Avatars, defeating the monster, leveling up...doesn't sound like a classroom?? Well maybe it should...This afternoon I read several articles about how important both physical and digital games can be for children. Games and play don't only support student academic growth and critical thinking but can support students in their social and emotional development, which was a new idea for me. I watched a few videos by expert gamers and game implementing teachers with my brother, who is a big fan of video games. We've had our share of debates over the years and, although I hate to admit he's right about anything, these resources helped me understand where he was coming from and how games can be a powerful tool in children's learning. If I am already implementing some game concepts into my classroom like leveling up on the Super Improvers Chart, an element of Whole Brain Teaching, distributing delfinitos (paper mascot tickets for correct behavior) for a weekly raffle, and a self monitoring progress chart for reading and phonics growth, then why wouldn't I use the wildly better online programs that do these things and so much more at the click of a button? I know from personal experience the excitement and engagement induced by such games as Kahoot to practice Spanish conjugations in my advanced Spanish class, Class Dojo for awarding team and individual points, and iRead as an adaptive game for phonics. Today, however, I was able to dive into many new game resources. First I looked at Legends of Learning which I had great hopes for because it provides gamified lessons and practice organized by grade level and standard. I love the organizational element of this platform but the games are somewhat poorly designed, making it difficult for students to see and understand what to do. It is, however, free, and would be nice extra practice once students have learned a concept. Next on the list was Seterra. This website doesn't have the fancy avatars but I LOVE IT, probably because I love geography and maps. It is also simple and easy to start. I remember playing a very similar game when I was a kid which got me to master the states and capitals. There is every kind of blank map (printables too). As soon as it opens, a timer begins and you are prompted to identify the country named. There are various ways in which you can make the game more or less difficult. Teach Your Monster to Read is a really great free resource to teach the building blocks of reading but since my school district has already purchased iRead for us, I have a very similar and more advanced tool for this. I am most in search of a great math tool which I have found in Prodigy and DreamBox. Prodigy looks like a great free resource but I'm a little more excited about DreamBox because of its math tools that are much like physical manipulatives and models we use in class. It also adapts to the learner and comes in a great Spanish version. What I'm still in search of is a good tool for Spanish language development...not just syllables, sight words, and vocabulary, but something that helps them create mental patterns for the grammatical way the language works and implement that knowledge. I looked into Imagine Learning Español which we only use in first grade at my school and noticed they are looking for districts with immersion schools that would like to participate in their español research pilot and so I contacted a few people about it. As I was thinking of my plan to start students off in a blended learning atmosphere at the beginning of school so that they would be prepared to go back to distance learning in a moment's notice, I was worried about being able to prepare for both small group and online lessons at the same time. These adaptive educational games will be such a powerful resource to facilitate that transition for me and I can't wait to try them out on my incoming new students!
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What a list of fun tools I explored this week! I thought I had seen educators on Twitter posting instructional videos made with Powtoon so I wanted to check that out first. It seemed to be a more fun and colorful way to share written information. Definitely a step up from the old Power Point presentation. There were even animated "teachers" to the side doing the presenting. From what I've seen so far, it seems there was a lot of text featured in this tool even though the background elements were very fun. Next I opened an account in Nearpod. Nearpod seems to have a lot more options. When exploring some of their pre-created resources to get an idea of what I could create or assign for my students, I saw that the presentations had much more variety to them and were more interactive. There were places for students to add a short answer response or answer a poll question that could provide the teacher with valuable information about where the class is in their learning of a concept. You can also link videos into these presentation. However, I can imagine my younger students who struggle with reading just clicking through all the informational slides until they get to a video or picture. I'm still trying to figure out if some of the presentations are more meant for student to do on their own or for the teacher to use in front of the class. Of course, I would be able to design them how I like. This would especially be a nice tool for social studies or science when I need to present a good amount of information. In Seesaw, it's easy to write instructions and assign an activity but the instructions shouldn't get too wordy otherwise they'll be ignored. Nearpod might be a good resource for connecting other videos and some simply written content for students to review as part of a unit of study. I also checked out Flipgrid. I know this tool has so much potential that I don't want to miss out on. I made a little intro video and sent it to a couple friends. I like how easy the video editing is. Once again, from what I know so far, for the youngins, it's just easier to use the built in video feature in Seesaw along with the blog where kids can comment and leave feedback, than teach them a whole new video platform and login. However, I know that if we start the year with Seesaw, the kids might master it and mid second grade be ready for a new more exciting tool to add to their belt. Then, I made an account with ExplainEverything. I had heard of this tool before and remember being in need of a better whiteboard/editing tool during distance learning last spring. Explain everything seems to be a very interactive whiteboard where you can import pictures and record yourself making annotations, voice commenting, or moving objects on the screen. Since it is not a video tool but a whiteboard tool, it appeared that you could only work with one frame really at a time. Finally, I also made an account with Edpuzzle. This is my favorite tool so far because I had a big need for it during distance learning and didn't realize what the tool was or offered. It was very difficult to ensure that my students were watching the videos that I so painstakingly made and posted in their carefully designed Seesaw activities. For the lesson I made for class this time, I made my video with Screencastify and the base ten pieces app from the fantastic free apps offered by the Math Learning Center. I then opened this video in EdPuzzle and added comprehension questions. After assigning this to a fake class, I was finally able to access the share feature so I could get the URL and enter it into the link field in the Seesaw multimedia section. I will definitely be using this for my upcoming lessons to ensure more accountability for viewing instructional videos. It was certainly interesting looking into other teachers' and administrators' ideas on distance "learning," a hybrid model, and blended learning. In any case, I know that this coming year, I want to use technology to my advantage. Hopefully the district plan is at least to break my class into smaller groups physically present at school already but in a regular classroom setting I can definitely see myself utilizing these tools to have kids learning in meaningful, engaging ways, while I get to have more personalized small group time (socially distanced) with a few. We'll see where the year takes us... "Google Forms, what a wonderful phrase. Google Forms, ain't no passing craze...It means no worries for the rest of your days..." Ok I'm going to stop the song here. I really like the versatility of Google forms. As I've been working more on getting deeper into the mind of my end user in my research, I can see that a tool like Google Forms will become very handy to get first hand information from the user and not simply observations from my end. I can especially see how useful it would be to gather information from parents, especially since at my school, we don't have our first conferences until November. While I haven't been able to use the add-ons yet because I haven't administered any Google Forms to any population of people, I love the idea of instantly having pie and bar graphs available to analyze results. I also want to learn more about how to create rubrics with Google Forms and add-ons which is my next step. I've already created mini peer writing evaluation rubrics but I'd like to turn this into a Google Form experience for students. They can simply rate each item on a linear scale. Then the add-on can compile the data and I can share that data with each student so they can start improving based on the collective suggestions of their classmates. I need to do a little bit more experimenting before I have this down as I've only installed Flubaroo so far which compiles data from multiple choice questions. Finding the time to give meaningful feedback to each student as well as guide those who need more hand-holding at the young age of 7 or 8 has been a challenge for me and the more I can get students to point out each others' strengths as well as give guiding words for improvement, the more my class can run itself and continually grow despite there being one of me and 25 of them. As far as other types of assessing in math or language arts, for example, I think my students would better benefit from activities done on Seesaw where they can draw out or voice record their thinking or even a different application such as Quizizz or Socrative which have a little more room for visual stimulation. Google Forms has room for visuals but is heavily text dependent making it appear a little more heavy and dry for the little guys just starting to get the hang of reading. One last way I'd like to use Google Forms is with my colleagues. It's a great way for me to gather and interpret information from my expert peers. I would like to create a specific Google Form for my grade level which will be comprised of two new members and two continuing members. I think it is a good idea at the beginning of a collaborative year to reflect on what our own strengths are, how we feel we can best contribute, what we know about our own work styles and ideas of accomplishment and productivity, and what we need from our collaborative team to feel that success as we work together. Is there a place for social media in education? My gut reaction is to answer with a "no." This is, however, coming from a second grade teacher's perspective. I think there is an age appropriate time to introduce social media in education and maybe this timeline will change as our technological and online expectations change with time and culture. Currently, children need to be at least 13 years of age to have most social media accounts. For me, it makes the most sense to begin to start teaching students the power of social media and how to use it for good shortly before this age to better prepare them for the path ahead. According to "Teach Students to Use Social Media (the Right Way) and the Possibilities Are Endless," published on nprEd by Ariana Figueroa, this is what CJ Maple, a Kansas teacher did when he made a tweet that got 227,000 retweets. This clearly showed his third grade students how powerful online communication is and how quickly it can spread. I was intrigued by the New Jersey teacher Dipilato's use of Twitter to keep her students up to date with reminders about homework and relevant articles and information to class topics. She's absolutely right when she states, "'kids check their Twitter more than their school e-mail.'" Even more intriguing is the student perspective on teachers' use of social media in "My Favorite Teachers Use Social Media: A Student Perspective" from Education Week by Katie Benmar. She gives almost a scathing account of teachers' lack of cognitive investment into the expensive technology they are freely provided by their districts. Benmar stated that she enjoyed most, classes in which her teachers best utilized the technology and social media platforms available to them. While I am not convinced at this time that modeling social media use to my second graders is most likely not age appropriate, I am reflecting on my use of technology overall in my classroom. Technology is here whether we like it or not. Instead of following wherever the young crowd leads, as educators, we should be paving the way for the young generation to be responsible and harness the positive power of the tools available to them. Even the simple Chromebooks in my classroom that have cameras, microphones, and access to the world wide web, are not being used to their full potential. Next year my school will be getting Promethean boards. I know there is another steep learning curve ahead for me but I also know my students will enjoy the benefits of my time well spent in learning ahead of time and right along with them! Recently, I have found a whole host of new digital tools I'd love to learn and use with my students. How will I find the time to master each of these? Having a personalized learning plan to map out how and when I will study these new tools so that I'm ready for the fall, is the first step. When the school start date arrives, teaching digital literacy will be a huge part of our "Smart Start" or first two weeks setting up procedures and expectations. I will rely heavily on age appropriate resources created by Common Sense Media. As we begin the year, it will be important to also keep equity at the forefront. After researching a multitude of anti-bias and social just resources for educators and parents put together by KQED Mindshift, ADL, and Common Sense Media, among others, I learned a few helpful tips for keeping equity at the top of the discussion. Emphasizing equity in the classroom is a way to make all students feel safe and valued. A way to do this in the beginning with young students is to provide opportunities for each class member to share about themselves, possibly through a bio-poem like this one. If we are still under distance learning circumstances, students could share a short video presentation of their own poem via Seesaw and post it to the Seesaw class blog after reviewing comment protocols with students. Even if students are back in the classroom, this could be a fun homework assignment that we could watch together in class and give live feedback on during a group session. On the websites I mentioned above there are great articles (The Atlantic) about how to react to young children's unfiltered comments on race and how to have healthy discussions surrounding diversity and compassion (KQED: 4 Tools to Help Kids Develop Compassion and Social Change). Whether done online via Zoom or in a face to face classroom community circles, focusing on these issues, when done in the right way, will not only help all students feel more included but will help students call out bullying and stand up for each other. In second grade, one of our major social studies units covers the topic of heroes past and present. This is a key area in which I can highlight people who've made a difference in recent or past history who have had different upbringings and experiences than my students. My classroom is usually a fairly equal mix of native English speakers and native Spanish speakers. There are not usually, other ethnic groups represented among the student body. By highlighting people from different cultural groups and upbringings, I can cultivate a respect for others and an appreciation for diversity in my students. A last resource that I've found to cultivate compassion and a stance for equity among my students is The Wonderment. Through this website, I can choose projects to work on with my students to better the environment, provide resources like books and education to students around the world, and much more. Having an ongoing project for students to learn about and invest in, helps encourage empathy and a focus on others and giving.
I've always quickly learned to be competent in the tools I really needed in second grade for the allotted time and devices given to us in the past, but I've also wished I had more technological skills to get a little more creative if ever given the opportunity and time...Well, this past March, I was given the time and was basically pushed out of the nest. It's interesting that during the first two weeks when students were using paper packets and the district was preparing lesson plans and trainings yet unknown to us teachers, I eagerly learned many digital skills to better connect with my students after our abrupt parting. However, once mandatory technological trainings began, I was completely overwhelmed. During those first two weeks of quiet, I learned how to better use iMove. I wanted to connect with my students as well as teach them something I'm passionate about, plants. I took photos of all the wild plants I found and knew they would be able to easily find and identify and I made a video scavenger hunt challenge for them for three weeks in a row. Each video got better and better. I learned that I have to export my photos from iPhoto to a separate folder and import them to iMovie. I would also record a little intro clip and conclusion clip simply using Photobooth and drag it into the correct video timeline spot. I struggled with the sound at first but then realized I could increase or lower the volume of each separate clip. Later my friend who makes podcasts, showed me how easy it is to find royalty free music on youtube and download the audio portion only for the background. Once I actually started teaching curriculum for distance learning, I used Screencastify heavily. I made math and language arts videos while modeling with the Math Learning Center's math apps page and my previously made Seesaw student template so students could see exactly what they would be doing to complete the assignments successfully. I later started to improve my Screencastify videos in Editor, part of the Screencastify extension. I found it to be a very simplified version of iMovie. I had used some teacher math tools in my videos from the Toy Theater website like their interactive hundreds chart but when I couldn't find an interactive thousands chart, I got a pdf file of numbers on hundreds charts from 1 - 1000. In my recorded video, I used Kami to highlight in different colors the types of skip counting and how they looked when starting from larger numbers and non-multiples of 10. Certainly my favorite new online educational tool has been Seesaw. While the learning curve was steep since it has so many capacities and I had to master it in order to assign anything, after a training or two and a phone call with a Seesaw expert, I had a better idea of how it worked. It's basically like a Facebook platform where pdfs or images can be uploaded or assignments can be created within the program itself or taken from other teachers in the community library. In Seesaw I learned how to create student activities with geoboard backgrounds, insert images and templates from our curriculum for students to work on and edit, and various other drag and drop, fill in the blank, design, and fluency exercises. Depending on the activity, I would give students the option to answer with the different formats, video, voice recording, typing, drawing, and or a photo. I could create lessons and give feedback through the same means. I loved how teachers can assign "skills" to each activity and then when reviewing grade with a number of stars that later show up in a color coded chart almost like a grade book. I plan to use this for assessing specific skills in the classroom in the future. I also learned how to create and assign a virtual classroom with many embedded links in fun objects in my picture that students could explore. I know I've only seen the tip of the iceberg of this online education tool.
In second grade, students are finally improving with basic fine motor skills when it comes to computers such as right and left click, moving the mouse, steady hand movement to click on smaller icons on the screen, and even using the touch pad on Chromebooks (still difficult though!). When it comes time to start teaching them digital citizenship and specifically digital communication, I have realized that I need to start with something as simple as: what is the internet? When my students use school computers, all they see are colorful icons on the desktop and taskbar and one of those colorful icons (the circle with the blue center and red, yellow, and green surrounding it) leads them to most of the learning "games" they can use in class. Students in second grade need to be very clear on the difference between using programs on the computer vs. using internet webpages and applications on which action and communication is easily made public. I like to describe the web browser as the door to go outside. You never go into the front yard or street or go outside the classroom without first having clear permission from parents or a teacher.
Common Sense Media is a perfect teaching tool because it gives grade specific lessons on various aspects of digital citizenship. The graphics are age appropriate and eye-catching and the songs have a catchy tune and message too. Second graders, like most students, want hands on practice. They want to get on those devices as soon as possible. A good way to get them using computers but still learning about digital citizenship is through the Be Internet Awesome website through which students can play a game in "interland," I went to middle school in a 1-8 grade one room schoolhouse and I often think back on how the teacher got kids to almost independently work on math and language arts lessons simultaneously. Most likely it was attained through a gradual increase in student autonomy. My goal is to get students to make good decisions for themselves regarding their own learning. I think for younger students, the transfer of responsibility from teacher to student would need to happen over time as they show their readiness for the next level of independence. With more autonomy comes the ability for students to personalize their own learning. Personalized learning has been a popular ideology in education and seems to be, to some degree, in agreement with the Montessori ideal and Choice Theory. People are more willing to put effort into learning something they are intrinsically motivated to study. Standford University education researcher, Larry Cuban said that when we're thinking about what is best for students, it is important to ask ourselves, "do you want higher test scores? Or do you want kids to learn to be independent decisionmakers?" I want my students to be independent decision makers but currently, in my second grade classroom, I am the primary decision maker even though I know how powerful choice and intrinsic motivation are for students. I simply haven't figured out how to offer that many options and that much variation in guidance to all 25 of my students yet. The various paths towards personalized and competency based learning can guide me towards offering students something better. I do already use some competency based online programs such as iRead which is a self-paced phonics program for primary aged kids. If I were to try to implement a competency based phonics instruction that was personalized for all, without using technology, I would be continually assessing and have little time for instruction. While these programs are based on algorithms and data from individual progress, I think they are best used in conjunction with teacher intervention. In Teaching in a Competency-Based Education Environment, Katie Varatta quotes Robin Kanaan stating that in personalized learning, “'Students co-determine with the teacher what learning targets they need to accomplish and how they could show evidence of their learning. This is possible through agency and equipping students to understand themselves as learners.'” In order for students to co-determine their learning targets, they need to be clear about where they are in their own learning journey. I have been working towards this in my classroom ever since our emphasis on student assessment capability highlighted by Michael McDowell. I made a chart for English phonics growth, measured by iRead, and Spanish reading growth, measured by a running record I give called the EDL. Numbered student icons move across the chart according to how many levels they've grown, not what level they currently are on. This gives kids a way to see clearly how much growth they are making. I'd love to implement something similar in more subject areas but the upkeep has proved challenging. This year I published a book with my class on people who've made a difference in history. Over the years I've collected biographies and now had enough for each of my students to choose one. I could see how excited they were to have their own person to study about. Of course, there were those who weren't quite ready to read a book on their own yet. But there were others who took the information and ran with it. Much of the reading material needed to be supplemented so I allowed each child to watch a video on BrainPop about the historical figure they chose. I can see now, how important it will be for me to set up students to access kid friendly research sites and feel comfortable with technology ahead of time so I can allow students the freedom to chose the topics they want to research in a given category throughout the year. In the last two months I have come through the whirlwind of what is distance education. I have enjoyed learning how to use the Seesaw program to create and explore assignments for students. From what I've learned, Seesaw doesn't quite facilitate student choice and it is not an algorithm based learning platform but it does make it easier for me, as the teacher to give different assignments to different students. I'm also interested in exploring how I could use this in the classroom to create a very engaging independent learning station for students to allow me to work with a smaller group of other students to better personalize learning for all. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
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