...that's not really a word study.April. That wonderful time of the year when all middle school students and teachers lose "they" minds. As evidence, I give you things I've said in the last week alone:
No one has every accused middle schoolers of being exceptionally logical humans. However, there are some bright spots to the end of the year.  Here's one of them. This kid. He is my tech genius of first period. Yesterday, he turned me on to a website called @PaperRater (www.paperrater.com). How can this company have been around since 2011 and I've never found them? (Luckily, I have kids like this dude). @PaperRater uses A.I. to analyze papers. Granted, it's a little clickbaity and I have only used the free version, but things I LOVED were:
The literature says that this program is powered by A.I.. As I said earlier, I don't think this will take the place of a teacher or peer feedback, but it is a great place to start in the revision journey.
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The video above was taken using @ARMakr as an example of a dynamic vocabulary lesson for the ELA classroom I have not been this excited about technology in the classroom since I discovered automated grading on @Flubaroo five years ago. Augmented reality is about to take us to the next level in education. Why? Because it's cool and fresh and has limitless potential across the curriculum. Imagine this tech in a science classroom. Students could put the entire digestive system on their body and then point out the parts. What about a tour of Jupiter? For mathematics, teachers could make equations life size and ask students to explain each section by standing in it and pointing. History? What about interviewing a historic figure by having a student hiding behind the image doing a ventriloquist act with the picture? So. Many. Applications. Here's an instructional video showing how to use Keynote to get rid of backgrounds with Instant Alpha made by @tearagon7, an Apple Distinguished Educator out of California. I found her examples on twitter during a wild search for ideas. This easy to follow tutorial has so much potential to revolutionize interactions with material. Check out her video and then see what she's going in her school on her website and in her e-book! Here's Tauren to tell us why Hour of Code at Logan Fontenelle Middle School is fun! It is always a pleasure to work with the teachers and staff at Logan Fontenelle Middle School to put on our annual Hour of Code event. This year was no different. Even though we had to rearrange due to a snow day, we were successful in introducing an opportunity to participate in the Hour of Code programing regime to all of our 400+ students. By leveraging student ambassadors, we brought twenty five guided studies coding fun. As always, my thanks go out to @SchaeferDoug, @VanhesscheTracy, @BellevueSchools and @LFWarriors of making this a coding project to remember.
"And since we all came from a woman |
Finally, they pick an individual assignment to work on independently (and then self-check answers in a peer group). Finally, they work t to choose one of five poems/songs. These become the basis for our comparison contrast essays.
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).
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."
 | As you can see here, every station had a flight school @NearPod attached to it. All students had to complete the flight school before they were allowed to grab their drones and head to their location. You can see the big 2 written under the SpheroRaptor unit! |  |
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
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
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
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."
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:
- Give groups formal lessons on coding with Blockly (@nearpod maybe?)
- Allow more time to film and edit.
- Find a way to separate the groups and give them more space to program and work.
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 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 Lesson
The 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 Lesson
Objectives:
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).
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.
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.
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)!
- I'm glad they pay me to teach because art is hard.
- I'm better painting small things close up than landscapes.
- I have a hard time being disciplined enough to paint/or write.
On a similar note, after taking the Bellevue Techie Squad's BlendED PD this summer, I learned several things.
- I'm glad they pay me to teach because teaching is hard.
- I'm better at visualizing large units than I am working on the details of those lessons.
- I have a hard time being disciplined enough to write my blog and promote what's happening in my classroom.
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.
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 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.
Santha Walters
I'm a technology curriculum facilitator, and I'm excited about integrating technology in the classroom.
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