I'm drawn to this image because it has so many words. All are important, hwo do you know what to focus on. For me and the research I am going to do, I think we need to focus on critical thinking. I like how the word is larger and more pronounced to show importance. After our readings and study lately, it is hauntingly clear that we can't keep up with the lightning speed of technology. What we can do, is teach our students to think. I have come across teachers that don't quite know how to get English learners to do critical thinking. So, they just don't do it. There is still a mentality that we only focus on Depth of Knowledge level 1 type questions, especially for English learners. I will admit that it is difficult at the Elementary level for students with low levels of English to show higher order thinking skills. However, they can and do have those capabilities. We need to spend more time to figure out how to teach those skills and practice them and not assume our ELL students have cognitive limitations instead of just language limitations. Thre are many many ways to teach critical thinking with ELs. We have to have comprehensible rigorous input in the content areas for students regardless of language proficiency. What I have seen lacking is the scoffolds in place to move ELs in their language AND content. In my experience, some teachers have trouble with students lacking skills in language and content and curriculum that is far above their students skill levels. I have learned extensively about how to do this. However, the kicker is to try to manage that within the confines of a online world for 8 year olds. I have ideas and I'm slowly working toward that. I need to intoduce flipgrid to my students. I also need to figure out how to use the collaboration and communication rubrics within the conines of Zoom and 1-13 children right there observing everything. I am very dedicated to figuring it out as that is a huge part of my research but more importantly I owe it to these children that need to learn. These are importnat skills, much more important than finding the key details in text. These are skills they will need and use in all aspects of their lives to be successful. I am going to work on oral academic language skills but the goal is to have the necessary language to discuss the concepts and content taught. With the appropriate scaffolds and technology, we can absolutely work on it, we have to.
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790 Research Action Action Research is exciting. I consider myself a data person so everytime I would get the school started with SMART goals and working with teachers to test, plan and refine, that was one of my favorite things to do. So, I am ready to get started. Of course my downfall right now is time. Trying to manage my planning of my 3rd grade class and all that entails in Distance Learning and my own children, let alone my house and exercise and .... it goes on. So, my goal this week is to organize my time. Last Friday, I was able to record my students sharing an item from home in a smaller group in a Zoom breakout room. I was impressed with those that we could hear but realized that my students have some major problems with their technology or internet because there were many that we could not understand. I will have to look into that. I can't wait to look at the transcripts just to get some information. This was not an official baseline test as they were not using academic language, I just wanted to get started and test my system. So, I have some tech issues to deal with first. Reading Mertler and the detailed step by step plan for action research really helped me calm down and not feel overwhelmed as did my meeting with Dr. Redmond and Dr. Craig. I still feel worried that my research is not innoative enough but they reassured me that anything right now is innovative. I really need to take that to heart because I have never done this before, not even in the spring. It does help that I have been able to observe Zoom classes, that was the bulk of my spring activity. I would much rather be teaching than watching. I guess you could say that I had my own mini observational data session. I am also concerned about the potential to have my class change soon. Actually, it is pretty much a given that my class will change. I would like to stay home and teach but not all my students will stay home. But we will have to chalk that up to something I can't control so I have to let it go. The bright side of that is that I feel like I bonded with my class fairly quickly so hopefully we will be able to get throught the changes together and start really learning. My essential question has not changed much as I am still wondering how we can prevent long term English lerners but I will need to narrow my focus to academic oral language. Innovative learning makes me uncomforatble. There, I said it. I have been "successful" in how we have been teaching. My own children are successful in the current system. They will go to college and be successful in the current system. I also realize that we are the privileged few that will benefit from this system. We have what we need, we get to choose what we want to do. I worry my child will pick an art school, haha. But, what are they learning? Are they really learning what they need to be active participants in their lives, their community, their chosen career? They are both smart and have great critical thinking skills for their age but are their schools teaching what they need? Are they prepared? As we have learned this week, the paradigm should shift in education to keep up with the changing and somewhat frightening world. We can't prepare them by teaching them the set of facts of all they need to know by June of their 12th grade year. We have to teach them to think, process information, create new ideas, and make decisions, solve problems, ask questions, infer, collaborate and organize. These are the hot commodity for my kids and my students. I have to put emphasis on how to do these things and use the information in the standards to do it. Is it important for the 3rd graders to know that the Wappo tribe used to trade obsidian with other tribes, no. However, should they be able to evaluate what was the best course of action for the Wappo to survive so that one day they can help communities survive? Maybe. Should I change my tactic in class, absolutely. I'm still thinking about how to increase collaboration and oral academic language (and let's be honest, basic teaching on Zoom) for 3rd graders. We are still in the heavy emphasis stage of Social Emotional Learning but that is really providing some thinking and analysis for these students. We are reading and thinking about the message, theme and our connections to the books we are reading and responding with drawing and writing about our experiences. The cohorts are getting better at breakout rooms so we can start to use language and collaboration that we need to be productive as well as our higher order thinking skills. I have a long way to go in a solid distance learning experience, let alone adhering to the shift needed. But what if I use this time to do it? Could we really thrive as teachers and students now? Could I learn from my students and they learn from me in a new way? I really hope so. I commit to trying. Wow! That was depressing. Chaper 1-3 of The Flat World of Education by Linda Darling-Hammond was really upsetting and fascinating at the same time. The description of the Finland School System on pg. 5 was really interesting. It was compelling to me about using the tracking system from the high stakes testing to follow and place kids. I was thinking oh, it's good we don't do that, hey, wait a minute! We do! I had this moment a lot while reading the first few chapters. Some of the horrors of our educational system we participate in, right here in Napa. I participate in. That is a tough pill to swallow but as difficult as that may be, my eyes are a bit more open and that can only be a good thing. As the testing coordiantor for the last five years, I was intimately involved with all aspects of all tests for elementary that our district gave. I do believe in a lot of them and find use for them for sure. Are they perfect, no, not at all. (Especially after the online version of ELPAC for 5 year olds) but I do want the information from them. I want to know what our kids can do, I do want to see the gaps and address them as a system and a teacher. I also know that the tests can't be the end all, be all. My school is the lowest elementary school in Napa Unified. I did feel pressure to succeed because of that. There weren't "sanctions" but we needed to do something about it. We got more money with a ton of restrictions that it almost wasn't worth having but we are still working on that as COVID is here so we can't even use the money right now. The idea of the information doubling exponentially and that we can't teach the same way because there is so much information, we have to teach what to do with the information. That is certainly something that California schools are not completely set up to do. In looking at our standards, most of them are facts and not necessarily what to do with information. The statement about there being 12 years worth of information so there are 12 years of education, that is crazy to think about, that the limit came from that finite amount of information originally. How many years do we need? Another note that stuck with me was the lack of teacher education and teacher training as a widespread problem in the US. How wonderful, if we were taken care of like teachers in other developed nations. I feel like this is something that has bothered me from the beginning of my career. I felt woefully unprepared to teach when I got my credential, luckily, I had a mentor and wonderful team members at my school but I still remember vividly being like how do I teach guided reading? I had not one clue. I have sought out education all along, moved over on the pay scale quickly and maxed out. Now, I have no incentive nor am I paid to get more education so I didn't for years. However, I was an Academic Specialist and we had coaching and training but that program was suspended due to lack of funding so there are a bunch of us around with a lot of training, I am actually excited to try many new ideas with my class. I also did seek out becoming a Project GLAD trainer and I feel like that was a masters degree right there. Alas, that program won't continue due to lack of funding. I am seeing a pattern here. How do we manage our education dollars to meet the needs of our students, in Napa and beyond? I look forward to reading more about the solutions in the following chapters. As a person who likes to solve problems, I can't wait! When I start to think about increasing oral language for English Learners online, I must admit that I get a bit discouraged. But the more and more I think about it and research, the more important it becomes. John Hattie gives classroom discussions an effect size of .82, which is well above the .40 hinge point. That is motivation enough to work to solve this problem. The benefit of focusing on oral language is that it will help so much more than just the language skills of students. Yes, we know it will increase literacy skills, but I am also excited about the students feeling valued and being more engaged and having fun. Hattie also talks about having a dialogic classroom, where the discussions promote communication between students and value the students' views. One of the things I have noticed is low confidence and lack of risk taking for ELs, something I hope to rectify with ROBUST oral language skill instruction online. As a teacher, I need to shut my mouth and listen to students to create this envirnoment of effective talk in the classroom.
So, a challenge for me is how to create that environment in a Zoom Classroom. In elementary, I think breakout rooms were not as effective as they could have been. Students were unsupervised and did not have the skills or support to interact in the best way possible. I would like to change that, I was thinking of utilizing helpers, Americorps volunteers, intervention teachers, SPED teachers, or possible parent volunteers. I was also going to try to have multipe devices going in my zoom room so I could monitor. I would start with very easy tasks at the indroduction phase, start the breakout rooms with a high interest level as a way to train students how to use he breakout rooms effectively and report back what they did. For example, some sort of jigsaw of information but start with something easy like go count how many plants are in your house then report to the group, add up your findings and share out. or even easier what is your favorite animal. Another way to assist with teaching and sharing for EL's in distance learning is to utilize tech tools. Of course, I would have my students use Imagine Learning. But they can also utilize other programs or sites to assist with language support, Khan Academy in Spanish, Newsela in a supportive level of reading, language supports on iCivics. I would also like to try the app Read & Write to support text to speech. Specifically for oral language, I can use Digital Storytelling like book creater, shadow puppet Edu and Explain Everything. I have not looked at these tools yet, but am excited to see how we can get kids talking in academic language as much as possible. Adobe Spark could be another tool to utilize. Lastly, Flipgrid seems like an easy way for students to respond to me and to each other about what they are learning or questions they have. This really will be an investigation phase for me and even when we go to hybrid and back to school full time, some of these tools may really help students in the "regular" world. Gaming is when the learning comes from the playing of the game. I played iCivics with my daughter today, it is a game that teaches you about government. We played a game where we were lawyers and had to tell clients if they had a case, then we had to match lawyers with certain skills in certain laws and try to do it quickly. We enjoyed that and had a lot of fun. Gamification is when a teacher might bring in game elements to a lesson to motivate students to learn content. We use this in the big ending activity (Process Grid) in a GLAD Unit, the kids are super motivated and have a good time showing what they know. As with all strategies you do have to mix them up. If I did the GLAD strategy everyday they wouldn't have fun with it anymore. That leads me to think about our school programs that we have been using in NVUSD and at Snow. We use STmath, FASTT math, iRead, and imagine learning that the district pays for. Our teachers really like STmath but I am not a huge fan because I think we don't have time for it and it is not used properly so therefore it is ineffective. I feel the same about almost every program we use, we are not using it wisely so it is ineffective. I think the only one that is useful as we are using it is Imagine Learning because it is specificlly used for our upper grade newcomers. Those kiddos are in a unique and unfortunate situation in that they have arrived in the US after the bulk of phonics, vocabulary and literacy is taught. So, they tend to have gaping holes. Imagine Learning can fill that void a bit because our upper grade teachers really struggle to teach these students what they need. I would like to continue using it in the fall, especially with my ELs. I also would like to use Prodigy, Flocabulary, iCivics, and Quizzez and perhaps Class Dojo. I shared with my kids today that I was looking at a bunch of educational games. They were completely uninterested until I just got them and we looked at them. iCivics and The Oregon Trail were popular. I also have gris, Time tek, Addimals, Mt.Multiplis, and Zoombinis on deck for tomorrow. On another note, I watched Jane McGonigal's Ted Talk, which was great but then I watcher her other Ted Talk where she shared her game SuperBetter which she created after suffering from the long term effects of a concussion and was suicidal. She shared the elements of resilience in humans and SuperBetter is a a health and wellness game. It would absolutely be appropriate for High Schoolers to teach them how to pay attention to their wellness. I am not a gamer type person, I don't think the game pigeon app counts but this was phenomenal. I watched the Ted Talk from Eddie Obeng, Smart Failure for a Fast Changing World. The biggest ah ha I had was at the end when he states, "Absolutely and rational decision ,,,does this also make sense in our new work after mignight". It stuck with me because I am always rational. I plan, I evaluate, I make decisions, I follow those plans and decisions through. So, his discussion of turbulance is... a bit unsettling. I tend not to think of myself as creative but what I have come to understand that I am not creative in the artistic sense but I am in the thinking sense. I can look at a problem and come up with different ideas or solutions for said problem. I can do out of the box thinking. I was a bit usure of his discussion of the new world and learning. Because, after 24 years in education, has that much changed? No, it really hasn't. Yes, there were even computers when I started teaching. Haha! I really connected with his discussion of what we in education refer to as a growth mindset, in that we should be rewarded for trying new things, doing something different and yes even failing. That has been one of the biggest difficulties of my tenure as an Academic Specialist, that many teachers are not taking more chances. There are probably a million reasons for this but we HAVE to try new or different things to show our kids that it is ok and encouraged to try something new, we might fail and we might succeed. This risk taking is impareative in education for both teachers and students. Some teachers are telling students it is great to try but aren't showing them that and setting up an environment of failure = success.
It is interesting that I don't consider myself a risk taker but yet I really am. I am in education, in my personal life, as a parent, but not quite yet in business or financially. Not a gambler! So, in thinking about my research, I really need to mull over my ideas more and start thinking outside the box. How do I come up with something innovative? That is a bit paralyzing at the moment. Especially when there are tried and true strategies that work for ELs, but many still aren't achieving. Well, back to the drawing board on this. To Be Continued... Digital tools... I explored many digital tools this week to find if any might be useful for me now and in the future with my class. I looked at Audacity, I signed up for it and practiced using it. It was easy to use but when so many other programs can do this and more I didn't really see the point of using it for my purposes. If I was more into vocals and making them wonderful and precise this might be the tool for me. Next, up was Screencasify. I had not used this before or any screencasting program. I also thought this was easy and I really like the option of embedding your video as well. I think that is important for Elementary kids, so I will absolutely use that. I didn't play around witht the editing. I don't see myself using that as much unless catastrophe strikes. I have done many videos and feel it is pretty great to just keep going if I flub up my words or if something isn't perfect. I want my students to try things out even if it is uncomfortabe and it is important for me to model that as well. Plus, I don't think the goal is to have this perfect video. I looked at Classflow and I think I would need more support to understand and use that option but I am really inteested in using that. I am going to keep that tool on the shelf right now. Pear Deck was pretty great. I definitely see myself using this. It is an add-on for Google Classrooms, and can turn your slides into an interactive tool. It will be useful in distance learning but also while just using google slides in the regular classroom. Perhaps I am late to the game but I used Hyper Docs finally. I really enjoyed using this. I love to create lessons and units. It is sometimes hard to organize and I just end up dong like lists and things on a Google Doc and it is not super organized. I created an elaborate lesson on Rosa Parks and it was really fun, especially knowing that all the "extras" would really help students understand the content. I think Pear Deck and Hyper Docs would be easily adapted as an assessment tool. Any program where students interact or produce an be used as an assessment. I recently told a friend who is a middle school ELD teacher about Flipgrid and how we could potentially use it for ELs, She was excited as we know the extra wow factor or the not writing factor can help ALL kids engage is school but also give us information about their learning.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IN55pU1Bpd3fvxn2CGT358haWzEnBSJXKZLujWtCdM4/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IN55pU1Bpd3fvxn2CGT358haWzEnBSJXKZLujWtCdM4/edit# This week I have been reading John Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers and it really has added to my driving question. I want to focus on data driven strategies or programs to really make an impact for long term ELs. So, I have gone off on a tangent reading different articles and interpretations of Hattie's work. I also read some articles by ACSA about changing the course for LTELs. The interesting part of the research I have been doing is that there are a lot of articles about high quality ELD in elementary school and there are articles about LTELs but not about ELD and instruction specifically designed to reclassify students BEFORE they are in Middle School and High School. That is encuraging to me so it seems that I would want to combine some of these strategies or plans that schools have put in place for high school or middle school and adapt for elementary school as well as doing more mini research projects in the fall to narrow my search.
Enter Hattie, so many of the strategies that I am seeing for high quality ELD are also strategies that are good for all students, of course. For example, ACSA article, Changing Course for Long Term English Learners states that students need-
Google Forms...
I like Google for education. I use Google forms, slides, sheets and all kinds of other googly stuff. As a TOSA, I used it for adults, mostly for PD but also to gain information through surveys. It is a good tool for me. Observing my teachers start to use it for distance learning was helpful. We started to use slides and the students would make their own slides to turn in their work. This seemed fairly easy to navigate, I say this before I have to teach 8 year olds how to create their own slide on a topic of my choice from home. Ha! I absolutely will need to extend my knowledge into the realm of how 3rd grade students will use them vs. adults. I would like to try using the rubric aspect, I think this will be helpful to inform students what is needed in a lesson and how they did so they can correct themselves. I would like to use the forms with Flubaroo. I am all for using anything to help with grading, as that has always been a downfall of mine and one that I now know is a path I can not take. Students and teachers need immediate feedback. I am also interested in using forms with lesson plans. It seems a great way to organize lessons and use of standards. I still want to learn Hyper Doc and it can be used with Google so that is something to explore. In thinking about my action research project, Google forms can be a helpful tool for me. I think I would love to use it to survey students and parents to keep track of data. I need to learn the motivation, goals, and values of my end users. I think it will help keep track of my data, where students are (test scores) , what is next for them (goals) and any readjustments necessary. If I am working with a small population, I think I could use forms as a daily or semi daily check in. In person check ins would be preferred but if we are distanc learning then it would be beneficial to use this as a way to have individul time with a student or as a way for them to communicate with the teacher. There are a lot of google forms and uses still to check out. So, this week I went off task and really thought about visuals as I dove deep into Baggio. I couldn't stop thinking about what I have been doing over the last few years and wanting to go back into all my presentations and evaluate them. I also wanted to just start making new ones for my upcoming 3rd graders. Chapter 10, CRAP was a lovely little succinct summary of what to do with visuals when teaching. Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity make sense finally after the first 9 chapters, but then I do enjoy a nice checklist. Also, in thinking of distance learning and using technology for students, I can see how useful the elements of Visual Learning are right now. It was fun to think about my driving question and start looking into websites and read articles about Long Term English Learners. I am interested in what we can do with our kids in third, fourth and fifth grade who have stalled progress. What can we do at school to help? I am intrigued by the end user profile. I hadn't been thinking about the whole person. I was just thinking in terms of data and instruction, clearly lacking in the other areas that need attention. The SITE model has us diving deep into the learners' values, motivations and culture. Is that our missing piece? It makes me then think about our current events with the Black Lives Matter movement. Are we not valuing our students' culture? I like to think I am but really I have no idea. As a member of our Wellness Team and Student Study Team I have learned more and more about children and trauma over the last few years but what are we doing as a school site and a district to really value the perspective of all our students. Are we doing that? NO. We aren't. What are we going to do as educators to address this issue with our students? Will that be our answer to achievement? I am definitley a skeptic when it comes to social media in elementary school. I don't feel children are developmentally ready to properly use these tools. However, I do want to embrace the idea of teaching students how to use these tools. The idea from the article by Ariana Figuoroa, Teach Students to Use Social Media (the right way) and the Possibiites are Endless. She raised a great point about how quickly information can spread when detailing how a third grade class tweeted and it reached 300,000 people. WOW! What a great example. I do think that we should teach using social media as part of digital citizenship. Students should be taught how to interact appropriately on the internet AND social media. It can absolutely start in 3rd grade. I would envision having a teacher or class account, perhaps instagram that links to facebook. I am thinking it would be best to start using it as a tool to communicate with families and as a celebration page of what happens in the classroom. I have a teacher friend who has a separate instagram account for each school year and posts pictures and information. That is easily doable plus if we post assignments or projects and parents can communicate with teachers that would be a wonderful bonus. In thinking about Tech like a Pirae, I really would like to embrace the idea of having a class that you are "tech friends" with. We could look at their social media and comment on it together, etc. branching out and doing it in a controlled and healthy way.
I am really impressed with how some teachers have been using social media, especially in the time of COVD 19. One of my middle school teacher friends was using snapchat to get kids to come to zoom class. Some of our teachers at Snow have been really great using technology and social media to help parents get information and resources they may need. Hell hath no fury like a teacher trying to get ahold of her students. I do have to admit that I often see distraction more than opportunity when I see kids on devices on social media. After reading George Couros' article, I do see opportunity as long as we structure it. I loved his story about drowning out the negative with positive, what a way to make an instant positive experience in the moment. It is for sure something to strive for. All the readings this past week bring up a lot of questions for me in terms of my Essential Question. The main one that is hounding me is How will students be motivated to NOT be a long term English Language Learner? The SITE model asks, What values do learners hold? and What will motivate learners? That has me feeling all kinds of ways because I don't know the answer to that. The Instructional Design models have so many ideas that my head began to swim, Students need to know the information and how to use it (SITE), If no prior knowledge in an area it is very difficult to learn the new information (Baggio), when the enterprise goals are different than the learner goals (SITE), Clark seems pretty straight forward but the idea of motvation and goals the learner has to have really have me stumped. In my experience many elementary students don't really care if they pass the ELPAC, and the RI/CAASPP and become reclassified. Have we not explained it well enough? Is it too abstract? Are they able to think long term? These questions that I have don't even get into the question of how will I teach them well enough to be qualified to reclassify. Although, there are many thoughts on the potential strategies.
One thought that I did have and am mulling over is Project GLAD, could that be my saving grace? The kids have so much fun and are highly interested. They are not interested in passing a test but they are interested in learning and isn't that the goal? Could I combine the two? A few areas within ELD that I have been considering have been academic oral language and academic vocabulary and both areas are heavily taught in GLAD. As I have read about the instructional design models, I was reminded again and again what quality instruction is. Could I use these strategies that I love to address my essential question? I was one of the "lucky" teachers that did not teach teach students during distance learning. I worked with the district team to write the distance learning lesson plans and observed teachers at my school every day. On the lesson plans, part of what I did was to find resources for a content area, something I love to do. The digital tool that I used with students was Quicktime. I did not have a classroom and did not see students in any regular capacity. However, during distance learning, teachers at Snow were concerned about ELD. I was as well. I offered to record short videos of GLAD lessons that went with Benchmark to be pushed out by teachers. I used Quicktime and my trusty airpods to record the lessons. I had only recorded myself teaching in front of a live audience with someone else recording so there were a few differences that had to be worked out. Postitioning of the computer/camera needed to be at the right height and distance because I was using paper materials, either on the wall or as a book. During ELD in a regular class there is a lot of gestures but that didn't play well for the camera nor did positioning the materials or moving them around but it was easy to correct after a few tries. The biggest part of ELD and specifically GLAD strategies is student interaction, as there was not any, I had to pause and wait for them to theoretically turn and talk to someone (dog, stuffed animal was fine too) at home. The videos were then put on safeyoutube and I just linked them to a doc and sent that to teachers. I had to make sure the lessons were no longer than 10 minutes as that would be much too long for elementary school. I think it worked really well, it was easy to use and edit. Teachers responded well but not all of them used it, as time went on there was so much for kids to do and we were conconerned about overwhelming them. The kids who watched enjoyed them, I think it was nice to have a familiar face vs. a random person on youtube. Plus, the content was exactly what they were learning about in their morning ELA class. I think I used the right tool for the job, it was easy to manage and got the job done. I would absolutely use this in the fall for these types of lessons as I think one area of improvement for NVUSD distance learning would be to have more teaching "presentations" be on video and allow the in person meetings be to clarify, discuss and connect.
I always try to connect lessons thematically to kill two birds with one stone. As educators, we do not have time to teach standards in isolation. So, one of the things I have focused on in professional development with my teachers is to teach a lesson with multiple objectives, most often a content objective and a language objective. So, we have worked on teaching Benchmark (our elementary ELA curriculum) and using ELD to teach language and the topic/content that started in Benchmark, like for example Government. So, in looking at the resources this last week I was able to see many that would fit right in with our current curriculum and standards. The resources Common Sense Media and Civic Online Reasoning have sections to protect kids from misinformation. These lessons would work very well when we are teaching critical thinking and point of view both in reading and writing. They break down the way to think and research content online. This is one of the most important tasks we as educators need to teach as the media, online sources and social media, etc. are more and more savvy. Our students, espcially young students really don't have the experience or skills to determine accurate information and what to look for. I can think of quite a few adults who may need this as well. These lessons can teach that for elementary learners.
There was a section on ADL called Talking about Race, I think would be great way to start the conversations about race that is needed to move beyond every elementary classroom teaching about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in January. To actually look at yourself and define yourself and teach about others experience, these are the topics that have not been addressed in most classrooms, including my own in the past. It would certainly fit in our SEL curriculum and easily discussed in communtiy circle time. We have seen a huge need for this type of education at our school. Thinking about the readings do Dervin, Clark and Baggio really had me thinking about Project GLAD. I am a trainer for Project GLAD in NVUSD. So, I was reflecting on how I train teachers and how the GLAD strategies work within the different pedagogy that was discussed in all the reading.
As an Acadmic Specialist, we discussed a lot the amount of information that recipients can handle at one time. But we really struggled with the amount of information that needed to get out. In a Project GLAD training the information is HUGE! There is so much but it is sort of a get the inormation out and it starts to make sense over the course of the 6 day training. One of the main reasons that I love GLAD strategies so much is that it brings fun back into the classroom. When I was reading Chapter 2 in The Visual Connection, Baggio described why visuals are so important. under the section about Attention. Attention is the first of "Nine Events of Instruction". If we don't have student attention then they will not learn as much obviously. One concrete example I have of that is I was doing a 3 day demonstration in 3rd/4th grade classroom at my school so I knew the students. There was a boy in the class (not my class) that I knew well because he often got into trouble, he was not fluent in academic English and had gone back and forth to Mexico for most of his schooling, he was homeless and his mother was in a domestic abuse situation. He was just not interested in school and I really couldn't blame him. I was very aware and had to teach him and train teachers. My teaching partner and I purposely included him, made him accountable, brought the content to his academic level and sought him out to be an expert. He was thrivinig! It was such an example to me how well these strategies work with students. He was engaged and had zero attention or behavior issues. One of the main reasons is GLAD is based on visuals and oral language at first. When I taught him to be an expert at tornadoes at the end of the 4 days, he knew he had to go back and teach his group so he was really paying attention and I had to prepare him for that. He had the buy in that Baggio discussed in Chapter 2. So, even though our training is quite dense, by the end we see the results from Day 1 to Day 4. Is it magical for all teachers all the time, of course not because not everyone has what Baggio described as what adult learners need, attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction. Thank goodness I'm taking this class! I really had little knowledge about digital citizenship and that there were ready made lessons available. I have been stuck in data and assessment for the last 6 years so I didn't really have to deal with this topic much. I'm headed back to the classroom in the fall and my kid is headed to Middle School. It is high time I figured this stuff out!
I watched some videos on Common Sense Media, I have only ever looked at it to see if games, movies and shows were appropriate for my girls so the lesson plans were a pleasant surprise. I love the lessons available. I can see how they are easily adaptable and user friendly and so so relevant in our distance learning world. Using the lessons in class, if we have it would be much more useful. I can see pairing students together to watch videos and then teach the other kids what they were about. It would be easily adaptible to online class too. Another video I watched had the 4th grade lesson about Superheroes. It was so fun. I love having the kids make a comic strip with the hero as the person who has good digital citizenship. The students could really get into that and it connects with what they are learning elsewhere too by having them write and talk with their partner. Using technology is a great way to have students work together, espcially to address how to use good citizenship, we could also address some of the questions/discussions in the lessons during our class meeting time. Class meetings are a great way to discuss problems, potential problems or feelings. There are so many ways to make digital citizenship personalized for students. I am grateful, students have learned many of the necessary digital tools needed for distance learning, we will obviously have to build on that. It does appear that perhaps digital citizenship doesn't seem to be taught until maybe 4th or 5th grade at my school, at least that is when problems start to crop up. But much like procedures and expectations, we need to teach student to be knowlegdeable, skillful and have the resources to be successful and safe digitally. Imagine if we teach it and expand on that every year? Just like our standards for ELA and math we should teach the technology standards. I honestly have never looked at them until yesterday. ;/ During our lockdown students (and families) had to really fast forward quickly on the standards, many grade levels were doing things that were quite advanced on the fly. It will definitley be a priority in August. The biggest takeaway for me on digital citizaenship is that I need to teach my daughters how to be a good digital citizens. So far, my tactic has been to with hold even though I am grateful to their school for teaching some of the lessons but I just deny them access to many things that soon they will come into contact with. I think that would have been my strategy for my new third grade class but with such a heavy emphasis on technology and my newfound knowledge that plan must change. I think my aversion to education research started in college. I had a professor who taught my education theory class, he was a researcher and not a successful teacher. He knew it and told us early on that he had read his reviews from students and knew his strengths. He announced that we could come to class on test days and he would only include material from the reading material on the tests. I knew myself as a learner by this point and always attended class and did the homework in order to get good grades. I decided to try a new tactic with this class by not going. It ended up to be successful for me but it was a test of my strategy. Yes, I passed but the education theory was still not my cup of tea.. I am much better with concrete ideas. The article, Qualitative Research in Information Management was tough to decipher but it really made me feel for all my students when they have to read a text that is challenging. I started by trying to write down the difficult vocabulary words and what they meant, but quickly realized that would be futile. So, I then was determined to just do a cold read in the close reading style. I really found myself struggling with that as well, mostly attention wise. Of course, my children running around playing didn’t help but it made me realize that my behaviors were just like some students I had encountered. Just like my English language learners, I could read the words but did not understand what I was reading. I started to read it in small parts and then summarize in my head in layman's terms, that was a bit better. The author was trying to teach us about the principles and process of information gathering for research.
A difficult text like this should have many scaffolds in place. A few that I was thinking was to have some sort of frame of reference, much like the end of the text when it discusses the exemplars. The vocabulary was extremely difficult for me and we would need to teach the vocabulary before and during reading the text. I think students could read this in small group and discuss questions for each small section with their group. In addition, I think a paper copy would be beneficial so students could mark the text. I think a visual representation and/or charts would help to understand. On page ,,, the diagram did enhance understanding and that would help all students with a difficult task. It’s basically all of those reading comprehension strategies that we use to help understand text. As usual, when I read articles, attend professional development, attend meetings and observe teachers, I am always thinking about how I would do it. Reading these three articles were no exception. Personalized learning and competency based learning absolutely has a place in education. One of the first things that came to mind was the how part with our mandated standards and curriculum. Of course, then I started to think about how could I really do it if I was trying to get around or include those things that are mandatory in California and NVUSD. I also strongly do believe in standards and curriculum so I am not one to “throw them out”. I have always been one to adapt based on my students needs. I do feel that we need to personalize learning much more than has been utilized before. In elementary school, especially K-2, there is a lot more personalized learning as they teach small groups much more than upper elementary. I do not know my grade level in the fall yet or even my assignment but I do know that small groups have a huge part in my classroom regardless of grade level, especially if we are going to do a distance learning hybrid. Students need to be appropriately challenged and NOT doing busy work to fill their day at home or at school. I think competency learning comes into play nicely when it corresponds to the work that students are doing in class or at home. Meaning that it is not something that stands alone and is not revisited or taught or touched upon with the teacher, peers or work. The biggest way to personalize learning is with small groups. It was my mission last year to finally get my teachers to use small groups during reading as there are vast differences of ability and the language arts curriculum was/is so far above most students' capability. I went into each classroom for two weeks, about 3-4 times per week to help set up small groups. I prepared a lesson for a targeted group, used our intervention materials and taught that group while the teacher taught or monitored the “other” kids. As it was midyear, we did not have to do a ton of procedure teaching. The next week, the teacher and I would swap roles, she would take the small group and I took the “other” group. The teachers and I met to discuss how it went, what to change, what to keep and how to continue. I absolutely would use this model in any classroom or grade level, making sure that groups were fluid, sometimes only pulling one student at a time based on need. Technology(like Dreambox) can be a wonderful tool for this particular model. One, students can be occupied while the teacher is teaching and it is useful teaching where they are getting instruction that is adaptable to their needs as well as informing the teacher what those needs are so they can correct the course as explained in the article “Teaching in a Competency Based Education Environment.” In the article, “What does Personalized Learning Mean”, it discusses a typical day or an order to setting up personalized learning that thought was quite helpful especially how we would need to adjust learning in the fall due to Covid 19. I like how it addresses mindset, and the idea that we don’t need to teach part of the curriculum or standards because the kids already know the information is an exciting idea. It makes complete sense and it goes back to what we used to do a while ago when we as teachers had more freedom to teach as we saw fit for our students. If a teacher gives a pretest and the students do well and we still go on to teach the unit and then test again, what is the point of that? It makes complete sense to have students not do work they already know how to do. My own child has been doing I Station at home in spanish. I do not know the program as a teacher, only as a parent. I don’t know if it changes based on how she does or if it just keeps plugging along based on the format that was preset. Well, she is bored stiff on it because it is below her level. I don’t know if she didn’t do well on the pretest and it placed her there or if that is where every second grader is placed. All I know is she does not want to do her 20 minutes daily. I am sure that is how many of our students are feeling when they are on programs or doing classwork that is below or far above what they need. We absolutely need our programs to adjust to our students regardless of whether they are computer based or not. Classroom decision making or student agency is absolutely something that I have always done as a teacher and as a parent. I used to think it was because I was lazy. Haha. I really realized that I wasn’t going to do something for a student they couldn’t do for themselves. I didn’t write their names on their books, or even pass out their books or answer all their questions, they are capable of doing that for themselves and each other. Of course, I do things for my class and children to show care and love but my energies are better spent in other areas. It is beneficial for them to know what they can do and feel confident in that. That extends to their learning, they can write a paragraph on their own if I have properly taught them, they can choose a friend to work with if I have set that up with the class. I really like the line in the article, “Encourage the humans to be optimizing their decision making”. It goes back to using the tools you have in the most appropriate way. As a teacher, I will make those decisions, perhaps this is my one to grow on, taking more of a backseat and letting students take on more of a role in decision making. |
About the AuthorI teach 3rd grade in Napa Unified. Archives
December 2020
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