8th Grade Science and Twitter

I am back in middle school now and back to teaching 8th science this year. I started my career here and have missed 8th grade science for the past 5 years. It wasn't until today that I realized how much I really missed it. Today in class we started our Twitter documentation of our learning. My students love Twitter and spend a lot of time on the site. I decided why not cash in on that motivation and excitement. To start, we discussed why have a class hashtag. The class hashtag was a way for our students to document their learning to share with absent students or to refer back to when studying or doing work. We then created a hashtag together. They loved it! Each week, a student will be the "tweeter of the week". They are in charge of tweeting out using our class iPad at least three times a week. Then other students are free to tweet in class using the hashtag. We had a great digital literacy discussion today about asking permission to share other students work and pictures. It still amazes me how digital savvy our students are and how little they understand how appropriate digital etiquette. We finished the class with a lab and I have never seen my 8th graders so engaged. They were taking pictures, documenting their thinking, and helping each other on Twitter. I can't wait to see where this goes!

Setting Up Daily 5 Math

As a former middle school teacher, setting up Daily 5 Math to be successful was definitely the hardest part of workshop. Spending two weeks setting up work and not actually diving into the work right away was tough. I was ready to get started but I knew the students were not. I kept having to tell myself "Go slow in the beginning to go fast later." Although it did usually take two weeks to actually begin meeting with individuals or small groups, the time spent was well worth it. The time spent in workshop throughout the year went much smoother and was more efficient because of the time we spent setting up expectations.

The first day was spent introducing the workshop model. We would compare the model to the readers and writers workshop students experienced in earlier grades. I would stress from the beginning that this was independent work time. We had a discussion about what "independent" work meant. This discussion was probably the most valuable of the year. Had students not understood that independent essentially meant without teacher assistance, I would not have been able to meet with small groups or individuals, which was the point of doing workshop.

The next five days were spent delving in deeper to each of the five elements of Daily 5. We would start with introducing Play It. After a brief explanation of Play It, we would create an anchor chart of what the room should sound like and look like during Play It. Again, this was opportunity to stress that myself and my co-teacher were not available to help with questions since we would be working with students during this time. After creating the chart, we would practice as a whole class doing Play It. In addition to practicing the choice, this was also a great opportunity for students to play one of the games and learn the rules. I would monitor and often remind students to refer back to the anchor chart to make sure they were on task and behaving appropriately. This same process was then repeated for Practice It, Write It, Explore It, and Digitize It in the following days.

The second week was spent on guided practice of the choices and/or introducing new games for students to use during Play It. Day one, I would begin by assigning students to a group and then assigning each group one of the choices. Students would review the anchor chart before given time to practice. I would also introduce the use of the timer on this day. The second day, I would let students choose a choice and practice the choice. The third day I would use the entire 30 minutes and assign groups two choices. We would practice using the timer to transition between activities (I used a three level timer where one sound would signal students to start cleaning up and to transition to the next choice. A second sound would signal the beginning of the second choice). The fourth and fifth days were spent practicing the actual 30 minute time where students were assigned a choice and made a choice. After each day, we would reflect on the process to help ensure students knew the expectations.

After these two weeks of set-up, I rarely had a problem with behaviors. If I did, I would use the yellow caution cards which I will discuss in a later post. Students were aware of the expectations and followed them daily. My co-teacher and I would often refer to the posters to help redirect or focus students throughout the year. Setting up the workshop properly is the most important part to getting the most out of Daily 5 math.

The "Daily 5" of Daily 5 Math

I set up my workshop with five different choices for students. Each day I ask students to do one choice and then they have the option of choosing the second choice for the day. I encourage students to choose the same choice no more than twice a week. I will share more about the logistics in a later post.

1. Practice It - This choice offers students a chance to practice content we are learning in class or review content from previous years/units that would support future learning activities. I try to pick worksheets that are more than drill and practice. I often pick sheets where students have to solve the riddle with their solutions or color a picture to that correspond to their answers. I also use the skill sheets and additional practice sheets that come with our curriculum. Often times, I ask students to bring this sheet with them when I meet with individuals or small groups throughout the year.

2. Write It - This choice is an opportunity for students to write about math. Last year, I spent a lot of time working with our literacy coach to make the writing opportunities more rich and connected to the CCSS. Students respond to math reflections from our curriculum or they will write feelings and attitudes they have toward the math we were doing. Sometimes, I will have students look at student work and explain whether this was a "good" solution or not.

3. Explore It - Manipulatives are the main focus of this choice.I encourage exploration and ask students to look for connections between the manipulatives and math we have done. I also ask them to look for patterns and connections to other manipulatives. Students have the opportunity to interact with maniupulatives before they are introduced in a lesson. I give students a focus when using the manipulatives by providing questions. My next step is to start having students document this work in their math notebook using our class set of iPods and Evernote. I want students to take pictures of the modeling they are doing with the manipulatives. I found that by giving student this time to explore, students are on task more often when we are using the manipulatives with a lesson. This time allows for them to "play" with the manipulatives.

4. Digitize It - This option involves our class set of iPod Touches. Some weeks students are asked to be on a specific math app that pertains to our learning and other weeks students are allowed to choose what app they would like to work on. When I meet with students, I often suggest apps they should be on during Digitize It to help with their math goals. For classrooms that don't have access to mobile devices, laptops or desktops would work for this option. When I was on leave one year, my long term sub used the classroom computers and had students rotate through Digitize It. I will list some of the apps we used in the technology post later.

5. Play It - Students play math games with a partner. I use games from our curriculum and games I have collected throughout the years. Students have to work with a partner in this choice. I have a binder of all the game boards and rules laminated for each pair to use. Some of the favorite games are the 24 game, Product Game, and Fraction War.

Math Workshop in 6th grade

Three years ago I was drowning while attempting to teach Languages Arts for the first time. In an effort to stay above water, I attended a training on the Two Sisters Daily 5/CAFE. I was inspired to try Daily Math in my class the next year. Over the summer, I started to gather research/ideas to help me implement the workshop method in my classroom. I realized that very little existed for the upper grades, especially 6th grade. My hope is that this becomes a resource for those teachers wanting to use workshop model in their Upper El/Middle School classrooms. 

Over the next few entries, I will detail how the workshop model functioned in my classroom. I am hoping this year to now integrate this model into a traditional 7th/8th grade math class. 

I dedicated 30 minutes every day to Daily 5: Practice It, Write It, Digitize It, Play It, and Explore It.  Each day students were assigned one choice and given the option to choose the other choices. Each choice lasted 15 minutes. During this time, I would work with individuals or small groups on personalized math goals and our current curriculum. My co-teacher also used this time to work with students on their IEP goals. Students worked independently or in pairs on their choices. 

I also integrated technology during this time. Students used iOS math apps during Digitize It and rotated in pairs through an interactive Whiteboard lesson.  I will go into further depth about the technology in a later post about the Daily 5 choices.

I loved this time and really felt as though I could meet the needs of all my students from the special needs students to the gifted children to the students on grade level. Most of my students grew one grade level, if not more than one. I feel this was due in big part to the use of the Daily 5 model.

Writing, technology, and math

My goal for this year has been to increase writing in my math class. I have been working with our schools' literacy coach to accomplish this goal. For the last two units, we have been trying a day of Writers Workshop near the end of the unit. Since we do math workshop everyday, it has been an easy transition. The last unit we did graphs so it was relatively simple to have the students connect graphs to the real world by writing about a graph. Using decimals and percents, proved to be a little more difficult.

I wanted students to connect a non-fiction article to the decimal/percent concepts we have been learning. Our coach and I were struggling with this but ultimately came up with writing a story problem about the article. We were concerned though because we had never written story problems in class. My coach mentioned we could give students clues while they were working to help scaffold their thinking. She was thinking of envelopes. I thought lets use QR codes. So for each article, students were given 3 QR codes that contained hints to help students create the story problem.

The QR codes worked very well. Both classes were silent and working entire time. The QR codes empowered the students to work independently. I was then able to work with a small group with no interruptions and still felt confident that my students were engaged.

Creating a lesson like this really supports the idea of TPACK. I had already created the lesson and found how to merge technology in. I didn't say lets use QR codes and create a lesson around them. I believe this is why the lesson was so successful.

Adapting My Mission

Today I was able to help a colleague integrate technology into his classroom and I realized how much I enjoy helping others integrate tech into their rooms. My colleague came to me and said he wanted a way to organize his classroom library. Currently, the kids fill out a sheet of paper and put it in a basket to check out a book. He told me he was thinking about QR codes. Instantly, I thought Google forms! So during our prep time, I worked with him to help make this become a reality. I loved seeing how excited he was. I felt successful. This made me think that my mission is more than just integrating technology into my own classroom. I want to help integrate technology outside of those four walls. I am convinced that they way to reach these digital natives it through technology. Helping colleagues will in turn help these students to learn. Now I know what I helped with today is not necessarily enhancing learning, but it could empower a student. Imagine a student who does not like to write so doesn't check books out because she is afraid to fill out the form. Now that student is empowered to check out books because the iPad can do the writing for her. Also, this teacher will now be able to work with Google forms in a simple project. As he becomes comfortable, he may find a content and pedagogy to integrate the forms into. Another important aspect to integrating technology is helping teachers to feel comfortable using the technology. This teacher is using the technology is a way where he can become comfortable with it before actually integrating it into a lesson. I can't wait to help more colleagues!

Screencasts

My first post. After being inspired at MACUL, a tech conference last week, I have decided to jump into the world of blogging. My goal is to share different ways I am integrating technology and the successes/issues that I encounter along the way. I would love to hear feedback so please share your thoughts!

Today in science I tried something new. In my Ed tech classes, we have been learning about how to create screencasts to help support students in different multimedia tasks. So I walked in this morning after being out sick for two days and decided today would be a great day to try a screencast. The students were going to use a simulation in science to calculate distance. The simulation asks students to first create reference points and then use the distance formula to find the solution. The program provides feedback such as reference points not matching up or forgetting to include units in the answer. It will be the third year I have used this simulation.

While creating my screencast using Jing, I made the common mistake of not including units in my answer. Part of my screencast then included me checking my work and having to add the units back on to the answer.  This ended up being a great mistake! I posted the .swf file to my Edmodo along with a reflection assignment. I crossed my fingers and hoped this would help my day run a little more smooth than normal.

The screencast was a great success. After dealing with the tech glitches of viewing a .swf file, the students viewed the screencast and all got right to work without questions. It was amazing. Traditionally, I would model the simulation for the class and then once students started to work, I would run around like a mad women helping at least half the students get ready. Not the case today! The screencast was the scaffold that most students needed. An added bonus was almost every student added units on their answers from the start. This was definitely not the case in past years.

Again, I am amazed at what a small amount of work on my part can do to support my students in taking charge of their own learning. I watched students go back and rewatch parts of the screencast when they had questions. I was able to better assess students while walking around the class because I could focus on the content and not troubleshooting the technology. Days like today help me to understand was technology integration, even in small doses, is crucial to education today.