Language Povery and 21st Century Tools

Language Poverty students need specific scaffolding and strategies in order to access the required content. At the secondary level, content is accessed through language: reading, writing, speaking and listening. English Language Learners (ELL) require more focused attention on listening and speaking than native speakers. However, children who live in poverty have had less access and exposure to literature and rich vocabulary. Therefore, students who live in poverty and students who do not natively speak English enter school with a deficit of language. In order to access the content presented them in the secondary classroom, these students require additional support.

I believe the greatest support these students of "Language Poverty" require is through vocabulary instruction. This vocabulary instruction must be contextual. It cannot be separated from the content. Students must experience a concept: hear, see, taste, touch, smell, and manipulate it. As children, when we learned a new word/concept it was through our experiences. We did not take notes on a word! In addition, we compared the word to concepts we already possessed.

My nephew, for example, upon being presented with a grape for the first time called it a, "berry." He CATEGORIZED it as being sweet, small and red, therefore it must be a berry. His mother responded, "No Kia, its a grape. Can you say, grape?"

To learn a new concept we compare it to what we already know, our SCHEMA, to truly grasp the concept so that we can use it.

How can secondary teachers offer meaningful experiences to students inorder for students to access the content THROUGH the concept? How can we do this through the medium of 21st Century Tools?

Tonia tried her hand at Vlogging (also known as TloGging)

I have been meaning to get back to blogging for the past year....when you stop doing it, you get so much you want to share, you don't know where to start. So, I vlogged....although I prefer to call it a tlog. Hopefully, I can once again become reflective about my practice....

The Roof -- The Roof -- The Roof is on FIRE

I can't believe that it has been less than a month since my last blog post. How quickly change happens in education.

About a week ago I had a dream that one of my students started a fire in the classroom across the hall. I saw the flames and sent a student to pull the fire alarm....there were adults and students in my room.....in a panic I started screaming for everyone to leave the room....the adults carried on their conversations as students lost control and began running across tables and doing crazy things. The adults continued to talk despite my pleas to leave the building. My dream ended with my classroom filling with smoke...

This dream has come at a time of great transition in my professional life. I have been appointed as the Science and Technology Coordinator and have handed my classroom off to a VERY CAPABLE student teacher. I was doing both jobs for about two weeks and have transitioned almost completely. And now, I am wandering around in a daze trying to figure out how to have the academy ready to drive learning in less than TEN months.

The crazy thing is that I have gotten less done in my full time capacity as I did doing it part time. I have literally been in meetings! I'm still teaching first block and there is about 1 hour of lunch supervision. Its CRAZY.

I'm very excited about the possibilities of having an academy full of teachers focused on integrating technology into their instruction. I just don't know where to start.

I think that the teachers think we have this secret plan about the transition that they are unaware of. If they only knew that I was just as confused as they are!!!

Hopefully in the coming WEEKS (not months) I will be able to develop a clearer picture that is transparent and supportive of teacher needs so that they can develop great instruction so that our students develop into amazing learners.

I hope to set up a google group or NING group that will fascilitate collaboration, provide book studies to help teachers focus on their practice, develop academy policies and practices, develop an idea of the picture of our learner, introduce teachers to the expectations of technology, and begin to paint a clearer picture of the S&T academy. I think all of this will be supported by the collaborative tools that Web 2.0 has.

One of the cool tools I'm excited about is through acrobat.com. This adobe veture uses a Java platform to provide document creation, PDF creation, collaboration space where desktops can be shared. It is still in BETA and has a few kinks, but the document creation is a little cleaner than Google Docs and the super bonus is the PDF creation application.

course management

I have created an "online" course experience for my students who are "retreads."

Those who have taken the class before and do not need language support are doing a self-paced version. I posted all of their learning activities on a wiki and am having them post them on their Goolge site.

I'm pretty excited. I've been playing with the idea of a course management system, namely sakai, but I may be able to do most things through a wiki.

the are blogging on a "reflection" page, doing notes and activities directly on their site.

its kinda cool....

I'm going to observe them this week, it is the first full week and see if they are more on task and completing more activities than before.

I am also excited that I can rescue my monolingual students and start emphasizing language through content!!

how to move from great to good

I don't know how "PC" this blog post will be....this is a warning.....I'm going to use this post to vent because I find that by venting I find clarification and ultimately new direction and resolve.
I love to teach, but sometimes I feel like the cliche: babysitter. I plan, sometimes to a fault and all I end up doing in a day is chasing students around the room, asking them to get on task and then pretending not to have my feelings hurt when the call me a name (the latest is McAsshole)!

I want each of my students to feel cared for and know that I expect them to excel. I wonder how clearly I have been able to voice this message over the past two weeks?!

My biggest headache comes from my 3rd and 4th block Social Studies classes. I thought they were supposed to be "ELA", but our school has such a high course failure rate, that half of the students are what Jennings lovingly refers to as "retreads." (Retreading works for my tires.....for a time, but isn't helping these students learn to learn or live. ) So, I have half of my students learning language, and the other half retaking the class. I can't really teach language....I attempt to teach content to students who have no idea what I'm saying and chasing the other half of my class around the room with threats and plees to "do thier work." Looking at my gradebook, I see that noone is passing ----- noone is completeing thier work.

I have often told myself: "I am a good teacher, good teachers handle all situations with grace and agility and make all students learn."



Last night I was reading a book for my Evaluation class for my principal's license. In summary it said, the job of a supervisor is to fascilitate growth among teachers so that students get the best education possible. It also said that supervisors must be aware of the teacher's experience, maturity, life obsticles, and setting ----what they have to deal with inside the 4 walls of their classroom. Supervisors should give teachers, especially young teachers, opportunities to grow and that means making sure their setting is manageable.

I keep comparing myself to Jennings. However, eve with 30 years teaching I won't be as great as she is nor will I command as much respect. Yet, here I am, a teacher with only three years experience expecting the results of a teacher with thirty. And, I feel that my administration expects the same.....wouldn't my class load be different if they did?

My question: how do I move from being a good teacher to a great teacher in my current setting?

And when did I become the teacher that blames my failures on my administration(/counseling center)?

I need to differetiate....everyone says so, but none can explain to me the steps to do it. It seems that differentiation can be explained in theory by textbooks, peers and administrators but, it takes experience and intuition to do it....and do it well.


By looking at my classes, I need to differentiate and create three - four lesson plans for each class. --- Thats my next step to figure out how to do this efficiently.


I also need to make sure I acknowlege my students who are on task....

I need to plan activities that are kinesthetic and allow for movement.....maybe I won't have to chase these kids around so much...

SWEET

Woe, there is so much to do when school starts I don't know where to begin. I keep giving myself other tasks to do too....but they are so much fun!

First Area of Distraction
Dave Tarwater and I spent my plan today attempting to put Sakai onto one of the computers in my classroom. Our limited understanding of networks thinks that we can use one of the computers as a small server. Some where we did something wrong and it didn't work. I was hoping that it would be much easier to use than moodle. However, downloading and installing was way more than we could muscle today. I think there is something wrong with where our directory is pointed. I'm going to try the download from rSmart tomorrow. From playing around I really like the cleanness of Sakai, it doesn't seem as fumbly as moodle. It also offers blogs and eportfolios....I'm very excited about this. We're hoping to replace the e-courses that the school currenlty pays for with Sakai.

Second Area of Distraction
The ILT is planning on defining the new academies that our school will be moving into next year. We will be presenting the vision during after school PD sessions over 2 days. However, we had to throw in an overview session with the whole staff given by our principal. I did the math. Getting 80 teachers to leave one area of the school after the initial presentations to go to another part of school to get the overview of each acaademy seemed like a waste of time. We only have 45 mintues after school each day. SOO......I thought it would be cool if the teachers broke into their session and watched a streaming video of the principal at the same time. SWEET!! However, UStream does not work in-district(?) and whiziq only offers a small video with the larger white board....not what I was looking for. So, Joe pointed me to Mogulus, which is pretty sweet. It sets up like a news channel with scrolling text and everything. Also, your viewers don't need an account, you just point them to your page (www.mogulus.com/ACHS). You can even embed in a webpage or a blog!!! It has a chat feature ....which would be cool, but it doesn't work in district...

I've enjoyed being distracted, but I have some cool stuff going on in my classes too....but its late, I'll share more tomorrow!

Summer Break is over.....now I have to think

The greatest growth I’ve experienced as a teacher came last year. This was the year I began to blog about my experiences in my classroom I found that I was able to work my way through most of my issues and really REFLECT on what worked and what didn’t. The greatest impact came from comments that colleagues made on my blog. These questions and thoughts led me into deeper thought. I became a researcher in my own classroom. I watched what was going on, made predictions, tested hypothesis and continually changed what I was doing to match the impact in my classroom. I believe that this is a very constructivist way to teach. I didn’t just settle for a copy of someone’s lesson plan and leave in that day. I didn’t rely on textbooks (my students can’t read them any way). I relied on what I was experiencing, what I was learning from my colleagues, and what I could find from research. As log as we are talking about cognition and learning, we might as well talk about Vygotsky. Through my blogging I made my own learning about teaching social. Vygosky writes: "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals" (Vygotsky 1978).

This is the understanding that I have constructed from the experiences that I have had.

While reading The Case for the Constructivist Classroom I experienced a paradigm shift. Piaget is very focused on the individual and their cognitive structures…I didn’t see him making connections to the social experiences that students may be having. “The growth of knowledge is the result of individual constructions made by the learner” (Brooks & Brooks 25).

I reorganized my understanding of creating understanding.

While I made these connections by communicating with others in a social setting (by blogging), the change in my teaching came from the individual level. I may have discussed and researched changing a practice, but the change was individual. I had to take these pieces from conversations and my own experience to create new meaning. I thought blogging only worked because it was social. But, I missed the fact that we construct ideas and socialize with them thus making an individual change. I think that Kant would agree according to The Case for the Constructivist Classroom, analysis of actions lead to new knowledge just as experience generates new knowledge (23).

TIE 2008

short post....'cause its been too long

I haven't had a blog post in a looonnngg time. I feel so horrible for not having the time to reflect on what happened at the end of this year. School ended a month early and so the end of term/year activities took place in only a couple of weeks. (I only made it to yoga 3 times last month).

I am currently working with my colleagues in creating a plan for our new academies in our new high school. I hope to reflect on the process in the next couple of weeks....Pretty exciting.

Right now I guess I'm pretending to live blog but there's too much discussion to keep up with....

I'm enjoying the process of discussion and collaboration with my colleagues....despite the topic! However, the topic is very exciting; we are creating philosophies of eduction and THEN trying to figure out how to see them through

Research Results

Yesterday's post was a brief presentation to my research class on the results of my research on blogging with my classes. I will be presenting the full (20 minute) presentation on Tuesday, April 8th at the Action Research Conference at Jefferson County's Administration building.

I'm very excited with the results. I my study looked at how blogging impacted community, writing and retention of content in my ELA Social Studies classroom.

After the study
...80% of the students felt like they were part of a classroom community.
...80% of the students improved their attitudes towards their classmates, their school and their classroom
...All students reached partially-proficient on the writing rubric
...80% of the students moved an average of 4 points on the rubric
...60% of the students improved their writing organization
...100% of students improved the content in their writing
...students were able to discuss what they knew and didn't know
...the word "learned" was used 50 times in their blogs
...Students used classroom vocabulary in their blog entries

I WISH
...Students cross-posted more often
...Students regularly commented on their classmate's blogs
...I posted/commented more often on the student blogs

Read this doc on Scribd: Presentation for class

Pre-Spring Break Blues

On the Civil War unit. Its going pretty well. My students worked for two days researching a civil war and putting a video together on the war. It really wasn't supposed to be that hard or indepth...however few of them got the work done. So, yesterday they were to present and the students who did present had awful presentations. On top of that....I was being observed.
If I were on American Teaching Idol....Simon would have done me in!

Today they are presenting whether or not they have their videos done.

This week I have discovered Google Sites. Its a ton like wetpaint. I need to figure out the protections on it though, because it looks like anyone in the district can edit a student's page. I'm treating them as their unit portfolios, to keep track of thoughts and assignments. They will put their video(if they have one ) on their site and they will put their final toondoon on their site.

Despite my awful observation, I feel like I am moving forward with the unit and that at the end the students will know what they are supposed to know.

Civil War Unit

I've put together my lesson plans addressing the Essential Questions:

What effect does civil war have on people? What is the definition for civil war?

The first task is for students to research a current day civil war and describe it to the class. Then they will create a voicethread or a video to describe what a civil war is. Finally, they will use toondoo to compare and contrast these current day civil wars to the American Civil War.
--All over the course of a week and a half! --

I'm very excited about this unit and believe that it is something that my students can get into.
Please browse the plans and let me know if you have any feedback!

Unit Plan

Day 1

Day 2, 3, 4

Day 5

Day 6, 7

Blogging Research Tag Cloud

Essential Questions

I've been thinking about how to use Essential Questions to make American History more appealing to students who are not from the United States. I'm planning a unit on the Civil War. I'm bored by the Civil War. I became a Social Studies teacher because I enjoy looking at people....not dates or battle fields. This unit in our curriculum is all about the Civil War and wants the emancipation proclamation and a battlefield described. I've put off creating this lesson because I'm bored by just thinking about it.

I began thinking about the bigger issue.....what is the thing that is timeless about the Civil War? ...not the causes....the actual war itself.



I did what I do best, I had a conversation....several conversations about what this essential question(s) could be. I sat down with one of my assistant principals, Kevin Greeley, asking if I could have a conversation with him about "instruction." We discussed that dates may not be that important for my students....but the ability to connect the material to their lives is important. I have students from Egypt, China, Somalia, and Mexico. All of these countries are closer to Civil War than I have ever been.

I took the things we talked about and talked with Joe Miller. For spending the first part of his career outside of education, he has amazing insights. He is our director of Assessment and the Global Learner Guru of Technology.

Through these conversations, I've finally narrowed the questions down:

What effect does civil war have on people?
What is the definition of civil war?

image from: http://ginisty.typepad.com/weblog/images/question.jpg

Essential Questions

I am wrapping up my unit on the causes of the civil war and wondering how I make it more broad and meaningful for my ELA students. How do I pose a question that we would like answered to day, and answer it by looking at the Civil War. I know its doable and I feel like I can do it and I'm touching on it....but what does it look like? How different would the class look? How would I still cover those (few) things that the curriculum is asking me to cover?

After CSAP Regina and I are going to plan our our "tearing down the walls" unit. It will be within our school. It will involve 10th grade IB Alegbra students and 11th grade ELA Social Studies. I think that if we get that Essential question down and figure out how to hold conversations and virtual projects between theses classes I will be half way to figuring out how answer these questions.

Also, looking at framing the umbrella Essential Questions that will frame the lens for the Science/Technology academy!

I'm beginning to see the importance and usefulness of Essential Questions. The Edge textbook by Hampton Brown/National Geographic does an amazing job of Essential Questions! I'm going to study it and find ways to do it on my own and make it feel organic!

Live Blogging

Below is my first at liveblog with my students I'm following a lesson plan that I posted in my Scribd.com.

I began class showing the students my blog and having them ask and answer questions. They were really engaged, looking over their resources to find the information. All of them!

Then I asked them to form groups to lead their own conversation tomorrow...they fell apart. I asked them to think of 3 points they wanted to make and what questions they want answered. Their goal was to "develop deeper understanding of what would cause a country to go to war against itself."

I need to think of another scaffold I should add...so that tomorrow's presentations don't go wacko!