Avoiding Procrastination #flipclass

Because I teach third grade, I must communicate all work expectations with the parents of my students. I must be very organized when creating and assigning long-term and short-term projects because the students are just learning to take full responsibility for their own learning in third grade. I create detail assignment descriptions, outlines, due date calenders, and rubrics. The long-term projects completed in third grade involve cooperative learning/problem-based learning. To teach students to pace themselves with a long-term project, work time is allotted during class. I am able to reminds students about due dates and give individualized feedback when the projects are partially completed during class.

I find myself struggling with flipping my lessons because younger students do not seem to realize they are held accountable for the work. I hear many excuses such as "I had gymnastics." or "We were just too busy at home this weekend to do it." I actually feel parents do not realize that their children are fully responsible for their work in third grade because they often make excuses for their children as well. I did not start the year with communicating my flipped lesson expectations because I just began flipping about five weeks ago. I believe that next year will be better in terms of pacing, expectations, and transferring responsibility to the students, Elementary school is much different than middle school and high school. It feels as if I am actually making the outlines, due date schedule, and rubrics for the parents who seem to need all of the details up front more.

Late Assignment Policy - #flipclass

I teach third grade and I am detail-oriented when it comes to late work. I accept late and made-up missed work from all of my students. Whenever students have late work, I write the assignment date and name under their name on a weekly log. When students turn in their work, I highlight  the assignment showing that they turned it in. Students do stay inside for recess to make up the missing/late work. At the end of the week, students write down how many late and missing assignments they have in their agendas in their goal portion. Students who have several late and missing assignments per week are asked to write an assignment goal. They also create actions steps to help them be proactive about turning in their work.

Third grade is a vital year for helping students develop student responsibility. In this grade, students still want to blame their parents for late and missing assignments. The transfer of responsibility can be difficult, but I feel responsible for making these newly intermediate students responsible for their work.

Blog #5 Visual Reflection

See a larger version of this infographic here!

METC 2014!

The METC was amazing and exciting! More than anything, I want to share the great resources, technology tools, and tips I collected during the following break-out session presentations:

Discovery Education & Student Engagement: The presenter for this session was someone who worked for Discovery Education and not necessarily a teacher currently in the field. Regardless, he did not advertise the “product”, but rather demonstrated the components of the site. Before coming to this session, I used Discovery Learning for streaming videos which relate to the curriculum content. Using this site, a class could read and watch videos about current events, take part in virtual webinars, and gain background knowledge with different media types. The most useful of the components was the ability to search content to “view, listen, and teach” by specific grade level Common Core State Standards.

BYOD & Google Drive: The biggest take away from the BYOD portion of this presentation was that teachers must manage the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative as they would with any other activity in the classroom. Teachers must have a plan for the use of devices, define and enforce clear expectations (use visuals), be consistent with consequences, trust students with their devices, and communicate to parents the way in which devices are used. Finally, teachers can use Google drive to store student work, allow students to edit each other’s’ pieces, and grade assignments from home. Teachers can also use Padlet, The Answer Pad, and Socrative with Google Drive to assess student learning.

iPads: More Than Just Apps: The presenters shared their presentation concerning this topic (http://goo.gl/3f5S0r). The SAMR model will help teachers decide which kind of apps to use frequently in class. In summary, teachers should use “R” of “SAMR” often which stands for “Redefinition”. Redefinition means that students use apps to synthesize, evaluate, and create to activate critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. The presentation was categorized into lists of apps for substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition.

Using Technology in the Math Classroom: I thought that this presentation would be very beneficial. I quickly realized that the presenter had prepared to focus on pre-calculus and calculus teaching. I did not leave the session because I thought I could use the same tools to create lessons/activities for elementary school students. Aside from the talk of functions and polynomials, I found that the site Math Type could be used to create practice and assessments with adequate equations. I found that students can create graphs using Desmos, Wolfamalpha, and TI-SMARTView. Finally, I learned that teachers can create math tutorials using Jing to voice over steps and video-recoding  while using OneNote to write out steps.

Playing with Presentations: I leanred about VoiceThread, Pow Toons, Trading Cards, SlideShare, Present.me, Zoho Presentation, Google Presentations, and  Animoto. These presentations can be shared or stored online, edited by a collaborative group of students, and graded from any place.

I hope you enjoy these sites and technology tools like I did! There are so many that it is difficult to choose which to explore in depth and use in the classroom – happy teacher-teching! 

Twitter Chat

I participated in the “Missouri Education” chat (#moedchat) and the “Web 2.0 Tools in Education” chat (#web20tools). First, I tried to participate in the “iPads in the Classroom” chat (#ipadchat), but the conversation was not consistent even though I joined at the scheduled day and time. At first, I felt disconnected because there were many different subjects going on at once. I learned to narrow in on a few subjects and respond to specific tweets to build a rapport with people in the chat. I was using Hootsuite and added a stream for the chats. During the first chat, I did not have a stream open for “mentions” and did not realize people were “mentioning” or talking straight to me. I found many valuable resources others shared such as lesson examples and free materials for teaching internet safety. I finally became part of the flow and learned to view resources, share related resources, mention others, and retweet. I was a much better “chatter” during my second chat. During the second chat, I was able to talk with my current classmates and another teacher from another state. The really neat thing about the “Web 2.0 Tools in education” chat was that I not only learned about the tools, but if they actually worked as theorized in real classes. Most textbooks do not have accounts of teachers incorporating tools in their classroom discusses the positive and negative things about each web 2.0 tool. This chat was much more fast-paced, so I feel like I learned much in a short period of time!  I learned through the “Missouri Education” that one of my high school teachers (Kerri Skeeters) was going to be at the METC. We connected, began to follow each other on Twitter, and planned to meet up at the METC next week! I also connected with a person who is presenting at the METC and began to follow one another on Twitter. I think the most challenging part was leaving the chat because I wanted to stay and make connections (I had other things to do!). 

Blog #4 - Social-Networking

I have joined Pinterest and Google+, but I had no idea that these social networking sites had helpful sites dedicated to education! I rarely ever used these sights and always thought, “What is the big deal?”, but now I know what all the commotion is about! I found this resource on Pinterest called, “TheSpEd Teacher’s Must-Have IEP Kit” on Pinterest after searching “I.E.P”. Sometimes, I have several students with different Individualized Education Plans with many different goals. I feel it to be very beneficial to have a summary, goals, and information about these students organized in a manageable form. The I.E.P. documents are very lengthy and wordy, so I feel having the most important parts highlighted will help me be mindful about the student’s goals while planning lessons or interventions. Instead of having to create an outline, I would just download this resource from Pinterest, print the organizer, fill it out based on the I.E.P., and keep in a place I would look often. I also found this goal sheet called, “My I.E.P. Goal”. This goal sheet is actually a bar graph allowing students to keep track of their reading fluency. Currently, I progress monitor four students on an online reading program called AimsWeb to track the progress of their reading fluency and accuracy over the course of the year. I give these four students weekly passages to read and reread at home. I am going to print out this resource and send it home, so the students can keep track of their progress they make at home!

In Google+, I did not know that there were “communities” to join. I thought of Google+ strictly as a socializing site, but it can be used for professional development as well. I found this community called, “Special Education” and joined it which is like following a group or person on Twitter. I know that some of my students require help with learning social skills. The first resource on the Special Education community site was a webpage titled, “MySocially Speaking App for iPad”. As a general educator, I know only basic information about teaching special areas such as social skills. I would to reflect and foster social skills learning the general education setting too. Finally, I found this slide show called, “Hand-Painted Wall Murals”. The brief article talks about how the arts can affect student behavior. For students who require calming methods, I though this may be beneficial. It also helped me think of how we could best repaint/transform the library into the Learning Commons! I could spend all day on these social-networking sites because there is such a wealth knowledge being shared every minute! 

Blog #3 - A Networked Classroom

I believe there are many advantages of a networked classroom. Today, I attended the Classroom Instruction that Works (2012) professional development. The presenter, Howard Pitler (@Hpitler) repeated a phrase I had heard for the first time this morning – “none of us is as smart as all of us”. After the professional development session today, I went home and read chapter 3 of Personal Learning Networks (2011) and it was stated on page 62. The phrase was also highlighted in the lecture, so I stopped to think about what that phrase meant in an educational setting.  Students gain more insight they could have without networking with curriculum resource sites, audiences or experts afar, and peers afar. Networking allows students to collaborate, problem-solve, and make connections to the real-world. The disadvantages that come with a networked classroom are the same disadvantages students could face at home which consist of cyber-bullying, internet safety issues, etc. (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p. 75). I would rather the students run into  these issues at school, so the students can learn a systematic, ethical way to go about these issues and then apply the ways at home.   This site called, “Not My Kid” addresses these potential issues and offers parents a peace of mind when they think about online tools used in school. http://notmykid.org/internet-safety/

To slow transition my classroom into a networked classroom, I may start with simpler, free online tools to connect with the parents. Teachers could use blogs, eNews, Remind101, and Twitter to send updates about upcoming classroom and school events. Later, the teacher could give this “classroom news” job to a student and then take on something more involved. In the text, the authors state that it starts with the teacher and they should start with simpler tools (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p. 81). It was overwhelming when I tried to wrap my brain around all the possibilities of Twitter use in the classroom and the Twitter vocabulary, search engines, protocol, and more. If I start slow, I am sure my efforts will reflect quality and not quantity.

I think a networked classroom would benefit diverse learners, especially students who visit resource rooms throughout the day such as ESOL, gifted, and Sped resource rooms. These special area teachers can often be out of the grade level loop despite PLC efforts and collaboration days, so a basic information/resource sharing site such as Twitter could easily inform them. Students who are pulled out often may feel they are not learning the same material, so a disconnect from the classroom could develop. The disconnected feeling could affect peer interaction on a daily basis. Diverse students may need extra motivation to meet learning objectives and networking with experts in the field can be one way to make this happen. The article, “Service Learning in Special Education” emphasizes the power of real-world connections. http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/service-learning/special-education/