Reflections of a Techie

Wicked Great CC Picture Finder

compfight + a flickr™ search tool.

It's always a challenge to use CC licensed photos for everything I do.  While I have a couple of effective search strategies....this new idea filtered across my Google Reader from Free Technology for Teachers. 

I love the way you can search using tags.  I wish I could remember to teach this to my students...not the using it part, but the creating content part.  I think I'd help the world have more CC license products from which to chose!!!!!

Expository science writing...part 2

I wrote about using the Essay Map to help us do our scientific writing.  The first day seemed like things were going fine and then we fell off the track.

My students are so young and literal that they couldn't make the jump from a English class assignment to using that something in science class.  When I'd talk about the main idea of their lab, they would just look at me astonished.  (It sort of felt like when I ask them who was the "Who" in a reading passage.  Remember when you learned the 5Ws + H as a way to read for information.  They couldn't jump to thinking about the WHO as anything other than a story's character.)

I had to go back and rework the whole Essay Map.  I actually combined with the Persuasion Map because writing a science lab conclusion is a bit more persuasive than essay in nature.  At least at 6th grade.  I try and convince my students that their job is convince the lab report reader that their evidence "proves" that what they've concluded is accurate, reliable and valid.

I also thought if they filled out this graphic organizer that they'd be able to write their paragraphs using the graphic organizer.  They weren't able to do.  So I regrouped again and wrote my own paragraph and shared that with them.  They actually copied exactly what I wrote on the board as their essay.  I asked..."If I had written My name is Mrs. Ratzel", wouldn't you know to substitute your own name where my name was?"

"Well, we guess so now that you say it that way." ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Now that I knew where they were in thinking/writing like this, I highlighted each place in my essay that they needed to substitute their own data.  In a different color, I highlighted the words they couldn't just copy..that they needed to find their own way of explaining what they were thinking.  Honestly I was about to give up at this point....and it was then, from the depths of discouragement, that their light bulbs started going off.  Thank goodness for my SmartBoard because I could still use the essay I originally wrote and I just used the different colors for the different purposes in their writing.

"Oh, this is what you wanted us do?"   "well, that's easy".  Easy????  Easy?????....if it's easy, I thought...do it.  Sure enough they did.

Are you falling off your chair laughing?  You should be.  It's why teaching middle school kids is the best.  They keep you young with their innocence and on your toes as you stretch them to unimaginable places.  The last part of this writeup is to get their data tables and graphs in a more formalized looking fashion.  At least I know that won't be as hard as this writing piece has been.  Boy will I be ready next year with some interim steps to save all of us some frustration and gnashing of teeth. 

Can you prove that? using evidence to support conclusions

We're coming to the end of the Journey North...a study about how to use photoperiod data to track down mystery locations throughout the world.  Students have said this is "the best" and "I hate this project".  Actually both comments delight me because they reveal, at least in my opinion, the depth of this study.

Students are used, at least in 6th grade, to knowing the answer off the top of their head.  If they don't know, they just say something like...

"I don't get it."  or "I need help". 

To which I always reply, "What don't you get or "What do you need help with". 

Usually the answer is "Everything".  And as any teacher worth their salt would say..."I can't help you until you know a bit more about what you don't know.  Or at least be able to tell me what you have tried and where you got stuck".

Students hate those kinds of answers.  All to frequently they want you to give them the answer or they will badger you with so many questions that you will give in and just tell them what they ask you.  This project has been like that.

It has been painful and has made me wonder why I chose to do this project again.  It's my  5th year.  Yet now that we are down to the end, my students love the project and are thrilled that we're about to find out if they have correctly deduced the location of these classrooms.  They have used math, they've analyzed sunrise/sunset patterns, looked through atlases, had to discuss their reasoning and defend their evidence, and they've had to suffer through their teacher not knowing "the answer" or if they are on the right track.

It has been a wonderful experience (albeit I don't think they'll realize it for years to come) in using evidence and data to "prove" that your conclusion is reasonable and logical.  They've ramped up their conversations with each other.  It makes me laugh because they are both delighted when they get the same answer (because then they think they must be onto the right answer) or if one of the holdouts can prove their point better than the crowd and the crowd switches their thinking.

The SmartBoard has been invaluable during the Journey North. We save all of our thinking....I convert those thinking drafts into PDFs and upload them onto our class webpage.  That helps the kids at night when they are working on a clue and they need to review what we came up with in class.  I can also display anything we've done because I've saved everything in weekly folders.  Lastly when someone is gone, sick or disorganized (read:  they lost their notes or spiral)...the notes are downloadable off our class page.  The SB has made a huge improvement over past years and I can't imagine how we did this without the SB Notebook software.  (BTW..in the middle of Journey North they upgraded me to a different version of SB Notebook.  That took a little adjustment, but we LOVE the table function and use it all the time to aggregate all 10 mystery locations)

Improving fishbowls...ramping up mathematical discourse

I know I've posted about this technique before...but I added something to the fishbowl.  This week I added the "Empty Chair".  While this isn't a new technique to many, it is to my class.  They have loved this feature because students that were on the outside watching the conversation unfold sometimes just couldn't wait.  Now they can sit down to make their comment in the empty chair.

I tested it out on Thursday and Friday because we have been working on phi, what we've dubbed as the second most famous irrational number.  I asked them to research how phi has been applied in the arts.  I'll have to say that threw many students for a loop because they've never done math research before.

Once they'd recovered their balance they found amazing resources and then created samples of that work.  What I found even better than the work itself (and it was terrific) was the conversation that accompanied the work.  It was their questioning and probing about how Fibancci numbers were used in each piece...most of them could show how they'd use the sequence to decide on the dimensions of their starting point.

Guest expert voices on formative assessment

This has been a wonderful day.  I'm building my Assessment class and thought I'd try and use interviews to spruce up the online content a bit.  I wasn't sure how this would go...but I ventured out today.  Took my computer to work along with my Snowflake microphone and started interviewing people.

I had thought about the questions I wanted to get answered before I talked with them...mostly wanted to hear their expertise on what works in terms of preassessment and formative assessments.  This is something that we've been very busy working on district wide so I know tons of people have good stuff going on in their classrooms.

But as I listen to my colleagues describe what they do...I'm blown away.  So effortlessly they chat about this amazing body of work they do in the name of making students into successful learners. I swear that policymakers need to hear testimonies of these teachers + the loads of other teachers who do the same thing....it's work and innovation that creates this incredible backdrop for students.   I honestly think you'd have to try to fail with thoughtful practitioners like I spoke with today.

Using formative assessment and empowering students

Using an online poster maker

Using a map for expository science writing

I struggle and struggle with helping my students incorporate what they learn in their English classes into the writing they do for me in science.  Somehow there's a huge disconnect between the simple techniques they utilize in that class when it comes to managing the content they've learned from me.

I read about a new tool Essay Map in Keith Jarrett's blog.  I tried it out with a couple of students who stayed late yesterday.  They loved it and I could see the light bulbs going off in their heads.  They were amazed at how well they could answer the questions the Map asked them.  When we finished and looked at the results, they were almost silent.  It somehow had never occurred to them that THIS was what I wanted them to produce.

Thanks to Keith for finding and writing about this resource.  I plan on using it during our next writing assignment in science.  I plan on having them take their research notes, which will be more than adequate to use for answering the questions, into the computer lab.  Then letting them loose to test this Map out.

I'll keep you posted on how things go.