I Actually Did It!!

I decided to cross post from my personal blog to this one, kinda tying the two together. Read on and I'm sure you'll understand why.

When I started this process over 3 years ago there was a big part of me that never saw myself actually finishing. I remember sitting there with a stack of GRE words in my lap night after night thinking, well I’ll just keep at this but I won’t get into the program. And then I did, I got in.

And then I started my first class. I’ll never forget that day, September 24, 2007, because we were in Washington DC where A. was receiving an award. But all I could think about was my class starts today! And I poured everything I had into it. It was HARD and time consuming but I loved it. And I kept thinking, well this is great but how long will I be able to keep this up? Surely I’ll never actually finish. And that was a little scary to think about considering I’ve never quit anything in my life.

But I just kept on trucking… through a struggle with infertility, then getting pregnant and working late at night until I was practically passed out in front of my computer. Then there was the summer before Andrew was born where I did nothing but tutor and study, tutor and study, sometimes up to 14 hours a day with my big swollen feet propped up on pillows and a certain person in my giant belly kicking my books off my lap. Then through having a child and reading chapters in textbooks while I pumped or nursing while I typed. He was 5 weeks old when that particular course started. I don’t even remember what it was called much less what I learned in that one.

Then I went back to working full time, doing after school tutoring and singing in the church choir. Oh there was dance in there too (something that finally had to give). I started getting up early and going into work by 7:30 so I could work for 25 minutes in the morning. Then I’d stay an extra 15 minutes in the afternoon which gave me 30 minutes to work if I had all my other stuff in order. I have become exceptionally good at squeezing every second out of a break and reading textbooks at stoplights (don’t worry Oprah, I’ve stopped).

I’ve helped raise a family (and received a lot of help too) while having a husband who travels a large percentage of each month. I have had to step away from synchronous sessions to go assure my toddler that yes Elmo, AND Mickey Mouse, AND Blankie are all safely in bed with him. I have been asked dozens and dozens of times, “what time did you come to bed last night?” with a tone that suggests I might have lost my mind to stay up past midnight working on an assignment.

I trucked on through classes I loved and a class or two I hated. I have relished the insight, the ideas, the knowledge (as cheesy as that sounds) that I have gained from every single class I have taken.

I did not ever think this day would come but tonight, I submitted my final assignment. I have completed my 12th and final course to complete a Masters of Education Degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Educational Technology. I have received a perfect score in 11 out of 12 classes and a 98% in the other course (yes, that pisses me off tremendously but hey, I had a 5 week old!) In two weeks I get to go back to Gainesville and walk across the stage one more time, one last time. And then this chapter of my life closes.

I’m finished!

What’s next?

Q & A

Some of the feedback from a classmate caused me to reflect and further explain some key points that I had originally made in this journal. I am going to post the questions and responses below.

I found several interesting findings in your report. I was struck by the differences in the results for the first essay and thereafter. You explain that the first essay is 5-6 sentences, and the rest were 5 paragraphs. It is not clear that the directions were different; what accounts for the very poor essay scores on the first assignment? If the assignments ARE different, why did you include it with the others?

The first essay is a baseline. The kids come back after summer and are told to write as much as they can about something they did over the summer. It's purely a baseline. Then after several months of instruction they were given directions and explicit instruction on writing a 5 paragraph essay. One thing I definitely need to add to my inquiry is to say that MANY if not MOST are still not 5 paragraphs but they are drastic improvements from the first essay and I think that is to be expected since they would have at that point received several months of teaching. I included the assignments that I did because that was what I had to work with. I wanted to do a comparison of data and ideally I'd have time to do another essay but it can take several weeks and I've got other curriculum I need to teach before I can do another essay.

Also, did your first group have 10 returning students, too? The students that I have known who flunked a course the first time were able to frequently get an A the second time because it just took them hearing and doing it twice to finally do the expected work and get it. Maybe that also contributed to your improvements in 2010?

I always have about 20 kids and always about half are returning but NOT because they failed. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I know I get confused when I read everyone's inquiry about their context so I'm just saying this to remind you that I work in an all special ed school. We are ungraded. In my department the kids usually stay for 2 years-- It's kind of like Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2. Now if a child stays for a 3rd year then we may consider that being held back but that's only happened once and it wasn't for either group of children in the inquiry. Since there are always about the same number returning I don't think it played a roll in the data differences. I'd have to look back and check I want to say that last year's group had 11 returning from the year before and 24 total so about the same ratio. I thought I'd mentioned this in part 1 but I can't remember now. I'll go back and check.

Finally, did you really mean that you "wrote large portions of their speeches for them", and was that factored into the final essay assessment score? With all due respect, if this is true, how can your comparisons be valid since you are grading yourself in the first group, but not in the second group?

Ah yes, this. I know. It's hard to explain and I need to word it better. Again, they are special ed so I did allow students to dictate the entire thing in some cases. I guide them all a little differently depending on their needs but in the end the guidance is usually the same from year to year. So for example, in the first group I may get a speech that is 5-10 lines written on a paper and not a lot of details. So I sit down with them one on one and I start with what they have and then I ask, "so tell me more about ___" and I make them elaborate. If they are lost for a word I might give them 4 choices or refer them to several tools I have provided for them. Is this me doing it for them or is this them telling me what to write? It's a fine line that becomes easily blurred. All I know (and what I tried to report but I see I didn't do a very good job) is that this year, when I got the essays/speeches there was much less of me helping them fill in the gaps. They took the effort to improve their own language, include research and details.

So much I have forgotten to say

Well I didn't mean to ignore my blog here but so many things have happened, not the least of which me being sick... but I'll get back to that.

I've been analyzing my data for my inquiry assignment and I figured I'd make it easier on myself and give myself a stopping point so I could evaluate what I had. So I took a little blogging break.

But I've been keeping some notes on things I wanted to mention. The first and most exciting thing is that one of my students won first place in the speech contest! He was up against, get this, 3 former first place winners! And he beat them all! I could not be more thrilled. He had an amazing speech about what he'd do if he were president-- he earned my vote! I'm thinking of trying to find a way to send the finalist speeches to Mr. Obama himself!

I am trying to reflect on what made J's speech so awesome. He definitely had the drive to win. He was a finalist last year but didn't place so I know he really wanted it. He also is very into politics so this was a great topic for him. But if I could really point out one thing that made this one different from the last was the passion he showed. If you were wondering by the way, he was the one who, after watching the video clips from The West Wing, told me that he felt like he got it. So lots of things combined to help make that an incredible essay and speech but I'd like to attribute at least a small amount of that success to the SMART Board.

Another thing that happened was that speeches ended and we went back to regular instruction. Phew! I love speeches and all but I do think it gets to be a bit much after a while. I started on Adjectives which is always a review for everyone because lets face it, by the time you get to the 4th grade curriculum you've already had adjectives for the last few years. So how could I make it different? Well of course with the SB! There was this one activity I found that was kind of a cross between a cloze procedure and a mad libs. It was this story about a haunted house (they didn't seem to mind it was out of season) and they had to fill in the blanks with words that meant "scary". So I pulled up thesaurus.com and showed them how to search for words which they thought was insanely cool (they seem to have forgotten that I showed them this at the beginning of the year). Then we filled in the blanks of their story. They came out incredibly well and the kids were once again very enthusiastic about participating.

I did notice that we are back to our old behavior problems with regard to the board. The first problem came with writing words in the blanks. It is just not easy for them to write. Some of them don't press hard enough, some put their hand down on the board and that messes up their writing and some write so poorly that the kids can't read it, I can't read it and the board can't interpret it to turn it into print. So I decided after about 15 minutes of letting them write that I would instead have them pick a word from the thesaurus page and I'd write it, turn it to print and then let them drag it into the blank that they wanted and that went much more smoothly.

So finally, we get back to this week. Well I have not been to work the last 2 days because I'm sick. Unfortunately for my students that means no SMART Board for them. You see, there are not many of us at work who are comfortable with the board and the people who graciously filled in for me in my absence were definitely not going to do anything using the board so my poor kiddos had to work in the textbooks which I know they hated and almost made me show up sick just to keep them from that. But I guess they will also appreciate the board that much more when I return. We need to solve this problem either by me training my potential subs on how to use the board or me providing alternative lessons that are more fun that the textbook. Or hopefully I can just not be sick anymore and then it won't be a problem :) So there you have it! Now you're all caught up!

Fourth Participation Log

Lesson: Introduction to using adjectives to improve writing. Adjectives.notebook

First Count: 8/10

Second Count: 10/10

Third Count: 9/10 (Same student as one before)

Notes: This is my least engaged lesson so far. Could the effect of the board be wearing off? I am not ready to say that just yet. It has been an odd couple of days. The students are still enthusiastic about it but are also more misbehaved. The first student was messing with his pencils and the second student was not engaged because he was distracted by the first student.

Interview

A few weeks ago, I interviewed one of my students. The student, M, is 11 years old. She has been attending my school for the last 2 years. She was very enthusiastic about talking to me. I selected her because she is very honest and somewhat opinionated. I felt she would tell me the truth and not just what I wanted to hear. She's also quite able to express herself despite having trouble using correct grammar. The questions I asked are in bold. Her answers are given verbatim. A few times, I clarified her answers. These clarifications are found in brackets.

Tell me your thoughts about the SB?

I like the SB because you can look at anything you want and the class can see everything and it’s so much better than my teacher bringing the computer around and showing everyone.

How has it helped your learning?

Now I’ve learned so much in Social Studies the first time we used it. We looked up Indian, I mean Native American stuff and we have been learning a lot and there’s actually a lot of people who have been learning so many things that I can’t imagine.

Has it helped in any other subjects besides Social Studies?

You can learn and have fun on the SB at the same time by playing the treasure game my teacher pulled up from the internet. It’s fun and you’re learning at the same time.

So you think it’s helped you learn grammar?

Yeah. It’s better because it describes more things than the textbooks. It uses words that we understand and we get better thoughts of things rather than just having a short sentence. The book goes too fast. There’s not enough examples to get it.

Oh and there was that game we played. The one from funbrain…

You mean Mad Libs?

YEAH! That’s the one. See that was really good because it used all these nouns and stuff and adjectives and the other ones. It gave us all these good words to put in sentences and we didn’t have to spell it or anything, just touch the word. Even though sometimes it was hard to touch it when it was bouncing all over the screen but that made it fun too.

I’m glad you enjoyed that game.

Um, let’s see… We could also take SRC tests when we all read a book together we can take the test together. And Google earth was the best. We can see things like the Eiffel tower and see where our friends live and you can put the address down and see the place. Remember how on the Grandparents breakfast day they [the parents and grandparents] all wanted to see the board. My two grandmas were so excited and they asked what it was and they said “we didn’t have that when we were little”. One of my grandmas said “man that would have helped us when I was little”. She was very excited to see the differences between when she was little and now how there are tvs and computers and smarboards in the classrooms.

Your mom got to see the board too, did she have anything to say about it?

Your parents get real excited when you come home and you say Mom look what I learned on the SB today and parents are happy that the board helps you so much and you look up things and get more information and put it up on the SB so you get more time to see everything.

I think that’s it, no wait, remember in social studies. You can look stuff up during social studies when you have a question and you can find the information right there.

What do you mean by that?

In the textbooks, you know how the sentences [paragraphs] are really short? Well on the Internet it’s more like a paragraph [whole web page] and that’s so much better than one little sentence. It helps you understand it.

You can go up and get a pen and you can write things and you can write it in cursive or however you want. It’s not boring like just sitting there listening cause you get to do stuff out of your seat.

How do you think the SB helped your writing?

It helped us by showing the class and how it was a big picture and seeing it clearly and seeing it better.

Can you explain that a little more?

You know, how you can show us everything, like, just put all the sentences up so we can see what it’s supposed to be like and if we get stuck we can look at that and it helps.

I’m going to list some things that we used the board for in writing class. I want you to tell me your thoughts about each thing. If you think it wasn’t helpful, it’s okay to tell me that, too.

Doing research?
That was the most fun things because you can just imagine so many things that you can look up on the computer and you can see so many things. The White House was pretty cool. I didn’t know that it had 135 rooms. It’s way easier to find stuff on the internet than in books because you don’t even know if the stuff you want to know is in that book and maybe the library doesn’t even have the book you need but the internet does.

So the SmartBoard helps with Internet searching? But can’t you just do that on a regular computer?

Yeah but it’s fun to see it all together and like, when you showed us the good websites and not the bad ones to use it was easier to do it myself.

Scholastic website?
That was also a fun thing to do. Half of the things I looked up there I didn’t know.

Personal research?
I didn’t know that people recycled 50% of the cans. I found this good website.

How did that help your writing?

I think it made my speech better to have more information in it and stuff.

Organizing paragraphs?
People can see what you’re talking about instead of just reading it and when you underline it, it’s better because you can see where the teacher was reading.

So underlining things helped?

Yeah and the colors too. Oh and saving stuff. That was the best part about the Smart Board that we got to study the same things for a couple weeks but we can still save it and go over it again if people forgot about it. And there was that one time I was absent and you printed what I missed so I didn’t get behind and all that.

YouTube Videos?

We got to watch the old cartoons [School House Rock] you learn stuff that you didn’t know and now you know it. It’s in your brain and when your teacher asks you the question it pops up in your mind and you already know it.

Do you think you could have gotten that from a book?

No. A book may give you a sentence and it would be good words but it wouldn’t give you the right words that you would need. Like a book would tell you a horse is a mammal that can run really fast but you need more to understand it. So by looking it up using the SB, people can learn more stuff and know how it helps so many people rather than just one person and it gives you information the book doesn’t.

Anything else you want to add?

You can put up a white blank board and you can write down the words that we’re having trouble on and you help us with it instead of having a regular white board. You can erase it better, there’s no marks on the board like pens do. You don’t have to clean it every single day.

What things could I do to make the board better?

Nothing that you can explain better. Nothing. If you explained it wrong someone would raise their hand and you can explain it better. We use it perfect. We use it for what we need it for. For everything! For speeches we looked up so many things on the SB. It’s fun how you use it. Not the other teachers but how you use it. You look up things and think “oh my class would love this one and you see how we love it just by our faces and you pick things how they look fun and it’s just exciting how we look up things that are fun and we’re learning.”

Thanks for talking with me.

Changing Practices

I'm reviewing some notes for my class which is what this whole blog is for... I had written down a question that I was supposed to ask myself.

"How am I changing my practices with this technology?"

Well I've been thinking about this a lot. Because it's a multi-layered answer. Obviously the SmartBoard changes how I teach dramatically. From a physical standpoint, most of my regular white board is covered with the SmartBoard so I no longer teach using a regular white board. Beyond that basic change, I have changed how I teach lessons. Part of this change comes from how I prepare. After teaching the same thing for now 6 years, I don't need to put much direction in my lesson plans. "pg 16 verbs" would suffice (We mark benchmarks differently for anyone who reads this and wonders why my plans don't include benchmark notations). But now it takes a lot more than that. While the written plan might say "verbs.notebook lesson" instead, I also have to make sure that lesson exists and if it doesn't or I don't like the pre-made ones, I have to make it myself. And that takes more time and effort. At the same time, this time and effort is worth it because I know I'll be able to use it again and again. I feel like I'm dedicating more time to planning and preparing and that extra time reflects well in my presentation.

Another way the SB has changed my practice is by allowing me to integrate web based materials. In the past I had a couple of lessons where I would pull up a web page and then have the students gather around a computer 3-4 at a time. This severely limited my use of the internet and the valuable resources available there. Now I think nothing of pulling up a website and letting the kids go to town exploring and learning.

My classes are now more interactive. I used to spend 10-15 minutes at the beginning of class introducing the concept and reviewing the previous lessons. Then I would put the students in pairs and have them answer questions from the textbook. I knew that this was not the best approach. The kids liked my "lectures" (at least to a point) and I did my best to make them entertaining and memorable. But they were purely auditory and that in and of itself made the lessons less adapted to visual students. Now it's completely different. We've used the textbooks maybe 3 times since the board arrived last October and we used the books WITH the board, not instead of. The students work together using the board. My class is more unruly. They are more talkative and out of their seats. They communicate with each other. They think more. They reason more. They explore. We have broken out of the Catholic School mold of children sitting row by row with their hands folded neatly on their desks and I love it! I am happier with how I teach. I feel more effective as a teacher. I feel like no matter how boring my topic is (and let's face it, most people don't LOVE grammar) my kids will leave class with a smile because they got to answer their questions by dragging something with their finger or clicking on the right box and making it change colors or some other more enjoyable task than sitting and writing with pencil and paper.

And it's not just language arts that receives this benefit. I can show them everything. There hasn't been a time yet where I wanted to show the kids something that I couldn't find available on the Internet. In social studies, we still use textbooks but the kids have developed a sense that the book doesn't have everything in it. Last week we were studying the early Floridians. We were making a chart of the different tribes and one of the questions was about whether the tribes were mound builders or not. Well the book didn't say and that led me to think the answer was no. That answer wasn't good enough for my students who immediately directed me to Google, where they typed in their search terms and discovered that the book had not in fact included the information that the tribe were actually mound builders after all. I get the feeling every day that I use the board that the possibilities are endless. The learning is deeper and more lasting.

I can't really say enough good things about my SB. At one point this year I was getting very frustrated with school and working and being away from my toddler and it was hard and then this board arrived and it changed everything. Has the board changed my practices? It's changed my life :)

Thoughts

I sat down and talked to my kids about the board again today. The results are in the posting below.

I've been digesting the things they said to me. Nothing they said was all that surprising. In fact most of it I'd already heard more informally. I could tell that a few of them were trying very hard to give thoughtful answers and those were the ones I appreciated the most.

One thing I hadn't really counted on was their inability to really put to words how the SB had helped them with their writing. In some respects, this doesn't make a huge difference for my project. They like the board and they perceive it to be helpful. Their writing scores and consistent class engagement provides support for the board but I do wish they had been able to give me some substantial feed back on why they felt the board was helpful. Maybe it's because we haven't done a board lesson for a few days but I had really hoped they could say something like, "I have a better understanding of how to structure my paragraphs." Ha even as I write that I realize it's not something any of my kids would have ever said. I guess what I have to keep in mind is that, even if they can't express the benefits, I am still seeing benefits. The focus group information was interesting but not as helpful as I had hoped it would be.

Focus Group #2

What are some of your feelings about the SB now that we’ve been using it for a few months?

It’s awesome
We’re lucky to have this advanced technology.
Sometimes the internet doesn’t work and that’s really annoying.
Google Earth is the best. It really helps us learn geography.
It can help us understand more about what we learn.
It can help us learn.
We can use it like a real computer.
Instead of taking turns looking up stuff on regular computers, we can do it all together.
The internet is a powerful resource and tool to gather information and that’s why it helps us.
It does more than I thought it would do.
I like being able to touch it and being able to draw and erase with my hand.

What are some of your favorite activities that we have done so far?

Google Earth
Scholastic
Watching You Tube videos
Treasure Hunt (game)
Yeah, Treasure Hunt is the best! Can we play it now?
I like doing the Internet
I like the White House pictures (website)

How has the Smart Board helped you write your speech?

It helped us write better because we could see examples of how to write and also how to speak. The You Tube clips were awesome.
It’s great to pull up information and share it with the whole class cause then we could see how to do stuff.
It lets you go back to old stuff and make sure you’ve got everything.
It changed my life!
It makes stuff fun and not boring.
We learned about how to use Wikipedia the right way to do research.
We watched about vetoes. I didn’t know what a veto is but now I get it. So now if I’m president I will know what to do.


If you could change anything about the board, what would you change?

I’d make it cover the room and all the walls.
I would change the color—add more color markers.
I wish we could all use the board at the same time instead of only one at a time.

Well Here's Something

I was concerned I wouldn't have anything to use the SB for while my kids are rehearsing their speeches in class but I was wrong! Maybe this is a little bit of a stretch but hey, I think it's worth something...

So as we started going through the speeches, I found that some kids are just struggling to get through reading theirs. We can't really work on much expression until they have the words down (and yes, you'd be surprised how hard it is to read your own work when it's spelled properly). So then there's a second group of kids. They can read their speeches just fine and now we have to work on presenting them not just reading off a sheet of paper. Well it's hard to teach kids how to show passion in their voices and it's plain to me that there really is passion in a great deal of the writing.

We were just about through the whole class worth of speeches when suddenly I had a brain storm. I thought well, it's hard to describe passion so why not show it?

I thought I may run into some issues showing an Obama speech to my students. I don't want to get in a political debate with them (or their parents!) but I did want them to see the president giving a speech with every ounce of his being. So, second best option-- The West Wing! Thankfully there are hundreds of clips from this amazing show available for viewing on You Tube and since I didn't think it would be necessary or appropriate to show them a whole episode, I just pulled up a few 2-3 minute clips. They watched in pure silence as the actors demonstrated exactly what I was talking about. One student turned to me when the second clip was over and said, "Mrs. B! I think I get it!"

Could I have possibly shown all the students these clips using one regular computer? Sure, but it would have taken the entire class period. I have found yet another wonderful use for this incredible board!!

Done! (Sort of)

I haven’t been writing in my journal as much as I would like because although I’m using the Smart Board in other classes, I’m trying to keep my focus on my inquiry project which deals with writing. Last week was a really hectic week. It was Catholic Schools Week which means that nothing goes according to a normal schedule and most classes are interrupted for one reason or another. I spent the week’s language classes taking kids individually and going over their speech with them and then typing it for them. Yes, I know they should probably type it themselves but I don’t have a month to get this done and I am much faster. Plus, they type for homework 2 times a week so they are decent enough. So there wasn’t much Smart Boarding going on in language. I bet there are ways I could have integrated it but to be honest with myself I was just stressed to get this done. Sometimes I feel a little TOO much pressure to use the board. This is pressure I put entirely on myself because it is certainly not coming from my boss. It does come from students at times though. They get disappointed when I tell them I don’t have a SB lesson for them. I think that speaks highly of the board itself. I would have loved to let kids explore with it while I was helping kids get finished up with speeches but unfortunately I only have the one computer to connect it with. So anyway, that’s why I haven’t written more. Over the next few weeks we’ll be practicing and that won’t require using the board much either. Maybe I’ll take a side journey into my use of the board in other subject areas.

Fourth Participation Log

Lesson: Compare and Contrast presidents.notebook file. (For background and understanding regarding speeches)
First Count: 11/11

Second Count: 9/9 (Students left for speech)

Third Count: 8/9
Notes: The students were really enthusiastic about this lesson. For the first count I wasn’t sure if everyone was paying attention but when I called on the student in question, he was ready with the correct answer so I am counting it as all being engaged. Towards the end of class they started getting antsy but it was almost lunch time so that is to be expected.

Time Crunch

We’ve been in a rush to get the speeches done so we can start practicing them. I like to have the students practice for at least 2 weeks before giving their speech before the judges. I bet this seems like a really long time to an ordinary classroom teacher who would probably send his or her students home and tell them to practice it there. My kids need to feel comfortable in the environment where they will perform so we practice a LOT. It’s also neat because the repetition helps the other kids learn the facts of all the speeches. If they only heard it once or twice they would not process the information but after hearing each other’s speeches several times they start to learn new things. I guess there is not really a whole lot about Smart Boards in this posting but I guess what I’m trying to explain is why we’re not using it as much for writing these days.

Here’s what I’ve learned from this speech process:

The Smart board helps kids understand—
Paragraph structuring
Outlines
Search techniques
Editing

I don’t even have to compare one year to the other to see that these speeches are the best written I have ever seen. I’ll freely admit that there were times in the past where I had to essentially write the whole thing for students but this year EVERY single student had something written down, even if it wasn’t a complete essay it was far more than just a start. I have many of the same kids I had last year but I also have new kids. I have some very talented writers but I also have kids who struggle severely. The only change has been the Smart Board so I have to conclude that these positive changes can be attributed to this new technology. I can’t wait to crunch the numbers.

Feedback

I got to “meet” with my classmates last night. I put meet in quotes because it was an online meeting in real time using a program called elluminate. It allows for voice discussion and text chat. There is also a board where things can be posted. I’ve only used it 3 times now but it’s very enjoyable and makes me feel like I’m in school again—oh wait, I AM in school :)

Anyway, I got a suggestion to discuss how my observation with my principal went. Well that was about 6 weeks ago but I do remember it pretty well. Here’s my take on my observation a little bit after the fact… (The participation log from the Observation is still available from my post back in November)

Observation

Today my principal came in to observe my class. This is something she does twice a year formally and at random times more informally. I’ve never been bothered by observations. I’ve always gotten good reviews and fair assessments. I was a little nervous though because I did a Smart Board lesson for my observation and this was the first time my boss has seen the board in action. I wanted to make sure she felt like she was getting her money’s worth. The lesson went really well. I did a combination of lessons I found on http://exchange.smarttech.com/ . The lessons were on verb tenses. I know from past years that it would have been a very dry lesson but they were extremely well engaged. I used this opportunity to do one of my logs of student engagement since this is already something my boss does during observations. All students were engaged!! I think that is a first! Usually there is always one student who is off in lala land that I don’t notice quickly enough to bring their attention back to the lesson but this time they were all there. My boss also noted that one of the students that she has never seen contribute to class was contributing and that is a very big deal! It’s true, this one student never used to raise his hand for anything. He would answer reluctantly if I called on him but he was itching to demonstrate something, anything on the board so his hand was up constantly. Overall my boss loved the lesson and the kids behaved well for the most part except a few were a little over zealous and wanted to show off what they could do. I’d rather over enthusiasm than the opposite. I wanted to mention that this behavior was not at all unusual and I don’t think it reflects on having the principal in the room. Some kids are always a little off the wall and that’s part of the reason why they’re at my school. They may have been slightly better behaved than normal but not drastically so. I think she got a fair and accurate picture of life in my classroom. Overall, it was a great observation

Ooooh This is Cool Too!

Well one thing I have a really hard time getting my kids to do is editing. They are stubborn and sometimes simply downright unwilling to look at their work after they are supposedly done. I was thinking about how modeling worked for Internet searches and how I’d used the Smart Board to show kids how to edit late last year. I had a student type his speech and then I brought it up on the screen so everyone could watch us edit the paper together. I think maybe there was something freeing about seeing that this student, who is a top performer, made mistakes that needed correcting. I think too often my students, even with their disabilities, strive for impossible perfection. They tend to think if they forget one capital letter then the whole paper is a failure. They watched as we quickly and easily edited the mistakes in the paper and how we rearranged sentences to create a better flow. The best thing I got out of this lesson was the following comment: Me: “Austin are you ready to type your speech?”
Austin: “No, Mrs. B, I haven’t done my proofreading yet!”

Maybe the concept of editing isn’t so scary anymore.

Writing: Day 2

Writing is going much better than expected. It was nice to simply pull up the file I saved yesterday so I didn’t have to redo the lesson. My kids need constant reminders of what they have learned and visually, since the pages from yesterday are the same as today they form a familiarity with the concepts. Of course once they got started, many realized they still needed more information. This is where this whole Smart Board/Writing process got increasingly interesting.

I need to start by explaining the old process of doing research—step one: go to the library and get a book. Step two—flip rapidly through the pages of the book. Step three—determine that there is nothing useful in the book. Step four—try the Internet instead. Step five—open Internet Explorer. Step six—ask for help because you have no idea what to do.

Well that’s not what happened this time. Kids would ask me if they could look up information on the Internet and after I granted the permission they would proceed to open the Internet browser and do their search. Sure, I had to spell some words for them but after that I didn’t hear from them. I always keep a close eye on kids using the Internet and I hate to use the word astonishing again but that’s how I felt because I saw them systematically evaluating the web pages and finding what we agreed were terrific resources. Now part of this I can attribute to a generational difference. Granted it’s only been 6 years since I started here but each year brings me a more tech savvy group than the last. I don’t think that one can attribute their searching success entirely to their previous exposure to the Internet. No, I believe that after watching me demonstrate search techniques on the SB and doing searches in a guided group fashion, they have picked up on the intricacies of performing a quality web search. At this point, I don’t think about it that much. I search and scan and kind of know what I’m looking for but that’s a hard concept to teach. Instead of teaching it directly, I taught my students how to do an effective search just through modeling. Who knew it could be that easy? Well I was impressed with the things they found. These will be the best researched speeches we have done yet!

Starting to Write

Writing is a daunting task for my kids. Well in fairness, it’s a struggle for a lot of kids, even “neurotypical” students. (This is the word I’ve just been taught to use to refer to “normal” kids.) So I had them compete some worksheets that I made that were intended to get their ideas flowing and to provide a place for them to write notes or facts that they had learned from our previous web exploration of the presidency.

Now I’ve done speeches for 5 previous years and we do at least 2 additional full essays each year so I’ve done the “get started writing” day dozens of times. I was shocked at how well it went. Now I realize that writing stuff on an electronic board may not seem all that different than providing a typed outline or writing directly on a white board. I can’t fully explain the difference or why it’s so much better. Maybe the kids instinctively pay more attention to something that has the tech appeal. But I also think that being able to go back and forth between “boards” without erasing lets me provide more information because I know I’m not going to just erase it in a minute or two.
So what I did was create 5 boxes representing the 5 paragraphs. At first I just made the boxes and I put the topic sentence in each box for them. I told them they could either copy my sentence or put it in their own words. I see this more as modeling technique than simply giving away answers. Anyway, after I wrote down the outline, I selected the bottom 4 paragraph boxes and shifted them down giving myself space to make more notes about the first paragraph. I noticed that this helped the kids see the structure of an essay. I often have problems with kids who try to write down all the main ideas first and then realize they don’t have space to write the details. They get frustrated with erasing. I think by seeing the writing space on the board it helped them better understand the scaffold of the entire essay. Whatever the cause or reason, I did not have a single student make more than a basic structuring error and that is astonishing.

I kept the notes displayed by opening Smart Notebook twice and putting one page up on one sides and the other page up on the other. There may be an easier way to display to “boards” at one time but this worked for us.

Back on Track

Well after yesterday’s fiasco, the Internet is up and running again. The kids did some exploration of the White House website. We also talked about Air Force One. Their enthusiasm was pretty evident through the lesson although there wasn’t as much interaction as they would have liked. There’s not much to do TO the White House website, it’s mostly reading but they did seem to like the pictures. We got into a good discussion about the secret service. One student had this realization of what having secret service protection meant and says, “You mean there are people who would die for you just because you’re president?” I thought this was quite insightful. It led us down a path I hadn’t intended but thankfully, with the functioning internet and the SB, I was able to give the kids the info they were looking for on the fly. Overall, today’s lesson turned out pretty well.

Crisis

After some preparation, I decided we would do a very streamlined, mini webquest using the Smart Board. I wanted the kids to find interesting facts about the White House and I felt the SB would be a great way to go about doing it. I found this neat tool on Scholastic http://www.scholastic.com/kids/president/ called “If You Were President”. We got through the first part of the lesson using the Scholastic site and then we were moving on to look at the White House website. Well down went the Internet. We have some issues with our Internet connections here at the school. Part of it might be older equipment but mostly it’s an issue with the Internet service so it’s not really anything that we can control. So here I am totally stuck without a lesson to do with my kids. I had pulled some library books and so I ended up resorting to that but I was frustrated and the kids were frustrated that a promising lesson had to be postponed.

So there is one major problem. We need to get our internet service worked out.

More on Speeches

Ok well I’ve come up with a plan. It doesn’t feel like the same type of speech that we’ve done before so I’m still nervous about it but I’m SO GLAD I have my Smart Board now because it will definitely make things easier.

Here’s my plan: Introduce the topic by covering places and things associated with president and government—the White House, Air Force One, the secret service, congress, the supreme court, etc.

Then help students figure out a topic that they would like to make their main focus if they were president—a cause if you will.

Finally, I’ve provided kids with a list of leadership terms. I want them to read the descriptions and pick 3 terms that they think best defines who they are as a person. Then I want them to explain why these traits would make them a good president.

We’ll see how this goes.

It's Time for Speeches

I’m not sure how I feel about this year’s topic. We’ve done a wide variety of topics provided by Modern Woodmen of America http://www.modern-woodmen.org/Public/MemberBenefits/YouthPrograms/YouthEducationalPrograms/SchoolSpeechContest.htm Topics in the past have ranged from “My State” to “A Person Who has Touched Many Lives” This year’s topic is “If I Were President”. The guide lines are a little vague and right now I’m having a hard time conceptualizing how I’m going to make this work. I’ll sleep on it.

Third Participation Log

Lesson: Contractions using contractions.notebook and contractions dominos.notebook
First Count: 10/11

Second Count: 10/11 (Different student)

Third Count: 8/8 (Students left for speech)

Notes: We were interrupted by the SLP coming to take 3 of the students out of the room. The disengaged student was one of the speech students. I think she was preoccupied with waiting to be called out of class. She is usually pretty focused on lessons but she was either watching the clock or reading a book under her desk (until I took the book away). One student that used to be goofing off all the time had his hand raised for just about every question.

Third Participation Log

Lesson: Contractions using contractions.notebook and contractions dominos.notebook
First Count: 10/11

Second Count: 10/11 (Different student)

Third Count: 8/8 (Students left for speech)

Notes: We were interrupted by the SLP coming to take 3 of the students out of the room. The disengaged student was one of the speech students. I think she was preoccupied with waiting to be called out of class. She is usually pretty focused on lessons but she was either watching the clock or reading a book under her desk (until I took the book away). One student that used to be goofing off all the time had his hand raised for just about every question.