January Blog Post

My thoughts about Collaboration in September are still pretty similar. I think that when it is working it is awesome. If you think about the 7 Mindsets, "We Are Connected". We do rely on each other and better things do happen when we work well together. The issue remains that it is hard to make that time. Also it's sometimes hard to have a consensus.

Collaboration with students involves having multiple students work together to accomplish a task. Sometimes that looks like a group of kids smiling and laughing and videoing each other like I saw today, while sometimes it looks like a couple of kids arguing with one another about which way they should do something. Sometimes it works really well. Sometimes you have 3 kids working together and one student isn't collaborating like they should, so that is what you're combatting.

I get students to collaborate on projects, activities, and other assignments. I think that to do that you have to set expectations for what each student should be doing. Sometimes they have different tasks while sometimes they are strategizing together on how to complete the task at hand.

Some specific projects and activities I've done that have resulted in successful collaboration are many of the ones we've done at STEAM. My favorite last year was the BIG Social Studies project where I put together about 50% of my social studies standards into one big project at the end of the year to finish them out along with some ELA, Math and Science standards. Those kids got so into it. Even the kids who typically aren't interested got involved and were creative and the groups that struggled, we talked as a group and split up what each student should be in charge of, then they came together to share their final product.

I commit to having my students grade their group work this month to see if that helps improve our collaboration.

December Blog for BOAT - Critical Thinking and Assessment

Student learning whenever a student creates a product to demonstrate their understanding is deeper. When a student is just answering a multiple choice test it becomes too easy. They can work backwards to find the answer and it doesn't take as much effort.

Teachers should create more engaging lessons for students so that they become more involved in the lesson. They are more likely to remember what they've learned and be able to relate back to it another time.

Teachers demonstrate creativity through our classrooms, our lessons, our anchor charts and more. I think kids know how creative we are based on how we teach.

Critical Thinking in November

Critical thinking is deeper level thinking that involves analyzing and evaluating information in order to come to a conclusion about something. Typically I think of solving a problem when I'm critical thinking.

Some activities that require me to think critically involve building lesson plans, solving behavior issues in my classroom, planning an assembly or a party, etc. I think we use critical thinking all of the time as we're just going throughout our lives and jobs.

Critical thinking is important because we do need it so often. We have to be able to solve the problems in our lives. Sitting there and saying that I don't know how to fix this and asking someone else all the time isn't going to work. We have to be able to analyze a situation, come up with solutions and then work to solve the problem or we're just stuck.

I think critical thinking is something that we take for granted. I feel there is a big push for it in teaching right now, but somehow we learned these things. If we can reflect on the practices that taught us these skills, then we can help our students to get there. I remember being a part of a really cool 5th grade pod that was like a city. We role played and pretended to be banks, writers, police, etc and had to solve issues in our town. It was such a fun way to practice the skills of critical thinking. Creating more real life type of issues and teaching through project based learning was really effective when I was a kid and it's come full circle and that's where we are at now. Back to project based learning.

I commit to increase and improve my critical thinking as a teacher by planning more hands on activities within English Language Arts.

October Reflection

Communication is how someone shares a message with someone else. There is one way communication where one person shares a message with others. There is also two-way communication in which people can share with each other. Typically two-way communication is more effective.

I communicate with teachers in person, via email, Twitter, Facebook, phone, text and through paper messages. Some paper messages can include grade cards, pink and blue forms, information about events, etc that we are doing that they need information on.

How do you communicate with educators outside of your building? Outside of your district?

When I communicate with educators outside of my building it is typically through Twitter or Facebook. Sometimes I email, call, or text with former colleagues. 

To add onto the questions and talk about my feelings about communication. I am actually a communication major. I think communication is a key factor in being successful in anything you do. Making sure to communicate is key in any relationship whether it is a marriage, a friendship, a community relationship, a student-teacher or parent-teacher relationship, etc. Staff members feel better toward their bosses when communication is done well. That would involve the method, the amount, the content and the clarity of the communication.

I will increase and improve my communication as a teacher by utilizing Twitter better.

Fighting that Wifi Battle

I love technology. I also hate it. Some days it works perfectly and others it is a mess. Right now I'm balancing my emotions between loving and hating technology because the wifi in my room and some of the iPads are just not working well.

Instead of just complaining about it, I'd rather share how I'm dealing with it so that perhaps I can help someone out there experiencing the pains of technology integration when the technology isn't your friend.

For one, I'm doing lots of partner work. "Oh, your iPad isn't connecting. Well you can work with your shoulder partner to do this Kahoot collaboratively." Or "I'm sorry that your iPad can't load Zearn, today you'll work with this student to complete the math lesson." In these instances I'd rather all iPads work, but I'm having some unexpected accomplishments. In the instance where Zearn wouldn't load I matched up people or they matched themselves up and the conversations I heard over the math were pretty impressive. I had one girl who really didn't want to work with her shoulder partner, but I told her to look at it as a tutoring opportunity and the two of them took off and did an amazing job. Her partner probably learned more from her and that video than he did during my entire whole group lesson. When they did Kahoots collaboratively, I had all of my students have to complete their work on their white boards before they could answer and those partners could check each other's work. It ended up being really effective.

Don't get me wrong, I still want the internet to stop hating me, however at least I'm seeing some positives too. Sometimes as a teacher you just have to be able to roll with the punches and that's what I've been doing. Collaboration is a great thing and my students are benefiting despite their technology not being 100%. I'd call that a win in my book.

Grad School Helps in the Classroom

So I'm actually taking a class right now on integrating technology into the adult classroom. It's been really interesting and taught me a lot. I can apply some of what I'm learning to my own classroom and this week I tried a discussion post on the Constitution since we are supposed to talk about the Constitution on Constitution Day.

I required my students to either post something they learned or a question they still had after watching the School House Rock Preamble video. I had some lower level questions, some higher level questions and it was informative about where my students are when it comes to an assignment like that. I also required students to post on at least one other student's question or comment about what they learned. That was interesting. I had some, "Yeah, I agree." I also had some who looked up information to answer questions. I had some who brought in their own thoughts. Some were very basic and there is room to improve, but I was surprised by some of the genuine conversation that occurred from fourth graders.

Overall I was excited to try it out in my classroom and I can see discussion posts really improving our critical thinking skills as we move throughout the year with some guidance and facilitation.

Reflection for 9/13/2016's BOAT meeting.

My definition of collaboration is people working together to create something whether it is a product, an idea or a goal. Each person is putting forth an effort in the product or idea created. Collaborating is usually preferred to working on your own because it allows more than one mind to look at a problem or an opportunity. The more minds you have working on something, the more ideas and perceptions are brought to the table. In the end it can be more successful than working on your own.

Tragically I had to say that it CAN be more successful. I don't think collaboration is always successful. Collaboration can be a tricky thing. First finding the time to get together with others is frequently a struggle. Another issue with collaboration is something you see with group work in general. So many times there isn't an even amount of effort put forth in collaborating. Some people might not want to collaborate, others might want to take over and do everything and ignore the voices of others. Collaboration does have its struggles, and I didn't even scratch the surface of the issues that can arise.

Some ways to help fix the issues of collaboration consist of good directions from the instructor. I think having clear expectations and requirements can help facilitate collaboration from a teacher to student standpoint. I think as teachers, our principal or facilitator has to have clear directions on how we need to collaborate. I also think that having people who are willing and able to participate as well as to listen to others we can be more successful.

Then collaboration becomes:

My commitment is to improve the way I collaborate by sharing more with others.