Monday, March 24, 2014

PBL #1 Meadowlane Park Rangers

park ranger

Check out my project based lesson plan, "Meadowlane Park Rangers", on my website under the PBL#1 navigation tab. Students will be working with the city economic development planner to organize a volunteer group to maintain a local park located on the same property as our school. It is an awesome opportunity for students to show community involvement and civic pride!

Questioning Techniques in the Classroom...Are We Asking Enough?

hands raised


As a teacher of 20 years and a mom of a 17 year old son who shares his innermost thoughts like a bear shares honey, I've learned to become better at asking the right questions to solicit answers which require more than monosyllabic grunts, shoulder shrugs, nods, or other nonverbal gestures. The art of asking questions to generate a response which requires thought or logical process requires at least two things: the question should be open-ended and should allow for more than one possible solution. First, an open-ended question is going to eliminate the yes/no response, or the selection/choice response, or identification responses such as "who" or "what". Second, when a question has more than one possible solution, more than one student has an opportunity to participate in the discussion. This keeps the kids in the back of the classroom on their toes, and the kids on the front wondering why they aren't the only ones with opinions. Ha!

Too often, when questions are asked, students are relieved when 3-4 eager beavers keep the teacher happily rolling along by quickly providing responses to close-ended questions without having to insert any effort toward thought or action. Those are the students who need to be challenged to think, and because I taught 8th grade for 17 years, I learned this group was unique in their need to be impressed. So, instead of asking a question like "What is the circumference of a circle?", I would ask "You and a partner have 5 minutes to find any objects in this room to demonstrate how to measure the circumference of a circle. How would you do it?" At the beginning of the year, the students would just look at me and each other like they didn't know if it was actually OK to get out of their desks, but eventually learned I encouraged constructive movement as long as they were working toward a goal and producing a product.

Now that I'm in an elementary setting as a media specialist, I've learned even more about the art of questioning with younger students using techniques such as wait time, whole group response, thumbs up/thumbs down, response cards, and equity sticks. I try to incorporate as many of the same styles as the teachers in the classrooms so when the students come to me for lessons, there is consistency. Therefore, in addition to the open-ended and multiple solution aspects of asking questions, I've learned to use tools to prompt responses from as many students as possible to keep all students engaged and provided with opportunities to demonstrate understanding.

Our school recently was chosen for a site visit during our district Advanc-ED accreditation. Several months of planning went into the process of getting ready for the team's visit, and during our exit interview with the review team, one of areas in which our school received high marks on the ELEOT tool was in the area of Progress Monitoring and Feedback Environment. What did that mean? We were asking the right questions, probing deeply, and providing chances for students to go further with explanations to show understanding. Equally worthy of note was the participation level of the students and a decrease in the amount of distractions and disruptive behaviors.

I found each of the following articles of interest. The first is a list of ten questioning techniques which can be used in the classroom. The second is an article describing the benefits of good questioning for positive classroom management.

EDM 510 Website

under construction

Click here to view my website which is currently under construction. Please pardon my progress!

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

C4T Semester Assignment My Choice

library girl image

Jennifer LaGarde, aka the Library Girl, is who I selected for semester long assignment. I already followed her blog and her Twitter account before this class because I think she is an amazing inspiration to me as a media specialist, and feel she gives superior advice on how to keep libraries a vital space in schools. She is from North Carolina, and travels extensively to workshops delivering her "Zombie Apocalypse" speeches to media specialists, administrators, and teachers across the country. The following blog posts are some of my favorites on her page. If you are a media specialist, or an aspiring media specialist, The Adventures of Library Girl should definitely be on your list to follow.

#1
When I first met Jennifer LaGarde last summer at a new librarian conference, she presented the first of her four part series of "How to Survive the Zombie Librarian Apocalypse: How to Begin with the End in Mind". The zombie graphics are her licensed originals, and the content of the material is spot on with needing to stay current as media specialists to avoid becoming complacent. In this first of a four part series, I found that beginning with the end of the year in mind by setting goals, and having data walls to display circulation statistics can be vital to keeping the library program viable in the school. She also gives links to which annual reports to make available to administrators in planning for the new year and budgeting for purchasing new books. The entire post was helpful, and I've written my comments to her below:

The data wall is an excellent idea, and I have actually begun using this data in a newsletter along with the AR data for students and parents. Do you have an assistant to help you, or do you update the wall yourself each month? You mentioned using library helpers to help calculate the data, do you also use student library helpers to assist with circulation and other library tasks? I currently do not have help, but have been using student workers in the morning before school starts.

#2
Moving from Decoration to Documentation

In this post, Jennifer asks four very important questions about the library space.
1. What does this librarian value?
2. What happens in this space?
3. How does what happens here impact student learning?
4. Why do we still need libraries?

The questions posed by Jennifer were to spur each librarian to think about first impressions and to consider how the space of the library should be maximized to show how the work of the library matters to the student who use it. She argues the space of the library should be more than just a place to provide space for books, but for displaying student work and a creative commons area for students to create work.

This is my comment to her post:

I worry sometimes about the space of the library looking messy if an administrator should walk in, but then I'm reminded when students are making a productive mess in the library to create a product, they are using the space as a creative commons, and it's not always going to be a perfectly neat, quiet space. Thank you for the Pinterest anchor charts. I will be excited to share these. I appreciate the direct questions at the beginning of your post which makes me do a reality check about the work I am doing as a librarian and what I need to do to ensure the library space isn't just being used to shelve books.

#3
11 questions that need 11 answers

Jennifer knows how to keep it real, and in this post, she poses 11 questions related to school libraries which deserve answers. What I decided to do it to take the 11 questions and post them on my wall in my office as a reminder for how to strive each day to be better every day, and to provide the best services possible for the students at my school. You can view the 11 questions Jennifer asks by clicking here. My comments to her post are below:

At our next district media specialist meeting, I plan to take a copy of these questions and ask each to answer them by the time we meet at the end of the year. Then, I would like to compile these answers on my blog once I have gotten responses from those who have chosen to participate. It will be interesting to see how our answer align (or not), and how we can use these questions and answers to make all the libraries in our district more viable resources for the students and parents in our community. Would you suggest I ask the answers to remain anonymous? Thanks again for your commitment to the profession.

#4
In this post, Jennifer makes some raises a very important topic about the validity of libraries in today's technology driven society. She highlights two truths about libraries, the first being times have changed, but the library hasn't, and the librarian's work is no longer connected to the goals of the school. The second reality she outlines is that the library has changed, but perception has not, and librarians are helping students make connections, inquire, and participate globally, but those outside the school do not see this as useful yet. She shares an amazing graphic she created to show these two realities and what librarians should do in both situations in her post. Also, she is very candid about the fact there are many schools around the nation which have chosen to shut down their library programs because they have not been shown to provide the schools with enough supporting data to keep them open as viable resources. Therefore, Jennifer continues to point out what is necessary for librarians to do in order to pursue the profession and keep our jobs.

This are my comments to her post below:

I totally agree with both realities you have highlighted in your graphic, and certainly feel it is up to us to find the viability in our programs. Also, the point you made about complaints being actually a request for help is an interesting slant, and I haven't thought of teacher complaints in this light before. What tips can you give for teachers who do nothing but complain when I ask to collaborate? Many of them think collaborating is them emailing me a list of the objectives for the week and me coming up with something for their kids to do when they come to the library. So, I always feel obligated to make it work out, and am doing double or triple the work load to make sure the student needs are met to keep the teachers from complaining about how much they already have to do, AND to keep my position viable.

C4T Rotating Weekly Assignments #1-4

My first teacher assignment was to post to Kathleen Morris who is a teacher in Victoria, Australia. She is currently on maternity leave, but is continuing to make blog posts.
This is my initial response to her post about being on maternity leave, but still continuing to blog and encouraging others to post comments about the upcoming new year:

Hello,
I am Angel Wilson, Media Specialist at Meadowlane Elementary School in Phenix City, AL (NOT Phoenix, like in Arizona). Currently, I am finishing my certification in Educational Media and am taking a course which involves learning how to create blogs. I have been assigned to you by my professor. Your links to tips for starting blogging really are great tools, especially since I’m relatively new at the experience. I look forward to following your posts, and thank you for including some helpful tips I will be able to share with the teachers and students in my school.


Mrs Kathleen Morris says:
February 7, 2014 at 10:49 am
Hi Angel,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I’m glad my tips were helpful for you. Good luck with the rest of your course!
Kathleen



Pearson logo

The blog I was assigned to this week is Teach Intersect authored by Bill Genereaux.
Click here to view the Teach Intersect blog.


The post (Dated Nov. 22, 2013) to which I made a comment was about a video entitled Victoria's Story: A Vision for the Future of Learning . Bill Genereaux, the blog's author, entreated readers to view the video. After I watched the video, I honestly did not know if I was watching a sci-fi movie, or if I was seeing technology which will become a reality in the near future. The idea behind the technology presented in the video was to provide each student with a handheld device which is attuned to the needs of the learner, makes the use of holograms, and also provides intuitive remediation based on a student's method of answering questions. You have to watch the video to truly understand what I'm talking about. At any rate, I felt the technology and the concept behind it was actually a brilliant tool for helping students learn, however, I was not in agreement with how personal information about a student (such as personal schedules after school) could be accessed immediately by a student's teachers, tutors, etc. It seemed a bit intrusive on a young person's privacy. If something like this ever became available, I would be be remiss to not wonder if the availability of such technology would only be accessed by students whose families could afford it, or by students in a school system wealthy enough to provide it. Here are my exact comments below:

I’m not quite sure what to think of this video yet. There are some amazing concepts for customizing student learning, but the personal information (such as knowing a student’s after-school schedule) seems invasive.

lego blocks

"Everything You Need to Know About Common Core" was the blog post to which I commented this week. Teacher Tom writes about a speech educational historian Diane Ravitch gave denouncing the aims of Common Core. At first an advocate of creating standards which would help students moving from one school district to another achieve the same goals, Ravitch pulled away from assisting with pushing the standards forward primarily because she feels the movement became more of a corporate push than an educational reform. Her full speech can be found http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/. It's a worthy read. Teacher Tom's comments to her speech can be found here. My comments to both the speech and Teacher Tom's post are found below:

After reading your post and the speech by Dianne Ravitch, I found myself nodding enthusiastically as I read, acknowledging the changes I have witnessed in our district over the last 10 years, and ones we are experiencing currently with the implementation of Common Core. I am a LMS in the highest poverty K-5 elementary school in our district. This is my second full year in this school, but 20th total year in the same district. The frustrations I dealt with as a teacher throughout the NCLB years, and now with RTTT, and the unreasonable testing goals which could never be feasibly attained to the prescribed percentages, placed and continue to place an overwhelming burden upon teachers and students. Teachers in my building are restricted by scripted lessons and time schedules which nearly completely eliminate teachable moments or veering off topic to discover something new for fear a standard won't be covered in a set amount of time. The overall morale of teachers in the time of my tenure has dropped dramatically, and while there are other contributing factors including major budget cuts and lack of student motivation, the onus of standards, computerized tests, interpreting test results, and data meetings have had significant impact on the attitude of today's teacher in public education.

I appreciate you taking the time to post your findings on such a very important topic. How does CCSS impact you and your students, or will it have any impact for you at all?


6:35 PM

C4T Semester Long Assignment


I was assigned to follow Kathleen Morris who is a teacher in Victoria, Australia. She is currently on maternity leave, but is continuing to make blog posts. I have really gained a lot of great information from the posts she has made, and am enjoying using the PDF files she is willing to share on her blog. Many of them I have been able to share with the teachers at my school as well. Below are the comments I have made to her posts.

#1
This is my initial response to her post about being on maternity leave, but still continuing to blog and encouraging others to post comments about the upcoming new year.

Hello,
I am Angel Wilson, Media Specialist at Meadowlane Elementary School in Phenix City, AL (NOT Phoenix, like in Arizona). Currently, I am finishing my certification in Educational Media and am taking a course which involves learning how to create blogs. I have been assigned to you by my professor. Your links to tips for starting blogging really are great tools, especially since I’m relatively new at the experience.
I look forward to following your posts, and thank you for including some helpful tips I will be able to share with the teachers and students in my school.

Mrs Kathleen Morris says:
February 7, 2014 at 10:49 am
Hi Angel,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I’m glad my tips were helpful for you. Good luck with the rest of your course!
Kathleen

#2
If you are needing a great resource for starting a classroom blog, this is it. Kathleen has put together an excellent guide for getting started. This is my comment to her post. You can find the PDF file at the bottom of the blog post as well.

What a wonderful resource for beginning a classroom blog. Thank you for the extensive amount of information you've provided for beginners like myself. I am in the infant stages of a personal blog, but would love to start blogging with students about books they've read, or books they would recommend for others to read. Do you know any media specialists you would recommend I follow who use blogs? I have downloaded the PDF, and appreciate you sharing your expertise.

#3
I really thought this was an excellent set of free Web tools with explanations for how each tool can be used by teachers or students and what type of product can be produced. I have shared this list of tools with the teachers in my school, and the list is available in a PDF file at the bottom of the post. This is my comment to her post below:

This is an amazing list of free tools. I have used some of them, but there are several here I look forward to trying out. Have you used AnswerGarden before? It works by you posting a general question, then as users submit answers, they are generated in a cool word cloud which can be exported to Wordle or Tagxedo. Check it out at http://answergarden.ch. It's free and doesn't require a login. Thanks again for your great list of web tools!

#4
Internet safety continues to be a topic of concern, and Kathleen has put together a set of three posters for parents, students, and teachers with safety guidelines. I downloaded all three posters, and shared them with my colleagues. You can find the posters in a PDF file at the end of the post. My comments to her are below:

Wonderful set of guidelines for responsible Internet users. As an educator, I am always mindful of my personal behavior on social networking sites and feel it is important for all educators to follow your guidelines as well. I also agree with several others who have liked the acronym YAPPY. Did you coin this yourself, and if so, kudos! What a catchy way to remember what information not to give out. Great job with content and design of the posters, and thank you for sharing them with us.

C4K Assignments #1-4

a
working out on mats

This was my first post to a student, and Jerry was describing his first day in gymnastics class. You can read about it here. It took me back to old times, and I enjoyed writing to him about what I remembered in elementary school about PE class. This is what I wrote to him:

Hello from Alabama, Jerry! I, like Megan, am a graduate student in the online program at the University of South Alabama in the United States of America. Besides attending school online, I am a full time elementary school media specialist (librarian), so it's great to see you are blogging your experiences so others, like myself, can learn about people around the world.

When I was young like yourself, I remember enjoying PE class, but never had an opportunity to learn gymnastics. It sounds like you had a great first day on the mats, and were excited about your stretching exercises. I think exercising is great, and really love doing yoga.

Thanks for your post, and keep up the great work blogging and enjoying your classes!

padlet app icon

"What Goes Around Comes Back Around" is the theme for the wall created by the student's post I viewed this week. Kumiani's wall can be viewed by clicking here. I was intrigued with the app, Padlet, used to create the wall. I haven't used the app before, but have enough interest now to try to use it. It seems to give the user space to create a moving wall of images where text can be created to scroll on top. I really enjoyed this post, and my comments can be viewed below:

Hi! My name is Angel and I’ve been assigned to follow your blog by my professor, Dr. Strange, in a micro computing in education cours. I am a Library Media Specialist and am completing my certification online through the University of South Alabama. I am a 20 year veteran to education, and blogging is relatively new to me, so I’m thankful for the chance to see a variety of blogs, especially ones created using tools I’ve yet to discover. I really like the wall you created using Padlet. Was this your first time designing a wall? Where did you get the topic idea for creating it? Your photos and text match the theme well. Great job! Can Padlet be used in Blogger? Thanks for allowing me to comment. Keep up the good work!

peavy predator guitar

The student I was assigned to view on this class page had not yet made any posts, so I chose Breton. He had recently visited his grandparents' house and found a guitar which had belonged to his uncle in the 90's. He was excited his grandpa gave it to him, and I thought it was cool because I've always wanted to learn to play. Here's what he wrote, and below is what I commented to his post:

What a cool thing to find! I have always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. My mother was a piano teacher or 25 years, and I started playing when I was 5, so I thought since I knew how to play piano and read music I could pick up a guitar and play with no problem. NOT!! They are two completely different beasts. How did you learn to play, and did you take lessons or teach yourself how to play? Even though you have a Les Paul, getting one that belonged to your uncle in the 90's is still really cool.

C4S Comment #4

firebears the rescue team

Meagan created a book trailer using iMovie. You have to check it out! I am so going to do this with my students. I was inspired by this post, and couldn't wait to get started making my own book trailer. You can see Meagan's trailer by clicking here.

This is my response to her post:

LOVE the book trailer! I am currently working with a group of 5th graders to make book commercials for titles linked to topics taught in the classroom. Did you use iMovie to produce this? Also, did you use images from a vendor site, or did you take your own pictures of the book pages? The music and text had me sitting on the edge of my seat!!

Meagan even responded back:

Thank you so much! I actually scanned the images into iPhoto to edit them. From there I added them to iMovie and placed the pictures with the music adding text where needed.

C4C Rotating Weekly Assignments Posts #1-4

Plagiarism wordle


Sarah pointed out in her post students should be shown how to properly cite resource early in their education so as to avoid plagiarism, and ways to prevent it. Her complete post can be found by clicking here.

This is the response I gave to her post:

I am glad you pointed out the need to make students aware of how to cite resources in elementary school to establish a pattern for crediting others' work. The third grade teachers at my school recently asked me to help their students create photo collages in PowerPoint highlighting an animal of their choice. When we started searching for images to include, I explained the photos they found did not belong to them, and showed them how to reference the sources for their collages. Almost all of the students I helped were not aware of plagiarism, or how to avoid it. What grade level do you think is the best for starting a conversation about plagiarism?

search

T'Keyan's post highlighted what she thought were the top six search engines for people to use, not necessarily related to educational research, but for general use such as rating professors or job searches. You can view her post by clicking here.

This is my response to her post entitled "My Top Six Search Engines".

I liked how you included search engines which were not necessarily used only for educational research, but for other useful information such as Monster and Rate My Professor. Which ones of these engines have you had experience using prior to this assignment, and which ones, if any, do you use on a regular basis? I have only briefly used the Wolfram Alpha for this assignment, but found it interesting since the answers provided are generated from a database and require no additional searches to arrive at an answer. Also, out of the search engines you researched, did you discover a new favorite?

dancer silhouette

Allison posted a digital story of her daughter entitled "A Dancer's Story". The tale highlights the life of a young dancer with lovely photos and an excellent song selection to match the story's theme. This is my comment to Allison's video post:

Beautiful story of a beautiful dancer. I have a very dear friend, Shane Hall, who is a professional dancer, choreographer, costume designer, and studio owner. Although I have never been a dancer myself, I have seen the intense amount of work it takes to become an accomplished artist, and I admire anyone who has the talent and determination to do so. Great job relating your story. The music was a wonderful fit!


Ramsey gave a very thorough review of Khan Academy, and I found his thoughts as a math instructor to be constructive, yet thought provoking with regard to how answers to a math question can be derived in several different ways, yet the academy may only show one solution. His full post can be read by clicking here.

My response to Ramsey's thoughts are below:

Your thoughts of Khan Academy fall in line with mine after having read reviews of both proponents and critics. Many of the critics feel the videos lack structure and pedagogy, but yet give credit for the instructional videos being useful as a resource. Like yourself, I agree the resources should be used to supplement content, provide extra practice, or even provide alternate methods for arriving at a solution, but not as an isolated tool for understanding content. I can see where clicking on hints just to arrive at the answer might subtract from what a user could learn, but I feel the hints would be helpful for students who are very reluctant to learn math, especially younger students. Have you created a personal profile on the site, and have you used the site before this assignment? If so, did you use it for your own personal benefit, or to help students? Good job formulating your thoughts!

Monday, March 10, 2014

Project #3 Presentation

Project Based Learning

technology chalboard
The focus of the conversations between Dr. Strange and Mr. Capps in the videos discussing PBL primarily were directed toward creating student centered, technology enriched classroom environments where students are challenged to ask questions, research, produce products, share, revise, and reflect with the purpose of becoming globally adept, responsible, productive 21st century savvy citizens. In this new century of learning, the paradigm in education is shifting from the mundane, boring, pencil and paper, rote memorization doldrums (of some teachers) into the collaborative, engaged classrooms where students are realizing a new sense of ownership and pride in their education, and acquiring new skills through schools who are offering Project Based Learning opportunities. While PBL may sound like a new educational buzzword, the concept has actually been around since the times of Confucius and Aristotle, both teachers of inquiry and "learning by doing", who advocated asking questions and seeking answers by using logic and reasoning. Just as those teachers promoted critical thinking skills, other great teachers, psychologists, and philosophers throughout history such as Dewey, Montessori, and Piaget presented models of learning with "life experiences" at the core1.

As a twenty year veteran, and a lifelong learner, I can honestly say I have been a proponent of "doing" and "experiencing" throughout my entire career, even before the introduction of the ACCRS and technology tools. When I was listening to Mr. Capps tell the story of the "big wigs" come into his classroom and his students were in the floor doing an art activity, it reminded me of my first year teaching 8th grade science, and my students constructing huge double helix DNA ladders in the floor of my classroom. (Again, this was 20 years ago.) A colleague's gifted son was in my class that year. Four years later when he graduated, she sent me a thank you card telling me I was the only reason he looked forward to coming to school that year because I challenged him to think, and referenced the DNA models in the note. Later in my career, I started the first LEGO Robotics Engineering Lab at our school which was the quintessential project based learning classroom. When Mr. Capp spoke of student interest, content standards, authentic audience, and community involvement, the robotics lab included all of those things.

One of the things Andy mentioned with regard to PBL I took down as a direct quotation was
You're gonna get more than you expect.
I can definitely say I have experienced this feeling with students who produced robotics projects which far exceeded what I expected them to create. Students would be given projects where they would build robots to complete tasks, and I was continually amazed at the variety of ideas students were able to generate for ways in which to solve the same problem. I can remember students thinking at the beginning of a project they would never be able to complete it, but by the end of it being so proud of what they had accomplished, and what they had learned along the way. Other aspects of PBL Anthony mentioned in the video I was able to confirm through my experiences with the robotics lab was the sense of ownership, the level of student choice. There really isn't anything but praise I can give for programs like what Anthony is using in his classroom for I have personally witnessed the benefits. Students love it, administrators support it, parents become involved with it, and the community will volunteer to help with it.

The Alabama College and Career Ready Standards were developed out of necessity, partially in response to continued evidence from international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS which showed the US falling continually falling behind other countries in performance. Therefore, because our graduates are competing for jobs in a global, technology driven market, and our economy depends on a higher set of knowledge and skills, the standards which drive the instruction in the classroom has had to change in order to accommodate the needs of the learner. Thus, technology usage in the classroom and the incorporation of project based learning is in demand.2

The questions raised in my mind after having viewed the conversations in the videos, and also having a decent grasp on project based learning are these:

1. How do teachers persuade administration to buy into PBL, especially if there is a district developed pacing guide?
2. How much autonomy do teachers have in deciding which projects to choose?
3. What type of training, if any, is required to begin using project based learning?
4. Can problem based learning be implemented in schools with limited technology tools?
5. What are the best ways in which to assess projects created as a result of problem based learning?

Additionally, in response to the charge to locate 12th grade standards for writing, I have included a chart below to include the 12th grade writing strand standards from the Alabama Insight Tool.