I've been AWOL for a couple of months and for a very good reason!
I've switched roles in our district. After three fun years galavanting around the district as a CTP-curriculum technology partner, I've returned to the classroom. This year I'm teaching 5th grade at Ben Franklin Elementary. I thought going back to the classroom would be tough, overwhelming, stressful... you know the lingo. But guess what, it has been an absolute delight. Easy going, fun loving, low stress... TRUE STORY! OK... maybe there's some stress but none of it classroom based. I'm rolling forward with THE best bunch of kids a teacher could ever ask for! They are smart, inquisitive, happy, and really great thinkers.
Next posts.... how we're changing it up in Math and Language Arts
So what will the purpose of this blog be now that I'm in a new position. I think I'll just share how we're trying to change into 21st Century Classroom. We have one to devices- netbooks, and 2 iPads. I'm working on getting more iPads or iPod touches but that's another post.
So what's going on? For starters, we use our netbooks every single day with a purpose in just about every single class. Our district really enables teachers. By this I mean, they tell us when to teach, what to teach, and how to teach. The longer I teach, the less autonomy I feel I have. This is the struggle. Our district provides so much "stuff" that I feel like I have to use it. But I've finally come to fruition that I don't. Here's one example: Notebooking.
We use notebooking in science and social studies to record our thinking. It's a tangible, organized, glorified worksheet (in my opinion). I've tried it for 2 months and I still can't stand it. Kids cut apart worksheets and tape or glue them into a notebook and then reflect and write about it. The text they read is minimal. I am very close to throwing out the notebooks. The notebooks are actually also online through the company and worksheets are interactive so they can complete them and hand them in online. SCORE! No more carrying around notebooks to correct or looking for sheets that were torn out of one notebook. No more copying, no more cutting, no more taping. One chapter focused on maps. Looking for geographical terms and physical features in preparation for the history lessons coming up. Kiddos did the paper maps but really didn't take any ownership of their learning. None wanted to color their maps (remember those days) and some were so messy, I could barely read them. Just the thought of taking more time to correct their handwriting made me cringe. Then the sky opened, (I really felt that way) and I had an AHA moment. GOOGLE MAPS! Why hadn't I thought of that sooner? I brought the kids to the carpet, shared a google doc with a table that asked them to take a trip through google earth or google maps looking for evidence that these geographic terms really existed in other places other than the maps we were given. I asked them to add a screenshot of the place they found, tell us where they found it, and write a brief description of the term is. Then after everyone had contributed one term to the table, I showed them how to make a google map, how to pin examples of the geographic terms, how to research where to find them if they were stuck. They were so ENGAGED! and better yet, they understood that these were real places in their world. Here is an example of our table and one student's map.
Last week we learned about how scientists believe American Indians migrated to North America.
We read our one page text book synopsis and did our little summary on the map but then we did a Visual Discovery on an image from the inuit tribe. The kids were so engaged that we turned it into a writing assignment. They had to pick a person, animal, or item from the image and write from it's perspective in the image. Keep in mind that we have studied this... migrating, adapting, different environment changes etc. Some kids wrote realistically and some wrote fantasy. I loved the writing and we posted it on our classroom blog. It was pretty clear to me though that many kids didn't really understand the hardship that the American Indians endured. So I uploaded a few video to our blogs and asked them to watch the videos, then revise their writing to show what they knew about inuits migration challenges. The revisions are looking good and should be posted soon
. What a difference a few videos can make.
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