In the coming week, my students will be learning all about the landforms that exist on our planet. Making this type of learning become more visual, I again turned to my trusted www.biguniverse.com account for help! I began by searching for books using the keyword, “landforms,” and was pleased to find many interesting books that I could assign to students and use in a whole class lesson on my interactive white board.
After looking at many of the titles listed below, I realized that not only are these books recent publication, but many of them can be found at my local library. However, rather than having only one or two copies of the book for my entire class, I now have a copy for every student by using Big Universe Learning. Additionally, these titles can be accessed at home for students who are absent (which tends to happen around cold and flu season!), students who need information front loaded, or students who wish to do independent study projects outside of school.
Suggested Titles on Big Universe Learning- Landforms
Looking at Landforms by Ellen Mitten (This title can also be found in Spanish on Big Universe Learning to support ELL students.)
Investigating Landforms by Lynn Van Gorp
Mountains by Emily K. Green
Rivers by Emily K. Green
In addition to visiting www.biguniverse.com to search for books, I also visit a site to find activities and lessons that I can do with my students on the interactive white board. My favorite site to visit (which happens almost daily now!) is SMART Exchange. This is a site which holds Lessons and Activities for nearly any subject or content area. The great part about these resources is that they are mainly created by teachers who are currently in the classroom. When I’m teaching a concept, I search by keyword, and find amazing resources. After previewing the activity, I can download it onto my computer to use at a later time. I can use the activity in its original form, or I also have the ability to modify the activity to meet my instructional needs. Using this resource has saved time trying to create new interactive lessons from scratch. Additionally, most of the postings are visually stimulating and offer interactive activities/ games to be used by the class.
Note: SMART Exchangerequires a teacher to set up a FREE account in order to access these amazing resources.
To begin this unit on Landforms, I also send an email to all of my parents with links to YouTube videos about Landforms. This is a great way to inform parents regarding the content their child will be learning in the coming days. For this unit, I plan to send my parents the following link:
Landforms- Educational Songs By The Obies
This week, I worked with one of my guided reading groups on using nonfiction conventions to support comprehension of informational text. I began by assigning the text Why Animals Live in Hives, which can be found and assigned to students on Big Universe Learning’s website. The students in this group were able to read the text prior to our group meeting date, and become familiar with the content.
Once we met as a group, we began to dissect the informational text and analyze the various features. During a pre-assessment opportunity, I became aware that these students were not strong in using section headings, table of contents, and the glossary to support their comprehension of the text. Throughout the lesson, we examined the informational text and discussed these specific features.
After our initial discussion, the students began working in pairs on specific activities related to nonfiction conventions.
Nonfiction Activities:
- Creating questions based on the table of contents.
- Determine the main idea and supporting detail of each section.
- Locate the definition of the important vocabulary related to the topic as found in the glossary.
- Answer literal comprehension questions, which required locating specific information/ facts in the text.
- Reflective questions, which asked the student to determine the most important fact in the text and provide reasons why they determine it to be the most important.
Once the students are finished with their partner activity, we will discuss their answers, and discuss how using nonfiction conventions can support comprehension.
The final application of their learning will be in the form of an independent study project. Students will determine a topic of interest, create six questions related to the topic (teacher support and guidance), and then obtain informational text related to their topic. From this point, they will determine the answers to their questions from the informational text. Students will then display their learning through a technological program of their choice and present to the group.
Note: www.biguniverse.com has many informational text titles to choose from when planning for your guided reading groups. It is very simply to assign the text to the whole class, or a specific group of students.
This year, my professional goal setting has expanded to include 21st century learning skills that are at the forefront of educational news and educator professional development. The idea behind 21st century skills and incorporating them into classrooms is to utilize technology to help students build those skills necessary for the future. Information related to 21st century learning skills suggest that classrooms should include creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration.
Obviously, blogging has become a major part of my professional dialogue through Big Universe Learning, and I have seen first hand the impact that blogging can have on my teaching development and continuous sharing of innovative ideas. I wanted to provide my students with the same type of opportunity to communicate and collaborate with their peers in a 21st century form. (The site that I use for classroom blogging is www.kidblog.org since it is extremely user friendly and easy for primary age students to understand.)
When initially setting up our classroom blog, I introduced the concept to my students through examples of how people use blog sites in their everyday lives. Then, as a class we determined the topics and expectations that all blogs should follow. In addition, we discussed in great detail the information related to Internet safety.
Internet Safety Concepts:
- Understanding that the Internet is viewable to the public (Regardless of being password protected.)
- Students should never use their first and last name, and the location in which they live or go to school on a blog post.
- Students should never put a picture of themselves on a blog post. However, pictures of objects related to the main idea of their post are acceptable.
- Comments written on the blog site should be appropriate, and the comment should be directly related to the main idea of the blog post.
- Students should only sign into the blog site with their unique username/ password. Using another student’s password information without permission is considered “hacking” into their account.
Each student’s first blog post was a controlled topic which helped to introduce the students to all the features of publishing a blog post, as well as, viewing their peers’ postings and leaving appropriate comments. My students created “Transitional Phrase Stories” titled “A Day in My Life,” which helped to introduce them to their peers, while also meeting academic content standards for Language Arts.
From this first blog posting, students have been encouraged to post blogs related to the agreed upon topics. (Personal experiences with family, sporting events, books and vacations, etc. Or, students can blog about concepts that we are learning about in the classroom. Our blog topic list is ever expanding.) To my surprise, many of my students have not only enjoyed posting new blogs for their peers to read, but have also left meaningful and creative responses to others’ postings. All comments are subject to teacher approval, making it easy for educators to monitor comments for appropriateness. Additionally, each week I post a blog related to literature or a learning concept, and encourage students to leave comments to promote an online dialogue. Not only are my students visiting their blog at school, but many of them are also logging on at home!
This week, I posted the following blog topic:
“We have been using www.kidblog.org for a few weeks now, and many of you are becoming comfortable with how to post and leave comments. Think back to your experiences with this site, and leave a comment to reflect on the following question: What do you like most about blogging?”
Popular Student Comments:
- “I like reading what other kids blog.”
- “I like being able to talk to my friends.”
- “I like it because I can talk to my friends at my house.”
- “Sending comments to friends about books.”
- “I love sending comments.”
- “I like it because I can talk with my class when I’m not in school, and it is cool to blog with my class!”
- “I like it because you get to blog and send comments.”
- “I like it because my friends can read what I write.”
Classroom blogging has greatly impacted my students’ willingness to share ideas, communicate and collaborate creatively, while also meeting reading and writing academic content standards! I hope my experience encourages other educators to take a risk and introduce students to the world of blogging!
Last week, my class began experiencing a 21st century pen-pal opportunity with a primary grade class from a neighboring district. I’ve encouraged my students to converse with pen pals in previous years; however, this year their pen-pal experience was quite different.
After attending a professional development session this summer regarding 21st Century Skills, I wanted to adapt my pen-pal activities to align with the skills of creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, and communication and collaboration. A great part about today’s educational world is the influx of technology in classrooms that can be used to address these skills. 21st Century learning is not only about using technology, but the learning skills developed while using technology.
This year, our first interaction with our pen-pal class was through Skype. The other classroom teacher and I met previous to this Skype session to set a timeline of events and curriculum alignment. During our Skype session, the class got to see each other, briefly share about our classroom, compare the two classrooms, and learn about the subsequent activities that would follow.
In the following two and a half weeks, each classroom will be reading Flat Stanley: His Original Adventure by Jeff Brown. Students will be working on comprehension activities such as main idea/ details, summarizing and sequencing events. After the completion of the text, the students will create their own “Flat Stanley” adventure in their respective elementary schools.
Students will place in small collaborative groups where they will be responsible for designing a creative adventure for Flat Stanley. Each group will write a script, record their adventure using a classroom Flip Camera, and then insert the video into a class Keynote (power point) presentation. Within each group’s scripts, they will be using concepts such as transitional phrases, telling time concepts, and fluency/expression when recording.
At the end of the two and a half weeks, the two classrooms will exchange presentations. We will view each other’s presentation in order to learn more about the schools and get to know the “adventures” that happened to Flat Stanley. Then, we will Skype again and discuss the presentations. At this time, students can ask questions and offer affirmations related to the presentations.
From the beginning, my students have been extremely excited, interested and motivated by this project. This project encompasses many of the 21st century learning skills that all students should have the opportunity to develop while attending school.
While on a recent trip to Northampton, Massachusetts, I began to think about how people use literacy everyday. My husband and I love visiting local “hot spots” while traveling. While this trip was quite short in duration, it wasn’t short of enjoyment. Before traveling, my husband and I found information related to the town, restaurants and local entertainment. Understanding how to use practical travel literature is an important task, and can be a valuable lesson in the classroom.
Prior to going on a class field trip, try to provide information about the location and activities they will experience during the trip. Many locations offer brochures or have websites that describe the site. Just as adults seek this type of information when planning trips, students should have the same experience. Or, when the class returns from the trip, the students could create their own travel brochures highlighting the important information and activities that they gained during the experience.
While reading literature to students, try visiting http://www.googlelittrips.org/ to help connect the location of the story to a real location on earth using Google Earth. This site is FREE and contains a variety of text to choose from. The site contains a video tutorial for novice users, and encourages teachers and classrooms to create their own “lit trip” to contribute to the site. This technology has created a way for teachers to bring the outside world into their classrooms by making connections to great books.
Making literacy practical and pertinent to everyday life creates a strong argument that it is extremely important. Regardless if your class is leaving the school on a trip or not, traveling literacy should hold a place in your classroom and your students should experience the world around them!
The world lost a pioneer this month. I know that this is an unusual topic for our Blog, but bear with me, please. Michael S. Hart passed away on September 6, in his home in Urbana, Illinois. While not exactly a household name, Mr. Hart has changed the way that we teach, read, and share information. You see, Mr. Hart was credited with inventing the “eBook” in 1971. An amazing four decades ago, while he was a student working on computers at the University of Illinois, Mr. Hart was given access to a network-connected mainframe computer, with the goal of improving his skills. Grateful for this opportunity, he looked for a way to repay the university, and apparently, as he often said, he was just at the right place at the right time. While shopping for groceries on the Fourth of July, he was given a fake parchment reproduction of the Declaration of Independence. He thought that, if he put it online, it would not only preserve the information, but would allow the people on the small network to access it at any time. That single document was followed by thousands more, as Mr. Hart recruited hundreds of volunteers to help him manually type or scan thousands of classics in the public domain and copyrighted works they had permission to reproduce. Mr. Hart began to build the massive library known as Project Gutenberg, named after the 15th-century inventor of the printing press. (Langer)
And so, the digital book was born.
It seems unbelievable that a self-described “truck driver who got loose in academia”, (Langer) would become the force behind the shift that would rock the publishing world. It makes me wonder what they next step in publishing might be, and whether, somewhere on a college campus, a student has already begun the shift. Will we be content with eBooks and portable readers, or is there another dimension to books that we can take one step further? Since the books are the content, and not the format, how can they be produced to become even more accessible and appealing to the world’s readers? If Mr. Hart can conceive of the digital library while the Internet was still in its infancy, and generations before iTunes was conceived, perhaps we cannot even see the next shift in reading. However, I think that we will be much more receptive to changes in the way we read, now that Mr. Hart has paved the way.
Source
Langer, Emily. “Project Gutenberg creator Michael S. Hart dies at 64.” 8 September 2011. The Washington Post. 10 September 2011 .
At a recent School Librarians’ workshop, a very prestigious and knowledgeable speaker addressed the growing popularity of library eBook collections. He spoke at length about eReaders, and the expense of accumulating enough hand-held devices to meet the demand of borrowers. He taught me about the dangers of eyestrain, and of E-ink’s supposed benefits over backlit LCD readers. He discussed the controversy surrounding one particular eBook publisher who has limited the number of circulations that each eBook can have in one library. He spoke very engagingly, but the discussion turned away, I felt, from the true problem of loaning eBooks through libraries.
Books are not the paper that they are printed on, but the content and ideas within the covers. Libraries circulate books in all forms; it is becoming easier and more feasible to collect large numbers of eBooks in public, university and school libraries, and we feel very proud when we can point out how many e-volumes the library loans. However, are we discriminating against the less fortunate when we use library funds to purchase eBooks without also buying readers on which they can be enjoyed? If we loan audiobooks and eBooks, are we obligated to also loan the means by which a borrower can read that book? Or should we assume that the library user has an eReader or a CD player or a computer at his/her disposal? This is not as much of an issue in schools, as there are usually enough computers available which can be used for both functions; however, books are borrowed from school libraries to be used outside of those four walls.
As libraries transform collections from dusty paper to digital format, as I am sure they eventually all will, there must be a way to make certain that the collections are, as Melvil Dewey envisioned, free and accessible to all.
Without question, all educators encompass a wide range of comfort when using and implementing technology into their classrooms. This discrepancy can exist within the same school and grade level, making the technology experience of some students far greater than others. Realizing the lack of equity is only half the battle. Administrators and Teacher Leaders need to then devise a plan to help educate those teachers so that they are less intimidated, and begin to realize the educational impact technology can have on students in today’s classrooms.
Professional Development Offerings
PD sessions should be offered within each school building related to technology in the classroom. Sessions should include topics from initial set up features, to implementation practices to meet educational standards. Since there will undoubtedly be a variety of needs in a single building, there should be a variety of topics offered to help meet the needs of the educators. Encourage teachers who have experience using technology to lead these sessions. Professional development will help those teachers build confidence, thus making it more likely they will use it in their classroom.
Technology Schedules
One of the most common excuses that I often hear when it comes to using technology is #1 other teachers in the building are always using it so it is never free for them to use, or #2 the technology is never working or charged when they need to use it in their classrooms. These two excuses can be overcome by creating a technology schedule for the building. My elementary building has taken inventory of when specific grade levels would like to use the technology each day. We then created a schedule to reflect these requests, along with scheduled charging times. Technology is stored in specific locations in the building, and all teachers understand how to care for the technology with regards to charging methods.
Grade Level Teams
One of the most inequitable occurrences when using technology can exist in a single grade level. Visualize this scenario: There are two teachers who teach the same grade level in a particular elementary. One teacher uses and implements technology into their teaching and student learning daily, while the other teacher rarely does. The students in each of these classrooms are getting a very different education. To avoid this inequitable educational setting, grade level teams need to support each other and plan together to ensure that all students are getting the same education regardless of their teacher.
Get Over It!
Yes, just get over the fact that you will probably not be a technology expert. Even though a teacher is not an expert, the students should still be able to use the technology in the classroom. Don’t worry, the students will know more and be more of a risk taker when it comes to technology than the teacher. Encourage students to support one another in the classroom, and capitalize on their technology discoveries!
Building literacy, for me, involves doing something with the materials that are read or written.
I am a fan of students completing projects to go along with book they have read or are currently reading. On ReadWriteThink, I found a project for creating Character Trading Cards. Although this type of project could be done not using technology, I think the interactivity of the project on ReadWriteThink makes it much more engaging for students.
The directions are clearly outlined on the site to create Character Trading Cards. This may seem to students like just a fun activity, but the pieces of information the student has to enter for the creation of the card will give the teacher key insights to the ability of the student to comprehend, synthesize, and pay attention to detail. One starts a card simply by typing their name, the name of the main character, and the title of the story.
After submitting that information, the students gets to see the creation of the trading card. Each time questions are answered providing new information, the card being created changes (immediate feedback?).
There are 5 sections (or types of information) used to create this card: description, insights, development, statements/actions, and impressions. The questions for each of these sections require students to think about what they have read and not just copy an answer straight for the book. Part of reading and understanding and story is being about to think about it and not just be able to recall basic facts.
Depending on the amount of guided practice, group work, and ability level, I think this is a project that could be adjusted to use with students from a wide variety of age and reading levels.
Here are some books on Big Universe Learning with interesting main characters that might work well with a Character Trading Card project:
At the beginning of a new school year, it is very important to learn information about the new students who enter your classroom. Teachers are provided information related to academic progress in previous school years in order to make initial instructional decisions. Yet, teachers also need to know information that can’t be determined or provided through a test score or grade mark. This type of information relates to the child’s personality, interests, comfort in school, and social relationships, which also impact classroom learning.
In years past, I have always started the year with a “getting to know you” type activity. I ask each child to bring in three items from home that can fit inside of the provided lunch size, paper bag. If the item is too large to fit, they can always bring in a photo of the item. Throughout the first week of school, I ask a few students each day to share their items in the paper bag with the class.
During this share time, I document important information that the students share such as their interests, summer activities, and comfort sharing in front of the group. This helps me throughout the year to understand the life experiences they bring to the classroom in order to capitalize on those experiences for educational purposes. The students then create a list of writing ideas related to the items in their paper bag. This provides a great working document of personal narrative ideas for students to consider during Writer’s Workshop. Additionally, it also helps their peers understand more about their friends in the classroom, which helps to create new friendships based on interests.
This year, I’m planning to expand my “getting to know you” activities the first week of school by asking my students to also bring in their favorite book that they like to read, or the book they like their parents to read to them at home. My students will also be able to log on to their Big Universe accounts to showcase their favorite book selection! This activity will begin to provide information related to my students’ literacy choices. I can make note of the genre, level of text, complexity of story, interests, who reads to them at home, as well as their overall experiences with books.
Once the students have had time to share their favorite book, we will then sort the titles into genre categories. This discussion is a great way to instruct students on how to distinguish between the various genres. I will then introduce a reading log, which requires the students to make note of the title, and genre of each book they read in the classroom. This log is kept for the first month of school, and then the students will analyze their reading choices. Next, my students will be displaying their reading selections by creating a custom graph at: http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/graphing/classic/. It is my hope to continue this activity on a monthly basis so that my students can analyze the trends of their reading once their graphs have been created!
