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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.