Ruth’s Ruckus2

I first became aware of Dr. Don Leu’s work at the VSRA conference about 4 years ago.  Someone dragged me to the General Session and said they thought that I would enjoy the speaker.  I was skeptical, but pleasantly surprised.  So when I saw that he was featured for this conference, I was determined to go to one of his sessions.  During this session, Dr. Leu gave 15 ideas on how to work on online reading comprehension.  This was a great reminder, as some of the ideas were too forward thinking for many of us the last time that he came.  I certainly wasn’t ready to go back and help teachers integrate some of them the last time…too many of the teachers weren’t ready.  Many still are not ready, but some of the ideas are part of our everyday practice at this point. You can find his handout herein electronic format so that you can use the links… LeuKeynoteHandout

Some ideas that I would like to try: 

• Using Internet workshop as an instructional model – I think 6th grade social studies would be perfect for this – Ms. Hamill,  Mrs. Mitchell, and Ms. Underwood – I would be happy to help you try this out.  I think given a structured problem and a simple worksheet would make the idea appealing to the kids and it wouldn’t take too long.
• Using search engine results to teach students to read to locate information – this would be great in both all of the intermediate grades.  Mrs. Hunter-Lowe, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Wesley – I would specifically like to work on this lesson with you.
• Internet Project – Send/Receive and international morning message of the day – I think fr 2nd and 3rd grade, this would be great if we set it up in the begining of the year and worked with schools that represented the countries that you study.  Mrs. Heil, Mrs. Bass, Ms. K. Brown; Mrs. Rowson, Ms. Bailey, Ms. Sheppard, Mr. T…we should all work get together and plan on doing this for next year.  I’m going to tag Luann Smith while I’m at it – this would be perfect for foreign language as well.

The first conference session that I went to was The Teacher Research Grant Award session.  If you know me, you know I love research – so this should be no surprise…the session was by a reading specialist in Montgomery County.  She had won the grant with her proposal on using podcasting to increase student reading fluency.  Her work was very interesting. She chose some 5th grade students who had issues with fluency and assigned them poems to read and practice.  She sow them twice a week after that once to listen to monitor their practice and once to record their podcasts. Podcasts were made available to others in the school using  iTunes.  At the end of 9 weeks she took some reading assessments to compare to the students’ reading prior to this intervention strategy.  She found that students had gained 20 wpm in fluency.  In addition the students had begun self correction which meant that the increased fluency had begun to effect their comprehension.  We had a very interesting discussion (there were only 7 of us in the session) about how this intervention might effect students if it were carried out for an entire year. 

The session led me to think about how we might adapt the process to work in my schools – or for that matter replicate it across several schools.  If one of the reading specialists would work with me, I think we could devise an intervention for both upper grade students as well as lower grade students.  If we chose maybe 5 students in the intermediate grades who needed fluency intervention, the reading specialist could assign them a poem (the following authors were recommended in the session: Paul Fleischman; Hoberman; Jack Prelutsky; and Bruce Lansky) and  work with them once a week to check that they were practicing.  Then I could work with the reading specialist and the students once a week to record the podcasts.  We can upload the podcaststo a blog (iTunes wouldn’t work for us) and then teachers in the lower grades could use the podcasts for a center ime activity along with the text that the students used for the podcast. We already have the microphone and software and probably some of the books…we just need some willing participants.  I guess I first thought of  Blount and Carey, but now that I am writing about this, I could see this working for some special ed teachers – namely Armstrong, Goolsby and Morris and even some speech applications , so I guess I’ll tag Moses as well…

One of the things on the list is to create a VoiceThread to be used as an educational resource.  I worked with the Spanish teacher, Mrs. LaPiana and a small group of students to create this Vociethread.  She wanted to use the voicethread to introduce the topic “Seasons” to her class.  I think the kids did great considering that they had no idea what they were saying.  She wrote the scripts out for them phonetically…

On February 10th the secondary TRTs and I held a work session for the Foreign Language teachers.  I was very happy about the work we were able to do assisting most teachers individually or on small groups.  I was able to work with April McKee from Churchland High School who was a really hard sell.  Mrs. McKee has fully participated in every session that we have done with  the foreign language folks, but she finds no use for technology in her classroom…I finally got her insterested in creating a review site for her students.  We put together a wiki very quickly, and then used a digital voice recorder to create two podcasts for her Spanish 1 students.

What does this have to do with my 21Things??  Using a digital voice recorder with a teacher is number 21 on the list.  Don’t get happy yet, I’m not done…I’ve skipped around a bit and still have 5 items to go…

I am just so excited!!  For the better part of two years I have been talking to my teachers about using the DE Streaming teacher tools.  I have explained - they are easy to set up, students will really be engaged, I promise you’ll like it – to no avail…until this week!

KUDOS to Mrs. Mitchell, Ms. Hammil, and Dr. Hunter-Lowe who all jumped in the deep end this week.  Mrs. Mitchell and Ms. Hammil have worked with me to create a DE Streaming assignment that requires research, note taking and videos to crete a Wordle on civil war leaders.  Dr. Hunter-Lowe used a DE Streaming writing prompt to help her students prepare for the writing test. 

The kids are all excited.  The teachers are pleased.  The level of technology implementation in  the building continues to rise.

I am forever getting great stuff from folks in my PLN.  Two websites that I was introduced to recently are interesting:  This first one – Kidblog looks promising and will need to be sanctioned by OITMS before anyone uses it.  The premise is the same as classblogmeister – simple safe blogging for students. Instructional blogging – like writing prompts, journal entries and literature circles.  The interface of the Kidblog platform is clean, slick and updated.  I haven’t played with it at all to see if it has the same features as the blogmeister.  We’ll have to see…

The other site is  Carrotsticks.com – it’s a math game.  It’s very cute and just for practice in basic math facts.  The only part that is free is the addition part, but I played and had fun.  “competed with two other kids” and even had a progress report and achievement certificate sent to “my parents” email address.  I think there may be some real use for this in a classroom setting.

I actually got the link for this from my supervisor, Karen Streeter.  It’s a fun exercise…I could think of several ways to use it in a classroom:

• Writing prompt
• animal adaptations
• voicethread prompt

Anyway, here’s my wild self…you can give it a try at http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

I’ve never tried Animoto before.  Heard lots of good things, but just couldn’t get around to it.  I just suggested a teacher try it, so I thought it might be a good idea to follow my own advice…tell me what you think.

This is a VETC09 session. Live Blogging…

Sharon McGlone, TRT at Booker T in Norfolk, is presenting.

Things that help:

• TRT gives overview to students
• TRT creates samples when planning with the teacher
• TRT co-teaches
• students practiced in diads
• Rubrics given to students before they were assessed
• Teacher training is key
• refer to podcasts as “audio files” to increase teacher comfort
• Students in groups worked best
• be careful about identifying students when putting their projects on the web
• sometimes you may need to use a file converter depending on your intended application

Using recordings to improve student oral language – Oral assessments every 4 weeks

Students were able to listen to themselves and classmates while creating their projects once files were posted on the web.  Students self selected conversational topics.

Students work is posted on the web as part of a student portfolio and for comparison of student fluency.  After students learned to record themselves – they did extensions.  Research a topic and then record themselves talking about it.  Students got excited.  Shy students were more apt to participate.  Additional project extensions include creating a slideshow (PPT, moviemaker, photo story) and using the student audio files with pictures.  Students can make wordles out of their speeches out of their topics.  Students wanted to reread or recreate their readings to help with the timing when using the file for projects.

Teachers were able to create files for students to listen to and practice and put them on the web.  Files are posted on their websites (linked from NPS site    http://ww2.nps.k12.va.us/education/components/sectionlist/default.php?sectiondetailid=34&category=168&).  Teachers can show students how to download the files to MP3 players (PPS kids could practice this in class if the teacher has borrowed the class set of MP3 players from OITMS).

Students could peer review each others work…

Got an email about a great new find from fellow TRT, Brian McKee. Sheppard Software is a great site with tons of interactive activities.  I’d love to help some of you try it out in the classroom…