Technology Goals

The district that I work in is committed to the implementation of Technology in the classroom.  All students have a device from grades 5-12.  In the elementary level, the students have a set of Ipads to share within each grade level.  In Title 1, I have three Ipads to use with my students and I share these with another Title 1 teacher for part of the day.  Each year, I need to write goals and submit them to my principal.  This year, I needed to include a technology goal as well.  I have been reading and watching videos about 21st Century Learning with a focus on the 4 C's.  My technology goal this year is centered around creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.  By using technology in learning, students become engaged in ways they can't when using textbooks to perform paper/pencil tasks.  There is so much more available to them when able to explore the world in a single click, and to engage in collaborative learning by brainstorming and using technology in creative ways.  I am keeping in mind that my goal is to get to modification and redefinition. Here are two goals for the 13-14 school year:  

1.  Improve my knowledge and skills in order to integrate technology into my instruction.

     *I have started working on this goal by watching videos and reading on how to incorporate technology into the classroom curriculum.  I have gotten some great ideas that will move my integration from

substitution (last year) to modification and redefinition.

2.  Integrate technology into weekly instruction to support teaching and learning.

      *I began using Ipads and Educreations with my students last week.  I took vocabulary words from their 2nd grade basal story and passed them out to each group of two students.  Then, they walked around the school and took pictures of what they thought represented their vocab. words.  For example, one group had the word enormous so they went outside and took a picture of the school because they said it was enormous.  They had so much fun deciding on what they would photograph and how it related to their word. We talked about freedom to explore and to make decisions on their own.  They kept looking to me for approval.  They were not use to the freedom to think outside the box and to actually have fun with the learning.  We also talked about categorizing and sorting pictures.  One word was turnip and they said there wasn't one in the building.  That led to a discussion about ways you could categorize pictures like shape, color, food, texture.  We are going to keep expanding on this learning.  This week the students are going to modify a story in their basal called, "Helping Out".  They will first take pictures that show "helping out" around ORE. Then to integrate writing, they will write on the picture pages and and use their own voice to read the story.  I can hardly wait to see how this will turn out.  They are excited and so am I.

Blogging Community November Strategies

A celebration that I had this past week was with two kindergarten boys that I see.  I have been working on my AR plan during their group time.  I am working on getting them up, running around, crawling, throwing balls, etc... in order to engage them in gender specific learning strategies.  I did a letter check on them when I started mid October and they each knew 1 letter.  On Friday I did a check and they knew 14 and 16 letters.  After less than two weeks of the change in instruction, I would say that it has been making a difference so far.

Marzano's, What works in Schools - Translating Research Into Action....Reflection

What do I think are “The Worst of Times” in education today:

                -standardized testing and just plain testing

                -so much responsibility on teachers to do and be everything for kids

                -reduced federal/state funding of schools

                -support from families – volunteering, etc… because life is moving so fast at home

                -student experiences/educational gaps – some come with so much/some come with

                  nothing

                -pressure and anxiety on students to be high achievers in order to go to college

                -people who refuse to change because they’ve ALWAYS done it a certain way

                -inability to let staff/administration go if they aren’t doing their job

                -lack of professional development when new initiatives are introduced

What do I think are “The Best of Times” in education today:

                -well prepared teachers coming out of college

                -advances in technology and integration into education

                -so much research being performed on best practices, curriculum , etc…

                -opportunities for students to go on to post-secondary education

                -Some testing- better identify students in need of targeted interventions…ability to know

                  benchmarks/growth

Marzano starts off his article sharing what he sees as the worst of times over the last 60 years in education.  Much of what he shares focuses on how education does not affect a student’s achievement.  This was thought to be primarily due to the strong influence of a student’s home life.  Researchers wrote how failure in school was not the fault of schools at all.  At the turn of the century, new research was coming out that directly opposed these findings.  In fact, research began to show that students from all backgrounds could be very successful if the school was a highly effective school.  Excuses for why kids were failing were finally being exposed by new research.  Now, it is becoming well known that highly effective schools can have considerable impact on the growth and achievement of students regardless of their personal backgrounds.   This impact can be categorized into three general factors, 1) school-level factors, 2) teacher-level factors, and 3) student-level factors.  Looking at my above worst of time thoughts, most of them fit into once of the three areas, but they are all excuses as to why it is difficult being in education today.  They are not rooted in any kind of research, especially Marzano’s research.  According to Marzano, by having a highly effective school, none of my ideas play any part into student achievement.  My thoughts on the best of times can also fall into the three general factors for effective schools.  They are all based on the student, teacher, or school. 

I do agree with Marzano’s research that finds all students can be successful when being educated in a highly effective school.  I look forward to reading more about what characteristics these schools have in common.  I also see that my school and I need work on being more effective in educating students.  This year we went from being a reward school to a celebration school.  All three factors that affect student achievement need to be reflected upon for our school to gain back a reward status.  Are we strong in the five areas Marzano describes for schools?  Are we strong in the three areas for teachers? And how much do we use the three factors for students as excuses for not being a reward school?  I look forward to reading and reflecting more on the ideas that Marzano shares in his book.  I especially am interested in the interventions he mentions early in the first chapter.  Not only does the school I work at have some areas that need to be investigated, but I also have some learning to do in order for the school and my classroom to be a highly effective place to learn and grow. 

Technology Integration

This topic is one that our district has been focused heavily on these past couple years.  We have had many in services and short trainings on integrating the use of ipads, tablets, web tools, etc...into our daily classroom.  Last spring we created lessons using the SAMR Model.  We have moved and will continue to move to a one on one pupil to device based technology plan.  Striving to integrate technology into the day in the life of a student is happening no matter what apprehensions we have as teachers.  The 21st Century classroom is here and I need to move into this type of learning.  Some of my apprehensions revolve around teaching small groups of students for 20 minutes.  My integration is going to have to look a bit different due to the time element.  So far I am sitting at the substitution phase of SAMR.  I just received 3 Ipads last year, not enough for each student.  Students have to share which will lend itself nice to collaboration.  Yet, the students want their own to use and sometimes show challenging behavior when they have to share.  When I have engaged them with the ipads they are absolutely glued to the screen.  They love the ability to move freely navigating the Ipads.  I have noticed some of them talking to one another about where they are and I have noticed how they help each other out when they don't know how to do something on the Ipads..  I am going to be planning a Techno-Read month for our Adventure Read after school program next week.  Classroom teachers have some great ideas on how to use technology to move into modification and redefinition.  One teacher knows a lot about Animoto so we will be planning comprehension around the making of videos.  I look forward to learning from them so I can best integrate the practices into my small groups.

Fall Conference Reflection

On Sunday, I was most inspired and enthused by the literacy discussion my group had in the morning.  The articles focused on ideas for classroom integration across the content, ideas for interventions, and the importance of creating a literacy influenced classroom environment.  A couple new ideas I found helpful that were shared were to have student sharing times following guided reading groups and an inner and outer circle sharing of story comprehension.  I am going to be trying these out when our after school Adventure Reading Club starts in November. 

The Lasallian principles that we have discovered so far in our learning community were clearly present at the fall conference.  These three conepts are:

Associtation - This concept was evident by bringing people together to collaborate around a specific goal or concept and to co-construct learning.

Generativity -  During our small group meetings, we were building the capacity of each person to contribute to a collaborative community by showing care and appreciation for the ongoing sharing of each member.

Adaptation - Using the 21st Century skills of collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication, the groups were undergoing authentic learning from one another.

Backward Design Sharing

Backward design is a planning process which starts with an essential question that is guided by common core standards.  The process unfolds with engaging lessons and ends with enduring understanding.  What I love the most about BD is the focus on an essential question that ends with an enduring understanding.  Even though my teaching includes many small groups for 20 minutes at a time, I have begun to always ask the question, "What is essential and what is the enduring understanding?"  If I can't answer these questions, I revamp what I am planning so my lessons are aligned with the BD process.  I also feel more confident in knowing my lessons include the common core.  If an administrator would come into my classroom and ask me to see my plans, I could show them my BD units and how the core is woven throughout the learning.  It has not only changed my focus at school but I use it in my personal life with my family.  My husband is a religion teacher and he likes to process his lessons with me.  I have begun to ask him what his overall essential question is and what understanding he wants the kids to come away with from class.  He is not a professional teacher but I encourage him to use Bloom's Taxonomy with his questioning and learning activities he plans.  At first he just gave me the sideways glance but now he is having fun revamping his style of teaching with the kids.  Slowly, as I incorporate my own learning into my teaching, my overall focus and direction will be clear and to the point, rather than full of fluffy activities that fill time but leave the students with no more understandings than when they started the unit.

One question I have for somebody who teaches small groups for short amounts of time like I do, how do you create backwards design units when you teach skills like letter names/sounds, phonics, or sight words?

Another question I have is how do you include all of the common core standards into BD units when they may not fit any of your created units?  I included many in my reading BD units but some of the standards didn't fall into any design units.

Action Research Abstract

How will implementing gender-specific strategies in kindergarten for a boys only and girls only group affect their growth in pre-reading skills?
 

The question guiding my research is: How will implementing gender-specific strategies in kindergarten for a boys only and girls only group affect their growth in pre-reading skills?  After performing a review of literature on gender differences, I found that boys and girls are wired differently and would benefit from understanding what makes than different and how those differences could be addressed in the classroom.  Children need to be learning to their potentials.  They are misunderstood which affects their achievement.  They could be learning more effectively by matching gender preferences to the teacher’s lesson planning.  By making changes in my teaching I can begin to help students feel understood and can teach to their learning style.  I hope to accomplish implementing my gender different small group lessons by dividing up the students into a boys only group and a girls only group.  From there I will plan more active lessons for boys by allowing them to be louder, using a louder voice when teaching, more competitive games, and allowing them to be more "rough".   Lessons for girls will consist of more cooperative seat work, using a quieter voice, and less competitive games with more collaborative conversational games.  To collect my data on the given changes I am using student surveys, a  teacher journal to write field notes on a daily bases, fall and winter data from FAST - our new “AIMESweb” data collection tool, and NWEA data.

My data collection has not started at this time as I began with kids only one week ago.  Title 1 gets a late start in our school as service is data driven.  I plan to begin my data collection in early November to be complete in late December.  I am finding that I may be restricted in changing the groups up.  My time isn't as flexible as I hoped; thus, I may need to plan a new question and plan new ways to gather data.  I must settle into my schedule before I will know exactly how this is going to work out. 

I have been observing their gender differences "unofficially" for the past two weeks and I am definitely seeing some gender differences amongst my groups.  I am beginning to make some changes and catching myself when I fall into the gender "traps" which mostly include disapproval of boys and how they learn best.  As a result of my interest, I would love to see how gender specific practices could be implemented in other settings throughout the school day.

 

 

 

Differentiation in a Title 1 classroom

Differentiation through flexible grouping was an area that I read more about and investigated how I do or could implement the practice in my already differentiated small groups.  Being a Title 1 teacher already lends itself well to differentiated groups.  I teach pull out groups that are designed strictly around data.  Within the students who fall in the lower 30% of the grade, I have found that there are still several ways to break the groups down further by skill or ability.  This fall I focused even more on grouping these students into differentiated skill groups.  After identifying who would receive Title 1, I met with the other teacher and we divided the groups down into very specific skill levels.  This is allowing us to meet the needs of the students by where they are at in the hopes of closing the gaps quickly.  This has been a challenge in the past as students grow at different paces; thus, the groups need to be very fluid and flexible.  So far this is working really well with our small groups.  The students who have lower skill levels are being led with skills right where they are at.  The students who are just below the cut are getting very different skills and should pop out of service much faster that the lower groups.  Once they transition back to class either new students will take their places or the lower groups will be divide again in even more specific skill groups.  Flexibility is the essence to this classroom practice.