Across the Continents

Something I have done in the past is correspond with a class in London.  When I was a sophomore in college, I spent a semester abroad there and spent time in a classroom working with a teacher.  I have stayed in contact with the person and we have shared a few things during the year.  I have bigger plans for next year though.

I want to plan over the summer a year long exploration of another culture.  I want my students to research, share, and communicate with students their age over in London.  My students truly lack understanding of the world outside of their small rural town in North Carolina.  This not only helps them understand something outside of this town, but it lets them interact with students with a completely different culture!  I see this tying into writing, where they write emails back and forth and share it on a classroom blog. They also would write a compare/contrast essay on things that are similar and things that are different in lives of students in London.  We will be sharing information not only about our history, but also about our favorite books, problems we are having in math, etc and hopefully really form a good connection with a group of students.

Communicating with Parents

Communication is important with any job, but especially teaching.  Not only do educators have a need to communicate effectively with their students, but they need to communicate regularly with the parents of the children in their class as well!  This is almost just as important because parental support can make or break a students progress.  If they are getting extra help at school AND at home they are receiving the same help, they will progress at a faster rate than if they just got help at school.

Parents trust teachers with their more prized possessions, their kids.  It is our job to share with parents grades, funny stories, concerns, and the curriculum we are learning at the time. Having open communication can seem like a daunting task, especially to a young teacher such as myself.  It was one more thing I have piled high on my plate.  I realized it is one of the most important pieces though, so I make sure I take time to talk to my parents.  This makes when I need to share news that parents might not want to hear, they understand I truly have the child's best interest at hand.

How do I keep up with my communication you might ask?  I have a classroom website that is on my school's webpage.  I have sent home a letter to the parents explaining where it is and what they can expect to find on this site.  Here I have homework posted, important dates that are coming up on the calendar, a short letter every week briefly talking about what we are learning that week, and twice a quarter I post my grades to an online gradebook.  Not to worry, parents have to sign in and can only see their child's grades.  I also have my email address posted and encourage any questions, comments, or concerns to be emailed to me.

I call home often!  I call parents and leave messages if I need to asking them to call me back.  If they don't call back in 24 hours, I call again to make sure they get in touch with me.  I call when a struggling student shows great improvement, when a student isn't feeling well, when I think they had an off day- I like to keep parents up to speed on this so they can see if the child acts similar at home.  This opens up more conversations- if they do act the same, what can we do to get them back to what we expect?  If they don't act the same, what is it that is different and how can we be consistent?

Assessments Online

I have heard from so many sources that soon national and state wide testing will be completed using computers.  At first, I thought this was wonderful!  No more bubble sheets.  No more tracking errors with students circling one letter in the book, and filling in a different letter on their answer sheet.  However, since using ClassScape as a study guide for my student I have been a witness to the difficult challenges it poses.

We teach students strategies to use on paper.  Students that struggle remembering to show their work on the same paper as their question, have an even more difficult time showing it on a completely separate piece of paper.  Students have trouble figuring out how to highlight and underline on the computer.  Teachers need to explicitly teach students how to use those tools.  It has to be very comfortable and almost second nature for the students in order for it to benefit them.

I struggle with balancing taking time to teach them how to properly use the tools on the testing sites and taking time to really teach them the curriculum.  They need to know how to use the site and the tools they have to offer.  However, if they don't know what the question is asking what is the point anyway?  I find that the more comfortable students are with computers and testing, the better they will do.  Before a big test, show them what they can expect.

ClassScape

ClassScape.org is a great site to use with students. It does require a subscription if I am remembering correctly. It is created by the same makers of the EOG. The questions are set up in the same manor.

Today, tests are starting to be taken on the computer. Just today, my students took their third nine weeks benchmark on ClassScape.

Teachers can log in and choose objectives and competency goals based on the topic they would like the students to test on. I use this in my classroom as a study guide for a test, to actually give a test, and a review of previous materials.

They have prepackaged quizzes (two for each objective to the NCSCOS) and teachers can create their own quiz. Teachers can share a quiz with others in their school or county. All of the quizzes you create are saved year to year so you can assign them later if you like them.

This is really great to find example problems, especially in math, for my students. It provides teachers with another resource to pull from.

Technology Problems

We have all been there. We have an amazing lesson planned using nothing but technology only to find, it is temporarily not working. Panic sets in. You put something up quickly on the board for the students to work on while you (try to) figure something out. How can you count on technology when it is always having issues?

I came across this frustration last week. In Social Studies we are working on the unit Changes Over Time. I had created a triple venn diagram to use to compare and contrast colonial times, parent's generation, and my students generation. I had picture and words students would use to drag into the correct area of the graphic organizer. This was going to be saved, and then printed out for students to use as a writing tool for a paper. Social Studies time came around and I discovered my computer was frozen. No big deal, I restarted it. Now, my program to display the venn diagram would not open. When it finally did open, it had somehow changed the format of the document. After completely getting frustrated and undone, I gave up and we drew in our notebooks. However, time was not used efficiently.

In my experience, I have come to rely on technology. However, always have a

"Plan B" in the back of your mind. I did not have a plan ready. Students deserve to be exposed to 21st century skills; however, if something is not working properly, the students still need to learn the information! Being a teacher means you need to be flexible. Roll with the punches. This can be hard, but it is necessary. While technology is a wonderful asset, we need to be prepared for the inevitable. Something will go wrong with the school's server, the website will be closed due to maintenance, etc. As teachers, we cannot let this get in the way of our student's education. I learned a great lesson last week, and I just wanted to share this with you all.

Math resource

While I had Spring Break last week for grad school, I was still busy teaching away at the elementary school I work at. I have come across a lot of great resources in the last few days (my county had a professional development day on Monday, and today I have been observing other teachers around the county to look at how others teach and strategies they use).

A family friend of mine sent me an email about this math resource at www.tenmarks.com. I am going to be using this with my blog as a way to check how students are progressing in math and integrating technology. This is free for teachers, and is aligned with State and Common Core Standards. Yay! You type in the names of your students, select the grade level, and then create a label for your class. This allows you to group students as a whole group, or you can differentiate and group students based on skills where they need to spend more time.

I can assign different tasks for students to do, what topic of math to focus on, a subtopic if there is on, and change the number of questions, etc. It grades it for you as the student log on and complete the assignment. I can log on and see the report and what each individual students missed.

One thing I wish it would allow is for you to see the assignment before any students takes it. I haven't been able to find if they have that available. It does however, show you an example question for each strand and topic. You can choose 3 albums (strands/ topic areas) from other grades to include on your page for differentiation purposes. This is great for math centers where students who are on grade level can be working on third grade material, students that need enrichment could be working on upper grades material, and students that need extra help can be working on a lower grades material. They would all be on the same sight and working on the same skill, just differing levels. This would allow the students to work on their level while still working on the same skill.

iPad Learning

A few weeks ago I made a PowerPoint about the use of the iPad for a class project. Late last week I went to a meeting for my county. I had the pleasure of listening to North Carolina's Teacher of the Year. She spoke about how students are learning differently these days. Students are not just learning by listening to us as teachers.

She was walking around a school, and a young child asked her to help him tie his shoe. She worked and worked with him, but he just couldn't get it. He left and she went about her way, thinking he was giving up on this chore for the time being. He came back and informed her that he just learned how to tie his shoes. She happily asked how he did that so quickly and his response took her aback. "I didn't need your words. I went on the iPad and Googled for a YouTube video on how to tie your shoes."

When she told us this, I just had to laugh. Of course it would take a child to make such a powerful gesture. Without any assistance, he was able to use the iPad to look up how to tie his shoes. He knew exactly what to do! If we do not allow students to use the technology around them for their benefit, not only are we wasting money, we are putting a ceiling on our children's education and independence.

OK, so since last week a lot has happened. First, my students absolutely adore the class blog! They are always so eager to finish their morning work and get on the blog to see what I have put up for them to do. This week, I have used the blog each day. The first day posed difficulties because they struggled even logging into the site. However, each day they got better and better. I would definitely suggest using the blog daily at first to smooth out as many kinks as possible.

Each post asked slightly more of my students. The first post was just about what they thought of the blog, then about a friend in the class, they took a poll on a math questions, and finally today they took a quiz on the blog. They bombed the quiz. I was really disappointed. I was unsure if this was due to the content of the quiz, or by the act of taking a quiz online. After asking the students about the questions and going over the answers with them, we call came to the same conclusion. It was the fact that they had never taken a quiz on the blog before. They weren't sure how it worked, they didn't know if everyone would see their score, etc. I never explained it to them! Yikes! So, reader, learn from my mistake, explain the process of taking a quiz on a blog to your students. Yes, they CAN use scratch paper to solve the problem, they do NOT need to solve a difficult division problem in their head. Oi!

I have had a lot of positive experiences though. Each student got to choose an Avatar to use as their profile picture. This way they do not have a picture of them floating around on the Internet. We went over guidelines of having a blog. Yes, complete sentences and punctation were required. They cannot use this blog as a Facebook account, etc. After going over the guidelines, we all signed it and I have posted it in the classroom so remind us all of our agreement.

The students have been talking about the blog to each other at lunch, to other students, and even mentioned it to a few teachers. I have also been sharing this journey with the other members of the third grade team. Two of them seem eager to start a blog of their own. They were impressed with the options the blog had. One of them was in the mindset that a blog was just something to vent on, somewhat like a journal. I explained some of my ideas, and she was floored!

In the next coming weeks, I plan to make sub groups on the blog and have literature circle discussions on the blog. I am hoping this works well and helps my students work independently while creating their response, but collaboratively working together via discussion.

As always, please comment and ask any questions! I love feedback!

Student Blog

Since creating this blog for myself, I have really started to wonder how my students would react to using a blog themselves. I began to ponder different ways for them to use this piece of technolgy. I want to make sure students are truly getting something out of its use instead of just another item to check off their to do list for the day. As a teacher, I like to have fun teaching, and as a student I want the same thing. I began to think of an easy way to start them on the process of using a blog. The first thing that came to mind was using it to communicate basic skills and thoughts for the day. A modified message board if you will.

I have talked the idea over with my assistant since he knows how I operate my classroom and how the students behave. Tomorrow, I will explain to the students what I will be doing and how this is will be set up. Every morning my students have morning work to complete to start the day off with review and get their brains juiced up for the day. After they finish their morning work, I will give them the opportunity to log into my class webpage, click on the link to the blog, and have students read the latest message I wrote to them. This might be a question I ask them to see if they can explain a skill, I might just have open conversations with them about what they like most in teaching, etc. I want them to know they have a say in what happens in the classroom (to a point).

Hopefully by the next post I will have some feedback to write to you about!

First Post!

I created with blog for a class I am taking in grad school. I am to use this blog as a portal to express 21st century learning I notice in the classroom, ideas I have, articles I find interesting, connections I make to class discussions, and even use this as a place to post questions I have about technology in education. I plan to write in this twice a week, and document any activities my class has done, and list any new sources I might have found. I hope, reader, you find use in my postings and can learn with me as I delve into the world of 21st century skills.

A site I use on a regular basis in my classroom is IXL.com. My county has subscribed to this site as a math practice resource for students. They select their grade level and a list of topics appear. The student then selects the topic and objective they want to work with. The computer then asks questions until the student has "mastered" the skill. This is a great resource because it differentiates for each child. As a student gets a problem wrong, the difficulty of the next problem will decrease. There is also a place for an explanation so the student can understand where he/she went wrong. The computer automatically assigns problems that are similar to the one missed until the students gets several correct. This allows students that are struggling to get extra practice, and those that are achieving at grade level have opportunities for enrichment. I would highly suggest writing a grant to have access to this wonderful resource.