Teaching For the Future

Main Idea: The Most Important Comprehension Skill

3/29/2018

Helping young readers determine the main idea in a reading passage is in my opinion the most important comprehension skill to have. Readers need to be able to state in their own words what they've just read. However, distinguishing the main idea sentence from the topic can be confusing for many students. A lot of my students will state the main idea of a passage with just one word or "all about...." While this tells me they got the gist of the story, it does not mean that they actually full understood what they read. To become a better and deeper reader, students MUST be able to state the main idea in a sentence in their own words. I show my students this strategy for checking for understanding in their reading. I tell my students that if they can state the main idea in their own words, then they comprehend what they've read. However, how do I get my students to understand the difference between the topic and the actual main idea? Well keep reading to find out my favorite lesson on teaching the main idea!
I first use short passages that I printed from teacherspayteachers. I laminated the cards and tape them onto 10 different posters. I then write Title on one side of the passage and Main Idea on the other. I let students work together in pairs or triads. They rotate around the room stopping at each Title/Main Idea Poster with a passage to read on it. Students are given post-its to record a title for the passage and a main idea sentence. They place the title post-it on the title side and the main idea post-it under the main idea side. I have the students place their post-its face down so that other groups don't copy from others.
After students have rotated around the room, I hand a poster to each group. They work together to read all of the different titles and main ideas on the poster. They get to choose the best title and the best main idea for their passage.Oh and the best part?? I play music while the students work and move around the room. It really makes for a memorable lesson!!

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Take a Brain Break!

3/17/2018

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Today I'd like to reflect on my thoughts about brain breaks in the classroom, my challenges with brain breaks, and my goals for brain breaks.

In my third grade classroom, I can always tell when my students just need a break! Maybe it is to get them fired up, calmed down, or simply just to transition to a new activity. School days are long for our students and we expect a lot from them. Including brain breaks into the day can really change the classroom environment and call essentially make kids more focused and work harder. Brain breaks should not be an "addition" to class schedule, but should be implemented when necessary. I don't schedule breaks when I'm doing my weekly lesson plans. I usually just "read" my students and we take a brain break when they seem to need one. I am not sure if this is the best because I've done some reading that students should take a break every 30 minutes. However, in my classroom, I keep my students very busy and we do a lot of moving around the room all day, which makes sense for me to watch and notice when my students seem disengaged.

In the mornings, I like to get my students moving right away. After morning announcements we do a quick clap once above your head, once in front of your belly button, once in front of your toes, then high five a classmate and have a seat! This gets students awake and ready for the day! If we need a fast break later on in the day, I refer to different versions of this like clap twice above your head, twice above your belly button, twice in front of your toes, hands on hips, turn around, etc. This kids back on track and ready to focus with a few quick and simple movements.

I've recently become interested in mindfulness in the classroom. One of my favorite resources for brain breaks in GoNoodle. www.gonoodle.com This website has AMAZING engaging breaks for my third graders. We even have a classroom reward for a student to choose a GoNoodle brain break. My students enjoy the fast and dancing ones, but GoNoodle has great videos in many content areas. For example, there are some great skip-counting songs and pattern songs for math. This makes for embedding learning right into the break! Bonus!! Back to my thoughts on mindfulness....GoNoodle has many breaks for focusing and practicing calming down/mindfulness activities. We just finished up our IREAD assessments this week, and before each one we did one of the mindfulness activities. I had to explain to the kids that yes, they may feel a little weird doing some of the breathing exercises and movement exercises, but if they focused on them, then it would ultimately help them focus. My hope is to include more of these focus activities to help my kids feel less awkward doing them because I feel that being aware of their breathing, minds, and focus will ultimately help give them strategies to refocus on their own in the future.

I am a huge believer in providing breaks in the classroom. We push and challenge our students so much throughout the day that sometimes we forget that they are KIDS! They need some fun and laughter too. My opinions are that even though brain breaks may take a few minutes from teaching time, the benefits of having students engaged longer and focus longer after taking a break far outweigh the time lost.

I do have lots of questions about when and where to implement brain breaks. As for right now, I've just been noticing and reading my students for when they seem to need a break. I am wondering if I should start planning breaks when I lesson plan. I'd love to read your comments on HOW and WHEN you provide breaks for your students too! #inelearn

Thanks for reading! Now take a break then come back and write me a comment! I bet your comment will be better after taking a few moments to think and give your brain a break!

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Challenge Based Learning (CBL)

3/4/2018

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After being introduced to Apple's Challenge Based Learning, I have decided to try this in my 3rd grade classroom. Challenge Based Learning is different than the popular Project Based Learning, which is what I am pretty comfortable with as most of my lessons center around students creating to demonstrate their learning. Challenge Based Learning is different because students identify a real community or global challenge then develop a solution to actually implement.
I have been gathering a lot of resources from the Digital Promise website http://cbl.digitalpromise.org
The framework for CBL is Engage-Investigate-Act. I am excited to start this challenge this week. For the Engage phase our Big Idea will be Bullying. From there, students will generate essential questions about the topic then turn those essential questions into a call to action. Not sure how long our Engage phase will be and I know I will have to do some modeling with my young learners.

Visit my blog in a few weeks to see how our CBL is going! Be sure to visit the Digital Promise website if you are interested in learning more.

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Taking VR to the Next Level with CoSpaces

2/27/2017

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I blogged a few months ago about how using virtual reality in the classroom and truly enhance the learning experience for students. I now want to share how I have taken going on virtual reality "trips" to having students create their own VR experiences with CoSpaces! Yes...I said..STUDENTS CREATING VR!! Always a goal of mine is to get students to go from consuming technology to creating with it. CoSpaces is a fun and engaging way for students to be creative while also demonstrating understanding.
After students researched chosen destinations after reading the book Highest, Coldest, Hottest, Deepest, they demonstrated understanding by creating an infographic to explain facts about their destination.
The end results blew me away! Each student created a VR field trip and then shared their creations with class members!
Other uses for CoSpaces:

Book reports: Create the setting of your story. We have been reading Shiloh, and my students have been hooked by this book. I had them create a VR scene of Marty's home and Judd's home.
Demonstrate new learning: I had a student decide on his own to create an amazing infographic about the Oregon Trail. He's been reading a nonfiction book on this topic during independent reading. He emailed me on a Saturday morning his amazing final project. Of course, I right away opened his work and was taken back to the time of covered wagons, and learned some interesting facts at each stop!

Here are some links to some of my students' works
https://cospac.es/OkwP
https://cospac.es/Vbfq
https://cospac.es/EVjg
https://cospac.es/joGI
https://cospac.es/mNTR

CoSpace website discusses many other ways to utilize this in classrooms:

Storytelling
Modeling 3-Dimensional figures (without the mess of glue and sticky fingers!)
Creative play (let students shine with their creativity!)
Virtual Exhibitions
Infographics (my favorite use so far!)

My next step this week is to have students create Whoville after reading Horton Hears a Who in honor of Read Across America this week! I can't wait to visit Whoville with them!

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Going Global: A Journey with 3rd Graders

2/20/2017

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Technology is AMAZING. Collaborating and connecting with others is made possible and it makes it so much more engaging!
This year, I have been breaking down the walls of my classroom in many big ways:

Kidblog.org
Global Math Task Twitter Challenge #gmttc
Global Read Aloud
Skype
Sharing Google Drive folders via Twitter
Seesaw
Edmodo

Here are my thoughts on the benefits of going global with my students.
First and foremost, digital citizenship skills are truly embedded when sharing and communicating with the world. My students have seen and experienced firsthand how their digital footprints are created each and every time they publish something online. This has allowed me to have many conversations and lessons on only publishing our best work. Now my students put forth more effort in their work since they know it will be seen by an authentic audience.
Collaborating with other students around the world is made possible with the use of technology! To be future ready, students need to know how to communicate effectively, as they could have a job that requires them to work collaboratively with someone across the world! Being a part of the Global Read Aloud and participating in Global Math Tasks each week, my students are given the opportunity to work out math problems and discuss reading with other students beyond our school. With the Global Math Task Twitter Challenge (#gmttc), students can communicate their math thinking and even see how other students solved the same math problem. Great way to collaborate and share our thinking! We read Pax alongside three other 3rd grade classes from California, Nevada, and Canada. My students had practice communicating their thoughts about each chapter with these other students, while also replying to comments made by the other students. This has helped my students to have tolerance for cultural differences while also learning about geography.
Living in a digital world, it is SO IMPORTANT for students to understand and practice how to live and engage in it. School is where it starts to create positive digital interactions for our students to be truly successful and have a great impact on the future. As a teacher, I do all I can to model how to be safe and productive in our digital community. Students are already online at such a young age. We are failing our kids if schools and teachers aren't giving them experiences to practice in our digital world.

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Using Data to Personalize Learning and Remediation

12/14/2016

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I feel so lucky to be a teacher today with so much technology at my disposal to better support all academic levels of my students. With so much focus on standardized testing, I know that I have to make sure my students will be successful on these tests, but will also develop critical thinking skills and be given opportunities to be creative with topics that interest them. Using data has allowed me to customize my students' learning experiences by providing them with skills at their levels while also giving them choices on how they will learn it.

My district utilizes the Renaissance STAR assessments and Acuity. We take these assessments quarterly and after each test, I dig deep into the test data to look for gaps and to target which students are lacking what skills. From there, I think about ways to address each of my students individually. An effective resource I can use is OpenEd to begin my process of making growth and remediation a personal experience for each student.

Here's how:
OpenED is a K-12 resource library that offers assessments, homework assignments, video games, and lesson plans aligned to common core and most state standards. It offers a great resource library where teachers can search for specific standards then assign to individual or groups of students. The best part? If a student does not master a skill, then OpenEd sends out suggestion activities to help support that skill. This is where students have a choice in their next steps towards mastery, as OpenEd offers a video, game, or another question set.
Make it even MORE PERSONAL! Data is not always based off a test. It also comes from teacher observations as well. I keep track of my students interests and activities. When assigning content from OpenEd, I choose reading passages and activities that I think my students will enjoy learning about.
Students can also keep track of their learning as OpenEd shows students how they performed with a Red-Still Working code, Yellow-Near Mastery, and Green-Mastered. This helps my students understand where they are in mastering a skill on their own.
OpenEd has been very effective in my classroom. Although it does not address a true personalized learning experience, it is a starting point for many teachers who ultimately want to provide for a student-centered environment. It offers so many engaging resources to address the individual needs of my students that data has identifited as problem areas.
OpenEd definitely gives teachers the ability to blend learning with technology and face-to-face instruction in an effective way!

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Make Lessons Come to Life with Virtual Reality!

11/7/2016

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Today we had a blast going on a virtual reality field trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. We didn't even have to leave our classroom!
Thanks to the VR feature in Nearpod (if you haven't used this awesome tool, then you MUST click on the link to read more about it), my third graders and I explored The Mall and focused on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The reason I chose to specifically explore this memorial is because we needed to build background knowledge to make inferences in The Wall by Eve Bunting, which we will read tomorrow. It is a challenging text and I know that my students need more background knowledge about this memorial and what it represents. With Veterans Day coming up the students were very interested in the topic. We got close to the wall and noticed the names engraved, then we read some facts about the memorial. We concluded the Nearpod lesson with a comprehension check. The students viewed pictures of people standing at the wall with different expressions on their faces. Students used the draw feature with Nearpod to circle clues in the pictures that helped them infer who the people were and why they were visiting the memorial. What a fun and successful lesson! Can't wait to use our background knowledge gained from this VR trip to help us comprehend our story tomorrow! Check out The Wall by Eve Bunting...GREAT story to read around Veterans Day.

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Using Seesaw to engage and involve Parents

10/30/2016

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Seesaw is a student-driven learning portfolio that has been a powerful tool in my classroom for the past few years. It is a tool that I have used with all content areas. With goals of having a student-driven classroom that empowers my students, Seesaw is a must-have! Students can track their progress; I can easily give feedback; students have an authentic audience for their work. I can go on and on about this amazing tool, but for now, I am going to focus on how I use Seesaw to engage PARENTS!
As stated before, Seesaw gives students an authentic audience. When they publish work to Seesaw, parents get notified that a piece of work was added to the Seesaw journal. Parents can "like" or comment on student work as soon as it is published. I LOVE seeing the reaction from my students when they see that their parent has "liked" their work.
This year, I have added a new piece into how I engage parents. I have started using Seesaw as a way to keep parents informed. Instead of printing out a newsletter each week, I send out my newsletter via Seesaw. Parents can have easy access to the newsletter and can even comment with any questions they may have.
And now for my favorite way of engaging parents with Seesaw........ Pictures and Videos!
I will add pictures of the class doing fun activities to the journal or of students who have accomplished a goal (Kahoot winners, honor roll, Student of the Month). I have also created iMovies of parties and celebrations that go on in our classroom. Recently, we celebrated our Fall Party. Many parents wanted to come in to help out at the party, but were unable to. So, I took pictures and videos of the party, created an iMovie trailer, then uploaded the trailer right into Seesaw! So many parents were super excited to watch and made very positive comments on the video. They were so happy to see what was going on at school!
One reason I believe Seesaw has been so successful for engaging parents this year is because for the first time, I have ALL parents connected to their student's journal. At the beginning of the school year, we had a Meet the Teacher night. I took this opportunity to talk to parents about what Seesaw is and gave out handouts on how to sign up for the parent access. I even gave an incentive...any parent who connected by the end of the first week of school would be entered into a drawing for an iTunes gift card! By the end of that week, all but one parent had signed up!!
What are some ways that you engage and involve parents?

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We are Digital Citizens!

10/22/2016

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Explicitly teaching digital citizenship skills has been a top priority in my classroom. With goals of giving my students opportunities to connect globally and provide authentic learning experiences, I know that understanding how to be a citizen in our digital world is a MUST for students. This year, I chose to explicitly teach how to be a responsible and respectful digital citizen. Here are the anchor charts that we made together. We created a class iPad contract that was signed by both students and parents (click the images to enlarge):

Charts inspired from AmplifyEd by Kristin Ziemke and Katie Muhtaris

Next, we spent about three weeks doing lessons from CommonSense Media. We had so much fun with these lessons, as they were so applicable to my 3rd graders. We discussed how we would react and respond in many online situations within our digital lives. After completing the course, we pledged to be Good Digital Citizens ALWAYS!
Now that many skills have been explicitly taught, I plan to keep referring back to these behaviors and the importance of being a RESPONSIBLE digital citizen. I constantly remind my students that when they are ready to publish a piece of work, it should be their BEST work. When they post or make a comment to a friend's work, then it should be positive and kind.
My main goal is to make sure digital citizenship skills are always embedded into the curriculum. I will be a model to my students, as digital citizenship starts with ME as the leader in the room.
Check back for updates on how I've been providing authentic learning experiences for my students and how being a good digital citizen is a key component for it to be successful.

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Close Reading Part 2

10/18/2016

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This is a part 2 from my previous post on 21st Century Skills and Close Reading. Here's how it went!
Day 1: I did a read aloud with the book So You Want to Be President. I chose this book because of the upcoming election and the high interest from my students. As I read, students took notes on the advantages and disadvantages of being the president on a T-chart. After reading, great discussions were held on the jobs of the president and what characteristics/qualities would be needed for these tasks. This was the first read and first exposure to the text.
Day 2: I made a copy of a couple of pages from the book. I posed the question: What characteristics make a good president?I modeled underlining and circling words that stuck out to me. Together, we looked for patterns we saw within the words we underlined. Using the clues we underlined and thinking about the patterns that we came up with, we inferred that the President must be honest.
Then, the students used a different page from the book and underlined words that stuck out to them. Since this is such a new skill for us, I decided to let a few students share what they underlined. Students then looked for similarities among the words that they underlined. After noticing patterns within their important ideas, they inferred some qualities that a good president would need. Check out the work!