Background:
This month's portfolio work looked a little bit different than that of the previous months. Instead of just a personal reflection, peer feedback was given. Each student was able to choose the piece to include for March. They were able to link in that work to their own Padlet Wall. Then, they wrote a short personal reflection. The main focus was on giving peer feedback to their classmates. Students were able to navigate to the Padlet's of their friends and then "SAY SOMETHING NICE & GIVE SOME ADVICE." We talked about how feedback is two-fold, containing both a compliment and then some wisdom for growth. The entire Padlet wall (with their work, reflection, and peer feedback comments) was then linked into their portfolios. Eggert's Reflection: Our kids were familiar with the tool Padlet as a student posting participant, but they really enjoyed creating their own canvas walls. They loved choosing the background and engaged with many different tech skills (copying and pasting links, screenshotting, reformatting the design of their slide & more). Giving peer feedback is a critical life skill and one that our kids need continuous practice with. The idea of "Say Something Nice, Give Some Advice" seemed to be a nice framework for students to communicate in a structured way.
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The loss of control may have a negative connotation, but what I share with you today completely changes the overall idea of this notion.
Student Led Classrooms are all the rage. In order for true empowerment, ownership, and authentic learning, our kids need to be in the driver's seat. KEEP IN MIND.... THIS IS NOT EASY! Think about the way classrooms have BEEN and are currently portrayed. The "go-to" Image/idea is teacher in front of the classroom with students listening, applying, etc. There is indeed a time and place for this. I will say, that many of our teachers are beyond this- kudos to them. It is not uncommon here for someone to walk in the room and students to be about the room, working independently or collaboratively with the teacher as the "guide on the side" or as more of a facilitator. However, I have to brag about the courage of our 5th Grade students and our 5th Grade teachers. Instead of the teachers leading the math lesson on surface area, three fifth graders were given the opportunity to build and then implement the lesson for their peers. We're talking write a lesson plan, make copies of practice, teach the content, answer questions, and overall, were in complete control of the lesson. What a powerful learning experience for not only these kids, but for their peers as well! It takes a huge willingness to give up control on the teacher's part here to put it in the hands of students. And... right before the high stakes PARCC testing? This is true understanding of the gravity of student led instruction. The more our students are empowered, the more their learning skyrockets. After all... "our job isn't to prepare our students for something. Our Job is to prepare them for ANYTHING." The sky is the limit! #LOSECONTROL! Our First Graders created Math Screencasts anchored around the standard of Expanded Form. They used a virtual Manipulative Site (Shout out To the Math Learning Center) to physically show their thinking as they explained the mathematical genius inside their brains. Talking through the problem helped the kids think on a deeper level. In a sense, they were to "teach" someone else how to break down a number using expanded form. This is a bit of an uncomfortable experience for the kids at first as talking out loud and being so explicit with thinking can be nontraditional. However, nontraditional and uncomfortable = growth! What a great and unique formative assessment! After our first screencasts, students listened to their own and reflected on their work. Together, a student sample was shared and discussed. The students picked apart all of the little elements in the model screencast and talked about why the shared screencast was an effective showing of understanding (using the word because, no dead space, including math language, short and concise explanations, narrating every action, etc). Then, the students had another opportunity to create a screencast. Their second one was miles better. Perhaps the most valuable piece was then putting them side by side in their digital portfolios and recording the growth that occurred. This powerful task involved deep reflection and critical evaluation on the part of each first grader. They were super excited to share their pride and how much they had improved from their first video. Want more information or details? Just ask! PS- See a previous blog post on Virtual manipulatives. For our February Portfolios, students created webcam videos for their reflections. It's great experience for the students to talk on the spot about their work in a raw kind of way. We talk about the need for the videos to be imperfect and the purpose of reflection.
As the students reflected, they were given sentence stems to help guide their thinking. The one prompt that really seemed to stump students was: I've learned _____________ about myself as a learner. This is telling as it will help me focus and guide student reflection in the future. Students have no problem relaying why they are or are not proud of their work or if they gave their best effort, but when it comes to thinking about themselves as learners, the alarm bells go off. Any suggestions on how to help students foster this kind of reflective mindset as learners? Our Kindys needed some more experience with digital manipulatives and with the math standard of measurement. So, why not combine them together for a powerful lesson?
While both elements- dragging and dropping (now without the arrow keys- using the trackpad) and measuring- were vital in the lesson, the heart was actually the discussion as the kiddos worked. Students ended up using the measuring cubes and overlapped them, didn't use them sequentially, and these "mistakes" made for super powerful discussion. The Kindergarteners had to defend their choices and make sense of what is indeed the correct way to measure. This gave us a really nice read on student understanding, but it was a stellar learning experience for everyone! Here's The measurement Template! It only seemed appropriate to share a little activity that our first graders are currently working on... of course, related to valentine's day!
There's a lot of talk regarding the SAMR model and authentic technology use. Here at DJ, we really pride ourselves on meaningful integration and not just replacing paper-pencil tasks with technology based ones. At first thought, creating a digital valentine's Day card (to then be printed out and sent home) seems like substitution. However, there are so many embedded tech skills that this lesson turned out to be one of the best. Here's how it looked:
Check out how AWESOME they turned out! What could have been a just "fun" activity for the sake of using technology turned into a powerful collection of skills that our First Graders got to practice! YAY! Reflection, for both students and adults alike, is an important key to growth. Careful thought and consideration helps us to move forward in directions that set us up to meet our goals and find success.
Many of my blog posts have been about Digital Portfolios. These provide authentic opportunities for our students to reflect upon their work (in different digital ways) throughout the school year. We wanted to take these reflections to a new level and also address DuJardin's School Improvement Goal of fostering a Growth Mindset for our students. I came across this FANTASTIC article with some really powerful reflection questions to pose for our students. In my opinion, these push our kids beyond the traditional "I'm Proud of my work because..." kinds of prompts. They elicit honest feedback and critical thinking! My personal favorites are...
These have proved to be really thought provoking and meaningful with students in all grade levels! Check the Inspiration HERE! Many lessons involving technology are awesome, but today, I facilitated one that was not so great. One thing after another seemed to go wrong. I am totally taking responsibility for this, but more than anything,I really see it as a learning experience. Our first graders were to create mathematical screencasts to explain their thinking. Lofty task? YOU BET! However, I know that it was possible and could be achieved. The Google Draw Manipulative template was a great idea in theory, but the base ten blocks didn't quite "group together" as needed in order to move a group of "tens." Instead, as they moved, the individual blocks were all over the place. Chaos ensued. The classroom teacher was super flexible and we made the best of the situation. Moving forward, I now know that Google Draw wasn't/isn't the best platform for the task at hand. With Screencasting, the nice thing is that you can "Screencast" over ANYTHING! The kids will use the NUMBER PIECES manipulatives from the Math Learning Center next time. They're pregrouped and can also use the pen tool to write a math equation on the whiteboard. IT CAN ONLY GET BETTER FROM HERE!
CHECK OUT THE IMAGES BELOW- WHAT NOT TO DO AND WHAT TO TOTALLY DO! These websites are TREASURED GOLD! ENJOY :) 1. What's Going on In This PIcture? The New York Times takes powerful pictures and removes their captions. What a great invitation for students to critically think and communicate! 2. National Geographic photo of the day
Pictures are worth 1,000 words! Consider having students generate questions around these first class images! Live and learn, right? Last year, we began GEnius Hour with our Fifth Graders. It was a great experience and we were so glad we tested it out, but there were definitely some big takeaways (Based on both teacher evaluation and student feedback) that we could hold onto and change for the following year.
Fast forward one year. We are ready for GEnius Hour, round two now. some of the tweaks and changes we made to improve the project include:
Stay tuned for updates...They're coming your way :) Many people inquire about how we teach Digital Citizenship to our students. Of course, there's a time and a place for some explicit instruction on the very important topic. However, I've come to realize that the best bang for our buck comes when it's seamlessly embedded into the other instructional work that the kids are doing.
A recent lesson reminded me of the power of authentically teaching Digital Citizenship to our kids. Students were annotating math work in order to reflect on their problem solving skills. Labeling their work involved inserting images, symbols and text bubbles (see the previous post titled "December Portfolios- Analyzing Math" to learn more). The 4th and 5th graders were introduced to the AMAZING resource, The Noun Project, to find and download symbols from a library. If you haven't checked it out- you must! In order to do so, they had to create an account. Therefore, We were able to talk about:
All of these pieces totally fit with what we were doing but also definitely resonated with our students. If we can teach them early about safe internet behaviors and such, it could make a big difference for them as they grow older and engage in the scary world wide web. Embedding Digital CitizenshiP into our daily teaching and the daily learning for students is the way to go!
Khan Academy is such a great resource for our students. It's an often occurrence to see students watching their tutorial videos for instructional help.
We decided to have our students try to create "khan style" tutorial videos to show their understanding of math concepts. Students used the video editor, WeVideo (one of our favorite tools) to screencast their thinking over the AWwApp Digital Whiteboard (also one of our favorite tools). They talked and explained as mathematicians as they drew their work. Once completed, students published their videos and inserted them in a shared slidedeck. They watched each other's videos and gave feedback to their peers. The students definitely took this new experience by the horns and rocked it! They always rise to the given challenge and push themselves to reach new heights! Talk about growth mindset :) Want to learn more about screencasting in weVideo? Just a quick thought on student exemplars/MODELS! More recently than ever, I've found the immense value in providing student exemplars for our students as they work.
Not only do they keep students on track, but the expectations are visually clear for everyone. When students can actually see what the goal is, they find more success along the way. Now, there are a few things to note with this realization...
When working on our digital portfolios, student and teacher chosen pieces tend to be ELA related, even science and social studies get some attention too. However, Math is the content area that isn't necessarily the "GO-TO" in this situation.
Therefore, our December focus was exactly that- math! Students took some of their math work (whether it was digital or written on paper) and had the opportunity to reflect and analyze through the use of annotations! YAY for more awesome tech skill integration! Students interacted with shapes, symbols, emojis, text boxes, and more to really think deeply about their thinking-- metacognition in action! The kids were given sentence stems for reflecting and then had the autonomy to analyze and annotate to their liking. The younger students copied and pasted symbols and shapes from a bank and the older students were introduced to the NOUN PROJECT. If you haven't checked it out-- it's totally worth a look. I love the way the site embeds copyright for our kids and the library of items to download is AMAZING. Below is the student exemplar! We have high expectations for our students with this portfolio task and are excited to see what they fashion!
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With each first grade lesson, I try to incorporate many "tech-based" skills- everything from right clicking to dragging and dropping. This week's lesson involved one of the math skills and standards that was being addressed in instruction- creating and analyzing graphs. In terms of technology integration, we always begin with the goal in mind, not the tool. Google Docs ended up being a tool that met our purpose here. Nothing super fancy or extra needed. First, we looked a pictograph and engaged in some "math talk" as we analyzed the data. Students activated prior knowledge and warmed up for our activity.
Then, we taught the students how to insert emojis (not as images, but rather as special characters) into their graphs to represent ice cream flavor choices. It was important for them to access the insert menu and then change the keyboard option to be emojis. Afterwards, we taught the kids how to fill boxes/cells of a table to, in essence, make the graph. The kids found great success with clicking in the cell, then finding the paint bucket, but struggled with holding down and dragging to highlight multiple cells. So... needless to say...highlighting in general will be incorporated into the next lesson with these kiddos! Either way, this is a lesson we would totally recommend... full of content and tech skills for our students (and teachers :))! |
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August 2019
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