Keeping it Real or Going Digital

There is something to be said about picking up a book and reading it. I love the smell, the feel, and being able to close it and say “done.” However, I also love my Kindle, Nook, and other online reading apps. There is something to be said about the convenience of picking up my phone, clicking on an app and reading for pleasure or work when it is digital.  When reading for pleasure I am reading for fun, enjoyment, and just for me. When students are reading for fun they are reading not for understanding just for the true pleasure of reading. How do we get students to move from a book in their hands to online reading for comprehension?

It is hard for students to read online for comprehension. Michelle Eaton hit the nail on the head when she said that students and adults are skimming the content and not actually reading  for understanding. For my guided reading groups, I have taken pictures or scanned  the books so as to have those books online for the students. This has helped so that I do not have to quarantine my guided reading books. This has made my students become better online readers for online books (but still in a book print).  Many of my students do love a book to have in their hand. Prior to us starting guided reading, I taught my students how to read online books or online articles.  I have found  that showing them  how to read in a digital world has made my students become better readers when asked to read online. 

Many students today are  reading more Graphic novels than ever before.  I believe that they enjoy the look of each picture rather than just black and white print. This can transfer over to items that need to be read in a digital setting. Eaton continues to say that we can create documents with pictures, we can change the color of the font and we can change how a document looks to help children become better readers in a digital format. I know that we do this for students when we want something of importance to be recognized. We might change the font of the color we build it, we might hyperlink it so that the students know that this is important.  

When things are important, we want to make sure that students are able to understand and apply the skill they are being taught. The best way to do this is by chunking information according to Michelle Eaton. When we chunk information, students have a better understanding as opposed to giving a lot of information at one time.  As adults, we break things into chunks and maybe categorize so that we can remember things easily. This can be applied to the online/hybrid model. I know teachers who use podcasts to help students learn about social studies. She uses the term “walking classroom”, this allows students to listen and walk outside while learning. When the students return from their walk and learn they reflect on what was listened to by using a 321 reflection activity. Sometimes they use a sketch to get their point across and or summarise. This can also take place at home for the online learner and will get students away from looking at screens. 

All of these ideas are great and I honestly can’t wait to try some of them, but I feel  like the best way to win the kids over is by being human and showing that we can have fun! Every morning I start off our morning with a joke of the day and then my students also come in sharing their jokes that they found over the weekend and so now we have a joke Monday and a joke Friday. My students also appreciate when I have crazy hair day and they can see that their teachers are having just as much fun as they are.   

Another way we have fun in the morning is by using my bitmoji classroom.  This adds a personal touch to the virtual classroom. I have had my students create their own bitmoji and it was a great experience for the shy student to really open their minds  as well as their interest. 

In summary, teachers are working hard to make learning fun in an unfun world right now. We are using digital tools, books, and people to keep learning alive in every sense of the word, ALIVE. Keeping the students wanting to learn and showing them how to learn through a computer and not hands on is the hardest part of teaching in the virtual world. 

This post summarizes Chapter 6 and 9 taken from The Perfect Blend: A Practical Guide to Designing Student-Centered Learning Experience By: Michele Eaton

Reaching Every Child

Teaching is not a one-size fits all approach. Teaching has many moving factors to produce the correct product for the student. In the beginning of every school year, I give my students a survey that allows me to teach them in the best way possible. This gives me a way to reach every student and gives me some creativity within my lesson. If a student does best as a visual learner, audioty, kinesthetic, or tactile I try to incorporate these in my weekly lessons. This worked best for when students were in the classroom full time. However with the 2020 school year, we have had to address how to adapt lessons to not only teach children in the classroom but also online. Are we able to teach all learning styles and address anyone who might need extra support.

This skill set happens to be my speciality. When I was growing up, I really struggled in reading and math. I wouldn’t say it was a learning disability, but more of a I was out of school more than I was in school. Thus causing me to really struggle with learning how to read. I needed a teacher to recognize that I just needed extra support to be able to understand the concepts. At that time it was extra time on a test, reading the test to me, and giving me the  notes that I so needed because I couldn’t keep up with the lesson. I hope that I am that teacher today for the children who just need a little extra when it comes to school. 

Students today are learning in two settings. One at home (full time or part time) and the other at school, this makes menu and choice boards a joy to work with for all types of learning. This allows the students to learn the skill then they are able to choose how to show they understand the concept. This choice  for any topic ranges from creating a video, doing a google slide, making a clip on an iPad, writing it down, or drawing it out.  This allows some freedoms for students who are not comfortable with always writing out a story or taking a test. This is not to say that there are times when we have a choice. 

Another way to help students when giving instruction is by having a virtual board ready for them. I just learned about this this morning, and I am looking forward to trying in my classroom. Jamboad will allow teachers to have slides for each child during a lesson or to collaborate in small groups online in the classroom. For students that need the extra support you could add more to their slide. This will cut down on frustration and assist with less questions and more independent learning. 

Today, my students are using items like Quizzes to help reinforce the concepts because Kahoot is too much with it being timed. Quizzes lets the learner go at their own pace. This also helps me to see what items they are not understanding. I can use this as a mid lesson check or an end of lesson check. There are other ways to get around a formative assessment to help students. One way I found it that I am able to record the test with Quick time and have the questions read to the students. This helps all students when taking a test online. 

I believe that it is really important to teach our students in a variety of ways. I also think it is important to accept that when assessing students that we need not just one way for our students to show us what they learned. 

A Must Read

The book that I read for this course was #Formative Tech. This became my teacher’s best friend this semester. I wish I had this book in the fall when we started hybrid/virtual learning. My biggest takeaway is something that Monia Burns states consistently throughout the book. “Meaningful, sustainable and scalable”, what does this actually mean?  

Meaningful– Make meaningful choices about technology integration. How will it work for you as a teacher and for your delivery of instruction? Make it work for you in your classroom and your students. Creating ways to collect data, to make this streamline. 

Sustainable– Successful classrooms are built on solid routines. When setting and delivering routines,  make sure that instruction is purposeful and will challenge your students. 

Scalable– Build your PLN. This is the best way to stay on top for your game for your students.   Teachers for years have closed their door and taught one way for all. In today’s world, we have access to millions of educators and that means millions of idas that you can use today. Connecting with your students is the best way to make the learning last. 

I would say my biggest takeaway was using Google Form to check in with students or as an exit ticket, or to track data. There are so many ways to use this, I didn’t know where to start. I started with my exit tickets and how to collect data better. 

I would recommend this book to any new teacher or anyone who is ready to try new ideas. As a side note, I love that there are QR codes throughout the book for you to scan and use for extra resources. 

References

#FormativeTech Meaningful, Sustainable and Scalable Formative Assessment With Technology By Monica Burns

I.C. The online teacher knows the primary concepts and structures of effective online instruction and is able to create learning experiences to enable student success (iNACOL Standard A)

II.C. The online teacher is cognizant of the diversity of student academic needs and incorporates accommodations into the online learning environment (iNACOL Standard F)

III.B. The online teacher develops and delivers assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards-based learning goals and assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement of the learning goals (iNACOL Standard H)

Unresolved Questions

During our conversation on Sunday it was interesting to hear some validation and we all still had some lingering questions. We started with two of the inquiry questions we each had, then followed that with conversation in general about school and our questions. We picked two that were important to us and educators. I think that many of these questions will remain for us and there may not be a clear cut answer. 

These questions are unresolved for us.  We have observations, but many ongoing concerns that we do not feel can be addressed by just one instructor or district.

• How do teachers/instructors make accommodations in the online learning environment to meet the varied needs of learners, from ESL to mental health needs to learning support?
  • Testing – offer to read to students in break out rooms
  • Move to PBL to eliminate academic integrity issues and accommodations
  • Student discomfort with projects.  Want right/wrong activities.
  • Are we preparing our students to learn how to learn?  Independence!
  • Communication, problem solving, ethical evaluations.  These are not soft skills.
  • Zoom has given us ease of access to students and parents.  And, we should maintain that access.
• What is our role in cyberbullying when it carries over in the school environment?
  • First, what is the role of the social media outlets to ensure that users are the appropriate age.  Merely stating an age in the user agreement is not adequate.
    • Throws them into an unsupervised adult world
    • No adult only spaces.
    • Spaces require judgment for people at an age when they do not developmentally possess the judgment skills
    • Our students do not have a sense of permanency
    • Our students have their own code and language that we do not understand in the cyber environment.
    • Their sense of privacy is very different.  Once published the right has disappeared.
    • Acting in the moment with emotion

Communication is Key

As a teacher, I give my parents a  “Peek at the Week” to let them know the skills we are working on as well as any special events that might be happening within the classroom. I add in the spelling list for the week. When we might have test  and student birthdays! I ensure that my families read this by adding a line at the end of the email for students to come in on a Monday and tell me a keyword in order to get a piece of candy or SOAR ticket (SWPBS reward). This makes my families more involved because I will also send out a Seesaw message that I sent an email. My students are super excited to see me on Monday to tell me the secret word! 

Communication is such a key component to any teacher. I love being able to share the good and sometimes the bad with families. The bad is usually behavioral however it can also mean not making gains like I would expect them too. Having data to back up your conversation is such a key component to having the tough conversations. It is easy to tell families that their child is doing great and here is the data to prove it. However, I always feel terrible when I have to inform families that I am concerned about a certain skill or developmental level for a child. However these conversations are much easier when I am able to graph, collect and analyze data that will support my reasons for stating the facts. I know that sometimes, when teachers talk it is like an eye chart, we might need a  504 or an IEP, did you sign a NOREP? This being said, showing a graph that is not growing or a number that is dipping and not increasing are all items we can show to help understanding. 

The district that I teach in uses Seesaw as a school wide communication tool. All elementary buildings are using Seesaw. I enjoyed looking through 9 ways to Improve Parent-Teacher communication and was excited to see that many of the items on here were being done by myself and our school. 

It is also important to report back to parents how they are doing on a general level, not just benchmarking. I am a firm believer that my families are part of my team and together we can help the students as best we can. If a child scores a 2 or below on a test/project (60 or below), I am messaging parents to see if we need to review the skills. I would send extra items home or a chance for me to retreach the skill and then try again. This has really helped my students feel secure when asking for help. 

In conclusion, I sometimes feel like maybe I am communicating too much but I would rather have too much than not enough!

References

#FormativeTech Meaningful, Sustainable and Scalable Formative Assessment With Technology By Monica Burns

9 ways to Improve Parent-Teacher communication

C.The online teacher demonstrates competency in using data from assessments and other data sources to modify content and to guide student learning (iNACOL Standard I)

The Digital Footprint

Everyday we are tracked through our searches, through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even my Amazon account. Everything that is done online is being monitored. Thinking about this in the digital age that we are in and teaching online/blended learning, what do distrits need to do to help guide teachers and students in the online environment? 

Many would say that districts should have strict guidelines that outline what is acceptable and what is not. Currently, the 5th grades in my building are finding themselves in trouble for bullying other students through the use of social media. I think that this becomes a gray area because it was after school. The problem is that they students used their school issued device.This reason alone allows the district to handle the actions of the students as well as the consequences with having policies that are outlined for parents/students/teachers. 

Some components are items that are outlined in the policy  that was developed would be items such as inappropriate matter, bully/cyberbully, gambeling, participation in groups that are  inappropriate materials, unauthorized chats, illegal activity, and the list continues for about 10 more items. These are all outlined in a ten page document for each parent/students/teacher to sign at the beginning of each school year. Acceptable use policy.

While looking through this policy, I have not seen anything about social media policies and guidelines. This has really been an issue within the last few years. So many students have social media accounts. Each district really needs to have set in stone guidelines for what is acceptable versus what is not. This can all be signed on the first day of school and I would review it one time a quarter for students. I do believe that there might be gray areas but documents should be able to have some form of outline for an action equals consequence. 

 Being around college coaches at tournaments, one of the many items colleges look at is a potential students social media account. I continue to tell students, “What may seem like a good idea today, coud hurt you in the future.” The one item we read about stated that you can never take it back once it is on the internet. I preach this to my children and my students. You want to make yourself a positive brand on any social media. Think before you type!

References

Acceptable use policy

Data, Data, Data

How many of us are having PLC meetings? DAT meeting? I know many of you are raising your hand as well as maybe an eye roll because, yes one more meeting! However, I think that if we can go in to our meeting and really look and analyze data, as educators we are able to see patterns across the grade level and specific areas in our teaching.

This year has been an eye opener for us as teachers since many of our students missed a whole spring semester of live instruction. I have noticed that many of the skills that are taught from March-June are skills many of the students are either missing the skill completely or are falling below grade level. This is where teachers are looking to data to help drive instruction. Data Driven Instruction blog helps support this idea such like Burnes in #FormativeTech. Burnes continues to encourage teachers to look at the raw data and analyze the data. What do you see as a pattern? How can you address the gaps in their learning? 

In the last PLC meeting that I attended, we decided that adding specialists to our list of people to help with the gaps in our students’ learning would be helpful. As a group we noticed that geometry was a gap in the students learning. We asked our Health and PE teacher to see if she could help. She created a brain break for us to use in the classroom to help fill in the gap of learning. My students love this and enjoy seeing if they are correct.

 Check out this awesome break break!Mrs. Decker’s Geometry Exercise Part 1

References:

#FormativeTech Meaningful, Sustainable and Scalable Formative Assessment With Technology By Monica Burns

Data Driven Instruction

III.B. The online teacher develops and delivers assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards-based learning goals and assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement of the learning goals (iNACOL Standard H)

The online teacher demonstrates competency in using data from assessments and other data sources to modify content and to guide student learning (iNACOL Standard I)

FERPA

Privacy is really hard to obtain in this day and age. I am sure that there are more people who have some type of social media account versus people who do not have social media.  This can even be said for our students. However, our students’ privacy in education, especially online is something that educators have to understand to the fullest. 

As March 2020 hit and our world took a drastic pause, educators around the globe realized that we need to adjust the privacy plans for our students with going to an all online format. In April of 2020, EPSD put in place a plan that covered FERPA, EPSD PLAN. This outlined expectations for each party participating in online learning. It outlined teacher/parent/student expectations. As a district, we needed to make sure our students were safe in the online classroom. Zoom Guidelines for FERPA were also considered and to ensure the safety of our students. As a classroom teacher and a union officer, I was fielding questions about this non stop in the spring and fall this year. How do we know we are only teaching to the students that are in the classroom? As I was teaching virtually in December, I could hear 5th grade teachers in my building in the next room with other students. That proved to be very distracting and knowing that I was able to hear names being called was something we discussed in depth at faculty meetings. As an elementary school, we requested that students wear headphones while at home to help ensure some teacher/students privacy. 

I often wonder why someone would want access to student’s information. However, I recognize that it would never be for the good. I think districts across the country have really done a great job with protecting the privacy of their students. My students on zoom only have their first name and last initial. While reading through the multiple documents, I realized that many teachers are probably in violation of FERPA with having names/numbers on items outside of the classroom. I don’t think we ever really thought about FERPA just wanting to display our great work, but my iReady skill board needed to be adjusted to not show names of students and their progress.

References:

EPSD PLAN

Zoom Guidelines

Are We Really Future Ready?

What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you think that profession will be around when you are ready for a job? Are you creative? Are you inventive? Do you think you will be able to create your own job? We need the educational community to get our students ready for the future ready skills. WHat does that look like for teachers, principles, admisiation? Teaching students to be problem solvers  and outward thinkers is what they will need from us as teachers. Check out this video to see how we can change the future for our students.

Paper Slide

Paper Slide

Who likes stepping out of their comfort zone? You guessed it…no one. However as teachers we often ask kids to try something new and don’t think twice about asking. This was my first time creating a paper slide and I had fun creating it. I think kids will like it especially the ones who enjoy art, drawing and creating. I will give this a try this week for our science lesson and see if the kids enjoy something different. I did have a hard time not rerecording and just going with the flow, but I think it turned out ok. 

The Paper Slide that I created is all about assessments, feedback, and academic honesty. I love giving students new ways to check for understanding. However, I do realize that some items will always need to remain. My biggest take away for this was the academic honesty section. I never really thought about asking if someone knows the answer to a question. As I look back, I realize the reason we asked was to make sure someone knew we did well. The one part that I let out but wanted to touch upon was to grade effort over just smarts. If we can grade kids on how they tried and maybe didn’t get it but tried again or asked for help, stayed after to work, there is effort put in there and often that is overlooked when giving assignments and tests.

“Great Work” Won’t Work

I know we have all been in this situation, you are at the front of the class giving a brief mini lesson and you are excited about the lesson. The result is that the kids are excited about the lesson and the chatter of your students is louder than you want while you are giving instruction….you wait and wait until you actually hear what they are talking about…every teacher’s fantasy…the lesson!!!! How do we foster this great love of and guide our independent learners?

In reading through #FormativeTech by Moica Burns, she covers some many great ideas to help guide our students down the right path. She suggested, I Do, We Do, You Do as well to help release some independence within the classroom and model the expectations for your students. Another way would be to have mid-lesson checks and reflections. These check in can be anything from a quick sentence, a drawing, or putting your thinking/thoughts on a sticky note in padlet. With this thinking, the question arises, do teachers have to provide feedback for everything. I think that if teachers did, we would be forever making comments about student work. How to provide feedback will be up to the teacher however all feedback should be meaningful to the student. I enjoy commenting on the Seesaw activities that I assign because students are able to see what I am writing in real time and they are then able to correct it.  

Feedback can be a number of items. It doesn’t matter how you give feedback to students as long as you make it meaningful to them. Can we give the feedback such as “Great Work” the answer is yes, as long as you follow it up with what was so great about the world, what did you like that make it great! I think that this is where  the human interaction of F2F school really comes into play. It is easy to give feedback and tell a student what they are doing well on and what needs to be worked on in any subject area. The meaningful part is the game changer. When giving my students feedback, I always start with the positive and then follow up with constructive feedback and how we can make it better! Another way would be to have a rubric that would measure where the students strengths and weaknesses are located in each section of the rubric. 

A new piece of technology that Burns mentions, that I was unfamiliar with and look forward to giving it a go is  Backchannel Chat. It is similar to Twitter. It has discussion threads that are real time. I could see upper elementary students utilizing this as well as middle and high school students. This allows teachers to check in and see what is being missing and understood by the lessons. This allows for all students to participate in classroom discussions not just the few who raise their hands. I have yet to try this but I think this would be a great way to have open conversations during the course of a lesson. Students could ask questions and I could or students could answer.This would allow students to show what they know and what they are missing.

References

#FormativeTech Meaningful, Sustainable and Scalable Formative Assessment With Technology By Monica Burns

Backchannel Chat

I.C. The online teacher knows the primary concepts and structures of effective online instruction and is able to create learning experiences to enable student success (iNACOL Standard A)

III.B. The online teacher develops and delivers assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards-based learning goals and assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement of the learning goals (iNACOL Standard H)

The Flipped Lesson

Teachers this year and the end of last school year learned very quickly how to reinvent the wheel of teaching. We made video lessons, some bad, some good, but all delivered not in person. When we are creating a video lesson or a flipped lesson we need to take into account our audience. I wish I would have known about the Ted-Ed at the beginning of this school year. Many of the flipped lessons are embedded with “stop this video and.…” Then at the end of the video lesson the students would have an independent activity to complete. They would then post the work to seesaw. There would be students that I would continue to ask to complete the lesson, but that required me to really look through each student’s journal on Seesaw. 

While creating the lesson on Ted-Ed, I realized that this is a better way to create a flipped lesson. I could use my own youtube videos or I can search the TedEd website for the video that would work for my needs. I found it very easy to upload and create my questions. I was able to add in supplemental video in the digging deepers section to help my students better understand the skills. I can’t stress that this was the easiest experience for any teacher. Just follow the directions. I can’t wait to try this with my students next week during math stations. I am anxious to see the results of my students. 

I will be using this for all upcoming review lessons that I can have the student complete during stations.

Flipped Lesson https://ed.ted.com/on/w7C0PMtH