MACUL Reflections

Looking back on our day at the MACUL Conference, I thought it was a really valuable experience, and I hope I can go back next year. While I enjoyed all of the presentations that I saw, there were a few that really stood out to me.

While the first presentation we saw was geared more towards math teachers, our presenter had a really interesting way of differentiating her instruction, and making her grading system extremely explicit for students. We attended Collaborating to Assess Student Learnig Using a Variety of Methods by Amy Nelson. She has created "menus" for her students. The menu consists of projects or activities that the students can complete during the unit to earn an A, B, or C.  Each item has a certain point value based on the level of effort needed to complete the task. 70 points is the lowest amount needed to earn a C on the menu. What was even more interesting was the fact that the tiers of the menu also coincided with Bloom's taxonomy, so the work that a student does for an A usually consists of a more metacognitive or creative project. While the unit menu that was presented was for an Algebra class, I think the menu idea could work in an English class. I haven't had the opportunity to see if other ELA teachers are using a menu concept, but I think that the menu could involve a writing component along with other supplemental activities/reading centered around the novel that the students are currently reading.

Another really interesting seminar I attended included writing with Google Drive. Not all of the information was new to me because I use Google Drive quite a bit with my students, but I did learn about some really awesome features that the program has to offer. The name of this session was Editing, Commenting, Suggesting, Oh My! with Karen Chichester. First, the presenter showed us how she helps students with research. I know copying and pasting information into an essay is a problem with my students. Google Slides is a great way to make "notecards" for the students and the students are allowed to access information with Google automatically citing where the student found the source. It is extremely easy to access. Just got to "Tools" then "Research" and Google provides you with a search bar in the window. Students can simply click and drag information over, and Google makes a footnote that links the student back to where they found the information. What was also great about this presentation was the use of text-to-speak apps that are becoming add-ons for the Google Drive program. This particular presenter uses the text-to-speak to have her students hear their work aloud, then make revisions if the work does not sound right when it is read. I often encourage my students to read what they've read to themselves out loud, and I'm sure that the students don't always take this advice. By using the text-to-speech apps, I'm hoping they will take advantage of hearing their work out loud, and then using their ears to make revision choices. I really thought all of the suggestions that this presenter gave for using Google Drive to were great for helping students become authors. Her philosphy is that we are not just teaching students to write, but we are helping them take ownership of their writing. I totally plan on using all of her suggestions with my students to help them with their own writing projects.

It's two days later, and I think I'm still trying to process all the new things I learned about at MACUL. There was one message that was clear throughout the conference; and it was that technology is only a tool we use. At the end of the day there needs to be effective teachers in the classroom that help students, and the technology is just a tool that helps us be effective with our practice.

Doctopus and Goobric... They Are Amazing!

Unfortunately, I had to miss our last Thursday class because of parent-teacher conferences. So as a make up for not being able to come to class, I'm adding an extra post into the blog. In my wanderings at Thurston, I was introduced to this AMAZING add-ons for Google Chrome, and I want to share my knowledge with you all. The add-ons are called Doctopus and Goobric. Lisa and I submitted an article to the MACUL journal about these add-ons because they truly do change the way we grade papers, but I also wanted to spread the info through my blog too.

So, hopefully I've caught your attention enough to ask, "Holly, what is this crazy add-on you're so excited about?" Well, imagine a world where you don't have to carry home a gigantic stack of 150 essays to grade. What if you could grade your essays electronically with a digital rubric that emails itself to your students after you're done grading? Doctopus and Goobric offer the ability to  import and organize all of your students work in one spreadsheet. Then grade their work and import the grades back over to the same spreadsheet. I actually used this add-on with my mentor to grade my student's mid-term papers, and I was amazed at how easy and efficient this program was to use. The program organizes all of your student's work in Google Sheets along with the links to each individual's document. Within Sheets you also create your rubric, which will then appear in your Google Docs like so:

The rubric becomes boxes that you can click on, which will then assign the corresponding number grade to the student. There is also a space where you can write additional comments for the student, and all of the Google Doc commenting features are still available. After grading, the rubric attaches itself to the end of the student's document, and emails itself to the student for their review. If you ask me, that's pretty awesome. I certainly plan on using this method of grading to stop wonderful question of, "Is my paper graded yet?" because the students will know as soon as you're done with grading their work.

I'll stow the used car salesman pitch about these add-ons for a second here to pause to reflect. At the beginning of his crazy journey called the MAC program, Google Drive just seemed like a nice tool for collaboration and making presentations. After working with this program on almost a daily basis, it has evolved in to a tool that I can use for collaboration and assessment on top of my own personal use. I'm a huge fan of efficiency, and I think this tool gives us the ability to not only be more efficient with grading, but also more transparent. I hope you find it just as helpful as I do!

Need more info about Doctopus and Goobric? Click Here

Tech Teach-In Brainstorm

For the Tech Teach-In I have a few ideas that I've been kicking around. So far I have a solid idea of what objectives the students need to complete as part of this lesson, but I'm not sure which technology tool I want to leverage to help the students complete the objectives. I want the tool to be integrated into the lesson in order to enhance learning, not just additional "fluff" that I add to the lesson to include technology only for technology's sake.

While this plan is still very much in development, here is what I would like to do as part of the Tech Teach-In:

Currently, as a class we are reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. I'm hoping to implment technology here to accomplish two goals. My first goal is to hopefully organize the characters in the novel for the students, and my second goal is to hopefully use technology to help students explore some of the deeper thematic elements of the novel.

With my students I anticipate that the number of characters in The Things They Carried will be an issue. Here's why I want to use technology to help my students. I'm hoping to use a tool such as Padlet to organize the characters for the students. Each character will have its own box on the Padlet canvas with a description of the charater along with both the physical/emotional burdens that the character must carry throughout the novel. My hope is that by using Padlet the students will have the multitude of characters organized, and writing their final paper will be easier because they have this accessible organizer to reference while writing.

The second plan for this lesson is to use it as a writing assessment for the students. From a content perspective I want the students to start seeing that one of the themes of the book requires students to recognize that the "things" you carry don't necessarily have to be physical. I'd like the students to start writing on this subject so I can assess if they're grasping this particular theme of the book. I'm thinking it would also be nice to make this lesson social by having students work in groups to write the character descriptions that would end up in the Padlet.

While I'm still trying to figure out the details for this lesson, there are two main concerns that need to be addressed prior to the lesson being written. Is Padlet the best tool I can use for this lesson? Would it be just as helpful to use a tool that the students are already familiar with such as Google Drive? From a content standpoint, I'm still wondering what the writing prompt for the students will look like. So, I need to make sure those details are solid prior to planning out the full details of the lesson.

Overall, I see great benefit in using technology to help the students organize the novel while also making it more accessible (our students only have a classroom set of the book), so I'm hoping that Padlet can be the vehicle to carry out the objective, but I'm still open to any changes that could be more beneficial to the lesson.

Edubloggers: Playing In The Big Leagues Now

So, I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I found it a bit scary to reach out and talk with other teachers about our practice. I decided to take this opportunity to hopefully get some advice on my practice from the more seasoned professionals out there. The first blog I commented on was The Nerdy Book Club. I immediately was intrigued by the title of this blog for two reasons:

A. I'm Nerdy! and..
B. A book club is something that I'd like to make central to my practice

This blog was a great find. Recently this blog posted on the top 10 ways to get middle school students involved in reading. Here's my response:

"Thank you for the ideas to help students get involved in reading! I'm a new teacher, and one of my goals as a teacher is to hopefully get students to become passionate about reading for fun. Currently I'm working with 11th grade students, and I'm wondering if anyone has had success with using these strategies in a high school classroom? Also, which strategy was the most effective? As a newer teacher I want to incorporate independent reading into my classroom, but I'm not 100% sure how I want to encourage independent reading. I can see a lot of these tactics working well with high school students, but I wanted to see what has worked best with older students.
Thank you again for the tips! Your insight is appreciated!" 

While writing my response I thought my blog comment would be a great opportunity to talk with seasoned teachers and how they can incorporate reading into their classroom. As I stated before, I'm a new teacher, so I thought that asking for advice would be a good place to enter the conversation because I don't have the same amount of classroom experience as the blogger. Currently my post is awaiting approval from the moderator, but I'm really hoping this post will give me the chance to get some great ideas to help me incorporate independent reading into my classroom!

Feel free to check out the blog! It's a great read!
Nerdy Book Club

Padlet Has Won Me Over!

Now that we've completed our Tech Tools in Use presentations I have to say that Padlet was my favorite tool that I plan on using in my classroom. Prior to the presentation I had never heard of Padlet before. What I learned is that it is a fantastic space to collect material for students and it is also visually appealing. I immediately thought that this tool would be great for my students and I really enjoyed the examples that the presenters provided for us. I really liked the idea of using Padlet for creating timelines because it makes all the information visual for the students and also interactive because students can click on each event to access another Padlet that is more specific to that point on the timeline. I can see potential with using this style of Padlet to give an overview of styles of literature over time.

I'd like to try and create a Padlet in "real time" with students. I can also see potential with Padlet when my students read novels that include many different characters. I know I have trouble with reading novels that include many different characters, so I think Padlet may have value in making a visual organizer for the students. The ability to create a Padlet within a Padlet (a sort of Padlet Inception) where we can classify characters and then create individual descriptions for those characters to hopefully prevent confusion. I think there could be value in doing this with students as we read a novel. Then, because Padlet is so easy to use and share, I can easily post this Padlet in a space that is accessible for the students as they are reading at home. I hope using this tool can help us easily answer questions like "Who is this character?" and "Why are they important?" as we continue with reading texts. I also find merit in the fact that the students will be building the character maps along with me because the students have helped construct it. I'm thinking of creating a lesson around this idea, and I'm hoping Padlet will be successfully incorporated into my lesson!

Does anybody else have any plans for incorporating Padlet into lessons? I'm curious to know what you're planning to do!

David Theune and New Ideas

For lack of better words I have to say that David Theune's presentation was AWESOME. I thought the ideas he had for helping students learn how to write were fantastic. I thought the concept of teaching students to write for certain audiences, instead of writing for a rubric, was a great way to hopefully help students learn the process of writing. I'm really hoping that I can implement the idea he had about writing for your community. I thought this idea was fantastic because it gives the students a sense of agency in who they are writing for and why. This project seems like way more fun than the typical 5-paragraph argumentative essay. It doesn't help that this type of essay is typically extremely formulaic and not the most exciting piece of writing you'll ever create. This project also takes the boring, tired prompt that is usually along the lines of, "Do you think students should wear uniforms" and changes it. Having the students argue for a charity of their choice makes every decision made regarding the paper the student's own. I say this because often the argumentative essay comes down to which side I can support better, even if I don't personally agree with the side I'm arguing for. With this prompt for the essay, I've made the decision on which charity to argue for, and I've chosen the evidence that I want to use to support my claim of why you should vote for my charity.

Finally, the ending to this project is what really has me psyched to try it in my own class. I think that having the students vote on the best essay, and then having the winners give the money to the charity of their choice is the ultimate embodiment of empowerment. This gives the students the power to see the effect that their writing had on other people, which is an opportunity we typically don't get. This project does a fantastic job of putting the agency into the student's hands, and this is something I want to strive to do with my teaching practice.

I thought that most of what Theune had to say was great, but I struggle with the idea of not using rubrics. I agree with him in the fact that students will typically only write for what will give them an "A". I myself am guilty of doing this. I'm all for scrapping the rubric, but then I find myself wondering, "If I don't have a rubric, then how do I set expectations for myself and my students?" Currently I don't have an answer to this issue, and I don't expect to have an answer any time soon, but I will keep my eyes open for better options.

Tech In My Placement

To be honest, when I signed up for this whole teaching adventure using technology wasn't even a thought that crossed my mind. Very simply, I thought technology would just be throwing images up on a projector, showing a movie or two, and that's about it. While working on my Tech in My Placement survey I was enlightened to what opportunities technology can provide and I can hopefully use some of these tools to help my students. This survey really got me thinking about what pieces of technology will be available and I'm beginning to think about how I will essentially put the pieces together to incorporate technology into my lessons.

One lesson learned from this survey helped me understand what a lack of technology can do to a classroom and also helped me start to think of contingency plans in the event that technology doesn't want to cooperate. From my time at my placement we've had a few occasions where the internet wasn't working or the computers were operating so slow that the students couldn't get any work done. This is where I think it would be extremely handy to know what technology is available at my school in the event that my first plan doesn't work. Hopefully I can have a second computer lab or a lesson I can easily exchange with my lesson to make sure that we are still productive without the technology that I had originally planned on using.

Another limitation that I began to think about was the actual hardware available for students to use. I'm not just speaking of computers, but also items like camcorders or audio recorders. I have some ideas for projects that my students could work on that would require recording devices. This Tech survey has caused me to take a hard look at what may be possible. I may have to rely on my student's technology to get the project done, which I don't have a problem with, but it adds another element of how I should plan for a project. Here I think it will be a great idea to have the students fill out a form at the beginning of the school year to make sure that they have access to certain types of technology, such as using a cell phone to record video. Essentially I see the process as figuring out what my lesson is, what technology I have available to me within my school and with my students, and then putting the pieces together. Let's hope it works!