Reflections of a Techie

Sneaky learning..building background knowledge painlessly

Another day of working hard to create background info.  Today was the big payoff...students turned in their nonfiction page.  OMG....they are colorful, interesting and engaging.  Kids were super proud of their efforts, seemingly liked doing them, and they are gaining information without even realizing what's happening.

I'm actually shocked at how much they've picked up by reading one book and finding 5 articles.  I know it doesn't sound like much, but just the process of searching for resources...not even reading them...has given them wide exposure to the vocabulary of this unit.  I hear them talking to each about how to broaden and narrow their searches...they give advice like "Try using earthquakes if you are lookiing for faults...I did that and found tons of stuff".  They don't even get that two weeks ago they didn't know the word faults had any connection to earthquakes and now they know to use it as a keyword in searching for information.

Most teachers wouldn't have believe that this learning was possible without giving a grade.  But I haven't.  Not a single one because I thought it was about the process not the destination learning so I wanted to make it as nonthreatening as possible.

As a side note, I have a couple of outliers on both ends.  Students that are super quick and competent have been given the option of doing a different assignment.  I found a real life scientific research ship that is drilling samples up to determine how the crust is put together, how it interacts and what it shows about the history of the earth.  There is an onboard educator that frequently blogs for students to learn about the ship, careers of those that staff the ship and explains the science behind what they are doing. 

I picked those that are real outliers to take part of this.  Started off with a virtual tour of the ship (Bubba's Tour) and then to read through all the blogs.  Today was so amazing...the two students that were working on this are designing an interactive bulletin board so they can share what they learn with the rest of the grade level.  They found a paper model to build of the ship...enchanted by the idea of a moonpool and drilling derrick atop of the ship...they literally ran to me and begged to put the model together.  Well.....I thought about it for a minute and totally helped them go for it.  It will be interesting to see if all the same hours find the same things pique their interests and to see how they develop this bulletin board...because they are not all my students nor are they in the same hour.  Communication and collaboration will be key.

What a great resource and I can hardly wait to see what students do this.

The flip side of these kids are my strugglers.  Instead of having them do this electronically which was too challenging...they printed out their articles, highlighted the most important learnings they had and then drew the stars on the top or a big "NO".  I think they were proud that they were doing the same things but just in a different way.

Creating criteria to help students judge background science articles

Making a little forward progress in our building background project.  Today we took students into the library to evaluate their 5 articles...we used a rating scale that I created.  It sort of made me smile because along the way they learned how to cut/paste citations into the evaluation worksheet and they learned how to vertically tile 2 windows...working in both at the same time without switching back and forth.

Small victories, I guess.

They really liked the fact that they got to "say" if the resource they found was a good one.  What was also a bonus to this was the early finishers got to be peer coaches for the ones that were struggling.  That was wonderful to see them pointing and helping each other.

We're well on our way to creating our own encyclopedia of articles about all the main topics in our upcoming unit.  I think they'll love reading and processing the supplemental materials THEY found and rated.  This is hard work, but it gets easier and the way forward becomes easier to see the longer we persevere. 

Building background science reading content

Thankfully the EBSCO folders worked today.  They seemed to save everything students put into them and it was pretty miraculous to see 50+ students hard at work gathering resources on their topic.  Reading the articles is pretty challenging and I have to figure out if I'm up to looking at the new notetaking feature that EBSCO offers.

They narrowed their search by full text articles and by lexile reading levels.  That seemed to really help because these are tough topics to read about when you don't know anything to start with. I sat down and read an article with one student...it was amazing.  Somehow when the fault lines in some areas slip, they produce an energy release as the rocks crash into each other.  That release "looks" like eerie lights in all sorts of colors (I thought about static electricity discharges that you can sometimes see in the dark).  This student was having a super hard time finding articles that related to predicting earthquakes and then he found this article...I think it made his day.

The thing I've really learned is that students don't know, at this age, how to go from the broad topics down to narrow ones and then back up.  The neat feature that EBSCO has is a set of topic synonyms along the lefthand side of the search results.  Students found these very helpful when their searches were running dry to generate new hits and go in directions beyond what they were capable of generating on their own.  EBSCO also has a button called "More Articles Like This One"...somehow it finds articles that have similar content.  It was useful much of the time...and it helped steer students in new directions, too.

Tomorrow we start evaluating the articles they collected in their folders.  It will be interesting to see how they ranked them....I came up with a simple system (2 Thumbs UP, 1 Thumb UP, and Thumbs DOWN) based on a couple of criteria.  Readibility, length, relevancy and interesting pictures...perfect for 6th graders.  They'll use the rating system on these 4 dimensions to create the rankings.  Then we'll start to assemble our 2Thumbs UP set of articles on the topics that will supplement our unit that begins on Monday.

Gosh this is a long road to create background knowledge...a book report and article searching.  It will be interesting to see how this impacts their ability to read the textbook.

Reading in science..tips I've learned the hard way

Busy this week setting up my science students to write their own nonfiction pages.  Reading in science class is tough.  But I'm pulling out all the stops that I know of to make it work.

Today was our first day.  I started students off by reviewing some well known nonfiction books styles...did a bunch of DK Books and other similar picture nonfiction books.  We discussed the things they saw that were common to all the pages I showed.  Pretty easily they identified that the there were different sizes of fonts and that the topic was the largest type font on a page.  Next they easily knew that there colorful pictures/diagrams/photos/maps on the pages with captions and factual information.  We processed how the fonts and styles differed.  Lastly we talked about how they might go about writing a small summary about the topic.

Next week talked about reading their books.  I used the ole KWL chart

to help them identify what they already knew and I had them write 5 questions they thought they could answer with the book they had picked.  Once this was finished, I gave them their task for the rest of the hour.  On Post-Its, they had to collect more important WOW facts.  You know, facts that make a person stop their reading and go "WOW"!!!

So they read for 20 minutes.

Monday we'll see how they begin to design their nonfiction page to represent what they learned while reading this nonfiction tradebook.  I think it's going to work.  But I'm not sure.

Plan C...backup idea for social bookmarking

Busy, busy week.  Never a moment to rest or reflection, so I'm super thankful it's Friday night.  All my big plans are sort of crumbling around me.  I had high hopes for using Diigo to social bookmarking to help my students develop their background expertise.

So my backup plan is to use the folder on EBSCO.  Except that it doesn't work in our school.  Somehow everything fell apart when the kids were trying to create their accounts...one student would log on and suddenly they'd be logged in as another student.  Things that they saved to their folder vanish. 

This weekend, I'll be searching for backup plan #3.

I really wanted students to learn how to use sources of information effectively.  I wanted them to collect a set of resources, then to analyze that collection and come up with a set of things most of our grade level could read and use.  I am determined to do this...no matter the obstacles.

It's not that easy to get access to Web 2.0 tools...but I won't be stopped, maybe just delayed a bit!!!!

I've been trying to get everything set for my upcoming research project.  I had wanted to use Diigo to save student's research finds...but I don't think it will get done before I have to start the project.

Today, with that realization, I worked on modifying what I'm going to do.  I'm still going to use the databases, but instead I'll use the Student Research Center at EBSCO. 

It's designed for middle and high school students, supposedly simplifying the search process.  I don't know about that yet, but I can say that they have some pretty terrific online tutorials and help files.

I just downloaded a couple and customized them for our school district.  One of the documents is a Scavenger_Hunt to acquaint them with all the buttons and functions of the website.  I think it's pretty straightforward...so I'm going to assign it for homework this week.  I'm also going to give them the directions for setting up a folder where they can save everything that they find.  ( This is where I would have been using Diigo.)  I think if they do this with their parents, it will give my parents a glimpse inside what we are doing in class.  I think that's going to be a good thing.  

We'll still be able to develop our analysis criteria and then rank order the articles we find.  I was just going to do this using tags and I don't think that's possible now.  But maybe this is actually a better starting place because it's simple and straightforward.  Not a bad place from which 6th should begin.  Hopefully the approval will come through for the Diigo toolbars to be added to our computers by the time I repeat this activity in the next unit.

I can't tell you how much work EBSCO saved me by providing these files.  Thank goodness someone out there can anticipate what people will need...but then it is a librarian driven website, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they are good at their jobs!!!!

Measure away...Excel spreadsheets and triple beam balances

We just finished a great week in science where the pod was set up in stations. Honestly, we could have never pulled this off without fantastic parental help.  My teaching partner set up a website where parents can go and sign up for times to help in the classroom.  It's super easy to setup and parents love it.  It's called Volunteer Spot and we list it on our class webpage.  Parents go online to sign up to help.

Anyway back to the kids....well we had 7 stations set up in the pod.  Each station had a collection of objects to find the mass using a triple beam balance. (I have been working on creating this collection the past two years.  In prior years, students had to find a small container and bring it to school to measure with the triple beam balances.  When the activity was over, I'd ask anyone that didn't mind to donate their container to the class collection.  Most of the time if the container was special or it wasn't filled with quarters, they be thrilled to donate it.  We now have over 100 different containers!!!!)

The extra pair of hands helped because we were teaching 2 classrooms at once.  Previous to starting this activity, one of our parents took all these containers home along with  digital balance.  She created the most unbelievable Excel spreadsheet with all the masses listed alongside the container number.

We used a blank copy of for the student worksheet.  It was super easy to walk by, have them ask you if their mass was with 2 grams and to check.  The kids really liked it too.

The second day in the pod, we had them find the mass of the container only now it was enclosed in a beaker.  To find the mass, they had to measure the beaker and measured the combined beaker/container and subtract.  We distributed electronic balances so they could check their results.  They used the same worksheet because we just rotated them to a different table.  This also reinforced last week's lesson where we taught them how to find the volume of an irregularly shaped object by looking at displaced volumes in a graduated cylinder.

It was something to watch...all 60 of those students were pretty much on task working to slide those beam weights back and forth.  They helped each and the collaborative spirit of the room was amazing.

Next week will be our performance assessment where students will have to come in and do everything they've been working on since August.  Not only using the triple beam balances, but graduated cylinders and metric rulers.  Honestly, I'm not sure where they'll ever use any of this if they become working scientists or lab assistants....but I think it helps develop an attention to detail and it's in our curriculum.

Can you draw with a temperature probe?

It's such a busy few class days...on Friday we had our first temperature probe lab.  This one is mostly about getting them to start learning how to use the probes.  I think it's quite brilliant of the lab designers to have students manipulate how the graph looks by dunking the probe in warm and cold water.  It's a totally engaging learning activity because students love to make a "M" on their graph or a "N".  It's funny..they beg to try it again and make their letter look better.  Almost immediately they begin to internalize how to make the graph line rise or fall.

Our only problem was that we couldn't get it all done in the 43 minutes.  I have to wait 4 days until I can get the laptop cart signed out again to finish the lab.

Students have asked me over and over again....can we do that again?  when are we going to finish our lab?  What I love is that they understand why the graphs move in the ways that they do.  This is something that I used to never be able to achieve with days of instruction and tons of worksheets.  Now I hook up the probes and in about 2 class periods, they are "pros".  This is tech integration at its finest.

Can you hold all the Joy???

Do you remember the Parker Palmer quote "

"I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy.  When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illuminated by the lightning - life of the mind – then teaching is the finest work I know." “The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching "

I believe in this and hang onto it as my antidote to the poor morale that surrounds me.  I love my students and I love my classes.  But I have to tell you that is with gritted teeth I returned to school this year.  I just feel like there is always someone, somewhere whispering "pressure, pressure, pressure"...at our convocation there was the dramatic data migration of test scores up and up and up. 

So imagine my delight when I found this post by Dayle Timmons about the Thriller Return their building had planned for that first day back.  OK...there was still pressure, but the joy for teaching and the learning was so present.  Take a look. 

Thank you Dayle for posting this and thank you to the building leaders that put this celebration of being back together.  It was wonderful.  I wonder....are you available for a road show?????

Help!!! NBCT Recertification...brainstormers needed!!!

My life is overwhelming right now...too much to do and the pressure is huge.  It's the start of my two year window to renew my National Board Certification...and I just didn't know if I had enough energy to do it.  Luckily for me, I have a great group of folks from which to take my inspiration.  I read through the Teacher Leader Network posts on doing renewal.  Sounds like everyone pretty much felt like me before they started.

So I'm putting aside all my fears and just going for it.  I've tried to read through the directions and have no idea what I do that would even qualify as a Professional Growth Experience...but I'm sure it will come to me.  Hopefully my virtual community can continue to help me struggle through this experience.

The thing about is this....I know I have the essence of a National Board teacher but to take the time to sit down to write about it in a coherent way is frightening.  I know I can do but I only remember the amazing amount of time it took me to do the initial certification.  I know that I don't have that in me...but I think this one is easier.  I just need a mentor...someone who knows what is going on and that can help me brainstorm.  If I could get a plan in mind, I know I can execute it.

So anyone out there that thinks they would like to help me, I'm open to all suggestions and help.