A Few of our Favorite Things

As I've been tweeting and Pinterest-ing (is that a word?), I got an iPad for our classroom.The reason I didn't jump on the bandwagon earlier was that I wasn't convinced that an iPad could offer my students learning opportunities that they couldn't find elsewhere. A vast majority of the apps I had seen, turn students solely into consumers. Just because you make a worksheet (or textbook) digital doesn't change that fact that it's still just a worksheet. I want my students to be more than consumers...I want them to be producers of  new content. After some research I found enough of  reason to make this purchase for my learners.

They are having a blast embedding the iPad into their learning routine in the different content areas. What I'd like to share today are some of the tools that we have been using to increase our productivity and efficiency of regular classroom routines. With these apps the students take (further) ownership of their learning environment.

Our Favorite Things... Productivity Edition:

• Confer As we all strive to meet the needs of our individual students, one of the most daunting tasks can be documenting the progress of each learner. Over the years, I have tired all kinds of methods...folders, binders, tables in Word (many of our school computers don't have Excel), but I knew there had to be a more convenient way for me and my students to track their progress in each subject. Not only do we chart their successes, big and small, but my students create personal goals in each content area. Confer does all of this and more. Through confer, you can easily form flexible small groups and you can export your data as a Google spreadsheet or a an email attachment.  You can tell this app was created by a classroom teacher who knows what teachers and their students need to make their conferring productive. Here is a video demonstrating how Confer works.

• Notability We all have to address what we do for students who are absent from class. How do we keep them informed? How do they know what they've missed and get caught up with their peers? We started using Notability. Each student takes a turn creating a note of the day's activities. The notes can include text (class activities, homework, classwork, deadlines, announcements, etc.), photos (my students take photos of the flipcharts they use, review games, vocabulary lists, science experiments, etc.) and audio (of me or one of them explaining something that needs more than text or photos). When a student is out for a day or two, he/she comes in when he/she returns to school, pulls up the note for the dates he/she was out and discovers exactly what went on in the classroom that day. The notes are also easily emailed, so they can also be sent to parents.
• Teacher's Assistant Pro Another task that can easily take up precious instruction time is documenting behavior within your classroom. We know how important it is to document everything: good, bad or ugly.One thing that I do with my students when we privately discuss their behavior is that I have them design the consequences and future plan of action for their behavior. It puts the responsibility on them to make any necessary changes. This app is easily customizable to meet your needs. So if you like to send home positive behavior reports like I do, this can be easily done as well. This app comes with a feature where with the click of a couple of buttons, the behavior report can be emailed to parents. You can tell that this app was also designed by a classroom teacher. Here is a video demonstrating the basics of how this app works: 

So although these apps may not seem as flashy as other apps, in the hands of my learners, they have increased our productivity and given us more of that valuable learning time. It's given my students tools to track their progress and take further ownership of their personal learning journey. And that is what all tools we bring into our classroom should do.

When Things Click

You know those days when you work and work with a certain students and there doesn't seem to be much progress and then ...BOOM, they blow your mind with what they've accomplished? Yep, we've all had those moments. I wanted to share with you the success of a student that we'll call Allison. Allison is a good-natured student who wants to do well in school, but she really struggles with reading and math. She not only is missing some key elements in her phonics understanding, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies, but she also doesn't know her basic math facts. 

When I do intervention or mini-lessons across content areas, Allison is there with me 95% of the time. I have to hand it to her, she never gives up. Then, the day before we take our reading test, she opens up her reading book and I notice all of these hot-pink sticky notes stuck all throughout the selection. Now this is a strategy that I've led her through many times (in reading and other content areas), but this time I hadn't done it with her. In fact, I hadn't even suggest that she do it. I asked her to share with the small group what she had done and as she explained it, she got out some blank sticky notes and started guiding them through her process.

photo by avrene

She showed them how to write notes on words she was unsure of as well as the vocabulary words. She picked out the setting, characters, problem, solution, author's purpose and examples of cause-effect and main ideas and supporting details on each page. She said she wasn't sure what to focus on so she had taken time each time she had read the selection at home to pick out each of the different strategies or skills. (as a side note, the students are not assigned the selection to read at home; all reading is done in class...she did this because she wanted to do it)

By the end of the our group time, she had led these struggling readers through a thorough evaluation and analysis of the selection. They were all focused on what she was saying. Allison doesn't usually volunteer to take a leadership role, but this time she did. She took ownership of her own learning and the skills and strategies that she had learned and she wanted to share them with others.

Of course, it probably goes without saying...she aced that test and so did the others in her group. She now is reminding the other struggling readers of what she taught them and giving them other advice. She asks me questions to make sure she's on the right path, but she has taken these skills and she is running with them. Don't you just love it when everything just clicks?

Let's Play!

Teaching in a school where the population is very transient, we are always getting new students that join our learning community. I overheard a quick conversation between a new student and a current student that set my mind to thinking. Fridays have been designated as test prep days for our school. In fact, school-wide we have been giving practice tests throughout the year. On Friday, the students were taking one of these practice tests. The new student looked at one of the other students and said, "You know Mrs. Ramsay loves these test days. All she has to do is sit behind her desk while we do all the work." The other student immediately jumped in, "NO, she doesn't. Mrs Ramsay wants to play with us and not do her boring teacher work." Wow, out of the mouths of babes. This is not something that I had ever verbalized or thought about  in these terms, but it is the absolute truth.

Now before people get all upset by the kids talking about us playing (including a past version of  my present day self), I want to stress how much rigorous work my students do daily. In fact,  my students often comment on how we get more done before 9:00 am than most classes get done all day. At the end of the school day, they are always amazed that it's time to go home because they have been so engrossed in their meaningful work, they've lost track of time. It frustrates them when their collaborative projects, small group time, or peer work is interrupted.

Hearing this student's perspective of what I do everyday in the classroom makes me smile. These fifth graders have picked up on something that I think many teachers are missing out on. We should be someone who wants to participate in the activities and projects along side them, not in front of them. Our time should be spent with them, not behind a desk. Play also denotes someone who is having fun, and we should have a lot of fun in our classrooms. If we're not, we must doing something wrong.

I'm so glad that I overheard this conversation. It reeinforced to me the importance of spending time listening, guiding, and interacting with my students. So as you enter your classroom, get out from behind your desk and out of the front of the classroom. Sit down with your students and participate in their learning discussions. Do those activities that you spent so much time planning and implementing with your students. You (and your students) may find a new perspective on your role in the classroom.

I can't wait for tomorrow so that we can PLAY some more. Anybody want to join us?

What is Homework?

A couple of weeks ago, I read a tweet that has really stuck with me. It said that homework wasn't about learning but about behavior. I wish I could remember who tweeted that so that we could continue that conversation and so that I could give them credit for saying it.

I have to say in my evolving journey as an educator, I have been questioning a lot of practices and wondering about their validity in truly and rigorously educating our learners. I teach in a system that requires a certain number of grades per grading period. In some cases, they go so far as to tell us which assignments must be assigned and graded and how many of those assignments we have to give each grading period. Then our school administration has each grade level break down those assignments/categories even further to turn into them. These categories are given a percent value for the final averages for each grading period. All of this is done for the sake of continuity across the district. I agree that there needs to be some continuity across the district, but are we more focused on continuity and losing sight of what's important? Doing what's best for our students.

Even within those tight restrictions, I have to say that I've moved away from creating these rigid homework assignments because, as the mystery tweeter mentioned above said, it is really measuring a behavior than actual learning. Many of my students go home with younger siblings to an empty house. They are the one in charge of caring for their siblings, helping to feed them, making sure they get baths, and they get to bed. If one of those students, slaps something down in a workbook to turn in without giving it thought, or by reinforcing the wrong thing by doing it incorrectly, what good does that homework assignment do? Is actual learning being evaluated? I have to say, "No."

To complete many of the required assignments, I've broken my class down into small group, learning centers, where I can meet with small groups of students to find out who really understands principles and concepts and who needs more help. These small groups change day to day and sometimes minute to minute based on what the learner understands and can apply to the project/assignment at hand. Once a student grasps something, he/she moves on to higher level activities that involve problem solving and critical thinking. Doing this I can accurately measure what each of my students understands and has learned even within these tight grading constraints.

Often in these small groups, we have really deep conversations and they make outstanding connections between life outside the classroom walls, their background knowledge, and their personal reading. These students often go home and do extra work to bring back and share with their peers. Sometimes, they gather up supplies and conduct an experiment with the class that they found while doing extra reading because their interest was so peaked by something we discussed in small group, they wanted to extend their learning and share more. I've also had kids create costumes and come to school as a historical figure, create presentations or games for the class, and find all kinds of interesting online resources to share. We've created a class wiki where we can house many of these activities/resources so that the students can further extend their learning beyond our classroom time constraints.

Now which one measures learning? The workbook pages that kids do, often incorrectly, or these amazing activities that they do that enhances and sparks enthusiasm in their peers often setting off a chain reaction of amazing learning events that they pursue on their own? Well, of course, anyone, including my 10 year old students, can see it's the latter. They know when they are working on something in the classroom, they are responsible for providing me with evidence of their learning and their thinking. I keep a file of all of this work, but because of our strict grading parameters, much (not all) of this extended learning is not reflected in their grades.

So how do we fix this? This is an excellent question, one that I'm still pondering and reflecting upon daily. Isn't traditional homework doing a disservice to our students? I think so, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about homework.