Tired.

 Blog 14 - Technology

This week I began my final "new" section of Spanish for sixth grade. It is so overwhelming to start a new class, over and over. I make my own Spanish booklet, so I had to print and assemble 25 of my booklets. I created a new Google Classroom and invited all of my students. I made a seating chart, revised my list of Spanish names that the kids choose from, archived my former GoGuardian class and set up a schedule for this new section, read through a student's 504 plan, set up my gradebook in Infinite Campus, prepared name tents for their Spanish names, and I have started copying and cutting up new sets of flashcards. I am pooped. Add to this the eleven, yes ELEVEN assignments for our grad classes this week! Wow! I am tired. I am looking forward to a weekend with no extra homework. 

Peer Feedback

 Blog 14 - Catlin Tucker's Blog

This week Dr. Tucker writes about the importance of feedback, and suggests facilitating the process for students to give each other feedback. In order for students to be able to give feedback, they need to have specific guidelines and be able to be focused. Dr. Tucker offers three ideas of ways to make sure peer feedback is meaningful. 

First, of course, there is a choice board for peer feedback. Dr. Tucker always has great ideas for choice boards. In this case, she has prepared and shared examples of feedback ideas for a first draft of an assignment or paper. If working with younger students, she suggests writing fill-in-the-blank sentences. This way students are still offered choice but the activity is scaffolded so that a younger student can still give applicable feedback. 

The second possible way for students to give feedback is to use a checklist, which Dr. Tucker has also created an example of. Using this checklist, peer reviewers will be able to identify a certain area for their classmate to focus on when editing or further developing their assignment. We all know that sometimes, it is easier for someone else to identify a deficiency rather than for us to realize it on our own.

A third way for students to provide feedback for each other is to give them a modified rubric similar to what their rubric looks like for the assignment. Add a column where students could add a short explanation about how they rated their peer's work. This will be a good way for students to familiarize themselves with the rubric and perhaps even reflect on their own work. 

https://catlintucker.com/2021/04/peer-feedback/

Flocabulary

 Blog 13 - Technology

As a teacher shared between two buildings, I wear many hats. One of my newest responsibilities this year has been helping with an eighth grade reading intervention time. The focus of the interventions was very undefined at first, and the input I got from colleagues was conflicting. The 8th grade literacy teachers wanted me to help students with the skills they were not performing well on during their classes. The district reading specialist wanted me to address the underlying reading skills that were deficient in these students, such as basic comprehension and vocabulary. 

When I examined the FAST test which students take three times each year, I could see that most of the questions students struggled on, at their roots, were due to a lack of vocabulary knowledge. Some of the concepts were so simple yet one little word they had not been exposed to caused them to choose an incorrect answer. To remedy this deficiency, I found a program called Flocabulary. This has been one of my favorite finds of this year! 

Flocabulary has units for K-12 based on many different content areas, but I just use the units on general vocabulary. Each unit begins with a musical composition, usually a rap, that incorporates all of the words. The songs are wacky and have crazy videos, so they really make an impression on the students. Because I have just used the free version of this product, I haven't tried all the online activities that students can do. I like to print out all the materials with a unit and go through them with my students, discussing, reviewing, and completing them together as a group. I have also created additional activities to go with each unit that will help my students to make connections between the words (even words from previous units), and to make the words more accessible and real to them. There is even an assessment that students can take at the end of each unit, and I really like how the questions are written because they require a higher-order type of thinking than just choosing a word to go in a sentence.

I am so excited for my students to complete their final FAST testing, because I believe I will see a change in their scores as a result of Flocabulary. I can already see increased confidence in these students and I hear them using these words in new ways, adding to their own daily vocabulary. (It will be worth requesting this program as a paid version from my district for next year!)

Re-examining Mental Models

Blog 13 - Dr. Catlin Tucker's Blog

In this post, Dr. Tucker tackles the question of what will happen in education, post-pandemic. Her question stems from her own personal reflection on her previous "mental models", which are our deeply held, often unconscious beliefs about the way the world works. If we apply this to education, it suggests that we each have clear images, ideas, and structures in our minds about the way teaching and learning happen. These ideas, developed through our prior experiences, might cause us to form assumptions such as the following:

• The teacher holds all the knowledge and must deliver it to the students.
• Classes must follow a set schedule, and students should be grouped by age.
• Students in a class should complete the same assignments in order to learn.

Truly, if I examine some of my own assumptions about education, I find some of these same deep-seated beliefs. If we want to take what we have learned about blended learning and continue to improve teaching and learning in the future, we must not only examine our assumptions, but begin to build new mental models about what works in education and how to effectively help our students. Some questions Dr. Tucker recommends for reflection and discussion are:

• What does a productive classroom look and sound like?
• How can we put students at the center of learning?
• What changes should happen if we want to prioritize student agency?
• How can we "leverage technology strategically to transfer more control over the time, place, pace, and path of the learning experience to the students"? (Tucker, 2021)

Hopefully, schools, administrators, and faculty will be willing to spend time examining currently held mental models. We should determine what deep beliefs might hold us back from continuing to grow as a result of the changes that were initially forced upon us by the pandemic. 

State Testing

 Blog 12 - Technology

This week students in both of my schools are taking their state tests, which for us means the ISASPs. Things look a lot different from "back in the day", when I took Basic Skills tests. Now our testing happens all on the Chromebooks, which can be both a positive and negative. No more filling in little ovals on a testing sheet! But one drawback is that students who rush through their tests can click "submit" without a teacher knowing, and there is no way to make them go back and reread, or check over their answers. 

I assisted in a fourth grade classroom this morning, and that is what happened with two of the students. The classroom teacher and I were answering questions, delivering needed supplies, and trying to monitor everyone, but without us noticing, two students (who should have needed a much longer time to complete the test) were suddenly all the way finished and had submitted their tests. How frustrating! Most of the students were working so hard, giving each problem their very best effort. I get it, the tests are definitely not fun, and for many students (and even teachers), it is difficult to grasp the point of why these tests are so important. I believe Horn and Staker would say that the days of standardized testing may be changing soon. What do you think?

Active Reading Strategy

 Blog 12 - Catlin Tucker's Blog

I was looking for a blog this week and realized that at the end of March, there were two in one week and I missed one! So here we go - I'm very excited about this one because it pertains directly to the portion of my job when I work as a Title I reading teacher, as well as the end of the day when I am usually doing reading interventions with 8th graders.

In this blog, Dr. Tucker shares how she became intrigued by a strategy she encountered in a text written by her colleague and a friend, Teaching for Deeper Learning: Tools to Engage Students in Meaning Making by Tighe and Silver. As Dr. Tucker describes, we have all had those moments when we are reading and we get to the end of a page or section and realize, "I have no idea what I just read!" This does not just happen to struggling readers, but can happen to anyone who does not engage with the text or focus on what they are reading. By using this strategy, students will make use of higher-order thinking skills to help them make meaning as they read, which will in turn help them to stay engaged in a text.

The strategy is simple; before reading, the teacher should propose a statement about the text that is open-ended, or debatable, or controversial. As students read they must search for evidence that either supports or contradicts the statement. This will help them prepare to competently converse with classmates about both the statement and their reading.

Dr. Tucker then takes the strategy and creates an amazing graphic template with suggestions that pertain to before-reading, during reading, and after-reading tasks. With a little modification, I could see her ideas working well in any grade from first to high school, and she specifically states that the strategy should lend itself to instruction that is in-person, virtual, or hybrid.

I am continuously thrilled by the amazing posts Dr. Tucker shares, and I aspire to really put her ideas into practice. Here's a link to this very helpful blog post: https://catlintucker.com/2021/03/active-reading-strategy/

Test Prep Choice Board

 Blog 11 - Technology    

I tried my first digital choice board this week! I was pretty excited to give it a try. I have several conditions in my current Spanish class of sixth graders that made it seem like a choice board would work well; there are quite a few behavior challenges in this group, stemming from a desperate need for attention; I have had to slow down the curriculum because of these behaviors; and we were preparing for a test. 

After reviewing several examples, the choice board I decided to create was a Tic-Tac-Toe board with a "Must Do" in the middle. I asked students to complete at least five of the nine squares, and encouraged them to do more if they were able. To help them study for their upcoming test, I offered choices of videos, three different online games, and 2 offline choices with flashcards and a quiet study corner. I did have a few hiccups, but I will learn from those and definitely try this again.

I was especially pleased by two main results from this activity. First, the high-achieving, self-motivated students were really able to go off on their own and complete many activities, as well as having fun by engaging with classmates in the online games. Second, my time was "freed up" so that I could concentrate on several students who I knew needed extra help. Even though it took quite a bit of time on the front end to create my choice board, these results made it worthwhile!

Student Questions Protocol

 Blog 11 - Catlin Tucker's Blog

This week, Dr. Tucker shares helpful ideas for those who are teaching concurrently (both online and in-person students at the same time). She notes that it is so difficult to give students equitable treatment when they need help, because those in-person students are right there in front of you, requesting your attention. The first step in her protocol is to have students practice attempting to answer their own questions first, perhaps through Google, a tutorial, or a classmate.

If this doesn't help, the next step would be to provide a single method for students to contact you for help, so that neither group of students has an advantage. Several suggestions are listed such as using a Google Form, communicating through a learning management system (LMS) if you have that capability, using the Remind app, creating a Padlet wall for questions and requests, or using a site called ClassroomQ, which is a virtual que where students can request assistance and also see how many are before them in the que.

As Dr. Tucker notes, both of these steps are good practice whether teaching online, concurrently, or in person. We want to remind students to attempt to resolve their own questions before asking for help from others. She always has great ideas and I'm excited to experiment with some of these in my own classroom.