More Tech and Edutopia Article

A "recent" Edutopia article about not blocking too many sites from students at school actually has a negative effect on students rather than protecting them. This article has brought up issues that we have already talked about in EML 595 and I'm sure any MLTI schools have faced. The problem I have with this article is that it was originally published 11/5/2008. The day after President Obama got elected with much excitement. Now, two years later things have changed drastically. My point is, so much has changed over the course of the last two years, politics, economy, morale, etc. but it doesn't seem like we have lifted any of the bands or the strictness of using the internet in schools. If anything, we are getting stricter. Is this really teaching our students anything? Eventually they will use a computer and have full access to all the good and bad available to them via the web. We should be teaching them how to be critical of information presented to them, how to communicate effectively with others over the web, and use the resources available to expand their learning in interests both in school and at home. Blocking everything on a large scale penalizes those who would and those who need to learn how to use the technology purposefully.

Getting closer to TPACK

I know that we have sort of talked about TPACK and moved on, but it is still lingering in my head. I am sure we are all doing some great things with technology that are close if not at the optimal stage of "Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. I thought I would share a couple of new resources that I am using to get closer to that ideal and would ask you to respond back with ideas/resources that you have.

1. Edmodo- It is like facebook for school purposes. This social network is free and is designed to be a place for students to get and turn in assignments, have discussions with peers, answer polls, get feedback from peers and the teacher, etc. I haven't fully explored all the options of this website yet, but it helps you as a teacher be able to organize and grade assignments as well as go paperless.

2. Assistments- This program is put out by WPI. If you use the Connected Math Program it is especially great for you. How many times have you had kids some in and say "I didn't understand what the book was asking me and my parents said they didn't do this kind of math". If you teach CMP, I'm sure many times. The great feature of this program (besides grading your student's work and giving you extensive data) is that it gives students immediate feedback and offers them hints if they need it. You can assign problem sets that directly line up with CMP units, or you can assign skills based assignments. The students complete the assisgnment right online and then submit to you. It is also free!!! I am knew to this program too, but I am trying it out this week with both my math classes.

Try these resources out and let me know what you think!

Edutopia Links

I have known about Edutopia and George Lucas' work since I took my Computers in Education course in Farmington. Articles and videos frequently come up in class and were mentioned/shown several times at MAMLE. It made me realize I do not visit this site nearly enough on my own. There is an entire section of videos on middle level education (the articles are great too, but I prefer the video section). The idea of project based learning came up several times at MAMLE so I watched some videos on it and this is my feedback. (I do want to mention that Mike Muir reiterated to MAMLE attendees several times that you may not be able to do all these ideas at your school, but focus on the ones that you may be able to implement.)


This first video is about teaching math at an all boys school in Kentucky. It sparked my interest initially because we had talked about have single sex classes and recently Cony High School in Augusta has piloted all girls and all boys math classes. This video shares different classroom management and instructional strategies for working with the boys. I also enjoyed it because it is of a lesson from the CMP2 book Stretching and Shriking. My school uses this curriculum and I had never thought to teach this specific lesson with the manipulatives like he does. There is also a piece in this video where the instructor shows his homemade document camera. We are fortunate enough to have document cameras on every team, but this teacher did not let his lack of technology hold him back.

MAMLE also focused on the importance that student's learn in different ways. We need to value the different learning styles for students. In one of Mike Muir's presentations he mentioned that most students are bodily- kinesthetic learners or visually spatial learners and we tend to teach logically and linguisticly. This video highlights an interesting way to appreciate students' different learning styles.

RTI Presentation at MAMLE

A quick note and question for you all:

What are your questions about Math RTI? I am part of a panel discussion/ question and answer session for Math RTI at this year's MAMLE conference. We plan to talk about what our school is doing for Math RTI in the regular math class, through SKILLS block, and Title I. As well as what we can do to better serve the needs of our students. If you were going to go to this presentation, what would you like to hear/discuss?

It is kind of ironic that I logged in to post on my blog based on something that I saw on the news tonight and I saw that this week's topic had been changed. The clip that just aired on the CBS evening news was about Japanese schools and how they differ from our schools. Their were two big differences that I noticed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/29/eveningnews/main6912732.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.1

1. The Japanese schools honor their teachers and the hard work they do (and not just monetarily). Teachers are highly qualified and receive ample amounts of training and professional development. This includes being encouraged to video tape your class and share with colleagues to improve your instruction, time to co-plan with other teachers (I teacher said he spent 60% of his day with students and 40% of his day with other teachers), and additional training if you are not meeting teaching standards.

2. Respect. I think this probably extend beyond the classroom to society as a whole, but students are forced to respect their teachers, peers, and themselves. Everyone pitches in with daily tasks, they wait for all people to be served before eating, and they value their teachers advice.

I am not one to watch the evening news and be intrigued by something. I dislike that the clip failed to mentioned anything about creativity of education and how the school is teaching developmentally appropriate academic, social, phsyical, and emotional skills. It does not say anything about the length of the school day, overall structure of grade level vs. skill level, or what classes are being taught. None the less, it's interesting and I probably will dig further and look into some of those other areas I just mentioned.

My first discussion circle!

I have always supported looping in Middle Schools based on my own experience. Throughout this first month of school, I have come to realize why looping is so great. I hit the ground running with my 8th grade class, we already know each other, they know my expectations and I know theirs, and we have already bonded as a class. My 7th grade group understandably does not have that same feel yet. We have actually struggled with creating a classroom environment where everyone feels safe and supported, while accomplishing my lesson goals.

Last week I went to a 2hr seminar about Restorative Justice hosted by the administrators from Messalonskee Middle School. The whole topic really intrigued me and I can't wait for the next session as well as to do more research on my own. After a particularly discouraging day this week I reflected about the discussion circles that they briefly introduced us to at the R.J. meeting last week (also after burning off some much needed steam at the gym). During the first week of school, we had our students create a classroom contract of what they thought was necessary to have the most succesful school year ever. Topping the list is "Be Respectful" and "Be Prepared", I decided that even though I did not have much training with Restorative Justice, I was going to give it a try.

I had the students physically move the tables and set up a cirlce with their chairs. I told them that I honostly didn't know how it was going to go, but I was giving it a shot and would appreciate if they did too (I was rather nervous about the uncertainty). I got out a giant di that I use for math activities and said that whoever was holding the di was the only one allowed to talk and everyone else needed to be looking at the person who had it. Those were really the only instructions I gave (which was also hard for me).We looked over the class contract and then I posed the general question of how we were doing with it. The students then started asking for the di and were opening up to each other. The students then even started asking for some "rules" of the circle. They wanted to make sure their thoughts were confidential among the group and no one would judge or laugh if it wasn't appropriate.. I was amazed that they were sharing the talking rights equally among all their classmates and not throwing it back to the same people. I cut this experiment off after I thought the students shared enough of how it was going and what we could do to fix it. Overall, I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Later on that day the students' asked for the di back and are they are now looking up sign language for please, thank you, yes, and no to try to make this process go smoothly. I am also abiding by our new class standard which is great! It is forcing me to let them control conversation and help each other out rather than me.

What does learning look like?

I have been reading the "Success In the Middle Act" since class on Wednesday and really pondering how it is going to help us implement some middle level strategies and get wide spread support for middle level certification, teacher education programs, and funds. As well as why all the house and senate sponsors except one (Representative Platt from PA) are democrats. I will continue to explore this and figure out how I feel about it.

Meanwhile

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

This article was recently posted in the blog I follow "This Week in Education" sponsored by Scholastic. The "Quest to Learn" program that is highlighted in this article focuses on the idea that we should be anticipating the way our students our going to learn in the future and the tools that will be available to them. Then we should use that knowledge to teach and assess our students in that anticipated way. In this excerpt they were writing a video game. They were also learning the skills of revision, problem solving, and how to analyze data. Other skills they have learned through the program are how to navigate a social networking site like Facebook, but it is only open to parents, staff, and students. They are learning what is acceptable for the Internet and how to find blogs of interest to them and respond responsibly and articulately. From what the article provided, the students were overwhelming engaged and there was a waiting list to get into the program even though it's a lot of work. There is very little mention in the article of students’ success in other academic areas. They were working other disciplines into this design program but I do not know if it was enough to meet current standards for other academic areas.


"Had they learned anything? It depended, really, on how you wanted to think about teaching and learning." - Al Doyle NY Public School Teacher

Is RTI part of Middle Level Education?

Through this week's readings I was surprised that I saw very little mention to RTI and data driven instruction. Our school has done a lot of work with RTI including implementing SKILLS Blocks for Grades 5-8 in Math and 5-6 for Language Arts. One of the focuses of MAMLE this year is also RTI. What are other schools doing in regards to RTI? With all the assessments that our students suffer through anyways, what should we be using as an initial screener? Our district uses the NWEA's, but there has been question if we get the most accurate results using this data. The way that our school (and several other middle schools who we have communicated with in regard to Skills Block) group students for skills block based on some type of score, thus homogeneously grouping our students for these intensive skills revision and practice sessions. Does this mean that our way of teaching it the first time was ineffective or does it just further prove that our students are held to unattainable standards? Schools are taking a lot of time and effort to implement different RTI programs, but is it just a fad though? You have to think that schools and teachers all want the best for students and will work with all students so they succeed.

The Good,The Bad, and The Goals of this year

Starting back to school was bitter sweet. I had a great summer and was rested and ready to start back up. I teach 7th and 8th grade Math and Science on a two person team. We have one class of 7th graders and one class of 8th graders. It felt great to already know the 8th graders and have a personal relationship with each of them as well as know them as students. I also felt great that there was not all the initial housekeeping to go over with them. They knew my expectations and we could really hit the ground running and have a great start. I do need to keep telling myself that I will get there with the 7th graders as it took me a while to set up a routine last year as well, but it definitely paid off.

Challenges of the beginning of school:
1. Lockers
2. The heat
3. The Red Sox continually losing and being out of wild card range

This year I am really focusing on the curriculum and how I teach it. Last year was such a learning experience for me that I barely had time to reflect on what was working, what wasn't, and how I could expand and integrate the curriculum. I plan to not be so dependent on the math program we use in order to give the students a better overall understanding of mathematics, including fact fluency, computational skills, as well as connections to science. Science was my major struggle last year and I didn't always enjoy it. Over this summer I have been to professional development and participated in conferences to better my science instructions and I'm truly excited to teach it this year. We are going to start off with the Vital Signs project (sponsored by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute) looking at invasive species in our area. We will also be doing simple machines, bridge building, a large unit on snowflakes, and maybe a CSI study. I have much more freedom with teaching science than I do with math and this year I am definitely going to take advantage of it!

The Future

During our SKYPE conversation this week, Ed mentioned this Newsweek article on creativity.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

After everything that we have read in our text books and articles, as well as the different websites and school models we have looked at, I see one overwhelming piece of middle level education missing. What is the objective? Everyone seems to have a different priority and a different way to "best" serve the needs of our kids. We need to all be on the same page. This Newsweek article discusses the lack of creativity our students currently possess. I think we all see this daily. With creativity comes determination, independence, and confidence. Are these skills more important to teach our students then the academic content? If we teach creatively and integratively it doesn't need to be a choice. There are middle schools in Maine and across the country that are doing great things, we need to share that! I think in order for real change to be made we need to educate the educators. All teachers, administrators, law makers, and anyone else in charge of the wellfare of our adolescents need to be educated in adolscent development. From week 1 of this course we discussed the lack of prepartion. Now we need to act on it. We need to share the information and resources we have used with our schools and with teacher prepartion programs at universities and our lawmakers. We need to have a clear goal of preparing our students to be positive contributing members of society. That comes through gaining skills, not through scoring well on a test. The skills will help you on the test, but the academic content doesn't help you out much with your indivdiual confidence, creativity, indepedence, etc.

Technology in the classroom

Here are my thoughts on the technology we used in this class. An how ALL of it can be used in my class in conjunction with the MLTI.

Moodle:At first I found the moodle to be very overwhelming. I was confused of where to find information and the overload of information and links that were available through this resource. Once I became familiar with the tool, it was pretty simple to follow. I like how you can add lots of resoources and post comments directly to submitted work. In my class, I think that this tool would be great for parents to see the grades and responses. I think it's a resource you have to pay for, so I'm not sure how realistic it is, but I would set each one of my students up with an account. The forums are a great tool for discussion among the class, after guidelines for respectful posts have been established among the class.

Voice Thread: I really liked this tool. I thought it was great how you could post video and audio comments and then respond to other people. I particulary was interested in the drawing cabilities. As one of the "genres" that my students learned about during their mutli-genre projects was picture to text. I think this tool would be great for all students to post their different views of the same picture. The voice thread would be a wonderful tool to use among the whole school on the same topic or to communicate with a different school as well.

Blogs: I loved being able to see what other people wrote and the comments that posts initiated. This would be a great way to record current events and book reviews. You can post videos, podcasts, and links to other resources. It's also a great tool to hold students accountable for researching "professional bloggers" that are interesting to them/content relevant.

Google Docs: This is a great tool for collaboration. Lab reports could be easily done, shared, and edited through this. Students could also submit their work through this and I could edit it easily without going through many sessions of paper and pencil revisions.

Skype: We just skimmed the surface of the capabilities SKYPE has. This is a great tool for students to converse with people near and far. You can share documents through SKYPE and have conversations with experts on specific subjects. I've also thought about setting up a mentoring program with my students and college students. This would be a great way for my students to ask for help and discuss with their partner.

Are We Doing Enough?

Coming of Age Chapter 8 discusses the health and wellness issues that middle school students face. As I was reading it the number one question that came to mind was, are we doing enough? Someone wrote in their blog earlier this week that schools are spending more time teaching more social etiquette than we use to and some parents are shifting the responsibility of teaching these morals to their children onto the school system. Either way, students need to learn them. The section that covers alcohol consumption and abuse linked in my head to the section on page 139 about leading causes of death among adolescents. The number one cause is accidents. I fully realize that it is not the school’s job (and definitely shouldn’t even be on the radar for middle school) to teach about alcohol safety, but again kids need to learn it somewhere. Too many young people get behind the wheel after drinking and “think” that they are ok, or go swimming, or go to bed while they’re still puking and the night ends horribly. The argument about “abstinence only” is the same; it is a moral issue that schools battle with. I like many other teachers just want the best for my students, and I think that we could lower the number of “accidents” that students have with a little education that is realistic to their lives.

Advisory

"Advisors must be willing to develop a relationship with students different from the one they experience as a regular classroom teacher" This We Believe in Action pg. 68

I have gone back and forth with how I feel about advisory at my school all year long. We have it everyday for 25 minutes. So, with a 180 school day calendar we spent 2000 minutes (33.33 days) in advisory. Two days a week we either walk around the block or exercise in the school and one day a week we SSR. As the year has gone on, I have found myself defending the program more and more. The connection that I able to make with my students is very different than the one I make in class. My students have me as their advisor for all 4 years they are at our school. Each group has ~12 students and has an equal distribution of boys and girls and students from each grade. With the small consistent group, students work together and the older students are able to develop leadership qualities. Another great asset is that if the academic teachers are noticing something is a little off with a student, they can consult that student's advisor and see if they have noticed a change/ have information to provide the academic team. We do not have anytime that we indivdiually meet with our advisees like the reading recommends. I would like to try and implement something similar to that at least once a month for all students.

Mind-stretching work like this requires no textbook, no equipment, no larger budget.

"Mind-stretching work like this requires no textbook, no equipment, no larger budget."- Marion Brady

I found that line of the article to hit home the most. I got an email the other day from my secretary saying that I needed to cut $500 out of my science budget next year. I can easily cut some of the materials and labs I put in there, but that does not sum up to $500. I have been stressing about this all week and talking with other science teachers about what they requested for the upcoming year. Brady is right in his idea that the most powerful examples of learning take place when the human experience is being observed. This works incredibly well for science and social studies, and sometimes math. Geometry lends it self very well to being observed naturally and construction of most things are based on mathematical principles. There are still the literacy skills and basic math required to observe these concepts in real life that are missing. I think what I will take away from this article is to try new things! Be confident and discuss with the students that chances are worth taking, and maybe I don't need all those things.

How do you prepare for student led?

As I've been reading the curriculum information this week, I've gotten some great ideas of how to engage students and even some student projects. I'm very interested in talking to someone from Maranacook Community Middle School about the sled construction project mentioned in the TWBIA video. I agree that student buy in is essential for real learning and it happens by having the students create the curriculum. I still am hesitant to give up that control. The scenarios of passive vs. active learning (TWBIA page 62) were good examples of the difference between the two, but also pointed out that these units are entirely student led. How do teachers prepare for these types of units? I think that I would constantly feel one step ahead of the kids (and as a very organized/planned person, I would hate that!).

The video clips on curriculum were great. I can see how the hot air balloon example was teacher planned, yet student led and executed. I know that I could do that type of project, so maybe I should start there. I wonder if the students came up with that idea or if he led them to it based on his plans. I also liked the "Art Based Partnership" clip. It reminded me that while we are all thinking about thematic units, we should be including our allied arts staff and cross planning that way too. Lastly, how do you combine student passions and interests with what you "need" to teach? Do you generate a list of topics that interest the students and pick the ones that fit the stated curriculum/standards then try to fit in the other stuff if applicable within the other concepts? Through all this reading, I can't stop thinking about when quality of education will come before quantity of education. I would rather know (and prepare students to know) a lot about one topic then a little about everything.

Thinking Critically

While reading Coming of Age I was startled by the amount of money we spend on incarcerated people compared to students (Brighton, 103).While there is no debate over the fact that we are not spending money effectively and with proper education we would have to spend less money on Correctional facilities, you also need to look at the facts they gave us critically (which I didn't do at first). I was very intrigued by this fact so I was sharing it with some friends, when they made me analyze it deeper. We provide 24 hour a day care with all meals to incarcerated people, while we only spend 7 hours a day on students with few amenities. If you break it down that way, we spend $1,125/hr on a person in jail, while we spend $1,242 on a student per hour. I bring this up, because later on in this chapter it discusses how we need to train students to be "discerning about media they consume and the advertising to which they are exposed." (Brighton, 114) When I first read the stats on page 103 I was shocked, but I didn't analyze it critically like the chapter later on says we need to train students to do. I find myself being very critical of some things I read (i.e. political articles) but then are less observant at other times, how can we teach constant critical thinking skills?

Creativity vs. Assessment

On the theme of assessment, what information is the data really giving us about our students? We know that students do not put forth their best effort on them as hard as we try. Honestly, are we putting our best effort forth? Summative assessment does not correlate with the middle school beliefs at all, the students have no control over what they are learning in preparing for these tests, and they rate very low on Bloom's taxonomy. I agree that there needs to be some consistency among schools and their curriculum, but this is not the way to do it. There is so much information that students learn that they will never be tested on but is far more influential to their learning. We need to take a look at our priorities. This generation of students who are getting over tested is losing precious creatvity. The developmental stage they are at has already lost some of their childhood imagination and creativity, why are we pushing more of it out?

Community and Curriculum

I have noticed throughout all the reading that one of the suggestions is to incorporate the community in many aspects of the middle school. There are always complaints of people who do not have children attending public school that they are paying too much for sub par results. We all feel burden by the testing that must be completed and when it the results are not satisfactory it is even more of an importance. How can we involve communities more with what we have in our curriculum? Service learning projects to help the community are an obvious answer but has anyone invited the community into your school to see what transpires over the course of a day? My elementary school use to do a "Tax Payer Appreciation Day" in April every year. We invited every resident of the town and showcased some top work from each grade as well as provided snacks and a tour. It normally was a big success, but because of testing obligations and financial restraints I think they have stopped.