Movenote for Fluency Self-Assessment

Reading fluency is critical for reading success and is a component of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  Students should have many opportunities to hear fluent reading through teacher-led read alouds, as well as, opportunities to practice for the development of greater fluency.  Fortunately resources abound for how to accomplish this task that can be found on the Internet (such as Scholastic.com and ReadingRockets.org).  Repeated readings, partner reading, and Reader's Theater all make their way into my third-grade class at various points in the year.

The third-grade Expeditionary Learning Module 1 Unit 2 focuses on developing fluency using the text Thank You, Mr. Falker as an introduction.  Later, students are also provided texts on their reading levels to practice.  When it came time for this lesson, I wondered how I could make my assessment of their fluency easier and how the students could self-assess their own fluency.

Lately, I have been experimenting with web-based programs and Chrome apps for my students to use for presenting knowledge and creating tutorials. Last year,  I used Movenote with a group of students during a Math lesson.  The students were helping a local yoga instructor with ways she could arrange 24 yoga mats in equal rows in her studio.  One of the project requirements was that they had to find a way to communicate their solution to her.  That presentation can be found here.  Movenote is easy to use and works seamlessly with Google Slides.

Once I decided to use Movenote as a way to record my students' oral fluency, the set up was easy.  I found passages from Readinga-z.com that were on each child's independent reading levels. Then I took screen shots of the texts and put each picture in separate Google Slides files. I shared the file with the specific students for which that text was appropriate (I would love to use Doctopus for this in the future).

First thing in the morning I showed a few students the steps the class would need to follow when we did the EL lesson later. I have learned to capitalize on my students' helpfulness and they provide the much needed assistance because I am the only teacher in the room.  This what they did:

1. Add the fluency Google slide to students' Drive accounts.
2. Download Movenote for Education from the Chrome Store.
3. Agree to give Movenote access to Google accounts.
4. Give permission for Movenote to use the web cam and microphone (make sure to agree to the permission request that pops up at the top by the address bar).
5. Click on the plus sign to choose the Google slide you want to use.  
6. Press record!
7. When you are done click Save and Preview... it is that easy!

My students emailed me the Movenote link and I made a Google Sheet of the links for my class. 

Students later listened to their reading and self-assessed their reading using a fluency rating sheet I got from Scholastic.  After having time to practice over the next two days, students rerecorded themselves. This week we will watch both and make comparisons. After making comparisons, we will set goals and continue reading with partners.  

Chrome Apps to Aid Struggling Readers

On Tuesday I will have the pleasure of meeting with a graduate class at Long Island University's Rockland County campus.  Janice Hurewitz, the course instructor, is my former principal and it is an honor that she asked me to join some of my other esteemed colleagues to speak.

The class is focused on interventions for struggling readers, so it is no surprise to anyone that I chose to focus on how GAFE and Chrome Apps can help.  I probably could have spent an entire day or even week talking about the ways students can benefit from interventions with Google apps.  After much debate I decided to just focus on a few options.

Below is what I came up with... (BTW I mention Padlet as a backchanneling tool, but there are so many ways that Padlet can be utilized to also help struggling readers).

The Therapist is In

In the past two years I have said, on more than one occasion, that I feel like a therapist/cheerleader more than a teacher.  There are human and affective aspects to teaching that just cannot be ignored.

While observing students over the years, I have found myself seeing sadness, self-doubt, fear, and anxiety on too many faces I care to count.  It is no coincidence that testing is at the heart of such feelings.  The rapid pace of instruction and measurement of progress with assessment result after assessment result have created a new breed of student.  This type of student may want desperately to achieve and please others but are fearful that they will not succeed.  Resulting in a student who shuts down, a student that cannot try something without assistance, or a student that acts aloof and the class clown to hide their true feelings.

Everyone wants to be successful.  We all have a need for approval and encouragement.  So I began to think of how we can get the message across that there are times in life when you are going to have work hard, persevere, and be okay with knowing you are not the best at something. The poster in my classroom that says, “Citius, Altius, Fortius!” just was not cutting it.

I began thinking how I could change the class climate and culture to foster the acceptance of failure and approximations of a goal.  Additionally, I wanted my students to know that being the first to shout “DONE!” when you think you have completed an assignment is not our end goal.  Quality over quantity.  

Two years ago I started a routine that I saw on The Teaching Channel where for the morning meeting the students have an opportunity to share how they are feeling.  Not only does this allow me to gauge students’ moods (and get a handle on things happening outside of school), it allows the class an opportunity to expand our vocabulary while developing words for self-expression.  The morning meeting also includes a time to celebrate and reflect on what they did well the previous day, and a time to make a goal for what they would like to do better today.

This summer I read Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell and I thought about the message that you have to fail in order to succeed.  I began sharing this message with my students.  It turns out that this is easier said than done.  Students have to believe that there is a glimmer of success on the horizon- the motivator- in order to persevere through tough times that pop up in the beginning of learning.

How is this working out?  Well, a student of mine expressed that she felt that things in school were going “too fast” and that others are “ahead of her.”  The day before she spent a miserable hour staring at a book and her text-dependent questions believing that she could not do it on her own and it would never get done. I reassured her that she was not the only one feeling that way. After explaining that, as a teacher, I care more about her understanding what we are doing than completing 20 more items than someone else, the most amazing thing happened… The next day, the same student was smiling when she found the answer to the first question.  She allowed herself to celebrate this “little” success before moving on to the next.

My students care about school and they want to do well… so if I have to find time in our busy day to “slow down,” embrace mistakes as learning opportunities, and celebrate the steps that lead to bigger successes, I think it is well worth it!

Reflections from an ISTE First-Timer

ISTE ended a week ago and it has taken me this long to fully process my experience.  I walked away full of notes in Evernote, many QR codes, product fliers, and bookmarked websites.  As the perpetual qualitative researcher I naturally looked for the patterns.  The pattern that binds my experiences at ISTE is the notion of PLAY.  This was not shocking to me because intuitively I knew that I thrive on play and my students certainly do too.

Flashback to this past school year...  I had the amazing opportunity of having a 1:1 tablet classroom for the month of September thanks to being a Sony Education Ambassador.  Although teaching third grade for the second year was stressful (at least I had one year of testing under my belt), I looked forward to seeing how the curriculum could be enhanced by the use of the Xperia tablets.  Curriculum drove instruction, the tablets made things playful.  You can see my blog post on my students' work here.

At the end of the school year, my school district had me pilot the use of Chromebooks in my classroom and I was elated. Not only were the kids excited about using the new, novel technology, but so was I.  I looked forward to going to work everyday because I got to "play around" with the Chromebook.  My students were encouraged to use Chrome apps to be creative, be collaborative, be critical thinkers, and to communicate.  As a result, they thought they were playing, but they were also creating the most amazingly detailed work that involved lots of reading of print and online texts, lots of paragraph writing, and lots of providing quality feedback for each other. You can see their work while studying China and Water on my website.

Ok, back to ISTE... 

Moby Sighting

 I attended workshops centered on Minecraft, augmented reality, apps, game-making with ARIS, and other web-based games.  The icing on the cake was listening to Kevin Caroll speak about how everything he ever needed to learn in life, he learned on the playground.  The obvious take-away is that play is essential for learning and knowledge development.  We thrive when we play!  Time passes quickly when we care about and are engrossed in what we enjoy.  It just doesn't seem like work!  What if entities in charge of curriculum development considered this?  When is the last time you heard a child say, they would love to play a textbook or reading program anthology?

Thankfully there are education leaders out there that are celebrating the state of play in education.  They recognize like James Gee that games are part of the "New Literacies" that are essential in today's digital age (read more about Gee's thoughts here).

Based on what I experienced at ISTE I recommend checking out these resources.

• Phillip Vinogradv's presentation from the Google for Education booth on gamification
• Changegamer is a website that promotes the use of computer games to learn about, "energy, climate change, natural disasters, the environment, economics, politics, history and science."
• AWW Web Whiteboard is a collaborative whiteboard.  Share the board and anyone can join in
• Padlet is another interactive space- shared by Steve Dembo and Adam Bellows
• Build interactive lessons with Pear Deck (works with GAFE accounts)- shared by Steve Dembo and Adam Bellows
• Make infographics with Picktochart- shared by Steve Dembo and Adam Bellows
• Marianne Malmstrom shared her resources for using Minecraft in the schools
• Tuvalabs has data sets that students can interact with to "empower your students to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, and communicate conclusions.
• Teachersfirst is a collections of lessons, resources and units
• Denise Jaffe's site for Universal Design for Learning 
• Microsoft's Innovative Teaching and Learning site
• Teaching with Primary Sources at Governors State University has a great site and the team that presented shared their Blendspace page that contains information on how they use ARIS for game making to learn content

Of course there is so much more that I learned and experienced... Stay tuned.

We are in(to) Kahoots, are you?

     The other day Leslie Fisher posted on Facebook about Kahoot, a "game-based classroom response system."  I had never heard of it so I immediately checked it out.  Now I am hooked.

     On the website you can create a quiz, survey, or post a discussion question.  You can create questions that include images and video.  The questions are projected on a big screen and students can answer the questions on individual devices that are connected to the Internet. This may sound a lot like other websites out there that do the same thing like Socrative; however, Kahoot has some features that sets it apart.

     The first thing that sticks out to me is that students can have accounts where they can make their own Kahoot, resulting in students being in charge of forming their own assessments.  In order to accomplish this, students need to do careful research and develop thought-provoking questions that include wrong answers.  Another difference is that Kahoot can keep points for correct and timely answers (you can create questions that are not point-based).  It is very engaging for everyone because the students are competing against each other and get immediate feedback. After answering a question the site reveals the correct answer with the number of how many people chose each answer.  Students' individual devices show them if they were correct or not and provide a rank among the other players.  A major bonus is that any device works with Kahoot because it is completely web-based... no app necessary.

    This week I tried it out with my third graders who are using Chromebooks.  We are working on CCSS standards regarding Geometry, specifically polygons, and I saw that others had posted quizzes on the topic.  A Kahoot can be shared and made public for others to use or copied of so that the quiz can be modified.  It was a roaring success! My kids asked to do the quiz twice and I have a spreadsheet of their responses from both times.  There is a breakdown by student and there are tabs for each question.

Ready, set, go!

   Last night I decided to give Kahoot creation a try.  I made my own polygon formative assessment with images.  It was so easy!  We used it today and the kids cheered. This is a miracle because at this point in the year they are so burned out from testing and their brains are focused more on summer escapades.

Victory and Defeat

Here is a video of what Kahoot looks like.

Student-generated Assessments Using Google Forms and Scratch

     Last school year was my first year of teaching third grade after teaching first grade for 11 years.  Let's just say that there are not many similarities to teaching emergent readers and readers in the intermediate grades.   I admittedly was a little unsure about how guided reading works in third grade when I first started.  Now that I am fully immersed in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), I am very aware of what skills and strategies I should be imparting and I am learning every day how to accomplish this feat.
     As a teacher interested in educational research, I have been looking at books and articles dealing with motivation.  No matter what grade I teach, there are always reluctant readers and I am striving to find out how I can motivate them to take risks and develop an interest in reading.  As I incorporate technology into my classroom, I notice how interested some students get in my lessons, and in particular some of the reluctant readers mentioned previously.
     The way I look at it, incorporating technology can allow a chance for innovative thinking, ownership of the work, and above all choices.  Students love choices!
     So when six of my third-grade boys were done reading The Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann Cameron, I asked them what are they going to do now that they have read this book? Some other students wrote a commercial for why you should read The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (see video here), so what were they going to do now that they completed the book.  Some decided to make a "test" of the book using Scratch and the other group decided to make a multiple choice test using Google Forms.  This "project" was a great window into the minds of my students and how they understand and perceive assessment.  Future lessons in book clubs later focused on moving beyond asking and answering questions that can be found explicitly in the text (CCSS RL.3.1).
     The first group that read The Most Beautiful Place in the World wanted to make a test using Scratch.  We have some avid coders in the class and they jump at any opportunity to use Scratch. They had to figure out how people would respond. The test (available on the class website) was the stepping stone for future "tests" and really illustrated the progression of learning and problem-solving. Later on, one of the students shown below made a test about our research on China.  He used a different format and other students collaborated to figure out how to program in the progression of points.

    The second group that read The Most Beautiful Place in the World started their final project by writing questions in their reading notebooks. Next, they wrote incorrect answers that may trick their test takers with distractors.  Once this was accomplished, I gave them a quick tutorial on using Google forms and they went to work creating their online assessment.

    The multiple choice group had to come up with the post on the class blog letting others know their test is available.  Now do we have any takers to read the book and take the test?


    These experiences later influenced how the class ended our online research of China.  Seeing the level of motivation, collaboration, and focus that these students demonstrated had me rethinking how the class' knowledge would be assessed.  Stay tuned to find out the results of my next experiment.

Feeling Unnecessary is Great!

    If you looked around the week before last (we are on Spring Break), you may have noticed that I was walking around the room feeling a little unnecessary.  In any other context, that may have been a moment when I questioned my abilities and felt lonely.  In this case, I felt reaffirmed as a teacher.

   What am I talking about? Well I will fill you in.

    All year I have been introducing various websites and apps for my students to use to complete assignments.  Now that we are towards the end of the school year, I am reaping the benefits.  Some people demonize the use of technology. They say that kids are no longer playing or engaging with others. Although that may be the case in a majority of cases, this is not the case for students that have been guided towards using technology to further their creativity and learning.


    We are finishing up a unit on China where we studied China's economy, culture, geography, climate, and government.  Students watched movies and wrote notes in Google Docs where they categorized information and compared urban vs. rural life.  Previous research units on Crayfish and the USA involved mostly print texts but the China unit involved the new literacies of online reading comprehension. Students were responsible for finding information in a scavenger hunt format utilizing a teacher-made website made years ago, a Livebinder page, a Google custom search engine, open Google searching, and videos.

Next, I asked the class to come up with ways to showcase their understanding of China. They came up with various ideas that included created a movie, newspaper articles, games using Scratch, and an assessment using Google Forms.  They formed their own groups and then they were off.









I asked them to first organize their ideas using Lucidchart which we connected to our Google Docs.

This is what they came up with so far with Lucidchart...

Names were removed above.

I will be posting more as this project evolves, but there is one last thing I want to note here.  I looked at my school email today and saw that three students have been using Google apps to do work over Spring Break!  In particular JM wrote an email to his classmates and myself. Below is what he said.

Those Who CAN Teach

Those who CAN, teach and well... those who cannot, reveal their misconceptions in a tutorial... 
Allow me to explain that statement below.

This post was inspired after I had the class create tutorials with the ShowMe app on the iPads and what I learned was a quite a surprise!  Here is how it all started.For the past several weeks my class has been on a journey to understand fractions.  It is has been a rocky road where according to the CCSS, expectations have been (along with other indicators) that my students will be able to:

Compare two fractions with the same numerator or the same denominator by reasoning about their size. Recognize that comparisons are valid only when the two fractions refer to the same whole. Record the results of comparisons with the symbols >, =, or <, and justify the conclusions, e.g., by using a visual fraction model.

Now we are at the "end of the unit" and I will assess the class in the coming week with a paper and pencil test.  Before we move on to a formal review of the concepts learned thus far, I thought why not have the class create tutorials so that we have them to use while studying.  Next year's kids would greatly benefit!

Friday morning the scene was set for a collection of awesome tutorials that explained comparing fractions. I had eager students and enough iPads equipped with the ShowMe app for them all to create their tutorials. After showing the students a tutorial I made for teachers wanting to use the app (shown below), the students were off in different parts of the room writing scripts.  Once finished, each child was encouraged to create a tutorial.  Enthusiasm about fractions was at an all-time high as I walked around helping students who were "stuck."

Later on, I started to watch the videos to see how they did.  Initially my reaction was a lot groaning and wincing as I watched student after student cheerfully explain the opposite of the concepts we had been discussing (I won't say teaching, because there clearly was not a whole lot of understanding).  I started to beat myself up and think, "What have I been doing wrong!"

Instead of drowning in my fraction sorrows, I thought about the situation in a new light.  Perhaps these tutorials were an opportunity, and not a failure.  These tutorials did what paper and pencil tasks or class discussions did not always reveal... the actual thought processes of my students while they were working through the mathematical problem.  After watching them, I created a spreadsheet of observations that will help me strengthen my instruction this week.  I plan on sharing some of the most accurate ones and then ask the students to be self-reflective of their tutorials.  Perhaps they will see the errors themselves... and perhaps I will have to be more direct.  They will have another opportunity to develop a second tutorial after they recognize possible improvements.  

This made me think about how we assess.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, kids are asked to explain their mathematical thinking in "numbers, words, and pictures."  When you look at that paper, what you see is what you get. The teacher still has to interpret what the child was thinking.  The students still could write an explanation down but have absolutely no idea what the strategy works.  

When creating the tutorials, my students' understanding was front and center. There is less room for interpretation if they themselves have to do the explaining.  Think-aloud protocols are nothing new to the educational research community, but I think it is more foreign to the general teaching community.  Recording our students thinking, I believe is a valuable tool (I did use this as a data collection method for my dissertation).  Even better is asking our students to teach someone else.  We all know to truly explain a topic to someone else, one has to understand it themselves.

Those who CAN, teach!

A New Approach to use "Drawing" for Writing: Using Drawings in Google Docs to Write a News Magazine

   The Set Up

     Who can resist the allure of watching the world's top athletes meeting to compete in dangerous, fast, and difficult sports.  It was Winter Olympic time again and the students in my class were charged with a writing mission: research and write a news article about Russia in general, Sochi as the venue for the Olympics, or how the Winter Olympics originated.  The second part was to research a sport of their choice and write a second article.  When I mentioned that we would be sharing these with other classes and that they would be posted online for anyone to watch, the excitement was palpable. 

Research Phase 

    After they received their topics, they went right to work.  A variety of print and online texts were used for the research part of the assignment.  To kick off the project we started with the Time For Kids article written for 3rd/4th graders and a collection of short passages I purchased from Teacherspayteachers.com from Logical Lex and other passages I downloaded from Readinga-z.com.  In addition, we used Google searches to find websites that answered the guiding questions in the research packet I made. We are in the process of understanding how to select key words for our search, finding an appropriate link in the search results, and how to use Google search tricks to find a key word in a specific website (i.e., site:timeforkids.org snowboarding).

    Already we hit many CCSS standards such as:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2 Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.5 Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a given topic efficiently.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.9 Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.4 With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.7 Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.

But the standard that was the most exciting for the class was this standard:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.6 With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Composition Phase

     Once the students had answered all of the questions in the research packet, they moved on to composing their information into paragraphs.  Particularly, we focused on how to group the information so that the paragraphs focused on one main topic (which is easier said than done with third graders).  The paragraphs were written in their writing notebooks first and then revised.  I know that they could have done this in Google Docs and used the revision history as a record of editing and collaboration, but unfortunately my school lost Internet for a day and half into the project and we were the victim of two snow days before a week long vacation for President's Week.  Losing the Internet in particular put a damper on our researching time.

    Moving forward, we typed our paragraphs into a Google Doc and edited further. If we had more time we would have done more collaborative peer editing using the "comment" feature of Google Docs.

Digital Publishing Phase

     I must first tell you that I was initially at a loss as to how the students would create a digital newsletter.  I needed them to be able to combine headings and text in the column-style that is used in news articles with pictures.  I posted on Google + asking what others suggested.  Interestingly the answer came from a post about Math from Alice Keeler.  She shared how she used Google Drawing to create virtual Math manipulatives.  She inspired me and I created my own to reinforce the understanding of fractions on a number line, but then I started thinking about how else I can use Google Drawing... and then the idea was born!

    The class created a new document in Google Docs and then inserted drawings throughout their document. Google Drawings allowed them to create graphics, combine elements (using the "order tool", but most importantly acted as containers.  What I mean is that a picture was inserted in a drawing. That drawing when saved and closed could be placed anywhere on the page.  

Each paragraph was placed within a text box in a drawing so that columns could be made. Fancy text was made available through the Word Art function with a drawing as well- That went over big with the third graders). 

Once the drawing is saved you can drag it where ever you want if you click "wrap text."

This was not too difficult for third graders to do once I modeled some key skills and I was gratified to see that some of my students problem-solved. They then became the experts that could help others around them.  As the project progressed, we had so many people offering to help because the learning of skills had a "trickle-down" effect.  

The end result is that the students:

•  conducted a research project,
• wrote informative pieces that included multiple paragraphs,
• used digital tools to publish,
• wrote for an authentic audience- the school, parents, and friends,
• learned valuable skills for using Google Docs that went deeper and will transfer to other situations,
• learned valuable search skills within print and online texts
• learned how to find Google images that were labeled for reuse,
• and enjoyed having ownership over their learning....

All while meeting many of the ELA Common Core Standards!

You can see their projects on our class website- once they are all done and I have embedded the documents.  Here is a sneak preview.

The Road Less Traveled: Using the End Product to Fuel Learning

    Every school year is another opportunity.  Another opportunity to learn and grow as a professional as I read more professional literature, talk with talented educators, and meet extraordinary students.  Meeting the diverse needs of my students can be a daunting task when you throw in high-stakes testing and more rigorous standards that have just been implemented one year prior.  In light of this situation, I am constantly trying to figure out new and interesting ways to engage my students- and honestly myself.  How can we find the road less traveled?  There are no blatant road signs showing the way, or that I have found at least.

Photo by Ann Douglas downloaded from Flickr

    Last year was an "interesting" year spent teaching a new grade level while trying to find the materials and resources that would help me instruct within the Common Core State Standards framework.  Google became my friend as I scoured the Web to find information, advice, and printables and thankfully people out there are very willing to share.  New York decided to support modules created by Expeditionary Learning (EL) for English Language Arts and modules for Mathematics on their website Engageny.org and this year I have been exploring the use of some of the modules in both subject areas.  
    To be honest, at first I really disliked the modules.  My reasons are not what you are probably thinking. I had no issue with the texts for the EL units and although I balked at some of the tasks my students were asked to do in the beginning of the school year, I see how my students have grown and developed since participating.  My real issue was that these modules are highly scripted.  So much so, that I felt that I had no real voice in my classroom anymore.  Since it was my first time implementing the modules, I did not feel comfortable "putting my own stamp" on the lessons.  As this year progresses, I am slowly changing this thinking.
    Here is where craftiness comes to the fore.  Instead of conducting teacher-directed lessons, I began to think of how we can infuse more student ownership into these lessons. I have been influenced by books such as Catching Up or Leading the Way by Yong Zhao, Creativity in the Classroom (4th edition) by Alane Jordan, and now the Passion-Driven Classroom by Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold.  How do I get my students to be more engaged, motivated, and learning?

Photo by CircumerroStock

    What would appear to be a passion for using technology "gone wild" is actually the source of my craftiness, my "lure for learning" as it would seem.  My students are my fish and my use of technology is the bait. I admit this and I am not ashamed.  
    Some examples of Math craftiness include:

• Arranging 24 Yoga Mats- Talking a friend into manipulating reality a little in order to teach my students about creating arrays for a more concrete representation of multiplication was one of the first lures used this year.  She is a yoga instructor so it was not out of the realm of possibility that she would need the help of my students to figure out how to arrange her yoga mats into equal groups if she had 24 students. (CCSS Math 3.OA.A.1; 3.OA.B.5) 

• Mondrian Art- Many of students love participating in anything that is outwardly "artsy" so why not learn about a famous contemporary artist while calculating the area of squares and rectangles? (CCSS Math 3.MD.C.5)

    Some examples of ELA craftiness include:

• Kidblog for Publishing- Since the beginning of the year I have had my students use Kidblog as a place for them to digitally publish their writing.  Knowing you have an audience, proved very motivating for my third-grade writers and they took more care to edit and revise for an audience.  They love being able to read each other's posts and comment on them.  We have read articles from Time for Kids and then written paragraphs summarizing key information.  These paragraphs were posted on Kidblog for everyone to see.  In September, we also used the Blogger (see our class blog) app to publish our personal narratives. (CCSS RI.3.2; RI.3.5; W.3.2; W.3.3; W.3.6)

• Aurasma Book Recommendations- After reading a book of the students' choice, they had to write a persuasive paragraph explaining why people should read their selection.  We ran into some memory issues when creating our videos using the Aurasma app; however, this led to an important lesson on summarization and finding the main idea.  The reviews my students had to come up with were quite concise but we still have the entire paragraph to refer back to once we work out some of the initial issues. (CCSS RL.3.2; RL.3.3; W.3.1; W.3.4; W.3.5; W.3.6)

• Northeast Travel Bureau Videos- The EL units we completed so far this year focused only on fiction texts so we have been reading informational texts at other points of the school day.  Instead of telling my students were were going to develop our comprehension strategies for reading informational texts, I told them that they were in charge of collecting information about the Northeast region of the US centered on the categories of economy/natural resources, geography, climate, and culture.  Lessons focused on finding main ideas and searching informational texts and then turning their information into persuasive writing pieces that would finally be turned into scripts for commercials for the "Northeast Travel Bureau."  They were in charge of collaborating with peers to develop the scripts and direct themselves.  If you click on the link above you will see that some groups created Google Presentations as a backdrop to their commercials (which also lent itself to a lesson on how to select images from a Google search that are earmarked as "labeled for reuse"). (CCSS RI.3.1; RI.3.2; RI.3.5; W.3.1; W.3.2; W.3.4, W.3.5; W.3.6; W.3.7; W.3.8)

    It makes me feel so good to look around the room (I can do this because they are in charge, not me) and see the animated faces and the furious writing, turning of pages, or clicking of keys.  In giving up control, I feel we all win.  I feel like I am an important piece to instruction by not being an important piece... if that makes any sense.