Tuesday, March 22, 2022

The Hurdler in action today

 I wrote about being a Hurdler in a previous blog post. 

Defined as a tireless problem-solver who gets a charge out of tackling something that's never been done before. When confronted with a challenge, the Hurdler gracefully sidesteps the obstacle while maintaining a quiet, positive determination. This optimism and perseverance can help big ideas upend the status quo as well as turn setbacks into an organization's greatest successes—despite doomsday forecasting by shortsighted experts. 

Today I had a coaching meeting with a teacher. When I showed up for the meeting 

KG: I have something to ask you that is not about what we are meeting about. 

Me: Sure, What? 

KG: I'm having this issue with a pie graph in Numbers (Apple app). 

Me: Show me. 

KG: Opens computer and shows me what she did, and then explains that she would like to add labels or a legend in each segment of the pie. 

Me: Ok, can work on your computer? 

KG: Yes. 

Me: I click on lots of things on the screen while KG says yes, I tried that, yes I tried that. 

Needless to say after clicking on many things, searching Google, and watching two YouTube videos we couldn't figure it out. I will be "hurdling" tomorrow till I get it figured out and can send her a screencast of how I solved it. 

I love being a tech coach! 

Monday, March 21, 2022

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Life Gets in the Way

 I haven't written in 4 days! 

I don't consider myself a good writer, to begin with. I never did well in English class when I was in elementary school. I started a blog in 2013 to share all the cool things we were doing with technology integration as coaches. I blogged when there was something to say, or when I finished a big project. It was a good way to reflect and put a bow on the coaching cycle. When my colleague Michelle Brezek over at Hello Good Good Life reminded me about Slice of Life (as she does every year) I decided I needed to start writing again. I blogged for 16 days in a row! I feel really good about that. 

Then life got in the way! In a good way, though! 

My son is currently serving our country in the US Army. He was home on leave for 6 days. This may not seem like a big deal and probably wouldn't have been at another time in recent history. But he is going to be going to Eastern Europe for a year to support US/NATO efforts and the Ukrainian refugees/ 

We spent the last 4 days seeing friends and family, going out for meals, running errands, and taking care of all the loose ends before he leaves. I need some more time off just to recover. LOL! It was great to spend time with him and the ones we love. I don't do that enough! I really tried to be in the moment and enjoy what was going on around me.

He leaves in a few weeks. They can't tell you when they are leaving because even they don't know when. I don't know exactly where he is going. Although I'm told some of this information can be found online if you know where to look. Once he gets there he can send us his address, so we can send cards and letters. 

Whatever you believe in - Please send positive intentions to all our servicemen and servicewomen around the world! 

Hopefully, I can get back on track and finish the next 10 days!

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

The Hurdler

 Inspired by the Ten Faces of Innovation and my most recent team meeting. 


The Ten Faces of Innovation is a book by Thomas Kelly. It is noted as a book that is a "guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal." It describes 10 personas necessary in an organization to drive innovation. In my time as an instructional coach, or a better description might be technology integration coach, I feel like I have cycled through all 10 of these personas at one point or another in the last 9 years. 

The personas are: 

Anthropologist

Experimenter

Cross-Pollinator

Hurdler

Collaborator

Director

Experience Architect

Set Designer

Storyteller

Caregiver


Right now the one that speaks to me most is - The Hurdler. Defined as a tireless problem-solver who gets a charge out of tackling something that's never been done before. When confronted with a challenge, the Hurdler gracefully sidesteps the obstacle while maintaining a quiet, positive determination. This optimism and perseverance can help big ideas upend the status quo as well as turn setbacks into an organization's greatest successes—despite doomsday forecasting by shortsighted experts. I don't know that I'm doing a lot of things that have NEVER been done before. I am trying to solve teachers' and administrators' issues or problems with technology. I really like crafting or co-crafting solutions with them. Just in the last 3 days, I have 4 different staff members come to me with 5 different issues or problems - "Here is the issue or problem. What tool(s) can I use to solve it?" Then lots of questions follow in order to make sure I have clarity on what they want the outcome to be for kids. It is so fun for me to choose an app and then test it to see if it really does what I want it to do. I love supporting teachers in this way. 

What persona are you? 

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Apple Elements of Learning - Real World Engagement

This post is as much informational as it is for me to synthesize my own understanding of the Elements of Learning. Plus if I do it every day that's 5 days of writing that I don't have to brainstorm a new idea. 

The 5 Elements of Learning are: 

Teamwork

Communication and Creation

Personalized Learning

Critical Thinking

Real-World Engagement


A note about the Elements of Learning. Apple's research shows that students that come from classrooms with the 5 Elements of Learning are highly effective learners and the technology just amplifies that learning. 



Element # 5 - Real-World Engagement


I feel like a lot of educators gravitate towards this one. They may think that a virtual field trip fits the bill. That actually isn't correct. It is a good use of the technology that we have, but it's not real-world engagement by Apple's standards. Real-world engagement consists of a number of components. One is realistic example - it is what it sounds like. If students are graphing severe weather they should be using real-life data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the like. The data should not be made up by the teacher.  Second, it should include immersion in the real world. This is where the virtual field trip might come in or students might visit a place or interview someone in the community. Next component is realistic task(s), an example would be doing something a professional or citizen might do outside of a school setting. The highest level of implementation is when it is immersive and realistic. This forms authentic engagement. Student work serves a. real-world purpose AND it has an impact outside of the 4 walls of the classroom. 


I have an example of real-world engagement that we've done in our district. It was an amazing experience for everyone involved. This was from about 6-7 years ago. Our summer school enrichment students were doing a unit on environmentalism and recycling. They studied the garbage patch in the Pacific. They took water samples from the biggest park in our city. While at the park one of the students had to throw away some plastic. He realized there were no recycle garbage bins in the park. The students went to the park district board to get more information. They spoke at public comment at a meeting. They worked with the park district to get bins ordered. The bins were ordered, delivered, and placed in all of our city parks.  That was all student-led. Everyone involved learned a lot about environmentalism and the inner workings of local government. 





Monday, March 14, 2022

Apple Elements of Learning - Critical Thinking

This post is as much informational as it is for me to synthesize my own understanding of the Elements of Learning. Plus if I do it every day that's 5 days of writing that I don't have to brainstorm a new idea. 


The 5 Elements of Learning are: 

Teamwork

Communication and Creation

Personalized Learning

Critical Thinking

Real-World Engagement


A note about the Elements of Learning. Apple's research shows that students that come from classrooms with the 5 Elements of Learning are highly effective learners and the technology just amplifies that learning. 

Element # 4 - Critical Thinking

Critical thinking tasks should involve open-ended questions with multiple correct answers or nonroutine problems. Students should be engaging in lessons that are characterized by one or more of the following: analysis, interpretation, synthesis, evaluation, or generating solutions. Some of these are higher-order thinking skills according to Bloom's Taxonomy. 

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy

In these lessons, critical thinking should be the main activity.  The place in the lesson where students spend most of their time and are where they are assessed. These lessons should also include intellectual independence. This is where students are responsible for figuring out the solution to the learning challenge and thinking deeply about related issues. Excerpt From: Apple Education. “Elements of Learning.” Apple Inc. - Education, 2018. Apple Books.  https://books.apple.com/us/book/elements-of-learning/id136798126. They don't need to create knowledge that is new to the world, just new to them. 

In an example given by Apple, students read multiple news articles about the challenges of providing medical translations to those who speak English as their second language.  Then students compare and contrast different policies around medical translation and come up with a proposal for new policies. 

I think this is may be the most difficult to do especially in primary classrooms. As of late, I'm not seeing a lot of open-ended questions that are being asked to be solved with higher-order thinking skills. I'm sure this can be done in any subject area but I feel like a good place to start would be a science or STEM classroom. 

Excerpt From: Apple Education. “Elements of Learning.” Apple Inc. - Education, 2018. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/elements-of-learning/id136798126



Sunday, March 13, 2022

Friday, March 11, 2022

Apple Elements of Learning - Personalized Learning

This post is as much informational as it is for me to synthesize my own understanding of the Elements of Learning. Plus if I do it every day that's 5 days of writing that I don't have to brainstorm a new idea. 

The 5 Elements of Learning are: 


Teamwork

Communication and Creation

Personalized Learning

Critical Thinking

Real-World Engagement


A note about the Elements of Learning. Apple's research shows that students that come from classrooms with the 5 Elements of Learning are highly effective learners and the technology just amplifies that learning. 


Element # 3 - Personalized Learning



Personalized Learning. I like to hear people in education talk about personalized learning. I feel like there are so many interpretations of what it really is. I feel like most people are really talking about differentiation. Again just my opinion. I have the book How to Personalize Learning: A Practical Guide for Getting Started and Going Deeper by Bray and McClaskey (Corwin Press). I've had the book for about 5 years. I haven't looked at it in 5 years. I don't remember much from it and I left it on my desk. I meant to bring it home. What I do remember is that they talked about UDL. Students should create a Learner Profile (LP). Then they create a Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) and they need to identify their Personalize Learning Backpack (PLB). The latter is a set of resources and apps that will support their learning. This was my first exposure to personalize learning. 



Now on to Apple's definition. Element #3 must have 3 components to be implemented at a high level. Those components are variation of task, significant choice, and equitable access. Let's look closer at those. Variation of task is when a teacher gives students more than 1 task to learn the material. This could be different scaffolding for different ability levels. Varied tasks create different levels of difficulty within the same assignment for different students. Significant choice means STUDENTS choose, with or without the support of the teacher. Students can choose a type of product, tools, learning activity path, and even learning goals. Do you have to give students choice in all those areas? No. Should you pick one and build on it in the next lesson or unit? Yes. This choice allows them to draw on their background and their strengths. Choice is not appropriate all the time, and you don't want to make choices about things they are not familiar with. Again start small and build on yours and your student's successes. Having students do a science lab in any order they want is not rigorous enough to constitute choice. Having students design their own lab or labs is! Finally, equitable access is important. Teachers should be offering equitable access through their lesson design and their classroom culture. The iPad or other device has assistive tech or accessibility features that can support students. Teachers should be demonstrating these options to the whole class or meeting with individual students to conference about what might meet their needs. 

Again doing all of these things caused the teacher to have to relinquish some control in order to meet students where they are. This is hard for many teachers. If they would give up some control they would get so much back from their students. 


I need to look at Bray and McClaskey's again and see how I can join these two approaches together. That sounds like a future blog post. 



Excerpt From: Apple Education. “Elements of Learning.” Apple Inc. - Education, 2018. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/elements-of-learning/id136798126

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Apple Elements of Learning - Communication and Creation

This post is as much informational as it is for me to synthesize my own understanding of the Elements of Learning. Plus, if I do it every day, that's 5 days of writing that I don't have to brainstorm new ideas.  

The 5 Elements of Learning are: 

Teamwork

Communication and Creation

Personalized Learning

Critical Thinking

Real-World Engagement

A note about the Elements of Learning. Apple's research shows that students that come from classrooms with the 5 Elements of Learning are highly effective learners and the technology just amplifies that learning.

Element #2 - Communication and Creation

This one is my favorite. It is more complex than it sounds. Communication and creation must include 3 components to be implemented at a high level: Students get to choose their own means of expression, they have a sense of audience and they adhere to principles of design. Let's break that down. Letting students choose their own means of expression can be difficult for some teachers to do. This CAN be done even in kindergarten. Does that mean, letting students choose what they want whenever they want? Absolutely not. There is a slow release. Teach them 2 apps and then let them choose which one will best support their demonstration of their thinking and understanding on the third lesson. Another alternative might be to choose between doing it digital or analog. For instance, a student can choose to sketchnote on paper with markers or in an app, like Sketches School, Keynote, or Book Creator on their iPad. Next, I have seen how powerful it can be to give students a sense of audience outside of the teacher in their classroom. It doesn't have to be an elaborate share-out. You don't need to find a classroom in Europe or Africa to share with. It can be the Principal or the class down the hall or maybe they create a product to teach a younger grade something. Here is a paragraph from a blog post I wrote in 2016 about the power of giving students a sense of audience. This was just one example and I know that giving our students a sense of audience changed the way they approached this project. 

Students used Lucid Press and their GAFE log-in to create non-fiction magazines. We decide before the students started that their audience was going to other students in District 100. After some debate, we decided on 4th and 5th grade students. I contacted 4th and 5th grade teachers in our district to ask them if they would be interested in having their students read and give feedback on the student-created magazines. Of course, they all said yes. They were happy to help. This audience helped framed the way students approached the project. Lynnette overheard students during the planning stage talk about how they would approach this based on the audience that they now had. This is what she overheard - "Your sister is a fourth-grader do you think she would know the mean of (a word)? Should I include it in my glossary?" This is a sense of audience that is really beneficial to students! 

The last component is principles of design. This means that if you ask them to write a non-fiction piece to demonstrate what they learned about the Civil War maybe it is in the form of a newspaper article. Adhering to the principles of design for a newspaper article means it includes: a headline, story, picture with caption, edition time (morning, daily, etc), date, cost, etc.

In closing, I would like to say two things. Students have a deeper meaning when they can create products that demonstrate their thinking and understanding of a particular topic or idea. Finally, I have found that teachers that have given up control when it comes to the means of expression are paid back in abundance in other ways. 



Excerpt From: Apple Education. “Elements of Learning.” Apple Inc. - Education, 2018. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/elements-of-learning/id1367981260

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Reflection from a day as a Technology Integration Coach

 Taking a break from the Elements of Learning posts (if you've read yesterday's post). 


I'm exhausted from a hard day in the classroom. This is the most I've moved around in classrooms since spring 2018, so this is going to be a short post. 

Today "FILLED MY BUCKET!"

I spent the morning in a 2nd grade classroom teaching them to use Apple Clips app to find 4 sided shapes around their classroom and then demonstrate the attributes of the shapes. Such a good well-behaved class. They all finished! Next, I was in a 4th grade classroom helping them use Keynote to measure and tell what they know about angles and vertices. It went really well! The kids were able to demonstrate their understanding of the concept of acute, obtuse, and right angles. Finally, I was in a 1st grade classroom teaching them to use Clips to create book reviews. A few tech issues but nothing we couldn't handle. There were a lot of questions and a lot of bending over or sitting on the ground to be on their level.

Everyone learned something today, including me! Everyone tried and grew today! Some kids created some really cool projects to support their learning! What more can you ask for? 

 Time for a good night's sleep. 

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Apple Elements of Learning - Teamwork

This post is as much informational as it is for me to synthesize my own understanding of the Elements of Learning. Plus if I do 1 every day that's 5 days of writing that I don't brainstorm a new idea for. 

The 5 Elements of Learning are:

Teamwork

Communication & Creation

Personalized Learning

Critical Thinking 

Real-World Engagement

A note about the Elements of Learning. Apple's research shows that students that come from classrooms with the 5 Elements of Learning are highly effective learners and the technology just amplifies that learning. 

Element # 1 - Teamwork

Teamwork must include 3 components to be highly effective. The first and most obvious is that students must be working with at least 1 more person in order to form a "team". The second is shared product. The student must be working towards a final shared product. Finally, they must engage in joint reasoning. Let's look a little deeper at the latter two. The team must create a final product that they work on together. The team turns in one project that they all receive the same grade for. The final product is large and complex and could not be completed by only one student. 

For instance, a group of students creates a podcast. The different parts of the script are written by more than 1 person and the technical pieces of the podcast are also done by more than 1 person. Another way is that 1 person writes the script, one person does the music and/or sound effects. One person does that talking and one person does the editing. It could all be done by one person but the specialty of skills and the amount of time needed is not doable in a 4th - 12th grade classroom. 

The second attribute of a highly effective project using teamwork is joint reasoning. Together students engage in analysis, synthesis and evaluation (higher order thinking skills) to complete group work. Using the podcast example again the team would need to look at all the information that has been gathered for the podcast script, before, during and after right the script ALL members of the team need to evaluate what is important and should be included and what should not be included. 

In my opinion, if these things are not happening then a teacher should add one at a time. I think it would be too overwhelming for a teacher and possibly for their students to add them both during the same lesson or project. 


Excerpt From: Apple Education. “Elements of Learning.” Apple Inc. - Education, 2018. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/elements-of-learning/id1367981260

Monday, March 7, 2022

Education Frameworks - Talking Tech Integration

Our district has chosen to use Apple's Elements of Learning as a framework for our technology integration this year. We've been a 1:1 Apple school district for 9 years. Every student K-8 has an iPad that they take home daily. Some of our neediest students have their iPads about 340 days a year. 

In 2012 we used the SAMR framework to talk tech integration. We were very device focused since we were brand new at 1:1. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. This is from the work of Dr. Ruben Puentedura. The first two are considered below-the-line teaching. They have their place in the classroom, but they don't really change the learning. The latter two are considered above the line and the learning changes. Above the line or innovative teaching is a moving target. In the early 90's QR codes were innovative and considered above the line, but now they are augmentation at best. This last point is one of the reasons I don't like using this framework with teachers. Nobody wants to work towards a moving target. Want more information on SAMR? Here is a great video from Common Sense Media if you like to learn with videos. Here's another take on it from my friend Carl Hooker.







In 2015 or 2016 we started to talk about TPACK as our framework. This framework was more teacher-centered as we moved through our 1:1 journey. It is the combination of the teacher's pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and technological knowledge. Where the 3 intersect is the sweet spot, the place where teachers want to be, as far as technology integration. Common Sense Media has a video for TPACK as well. 




Now we are using Apple's Elements of Learning as a framework to talk technology integration. This framework is very student-centered. The 5 elements are teamwork, communication and creation, critical thinking, personalized learning, and real-world engagement. Apple says that students that come from classrooms that have these 5 elements are highly effective learners sans the technology. The technology amplifies the learning. Because it is Apple there isn't a graphic available on the web.  



Frameworks help a district create a common understanding and a common language around an initiative. There are many frameworks out there. We have used the Knoster Model for Change, the TRU Framework, and others to support other work that we do in my district. 

What frameworks have you used? 

Sunday, March 6, 2022

My New Car


2022 Ford Mustang 

 

There she is! My brand new 2022 Ford Mustang Ecoboost 6-speed manual transmission in velocity blue. I have wanted a Ford Mustang since I was 14 years old. I love the body styles of 1965 to 1979 & 1994 to the present. The stars aligned and I had to buy this car. My used car was worth a lot of money and I got a really good deal on this new one. I had my last car for 3 years and the total cost of ownership after I sold it was $4,000 including oil changes and other routine maintenance. The car market right now is INSANE! It's fast and it's fun to drive. It's been a long time since I've driven a manual transmission car. It took me a few minutes to get back into the habit, but it was faster than I thought it would be. I only killed the car 4 times on that 1st day. I'm not a shoe person. I don't do bags or lots of clothes or even fancy clothes. I don't drink often, I don't smoke, or gamble. I'm also pretty practical when it comes to making big purchases. All my appliances are well researched, and I usually pick the Consumer Reports Best Buy.  I was lamenting to a friend about buying the car. He reminded me of how practical I always try to be. He told me that I work hard and if I want to drive a nice car, I should drive a nice car, so I am. Another friend asked me this week how I liked my new car. I said, "I'm happy every minute I'm in it!" She said, "So money really CAN buy happiness." I quipped, "I guess so."




Saturday, March 5, 2022

Tech Coach Slice

I am 1 of 4 tech coaches. I work in a district that has approx 3,200 students, approx 300 certified staff members, and 8 schools. I have been in the district for 31 years. I travel to all 8 schools to help teachers use our 1:1 iPads effectively with students. Over the 8 years that I have been a coach, I have developed many good relationships with the staff who have stayed (we have a very high turnover rate). This past week while I was heating up my lunch in one of the teacher workrooms (there is NO lounging going on - don't like the words teacher's lounge) one of the social workers came in. We greeted each other.  She proceed to tell me about an issue she was having with Google Forms. She set up self-assessment forms for students in her small groups. She was asking what was the best way to share them with her students.  After some questioning, I suggested she share them via Schoology, our LMS. I spotted her computer under a pile of papers, so I asked if we could do it together at that moment. She was not in a hurry, so we did. Then I showed her how to get notifications when someone submits a form. She didn't even know that I was possible. I shared some additional information. By this time both of our meals were heated up. She was super appreciative.

Why do I tell this story? These small moments of supporting teachers were not happening during COVID, or even earlier this year. Even though we have been in person all year this is my first small moment like this of the school year. Pre-COVID these were happening on a very regular basis, maybe even weekly. This small moment filled my bucket for the day. Looking forward to more small moments and longer coaching cycles! 

Friday, March 4, 2022

We Wrote a Book - Leveraging Professional Relationships

Here is a slide from a professional development session that we gave at IDEACon, Illinois's state ed-tech conference a couple of weeks ago. 



Lucy and I, on the right, wrote a book for Book Creator. Book Creator is an app that students can use on any device to write and publish their own books. The book we wrote is called Supporting Language Learners with Book Creator. Someday I will write a post about the process of writing a book for an app company. This post is about how that all came to be. Book Creator's parent company, Tools for Schools, is located in Bristol, England, UK. I'm not exactly sure how Dan Kemp and Dr. Beth Holland got to know each other. I assume it was through social media and Beth's work at Ed Tech Teacher a based Boston based company. I know Beth because I worked for Ed Tech Teacher when they did workshops in Chicago back in 2013. Beth was a lead trainer for Ed Tech Teacher for many years. I attended a workshop and the next year I found myself working for them as a helper in the room when they provided subsequent professional development sessions over the next 3 summers in Chicago. Beth and I continued to keep in touch over the years, mostly through Twitter and Twitter DMs. Beth lives in Rhode Island. Fast forward to the spring of 2018.  Dan Kemp, BC Marketing and Community Manager approached Beth to see if she knew anyone who used Book Creator with ESL students. Beth immediately thought of my team leader and me. We are a very tech-focused and innovative district. Beth reached out, to my team leader at the time, to see if she and I were interested in writing a book for Book Creator.  At the time my team leader had too much on her plate, so she said no to the opportunity. I, on the other hand, don't know how to say NO. I asked the new biliteracy coach in our district if she was interested in writing the book with me. She said YES! In reality, I could not have done it without her. Her knowledge and expertise in this area was invaluable. Not only was Lucy our new biliteracy coach, but I taught her children when I was a classroom teacher. Over the next 4 months, we navigated writing and editing a book! It was a stressful and wonderful experience all at once! I got paid to write a book! How cool is that?!!!!


The moral or lesson here is to keep and honor those professional relationships that you make. You never know when you might be able to leverage them for good! Part of a good PD session is being a good storyteller and I love telling this story of connection and leveraging relationships. 

Thursday, March 3, 2022

A True Slice - Gee willikers

 My last 2 posts were definitely the usual ed tech or techie posts that I like to do. This one is really more of a slice of teacher life. I have to include some techie stuff in this post, though,


Gee willikers

Yesterday I was working in one of our middle schools doing the Anne Frank House VR on Meta Oculus Quest 2. The students studied WWII and specifically the Holocaust. I go into our 8th-grade classes in both of our middle schools to run the VR experience while teachers and students work on other work. Students cycle through with about 5 minutes each in the experience. I really believe in the power of VR for our students (and others) to gain a sense of empathy after participating in an experience like this. Also, our students come from low-income families so only about 1/3 of them have experienced VR let alone own a $300 unit personally. 

That's a little tech background for you - now to the slice. 

Since many students have never experienced VR before some of them have very strong reactions once they put on the headset for the first time. An 8th-grade boy put it on yesterday and exclaimed, "Gee willikers!" I have not heard that expression used in years. The thing that also made it funny was that I had been using the term "coolio" with the students and the teacher in the room, who happens to also be a friend who is my age, was razzing me for using 90's lingo and thinking I was talking to the kids on their level. In both cases the slang was outdated. Does that matter? Did we both get our point across even though we used outdated slang? I was really surprised to hear something like that come out of a 13 y/o's mouth. I asked him, "Are you 90?" He said no, of course. I asked him where he hear that. He said he couldn't remember. 

In closing I will say -- This is why I love my job - kids really do say the darndest things and every day is different! 

Gee willikers slicers! 

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Sketchnoting and Read Alouds - Part 2

After visiting all 18 homerooms for the sketchnoting mini lesson it was time to model read alouds for our staff.  Our building literacy coach worked with teachers to find the right book for each classroom. Some of the books were chosen by teacher suggestion and some where chosen by the literacy coach based on the standard(s) that the teacher was currently working on. Some of the teams, comprised of 3 teachers each, chose the same book to work on the same skill. The literacy coach worked hard to prep each book. When I showed up to help support her I saw that she had Post It notes on some of the pages. These were to remind her what probing questions to ask and when to remind the children to do a turn and talk. Turn and talk expectations were reviewed before starting. Each read aloud was done very intentionally. The lens given for each story matched the standard, of course. Here is what students were asked to include in their sketchnote: 

Kinder - beginning, middle & end of story

1st - character, setting, problem, & solution

2nd - lesson or moral

3rd - character traits

4th - show what happened in an historical text with text evidence

5th - how did a character respond to challenges in the story or how did the character feel about the challenges in the story


Before we started 3 teachers were practicing sketchnoting with their students. After my initial mini lesson an additional 10 teachers reported doing sketchnoting with their students at least one more time since I had been there. That's 3/4 of the staff! Some of the teachers even sketchnoted with us! #winning

We were again blown away by what the students were able to create. Students liked it and were generally successful. What I noticed while I was doing my mini lesson and the subsequent read aloud was that I could tell which teachers don't use the iPads with their students on a regular basis. At the very least these teachers are not using the iPads for creation, but only drill and kill apps that the district pays for, for our intervention programs. Hopefully, this project will get one or two of the laggards to change their tune. I can hope - can't I? 

If you want to see pictures check out my Twitter feed. https://twitter.com/rmbtowner_tech. 

Finally, our literacy coach is AMAZING! Her intentional modeling was spot on! 

 

Below is a screenshot of the planning doc for the read alouds.




Monday, February 28, 2022

Sketchnoting and Read Alouds - Part 1

We have been using Apple's Elements of Learning as the backbone for our tech integration in our district. With a special focus on Communication and Creation (1 type) and Real World Engagement. One of the schools I work with was looking for an entire staff project for communication and creation. I was at another school listening to their literacy coach talk about doing purposeful read-alouds and it sparked an idea for me. What if we paired purposeful read alouds with sketchnoting? Sketchnoting is something I've been trying to "get off the ground" for the last few years in our district. We bought our students Logitech Crayons during COVID.

Back to the idea. 

The teachers were very open to the idea b/c they like the idea of students being fully engaged during a read-aloud. The building literacy coach and I also thought that some teachers could use some modeling in the way of purposeful read alouds. We were so glad the teachers didn't think of it as One More Thing, especially this year! Hence a coaching collaboration was born! 

We made a plan to collect some baseline data from the students. The questions we asked were - 

1. Do you know what sketchnoting is? 

2. Do you like read-aloud time in your classroom? 

3. Do you think drawing or doodling helps you learn? 

We used Poll Everywhere to collect the data electronically. 

I went into each of the 18 homerooms and did a 1/2 hour mini-lesson, "Getting Started with Sketchnoting: A Pershing Project". First I showed some examples of sketchnotes from kindergarteners and first graders. I made the point that a person from kindergarten and older could do this. Plus kids liked seeing their work in the slide deck. We talked about the apps available to them on their iPad or the fact they could choose to do their sketches with pencil and paper too. Next, we talked about the fact that sketchnoting is about IDEAS NOT ART (read that again if you've never heard it before). We practiced drawing the 5 elements that can be the start of, or part of any and all drawings - square, circle, triangle, line, and dot. If you can draw those you can draw anything. We talked about everyone making their own meaning of the pictures and words that they put on their paper/"paper". I also told them the only wrong answer was if they didn't try. Finally, we finished with a set of quick draws. They had 1 minute each to draw the following: cup, house, book, happy, person, pizza, idea or thought, and jump. Happy, idea or thought, and jump are either not nouns or not nouns that you can touch. I was blown away by what the kids were able to draw. They represented idea or thought in a number of ways - thought bubble, question mark above the head, just a brain with a question mark in it, a light bulb, and a lightning bolt. Genius! 

I had to do it virtually one day because of a severe weather day. 







Also, I sketched a logo to go along with the initiative.