I opted to work with a project-based activity rather than a problem-based activity for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to incorporate as many ISTE standards as I could in an effective way. To do that, and allow the students to design their own understanding following a more constructivist approach, the students are building a functioning web site that will allow them to explore a variety of language arts standards through an independent novel study. The focus of the novel study will be on identifying figurative language, acquiring new academic vocabulary, writing for extended periods of time and for various purposes, collaborating with others, text comprehension, and critical thinking skills. Students can find enrichment in design, learning programming skills like HTML manipulation and embedding videos. Those students who struggle will find a new avenue to express their knowledge.
To accomplish this task, students have to read the novel at home and work on preparing their responses and identified information. In class they will be using the Chromebooks available to construct the web site using Weebly or Google Sites, depending on the age of the students, as discussed previously. Since several students take their device home the choice of how the class time is used is ultimately up to the student. They can operate in a flipped type environment or in a more traditional setting. The summative assessment of the unit will be the actual web site and the contents therein. I will be looking at all of the major components of writing: conventions, organization, ideas, citing sources, etc. All of these can be found on the rubric. There are some completion aspects to the rubric, such as having a certain number of posts and pages. Students will also be grading one another’s work along the way, and assessing their progress. To complete this task I have created a google form in which students can choose their partner, work through a digital rubric, give feedback, and communicate the results to myself and to the “grade-ee” simultaneously, simply by submitting the form. These are formative assessments, and are meant to help the students find areas of opportunity in their work. These assessments were chosen for expediency, instant feedback, and ease of use for the students. Rubrics are great ways to provide consistent messages of expectations and allow students to know what will be assessed, much like in the expectations of a job. The speed at which a teacher can complete a rubric gives them time to provide detailed feedback about specific areas of the assessment. I think that this type of feedback is more authentic because you can focus on the good bad, and ugly and give precise criticism or praise. There are other minor assessments throughout the project, such as miniature presentations of the web site and tech tips to show off, as well as regular meetings with me to check for conventions, comprehension, and content. I’ve wanted to adapt this unit for the past year or so, but unfortunately I have felt a little stuck. I’m hoping that the more collaborative nature of the assignment with more of a global connection will enhance the student’s interest in the novel and their understanding of the English language as it relates to novel writing.
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To continue with the website building unit plan, I decided to incorporate a Popplet into my curriculum. I’ve used Padlet and other similar tools in the past with pretty good success, but I had never tried to use Popplet before. I like the program because of the workflow and thought-cloud format and the ease of use. This tool could come in handy a lot for students to share information that is readily found in the book as well as to have some help with concepts that are difficult for some students, in this case, literary devices and figurative language. This is a student centered lesson because it affords students the opportunity to communicate and collaborate in the classroom and out, with or without the assistance of the teacher, who is there to facilitate the learning rather than direct it.
In this instance I will be using the Popplet to have students categorize different literary devices that they discover while reading the book Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan. Students can add their own findings, modify or re-categorize what others found, make comments on what their peers found, etc. This will be an ongoing activity that will be incorporated into the daily activities throughout the novel study. The students will create concept webs using Popplet to show examples of the figurative language that they find in the book. Rather than creating an entire page of their website dedicated to this they can instead embed the tool into their website where it makes sense to them. I decided on this because of the students’ familiarity with the graphic organizer and how simple it is for me to read it. The purpose of a Popplet is to group ideas and create an easy-to-follow graphic. For the purposes discussed above, Popplet appears to be the best route, both in function and appearance, to achieve the objective I have determined for my students. Review the various blogging platforms suggested in this workshop's readings and learning activities.
Create a 350- to 700-word blog for classroom purposes. Include the following in your blog:
I keep a professional blog about things that interest me and things that might interest my students and their parents. In the past this has included my thoughts on assignments, teaching at different grade levels, cursive writing vs. keyboarding skills, and more. Now I'm including my school assignments! I advertise my new blog posts via Twitter to increase readership, but that number is still a little too low for my liking. The blog serves a purpose in my classroom- I try to engage the students and their parents in my thought process, as scary as that may be. I want them to know that sometimes a plan that I have falls apart or an idea that worked out really well. I believe that it's important for students to know that we make mistakes as well and that we think about how to correct them. It's a pathway to success to understand your weaknesses and then work on them. It fosters hard work and metacognition. It transforms errors into opportunities rather than end-of-the-world failures. This is turn helps to create a positive classroom atmosphere. Likewise, it is not a far jump, or even a change in the purpose of my blog, to use it as a direct tool for discussion in my classroom. If my ultimate goal is to connect with other professionals in education, opening up my classroom to them achieves that purpose as well. In my classroom I have the students use Blogger, partially because of the ease in which it connects with their school accounts. It is also a fast and easy way to create a blog and easily build up a readership for the students within their own learning communities. I know first hand that taking the time to write something and express your thoughts is daunting, and frustrating when no one sees it! Next year my goal is to incorporate blogging into a novel study by connecting with another class in a different part of the world. One of the novels takes place in India and another in Alaska. This would be an awesome opportunity for my students to be able to ask questions of the different cultures! Following that, students will be required to write comments and respond to their readers in away to engage their audience. The responses do not need to be outrageously long, especially for 6th grade students,but 150 words is not out of the question. I'm aiming for frequency of use more than one long drawn out response because I believe that the engagement and excitement will be kept higher, and the frequency of the responses will keep the blogging feeling fresh. I will also link in my blogs the social media of whichever organization or person is relevant to the discussion. This is authentic, and will help bring the outside world in. This blog post is actually a part of an assignment for a class that I am doing. The post is about using a collaborative and communicative tool to reach different learners in the classroom. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I am choosing to write this about a unit plan that I have tweaked and reworked for different ages and abilities of learners. While there are no names of students listed, I am basing this on an actually class that I taught last year, which contained a wide range of students from a varied learning background. Please feel free to comment on or discuss anything that I have written below!
Mr. Hopper ELA 6th grade Tool: Weebly or Google Sites Learners: Any level- typical classroom with ~30% IEP, 15% Gifted and Talented, 55% Traditional Activity: students will create a fully functioning website in place of a book report, including a blog for communication and visibility Reflection: I tried the website building activity again, and I had similar results the second time through. One of the big things that I found was that, again, not all students read the book! But I'm not going to focus on that aspect of the assignment for now. Rather, I want to look at the use of blogs and the communication therein. I chose to utilize the blogs for several reasons. The biggest factor in my decision was the visibility the students would receive from other classes, the author herself, and their parents and peers. Next was the ability to write over an extended period of time (nearly 2 months for the project) about a variety of different topics. Finally, I wanted them to have the exposure of writing in a different, and less formal, form. Actually teachers report that, according to Kathleen Morris, a blogger for TheEduBlogger.com, "the top three reasons for using student blogs in 2016 were assignments/assessments (34.3%), reflective blogging (29.6%), and collaboration/discussion (32.6% ) (2018). I feel like this accurately depicts the reasons for my assignment. The biggest advantage to having the students maintain a blog is that there is "evidence of student learning over time" (Morris, 2018) It shows me the growth, or lack thereof, that students make as they progress through the novel and how their understanding of the characters and content develops. There is also something to be said for developing one's thoughts from writing in a variety of different settings, formats, and more. It was also helpful to have students working together in proofreading and challenging the ideas of others. The disadvantages that I saw are actually mostly reparable! I felt limited by only getting my own classes to peruse the work of others with any consistency. I would like to try and extend this unit plan to another teacher in my district who is reading the same novel and see what we can get out of it. I think that having people that they may not know read their work would also encourage the students and provide them with some motivation to push themselves to do better. Another drawback that I found is the speed at which different students complete the tasks. I found some great extension activities for this, such as including time for Hour of Code, Typing.com, and learning to code with HTML. All of these activities allowed for enrichment and high interest and engagement. It was also the carrot for many students to push themselves. Morris, K. (2018). Primary Tech. Retrieved from http://primarytech.global2.vic.edu.au/2018/03/14/benefits-blogging/ Morris, K. (2018). The current state of educational blogging 2017/2018. Retrieved from https://www.theedublogger.com/survey-2017-2018/ I don't believe that cursive writing is unnecessary. Maybe it's just an old holdout of mine, but I think it's a useful skill. I am an advocate of tactile writing. I personally use a fountain pen and a drafting pencil exclusively, sometimes a Dixon Ticonderoga, and I take most of my notes in either sketchpads or dot notebooks. I prefer to print in pen and write in cursive in pencil, except when signing my name.
There are a couple of reasons for this: 1. There is a different type of connection to your writing. It's like farming or hunting your own food rather than buying it from the grocery store. 2. It's more personal 3. I'm a nerd and fountain pens are cool. I think that as we ask students to write for extended periods of time it's important to have a connection to your work. There are so many fewer distractions on paper than on a screen. It's tiring and frustrating when you make mistakes, which forces corrections to be made by hand. Those amendments to your writing by hand stick with you, just like taking notes on paper. Ok, that all said, we absolutely need to spend more time on word processing skills and document creation because students come to use missing those skills just as much as they are lacking in reading, writing, or math proficiency. Keyboarding skills should be a part of some curriculum! |
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December 2018
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