Admin

Homework: We All HATE It!

July 2, 2016July 2, 2016Admin1 Comment

Yes, it’s true, even teachers hate homework. We all know that kids hate homework and really, who can blame them? I mean they are in school all day working and then have to come home and do MORE work. Parents hate it – many find it a nightly struggle to get their child to do it. Whether the child has difficulty or wants to play outside, or both, homework is creating friction in homes. And finally, teachers hate it. First of all, we have to check it. Many times it’s done quickly and with many mistakes. This is painful for us! Secondly, we have to ‘get on’ those students who don’t complete it or complete it haphazardly. Again, painful and a losing battle.

I could go on and on about why homework is wrong on so many levels, but I’ll save that for another post. I’ve decided that next school year, I’m NOT giving homework! Instead, I’m giving activities that can be done at home. I know what you’re thinking, “Isn’t that homework?”

The answer is, “NO!” and here’s why:

I want it to be fun.
I want it to be low pressure.
I want the students to have a choice.
It would be super awesome if the whole family got involved in some of the activities.
The students have the option to do it with their friends. For example, if one activity they choose is to learn a dance and teach it to the class, why NOT have a few students learning the same dance to teach to everyone?
If a student doesn’t do it, I’m not going to freak out.

So here’s my proposal: Create a ‘Home Activities‘ choice list where students choose 2 activities to complete during a month. At first, I was going to have the students do one each week, but quickly realized I was creating way to much work for myself. Definitely, NOT what I like to do. Since this is my first attempt, I am sure that it will evolve. I also welcome feedback. While this first ‘choice list’ has few digital choices, I plan to create another with more – create a video, take artistic photos, podcasting, etc. I can also incorporate more digital choices into this list as well. However, many of my students come from lower income families and don’t yet have a strong sense of digital citizenship. These are things that will need to be taught before I ask them to do several digitally related tasks.

At the end of the month, the students can showcase what they’ve been working on. Not sure how this would work. Maybe as they complete an activity they share it with the class. That way there won’t be 30 projects to present in one day. As I’ve said, the kinks are still being worked out.

So, here’s my first attempt. Feel free to take and amend to fit your needs. Please remember to share out! We’re all in this together.

HomeActivities1 (PDF)

Screen Shot 2016-07-02 at 4.15.15 PM

Movie Premiere

June 16, 2016June 16, 2016AdminLeave a comment

I have been doing much reflecting, as most teachers do, upon this past school year. To say that there were many ups and downs would be an understatement. However, one of the best – if not THE BEST – thing I did this year was to have my students write, direct, act, and produce their own movie. With a full-fledged Red Carpet Event!

Thanks to Dominic and his efforts in A Tale Unfolds my students were able to have an incredibly memorable 5th-grade experience. This was, by far, one of the most fun and rewarding experiences in my teaching career. And I can’t wait to do it again! Throughout the process, I had been writing about this (A Tale Unfolds: Part 1, A Tale Unfolds & Writing, Writing and the CAASPP) and aligning it to 5th-Grade CCSS ELA. And here are the results of their efforts:

Red Carpet Event:

Cast Interviews:

Movie:

Once again, thank you, Dominic, for creating a high quality, rigorous program.

Drone On

May 11, 2016May 11, 2016AdminLeave a comment

This week I received a set of 4 Mini Parrot Drones, courtesy of CUE – Steampunk Mobile Labs What a GREAT week it’s been. Well, not all great. We finally finished state testing on Tuesday, with 15 days left in the school year.

So it’s a bit of a crazy week with finishing state testing, completing our movie (A Tale Unfolds), and the valley fair begins on Thursday. This week has been the perfect week to have the students code and complete tasks using the drones.

On Monday, we started with me attempting to give them a challenge to complete. Yeah, that was a flop. They were more interested in exploring the drones and programming them to do various tasks. I quickly let go of my idea that they could focus on a given challenge.

Tuesday, they were ready for a challenge. We took them outside to see if we could land them in a target. We had a few obstacles in our way: the biggest one being the wind. This proved to be perfect for their collaboration and problem-solving skills. Using the Tickle App on the iPads, the students programmed their Mini Parrots to lift off, go forward for a specific amount of time, and land. It was pretty cool to see!

Today the students were tasked with programming the drones to take selfies. THIS was a huge hit. At first, there were several random pictures taken. Then once they got the hang of it, they took some great selfies, which they downloaded onto their Google Drives.

${ "product_id": "0909", "uuid": "D2A9239C9AE19A2DEFE8B5D130C04F6D", "run_date": "2016-05-11T140254+0000", "filename": "Airborne_Cargo_2016-05-11T140301+0000_.jpg", "media_date": "2016-05-11T140301+0000" }$

{ “product_id”: “0909”, “uuid”: “D2A9239C9AE19A2DEFE8B5D130C04F6D”, “run_date”: “2016-05-11T140254+0000”, “filename”: “Airborne_Cargo_2016-05-11T140301+0000_.jpg”, “media_date”: “2016-05-11T140301+0000” }

(Selfie Photo credit: the students – they gave me permission to post)

It’s nice to have students finish the sentence, “Can we…” with something other than “…play a game”, “…have recess”, or “take a break.” They beg to code and explore every day. They are sad that they will be leaving at the end of the week and truthfully, so will I.

Thank you, CUE and Jon Corippo!

So. Over. Testing.

May 9, 2016AdminLeave a comment

portrayal-89189_1280 Without a doubt! I have 16 days left in the school year and I need to finish 1 state test and START and complete 2 district ‘Benchmarks’. THEN if one of the district benchmarks is below a certain level I have to administer an additional assessment. Can we say, “Overkill”? If I’m feeling this way, I can’t image how over these assessments my students are.

Now add on to that the end of the year hubbub. And being 5th grade we have a few more hubbubby things to do than some other grades – tour the middle school and my personal favorite (seriously, no sarcasm here) the puberty video (boys and girls are separated). AND we are trying to finish the last 5 scenes of our movie.

I will hand it to my students, they tried super hard on all the tests thus far. Today we began the 5th-grade science test. It’s so outdated that it doesn’t align to the NGSS. And it’s on paper (we have been taking all tests online). AND, as one student so cleaverly put it, “Why did they give us all the answers?” Yeah, he was referring to the A, B, C, D choice he had.

I waited until today, only because someone asked, to break it to them that this was NOT the end of tests. It was at that point that they were officially So. Over. Testing. I felt for them. I mean 16 days. We should be wrapping things up, finding the joy in our year, ending it with fun, but instead our education system gives students a final ‘Hurrah’ with testing, testing, and more testing.

When the Common Core State Standards arrived, I was hopeful. It was to be the beginning of deep and meaningful learning and the end of high-stakes testing. I think the message got lost along the way. Fortunately, San Diego Unified SD has rethought the current testing trend. Hopefully, more school districts will follow suit.

Searching Google Drive

May 2, 2016May 2, 2016Admin2 Comments

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been using Google for a while. This means that I have A LOT of items in my drive. For the most part, things are organized. However, there are those times when I can’t find what I want. I have somehow organized it in a ‘unique’ way: some way that made sense to my crazy brain that day. Thankfully, Google has my back.

On occasion, typing in the name of the document, spreadsheet, etc. yields me a quick search. Make sure you are in Google Drive to start your search:

However, more often than not I need to do an advanced search. At times, I know who shared the item with me. Other times, I know I am the owner, and sometimes I’m looking for a particular type of item (doc, draw, etc). In these cases, I click on the small down arrow to the right in the search bar.

This brings up a wonderful array of options:

Search by ‘Type’

Search by ‘Date Modified’

I can also search by ‘Item Name’, or if I can’t remember the name and I know it has a specific word or phrase in it, I can search by that too in ‘Has the Words’. Finally, I can search ‘Shared with’ if I know who I shared it with.

I love the search by owner feature. Often times, I can remember the person who shared it with me – secretary, principal, or fellow 5th-grade teacher.

Lastly, the ‘Located in’ search has come in handy. I often ‘star’ my original items or important ones.

Hope this helps you find what you’re looking for!

Makeshift Keyboards

April 27, 2016April 27, 2016AdminLeave a comment

Recently I received a new student in my 5th-grade class. Great kid from India. He has some English, enough to tell me he wants a Punjabi Keyboard. So, we created a Punjabi keyboard for him. First, we selected the correct keyboard on his Chromebook. Then, he pointed out that the physical keyboard was still in English. So then we looked up a Punjabi Keyboard online and I printed it out. Using Google Translate, we affixed them on the correct keys. We used tape. We were in business! Things were going great. Score 1 for me.

This victory didn’t last long. He then came to me telling me that the paper was bugging his fingers and I needed to tape the tops too. I explained that the keys would then all stick down to the board. So then, I had another brilliant idea: Saran Wrap, poor man’s keyboard cover. Yet another score for me.

Yes! This worked. He was happy. Until…. He wanted it all off. Yup, it wasn’t working for him. He wanted to continue with the English Keyboard…

(Sigh) You win some, you lose some.

Writing and the CAASPP

April 21, 2016April 21, 2016AdminLeave a comment

This week my students have been taking the CAASPP Test (SBAC). As you may, or may not, know, there is quite a bit of writing on it. This week we focused on the ELA portion. As a teacher, these tests kill me. I know what my students are capable of and know that they are making simple mistakes that they don’t normally make. That being said, I had several students transferring what they have learned about writing various sentences to this test, and more importantly, to everyday life.

Over the past several months we have been working on writing our own movie script using A Tale Unfolds, which comes out of the UK. I have written about it here and here. One of the strengths of the program is its writing aspect. The kids are constantly writing! Each week they are introduced to another type of sentence. One week it was appositives, another it was complex, and yet another had ‘if, if, if, then’ sentences. The program uses Alan Peat‘s modeling.

These are some of the things the students shared with me, with great pride:

Ms. N., I used an ‘if, if, if, then’ sentence.
Ms. N., I used a 3 -ed sentence.
I used an appositive. (She then showed me. It was beautiful! I got a little teary-eyed. Yeah, it was that awesome.)

I really don’t think my students would have produced the type of writing they did this week without the constant writing they have been doing for their script. The way the different sentences are introduced and the experience the students have with ‘playing’ with the new sentences has been a benefit to my students.

On a side note, I showed the first portion (without beginning credits/title/etc) of their movie to them. They are so excited! They are dying to see more. I even began showing other teachers small snippets. They were impressed. It’s been a fun experience!

Point of View

April 9, 2016April 9, 2016AdminLeave a comment

In Social Studies, my 5th graders have been learning about the causes of the American Revolution. Recently, they were researching ‘The Boston Massacre’. Being that we are in the US, the texts that we have, have a colonist/American point of view. This lead to; what was the British take on it? This lead us to a Google Search. However, we didn’t want to view anything that was written in the US, we wanted information from the UK. So how did we find out the UK point of view?

We navigated to a new tab, which brought up Google. While being logged in, we typed our query ‘Boston Massacre’. Now to filter our results for information from the UK. Located on the upper right side is a ‘gear’. Choosing it brings up a drop down menu. From this, click on ‘Advanced search’.

This sends us to a new page with several search filters. For our Boston Massacre example, we located ‘region’. This allowed us to narrow the region in which the information was published. We chose United Kingdom (this lead to a side conversation about ‘What is the United Kingdom?’). Then clicked the blue Advanced Search button on the lower right side.

This brought up the search results with the filter in place. All results were from the UK.

This, of course, led to an interesting discussion on why the accounts that we had been reading about and the accounts according to the UK were different.It was a great opportunity for my students to experience different points of view, why they exist, practice critical thinking skills, and begin to learn to question what really happened.

Nowa Techie

Lisa M. Nowakowski

Author: Admin