Ready to learn

This year I am teaching eight graders and is different... 

I have been teaching sixth grade for so long I forgot that I need to work for their trust and appreciation. The students are normal teenagers, just like most, friends are the most important thing, learning comes second to being cool and respect is earned not blindly given to anyone. This has been a great learning experience. Teaching is all about learning, stretching and growing. I love the challenges that life have given me so far and appreciate the opportunity to fail and try again. This year in particular I want to fall and get up quicker than ever. I want to fail and learn faster than ever. This year I want my brain to tickle everyday!! 

How can I get my students to learn? Showing then how learning looks like. The struggle and the satisfaction of learning, they need to see the process and I am willing to model it. I will try new things. I will empower them to find their passion. I will help them focus on getting to a successful place academically and in life. I will guide them to see the world as their canvas and show them that they don’t have to think outside the box because for them THERE IS NO BOX. We worked on building a culture of collaboration and respect, now is time to launch. I am looking forward to incorporate these amazing tools into the classroom and see them strive.

Rational Numbers Done the Vanguard Way!

The Goal: Creating a STUDENT CENTERED classroom from day 1!

            Collaboration began from the first day of school with the cup stack challenge. Reflection also began with the our #MathIs exit ticket. 

           Rational Numbers is a difficult unit for any 7th grader. My first year teaching, with a naive mind I believed my written notes were the most wonderful thing and there was not a chance my students would not succeed... EPIC FAILURE! I laugh at myself now for thinking that was the smart way to go. Now that I know better I knew teacher centered learning was not the way to go. 

        BEGINNING: Students had a pre-quiz so that I could realize what their absolute weakness was. I separated my students by those weaknesses and had them watch a tutorial video that I created on showme.com. Students then created a mini-poster that allowed them to practice solving rational number operations and have a written step by step explanation. 

            REFLECTION FOR THE FUTURE: I will create a menu of options as to how they would like to create their mini-poster (prezi, powerpoint, google doc, powtoon, create a video tutorial themselves, create a mini-poster as I had assigned this school year) to allow their own creativity to shine!!!

         MIDWAY: Now that student had practice with the computational part of rational numbers it was time to move the problem solving part of rational numbers... the scary part! I realized many of my students had a hard time picturing the real world problem which is why they couldn't understand which answer was unreasonable. I assigned students a word problem in which they created an animation for on powtoon.com. How some of my students visualized their word problem:

• https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/b2YaKa5IgTN/?mode=movie#/
• https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/eB7FSm5NnXZ/?mode=movie#/

          REFLECTION FOR THE FUTURE: Allowing my students more time to create their animation as well as giving them an option on how to create it (creating a video representing the word problem, creating their own visual if they prefer drawing).

             ENDING: I included the student made animations as visuals in the students independent practice which I noticed help many of my students when they were trying to problem solve. 

Did I meet my goal on having a student centered classroom for our first unit... I believe so. I hope these student centered ideas can be changed a bit to be used in your own classroom. If you have any other ideas that I could incorporate I would love to hear them!!!

it(sLearning)  Moved My Cheese!! (How I Let Go of My Weebly)

Anyone who knows me knows that I can be a little zealous about things I really believe in - almost to the point of perseveration.  Additionally, anyone who stands within earshot long enough will know that I love me my weebly.  In fact, I (apparently) am was such a fanatic that this devotion was skit worthy - as in my passion about weebly's possibilities in the classroom was featured in a pep rally skit, and the phrase "It's on my weebly" became a catch phrase with my kids.   But this devotion came to an end the day I became a Vanguard fellow.  Yes, I was walking away from a tool that had become central to my classroom - a FREE tool that I even loved so much that I paid for the upgraded membership - so that I could focus my devotion on itsLearning.  I made the commitment to replace my weebly (with three months left on the membership, no less) with the itsLearning platform, fully expecting that "its" would fall far short of all of the capabilities offered by my weebly. 

And...I was wrong.

itsLearning has not only replaced my weebly.  It has surpassed it, proving itself to be a very user friendly platform, in that it meets my "click and find out" rule, which goes something like this.... "I wonder if "its" can fill in the blank with whatever I want it to do.  I'll just click here and see...", and then I just click and follow the logical progression of options.  As of now, I have:

• Embedded a video that explains the difference in collaboration and cheating, so that my kids know what I mean when I say "work together".
• Embedded audio files (made on my iPhone's free voice recorder app) that explain the important points of chapters the kids have to read, as well as my "lectures" (< hate that word) for kids who may be out of class that day
• Created a Discussion Board for book clubs so that ALL 140 of my kids can discuss common texts
• Placed hyperlinks to Amazon books (for those kids who want to own their own books) and free online pdfs of books (for those who don't) that my kids have to read
• Placed a Google form survey for my kids to fill out that indicates which book they want to read for book club
• Placed a Google form survey for kids to share their most troubling grammatical issues (see below for more on what I'm doing with this!).
• Created a folder of handouts that I give the kids for those kids who miss class or misplace the one I give them

And this is just the beginning!  In the near future, kids will be participating in "mini Socratic Seminars" on their book club books, recording those conversations, and uploading those files for their peers to listen to and note additional ideas.  I'm also working on a way for kids to create their own teaching videos on the common grammatical concerns, based upon the google form mentioned above.  These videos will then be uploaded to a "Grammar Page", becoming a resource for kids to turn to when they have those troubling grammar questions. 

So, while I will forever have a soft spot in my heart for weebly, I am now an itsLearning devotee.  Who knows, maybe there will be a skit about it!

One month in..

Trying to manage 3 itslearning classes is A LOT, but students are starting to grow in their knowledge of navigating the system.

Food science is completely online and students are getting better on every lab at working in a group. The first lab report was a mess as many students didn't know how to share a google presentation with each other or how to turn it in with a link. Inserting pictures into the slideshow report caused issues. After the first lab and going through the process, the second lab was a breeze for students. I like having them submit some of their lab reports as a group google slideshow and then presenting the information. I'm able to see what misconceptions all the students have and we can have a conversation after the presentations about what was good and what needs work for their next presentation. Students are also working on their presentation skills.

Pre-AP chemistry and AP chemistry currently just have their agendas on itslearning with links to worksheets, videos and homework.

In pre-AP chemistry, I think I want to do self-paced flipped starting in the next nine weeks. Students will complete the tasks at their own pace (but they will have a date of the test). If they fail a quiz, they will have to come into tutorials during lunch or after school. They will have some options on which labs/activities they want to choose to personalize their learning. If they finish the required material before the test date, they will have three options. 1) They can do the other labs/activities that they didn't choose the first time  2) do peer to peer tutoring to help students that are stuggling on a topic or 3) Take the test early and then work on a project/lab that brings in multiple concepts that we have covered.

In AP chemistry, I plan on using itslearning more to make pre-quizzes and pre-tests that students will take to gauge their learning.

Making the Move into Week 5!

We have hit the first 5 weeks with a great stride. It has taken a little bit of pre-planning and a lot of practice to get kids use to using the devices. I have found that the best way to manage the sharing of devices was to put them in groups. Each student has a a group and an assigned device. In their group, they are able to all have a time to serve as captain of the device (a job that rotates and is very important in the life of a 6 year old!). We have managed to create some wonderful products with the app Chatter Pix and Popplet. As I was worried about loosing some of the other foundation skills for the place of technology, we have been able to integrate writing. Students have to write their thoughts and then use to guide what they say as they produce their learning. I have seen a big increase in their confidence to speak, and share by simply sharing within the app and the product they created. I have always believed, their ability to verbally share their thinking shows their level of understanding. Using the camera and the recording devices has helped me as a teacher assess the level of understanding. In addition, their has been big successes for kids that might struggle in other academic areas. They are able to be successful with the devices and produce, because it is a different way. There is no way that the students can say the first 5 weeks have been boring! Reading, writing, creating, and moving about sum it up!

One month in...

I can't believe its the fourth week of school. Time is flying! We've already begun working on personalizing learning using powermylearning.org. Allowing kids to have some control over their pacing and providing individualized instruction for #everychild to meet their needs has been empowering them. It's been fun to see them engage in the activities and see where they take their learning! 

I've been working with teachers on planning QR activities/Google hangouts, and other digital activities for Teen Read Week in October, and we're really starting to see kids responding well to integrated digital activities after adding a tech apps course on campus!

I walked away from ISTE with a massive list of ideas and possibilities, and as I've talked with others, they had the same reaction. So many ideas, so little time to try things, but I've decided to take small baby steps so it's hopefully not so overwhelming. 

There's a TON of digital resources I want to try from VR like Google Expeditions to AR booktalks and book recommendations. We'll be trying lots of things at SOMS, but the first real "risk-taking" for me will come during Teen Read Week (early October). I'll be trying some AR activities and we'll do a Pokemon QR scavenger hunt for books as we celebrate "Reading Just for Fun!" 

Reading Innovator's Mindset this summer helped me really look at my practice as a teacher and think about ways to really empower my students, create innovative practices, and help students begin to take more risks with their learning. So often our kids don't want to try or are afraid to make mistakes because they think it'll mean their "dumb or stupid or a failure" when that is the exact opposite of what we want them to think. Helping students to overcome their fears, take risks, and try new things must be modeled...WE need to take risks, try new things, and be innovative in our practices to help our students become empowered learners who strive to continuously improve. It's a work in progress, but as I said earlier...baby steps!

I could not resist...I am so excited to see some of the matter pics we did today! THEY ARE THE CUTEST!

Today we learned that matter is anything that takes up space.  We will start looking at the different properties of matter and create a matter board later in the week.  Thank you for sending in your trash!

These were created with the app Chatter Kids. I love how it brings oral language, content, technology, and fun all into one product. Kids were to pick a piece of matter and bring it to life by "giving it voice" to explain why it is matter! Check out these great examples!

More to Come...