Hey, Did You Hear?

Here are some highlights from observing student learning!  If you have any questions or would like to explore some of these ideas in your classroom, please stop by the Collab Lab!

1.  Mirror Student's iPad on the Apple TV
This is a quick way to build student ownership and increase student engagement.  Here, Mark Heintz has asked a student to project over the AppleTV, so all students in the class to see him take notes.  Many teachers use this method of student ownership to show class agendas or view Schoology from the students' perspective, as their student view is different from that of the teacher.  

2.  Using Quizlet Live to engage students.   

Quizlet live is a great interactive learning tool. It's user friendly and fun! Many teachers at Elk Grove have used Quizlet live, and we recently had the chance to join in on the fun in Eleanor Pattie's chemistry class. After logging in with their join code, students are grouped in random teams with fun team names. Team members must collaborate to successfully compete against the clock and their classmates to demonstrate their learning. Students get immediate feedback to confirm, or recognize gaps in, their understanding.

        

3.  Place Your Bets! Formative Assessment & Self-Reflection in Chemistry 

Eleanor Pattie engages her students in checks for understanding using a game she calls Place Your Bets.  Students access learning resources via Schoology that Eleanor uses to pose questions. Before each question students reflect on their understanding to determine their "bet" which is a "dollar amount" they put on their game sheet.  At the end of the short round (~five minutes/8 questions) students tally the amount that corresponds to their correct answers to determine the class winner. "Place your Bets" is a quick and fun way to vary a check for understanding after a lesson.

4.  Adobe Spark: Creating and Making Learning Visible in CTE 

The students in Pat McGing's Aerospace engineering class recently used Adobe Spark to create presentations to demonstrate their learning. Check out this example on Apollo 11:

Student Example

5.  Involving Students in their Learning: Remediation & Reassessment in Physics

Mr. Bozcar and the regular physics team have students self-assess following a unit test.  For each test question, students gives themselves a "+"  or  "-"  to indicate their confidence in knowing how to answer the question.  Then they give a check or an "x" to indicate if the answer was correct or not.  Then they give themselves a score of 1-4 based on a rubric (below right).

  

Next, students complete test corrections on the document below.  They are given a class period to do this.  

Lastly, the physics teachers have a schedule for reassessment with any one of the physics teachers on the team.

Teaming on Tuesdays #2: Student Presentations Made Easy!

By The Collab Lab Team

Today was our second Teaming on Tuesday of the Second Semester.  Our Teaming on Tuesdays offer staff an opportunity to participate in a short professional learning experiences, as short as ten minutes, that usually involves a brief visit to a classroom to see a strategy in action, followed by collaboration time in the Collab Lab to brainstorm applications in our own classroom and/or "play" with the apps.

The American Literature team invited us to observe their students doing presentations with Adobe Voice. Students projected their creation through Apple TV, but also gave an introduction in person and shared their presentation with their teacher digitally--mainly through a Media Album on Schoology. Much like ShowMe, Adobe Voice allows students to include images and text, then record their voice in the same slide. One advantage of Adobe Voice is that if a student makes a mistake, he or she can re-record one slide without having to record the entire presentation again.

When we returned to the Collab Lab, we brainstormed possible applications of Adobe Voice. In addition to presentations, one idea that emerged was to have students summarize the day's lesson in Adobe Voice as an exit slip. They could add one slide a day so that they have a review activity by the end of the week. We also discussed how students could create their own review videos to share with class--a type of podcasting, for example.  Other teachers liked the idea of having students take their own photographs around where they live and to create their own "About Me" presentations for their foreign language classes.  If you have more ideas and/or examples, please share them with us as the year goes on.

Here are some more examples of some of the American Literature students' projects!
1.  Mahatma Gandhi
2.  Dennis Rodman
3.  Lorde

Classroom Set-up

By Kim Miklusak

I've been thinking lately about classroom design and instructional technology space: white board walls, multiple projectors, maker spaces, etc.  For example, now with 1:1 instruction and Apple TV, there is no reason for my desk to be at the front of the room.  There is no need to be tethered to a projector.  And there is no need for my students to sit in any traditional set-up.  Right now my AP English classes are set up in 6 pods of 4-5 desk, so they can collaborate.  My American Literature class is a modified U-shape, so all students can communicate with each other.

Out of curiosity today I asked my students "How should we arrange the desks in order to maximize your learning in this class."  The diversity of their answers says a lot about how they think they learn best and makes me think I need to rephrase my question based on what I think my purpose is for class.  The answers fell into three major categories: 1) some variation of rows, 2) some variation of a U-shape, and 3) some variation of pods. 

None of that is surprising.  But what did surprise me was how evenly split their answers were.  When I asked them why, they each had a reason for their design and even suggested other teachers who have a similar set-up.  They were surprised to hear that I may try out one or two of their designs (shown above).  I think too often we still arrange our classrooms the way they have always been arranged.  With 1:1 instruction, I think we need to ask ourselves the purpose of our classes and the purpose of our instruction and analyze our design (given the constraints of our space, of course) to maximize learning.

Historical Twitter Handles?

By Mark Heintz

The strategy below is a post reading strategy that is easy to implement and gets a lot out of the students.  I have posted about how my history classes usually begin with some sort of warm up relating to documents.  Sometimes they are pictures, but usually they are a reading.  You can read more about them here.

Recently, my students read a few short paragraphs on the British East India Company. I wanted to see how much my students understood from the reading.  At the end of the reading they were asked to create a twitter handle about the document and a tweet that showcased their understanding of the passage.  This was the first time I used this strategy and I wasn't sure how it would go.  But it turned out to be pretty great. Some of the examples were pretty hilarious or very informative.

 The great thing about this strategy was the effort and thought the students put into the task.  They were reading the passage over and over again to come up with something good.  As I walked around the class, I saw students go through several drafts to get to one that was worth sharing!  Several drafts! It was suppose to be a simple post reading exercise, but ended up being an exercise in mental gymnastic that students really cared about.  At the end, some examples were shared over AppleTV.   Give it a try yourself, and let me know how it goes!

Determining Main Ideas in a Reading Passage

I start my AP World History class almost every day with a warm up.  I like the routine of starting off class with the students diving right into content and thinking.  Also, they know what to do at the beginning of class, which helps them start right away.  Before every student had an iPad, I left the warm ups at the door.  Each student picked the paper up as they entered the room, and the instructions were always on the sheet.  Now that each student has an iPad, they download it through the LMS I use, Schoology. 

Most of the time the warm up is a reading that builds background knowledge or addresses an AP theme that is, for a lack of better way to say it, random.  The warm ups are always short, something they can read or complete in less than a few minutes.  Then they can share with another student.  Finally, we report out as a class and then I answer any questions the students might have. The whole process takes from five to ten minutes.

I have a variety of strategies I use depending on what skill I would like to focus on that day.  Also, the variety helps keep the students interested in doing them almost every day. In this case, I used the deletion summary reading strategy.  I used this strategy because students often have a trouble determining what is important or not.  This is crucial when reading non-fiction material.  Furthermore, students will need this skill in any profession, as they will need to be able to sift through material quickly and efficiently in almost any profession.   

 I always give the students a clearly defined purpose when they read.  When using the deletion summary strategy, students cross out everything that does not answer the question or is aligned to the purpose. At the end, I have the students summarize the remaining information. 

Seeing what students delete or keep is very revealing. At first, they either delete or keep everything.  It takes several attempts for students to understand what is important. It takes time to develop that skill when reading unfamiliar non-fiction material.  To help the students, I walk through the process with the class.  After reading each line, I ask what part of the line is essential or directly related to the objective.  Then, we cross out everything we did not say.  As we do this more frequently, I will have several students share over AppleTV their attempts.