Innovation 3: Poll Everywhere

As another innovation to use with teachers during staff development sessions and wih students in my own classroom, I chose to familiarize myself with using www.polleverywhere.com to receive feedback on my teaching and presenting.  It is important that our students receive quick, gratifying feedback, but it is also important to refine and experiment with our teaching by receiving feedback from others.  Poll Everywhere is free to audience members of 40 people or less.  It is easy to sign up on the main page, and polls can be created in less than 5 minutes.  You can create a poll question and provide open responses or closed responses for your audience members, depending on what kind of feedback you want to receive.

I like that this Web 2.0 tool can be used easily and feedback can be received instantaneously through confidentiality from texting a response using your cell phone.  To see how to use Poll Everywhere in your classroom, view the following YouTube video:

Creating a Presentation

The book that I read this semester in Language Arts 6-12 Methods was Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones by Thomas Newkirk.  To highlight the important messages and ways to implement language arts strategies in the classroom, I am choosing to create a presentation through Sliderocket.  I had never heard of this Web 2.0 presentation method, and then after watching a demo video of how to create one on YouTube, I decided that this would be a more innovative way for me to display what I had learned in this book.

If interested in creating a Sliderocket presentation, use the following video to help you get started with creating your own presentation:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Q8Jk3jUT0

Innovation: Wordle

Another innovation that I am working on with my students right now is using Wordle to summarize what my class has learned about the solar system.  Wordle is a Wed 2.0 tool to use when creating word clouds and helps students to reflect on terms and ideas that they have learned on a specific unit or topic.  Students can use different fonts, colors, and orientation of words to display.  It can even be printed out!

I wanted my students to demonstrate to me everything that encompasses the solar system and be able to use this tool as a gallery walk in my classroom.  Students would print out a copy of their Wordle, so other students can write comments and reflect on what that student may have learned.  Students can also present and tell about what they learned creating their wordle.

To create a wordle, access the following site: http://www.wordle.net/create

Example of a Wordle

Innovation: Creating a Storybird

One of the innovations I started working on this week was adding all of my students to a class list for creating a Storybird.  I had heard about creating stories through a fun and interactive way that also includes images from using Storybird in my Literature and the Learner class last semester.  I had yet to try it out myself, and I also wanted to experiment with my students and see how they enjoyed it as a way to comprehend what they are learning about telling time.  I am working on creating a class assignment where students will be creating a story with at least 5 pages on a day's events using elapsed time.  The students would have to apply what they have been learning in math through creating a story with elapsed time events, as well as work on their writing skills.

To create artful storytelling, visit the following link: http://storybird.com/create/

Thematic Unit Plan on Character Education

The thematic unit plan that I am working on this semester in Language Arts Methods 6-12 course relates to character education.  I really think that with all of the teen depression, violence, and bullying within recent years, that it's important to begin chracter education early on in elementary school and procede into middle and high school.  One of activities that I really enjoyed adding to the thematic unit plan involved students being able to role play through different scenarios they might encounter in middle and high school and how they would handle these situations.

The following websites were also very helpful in creating activities and researching character eduation:
http://charactercounts.org (Well-known adopted character education program in schools)
http://charactered.net/preview/
http://www.goodcharacter.com/
http://myhero.com/go/about/ (Students can research role models that show examples of good character)

Chapter 5 - Popular Culture as a Literacy Tool

"The toxic media environment today provides cultural props that children can use to improvise their way into literacy" (Newkirk, 92).  This quote really struck me because we want our students to make connections to the outside world, yet we condone all the violence, especially with gun control in the media of recently.  Yet, how will our students expand their ability to write when we restrict our students to certain limitations?

When students are allowed to use their creativity of making connections through writing from fictional characters in movies and video games, it brings their writing more to life.  Being able to write fiction stories in class allows students the freedom to use their imagination and improvise.

The reality of writing is that when there is censorship in writing, it causes boys to fall drastically far behind in reading and writing by the 3rd grade.  As educators, I believe that we can look at this censorship in writing from two perspectives:
       - We can view media as the enemy and the negative effects in which it will take away from writing
                                                                 or
       - We can look at this as a way for students to connect to characters, special effects, and weapons as a

          way to connect through writing

Chapter 4: Expressive Writing

The beginning of Chapter 4 in Holding On To Good Ideas In A Time Of Bad Ones opens up with the following quote:

"Is a man to follow rules - or rules to follow him?" - Laurence Stern

This quote gave me the chance to reflect upon how there are so many rules when it comes to writing such as following a rubric that focuses on focus, organization, conventions, and support.  However, when we give students the chance to write freely without always critiquing and going over feedback, students are most likely going to have a willingness to write. 

Expressive writing gives students the opportunity to write freely without judgement.  If we want out students to enjoy writing, we need to give them more chances to practice writing than spending too much time going over feedback.  I love when my students get time to journal write about various journal questions such as "How would our world be difference if cows gave us root beer instead of milk?" or "If you could travel any place in the world, where would you go and why?"  My class always looks forward to writing freely with their own ideas and opinions and being able to share with a buddy.  It gives them the opportunity to express their writing in a comfortable environment.

                                                                      

Chapter 3 - Balance the Basics

A quote from Chapter 3 of Holding On To Good Ideas in A time of Bad Ones that really caught my attention was in response to the goal of writing in postprimary grades, "Using writing to respond to readings, deepen comprehension, and practice academic language" (Newkirk, 52).  As an educator, this made me reflect upon how writing should be integrated into all subject areas as a means to enhance what students are reading, rather than a separate area in itself.  Why writing has been neglected in other subject areas besides English classes I am not sure, but students need to be given the chance to connect the dots in their knowledge through writing.

Some examples of ways that my students used writing in the content areas this week in my class include some of the following examples: learning about artifacts in Social Studies and drawing illustrations of artifacts and writing about why they were important in history long ago, writing to explain similarities and differences between geometric figures, and writing a summary of what students had learned about our unit on space and connecting the stories to one theme in reading.

With the major shift in education towards implementing Common Core standards, it is a necessity for all teachers to work together towards one common goal to promote the embedded use of writing in all that the students learn.  The greatest deficiency right now in the workplace relates to written communication, and students need to continually practice it to grow at it.

Here is an article that relates to reading and writing in the content areas: http://www.adlit.org/adlit_101/improving_literacy_instruction_in_your_school/teaching_reading_and_writing_content_areas/

Chapter 2 of Holding on To Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones

Chapter 2, titled "The Teacher as Schmidt" discusses that research and theory are taking over education mandates and should be used as a dialogic method to teaching, rather than an authoritarian method.  Teachers are called on to make judgement calls on a daily basis and deal with 25-30 studens at a time.  Teachers' goals are multiple and should be an ongoing series of microexperiments.  I feel that when teachers are not given any freedom to experiment, then teachers lose the desire to teach.

According to Neuman (2002), "Reading instruction must be based on sound research and not employ the latest fad in instruction."  However, the results of the interim study of the program Reading First show no reading comprehension gains than non-Reading First students.  Therefore, I believe that education should be based on a sound mixture of research based theories as well as the teacher's method of teaching and experimentation.

Holding On To Good Ideas In A Time of Bad Ones by : Thomas Newkirk

This is the book that I am reading for the semester in Language Arts 6-12 Methods course at FGCU.  After reading the first chapter, the curse of graphite means that if it can't be scored through a machine, then we don't hold the assessment accountable.  A lot of what we encounter as teachers is teaching to the standards and being held restricted as to how we teach, so that accountability is based on research rather than creativity.  Elwood P. Cubberly described schools being similar to factories in that we build our pupils according to laid down specifications.  Our students are the products and teachers are the machinery that transform the products.

In response to the first chapter, most teachers feel stressed due to the many objectives and material to use to cover these objectives.  Yet, we continue to lead teaching through the sameness of standardized testing.  With the more freedom we try to include in our teaching, the wider the discussion and debate can become as to our excellence in teaching.  I am looking forward to learning about the six literacy principles worth fighting for within the following chapters of this book.