Teacher Tool Box: Technology!

This teacher tool overwhelms me but greatly excites me at the same time.  Having just recently (in the last 12 months) bought and started using a smartphone, I feel behind the times....already.  I invested in a smartphone and an iPad tablet at the same time.  I decided it was time to join the tech world and why not jump into the deep end?

I am so incredibly intrigued by the iPad and the possibilities it provides in the classroom. There are apps for literally everything and if there isn't one right now, wait just a couple hours or a couple days and it will be there.  No longer is teaching about finding materials and resources to use but rather sorting through the endless ocean of resources and possibilities.  This can be good and bad.  I feel it is my job to find and provide the very best of the best to my students.  This includes resources and materials they will be using but also behind the organizational and classroom management curtain.

Engagement and excitement for learning are big deals to me and I am beginning to see technology as a tool to encourage this kind of passion in the classroom.  Since students will be coming to the classroom with more and more tech knowledge from the outside world, it is my job to provide opportunities to explore tech in the classroom, as well.  Part of my beliefs as a teacher include publishing and creating for an authentic audience.  What could be more authentic than the entire world? The internet is a place these student live and will increasingly spend time inhabiting.  Why not meet them where they are and encourage productive and innovative interactions in cyberspace?

Along with authentic audiences, I am a supporter of (and incredibly passionate about) design education and its implications for developing successful members of an innovative and creation based society.  How can we get students to see that their time in cyberspace is more than just fun and games?  I think by having them create authentic products and sharing them with authentic audiences.  I want students to understand from a very early age, their activities online are not just for them to see but for almost anyone.  Why not harness this capability-instead of scare them, empower them to see technology as a way to make social change?


Technology I am currently crushing on:
Diigo- A place to organize and store all your bookmarks from the web.  Professional readings, activity ideas, etc.  I am still thinking about how I might have students use this resource for themselves.


Twitter- I just signed myself up for a professional twitter account.  I think this has a ton of possiblitieis for my growth as an educator.  I am currently looking for great educators to follow.  Let me know if you have a twitter and I will be sure to look you up.  You call your username a "handle"... right?  I am also seriously considering how I will integrate twitter into my classroom.  I like the idea of tweeting as part of a book group format. Let me know what you think and how you use twitter in your classroom.

KidBlog.com- I recently heard about a Kindergarten teacher using Kidblog in her classroom.  The kids were loving it and were crafting some really amazing posts.  What a cool opportunity for kids and such a great resource for parents to connect with their students education. I am looking forward to exploring more of this website.

Images-
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diigo.svg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twitter_icon.png
http://learningservicesnvsd44.edublogs.org/2012/02/06/primary-students-explore-ipad-technology/

Teacher Tool Box: The Instructional Conversation as a Tool

This past semester I was introduced to an important tool in the classroom...the instructional conversation.  When I first heard the name and began to think about the concept, my first reaction was "Oh...ok so we provide information to students in an informal setting where we encourage conversation."  Um...No-not quite.  Looking back now after having practiced and analyzed my own instructional conversation with students, I see that it is much more than encouraging conversation.

This tool is one that can serve many purposes in the classroom.  The first that comes to mind is to create a community of learners.  I know that if I have set the classroom expectations and created a foundation of trust and warmth, students will be more likely to participate in classroom discussions.  These discussions could be done in the instructional conversation style.  By involving all students and making them feel their thoughts and opinions are valued in the classroom, talk between students will increase and their learning will as well.  Peter Johnston introduced me to the term and idea of a dialogic classroom in his book, Opening Minds.

He says,  "A dialogic classroom is one in which there are lots of open questions and extended exchanges among students.  These are not classrooms based on the delivery of facts. They are classrooms in which there are multiple interpretations and perspectives-classrooms in which facts are considered in different contexts and in which people challenge each other's views and conclusions" (Johnston, 52).  If this doesn't scream community of learners I don't know what does.  This kind of teaching excites me and hopefully the students in my future classroom.

Another purpose for engaging in instructional conversations is to help students develop a critical literacy lens and identity when it comes to reading text but also the world around them.  The topic of critical literacy is a big one and one that I would like to explore in a blog post in the near future (so stay tuned) but I like to think of it as thinking critically about the power relationships, perspectives, and positioning that are presented in text. By having students converse about what they see and notice, their worlds will be enlarged and enriched.  The teacher talk during these conversations needs to be present in order to get the conversation started and moving in a some what focused direction.  These snippets of teacher talk (and they should be snippets...I'm working on this part) are an opportunity to pose questions to students to get them thinking critically about what they are being asked to assume about the people and world around them.  Whether these people exist in a fictional text or an informational video, students should be given tools to talk with people around them and express their opinions and findings. This is how we ensure our students have a voice in the classroom and in the world.  These young, critical voices can make great change.

As a tool in the classroom, instructional conversations can serve many purposes (I didn't even scratch the surface).  Most important to me is that students understand they are in an environment where their voice matters and where they can explore topics, with their classmates, on a deeper level.  Giving students spaces in the classroom to communicate and try on a critical lens will serve them for the rest of their lives.

How's It Going? My 1st Conferences with Young Writers

This week I am so excited to announce....I gave my very first whole-group lesson- a writing lesson at that! I know to many seasoned teachers this sounds silly- I know you do this everyday, all day long.  Just try to remember back to the day you did your first- nerves, excitement, and fear that you wouldn't get in all that you wanted to teach.  Will the students understand my expectations? Will they be motivated and excited to initiate learning?

For my wonderful group of 6th graders, I decided on a persuasive writing lesson.  I started by reviewing the basics, which they were pretty familiar with.  From here, I introduced their first choice.  A persuasive letter or persuasive essay was their first choice. We started a discussion in class to iron out the differences between both.  We talked about "our readers"- which format would reach your desired audience best? Why would you choose one over the other?  Does your format depend on your topic? What were the expectations for the letter, for the essay?   These were some of the questions they explored during our class discussion. From there, I provided the students a graphic organizer to help them get their topic, thesis, audience, and evidence in order.  I explained my expectations and provided them a rubric to guide their work.  Then...I STEPPED BACK and let them WORK! This was hard! The whole first work day, I wanted to jump in and pester them about their work.  Circulating did prove to be helpful to some students as they were developing and brainstorming for a topic of their choice, but for some they just wanted to be on their own.

The rest of the week they were given work time during our Daily 5 rotations.  This gave me the opportunity to move around the room and conference with different students each day. Wow is all I can say.... After watching and reading endless conferencing videos and articles in my college teaching classes, I was finally doing it on my own.  I was using a system that was kind of a hybrid.  I was using a conferencing form from Carl Anderson's book I have mentioned many times before, Assessing Writers.  Below is a picture of my conference forms.  I copied them on a different colored paper so they would be easy to find in a pile of papers or among other assessment forms on my clipboard.  The different colored paper worked very well for me because I was able to grab a new conference sheet quickly when moving from student to student.

I decided on an organizational system similar to those I had seen in many videos. I am so proud my system worked so well for me.

As I sat on my living room floor, that first night, I spread out all my papers and looked back at my scribbled notes and the checklist I had created. I knew more about my students tonight, than I had that morning. The feeling was one of satisfaction and excitement- my conferences had worked!

 I seriously can't believe the amount of information I learned about each of my students from a single writing conference.  Through conversation, I learned that K has great knowledge of persuasive language but could benefit from a lesson on writing conclusions.  I learned A has incredible skills when it comes to organization but could benefit from a lesson on diversifying transition words.  I learned O tends to think longer about her writing before starting but when she does she has an incredibly witty voice.  I learned M finds a graphic organizer helpful before he writes, while H likes to write a draft before going back to reorder his thoughts. This invaluable information would have been lost to the universe had I just assigned them the work and scored the results.

"With all the pressure we feel today as teachers to raise test scores and get students to meet standards, it's all too easy to forget to communicate how much we care about them as people and as writers.  It's easy to see only the work and not the young writers who are doing it" (Anderson 172).  This quote guided me as I began my first writing conferences.  Through personal conversations about writing, I learned so much about my students strengths and struggles.  While all this information is important to guide my future instruction, it was the conversation- the little, quiet one-on-one moment in an otherwise busy, noisy day that made the conference so special to me.  I loved being able to attend to just one student and give them my undivided attention.  I hope this was as special for them as it was for me.  "By truly listening as we confer with children about their writing, we let them know that the work they're doing matters" (Anderson, 173).  To me, this is one of the most important messages to convey to our students if we want them to initiate writing.  After this experience, there is no doubt in my mind, I will be using conversations like this in my future classroom.