The Objectives:When I was featured on Vikki Davis' amazing podcast "Ten Minute Teacher," I was asked how any of this relates to ELA objectives. My response was which objectives does it NOT related to because it would be a shorter list. I was not kidding. Here's annotated list. Station Rotation--BlendED in Action:This was a down and dirty station rotation (as is popular in the #BlendED learning community). Because our classes are only 43 minutes long, I opted to have the groups draw lots for which station they would complete that day. We had a total of five stations, but only four days for the unit, so one group did not get to do the flyers. When we have our next robot unit, that group will be first for flyers. Groups were student formed without my guidance. There was only one class where I had to intervene and make group decisions (because they wanted to have seven in a group and the stations work better with a max of five). The Plans:The Deployment:This is the first unit where I employed my newly purchased NearPod GOLD to deliver instructions (Shoutout to all my peeps at the Bellevue Public Schools Foundation @BPSFNE who purchased the software for us). Since it was station rotation, the students would come in, draw lots to see which station they were doing, and then launch @Schoology to get the codes to the @NearPod (s) to complete what I called "Flight School."
The "Guidelines:"Just a quick homage to Pirates of the Caribbean, because the students really took the initiative when some of the bots misbehaved and they had to find a creative way to use their time. Here's links to all the instructions for each station: Flyers SpheroRaptors Ozobots Dash Maze Hidden Jumper Maze Standing on the shoulders of GIANTS:The SpheroRaptor station was based off of this lesson from Sphero.edu.
The Ozobot Olympics was brought to you by Sandova Hankov @Ozobot.edu. Huge shoutout to these amazingly supportive education companies and humans--I could not have done this unit without the help of: @NearPod, @Schoology, @Tynker, @SwiftPlayground, @Blockly, @Parrot, @Apple, @SchaeferDoug, @MrsJCarlson, @AmandaMonk, @AnnFeldmann1, @NicoleFoxBPS, @TeachLoomis, @choglund87, @ramoore92, @BPSFNE, @BellevueSchools, @Lfwarriors, @lambertclass, @Dunlapbps, @CoolCatTeacher and the ever inspiring #ipadacademy
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I've been asked by students and by other teachers, "Why robot coding? How on Earth is that related to English?" My response is usually "How is coding NOT related to English and writing?" This year, I decided to let my kids answer that question. Here is what they said: Corwin: "It is similar to writing a paragraph because you have to outline everything beforehand. As well as the fact that you have to make an intro and conclusion in a sense. Essentially it’s like writing a paragraph in a different language." Alina: "I think programming a robot is like writing a paragraph because you need to use the correct codes just like how you need to use correct punctuation and spelling.You have to read and test it to make sure it works correctly.You can always fix it to make it work more fluidly or have better punctuation." Bailey: "For coding a robot the first thing needed to do is to have a basic outline of what you want it to do, much like how in an essay there is an outline. After that the codes are put together like how the body paragraphs are. Finally, you can edit the coding like how you revise an essay." Here's the winning video for Team Courage 2018. The lesson plans were pretty straight forward and can be found here. If technical lesson plans aren't your thing, the process went pretty much like this:  This year was the second year to run this lesson. In addition to being better organized with the grading and releasing kids into groups, I was also able to ask for feedback from the students. They gave me some great ideas for next year including:
I have an app called Papier. It's an awesome little bit of code that lets you have a new tab window turn into a notepad. Last year, I had two quotes come out during our fake news unit that I have on that digital notepad to this day.  Since the day last year, I have known that I have a duty to teach how to figure out what's true online. I believe fake news education should be mandatory for every ELA teacher on the planet. English teachers have the unique objective to "analyze and evaluate information" (LA 8.1.6f) There isn't a better platform than that really. Here's the lesson plan for how I tackled the issue of fake news. I did place this week long unit after students had generated the first drafts of their descriptive essays; we were on a brain break from writing. I cant decide if I like this lesson more for the hysterically funny results or it's easy for compartmentalizing and digitalizing the results. Organization and Deployment of LessonThe first thing I did was to create all the folders U would need in Schoology to organize all five days of lessons into folders. This is different for me. I will normally group by topic only. However, since I was going to be gone for two days of these lessons, I felt the chronological order helped keep things on track.  When the students click on the above folder they see this:  Nuts and Bolts of the LessonObjectives:
LA 8.2.1.c Gather and use relevant information and evidence from multiple authoritative print and/or digital sources including primary and secondary sources to support claims or theses. LA 8.1.6.f Analyze and evaluate information from print and digital text features to support comprehension. NOTE: I took about four lessons off the internet and put pasted them together for this lesson--LINK TO THE GOOGLE DOCUMENT PLANS Day One--discussion with the driving question of what is fake news and how sure are we that we have good sources when researching on the internet. Discussion of visual pre-test for fake news from Stanford History Education Group. Use THIS as a link for those classes to practice if there’s extra time or perhaps as homework. Day Two--kids come in practicing spotting Fake news with the Schoology Quick Quiz. . Then, they move on to Independent Work Time where students are watching two videos in edPuzzle to explain what (insesrt edPuzzle Link) Fake News is and how it affects them. Then, they take a “no-fail” (Google Form) Fake News Quiz. Finally, at ten till the end of the period, we close with a Kahoot reviewing all the material we went over that day. Day Three--NearPod of C.R.A.P. Method. Practice telling real news from fake news using this worksheet, a group of kids, and iPads (stipulate they may “use their resources--including the iPad”). This lesson ran long. Extended it to the next day. I do print out the articles in the worksheet. :-) Articles: Trump Bumper Sticker, Dog Shoots Man, and Man Dies When He Shoots Hurricane. Day Four--Give groups time to finish up (mine averaged between 5-15 minutes). Discuss the answers to which are real and which are fake. Allow them to debate and show their proof. Close with a return to the question from the first day about who susceptible are we to Fake News. See if answers have changed or stayed the same. Day Five--I was absent for this day as well. Had a sub. Had students use this time to create Clickbait using “Cooking up Clickbait” from Newseumed.org. Then, after working on paper, have the students use websites like BreakYourOwnNews.com to make their clickbait titles come to life! (show examples). Natural Differentiation--or self-differentiated groups is becoming a new hobby in my classroom because I'm lazy and I hate pigeonholing anyone. I want to design lessons that remove the barriers to the top end of the class, while at the same time nurturing and scaffolding challenged learners so that both groups and everyone in between reaches his/her/their zone of proximal development (Mike Anderson Learning to Choose, Choosing to Learn--chapter one). We had some amazing results this year. Check out the top three video projects this year. This unit is designed to review the six traits of writing and the five steps of writing. To make this blendED, I gave the students pathways to accomplish the pre-write. They could work on a packet (I use this one from Lyndhurst Schools) which walks them through a brainstorm, listing of memoirs, choosing the best three and illustrating OR they could watch a video tutorial (I used this one from Susanne Rasely-Philipps) on how to write one and simply follow along. I called this Path One and Path Two and told the students they needed to choose one.  So, once the students choose a path, they will start naturally differentiating themselves by rate of completion. Like this:    Here are the lesson plans I used. Also, the entire lesson would not have been possible without our iPad initiative. Here's just a quick list of all the apps the students and I used to make the videos and execute the lesson plans.  Although I didn't get to work on my drawings as much as I wanted over the summer, I did do a few and learned several things.
On a similar note, after taking the Bellevue Techie Squad's BlendED PD this summer, I learned several things.
With that in mind, I'm starting this year trying to stay fresh. This is my fourth year teaching 8th grade English in Bellevue. I'm getting into a pattern and having to create fewer and fewer resources. After all, I can just do what I did last year, right? Wrong. I would simply die of boredom. That, and with the ever changing state test, I have to evolve to stay relevant to what my kids need to be considered educated. With that in mind, I'm setting some goals to me and for this year. (And yes, those goals will be SMART)!  This is relatively ambitious for me and doesn't even touch my personal goals (Lost Creek was so much fun, I'd LOVE to do a loop there--but they are 25 miles long and I had trouble hiking four miles with my pack at 10k+).
It's going to be a fun year. I know that for absolute certain. Here's to a shiny new chance to change lives and live my best life. So, this year, I actually had a moment of exceeding frustration so intense I had to drink water, walk down the hall, talk to my co-teacher, and get myself together before I went back into the classroom because I absolutely wanted to destroy some student’s pour soul.
At various points during that walk, I blamed the kids, the district, and society at large. The walk was preceded by perhaps the seventh or eighth student coming to me and asking to do the big summative speech alone (without an audience). Instead of losing it on a kid, I just walked out. Here’s how it sounded in my head: Student: “I’m too anxious to do my speech. I want to do it just for you.” Me: “Let me understand this. All year, you have disrupted my class talking across the room for everyone to hear but now I have to give you a private session during my plan time so you can get your summative grade and get your speech done without causing you “anxiety.” Student: “Yep.” Me: “I’m supposed to do that; I don’t want to do that.” On my walk of shame, I drank water and tried to calm down. Luckily, I ran into my co-teacher (the fabulous Kami Truax). She saw the look on my face and knew something was very off. I very pointedly explained the situation as I saw it to her. She looked at me and said, “So, they are frightened.” That hit me hard. (Kami has a way of doing that). I was seeing them through the lens of supreme frustration with my job, my life, and my time on Earth. I had forgotten to see them as scared kids. My life’s purpose all came back to me in a rush. I was a teacher; I had to teach them not to be afraid and to do this task. So, I did. I started at the beginning of the unit having them do silly three sentence writing assignments (prompts like “Are Trix just for kids? Why can’t the rabbit have some? Is this discrimination?”). We were doing persuasive papers, so I tried to focus on prompts that would force them to take a stance on something trivial. From there, they had to turn and read it out loud to their table partner. Then, I expanded the groups from dyads to groups of four. The groups of four turned into half class groups. So far, everyone has taken these mini-assignments in stride and done his/her/their part. We’ve had some fun laughing at the silliness of the prompts and I have been amazed by the kids’ creativity in responding. At the end of the lesson, I only had three students (all with IEP’s) who needed a small group setting. It worked, and once again I am humbled by how much power I have in the classroom over the outcome of my lessons. When something goes wrong, I need to look to myself first and not blame others. That’s really hard to do as a teacher (especially as one who is used to having all the answers). However, it is incredibly necessary to continue to be a good teacher. At the end of every year, I do Genius Hour projects with my students. There are no grades and the only thing at stake is fame. The winner of the popular vote from all five classes gets profiled here. This year, we had some amazing entries. There was a dessert cafe complete with samples from the recipes, a "Day in the Life" of one of our team teachers, an "Ultimate Dog Park," and several ideal teen hangout designs. However, the winner this year was unique. The gentlemen decided that they would teach two teachers to play Fortnite and then pit them against each other to see which group could "teach" the best. So without further ado, here's the winning entry from this year's Genius Hour projects. I'm hosting a Twitter Chat for @BellevueSchools tomorrow night! Join us.  
Back in December, I was fortunate enough to be chosen by Vikki Davis @coolcatteacher to be interviewed about some of our technology innovation here in Bellevue Public Schools.
It was a great interview and I was truly honored and enjoyed working with Ms. Davis to spread the word about using drones in the classroom to facilitate communication and genuine learning. Be sure to check out the latest 10-Minute Teacher to see all the cool trends in education! All right. I had a pretty great lesson last week and I'm proud of it; however, no matter how fabulous I thought it was and no matter how much work I did to organize it, it did not end like I thought it would. Here's the basic outline: Objectives: TDA--students will work to hone skills associated with Text Dependent Analysis using differentiated reading groups and grade appropriate reading levels by employing the Readworks.org software. I used the MAP data to break the students into four reading groups. These groups are summed up here:  By creating these groups in Schoology, passages and questions in Readworks can be tailored and assigned privately. Each student only sees what he/she is working on. Students are allowed to redo tests until they have a minimum of 80 percent. After students have this review under their belts, they are assigned a version of the STATE TEST I recreated in Schoology. They will also be able to take this test until they have the score they desire.  #iPadAcademy Note: This level of differentiation would be extremely difficult maintain without the private group and grading features of Schoology. Using the two programs together, I can reach all levels in my classroom and remain confidential about levels and abilities.   The grades and rate of completion for this assignment are NOT in an acceptable range for my classroom. One of the major issues is that in the ReadWorks software, a student has to press submit on his/her/their test in order to have the response count. Even though I taught this concept and how to make sure it was turned in on two separate days (Thursday and Friday at the beginning of class), I still had many students fail to hit the submit button. This means that the functionality to grade their written responses was inoperable.
So, now I'm revising things to head into the next week. We will be forced to retry this assignment next week just to get the work submitted. It's going to eat into our Text Dependent Analysis essay lecture next week, but that's okay (especially since the curriculum for this quarter is very fluid). I will post my corrections to this lesson as soon as I figure out what they are :-). Thanks for reading. |
Santha WaltersI'm a technology curriculum facilitator, and I'm excited about integrating technology in the classroom. Archives
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