest story to hear was from a girl in my class who reported to us that her father, an Oakland fireman, had not come home and her mom was certain he was working on the freeway trying to save those trapped in their cars under the concrete. They finally heard from him a day and a half later, and indeed he was part of the crew that was cutting through concrete and pulling out survivors and non-survivors. He later confided to me that he would never be able to fully talk to his own kids about what he had done and seen during that time. I guessed that he may have been one of the firemen who had to literally cut through a woman’s dead body to save the life of her four year old son who had been trapped for 3 days next to his dead mother.

Nancy got home that afternoon after a ferry trip and a ride to her car with someone. We regaled each other with our survival stories for a few hours. A week later building engineers reported that the Speare Street Tower where Nancy worked swayed six feet in both directions during the quake, which is exactly what it was designed to do.

Nancy went to bed early since she hadn’t slept much the night before. I settled onto the couch to watch a rehash of the day’s events, but a lump in the cushion prevented me from being comfortable. In between the cushions was the apple I had taken one bite out of when the quake struck the evening before. The other side looked OK – So I munched on it as I relived the last 24 hours with Channel 5.

 

 

Learning is messy!

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Beginning of the Year Classroom Learning Ideas

Over the years I’ve posted about lessons and activities I’ve used successfully to start off the year. Here are some of them in case they help:

1) “Getting To Know You” is how I started my year with my students that not only was successful and getting them to know each other better, but was a great way to end up with my first seating arrangement for the year, and starting to teach them how to support and include each other.

2) Write It! is a writing game that I originally learned in a writing inservice class. Not only is it great at getting students to write, it also familiarizes them with each other’s names AND THEN becomes a great way to scaffold them writing quality blog comments. I did not share the blog comments piece in the original post, so I’ll do so here. Go read the original post first.

After your students are very comfortable playing the game and writing blog posts, use the format of the game to have your students write quality comments on blogs. When my students first blogged many would leave comments like, “Nice post.” OR “I liked it.” OR WORSE: “nice poste” OR “i lickd it” with no punctuation – that would be the entire comment. Then one day I thought to use the game as a scaffold. I’d explain that when they left blog comments they had to start (just like the game) with a “nice comment” like, “Your post was interesting to read.” OR “I like how you describe things.” OR just whatever. Next they could write anything else – perhaps sharing a connection to the post or a general comment, BUT they had to leave a question at the end (just like the game).

Why? Because it made them think about what they read, it required them to analyze something about the post to praise, and by asking a question at the end (along with a link back to their own blog!) it encouraged a conversation. I especially encouraged students to find posts that connected to something they had posted themselves – “Nice post about your new kitten. I don’t have a cat, but I wrote a post about my Grandma’s dog you might like. Here’s a link to it. Do you have any other pets?”  – Have your students comment on your own class blog at first so you see how they are doing, then let them loose on other class blogs.

3) Baseline – is a post for those of you that get started blogging fairly early OR take some kind of a baseline writing assessment at the beginning of the year. For years we were required to get a baseline example of writing to chart growth during the year’s benchmark writing assessments. I would have the students type up that assessment without correcting any mistakes they noted – then we had an archive of a baseline piece right on their blog. Sometimes we would come back to that piece, cut and paste it into a word processor and re-write. Students would chuckle at the mistakes and lack of grammar, or perhaps realize they were much better now at word choice and describing than they were. Great way for them (and everyone else) to see growth.

Well, that’s all for now.

Learning is messy!

 

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Help make sense of this (Updated)

UPDATE 2/12/2013: I’ve had several responses to this post through Twitter and face to face that have used logic to make their point. I totally agree this is nonsense, but I’m looking for written or spoken authority that has clout … something I’ve missed so far in the CCSS or education policy or law or ??? that is unequivocal on this point. I’ve also gotten an earful from middle and high school teachers of content that point out that they then are responsible for their content area not just at their grade level, but in this case students that have almost NO background K-5 that show up in their classrooms … YEP, that’s a big point here, besides the engaging content and more that is missed. Original post below:

I hear occasionally that K – 5 teachers are told that they no longer teach content area standards in science and social studies because they “teach the Common Core”. They are to address the science and social studies only through the CCSS in English/Language Arts. This is proved, they are told, because the Introduction to the CCSS ELA specifically states in the fifth paragraph:

“Literacy standards for grade 6 and above are predicated on teachers of ELA, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their respective fields. It is important to note that the 6–12 literacy standards in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects are not meant to replace content standards in those areas but rather to supplement them.”

Note, it specifically states “…that the 6-12 literacy standards in history/social studies, science and technical subjects are not meant to replace content standards in those subjects…”. Therefore since K-5 is not mentioned in the same way, some are using that omission to mean that the CCSS can (and in the case of a school not making AYP – should) be used to narrow K-5 curriculum to only the literacy standards in social studies, science and even the arts – but not their content. I’ve even heard, “When a teacher walks through the door of a K-5  Title 1 school, they give up their right to teach content beyond ELA and Math.”

So, beyond common sense and logic unfortunately, how do we help teachers under these restrictions disprove this interpretation? What can we point to that has authority? Please share in the comments!

Learning is messy!

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“Making Connections With Blogging” Is Published!

Our new book “Making Connections With Blogging” is out.

Actually the book has been out for more than a month. The “Making Connections” part of the title is really what is stressed. From the ISTE web site:

“Some students find writing to be a chore. Others write to get an assignment done but don’t put in any extra effort. There’s nothing like blogging to change those attitudes! Students will experience a whole new level of engagement when they are writing for an audience, writing about topics they are interested in, and responding to their classmates’ posts. Bring blogging into your classroom, and your students will not only be excited about their work, they will also develop their writing, reading comprehension, critical thinking, digital citizenship, and communication skills.

Parisi and Crosby show you how you can use blogging with any student as a part of any curriculum— not as an add-on, but as an integrated part of your lessons. Learn step by step how to blog, get ideas for your curriculum area, and understand how to manage blogging in the classroom. Get your students blogging, and change how learning happens.”

“Making Connections with Blogging” is also available for the Kindle. Would love to hear any feedback from readers.

Learning is messy!

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Leaving Their Mark – Redux, Redux

This is a first I think, a second repost of a post on my blog. I’m doing so because of my appearance on NBC’s Education Nation Teacher Townhall. I talked about things my students have done and an innovative pedagogy, and although this post is 2 years old it shares many examples of that innovative pedagogy.

LEAVING THEIR MARK

The end of the school year is always tough. Lots still to do, lots of emotions, lots of memories. This one is tougher than most because not only are we closing in on the end of another school year, we are coming to the end of 3 years together. As I was reflecting upon this the other day it occurred to me just how large a legacy this class is leaving behind.

This has been my first experience in a 1:1 laptop classroom. It certainly isn’t all about the technology, but the technology really has leveraged what they have accomplished because it has connected them easily to so many and allowed them to share and archive those connections easily along the way.

It started in fourth grade when we began blogging and learning about being understood and being careful with language so it meant what we meant and was clear to the reader. Their blogs became a way to share their stories, but also what we did and learned and what we accomplished- and we accomplished a lot. When I broke the news to them in December of 2006 that we had a student that showed up on my attendance over a month earlier and that we had never seen her … but that there might be a way to include her in our classroom using Skype video-conferencing, they were intrigued and awed that we might do that. After our first experience we decided to share it with the world and in just a few short weeks the students had designed and produced a video that taught the world just how powerful these new tools can be.  Their video has been downloaded thousands and thousands of times. (Update – about a million times now)

Not only did we use Skype most days to include our classmate, we also began making connections with others. We were interviewed over Skype by Lee Baber’s class in Virginia about our experience and made connections with other classrooms about science and other topics.

We were very fortunate that our classroom was chosen to have a special guest. Grace Corrigan, the mother of Christa McAuliffe, the  “Teacher in Space” who died tragically when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during launch, visited our room, and we Skyped out her visit to classrooms in Virginia and New York and they were able to take part in the question and answer period Grace agreed to.

To finish off that year we visited a local animal park, Animal Ark, and afterwards designed a wiki page to help further anyone’s learning about the animals there and included a lesson and video about designing your own animal.

In fifth grade as we continued to blog about our experiences, my students’ exploits became known to others and so we would get contacted by schools to participate with them – usually because they didn’t know of anyone else that knew how. One such experience was Skyping in George Mayo’s middle school class from Maryland. They had made some short videos and wanted us to watch them and give them feedback. It was easier for them to have us do this than the elementary school NEXT DOOR because they were at lunch when this class met and they couldn’t work out the details. We watched  and wrote our reactions to their videos and gave them feedback when we Skyped, and they asked us questions about including our classmate.

I was contacted by Skype about making a short film about our “Inclusion” experience. They sent a film crew to our classroom to shoot a mini documentary about how we did it. Even though our classmate was now with us in the classroom, they had her stay home one day and do school from her computer. They hung lights in our room and shot video all morning as we did what we usually do. They interviewed students and then packed up and shot in the afternoon from our classmate’s house. They produced 2 versions of the video. Here and here.

We continued to blog almost every day either writing new posts or reading and commenting on others. We built relationships with a number of classes around the world and to help keep track we began adding links to them on our class wiki page. Most of my students are second language learners and when we started blogging it would take most of them a week to edit a post into publishable quality. I don’t require my students to have zero errors on a piece before it publishes, but my students’ writing skills were very poor in general. They used poor English and grammar, and punctuation was almost nonexistent in some students’ work. They left out the details that made meaning for the reader, and we won’t go into spelling. At first students would write their posts by hand on lined paper and edit them several times before word processing them. Next they would print them out in a large size, double spaced to have room for editing. Many students would have 5 or more copies of their story all marked up by me in 1:1 meetings with them before their work was “publishable.” That’s why it took a week. By the end of fourth grade about half the class would publish in 2 days. And by the middle of 5th grade some students were publishing the same day as the assignment was given, and almost all were publishing in 2 days. We killed a lot of trees the first year, and I (and they) felt bad about that, but the impact it had on their English, spelling, punctuation, style and more was worth it. And the students continue to write and write and write (but we don’t print very often anymore).

During fifth grade, I believe initially over Twitter, but then in email, a fifth grade teacher in New York, Lisa Parisi, mentioned to me how much she liked the comments my students left on her students’ blogs. I explained that we had really been working on the quality and substance of our comments, not just saying, “Nice post” or “I liked your post” but also explaining why. Our students began doing more reading and commenting on each others posts.

Lisa and I wanted our classes to do a project together and so the “Mysteries of Harris Burdick” writing project was born. This book, written by Chris Van Allsburg, is the ultimate writing starter I’ve ever seen. After reading and discussing the book in class our students wrote collaborative stories using Google Docs so they could work at the same time on their stories even though they were thousands of miles apart. They even discussed things over Skype so they could meet their co-writers and have discussions about where their stories were going. Other teachers joined the project and paired their classes. The project won an award.

This year we participated in 2 projects that stressed being safe online. We talk about safety fairly often, pretty much anytime we use a new application – blogs, wikis, Flickr and so on and anytime it comes up in the news we tend to review the issues and what the people involved did right or wrong that caused or helped the problem that came up. We participated with a bunch of schools all over the world in the “7 Random Facts” project … sharing seven random facts about yourself without revealing any information that could identify you. By request we followed that up by participating with another class in another safety project where the students wrote vignettes about someone NOT being safe online and then wrote a moral to the story. We shared them in a Skype session with the other class. During this time students in my class shared that they had MySpace and other sites that they were really too young to have and that they had taken down inappropriate information about themselves.

The “Around the World with 80 Schools” project this year has been incredible in how it has made my students more aware of world geography as they met and talked with students on almost every continent.

Most recently we are finishing up our Reno Bike Project, project where we are helping a local non-profit organization that rehabilitates old bikes and sells them inexpensively, spread the word to get people to donate bikes to them. The Public Service Announcementand web pages they designed were just published and we are doing some other activities to help get word out.

I’ve left plenty out here to save space, but the point is these students have left a mark, a legacy that will survive their graduation to middle school and beyond. Not only have they done community service that effects their community, but they have participated globally and left the archive for others to ponder and I hope improve on. Most importantly they have vastly improved their writing, research, communication and numerous other skills along the way. They were only held back by my limitations and the limitations of the system.

I’ve learned at least as much as they have and I believe I’m a better teacher for it. I’m chomping at the bit to take what I’ve learned and share it with my new class. As of this writing I’m being moved down to 4th grade again to begin a roll up to 5th and hopefully sixth grade again. I’m really going to miss this class and I want them to know that and to know they have made more of a difference in this world than they realize. They can be proud!

Learning is messy!