Talk to you all soon!  I’m prepping a new post on ELD strategies so heads up, it’s on its way!

-Heather

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Post tags: digital learning, edutopia, online learning, skills of distance learning

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You can read the post, “Using Technology to Model Lifelong Learning Beyond the Bell,” here.

I am always happy to lend my voice and words to support the Writing Project.  Don’t know what I”m talking about? Looking for the best, life and practice-changing professional development out there?  Get thee to a Writing Project near you!

Happy Digital Learning Day.

-Heather

aka Tweenteacher

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Post tags: digital writing day, educational technology, virtual classroom, writing project

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Guess what?  I’m going to be facilitating a class for Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s Powerful Learning Practice.  The six-week course is on Project Based Writing, a strategic way to bring in authentic assessments and meaningful learning into any Language Arts program, elementary through secondary.

If you know anything about my teaching style, it’s about reciprocal learning, engaging instruction, and breaking down the walls between school life and real life.  But it’s always easier to jump start into a new unit if someone has tried strategies out already, which is where this class comes in.  Throughout the six-week series, I share what’s worked, provide downloadables, and help guide the participants to create Project Based Writing units that cater to their own classroom.  By the end of the class, the participants will come away with lessons created by and shared by everyone to adapt and use in their own practice.

To find out more about this new class, you can read here for an interview I gave to online awesome guru, Sir John Norton Esq.

What I like about PLP is how they combine both asynchronous discussions using ning with synchronous weekly webinars using Elluminate.  It gives a texture to virtual professional development that I’m proud to be a part of.

So check it out, and I hope to see some of my readers there!

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authentic assessments, authentic learning, education, PLP, professional development, project based learning, project based writing

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In my Edutopia post, I challenge teachers to do the same and even list 5 new habits I’m thinking of adopting as well.

So think about it: what new instructional habit could you try on, if only for 30 days?

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: edutopia, k12, middle school, TED

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Tony has been at my school for a while and no matter the cohort of students under his guidance, he serves them with the same support, kindness, tough-love, and wisdom year after year.

He meets the most challenging students with a smile before making them push themselves beyond what they thought possible.

He works with us all, pushing us all, asking for the moon and settling for a star. He asks the students to reach as high as the sky and then celebrates them for just reaching as high as they can. He asks the teachers to look at things from a different point of view, to see things through the student’s eyes, to try different tools, and to rededicate our hearts despite our daily frustrations. For it takes a village to educate our students. No teacher can do it alone, and Tony packs the punch of so many caring teachers combined.

He meets with a cadre of students in the morning, checking their backpacks for assignments due, keeping them accountable the minute they walk into school’s door. He meets with a different gaggle during their lunch, keeping them on track throughout the day. He runs our after school homework club, sitting one-on-one with students, giving them a safe place to work, to ask questions, and to succeed.

He knows every teacher’s expectations and assignments. He knows every student’s tendencies and saga.

In parent meetings, he supports all the stakeholders; he is straightforward with the parents, he is relentless with the students, and he is collaborative with the teachers.

Recently, I was in our front office, meeting with Tony about a student that was in my first period and that was a part of his caseload. A phone call came in as we were talking. It was from a parent whose student wouldn’t get out of bed and refused to go to school. To whom did the mother turn? Tony.

Apparently, there are students who have been awoken by Tony in their very bedrooms. He goes to their homes in the early hours of the morning, and convinces them to come to school. That’s right. He parents.

Yet, as special as our Tony is, I would bet that on every staff there are other Tonys out there: be they teachers, administrators, or counselors. Maybe they are recognized, maybe not, but they are there. The media doesn’t speak about The Tonys of our schools. The Tonys of our schools aren’t highlighted by our politicians. But they are there. These self-sacrificing, generous people can be found in every school and daily walk down every hall.

I don’t mean to diminish what our particular Tony does for our students by saying that his kind abounds in our educational system, but I do question why our media and policy makers hone in on this mythical 10% of “bad” educators and don’t acknowledge the literally millions of educators out there who have the angelic qualities of our Tony.

These Tonys are trying to desperately fill in the gaps created by well-intentioned families and misguided students who struggle to know what to do or how to do it. These Tonys work tirelessly to help students find a voice, find their motivation, find their meaning, and find their future.

So, who is your school’s diamond? Who is your school’s Tony?

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: achievement gap, education, k12, middle school, school counselors

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It is a community defined by our schools, our parks, our weekend activities spent watching AYSO and Little League. Every newsletter is highlighted by the activities available for families and for students. Every day, my kindergartner is sent home with information from the cottage industry of after school tutoring, Lego clubs, sports leagues, and more. The school choir sings at the local tree lighting. The high school band has marched in the Rose Parade more often than any other band in the country. It’s Norman Rockwell in a 21st Century world. In others words, our community, as with many communities in this country, is tied to our schools.

But this post isn’t about what I love about our area. It is, in fact, about a disappointment.

I recently received an informational brochure through the mail slot that gave an overview of an initiative that the school board is trying to pass as a funding measure to get on our local ballot. Fine by me. The goal is to educate people about Sacramento’s funding cuts and how they are chipping away at our schools. No problem there. They are seeking to “create a stable funding source that cannot be taken away” by the ebb and flow of cuts. Got it. I’m with them so far.

Here’s where they lose me:

“Senior citizen homeowners, aged 65 or older, can receive an exemption.”

Look, I’ve heard this before. The older generations in this country have raised their kids, and they no longer have a stake in our schools, so why should they continue to help pay for them?  This possibility of exemption is seen as a selling point for this measure, but I see it as a sadness in an increasing trend.

It’s simple. As the superintendent says, “we all benefit from living in a community with great schools….quality schools make [our district] a desirable place to live and creates demands for our homes. This keeps our property values strong, which is more important than ever.”

We are entering a very interesting time in this country as our citizens age and the next generation statistically will not be as well off as the one that preceded it. Since we all benefit from our schools, can we afford to exempt a growing population in this country from being held responsible for helping to support the students of this country?

Even printing the possibility of exemption sends a message that if it doesn’t apply to you, it is something you can overlook. Yet our schools do apply to us all. We can’t just hold the young parents of our students accountable for funding our school system. It is a responsibility of us all. Our public schools help neighborhoods to flourish. They help us all retain our sense of community, a sense that we all want as adults and one that begins at childhood with the sense of security, community, and neighborliness that is found in places like church, temple, and school.

How can we fund our educational system with only the aid of the generation that is currently using its classrooms? What message does that send to our students?

It sends the message that once a student leaves school that person can walk away from schooling and societal responsibility. It send a message that you can allow the current generation to fend for itself, but still expect that the community in which you live will be maintained without your aid.

If people live in a community, enjoy the benefits of that community, go to restaurants, events, break bread in that community, can they ignore the responsibility for helping to maintain that community? What will allowing an entire generation of citizens to opt out of educational funding do to our schools? That Norman Rockwell image would be a mere echo in this community were it not for our schools.

Does responsibility end at a certain age?

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: educational funding, Educational Policy, k12, middle school, public schools

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I’m basing this blended unit on TED.com, and the plan is to host a middle school TED-esque conference, combining it with a book drive for our media center. So, in a series of posts, I am going to describe some key steps I’m using with my 8th graders in order to scaffold our way towards our TED conference. On my Edutopia.org blog, I will describe how I introduced the concept of the project and the development of our student-created resource library, a tool that helps everyone to research more deeply.

On this site, you can learn about how students chose topics and you can download the worksheet that I used to guide them towards their choice. So follow me as I describe real-time writing in a real-world classroom. Hope this helps in your own possible blended genre unit.
______________________________________________________________________
As a Language Arts teacher, I don’t think my role is to teach my students how to fill an essay, but it is my responsibility to teach them how to recognize a great topic, how to research that topic, and how to present that topic. It’s called teaching something you know nothing about, and it permits me to learn from them as much as they learn from me. That way, I’m not the only teacher in the classroom and they aren’t the only learners. My job, as I see it, is to also model a joy in learning.

We started by watching some key videos throughout the first quarter on “TedTuesday,” and I’ve been asking simple questions like:
“What’s the theme?”
“Where did she get this idea?”
“What is the call to action he is asking his audience to do?”

In other words, we’ve been casually analyzing the speeches that we have watched. But now, with persuasion being the focus of this quarter and having just finished narrative, I feel we are able to jump in further.

What I needed to do was scaffold a way for the students to be able to choose their own topics. Furthermore, their topics had to be stated in such a way that the statement itself aided in uncovering the research the students would need to cover the topic.

I first threw together a checklist of assignments and key deadlines that the students would be responsible for this quarter as we lead up to our presentation days. Deadlines for responding to videos posted on my classroom website, when bibliographies were due, rough draft deadlines, etc…

Then we started full-force exploring possible topics about which to research, write, and speak. I told them that it was their choice to be excited by their topic because I wasn’t assigning topics to them; they got to choose. Now, this option, while it can bring out the highest quality in the end product can also shut some students down if not given some guidance. So to do that, I had Jr. Scholastic magazines, newspapers, and printed out articles strewn in duplicates on every table. In a timed activity, the students would grab a resource and skim for headlines and topics. After 3 minutes, they were told to switch resources, and so on. Additionally, we also had the classroom computers on the Ted website where students could skim through the titles of the speeches to be inspired by the names, many of which are clues to the themes, problems, or solutions posed by the speaker.

Then we created five posters and stuck them up all over the room with the following titles: School Site, Local, State, National, and International. We brainstormed lists for each of the posters with students going up to the papers and writing a topic for all to see. In the end, we had a list of around 200 topics.

Nevertheless, just listing a topic like “Animal Abuse” is not enough to begin writing a great speech and it isn’t enough to begin an efficient research necessary to inform an audience.

We needed a problem statement. A problem statement is a paragraph that explains what they wish to write and speak about, and by following the paragraph outline, it also helps them narrow down their topic to sometime manageable, more specific, and ultimately easier to research. When we think about college and career readiness, a problem statement is used to prepare for a doctorate dissertation as well as with business proposals. So the trick for me was in scaffolding it down to the middle school level. In a sense what they did was write an abstract from the get-go rather than a summary after the fact.

The end result was a guided worksheet that you can download here.

It breaks the Problem Statement into 4 parts:

1. States the broad problem/topic about which you are interested in researching

2. Defines the problem you will be solving by narrowing the issue

3. Describes why it needs to be investigated by giving background information and context

4. States the goals in writing and researching this problem (I will…., I plan…., I would like…, I propose…, etc…)

Then after writing the initial paragraph, they also developed 3-5 questions to help hone in on more specific research. After all, there’s no way a broader topic can show expertise. It would just cover things in too shallow a manner. Instead, honing in on a particular aspect of a topic and diving in deeper will undoubtedly make for a more interesting and more educational speech. And remember, these speeches are meant to inform an audience of a problem that exists and propose a solution to that problem. Advocacy: it’s a 21st Century Skill.

Next up after Thanksgiving vacation is to examine the various visuals TED speeches use as inspiration for our own. Will the students chose to use a digital camera like Terry Moore, produce a Powerpoint like 12 year-old Adora Svitak, or weave in video clips like Derek Sivers? We’ll see what the students chose and I’ll report back soon!

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: college and career readiness, narrative, persuasive, problem statement, Speaking and listening, ted.com, thesis, writing genres

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Life is persuasive. A lawyer persuades a jury. A job applicant pitches oneself as a potential employee. A scientist competes for a grant. A writer sells her idea in her query letter. Persuasive writing is a key that unlocks a world of possibilities. It is a skill that we see at every stage of life from writing the inevitable cover letter to one day hopefully writing a letter of recommendation.

School must reflect the world around it, and writing persuasively is a key skill for college and career readiness regardless of the path a student takes.

My question to all my readers is Should all teachers be held accountable for the quality of a student’s writing?  Is it the burden of ELA teachers alone or do other content area teachers have a role to play in this new CCS world of Persuasive writing?

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Argumentation, Common Core Assessments, common core standards, education, edutopia, k12, middle school, Persuasive Writing

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A couple of weeks ago, my school told the staff that they were going to roll-out the ability for parents to have access to our grade books online. Needless to say, many teachers grumbled and rumbled. As for me, it gave me pause, but I knew that the high school was already doing it, and it was merely a matter of time for the middle school. Besides, two of my four ELA classes this year are the 8th grade honors classes, and many times those parents have the expectation of access that goes hand in hand with being an active academic participant in their students’ lives. Keeping up on their student’s progress plays a part in that student’s success. Perhaps the thought is that if the grades are accessible enough, more parents of the mainstream and at-risk students will begin to play a greater role in their children’s learning too. I frankly deeply believe the writing is on the wall about such levels of access. It’s where we’re heading (and many schools already have), so it’s not a battle I’m interested in waging.

Besides, there are some pluses to this new transparency:

1. There is no longer such a thing as, “I had no idea how Little Johnny was doing. Nobody told me.” Wow. That’s really powerful stuff to be able to take Lack of Communication off the list of excuses as to why a parent has been inaccessible or not present for a student’s struggles.

2. It will light a fire under my tush to grade at a quicker pace. I’m not very sluggish at chipping away at that mountainous stack of essays, but I definitely appreciate the incentive to get things posted quicker. Sometimes those piles can really be overwhelming, and knowing that folks might be routinely checking for updates will aid in my own motivation to routinely get feedback to my students perhaps quicker than I do now.

3. No more progress reports. As of now, every Thursday, I get a stack of progress reports from my students at the start of each class. They come from the various AVID teachers or counselors. They’ve been set up for one reason or another, and I find the weekly communication very helpful to those kids. But it can be a dip in classroom energy to fill them out and get them back before the end of the period. Now, as my colleague Darlene has realized, rather than the student handing these grade sheets to each teacher, turning them in to the counselor, then to the parent to be signed, then back to school to their AVID teacher, a student need only be at home to compile their own grades, print it out, have it signed, and bring it to school. The missing of instructional time is henceforth cut out of the weekly process.

4. It reflects the time we live in. I can check my bank account balance 24/7. I can check my emails 24/7. I can watch the news 24/7. This is an extension of the reality of our world, and school must keep pace with the world around it.

But there are some concerns I have with this transparency too:

1. It leaves little room for a student to slip and solve their own problem before Mom knows about it. That is, you always get some kids per assignment who don’t turn it in or, of course, the many who turn it in at a lower level than you would like to see. Those kids, especially those in middle school, need to be able to approach the teacher and solve the problem. And many times they do. OK, so they get an extension or they turn their work in a day or so later. My final grade book reflects the kid they became. It doesn’t ding them for the process it took to get there. This portal gives parents a snapshot of the components of learning in a way that might take ownership away from the student.

2. It will light a fire under my tush to grade at a quicker pace. Oh, I already said that as a plus. Well, it’s a minus too. I think I keep up a pretty good pace with my scoring and feedback, but I fear it’s never going to be enough for some parents and students.

3. It will require all teachers to be on the same grade book program. I don’t necessarily think this is a big deal, but I have a modicum of fluency with technology that some teachers don’t have. Every so often, a district adopts a new grade book program and teachers learn the new fad. Eventually, a teacher tends to settle on one that appeals to him or her. Many teachers have learned the many grade books over the years, and stuck to those they felt best served their needs. They will have an even bigger switch to make, not only philosophically but also technically.

4. It will require educating parents in how to read the program itself. Teachers don’t have the time to answer all the technical questions about how to read the online grade book. Why isn’t this filled in? Because it’s a staggered due date for students. Why does the “completed date” say such-and-such? Because that’s the date the last student submitted their work. Why does the program call Quarter 1 “Y”? I have no idea. It confuses me too.

These concerns, however, are not grand enough to get in the way of progress, and I believe that this is progress. It puts more on the parents, more on the students, and fills a need every family has had since that little pioneer schoolhouse on the prairie. Hey, I watched Little House every week. Don’t you think if given the chance, Mr. Ingalls would want to know every time Laura ditched to go fishing? He’d use the portal as a way to make sure Laura and Albert were doing their jobs as students (he never needed to worry about Mary, after all). But I think the fear many teachers have is that the ones who are really monitoring these online grade books are the Mrs. Oleson’s of the world who are really there to check on the teachers.

Nevertheless, the fact is that this accessibility, whether we as educators believe in it or not, is the present and the future. As a parent, seeing my student reach for that TV remote instead of his homework, one day I’m sure I will also want to see how my kid is doing when he’s claims he’s doing fine in Math. Then again, we have a no-TV-during-the-school-week rule in my house.

Our job as educators is to prepare our students for their future. Communication plays a large role in that job.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: education, grading, k12, middle school, transparency in teaching

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Instead, we need to embrace more fully mobile technology. The big clunky forward facing, whole class method of lesson delivery via Interactive Whiteboard, I believe, is the Laserdisc of educational technology. The overpriced fad of Interactive Whiteboards (whether Smart or Promethean) is imperfect in their current incarnation. Sure, we all imagine classrooms with “Iron Man2”:-esque 3-D touch sensitive lessons, but inherently these pieces of equipment do not illustrate the spirit of technology in information delivery: all-access, collaborative, open, interactive, etc…

Currently, they are only as engaging as the lessons created, and those lessons are tedious to create and time-suckers in their efficiency. The prep time to create charts that utilize any effects over-and-above what you would already do with a laptop and LCD projector feels clearly developed by those with a disconnect to the precious time we have in education and the many hats we already wear. Additionally, while these boards were initially meant to help less-tech savvy teachers to embrace technology use, their hefty training time and prep time serves as its own gatekeeper for more than just tech tentative teachers.

I believe an online colleague of mine, Bill Ferriter, said it best when he wrote,

“I’m willing to argue that even with time and training, interactive whiteboards are an under-informed and irresponsible purchase. They do little more than reinforce a teacher-centric model of learning…make presentations, give notes, deliver lectures…I ask you: Do we really want to spend thousands of dollars on a tool that makes stand-and-deliver instruction easier?”

Instead, I believe mobile technology, that truly frightening technology the schools would rather spend money on avoiding than really examining, is really the silver bullet (if there is such a thing.) Smartphones, for instance, have the potential to be the great equalizer.

Mobile technology caters to individualization and differentiation, which is the present and future of student-centered learning. Mobile technology is cheaper and also represents the concept of “democratization of information,” the openness of high levels of information to the masses. The Interactive Whiteboard is still locked and loaded into the antiquated philosophy of “sage on the stage” rather than “guide on the side.”

Yes, the remote clicker technology gives the very important immediate feedback, but gaining access to remotes is not dependent on the purchase of the boards themselves. The fact is that 99% of all students carry their own remotes right there in their backpacks.

In fact, my students interviewed a young scientist from JPL earlier this year. She had just returned from rural Africa where she helped establish Internet access to remote areas throughout the continent. When asked by one of my students what the future of Internet Access was, she said that it, frankly, didn’t include computers. After all, many people in these remote areas don’t have Macs or PCs, but they do have iPhones right there in their pockets. In other words, the future of Web 2.0 tools is already being defined by global availability.

As for the future of educational technology, we must guide our purchases to reflect the world around us. We must support the learner on the go. We must support individual use, not teacher-only use. We must support inexpensive options that give us access to the most information, easily accessed and easily presented. Smartphones, (and, I believe, eventually iPads or other tablet options) permit us to assume more and more that learners have access to the same information and opportunities.

The real question is How can we spend the money saved on Interactive Whiteboard purchases in ways that really propel education into the 21st Century?  What tools or training do you think are more to the point of education’s future?

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 39 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: educational technology, interactive whiteboards, iPads in education, k12, middle school, smartboards, smartphones

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In it, I’ll be sharing what I have learned about the upcoming Common Core standards and how they will be assessed. It’s pretty interesting stuff and, in theory, far more aligned with authenticity than the bubble tests of yore. Nevertheless, there are challenges in making the transition to these tests that districts need to be prepared for. Despite these hurdles, however, teachers and districts can begin making the transition by identifying the skills students will need and by using more authentic methods of assessment in their own classrooms.

I’ll share some of what I’m doing in my classroom and some of the writing that’s on the wall with the tests to come.

Come join me! Like a birthday party, you’ll leave with goodies: a couple of download-ables and a slew of resources to help you in your practice.

Hope to see you Monday.

-Heather

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 21st Century assessments, common core standards, education, k12, middle school, professional development, standardized tests

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Wonka has left us with questions about his miraculous factory and the wonders he has taken with him.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: apple, education, huffington post, k12, middle school, steve jobs

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So began my schpeel on writing an Executive Summary for this DARPA/NASA Project I’m doing with my students (see earlier posts, “The Power of Teaching Something you Know Nothing About” and “DARPA project con’t: Research and Questioning.”)

I have decided that even though the NASA/DARPA video conferencing event is on Friday, Sept 30, there should be one last period at the end of this sentence for all students involved, not just those who were selected as panelists to speak on camera. So the following week, each of the small groups will be presenting in their own panels to their classmates. The classmates will be given mock checks in the amount of 1 million dollars, and at the end of the week, the students need to give their check to the group that they feel most deserved their funding.

It’s incorporating business with education, the reality of funding with Project-Based Learning. After all, while we may not run education lock step like a business, there is no reason not to be teaching some elements of business as we prepare our students for their future.

The most substantial part of my students’ writing contribution for their overall project is the Executive Summary. Yes, they also incorporated the science they learned into a science-fiction narrative. Yes, they have been doing research and taking Cornell Notes. But their end result must be presented in the form of an Executive Summary.

The Executive Summary is an interesting writing genre in that it hits many marks that make it applicable to life outside of school, which is why I’m choosing to teach it this year. For one thing, students can find examples of Executive Summary that exist in many industries. Can you say the same thing about the 5-paragraph essay?

Also, to prepare for it, I still teach the standards that are necessary for test scores. The genre, however, applies to both masters: meaningfulness and standardized performance. It uses Summarizing, Persuasive Writing, Research Skills, and Computer Literacy.

It also demands rigor in the form of simplicity, which can be uber-challenging, because it insists on concise writing and the role-play it connects to a real life scenario. In our case: our real-life scenario is speaking to a ballroom of scientists to convince them of our findings (Friday) and presenting in panels in front of our philanthropic peers (the following week.)

Yet the true rigor of this unit is the fact that it mashes so many genres of writing together. After all, life is not categorized. Scientists applying for a grant must summarize their findings and recommendations and still Persuade in order to receive it. Small business owners looking to present at a conference must Summarize their session, create a bio, and Persuade a committee to select their topic. A graduate student ready to venture out into the world must create both a Cover Letter and a Resume: both of which are versions of summaries using different methods of summarization (prose, bullets, numbers, headings, subheadings, paragraphs, bolded text, etc…) in order to Persuade potential employers to hire him or her.

So it is not surprising that presenting this writing unit is more rigorous than a more traditional unit. It is, in fact, more real. Which brings to light a question about our tendencies in education: if categorization of topics is easier to understand, but isn’t as true to life outside of education, are we really preparing our students for the expectations of real life by breaking our writings down into simple blocks of learning?

Look, the fact is that categorized, linear teaching is easier to comprehend. I get it. But it’s not life. So the best we can do to help each other is perhaps break down the components of the complexity of the job that we do as teachers every day. For it is complex.

To help break down a little about this particular writing genre, I thought I’d provide a brief outline that might help simplify what is far from simple. If you are interested in teaching Executive Summary, a simple order of the writing might be:

I. Why is this issue important?
II. Give a little background of the issue
III. Present some evidence of past/current methods
IV. State your own recommendations.

Remember with Executive Summary that the goal is short and sweet, max 3 pages. A person who knows nothing about the topic shouldn’t be slammed by a wall of dense text. The student needs to break up the information using Headings, Sub-headings, bold text, bullets, etc…The student can insert graphs, charts, and other simple visuals as well. It is a combination of fact-based, irrefutable evidence presented with no voice. Let the facts do the talking. Then, in the recommendations section, that’s where students can throw in more persuasive language and opinion. Of course, the whole piece takes a clear stance, which is opinion in itself. But it uses the strength of fact and summary to do the heavy lifting.

Overall, an Executive Summary should be positive, persuasive, and punctuated by simple and visual text design elements.

So here’s a snapshot of where we are in the whole project: I collect their Executive Summaries this Monday. Their multi-media presentations are also due on that date. The websites or PowerPoints are a collaborative, visual-based version of their Executive Summaries combined into one presentation where each panelist provided 2 slides to represent the main ideas of their research. The students will begin practicing this week for next week’s panels in order to earn the blank checks. In the meantime, the students will also be developing high-level questions using Costas and Blooms in order to grill their peers who were chosen this week to speak on the Sept. 30 panel to Florida. This way, the selected students can practice recalling their research and citing evidence on the fly when the time comes for the Q & A portion of our session.

Oh, yeah, and somewhere in all of that, we have to read the assigned short story in the textbook for a reading assessment bubble test the following week.

How’s the old Sesame Street song go? “One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong…”

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authentic assessments, darpa, education, k12, middle school, NASA, project based learning

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Need advice?  Check out my post at Edutopia titled, “20 Ways to Model Technology.”

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ed Tech, education, edutopia, k12. middle school

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In this case, my students have applied to sit on a panel in an upcoming DARPA and NASA conference in Florida. It was a mythical session at the time I designed the unit, but the amazing thing, as many of you may know, is that we were actually contacted by NASA in order for my students to Skype in as a session to the actual conference.

In preparation of this event, we are doing a lot of research. To frontload for this, we talked a lot about Internet Literacy. Some of the topics we have discussed are:

1. Google Advanced Searches
2. Recognizing biased Websites
3. Citation of various online sources
4. Norms of blogging and video conferencing
5. Tracking down more resources using the bibliographies of current resources

We’ve also begun a classroom resource library broken down by the strands of research each student is conducting. The students bring in their bibliographies and selected articles copied or printed out, and put them in their corresponding files. This library then becomes possible resources for other students assigned to that strand.

So the bulk of this past week or so has been research, and as a component of that, my students had the opportunity to interview some professionals in the field. JPL (Jet Propulsions Laboratory) found some very kind and willing volunteers who offered to be interviewed by email. This then blossomed into a full-on Skype session last Friday where my students could interview, face-to-face, scientists who are actually involved in the development of interstellar space missions.

My students, clipboards in hand, took Cornell notes as the scientists listened, answered, and even asked their own questions. Needless to say, it was cool.

I was particularly proud of the questions that the students developed to take advantage of these scientists who were willing to donate their time to share their expertise. We’ve talked a bit about the Levels of Inquiry and developing high-level questions. We’ve talked a bit about asking questions in an interview that are not easily answered with Google. We’ve talked about how asking great questions is an indicator to great comprehension. The result was great, and the time spent with the professionals gave us some richly researched, primary resources for our DARPA arguments that are due on Sept 26 as final drafts.

Here is the list of questions my students developed and agreed upon to send:

1. Do we currently have the technology to create an atmosphere?
2. What would be the most efficient way to generate electricity?
3. Where would we store waste?
4. How can you prevent contracting diseases from other planets?
5. What importance is there to human life suspension?
6. What ready and reliable fuel sources already exist that can be used to get off the surface?
7. What speeds, with today’s technologies, are we able to accelerate up to? And how will we maintain that speed?
8. If possible, are we going to use the properties of black holes/wormholes to our advantage? (sling shot-ing, portal traveling, etc.?)
9. In your opinion, would it be better to first send probes to new destination options, or take journeys of faith with real people?
10. How do you think we could fit all the materials (food, water, etc.) in the star ship?
11. How can we keep the public interested in the project throughout the course of time?
12. What use of media/ technology is best to project the endeavor throughout the US and the entire world?
13. In terms of selecting a planet, what would you look for as required qualities of a habitable planet?
14. What type of people should first try to colonize on the planet? EX: researchers, scientists, athletes, or regular humans/civilians?
15. What are the mental ramifications of being at/in one place (i.e. planets) for too long?
16. Would it be more economical to change the environment of the planet that we may find habitable or create an artificial area to inhabit?
17. How do you get knowledge of the new scientific discoveries out to countries that don’t have the technology we have?
18. What kind of environmental toxins are in outer space that we already know we need to plan for/avoid/utilize?
19. Is there another source of energy besides solar power that can be used on a planetary colony?
20. What are the most important qualities that a colony needs to be self-sustainable?
21. Do we currently have any technology that makes it possible to prevent bone loss?
22. Which medicines (from over-the-counter to powerful anesthetics) will be needed to carry on board to the starship?
23. Please describe a sleeping chamber on a starship and the process of waking up and going back to sleep with daily check-ups in between.

One can clearly see that while they are asking questions, they needed to have a level of research conducted and a level of understanding before asking these levels of questions. Wouldn’t you want to know the answer to some of these? Well, I tell you the responses that came back were as detailed as the questions asked and fascinating. As you may know from my last post, I am learning along with my students.

I’ve given them the scaffold of writing necessary to mimic those found outside of school. From there, the universe is theirs to discover.

I’ll keep you all in the loop as it happens!

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: curriculum integration, darpa, education, k12, middle school, NASA, PBL, project based learning

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As a result of this shift, and mind you, it’s only been a couple of weeks since school began, I’ve found that not only do my students enjoy learning more, but I enjoy teaching more. The strange thing is, however, that it is mostly due to the fact that with PBW, I’m not limiting myself to only teaching what I know. I’m learning with them, and in so doing, am modeling how to learn. In other words, I am the writing authority, but not the content authority.

Let me give you the best example I can. Right now, as we speak, I am in the midst of a fantastic unit called The Darpa Project. It all began this summer when my husband told me of a cool symposium going on in late September in Florida for which DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) was seeking presenters. They were asking scientists, futurists, ethicists, and science-fiction writers to apply to be a part of a forum to brainstorm ways to colonize a planet within 100 years. The project itself is called the 100 Years Starship Study. Incidentally, I can hear Star Trek music in my brain scoring that title every time I write or type it.

The conference would be segregated into 7 tracks, all focused on different aspects of what it would take to colonize: the time-distance issues, economic challenges, medical considerations, communicating and publicizing the rationale, etc…

As I read over the website, it occurred to me that applying to speak at a conference was a sort of a persuasive writing exercise. It also occurred to me that studying these different “tracks” and synthesizing one’s research into a proposal was a sort of an executive summary. And lo, a Project Based Writing Unit was born.

So I whipped together an iMovie introducing the concept with some dramatic suspense music thrown in. I threw together a pacing guide for myself and a packet with checklist for them. The packet gave details of how each small “professional community” of experts would be broken down into groups of 7 students. Each student would be responsible for becoming an authority on one of the “tracks.” The packet also contained various assignments and due dates leading up to a mock panel that would take place during lunch, where students from all over the school could come to our symposium to learn about colonizing the stars. And then I had a thought: hey, what if I called my friend in the CalTech patent office and asked if she knew of anyone who could come over during these lunchtimes to be an authentic audience for my students? Perhaps that person(s) could ask questions like a Q & A, or evaluate the presentations in some way? Wow, wouldn’t my students be excited, I thought.

So I sent out the email to my buddy, who responded and said she’d ask around and get back to me, and two weeks later I got a call…from NASA.

It seems that there is now an additional group added to the agenda for the DARPA 100 Years Starship Study: my students. It’s true. A small panel of my students will be presenting via Skype (or WebX, TBD) to an audience of those very same scientists, futurists, ethicists, and science-fiction writers my students will be researching. My students will be presenting not as scientists, but as experts with a unique invested interest in this project. After all, the adults in the room are planning for the generations that will come after the generation after us. My students, on the other hand, will have a hand in building the future for their own children. They will be leaving a legacy behind when they leave 8th grade.

But the import of what this unit has become is not what makes it so fun to teach. What makes it so fun to teach is how little I know about the content I’m asking my students to learn.

Sure I know a lot about writing and reading comprehension and research skills and internet literacy; and that’s ultimately what I’m responsible to teach. However, that’s not what the content of this unit is focused on. What that means is that we get to learn together. This is different than reciprocal learning, which is when I learn from them and they learn from me. This is going on a journey with my students, emailing and exploring and discovering and having head scratching moments and eureka moments along with them. We enter the classroom with ideas together, we sit and brainstorm together, and ultimately we will come away from this experience richer and more knowledgeable together.

I’ve got a few units already in the works for other genres later this year: Literary Analysis and Narrative to name two. But my goal now for this year is not to teach what I know, but to fold in what I know with what I don’t so that modeling learning becomes part of my job.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authentic assessments, darpa, education, k12, project based learning, test prep

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I know nothing about the woman; all we have is a name. But we love her already. It’s amazing how so many hopes and dreams become immediately attached to a name. This year, I will remember what this feels like in my own teaching more than ever because of what I’m going through as a parent.

It’s as if all questions of educational policy and policy reform go out the window when you are staring down your own kid’s first day of school. Sure I know that the system is cracked and broken. Sure I know that the teachers face challenges and funding issues and problems beyond their control. But for one child and his mom, anyway, it’s all about this woman, her name, and my prayer:

May you see him for whom he is. He is a kid who makes an adult think, but that comes at a price. He can have that conversation full of deep thoughts and questions; unfortunately he can’t seem to stop himself from having that conversation with you, even when you are busy talking to others.

May you forgive him his trespasses. Sure, he can go over to the Dark Side sometimes, but sometimes his audience likes those who are willing to go there, and I hope that you can help make the Side of the Force just as attractive.

May you find ways to allow us to help you. A real terror for a parent is that with the onset of school, all knowledge of your kid’s day stops. I wish I could be a fly on the wall witnessing all of his successes. I also wish to know about his key failures so that we can follow through with consequences at home. We’ve got your back.

May you give him opportunities to test out his leadership and his ability to follow.

May you let him name a chicken and clean out the coop.

May you let him be line leader and bring up the rear.
May he not totally strip down when using the john, and if he does, please know that we’re working on that at home too.

May you realize that while he talks a lot about TV, he doesn’t watch it nearly as much as he talks about it.

May you not let him play before he finishes his lunch. He’s a really slight dude and could use the nutrition. He just finds talking more interesting than eating, and then it’s too late, and the world is moving on around him.

May you enjoy his laughter, questions, thinking, dreams, expressions, gestures, monologues, un-rhythmic dancing (I point a finger at my husband for that one), impersonations, connections, and curiosity as much as we do.

May he not get lost amongst the carpet squares of large-class sizes.

May your smile light up his morning, as I hope his does yours.

May each time his hand goes up, you know it will be a contribution that will help propel the conversation. I make no promises, but I pray that will be the case.

May you catch when someone does something unkind to him, and praise him for handling it well.

May you catch if he does something unkind to someone, for he is a child who feels regret, and he doesn’t like the feeling in his heart when he’s hurt someone.

May you praise his uniqueness, for that will one day be his superpower, even if his penmanship may not be.

May you be the first of a long line of teachers that he loves and remembers for years to come. May you give him the start of a beautiful relationship with school and with education, one that sees him through frustrations with authority figures that one day he will just have to deal with. For now, however, he’s building up the memories of those who love him and care for him, and you are the first in that foundation.

May we be able to work together to help this young man in his relationships with people, with learning, and with himself.

May you have a wonderful year with our son. He is our joy and we trust you with him.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: education, first day of school, k12, middle school, parent's prayer, teacher's prayer

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Open Letter to a New Principal

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: administrations, education, edutopia, k12, middle school

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“Ohhhhh, teeeeeching,” he said knowingly. “Must be nice to have so much time off. Out at 3:00, and only what, 180 days of work? Nice gig.” He laughed in a smarmy manner and returned to his cocktail. I decided for the sake of the newlyweds that his drink must have dictated his manners.

I was getting my eyebrows waxed a few days later, and this clinician whom I have never met before asked what I did. “I’m a teacher,” I replied, wincing as she yanked off the strip of torture. “Ohhhhh, how relaxing that must be,” she said, smiling down at me in a dreamy way. “You know, to just, ahhhhh all day and not have any worries, no stress!” I winced again but opted not to say anything as she spread hot wax along my other brow.

There’s something I find confusing about the phrase “I’m a teacher.” Is it a secret password for “Release the verbal Kraken?” Is it some kind of code that means that not only can you judge my job, but you can also assume that I will find some modicum of humor in your massive misunderstanding of what it takes to do it? Does it give someone immediate allowance to be rude and degrading, losing all sense of etiquette?

After all, if someone had said, “I’m in construction,” I would never assume I knew how hard they worked, how they did their job, or what challenges they faced. If someone had said, “I’m a grip on a TV show,” I would never assume I knew how long they worked vs. how long they were seasonally on hiatus or how they spent their break. If someone had said, “I’m a lawyer, doctor, pharmacist, computer programmer, teller at a bank, waiter, day worker, chef, or even dish washer for said chef,” I would never utter the immediate judgment that may come to mind with each of those jobs. It’s just plain rude.

So what is it about admitting that one teaches that removes all filter of conversational decency from others?

Why is it that talking about teaching opens the door for not only poor judgment of what I do but poor judgment in one’s social manners?

Are teachers so downgraded in people’s minds that we don’t even qualify for polite conversation?

Perhaps in the future, I will keep little folded copies of Taylor Mali’s poem, “What Teachers Make,” in my wallet to pass out silently as people laugh at my expense. Or perhaps I will just harden up, smile, and do the job that people think they know how to do. I’ve written before that people’s assumption that they know about teaching because they’ve been through school is much like saying they must know childbirth because they’ve each been born.

I sigh, because as much I want to rip into those folks who straddle between the realms of good-intentioned-but-stupid and downright passive-aggressive-in-their-contempt, the fact is that truly educating people about teaching will never be about shaking one’s finger at those individuals who don’t get it. It will be about improving practice and promoting that quality. It will be about upping my pedagogy and being unabashed in announcing the hard work I do and the achievements of my students. As I’ve written about before, we must be both teachers and publicists.

And I use “announce” with everything I’ve got. We must stop being modest and quiet with our accomplishments. We must own our abilities, have pride in them, and yodel our victories like the Ricola guy on the mountaintop.

It starts with something small, like adopting a bulletin board on your site. Maybe it’s about tweeting a victory, writing a brief entry into the school newsletter, a submitting a success to the local newspaper.

I challenge you this year to start small in your bragging, not for yourself but for our profession. With enough teachers promoting what we do, with any luck, those who are rude in their anti-teacher sentiment will find no audience for their ignorance.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: education, k12, middle school, publicity, taylor mali

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Publishing Release Form. Check.

PG-13 Video/Clip Release Form to cover me for the whole school year. Check.

Set up YouTube Channel even though I have no idea how to use it yet. Check.

Purchased a Blackboard Collaborate account for a 100-person room. Check.

Tried out said room and can’t seem to figure out how to load a darn PowerPoint, but figured out how to remove a student from the room if he or she chats inappropriately. Check.

Sent off Book Spines templates to get copied for kids to use to show how much they are reading. Check.

Set up Weebly website. Check.

Designed first three weeks of lessons for all three different classes. Check.

Began email discussion with ELA department about digital portfolios. Check.

Set up bulletin board for opening days’ activity of agreeing on a classroom constitution and norms for online and offline behavior. Check.

Purchased 150 feathers to make quills and ink to sign said classroom constitution. Check.

Dusted off classroom library and set up realia props to lure kids in. Check.

Shoved around desks and chairs into position. Check.

Labeled chair names at each table group: Skulduggery, Prince Hal, Katniss, Mr. Darcy. Check.

Labeled table groups by colleges and universities: Harvard, USC, UCLA, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Connecticut College (mine), Lewis & Clark, Vassar. (Note to self: Allow students to do research and choose their own group’s college name during persuasive writing in second quarter). Check.

Broke into file cabinet that somehow got locked over the summer. Check.

Rigged a bookshelf that collapsed while being moved for carpet cleaning last month. Check.

Found all wires to set up Internet, LCD, and laptop at the front of the room and began yearly search for the rubber strip that allows me to walk over said cordage without breaking my neck. Check.

Air-blasted all tech equipment and set up the three classroom computers (rescued from being eRecycled a few years back). Check.

Made a list of supplies I need to purchase from Office Max, Staples, Office Depot, or whomever has the best deal this weekend: pencils, pens, post-its, highlighters, etc… Check.

Cleaned out cubbies to receive textbooks when they get delivered from the library on the first day. Check.

Killed 3 black widows. Check.

Sprayed for ants. Check.

Put up posters. Check.

Decided I’d rather have the students design the room as we go so I took down posters. Check.

Washed down the tops of cabinets and shelves that hadn’t gotten cleaned this summer. Check.

Designed opening day PowerPoint of results from my 8th grade surveymonkey activity at the end of last year. Check.

Spoke to NASA and JPL representatives to solidify their involvement in the culminating activity of a project-based learning unit that begins the third day of school. Check.

Set up phone. Check.

Cleaned out fridge. Check.

Looked inside my own desk, saw it was still a disaster, decided to just keep the drawers closed for another full year. Check.

There’s a lot that happens at the beginning of a school year before school even begins. Things are constantly happening behind the scenes, off camera, and, incidentally, out of contract. But it’s all necessary to do the job and start the year off right.

We’ve got PD days and department meetings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. During this time, we also meet our new principal for our first faculty meeting of the school year as well. We’ll get our final class assignments, schedule, and class lists to learn for sure what we’re teaching and to whom. Despite the official returns to work date, many of us have actually been working for a while, setting up our learning environment and setting up for the arrival of our clientele.

Good luck to everyone this year. May your own checklist help the start of the year begin smoothly, and may the rest of your year follow suit.

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2011. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: digital portfolios, education, first days of school, k12, middle school, virtual classroom, weebly

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