My Version of Discussion: The Not-So-Socratic Seminar

In most of my classes, my students love to discuss things.  They love it so much they would rather discuss where I bought my shoes or why I like the color green if it meant they got to have a conversation. 

...Except for one class.  I'm sure we all have that one class.  The one that makes you feel like an idiot for even thinking they would want to answer one of your questions.  The class where you ask a question and you give wait time...to the point of it becoming awkward.  You know that class.

To alleviate the pain and suffering of trying to get through a class discussion (or Socratic Seminar), I have created a way (I think) to force my students into group discussions.  I'm not sure if this has ever actually been done or suggested before.  I know I'm stealing a few different ideas from other places and putting them together into one strategy.  If you know that this actually exists somewhere else, let me know.  I don't want to walk around thinking I created something if it's something someone else did!

Here's the idea:

After reading a section of the assigned novel, I'm going to discuss levels of questioning with my students.  I got this idea from Jim Burke.  Then, I'm going to have my students each ask one inductive or analytical question about the reading we did.  I will have them write these questions on the individual white boards I have in my room.  You could hand out half-sheets of paper or sticky notes instead.

Then I'm going to get the students into groups of four.  They will have two minutes to read each question the group members have created and decide, as a group, which question is the best question, or the question they are most interested in answering.

Once each group has decided on a question, they will be given a notecard; they will write the group question on one side of the notecard.  Then they will get time for each individual to write their answer to the group question on their whiteboards--about a minute or so.  Then they will be given time to share their answers in their groups.  As a group, they will have to synthesize everyone's answer into one "BEST answer," which they will place on the back of their notecards. I will give about three or four minutes for this.

I will collect notecards and disperse them out to the other groups (this way each group will get a new question).  I will hand out four sticky notes to each group and one regular sized piece of paper.  The group will read the question and, without turning over the card to see the answer, each group member will write his/her answer on their own sticky note.  After a minute or so, I will call time and have the group members each put their sticky notes on one corner of the paper.  This way all four corners will have a sticky note with an answer to the question on it.  Like this:

Then the group members will need to synthesize their answers into the best answer (like in the picture).  They can then compare their answer to the answer on the notecard. If it is the same, great.  If it is different, the group needs to explain why their answer is the more correct answer on the back of their sheet of paper.  This may take five or more minutes to complete.  Groups would then turn all their work back in to me.

In this way, groups will be discussing, analyzing, inferring, synthesizing, and evaluating.  Whew!  And all in ONE class period.  Not too shabby.  AND so very much better than having to resort to crazy measures to get students to participate.  What do you think?  Do you do anything quite like this?  I've done the four-corners sticky note activity by itself, but never anything this in depth.

Tracking Student Progress

Hand in hand with goal setting comes tracking your students' progress.  I mean, how do you know if your students have met their goals unless you check?

The school already requires the teachers who teach similar classes to give common assessments and to track the students' scores on them.  We keep track of average scores, % of students who are advanced, proficient, close to proficient, far to go, and missed the boat (our own terminology for it).  I have been doing this for each of my classes, as well as keeping a running total.

I have also been keeping track of how well my students are doing on certain standards.  I chose a handful of standards my students need that go throughout the entire year.  I call them power standards, although I'm not sure I'm necessarily using the phrase correctly.

How do I track the power standards?  Well, for each of the common assessments (we make our unit tests our common assessments, as well as our final exams), I figured out which questions matched up with one of my power standards.  I then tracked how many students in each class missed these questions.  I could then keep a running total of the accuracy percentage of my students on each standard.

It sounds difficult, but it's really not.  It's just a little time consuming.  For example, on our Short Story Unit Test, question #s 1, 7, 12 and 15 were on characterization.  I tracked how many students missed each of these particular questions.  If 12 out of 23 of my students in a particular class missed question #1, 15 of them missed #7, 2 missed #12, and  none of them missed #15, then my students in that class had a 68.5% accuracy (meaning the amount they got correct) on characterization.

I could then track how each class did on each of the standards for each of the tests.  This way I could track their progress over the semester.  Again, it was a lot of math, a lot of tic-marks, and a bit time consuming, but it was well worth it.  I find it absolutely fascinating to see how my students are doing.  My students find it absolutely fascinating as well (no lie--they want to see their progress).  Plus, it's super motivating for them.

Want to know what it looks like?  Well, here are some of the graphs I made just by entering the data into excel and having it create some for me.

This is an example from one of my classes, tracking how many students were at each level on each test. 

This is what it looks like when I track test score averages for each class on each test.

This is the tracking on all of the skills that were on the final by each class.  This way I can see which classes did better on the skills.  Maybe then I can pinpoint WHY one class did better than another on a skill.

This is an example of the power standards proficiency levels on each test for a particular class.  This way I can see improvement (or not) on each power standard.  The hope is to see improvement over time.  This isn't always the case, though, especially since the tests get increasingly more difficult over time.

What do you think?  Do you track your data?  If so, do you have suggestions for me?

A List of Things I Really Want to Teach

I couldn't think of a really cool title for this random post of ideas I have, so I hoped that just being blunt would suffice.  I've had a bunch of ideas rattling around in my brain lately, but I've been so busy with helping my student teacher, working on data analysis, and trying to get Tier 2 of PBIS up and off the ground at my school.  …not to mention working on data and lessons for our Response to Intervention program.  :)

I've been seeing such super cool things on the internet and saving them because I eventually would love to fit all of this great stuff into my lessons.  My favorite part of teaching is that I can switch things up and change my lesson plans to add the new things I myself learn and find exciting.

Without further ado, here's the list of things I've seen and how I see myself teaching them.  They aren't in any particular order; I am just creating a list for easier reading.

1.  If Dr. Seuss books were titled according to their subtexts  What a great way to teach theme and main idea!  I am thinking I could show this page to my students and then we could come up with some new titles for the books/stories we have been reading in class.  For instance, we recently read Anthem.  I'm thinking a great new title could be The Dangers of Living in a Communist Society, or Really It Should Be All About Me.  Anyway, you get the idea.  And then the students could use text support to explain why it would be a good title.

2.  GoldieBlox Commercial 1 and GoldieBlox Commercial 2  Really, how great is this idea anyway?!  I would love to have my students watch these commercials and then do a writing about our society's portrayal of the sexes, especially towards children and whether or not this is harmful or helpful.  It would be really interesting if I could find some articles to add to this discussion; maybe one on the psychological implications of gender roles, an article on the positive side of gender role teaching, etc.

3.  Time Lapse of a Makeover  If nothing else, I think this is a great learning tool for my students to learn that first impressions are pointless.  It teaches about the importance of treating others with respect and dignity and how that can change people.  It would be a great way to start out a discussion of first impressions in my classroom; maybe I can connect it with the book Of Mice and Men or to my beginning unit on first impressions.

4. Colorized Historical Photographs  If you look at these photos, I hope you are amazed as I was.  These images really helped me to see how alive the people really were; it helped me to connect to history.  I began thinking about how easy it is to think of the past as "The Past" instead of a time with people just like me.  It would be great to show my students some of these as we read stories from the various time periods.

5.  Financial Lobbyists Draft Their Own Bill  How scary is this?!  And the scariest thing is, most Americans aren't even aware.  I want to make my students aware of the things that are going on in the world around them.  I have them read an article every week (an idea I stole from Kelly Gallagher), and this would be a great one to show them.

6.  Spoken Word Poetry: Women  This is a powerful poem, one I think would go really well with the gender roles discussion from #2 above.  Watch it; you won't regret it!

7.  The Wage Gap  Another powerful piece of information about which most of us aren't even aware.  It would be great to show this to my students and then have them write a reflection about it.

8.  Chipotle Scarecrow Ad  I think this is a really cool ad, but beyond that, I think my students could really have fun comparing this to "Harrison Bergeron" or Anthem, two dystopian stories we read in my class.

9.  Writing Prompts  I love this site!  There are so many great writing prompts, and the blogger connects it all to the Common Core.  I browse through this site whenever I want to find a cool writing assignment or journal writing prompt for my classes.

10.  OCD Poem Yes, I am aware that there is some language in this poem.  But it is so wonderfully written and so wonderfully performed that I might hope I could show it in my classes anyway.  It would make for a great way to start a discussion of mental illness and how it is viewed in our society.  Then I could connect it to Of Mice and Men or I could connect it with some nonfiction and have students write a problem-solution essay on how to help people with mental illness.

Again, these are just thoughts that have been floating through my head; I haven't actually planned out how I would use these things.  I've just kept them on my bookmarks bar in hopes that one day I will find a great spot and time to use them in my classroom.

Setting Classroom Goals

How many of you work at a school where it is required to set and post classroom goals?  I don't know how many teachers in my school actually do so, but it is *supposedly* a requirement at my school.  I always do it, and I find it really helps my students.  They have a target to shoot for and they have a measuring stick by which to see their individual progress.  I have an overall goal for them, and they set goals for each of their unit tests.

I teach almost exclusively sophomores.  As they are high school students and able to do so as a class, I actually have the students set their own goals.  Now, I do tell them that my ultimate goal is for ALL of them to pass the end of course exam.

How do you get tenth graders to set realistic goals for their progress on unit tests?  I share the class's overall average score and the percentage of students who passed the previous test.  I give a pre-test during the first week of school and I use that to start off the goal-setting.  Then I ask them what they think a reasonable goal is for both the class average and percentage of students passing.  They are surprisingly hard on themselves and choose steep goals.  (At least they do that first time around!)

I then ask them what they would like for a reward if they make their goals, and I give them some options like a homework pass or extra bathroom pass (I only give them six a semester) or I offer to dress up in an embarrassing/silly costume.

Then, when they take their unit tests and I have them graded and the data collected, we review as a class and see if we made our goals.  If we did, then they get their reward and we set new goals for the next unit.  If we didn't, we reassess and try to figure out why and shoot for the goals next time.

My students don't question "Why are we doing this?" any more.  They seem more motivated and they even like to compete with other class periods so that they aren't the "lowest" class.  I post their goals on a board in the room for them to see and I bring up their goals often as a reminder of what they are working toward.

I had three classes want me to dress up this last time.  It was a hoot.  They loved that I followed through and looked ridiculous for them.  Some even took their pictures with me.  I'm sure there are now crazy photos of me all over Facebook.  I even, sadly, had some teachers giving me weird looks, shaking their heads, talking badly about what I was doing behind my back (they thought I wouldn't figure that out), and saying things to my face like "I would never do that," or "You're too nice."  Umm...it's called POSITIVE BEHAVIOR SUPPORT.  I am rewarding their GOOD behaviors.  That's what teachers do.  They MOTIVATE students in any and every way they can.  And dressing up like a ridiculous goofball is something I can do for FREE.  I am guessing some teachers are just jealous that I have the courage to be silly in front of my students.  But I'll tell you what, I have a great rapport with my kiddos and they love me and my silliness anyway.

                                                                

                                                                                 Clown/Caveman/Batman

Caveman

Rapper

What do you think about rewards for hitting class goals?  Would you dress up silly for your students?

A New Project

I realized I never did post pictures of my classroom.  I will definitely do that soon!!

I want to talk about a new project I started with my African American Literature students.  Have you ever had your students doing something in class and everything went smoothly and the students were learning at a high level and were super engaged and you just felt like SuperTeacher?  I am feeling that way about this project.

It's the end of our first unit (on Race and Identity) and I didn't want to give a test that had them regurgitating information.  I also had already had them write an essay comparing and contrasting their views about race before and after the unit, so I didn't want them to do an essay.  But I did want to see what they had retained from the unit.  What was there to do?

This summer I came across the RSA video project featured on Blogush.  I loved the thought, but I was terrified to try it out because 1) I've never made one myself so I didn't think I could teach the students how 2) I didn't think I had the necessary equipment to make the videos and 3) I figured it would take SO LONG to do it.  I just wasn't sure it was worth the headache or the time.

This semester I was lucky though.  I have a very small class (I started out with 12 and now have 15 students) of only juniors and seniors and most of the students I've had before so I don't have any discipline problems.  I don't think I could do the project with a super large class or with a class of students I couldn't trust to do the work.

I used the information from Mr. Bogush's site to create my own information sheet for the students.

I showed the students what an RSA video was by using the Blogush site and showing the videos on my SmartBoard.  The students got excited once they saw what they would be doing!  

I broke my students up into three groups (giving 4-5 students per group).  Each group had one of the questions from the sheet (What is race?  How do we combat misconceptions about race?  How should parents teach their children about race?).  These were all essential questions we dealt with in our readings, writings, discussions, and the videos we watched in class.  Once students were in the group, each group was given a piece of paper and told to break their answer into five distinct parts and to write those five parts down.

The next day, when my students came in, I had them create a staircase outline.  A staircase outline kind of looks like this:

Only my students were told to only have five stairs for their outline (for the five main parts of their answers).  Each "stair" had the main idea on the top of the stair and then they had to write out what three images they would use to convey the main idea underneath.

Once they knew what images they wanted to draw to convey their main ideas, I had them use white boards and paper to start figuring out how to draw.  At this point I realized they needed a little more structure.  I stopped the groups and told them to decide who would be drawing the pictures and who would be doing the voice-over for the narration portion of the video.  I also gave the option for one person to be the "writer of the narration," as a few groups had five people in them and that person ended up needing a job too.  With the groups of four, two were drawing and two would be speaking.

The third day, my students went through a "dry run" of drawing on the white boards and practicing for being video taped.  We got through two groups' videotaping.  I used my iPhone to video them drawing.  They only needed three whiteboard markers and an eraser.

The fourth day, I was going to be gone, so I made that day the "narration writing" day.  They had to figure out how to write out what they wanted to say to convey their five main ideas and to make sure that the images they decided to use would go along with what they were saying.

I went home and sped up the videos on my MacBook Pro using iMovie.  I sped up the film to 5x.  (There is the option to do so by clicking on the options button when looking at the video panes, then moving the scale away from the turtle and closer to the rabbit.)

Notice where it says clip adjustments.  You click that.  Then you need to stabilize the video:

This could take a while.  Then, do you see where it says speed?  Move it closer to the rabbit (I set it at 200).  You may also choose to reduce motion distortion on the video.  Also, click on the Audio tab and turn the volume down to 0% so that you don't have silly chipmunk voices in the video.  It is quite hilarious to listen to, though!

The fifth day I will be back, so we will finish videotaping the last group and we will do the voice-overs for the groups.  To do the voice-overs, the plan is to use a small microphone that attaches through USB to the computer and then to save each audio file.  I then plan to add the audio file to the video file on iMovie (much the same way you would add music to a video or slideshow on iMovie).  Then I can save the videos and we can watch them in class!  

I am hoping my principal will have them added to the school website for others to see :)

The students have been fully engaged with this project.  They have been having fantastic discussions about the content of the class and they have been working together to make the project work.  This project has been a dream.  I wish all of my crazy ideas would work as well as this one did.  

I don't recommend going into a project like this as I did; it's probably best to know what you are doing first.  I am not always the smartest and I don't always follow my own advice though.

If you do something like this in your classroom, I'd love to hear about it!  How did it work for you?  How did you set it up?  

**Once the videos are complete, I will see if at least one group will allow me to upload the video as an example :)

Open House Idea

I know many schools run an Open House Night for students, and that each school has a different definition of what Open House really means.

At my school, Open House Night means the teachers stand outside their doors and greet students and parents as they come by to see where their classes are.  We also help direct people to the right locations and assist with locker problems.  There is no specific plan or order to where the students/parents go and we aren't expected to sit down with anyone and "talk shop."  I think it would best be called a Meet and Greet night.

I came up with an idea for this year's Open House Night: I created magnets with my email, webpage, and directions for setting up Remind101.  The magnets were made using simple print-your-own business cards.

I hot-glued little round magnets (which I found at Walmart) to the backs after printing and tearing out the cards.

I would upload a picture for you, but my information is on them.  Sorry everyone!

They were a great little something to give the parents and students as I introduced myself.  One parent said that he could tell I'd been teaching a while.  I'm not sure if it was my confidence in introducing myself or the fact that I had created contact information cards.  Most parents flew right past me and stuck their heads in my door.  When I would go up to say hi, they would be startled and tell me they thought I was a student.  Looking young is going to be great for me when I'm sixty!

So if you are looking for a great way to impress people at Open House Night, think about creating your own contact cards.  They are super easy to make and are fairly cheap (100 business cards cost $13.00 and the magnets cost $5.36 for 50, so about $11 for 100).  Less than $25 for 100 contact cards; I have about 100 students and not all of my students took a card, so I'll have some left over for next year.

At less than 25 cents per card, it's much cheaper than having someone else make them for you.  They might look fancier, but the cards below, created by Purple Trail, cost .67 a piece!

Anyone else do something neat for Back to School or Open House Night?

Creating a Virtual Classroom Library

I have loved moving into the newly renovated school and having my new, beautiful room.  I will upload pictures to show you my classroom tomorrow.  One negative of being in a new building is that we aren't allowed to bring in any furniture.  As in, I'm not allowed to bring in my own bookcases that I bought at Target a few years ago.  They are nice; they are still new looking.  There's nothing wrong with them.  But the powers that be have said no.  Because of this, I can't bring in my classroom library.

For a while, this really, really bothered me.  I think it is VERY important that my students have access to books.  Students don't get better at reading without reading and they can't read without BOOKS.

I have found a way around the entire problem though (I think).  I found this program that will allow me to scan in my books using my MacBook's built-in camera.  It will visually show up on a virtual bookcase and, using Amazon, give me the price, a synopsis, basic info on the book (like page numbers), and the ability to check out the book to people on my contacts list.  The program is called Delicious Library and version 2.0 is only $10!  It is only available through Apple products, though.

I set up my actual bookshelves in my office with the books and I turned my list of books from the program into a PDF file that I uploaded to my classroom website.  This way students can see my virtual library.  I can electronically keep track of which student has which of my books.  I can even (supposedly) publish the entire thing to a website, but I haven't figured that part out yet as I am not technically inclined.

This way, I can still allow my students access to my books without having "clutter" in my classroom.  I'm hoping it will be a win-win.  I plan to give book talks about a few of the titles every few weeks so that my students remember that I do have books available for them to check out.  I also plan to make a poster to hang on my bulletin board that will highlight a few titles I think they will like.

Here's an image of part of the library:

How cool is it?  Any suggestions for me as I try the virtual classroom library?  I could take any help I can get!  Also, if you use this product and know how to publish to a website using v2, let me know.  I've gotten as far as putting it in a folder on my laptop.  I don't know how to do anything other than that!