New connections! New Inspiration!

Written by Linda Ashida

As I wrote in a previous post, attending conferences and making new connections can be very energizing. That is exactly what I experienced at iEngage-Berwyn!



I was inspired by students and educators who came together to share their practice and explore new ways to make learning better.  Here are three highlights:

1) I was inspired by students! 

Check out these students who created an interactive virtual tour of their middle school using TouchCast.  They realized that incoming students from the elementary school were nervous about the transition to a new school, and they set out to find a way to help those students; to ease their anxiety and help them feel connected before the start of the new school year.  I was amazed at the student's innovative idea to make the video interactive. As you watch the virtual tour, you can click on any of the staff in the video, you'll be connected to a separate YouTube video of that person telling a little bit about themselves and the school.  What a great idea!  Creative problem-solvers right there!

2) I was inspired by teachers!

A fourth grade science teacher shared how she taught students to use models of work to demonstrate understanding and critical thinking related to the NGSS standards. She realized that the traditional paper and pencil tests she gave in the past failed to reveal gaps in students' understanding. After carefully scaffolding instruction to teach the criteria for a good model, she gave students choice in how to create their own models using such apps as Explain Everything.  Not only were these assessments more creative, by offering choice and integrating technology, they also helped her to better target students' learning needs. Always striving to improve her practice, at the end of the workshop she invited participants to give her feedback and share their own examples.  It was a great exchange of ideas.

3) I was inspired by the Keynote speakers!
 Jenny Magiera and George Couros.

Jenny Magiera encouraged us to connect with a crew and embark on new EdVentures. Dana Ladenberger captured Jenny's key ideas in her amazing sketchnote:




George Couros inspired us by sharing numerous examples of what characterizes an "Innovator's Mindset."   He challenged our thinking, insisting that this "mindset is necessary for all of us if schools are to move forward."  To learn more, check out his new book The Innovator's Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity.  The key ideas are captured in his sketchnote designed by Slyvia Duckworth.
 



For more of an idea of what the two-day conference event looked like, check out #iengagebwyn on Twitter.

I'd like to end this post with a shout out to Shannon Osheroff and Jordan Garrett, two innovative educators whom I met at Apple events during the last year.  Shannon first conceived of and planned the conference last year, and Jordan took on a lead role in planning this year's event.  Together with an amazing team of students, teachers and administrators from District 100 they planned a great day of shared learning!

Using Schoology and Locks

By Mark Heintz

Document based questions (DBQs) are a crucial part of history.  Yet, they are incredibly difficult and do not foster a lot of student movement in a fifty minute class period. Students get very frustrated with them and often move too quickly through a document.  Students often don't spend enough time on the source information, word choice, point of view of the author, tone of the document, and the evidence they would use from each document.  I wanted a way to slow students down when working through a document based question.  To have the students focus where I wanted them, I created a quiz for each document covering those topics. In the quiz, I dedicated each question to one of those topics. I should note that this was the first full DBQ that they did.

In Schoology, I set the limit a student could take each quiz to two attempts.  I wanted them to ask me questions if they could not complete it in two tries.  This allowed some students to move forward because they understood each document while students who needed my help received it.  

To incorporate movement, I only gave each student the first document on paper.  They had to "pass" the quiz to unlock a Schoology page that revealed a three or four digit code on it.

Then students had to get out of their seats, go movement during a DBQ!, and put the three or four digit code into a folder with a lock on it.  Inside the locked folder was the document they just took the quiz on completely written out.  The written response used all of the information that they just took a quiz on.  The other item in the folder was the next document so they could take the next quiz. 

By the end, students were moving around the room acquiring all the documents and understandings. It was very cool to see the students talking so much about the documents and allowing students to move at their own pace.  

As a reflection, I would not use all the documents again. It was great practice, but it took too much time to have students go through all nine documents. The whole process took about three class days. I wanted the students to write out the entire essay at the end to show how it all fit together, but the process of taking each quiz for each document took too much time.  Also, the locks were very motivating the first day, but by the third, it had been played out.  I think I could use this tactic again but in a more time sensitive way.

Aligning Purpose and Learning Goals: a Model from the Spanish PLC

by Dean Burrier Sanchis

The Elk Grove HS Spanish PLC team of Leslie Guimon, Pam Coté, Carmen Ruíz, Effie Kalkounos, Diana Cappelen, Ricky Castro, Dean Burrier Sanchis and Chris Cirrincione came together for a full-day department meeting in the CollabLab this past Monday. Our scope was very grand as we set out to establish our standards of expectations for our department, analyze our global approach to assessments, grading, gradebook setup, rubric usage, student engagement and overall department goals. Amazingly, we addressed and came away with some great tangibles for each and every one of those areas. Our fearless PLC leader Leslie Guimon took copious notes on the walls of the CollabLab, to the point of literally filling the entire wall, a testament to all that was accomplished.

The team began with brainstorming and note-taking

Certainly our greatest takeaway was the set of internally defined standards that we discussed, devised, wrote out and revised as a team. Our team was able to create a common vision for what we want our students to come out of our program possessing as students. Every team member had a hand in our penning of our Department’s 5 “Enduring Understandings”

The first major step was to define their purpose and learning targets

After creating this set of standards, we went through our assessment categories in our gradebooks and revamped our department wide setup to better reflect the new Enduring Understandings we had created. From there, we went through a backward alignment process from AP down to Spanish 1 to explicitly define the areas and ways we would be addressing the Enduring Understandings as well as our goals and curricular connections to the Understandings at each of our Spanish levels.

Final version of purpose-filled curriculum in a Google doc shared with all team members

Leslie’s notes document just how much we were able to accomplish. Chris Cirrincione took notes electronically and created a great visual representation of our results for today. Pam Coté treated our team to lunch where we continued our ongoing dialogues and renewed our energy. We found the environment of the CollabLab to be very well designed to fit our needs and handle our team’s drive and inspiration. Additionally, Linda Ashida and Kirsten Fletcher helped by adding their support and perspective to our conversations adding their vast experience and pedagogical knowledge, much to our benefit, as well offering suggestions for the uses of technology.

Summer Reading 2016 Kick-Off!

By Kim Miklusak

Today we kicked off our Summer Reading 2016!

A few months ago students voted on a theme--Overcoming Obstacles.  The teacher Literacy Committee led by our API Megan Knight then went through various genres and selected several book options.  Students were invited either by various committees or randomly during lunch periods to do "speed dating" to help narrow down the choices to one or two from each genre.

Ultimately, seven books were chosen.  Literacy Committee members and students worked together to create promos for each of the books.  Students then responded to a Google Form in order to select the book they would like to read this summer.  Here are this year's promos!  As you can see we tried to focus on "If you liked..." recommendations.

1.  Positive by Paige Rawl
2.  I Beat the Odds  by Michael Oher
3.  The Book of the Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez
4.  We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
5.  The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
6.  We Were Here by Matt de la Pena
7.  The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

This year we are happy to announce two new exciting updates to our summer reading program.  First, each student at Elk Grove HS received a copy of the summer reading book of their choosing!  Additionally, we are going to host our first Million Minutes of Reading in May.  Each day in the month of May everyone in the building will "Stop, Drop, and Read."

As we did last year, many teachers are "sponsoring" a book for their team or club this year.  We hope to continue to build our committee of readers!  Also like last year we had a kick-off event where teachers stopped by to pick up their book selection, enjoy some cake, and take some photo booth photos with the books they chose.  Check out our tweets from the event at our hashtag #EGSR2016!

Book Recommendation for English and Reading Teachers

By Kim Miklusak

For a while now people have been recommending the books Book Love by Penny Kittle and The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller to me as I continue to work through the purpose of reading in our classrooms and, more specifically, how we implement independent reading.  For those of you in the same situation, I can't stress to you enough that you should pick up both books now and buy some copies for your friends.

What I appreciated about these books was how much they stress the disconnect between our goals of reading and what we implement in the classroom.  We frequently use punitive measures when what we really want is for students to improve in reading skills and--ultimately--appreciate reading as much as we do, so they can apply their skills to diverse and complex texts independently.  Both books supplied not only theory and anecdotes, but also clear strategies to implement immediately in the classroom.

My strongest takeaway from Book Love was the idea that we assign challenging texts to students whose skills may not allow the book to be accessible to them.  Yet at the same time we frequently undervalue independent reading.  Kittle argues that we should help build reading stamina in accessible books in addition to building in reading strategies in order to help students access books they may see in the classroom.  

One of my many takeaways from The Book Whisperer was the differentiation between the Developing Reader vs. the Dormant Reader vs. the Underground Reader.  The developing reader is one who we would more commonly refer to as a "struggling" reader, and Miller argues, much like Kittle does, that these students do not read as much as they need to in order to develop their skills--especially in remedial or test-taking focused programs.  The dormant readers by contrast are the ones who float through class "unmotivated and uninterested in reading," the ones who actually enjoy reading but the minimal demands of a classroom or the "reading hoops of a typical classroom" cause them to lose their interest and focus (28-29).  Finally, the underground readers are gifted ones who prefer their own reading to that done in school.  These are the readers who we as teachers frequently don't design lessons for because they have already surpassed most of their peers in this area.

In the end, both authors stressed two main points.  First, students must read: read more, read often, read books of their own choosing, and read books in their ability level!  This will help open doors to more complex texts.  And finally they stress that we as teachers have to share our love of reading with our students.  We need to talk about books with them, be honest with them about what we do and don't like in books, when we give up on a book and why, and how we find new books, etc.  Most adults aren't reading, so how else can we create this culture of readers if we ourselves don't model it for them!

It's not a waste of time--it's the foundation for everything we hope for in readers in our classrooms!

Collaborating to Learn! Our webinar for the Illinois Principals Association and EdLeaders Network

By The CollabLab Team

Today the CollabLab team had the opportunity to present a webinar to the Illinois Principals Association / Ed Leaders Network: The Collab Lab at Elk Grove High School: Responsive and Sustained Teacher-Led Professional Learning.

Our purpose was to share with the participants how they can support sustained and responsive teacher-led professional learning in their buildings.  We did this by sharing how we started in peer observation groups and how we continue to evolve in the CollabLab today, centering our conversation around our motto of "Connect, Learn, Share."

Alongside us, our principal, Paul Kelly, supported us and collaborated with us on this presentation.  His focus was to help participants reflect upon professional learning in their own building and help guide them in creating possible action plans.  You can access a copy of this document here.

Throughout the webinar we connected with participants through the hashtag #elnpln.  Check out our conversations and connect with others.  You can access our PowerPoint here.  It contains links to all of the resources supported by the CollabLab.  Please let us know if you'd like to share your ideas or talk to us about professional learning in your school or ours!

Classkick Classroom Visits

By: Rachel Barry

Yesterday, Tom Walloch and I had a unique opportunity to bring to our classes.  A representative from the app Classkick had reached out to me to preview their upcoming web-based version.   Classkick For Web will be launching in a few weeks.  Now, schools with devices other than iPads (laptops, Chromebooks, etc.) will be able to use Classkick.

The representative, Laura Litton, came to our classes to showcase the new version and take pictures of our students in action.  Overall students enjoyed the experience, especially that their picture may be featured in some of Classkick's promotional materials.  

Some of the feedback from the students was that after using the iPad version, it wasn't as user-friendly to write with the mouse on the web-based version.  They also acknowledged that their opinion was based on using it in the math classroom and that there are other applications in other content areas that may find the web-based version more efficient.  

In talking to Laura, she mentioned the much greater network of teachers they could reach using a web-based version, due to the limited number of districts able to purchase iPads for their students.  Some schools are investing in Chromebooks for the lower cost, while other schools are limited to computer labs.  Investing in this web-based version allows for more teachers to benefit from this awesome method of formative assessment!

And here is a special note from Classkick: