Who are we fighting for?

In my casual research tonight on the Occupy Wall Street movement, I came across this video, called "Occupy the Department Of Education":



I was really surprised. The Common Core Standards are, in my humble opinion, probably the best federal initiative for public education since I've started teaching, and maybe even ever. They are clear, measurable, rigorous and allow teachers plenty of creative freedom in the classroom. But then, was this demonstration really about the standards? I could see PTA members troubled over New York City's questionable recent history with public education. Mayor Bloomberg took over the schools and made miraculous gains by lowering the standards. But now the Common Core will raise them. Are people angry because they worry their kids might not meet the standards after years of low standards and be held back, as is the practice in New York? Or are they just angry they didn't have a say in whether or not the standards were adopted?

It's clear that many people, both on the left and on the right, currently feel alienated from their local, state and federal governments. I also came across this image tonight, which I thought was interesting. (And, as a teacher, I love Venn Diagrams!)


I guess my main concern from watching the Occupy DOE video is that I don't want the tone in this country to turn so combative, so "people" vs. "the man" that we throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. I don't want to see systems that can work abandoned because people feel disempowered (i.e., public education as the enemy.) When really, low standards for public school students is what we should be fighting.

Apps, Apps, Apps!

An amazing presentation at the LWP Technology Conference on Sunday by Amy Vujaklija enlightened me to a number of amazing smart phone applications that can be utilized in the classroom.



Common Core

View the standards for math and literacy by grade level - no more lugging around heavy and cumbersome binders!



GoodReads and GoodReads BookScanner

Check your students' comments and track their reviews with GoodReads' App, and scan the barcode of any book to read the GoodReads review. Great for book talks!



Home Library

Scan in your classroom library and keep track of all your titles and their costs. You can actually check books out to your students on your iPhone, so you'll know who's reading what at all times, and be able to decrease the number of "lost" books, or even hold students accountable. You can even send them a friendly reminder about the book right from this application!



TeacherPal

A personal organizer for teachers. You can track attendance, grades and behavior. It creates data you can share with students, parents and administrators to make sure all kids are successful.




Edmodo

A way to stay connected with students. Send notes, reminders about homework or assignments due, be accessible to your students for homework questions.



Dragon Dictation

Great for special needs students who have "scribe" as an accommodation on their IEP. Students can dictate their writing, and the application records it as they speak. Unfortunately, the only way to punctuate is to manually add periods, commas or other punctuation.



Dictionary.com

A great ap for teachers and students for building vocabulary. The word of the day is an added bonus!

The More Lived-In Classroom

When I was first becoming a teacher - that short summer of education classes before I entered my baptismal flames - and we were reading Janet Allen's Words, Words, Words, I couldn't fathom what a "Word Wall" was actually good for. Since then, my uses and adaptations of the instructional strategy have changed many times. Some uses are documented on this blog, but each year I make new decisions and innovations. Here are the ways I'm using my Word Wall this year to help my students improve their vocabulary.



The so-called "Highfallutin Words" are words that are not in my students normal vernacular, but they are the words found in the new common core state standards, as well as what will no doubt appear on the standardized tests policy makers are busily hammering out. One of our first learning targets was "I can distinguish between connotation and denotation." Here you can see the words and definitions two students wrote and hung on the word wall.

Next to the Highfallutin words, are the "Spicy Words." These are possible replacement synonyms for dull and boring words my students may commonly use in their writing. These words came from a word sort activity on tone (related to connotation and denotation.) We'll use this section of the word wall to a greater extent when we write our first piece on heroism.



Finally, we have the "Bad Words." Because of our code-switching lessons, my students know that these aren't really "bad" words; just words that aren't appropriate for the language arts classroom. They're informal words better suited for texting or casual speech with friends and family.



In addition to the word wall, evidence of my students' presence can be seen on the chalk board I'd once envisioned to be my timer wall. Now, it's a place for students to claim the lost articles middle schoolers are so apt to forget: books, nameless papers, agenda planners, notebooks and the like. You can also see evidence of our classroom structure: we had to revisit expectations last week and it had a positive affect on the classroom climate. When the kids know exactly what's expected of them, it's much easier to maintain a calm and safe environment, even when hormones are raging.

Social Networking with Students

A few years ago I used GoodReads.com as an enrichment with my students. Back then I had computers in my classroom, and I allowed the kids to get online when they finished their work. Now, sans computers, I'm using GoodReads again - this time in place of those old, raggedy paper reading logs. No more strangely coincidental documentation! ("Danny, I see you read ten pages every night from 9:00 to 9:30...again.") No more forged signatures! No more "lost papers" turned in on the last day of the grading period filled out the night before!* (*For students who don't have computer or Internet access, or whose parents don't want them online, of whom there are only a few, the raggedy paper logs remain...)

GoodReads allows for an authentic discussion about books. Students are familiar with social networking due to the countless hours they spend each night on FaceBook. Now, their homework is more fun and engaging because it's conversational, interactive and technological.



Students add books to shelves that I and their friends can see: "currently reading," "read" and "to read." The books appear with their covers, and students can rate the books with one to five stars. They can also write reviews and read each others, which gives them a good idea of what books are out there, and what might interest them. It also gets them excited about reading and makes it a bit more "cool," since it gives reading a social element, rather than remaining a solitary activity.

At the beginning of the year I created class groups for each of my class periods. The students first assignment was to create an account and join their respective group.



Their second assignment - and all subsequent weekly homework - is to respond to a discussion prompt on their group's wall. Each Wednesday I post a discussion topic, and they have to reply by Friday at midnight for full credit.



The discussion so far has been pretty simple: what book are you reading, if you abandoned a book tell us why, how much have you read this week, make a text-to-text, -self, or -world connection to your book, summarize what has happened, etc. After my students are more in the habit of using GoodReads and posting on time, I plan to take the questions a bit deeper. For now, it seems to be accomplishing its goal of getting them READING - and that's what's most important.

Classroom Set Up

It's a new school year, and as always the summer has refreshed me and left me excited and ready for the new school year. You might think I'd be sad about have to down-size my room space, but I'm actually thrilled about my new room! My former room was almost too much space - sounds strange, I know, how could there be too much space? But somehow it made it seem like I was farther away from my students and in that way made it more challenging to manage.

I absolutely love my classroom this year! I think it's my best room design yet. Here are some of the photos I shot before the kiddos arrived; it looks a little more "lived in" two weeks into school.



My classroom library with books arranged by genre/reading interest.



Make-up work wall, where students can get the hand-outs and information about the previous days' lessons.



Our student work books and some writer's notebooks - still waiting for the rest to come in!


Bookmarks for students.


Student writing folders.



Sticky note sentence strips. Students will write words for the word wall on these. Although I hadn't realized it when I set up my room, this has since become my "Is It Yours?" spot where students can reclaim lost materials or no-name papers.


"Take a Break" chair, where students go when they need to refocus. They can go of their own volition or when I ask them to, but it's not a punishment; just a place for them to re-center.


Reading Corner for when students finish classwork.


Quote of the week and the week's plan posted here.


Student desks are arranged in groups of four with one remainder group of two.




I post student jobs, the unit's essential questions, the date (and Happy Birthday messages), learning targets and the agenda here.


"Help Yourself" wall where students can take regular hand-outs or resources to help them improve their writing.


Place to display exceptional student work, a place where students can get resources on how to publish their work, and an "About You" wall where students will decorate the bulletin board with pictures that show us who they are - like a show and tell. I did the first one with pictures from my life and my eighth grade report card that my mom had stored in her basement. The kids always ask, "Ms. Yost, how could you get a C in gym?" *Sigh* Memories of falling off monkey bars and walking the mile...


My desk with pictures and artwork of former students behind me.


Word Wall: "Highfalutin Words" (or academic words that students may not be familiar with), "Spicy Words" (or precise words that could improve our writing), and "Bad Words" (or informal words and trendy spellings that students may use casually, but that aren't appropriate for formal writing.)

New Common Core Standards: *Gulp!*

Our first day is tomorrow, though the kiddos don't return until Monday. We're scrambling with paper and bordette and little cut out letters and glitter and rosters and name tags and...what's this? New Common Core Standards?! Kentucky, like forty-six other states, adopted these national standards in an effort to win Obama and Duncan's Race to the Top. While Kentucky was not successful in this aim, we still won a great opportunity to completely overhall our instruction in English language arts and math.

I was fortunate to have worked with the new standards last school year and during the summer for the Gates Foundation's Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project. I created a curriculum module for writing monologues aligned with the standards. More important than this prestious opportunity was the chance to "get my hands dirty" so to speak, and really dive into the standards. While they are impressively rigorous (sixth graders are now to type three pages in one class sitting, for example), they are also clear and well organized, and will make standards-based grading, data driven instruction and alignment of learning targets with assessment much easier. They also bring reading and writing accountability into the science and social studies classrooms, which will reinforce the notion that the strongest teachers already believed - literacy underlies success in all text-based content areas.

The curriculum I followed last year and will follow again this year is the College Board's SpringBoard program for middle and high school students.

The SpringBoard program is already aligned with the common core, though I didn't realize the standards alignment was accessible online. No, instead I thought it would be a good idea to spend four hours mapping the first unit of instruction in alignment with the new common core; still I'm glad I did as it prepared me for the instruction.

After mapping out the curriculum, my colleague and collaborator, Ms. W, and I planned two ways to pre-assess the students initially. First in literary reading, then in language, or grammar. We would administer a reading test to them with questions directly aligned with the literary reading standards and use a checklist to identify whether students were demonstrating, developing, or not demonstrating the skill. Likewise, with the language standards, we developed a checklist and plan to use analyses of their writing to determine whether or not they've mastered the skills.

Because the pre-assessment contains some copyrighted material, I'll just share the checklists here.

Language Standards Checklist

Literature Reading Standards Checklist

Armed with hard copies of the standards, web resources, plans, pre-assessments and these checklists, I'm hopeful that these new standards will prove as an opportunity to radically improve and tighten my instruction. I'll let you know how it goes!

Power at Our Fingertips: Google Docs in the Classroom

For one of my classes this summer, I had to research and present on a technology that could be used to enhance instruction. Google Doces has so many applications for language arts and other content areas - check out Google for Educators for some amazing ideas.

Here is the PowerPoint for my presentation; ironically not created in Google Docs. (I suppose because this was a solo project and not a collab.)

YostS_TechnologyPaper.presentation.powerPoint - Copy

In another class, I did a lot of work with Google Docs myself. The work included creating a project proposal in collaboration with other people in the class, creating a survey, documenting the results, and creating a presentation of the survey results and our analysis. This inspired me to begin this year by keeping track of student data with a Google Docs spread sheet. I have very little experience with Excel to begin with, so I'm sure the learning curve will be sharp. Still, I think the technology will help me stay organized, and with only two classes of students this year while I work on my MS LIS, it will be the perfect time to experiement.

Reflection on LIS636: Foundations of Information Technology

Some readers may be aware that I've begun my masters of library science for school media specialist certification at the University of Kentucky through their distance learning program. As a final assignment to an introductory technology course, my instructor asked us to present a reflection on our relationship to technology in some technologically interesting form. Naturally, I thought of The Mighty Pencil. Below are my reflections on the course projects and their classroom implications.

As this course draws to a close, I am struck by the breadth of what we learned about information technology, and the implications for professional use in my classroom this year and a school media center some day. I came into the course intimidated and unsure of what to expect, but as the course progressed, I realized I had steadier footing than I had thought in the way of technology. Still, it was nice to learn the "nuts and bolts" of computers, the history of information technology, and the language of code - both binary and html. Overall, I have found this class quite interesting, and I feel much better informed now, and thereby more empowered when it comes to utilizing all that technology has to offer me and my students.

Undoubtedly the most difficult assignment this summer was project three, for which we had to write html code that included links and an image. Sounds simple, right? That's what I thought too, until I got started. Although I nearly smashed my computer at one point (kidding), I definitely appreciated the challenging process of learning - I don't think I could have learned it more thoroughly had I been given the exact steps of the process. It was truly valuable to "play" (although "play" has far too light and positive a connotation) with the code and muddle through until I at last uncovered the appropriate paths. And when I did this website is what I developed - try to contain your supreme awe at the complexity of the design (kidding again - it's quite rustic.)

While project three may have been the most trying, our experience with Google Docs was by far the most valuable. After our collaboration project opened my eyes to the powers of cloud computing with Google software, I grew fascinated by the technology, and decided to do my final project for my other class, Current Trends in School Media, on the use of Google Docs in the classroom. I am more than a little inspired at the capacity of this software to transform instruction, particularly ELA writing instruction, in terms of collaboration and assessment. I especially like the archiving of former drafts, which can allow writing teachers to assess the progression of a writing piece through revision - something that has always been messy and cumbersome. And, as an eco-freak, I am absolutely smitten with the reduction of paper waste. Were it not for this course, I would still be very much in the dark about all that Google Docs has to offer.



Another project I really enjoyed was the creation of our websites on Google. It was a fun to create the website and imagine its potential, while getting to know our classmates far better than we could have in a regular distance learning course. Of course I saw great potential for Google's sites feature in the classroom. When my principal asked me to head the literary journal this year at Westport, I immediately thought of Google Sites as a publishing option for an online literary journal. It would be easy, green and exciting for students to get their work up and out there for the world to read. I really can't wait to get started with it, and promise to post links as my students start creating something interesting.

Aside from the immediately pragmatic benefits of this course, what I've found most valuable is the confidence that I've gained. I like knowing that RAM is Random Access Memory, that it's the "short term" memory your computer uses to operate open programs in one sitting, and that it's impermance is the reason why my student lost his writing piece when a prankster friend unplugged his computer mid-keystroke. I like knowing that cookies may have been so named for the cookie crumb trail of data they leave on your hard drive, letting advertisers know where you've been online. I like knowing that binary is computer language (even if I could never read it) and html is the language of computer programmers. I like knowing these things because it makes me feel more empowered. Now I'm more likely to click around on the computer, exploring ways to do what I want to do more efficiently, rather than just calling over my more tech-savvy husband. This sense of confidence and empowerment is one I hope to share with students as an ELA teacher this year and someday as a librarian.

WebQuest

I know I haven't been on to blog in a while, I'm ashamed to say, but a new embarkation has left me inspired. I'm currently working toward an MS of Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky with the hope of moving into school media in two years. The more I learn about school media and library science in the program, the more confident I feel that this is the right move for me to make.

One of my first projects has been to create a WebQuest on QuestGarden. Initial thought: WebQuests are awesome. They are great ways to scaffold research projects for your kiddos, and although they take a bit more time on the front end, they will no doubt cut down on a lot of stress during the unit. I plan on sharing this "Civil War Letters" WebQuest with the social studies teacher on my team.

The first month is free and you can create and save as many WebQuests as you like. You can also publish your WebQuests for that month (see mine above), but after that a paid subscription is needed to continue accessing your WebQuest. I'm going to ask for that straight away, because I can see this being a great year-long and beyond resource.