As you may or may not know, many of our teachers have our students collaborating with other kids across the country. The authentic audience and global connection makes for some pretty powerful learning.
Recently, a fifth grade teacher from South Dakota (shout out to Mrs. Hojer) and Mrs. Guido from DuJardin worked together to create an awesome thanksgiving themed project for their math classes. Students wrote narratives about a balloon's route in getting to New York for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Then, they used Google My Maps to create a map based on their narrative and shared it with their collaboration buddies. Their buddies then were able to calculate the total number of miles traveled and answered many different math questions based on their journeys. It was such a neat experience for the kids. Writing narratives for a math purpose was fun. In addition, using Google My Maps was a new tool for our fifth graders- and one that they can hopefully use in other ways- throughout their education and beyond. The math involved was challenging and pushed our students to take ownership of new skills. After all, their work was being seen by their buddies... so they wanted to do their best! These are the kinds of learning activities our students remember. Our Goal- more of these invaluable opportunities for the kids! Check it out in action!
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Sure, our kids created comics using Google Draw and Google Slides, but we were lacking a true to form, free, and save-able comic creator.
STORYBOARD THAT to the rescue. Our district purchased a license to the program and boy, are we loving it! Students and teachers have really taken a liking to the endless possibilities within the platform. The built in library is super extensive and the ability to manipulative little details of the comic (character expression, scene colors, and more) make for work that really captures student creativity. It's been a great way for teachers to incorporate formative assessment in a non-traditional manner. Students think outside of the box and have really created some stellar representations of their understanding and learning. want to learn more? See the magic? start here (site includes tutorials, student examples, videos of classroom work, instructional ideas, etc.) check out some of the comics and reflections about the program below!
Our students have become very comfortable with designing slidedecks with lots of text. Well, it could actually be anything- a poster, video, card, brochure, etc- with too much text.
We are trying to veer our students away from including text that could distract the audience from the intended purpose. When watching a video on a historical event, for example, we've had conversations about the viewers not wanting to read large chunks of text. So, if no text... then what? Hopefully, students are gaining experience with expressing ideas in different ways that promote "out of the box" kind of thinking. They've been engaging with Videos, audio recordings, symbols, charts, graphs, and images to represent information. It's been difficult for the kids to share their ideas in a new way. However, we all understand the power of such a skill. Infographics, videos, and other forms of media in today's world really capture the essence of less text! In this case, the phrase, "Less IS MORE" really does hold true. Furthermore, synthesizing information into concise and clear ideas also proves to be an important academic and life skill. Check out the portfolio slides with LESS TEXT! 5th Grade infographics to come.... The ability to access virtual manipulatives is a necessity in the classroom for our kids. One of the biggest benefits of each student having their own device is the fact that the kids could just open a new tab when working and access the resources needed to set themselves up for success. However, On our chromebooks, the math virtual manipulative sites/resources are limited.
So... we've created many templates on Google Drive. Google Drawings and Google Presentations provide a great "canvas" of sorts for kids to work with as they learn. Students could turn in their work for teachers to be able to view and understand their thinking. Here's Just a few templates: Fraction Bars Base Ten Blocks Ten Frame MAT Glencoe Manipulatives is a site worth going to. We've had a lot of success with this one. However, I just came across this new one: Math Learning Center Apps. Our mathematicians may engage with these sites just for the sake of additional support. However, we often hold our students accountable and do so through having them take a screenshot or even screencast over their work. They may share with their teachers & peers, reflect upon their thinking and more... the sky is the limit! All students continued working on their digital portfolios for the month of October. Teachers gave students the choice of which piece to include. In addition, students had design rights to their slide. However, the main focus this time around, was the creating of an audio reflection.
We used the program, Soundtrap, to record our reflections. Students used brand new microphones to help with sound quality. It was a great opportunity for the students to express themselves in a different way. Just talking through their thinking is an important skill. Moreover, the using of a new tool will only open up more experiences for their future work. Perhaps a student may choose to create a podcast for another instructional project, now that they're familiar with the program. Perhaps the classroom teacher would recommend that specific or all students use Soundtrap to capture their thinking. The possibilities are endless! Our hope remains to empower students to use tools that are meaningful to their purpose and that they identify with. So often our go to is text. We constantly have our kids engaging with text. Don't get me wrong, evaluating and working with text is very important. It's a necessary skill for our students. However, especially in today's world, analyzing media is just as significant! I have to remind myself to give both my teachers and students many opportunities to interact with media. Yes, questioning, evaluating, reflecting... you name it.
Technology has afforded us with so many resources that we must take advantage of. check out some of my favorite sites as powerful media sources to have your students dive into:
After all, "A Picture is worth 1,000 words." Videos too! What are your favorite sites housing great media sources to help skyrocket student learning? Ever since I presented at a conference two years ago with a student, I have yet to do another presentation without one. The student perspective is the most valuable piece of our work. We want to hear from them, understand their thinking, and get inside their heads so that we can make learning exciting, applicable and authentic! Earlier this week, along with the differentiation specialist (shout out to Mrs. Gruzynski) and a 5th grade student, I presented at the Illinois Council of Instructional Coaching Conference in Naperville. our session title was "Color outside the Lines with the 4Cs." In a world where the jobs our students will have do not yet exist, it's even more important to help foster skills such as the 4Cs for all students. Here's the perspective our our young and wise 5th grade friend on each of the 4Cs. Pretty cool! COLLABORATION COMMUNICATION & CREATIVITY CRITICAL THINKING
Walking around, looking at the Chromebook screens of our fourth graders gave me goosebumps! The students were working on displaying their understanding of the events leading up to the American Revolution.
In a traditional setting, teachers may have administered a quiz or required students to write a paragraph about their understanding. However, in the this classroom, the teacher had the kids creating a comic illustration to share their knowledge, using our district's newly purchased subscription to Storyboard that. Kudos to the teacher for the great idea! WOW! The tool's library within the platform gave our students full creativity reign to synthesize information, design, and map out their thinking. Even though the basic events were the same leading up to the war, each student's interpretation and visual was unique. Furthermore, the kids LOVED this formative assessment activity. MUAHAHAHA... the best is when the students don't even realize the level of assessment that's occurring because they are so wrapped up in awesome creation. Check out a few of them below... got goosebumps?
It remains the little things in life that make us smile, right? Something as simple as changing the canvas or page size (in Google drawings or google slides) can do just that!
We are not as limited as we may think when using these creative tools! Our 5th graders are designing advertisements right now and we stretched the canvas to be landscape and much larger. We are even able to print them on legal sized paper to then hang in our hallways. Our 4th graders created ebooks, but the generic default slide size doesn't lend itself nicely to the visual appearance of a book. There's the ability to change the size of the slide/page to fit the purpose! Check out the tutorial video below created by a student expert in addition to examples of student work- and smile! When we first hear the words technology and distraction together, we tend to immediately think of video games, cell phones, etc. as a distractions from the important things in our everyday lives. While this may be true, i'd like to touch upon a different kind of technology distraction- one from an instructional lens.
We must always, always, ALWAYS bring ourselves back to the goal of our lesson! take this first grade example- teachers wanted a formative read on where students were with adjectives, or describing words. So, students were given a bunch of images to choose from and then had to label the different objects in the image using hotspots through the technology program called thinglink. NOTHING against thinglink (I love using it with the older grades and have found a lot of success with it), but the signing in process, downloading & uploading the image, creating the hotspots and saving/sharing the images totally took over the lesson. no longer was the focus on adjectives, it was more about struggling through the different parts of the tech tool for the students. After some reflection, we decided perhaps this savvy and cool looking tech tool was more of a distraction than anything else. if the goal was to get a feel for student knowledge of adjectives, was there another more effective avenue for us to assess this? The answer was yes! Instead of using Thinglink, we created a template on Google Draw (our students are very familiar with the Gsuite apps). Students still were able to choose a picture and then could drag and drop the appropriate adjectives onto the objects in their pictures in addition to create some of their own describing words. This was much more efficient, effective, and the goal was met :) Flexibility and reflection are key. After all, the glitz and glamour of new tech tools can sometimes end up taking away from our purpose! Portfolio Night is in May and even though it's only October, all duJardin Students (Grades k-5) are rockin' and rollin' with their digital portfolios. The philosophy is that the portfolios are collections of both work and reflections throughout the year. each month, students will add to their masterpieces and have incredible portfolios by the end of the year! get excited :)
Each student's portfolio should be unique and represent him or her. After all, the most important element of the portfolios is student choice. students have the ability to choose which pieces they include. As they insert their work, they are acquiring new grade level appropriate, advanced tech skills that they can then apply throughout their year (in other presentations, etc). But beyond the work choices, Kids have the full reign to design the way the appearance will be. ultimately, they take complete ownership of their portfolios! We are really looking forward to sharing the portfolios with our families! Here's just a taste... Watch the video below to hear from our first grade guest blogger about the Stellaluna Sequencing activity that he completed in class today.
After opening the assignment through google classroom, students used the arrow keys on google slides to drag and drop the images from their reading story into the correct order. Students discussed as they manipulated the pictures :) Each group had a differentiated activity for their skill level. after sequencing, students practiced their transfer and typing skills.
We've started the year off with a bang! all of our students are eager to learn and grow! With smiles on their faces, they received their new account passwords and for some, new devices too.
You see, Chromebooks are a tool for learning here at DuJardin School and in District 13. We liken the device to a pencil. It is not the sole way to learn, but a tool that unlocks many new opportunities to enhance knowledge. Because technology is such an important piece of instruction, the beginning of the year is the perfect time to review digital citizenship with our students. During our building handbook talks, we review the following points with students:
Teachers embed these digital citizenship pieces in throughout the entire year. However, If we can hammer these points home now, our students will hopefully be set up for future success-- always our goal :) Wow! The year totally flew by! It was a great one... filled with innovation and smiles- more than we could have even imagined! While many districts get ready to collect their devices, here, at d13, we do something a little different.
Our students are allowed to take their Chromebooks home. Why? Well, our philosophy is that learning should never stop. We've equipped the kids with so many learning tools throughout the year. They then have the opportunity to play learning games, read texts from our digital platforms and more. While this opportunity is AWESOME, it's important to note some of the other pieces of information we share with our students:
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Author(s)Jennifer Eggert Archives
August 2019
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