$ubscription$

 Blog 3 - Technology

So many choices! Do you get caught up in technological services you just "have to have", yet really don't want to spend money on? This year I am spending more than I ever have before on subscriptions to services for my classes. The first is a subscription to señorashby.com, which is a website for Spanish teachers with many different resources. Señor Ashby created one song that helps my students to learn numbers, and this is why I subscribe every year. One song!

My second investment this year started during September, when I just couldn't stand all of the political ads on Youtube. Every single day, I share a song with my students to begin class, usually a video with lyrics in Spanish and in English. I consider this to be such an important part of my curriculum that I was willing to start a subscription to safeshare.tv as well. Safeshare allows me to play my Youtube videos every day for students without having ads pop up, which for me, both saves time and prevents my students from having to watch those annoying (or worse) ads.

So when my free trial of Gimkit expired and they wanted me to pay monthly, I had to question myself. How many of these subscription services do I really need? I think the list of available educational subscriptions has probably exploded during last year. I have never asked my school to pay for these subscriptions, but I wonder if other teachers do. What subscription services have you "succumbed" to for your classroom? What are your favorites? And most importantly, should a school pay for these subscriptions?

Station Rotation Inspiration

Blog 3 - Catlin Tucker's Blog

Station Rotation Lesson Design

-Tion, -tion, -tion, -tion! The title reminds me of that great song from The Electric Company about the t-i-o-n suffix and how to pronounce it ... but many of you are probably too young to remember it! (It's the one from the 70's ...) I use it all the time with my reading students, to make them laugh! But I digress ...

Dr. Tucker continues to amaze me with her plethora of ideas for teachers, especially those teaching fully online or in a concurrent classroom situation. This blog was about her recommendation to employ the station rotation model to maximize learning; in suggesting stations she means different learning activities, not necessarily physical stations to visit. She lists three compelling reasons to use stations in a rotation; "the small group dynamic, opportunities to differentiate more consistently, and increased student control over the pace at which they move through individual tasks."

The three types of stations that Dr. Tucker suggests are a teacher-led station (virtual or in-person), an online station, and an offline station. What I really appreciate is the way she has emphasized a different purpose for each of those station types, which I think makes them much more intentional. Looking at stations in this way causes me to reevaluate why I want to use stations, and how to design each learning activity so that it will achieve my desired outcome.

I am fairly familiar with how to implement different stations at an elementary level, but it does not come as naturally to me with my middle school classes. Dr. Tucker has shared an abundance of specific ideas for stations in the areas of math, English, history, and science. The idea charts she has created are amazing, and it makes me want to create a similar one for Spanish! I think I'll put it on my to-do list for this summer and see if I can get my other world language teachers to collaborate with me.

       

Pear Deck Newbie

Blog 2 - Technology    

Using Pear Deck to Co-Create Class Agreements

I'm trying a combination of two new things tomorrow; we'll see how it goes. I am starting a new section of 7th grade Spanish, so we need to do all of those "beginning of the year"-type things again. We will go over my teacher mission, my goals for students, and how grading works. According to a suggestion from Dr. Tucker's blog last week, I am also going to try to have the class co-create our class agreements or expectations. I think that sometimes, especially on the first day of class, students may feel intimidated to share things, so I plan to use a Pear Deck to have them record
their thoughts on a few different points. I have not used Pear Deck much before, but have had a little bit of training, so I'm not sure if it will have the effect I am hoping for and do the job I want it to. (In case you're not familiar with Pear Deck, it is an add-on that can be used with presentation software, such as Google Slides, to allow students to interact with the presentation by answering questions.) 

I slightly tweaked the questions that Dr. Tucker suggested, so this is what I want my students to ponder and express:

• In order to feel respected and supported, what behaviors/norms would make you feel comfortable when talking with classmates and collaborating with partners?
• What might make you feel disrespected or unsafe in our work together?
• What can we agree to try to do as a class? What will we try to avoid?
• What do you value in your relationships with others?     

Depending on how much time is left in our class session, I will either display the answers anonymously for us to consider, or I will collect and review their responses, then combine them into a shared doc so they can review the class agreements as needed. 

What is your favorite way to use Peardeck? 

It's a GOLD MINE!

Blog 2 - Catlin Tucker's Blog

The blog post I follow, Dr. Catlin Tucker's blog, shared a video presentation this week. It was about 30 minutes long and I have already watched it twice! You know how sometimes, at this time of year especially, teachers can feel kind of bogged down like we are just going through the motions? The winter blues, perhaps? Back when my district used to allow us to take trips to attend a conference or workshop, I would often try to schedule one during this time of year, because sometimes listening to a colleague, expert, or any presenter who is inspirational, can give you a whole new outlook. I used to hope that I would hear at least one thing that would really motivate me, or a lightbulb idea that would really stand out ... Well, this video was so full of great ideas that I immediately started taking notes and grabbing screenshots!

Dr. Tucker is what I like to call a "guru" of all things blended learning. The subtopic in this video is teaching in concurrent classrooms, which has been my situation for the bulk of this year. She defines concurrent classrooms as "when teachers have a group of students in the physical classroom and a group joining simultaneously online via video conferencing". This presents many challenges, as you can imagine, some of which are unique to this type of teaching expectation. Dr. Tucker addresses 4 specific challenges and gives practical ideas to help contend with each one of them. Here are a few of my favorites from the many in this gold mine of ideas!

Much of the video centered around how to design your class, whether online or in person. It made me think about how I could redesign some parts of my class routine to be more inclusive of my online learners, while still being present for those who are actually with me in person. The first suggestion was about how to maximize the use of routines, and I was amazed at the variety of suggestions Dr. Tucker came up with for both the beginning of a class period and the end of a period. I have my normal beginning of class routine which involves playing a popular English song translated to Spanish, as well as a bell ringer to review something we learned recently. This might be a great time to mix it up, keeping with a beginning of class routine but switching every week or every couple days to a different activity within that routine, such as goal-setting, a feedback form, student self-assessment, or a welcome activity to "pique their interest" in an upcoming topic. 

Another section that made an impression on me was Dr. Tucker's suggestion to design the "meat" of the lesson as a "flip-flop", which she describes as a 2-station rotation: one as a small group with the teacher, and the other as either an online or offline student-directed activity. She just has so many suggestions for possible online station activities - I look forward to trying many of these! Now if I could just find the time ... 

This was an exciting post that really made me ponder my current teaching strategies, inspired me, and gave me that boost of energy that I have been needing to change up my teaching pedagogy a bit. I wish that same burst of hope this week for all of you as well!

(This week's blog: https://catlintucker.com/2021/01/concurrent-classroom-four-strategies/)

 

Blog 1 – Technology

GoGuardian

One of my favorite tools that has been provided by our school district this year is GoGuardian. This program allows our district to filter and monitor any device provided by the school, as well as allowing teachers to manage online classes and student activity online. These classroom management capabilities have been so helpful for me and my colleagues, both with online students and our in-person classes. However, we did not receive any training before the year began with how to use this program, so everything I have learned has been through trial and error.

This past week I tried a new skill which was setting a scene within a scene. In GoGuardian, a teacher can manage which websites students are able to access through applying what is called a “scene”. A scene is set up ahead of time, and can either allow only certain sites to open, or can block any sites you do not want students to access. At the beginning of the year, I simply watched what websites my students opened that were off-task or distracting, and created a scene that is applied for every session which will exclude those sites. However, I currently have a student (in-person) who is autistic but high functioning, and he will go anywhere and everywhere on his computer if he is able. When I speak with him personally and ask him to put away his device, or simply remain in Google Classroom, he will become agitated, angry, and start swearing which is so disruptive for myself and other students. I studied suggestions shared online about GoGuardian and found that I can create a secondary scene for this student only, because I don’t wish for all of my students to have this much restriction. I was able to set his computer to only open one tab during my class period, so that he is much less likely to find distractions online. I have also set up a message through GoGuardian so that if he tries to open another tab, he sees a gentle reminder to close his Chromebook and pay attention to what we are doing in class, until the computer is needed.

The result of this has been simply a quiet acceptance from my student, rather than arguing or swearing. I believe seeing the message on his computer feels less confrontational for him, and gives him some time to self-regulate while accepting this redirection. For this student and others, I believe it possibly feels less like an admonition from a teacher when the GoGuardian program redirects them. I know there are many capabilities of this program that I have not yet explored, so I look forward to becoming more proficient with it.

Blog 1 - Catlin Tucker's Blog 

Building Community Online

Dr. Catlin Tucker’s recent blog post about building relationships within an online learning community is very timely for me, as I just began a new section of my 6^th grade Spanish exploratory class which includes only online learners. Prior to this, most of my classes have been concurrent; that is, I am teaching both in-person and online students at the same time. I am interested in ways to connect all of my learners, no matter how they attend class. Dr. Tucker suggests that as educators, we have a responsibility “to help students to develop their social presence or the ability to assert their social and emotional selves online” (2021). I have honestly not thought much about this, but as I am incorporating more and more online teaching and resources, I wholeheartedly agree with this. 

A bit of investigating showed me that “social presence” is a concept that appears in quite a bit of research, even before COVID forced many of us towards an increase in online teaching and learning. I think I could be more intentional about helping students to develop this presence online. There are many ways to do this; the blog post highlights three. She suggests first setting agreements as a class. I am often hesitant to do this, because I teach a group for only 7 weeks and then they move on, and I feel like every second of our class time is too precious. I also often worry that when students set agreements in every class, they sort of become “numb” to hearing many of the same ideas over and over. I may try Dr. Tucker’s suggestion with my next exploratory section as an experiment.

The second idea is to initiate conversations at the start of class to help build community. Dr. Tucker shares an awesome slide deck that includes a variety of quick, fun check-in questions to use at the beginning of class with students. This is something I’ll have to ponder and decide if it fits my class goals. I normally begin class with a pair or group verbal bell-ringer, which activates some previous learning in Spanish that we will build on. I’m not sure if I would incorporate these community-building ideas instead, or do both a bell-ringer and one of these activities, or alternate days … what do you think?

Finally, Dr. Tucker shares a resource for a dialogic interview format, which is a very powerful tool that can help students to have deep and meaningful conversations and develop relationships with one another. If you have been looking for ideas to help your students build relationships with you and each other, this is a blog post you’ll want to check out!