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Duly noted.

einstein-desk-662x614

No lie: just spent 15 minutes trying to find an article I read about annotating that was so perfect, so clear and meaningful surely I bookmarked it, saved it, so it could be easily digitally retrieved upon demand. Nope. Can’t find it. My digital life is too messy, too cluttered to find anything easily. So, I’ll cut my losses and just post what I did find.

From Why You Should Have a Messy Desk
From Why You Should Have a Messy Desk

But this isn’t about my messiness; it’s about annotating as a means to curation. What are some tools to promote annotating media in order to create mentorship, ownership, and reach the ultimate rung on the taxonomy scale: creativity?

OH MY GOSH I FOUND IT! (See? If I just hung out in my bathrobe and drank cold coffee long enough, I knew I could conjure information!)

Documenting Learning https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/documenting-learning/

documenting-for-as-learning-tolisano2

 

Digital Annotations:

Software folks are coming out with ways to annotate on-line. I’ve found two:

Genius: http://genius.com

Genius can be a little….dodgy. It combines a social media context as well as pure annotations. Not for the faint of heart.

Scrible:

https://www.scrible.com/

Scrible is in beta, and so far I think it’s great.

Thinglink also grand fun.

Obviously, Google has options, but until I can figure out how to share things and not have YoloSwag69 make a mess out of shared documents, I’ve shied away from those.

Here’s a Prezi I put together a few months ago. It could use an update.

In the classroom:

Poetry: New Hope
Poetry: New Hope

Showing thinking and participating together is always fun. (And I am envious of this teacher’s amazing board handwriting…!)

Apps

These are some I am going to test soon:

Orion Markup: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/orion-markup-image-notes-annotations/id1014671845?mt=12

Annotations: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/annotations/id885557228?mt=12

Deskscribble: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deskscribble/id422170726?mt=12

There are many, too many to list, in terms of screencasts, annotations on screen, capturing, photography and text mash-ups, but I will always love WordSwag and Skitch:

IMG_0348

This article has a comprehensive list of How Annotation Reshapes Student Reading. Read it, print it out, turn it into a rubric/student reflection sheet. As always, ThreeTeachersTalk provide great information.provide great information.

Postscript: Been doing some research on apps that read aloud, or will help some of my struggling readers. If it’s tough to read, it’s tough to annotate.

Read4Me

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/read4me/id402454684?mt=12

VoiceDream

http://www.voicedream.com

FreeSpeech

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/freespeech-build-language/id1089150955?mt=12

And random acts of creativity:

http://www.abandonedamerica.us

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/urban-exploration-photography#.fwZe8NDzo

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/abandoned-places_us_55e76c3ae4b0c818f61a89eb

http://mentalfloss.com/article/65567/26-breathtaking-pictures-abandoned-and-forgotten-places

 

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We can work it out.

Sometimes convincing ourselves (of fill in the blank) is the most challenging argument of all; we set rules and boundaries of fair play, and then (sometimes aggressively) expect others to abide. And one life occasion where this is grandly obvious is the activity of “group work.”

when I die

Let’s talk about the beast that is ‘group work.’ There are multiple lists of how to make group work run more smoothly, and whether we want to admit this horrible truth about adulthood to our young charges, a reality of most work environments. And like just about everything with a label, not all group work, project-based, problem-based, etc. endeavors is created equal. Four 13 years olds deciding how the XVIII Amendment altered their lives does not necessarily engage the intellect or free the senses. Rarely will the ONE IDEA TO RULE THEM ALL emerges when more than one person is in charge: the compromises and ‘go along’ attitudes vary on spectrums depending on a group member’s individual temperament. Does the student see themselves as the leader, the boss, or the bewildered head-nodder? And we all play our part in group work--think about any staff meeting or committee you’ve been on, and how much effectively and efficiently gets done. Not much. Perhaps it is the ‘getting done’ part —do we want the result the process or the product?

And yes, while introducing the group project we completed right before the break, I scared my students with the TALES OF THE OPEN CRYPT OFFICE SPACES, and kind of a quasi ‘all for one fails, one for all fails’ kind of tactic. Not very nice of me, but they forced my hand –listening and collaborating are skills I hold dear, and by this time in the year it was time to put those values to the test. And up to this point, group work was one area of deficiency. I do want them to achieve great things, and learning how to be heard and gain people’s trust and belief  is part of that. But I also hold the individual studio/workshop time and process sacred. If I had to choose between creating in a vacuum, never sharing my work, or to listen to other people’s ideas in a group forever, that would be a special kind of hellish choice for me.

But here’s the tricky part: in any group, does there need to be recognition for (only) one or two visionaries? Perhaps we’ve been looking at group roles all wrong. Perhaps everyone needs a chance to be the ‘visionary’ and direct the work and shark-tank their ideas through a vetting process. I wonder if Bisman Deu had brought up her phenomenal idea in a classroom setting if no one would have listened to her, and her idea would have been tossed in the wastebasket. John Spencer wrote about the seven types of creative teachers: how can we apply this to students’ personalities and work styles?

I did say regarding some group work it is life or death. In all seriousness, Bob Ebeiling carried 30 years of guilt because no one listened to him when he tried to warn of the shuttle disaster. It can have tragic and deeply personal consequences when teams don’t heed others warnings.

Self-Perception, Individualism, and Performance

Perhaps it’s time to focus on the individual’s skill set in terms of their self-perception before going into a group project. In other words, each student reflects in an individual asset portfolio, thinking about their own perceptions of their role in a group project, their strengths, and their triggers. I can think of one student who is shining in cooking in her elective class, and gets the other students to follow directions and is a leader, while during the group work for the Amendments Project, she floundered and pointed fingers. My class work demands reading, and she struggles with this. Therefore, her sense of self-efficacy diminished per the demands of the tasks.

How Does Self-Perception Affect Performance?

Kids who see themselves as “good” students tend to trust their efforts. Because they believe in their ability to adapt and learn, these students have a high sense of “self-efficacy” (Ruddell and Unrau 2004). We can think of self-efficacy as a kind of faith in future results; it’s a student’s belief that, through personal effort, he or she can master new knowledge and skills. The idea of self-efficacy also reflects an understanding that academic competency is an acquired— not a natural— ability. Everyone can relate to the feeling of being a novice. We expect to make mistakes when learning to ride a bike, play soccer, or drive a car. However, some students don’t see the same learning curve when it comes to their academic work. They see themselves as “bad” students who have “always” struggled in school. Revealing the process of apprenticeship that all learning requires can reassure many frustrated students— and help them understand that the first step toward better performance is to see themselves as capable of achievement. Students who develop this strong sense of self-efficacy are, not surprisingly, more motivated to improve their reading and writing skills. Self-efficacy can be especially important for low-income and minority students. Research suggests that sustained effort over time, as reflected by high school GPA, is a more accurate predictor of college success than high-stakes assessments like the SAT— a test on which students with high socioeconomic status typically outperform students with low socioeconomic status (Geiser and Santelices 2007). Personal attributes such as motivation, discipline, and perseverance— in other words, a high sense of self-efficacy— can be even more important indicators of academic preparation than traditional aptitude tests. This means that students who consistently trust their efforts have a better chance of completing a college education.

Fletcher, Jennifer (2015-02-28). Teaching Arguments: Rhetorical Comprehension, Critique, and Response (Kindle Locations 4663-4677). Stenhouse Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Here are some of my tips about group work that I’ve learned the hard way:

  1. Always balance a group portion with an individual one.
  2. Allow them time to divvy up the tasks to allow for ownership. Make this process transparent.
  3. Provide time for a group mission statement, resolution, or creed. Post it on the wall.
  4. Create a template if necessary, but also, allow more advanced group work to lead toward medium agnosticism. 
  5. For middle school kids, they will be furious and resentful if one of their groupmates isn’t pulling her share. Welcome to life, kiddo. See #1, and let that be your response.
  6. Consider the process over product: for the Amendment Project (details below), the target and success depended on more upon what they learned, and what they could teach me and each other than perfect spelling or presentation skills at the front of the room. (Big fan of the gallery-walk structure.)

The Amendment Project

As with any new unit of study, tweaks and adjustments are required.

  1. Divide students in groups of 4 (3-5).
  2. Have them read through the Amendments and choose ones that intrigue them.
  3. Bring their ideas to their group, and decide which one they will focus on.
  4. Claim Evidence Reasoning document to help guide their knowledge building
  5. Provide a template for initial group work, then move toward medium agnostic for more advanced projects.
  6. Reading for Argument template
  7. Make sure to give space for their individual contributions (per the template)
  8. Provide discussions/forums to allow for individual contributions
  9. Be aware that many shared, collaborative tech tools let us down: PowerPoint on-line is still wonky and weird. One student was near tears because it deleted his final thoughts paragraph. I’m disappointed, too, because he is an articulate thinker and I always enjoy reading his insights.

There were many excellent exchanges and sharing of ideas that resulted from this project. One student looked up at me, shaking his head and said, “Mrs. Love…electoral college…” I know, young squire….I know. The other one happened when a student didn’t think the law about being a ‘natural born citizen’ was fair. I said well, it is what it is, basically, and then later, another member of his group respectfully said, “Mrs. Love, you’re right most of the time….” and I said, “But this time I’m not, right?” He said yes. Then we had one of the best discussions about ‘natural born citizens’ in the context of its time, and what it means now, and that laws are messy–and that’s the beauty. I could see a roomful of young men and women who would be amazing leaders of this nation, and I told them if this was their mission, to learn, be a scholar, understand law, and they could create amendments to suit their vision. Dangerous thinking? Absolutely. The key is teaching context, and any concept in a contexual framework of ‘then and now’ creates the liveliest and most engaging of humanities discourse.

Every single one of my students was successful with this project — every one. Every student contributed to the conversation, the work, and the process. They took the laws and considered them as relevant to their worlds today. I can’t ask for any greater self-efficacy than that.

Project Based Learning Resource:

Buck Institute for Education (BIE)

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Graveyard of Jargon

hopesdreams
What educational jargon or bandwagons have you had to bury?

My friend Philip Cummings recently posted something on social media that caught my eye, “Letting Go of Learning Styles” by Amber and Andy Ankowski on the PBS Parents site. This article busts the myth of learning styles, one of education’s most holiest of shrines, and offers much more authentic alternatives. And the Ankowskis have a point: no matter how special our snowflake, we’re all trying to figure out how to use gravity to our advantage during the storm.

Wait–that was a TERRIBLE metaphor. Forgive me. I’ve been doing mom-chores and adulting all day, and I’m cranky. College boy is in town and needed to get him squared away, and the whole tax thing, and now people are arguing, being bossy over one another, and quite frankly, it’s all a little silly. Or in the words of the immortal Mr. Krabs,  “What a baby.” The deal is, we really need to be careful when jumping on bandwagons: they have a habit of gaining speed and being much more dangerous during the departing.

Here are a few of my thoughts/questions:

  • What if a teacher becomes an ‘expert’ in one of these sacred teachings, and then that path is no longer valid or respected? I’m thinking of one educator I know whose expertise is in ‘learning styles,’ and how is she going to feel that others believe that it’s bunk?
  • What about all the backlash and misinterpretation of “grit,” growth mindset,” or gangum style? Whatever. I still dance to it. Just kidding. You know what I mean.
  • What’s next? What about the ed-tech movement, our love of Alfie Kohn, or DON’T EVEN THINK IT: UBD?!

STEP. AWAY. FROM. THE. U.B.D. AND NO ONE GETS HURT.

But back to learning styles, John Spencer noted,

“I feel like the original research on learning styles was flawed (and I’ve never bought into the notion of fixed learning styles). However, almost all of the research “overturning” learning styles relies on flawed metrics. In most cases, the assessments don’t match the instruction. So, a visual style of instruction and an auditory style of instruction both end up with a written test at the end. They do this to boost reliability but in the process, the validity suffers.”

I always liked Howard Gardner, and even he said learning styles was misused. His “multiple intelligences’ are NOT learning styles. That’s always the way, isn’t it? Someone has a good idea, does mountains of research, draws conclusions, and adjusts and flexes thinking, and then some bureaucrat gets a hold of it and takes all the flavor out. While becoming a teacher, of course I applied all the things I was learning about to my own young sons. The older one was the musician/mathematician, and the younger one (I was sure) was destined to be the next Jane Goodall with his love of nature. But again I think we confuse interests with concrete, fixated means of functioning in a classroom. We label, box, and shelve. We forget we are complex, adaptive systems, capable of multiple approaches to something. The concept of content becoming the focus makes sense: I wouldn’t learn about how to throw a ball from seeing a picture of someone doing it as well as just doing it. Moreover, I wouldn’t learn how to write a solid rebuttal from an interpretive dance (however much fun that would be).

There is just some stuff we need to know– like how to throw a ball, or write a great rebuttal. And we have teacher-experts in those areas who are more than capable and desirous of teaching those skills.

And then we come to the big tests that only focus on ‘reading’ and ‘math.’ And the ELA and math teachers seem to be the only ones who get their names tied to those scores.

I am predicting that ‘close reading’ is going to be next on the list of educational movements to at least catch a cold, if not completely buried in the Graveyard of Jargon. Close reading is great, and though everyone’s been cautioned not to overuse it, guess what? It’s being overused. And when something is overused it loses its effectiveness and provides diminishing returns.

But damn, that poor woman who spoke about grit. Bet she’s sorry.

What educational tropes do you think are about to expire and meet their maker in the big classroom, where St. Dewey watches over all of us, just smiling to himself?

Ah well. Enough of this. Time to dance!

I don’t care what anyone says: this is still fun to dance to.

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Deep down.

deep diving
Underwater Cave Diving by Viktor Lyagushkin www.flowcheck.es

 

Today I was observed for the last 40 minutes of my last class of the day on the first day back from winter break, and that was perfectly fine. I trust my evaluator completely and know that the feedback I receive will be informed and valuable. In our time -constrained worlds, though, I am not sure I’ll have the opportunity to tell her all the things leading up to the moment where she came in.

So here is where I get to reflect–this space is a good thinking space.

Today I began a unit I created from scratch. I use the steel-cased, reinforced, V-8 engine with multiple air bags of UBD, or Understanding By Design. It’s adaptive, flexible, and meaty. For my vegan friends: packed with protein.

Since I’m Humanities this year, and love cross-content, real-world connections, this past summer, before news of Zika broke out, I thought I would do a yellow fever unit, and how diseases impact history. My Enduing Understanding is: “Disease shapes the course of history, and often societies’ responses to health/disease are culturally based.” One of the essential questions is: How did our new nation handle health/disease?

And I’m using a classroom set, with an in-class reading of Yellow Fever: 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. I could only get my hands on 30 copies, so I told the students a few things:

1. We only have 30 copies; I can’t get more (a book angel gave me her 12 books from her classroom library, so now I have a few extras: bless you, book angel!)

2. We will work on stamina: stamina is the ability to focus on text during a time. The reason we work on stamina is mental training, just like we’re training for a sport. It’s endurance. It’s getting in the zone and not wanting to stop reading.

3. I told them my insights about students who say “I HATE READING.”

*They hate reading because they kept reading logs

*They hate reading because they don’t have choice

*They hate reading because someone shamed them when it was difficult

*They may struggle and not know why

But this is what got them: I told them no baby is born hating to read. Every baby loves to communicate, to look at their parents’ faces, to babble and blurb, and every baby loves stories. 

They became believers. But they also don’t know how much I have to fight this current trend of just reading passages. Robert Zaretsky, who teaches at the University of Houston, wrote this article, “Taught to pass tests, they don’t know how to read books” concerning how college students are ill prepared to read and discuss novels. 

Today, we are reaping the results of this strategy. Among its many catastrophic consequences has been its impact on student literacy. Like a koan riddle, we might soon be asking if a textbook war can take place if no one knows how to read. The decline of reading among American youth is reflected by a growing raft of books with titles like “Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It,” “Why Kids Can’t Read” and “I Read It, But I Don’t Get It.” These books, written by teachers, confirm what my conversations with my brother-in-law, a bright and dedicated Houston-based high school English teacher, long ago revealed: Forced to teach to the test, he can no longer encourage students to reach for the texts as sources of wisdom and wonder.

 

I am trying not to let that happen on my watch.

Close reading has an important place in instruction, there is no doubt, because…it’s not new. It’s as old as stories themselves. So I created a quote log that serves a few purposes: it provides 3 lenses to consider:

1. The author puts a quote at the beginning of every chapter: why? How is it significant to the chapter once read?

2. Talk about character/plot events: how are the characters responding to the events?

3. Look through the medical/health lens; was there anything in this chapter that related to health?

They will not be doing this alone. We will read independently, and burst forth with conversation. We will learn everything we can about the medical practices of the time, and how science and superstition can devastate or be our savior.

And they will read the entire book.

A few kids are hooked after the first chapter: who can’t relate to a pouty teenage girl who’s annoyed her nagging mother is waking her up to do chores? This response is universal.

One thing Zaretsky may want to try is what I did– remind his college students they love stories. And if he wants them to read stories worth telling, which he does, they will.

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December Drabble-A-Day

calvin snow

New traditions

I’m not sure when I did my first December Drabble-A-Day unit. “Unit” even sounds too mechanical and factory-ordered. I do need to thank one of my PSWP writing buddies, Aimee, who first introduced me to the word ‘drabble.’

calvin writing

So here’s how it works:

Whatever writing concept you want to teach, make a series of mini-lessons based on that particular concept.

  • Example: Creating Sensory Images–consider a series of images that deal with our senses of touch, taste, sight, sound, smell, and perhaps a sixth sense of anticipation or intuition. Have writers craft a story based on that one sense.Rock umbrella
    • Example: Topic and Image Combinations–very broad-based ideas
    • Example: Traditional Writing Prompts
      Use RAFTS–Role, Audience, Form, Topic, and Strong Verb constructs, or see if you can find some clever ones from Writing Prompts tumblr or WriteAbout.
    • Example: Punctuation–drabbles are a perfect time to practice perfecting the semi-colon, colons, ellipses, em dashes, etc. to help support meaning and nuance.
  • Collect a hefty amount of images from a variety of photographers, subjects, and levels of abstraction.
  • Have students take their own images, too.
Taken at the University of Washington campus and text added using WordSwag.
Taken at the University of Washington campus and text added using WordSwag.
  • Keep track of writing excerpts that may illustrate a particular writing concept you wish our young authors would like to try. A Kindle is a great tool for this.

This excerpt from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars serves to demonstrate writer’s craft in terms of using humor to deflect a serious topic:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.

Green, John (2012-01-10). The Fault in Our Stars (pp. 3-4). Dutton Juvenile. Kindle Edition.

 So you have all of these things: ideas, prompts, concepts, excerpts, images, etc. Map out two paths: first, choice. Make sure to give students choice with prompts that serve the purpose. Then, provide time and space to write and participate in writer’s workshop with trustworthy partners.

The boon

The students write nine of ten drabble choices: because it’s December, and December is for giving (and forgiving), the tenth drabble is a gift exchange. Every student chooses their best/favorite one, and shares it with their classmates. The students end up with a suite of drabbles in a portfolio, much like a printer’s suite of prints from shared artists. There is a student writer’s reflection cover sheet as well, for each student to reflect on which drabbles they enjoyed writing, what was challenging, and how well they attempted the concept(s) presented.
Ultimately, writers enjoy choice built on structure and support, and love sharing their work, too. If you would like guidelines for writing workshop protocols, those are relatively simple. Everyone writes. Every one listens first. Then, every one gives feedback that’s safe, constructive, and non judgmental. Ah, if only all our lives were as such. Happy Writing!
If you need help in using mentor texts, consider picking up a copy of The Writing Thief by Ruth Culham.
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