Perspective-Taking through class "Pinwheel" activity

By Kim Miklusak

In previous work in Emily Mikuzis’ senior English 101 class, her students worked on exemplification—making a claim and supporting it with examples rather than reasoned evidence.  In this case, students are using the guiding question “To what extent has your education served you?” with examples from their own experience.

To prepare for this lesson students read and annotated an excerpt from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” which focuses on his experience in education—specifically compliance versus critical thinking.  Students prepared by annotating form 4 different perspectives, color-coding each: urban student, suburban student, urban teacher, suburban teacher. 

They used Coates’ description of his neighborhood for the experience with urban schools and their own experiences with suburban schools.  Understanding that this pulls on some biases, the class had a conversation on empathy, per  While this is a limitation of the activity, the class talked through the nuances of each, handling it compassionately.  For example, one student pointed out that just because someone has a certain identity, it doesn’t mean they only have one perspective or a common perspective. 

Students worked independently first, then in small like-groups, then together in a “pinwheel” activity [from Sarah Wessling on the Teachers’Channel].   One member of each “perspective” sat in the “hot seat” and answered questions posed by the “provocateur,” who had prepared based on a question writing workshop held by the whole class on the previous day.  Therefore, groups were aware of some of the questions, but they could not prepare for all.  In the “pinwheel,” the provocateur also asked follow-up questions to continue and push the conversation.  Students referenced the text directly but also made inferences based on their perspective.  This is a much smaller group discussion than a Socratic with only 6 students in the group to encourage all students to participate while the outer group participated in a real-time backchannel on BackChannelChat.com

After class students debriefed.  Students expressed the difficulty in looking through others’ perspective, but they also appreciated that it slowed them down, forcing themselves to rethink what they would say.  They also really liked the backchannel because they could speak from their own life perspective and experiences, which allowed them a comfortable place to share.  In the end they felt it helped them take different perspectives in addition to simply analyzing what the text means.  After this practice activity, students will return to this activity in a few weeks, focusing on multiple authors and putting them “in conversation with each other.”

2 Schools Connect in Professional Learning w Google Hangout and Periscope

By Linda Ashida

Imagine collaborating with colleagues across schools, visiting their classrooms, and engaging in professional learning conversations before, during and after the class visits. It sounds great, right? Except when you consider the time and logistics necessary to make it happen.

Enter Google Hangout and Periscope!

The result?  Professional Learning conversations and class visits connecting two--or more--schools virtually.  That is just what we did this week in the Collab Lab!

The idea came about earlier in the year when Bridget Wilmot, the Instructional Technology Coordinator from Riverside Brookfield High School, visited EG.  She and I exchanged examples of the ways we facilitate professional learning in each of our schools. We discussed the culture of peer observation at EG, and that led to the idea to do a virtual peer observation connecting two small groups of teachers at each of our schools.

We decided to have our first virtual peer observation at EG, with two class visits during our second hour, followed by a post-observation conversation 3rd hour.  Prior to the observation, the two host teachers at EG completed a form they shared with the RBHS teachers to indicate the focus of their lessons, and to share a successful strategy and/or request for feedback

In order for all of us to meet each other and have a conversation prior to the classroom visits, we used Google Hangout.

 

From there we connected on Periscope to live stream from the classrooms.  Periscope, which functions much like Facebook Live, would allow our virtual visitors to comment and ask questions real-time. However, we ended up doing our live back-channel conversation via Google Hangout chat, since we were already connected, and that way, Rachel Barry could moderate the chat while I concentrated on the live streaming. Also, for this first visit we decided to create a private group, rather than stream publicly.

First, we went to Kim Miklusak's English class and, in a variation of a socratic seminar, we saw a student-led discussion on the novel Sula. Using guiding questions, students on the inside circle engaged in dialog, while students in the outside circle commented, offered feedback and asked questions via a Schoology discussion, which was projected on the large screen. In the photo below you can see me live streaming, and Rachel nearby monitoring and responding to the questions and comments from the RBHS teachers.

Below you can see an excerpt of the back-channel conversation with varied comments and questions from the RBHS teachers with Rachel's responses.

From Kim's class we went to Mark Heintz' World History class. Mark's students were engaged in a collaborative activity on Mercantilism, analyzing documents and finding evidence to support their claims. While the students discussed, Mark circulated from group to group to monitor the conversations, answer questions and offer feedback.

Check out this short video clip from Mark's class to give you a better of an idea of what the streaming, moderating and class discussion looked like.



Following the two class visits, about 10-15 minutes each, Kim and Mark enjoyed connecting again with the 4 teachers from RBHS, again via Google Hangout. They shared feedback and exchanged ideas that included lesson design and scaffolding, creating and curating digital curriculum materials, focusing on essential skills and giving formative feedback, integrating technology and non-tech methods to facilitate collaboration, and making connections across courses with literacy skills. Such a rich professional learning conversation! Furthermore, some of the participants, who used Periscope or Google Hangout for the first time, left with ideas for integrating th0se technologies in their own classrooms.

This was our first experience doing a virtual peer observation in this way, and for all of us it was a positive an energizing experience. We're looking forward to continued collaboration with RBHS and connecting again via Periscope to visit some of their classes.

We're also very excited about the possibilities to connect in a similar way with our colleagues across District 214.  We've already discussed some possibilities.  For example, imagine you are a teacher who teaches a singleton course and you don't have a PLC to collaborate with. You could connect with and observe the same class of a colleague in another school! Just as students benefit from seeing models and examples of work, so too can we benefit from seeing strategies in action, made even more possible via virtual class visits and conversations across schools.

Are you interested in connecting in this way?  Want to learn more or have an idea to share?  We'd love to hear from you!

Enhancing Language Learning with 1:1 Technology

Written by Linda Ashida

An invitation to present at the Winter Conference for AATSP (The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese) gave my colleagues Carmen Ruiz, Chris Cirrincione, and me a professional learning opportunity to reflect on, and share, ways that we engage students in language learning with 1:1 technology.

In our presentation we shared strategies that impact student learning by:

• Personalizing instruction
• Improving feedback
• Increasing Collaboration
• Connecting with Authentic Resources
• Expanding Learning Beyond Classroom Walls 

While our examples related specifically to World Language classes -  developing interpretive, interpersonal and presentational communication skills - the activities can be easily adapted to any content area.

Some examples of strategies we shared:

• Give all students a voice with backchannel activities using TodaysMeet or Twitter.

Today's meet is quick and easy to set up!  It takes just a minute!

• Give real time formative feedback with ClassKick or GoFormative .

Embed audio and video links for formative listening practice / feedback

• Encourage collaboration with Google Docs and Schoology Media Albums.

Crowd source resources and learning collaboratively! Divide class into groups.  Each group becomes an expert on a text, audio or video source and fills in Google Doc with main point, key details and key vocabulary!

Students upload infographics related to AP themes. Practice creating questions for their infographic.  Engage in paired speaking activities.  Share written comments for peer review.

• Practice listening comprehension skills with Play Post It or EdPuzzle (Shout out to our Prospect High School colleagues Teri Buczinsky, Ryan Schultz, and Mike Aldworth for sharing their example!)

Embed questions in videos for comprehension checks to build listening comprehension of authentic resources!

•  Engage students with Authentic Resources with SpanishListening.org, AudioLingua and more!

Search for native speaker samples by level,  topic, gender and country!

• Expand learning beyond classroom walls with Google Earth, Virtual Field Trips and Skype.

 Transport yourself around the world with Google Earth or Virtual Field Trips. Try a Mystery Skype!  Connect with another class and guess where they are from.

To learn more about these and other examples we shared, check out this link to our presentation slides.

Do you have other strategies that work?  Please share!

Would you like to learn more about any of the strategies from our presentation?  Please connect with us in the Collab Lab!  
ing Beyond the Classroom walls