Publishing Digitally: Sharing With Audiences Who Care

In a couple of weeks my sixth graders will begin their own Writer's Journey as they construct an original story using The Hero's Journey as a template for their writing.  

http://www.prosperityequation.com/images/self-identity1.jpg

Before we embark on that journey, I wanted the students to take some time to look at their writer's voice and how their unique voice came into being.  The initial idea for this study came from the book Parallel Curriculum Units for Language Arts, Grades 6-12.

I introduced the idea of writer's voice with a discussion of identity.  We started our investigation of voice with the following question:

• What is the relationship between identity and voice?

From that discussion we looked at how a writer's identity influences their voice.  Before we looked at the literature, I pre-assessed my students with the following questions:

•What are the parts of your identity that are constructed?

•What are the parts of your identity that are innate?

•Give an example of how your identity might change with a change in contexts.

There was a lot of confusion in the beginning about what is innate and constructed about our identities.  To help them understand the difference between innate and constructed we redefined the idea as "What is the difference between inheriting something and constructing something?"

Their understanding of innate and constructed identities became much deeper and interesting as students thought about their lives and the parts of their identity they inherited from their families (genetics and status) and the unique experiences that built their identities over time (broken arms, trips, competitions, pets).  Some of my classes even began to discuss their religious upbringing with some believing that religion is innate and others saying that it is constructed.  

With an understanding of innate and constructed identities, we started analyzing literature, beginning with a beautiful poem by George Ella Lyon titled "Where I'm From" As we read the poem we talked the parts of Lyon's life that were constructed and the parts that were innate. 

I then asked students to identify the part's of their lives that were constructed and the parts that were innate.  They listed 25 - 30 events or parts of their lives that were either constructed or innate.  I shared a few of my own stories about my identity to help get the ball rolling and to help the students feel more comfortable sharing personal memories and experiences.

Then the classes evaluated their lists, selecting the 10 -12 moments, events or things they felt had the biggest impact on their identity.  From there, we used Lyon's poem as a template to share that unique identity and voice.  Students did not have to use Lyon's poem as a template and could explore their own poetic structure.  But for many it was a nice scaffold to help them organize their thinking.

I knew from the beginning that the students needed to be able to share their poems beyond stapled copies to the wall.  The power of these poems lies in the connection family members can make to these children's lives.  How wonderful would it be to hear your child share their work?  How often does a grandmother or uncle or parent get to hear a child reading their work?  Especially an original work in which the student explores their identity and the most important moments that have constructed who they are.

I created a class account on audioboo.fm Audoboo is a free app that can be downloaded on most digital devices but also has an online recording feature.  This worked for my classroom because some of my students have their own devices that they can use to record but many students needed to use school provided technology. Audioboo allowed everyone to record their poems regardless of device.

After the poems were recorded, I was able to paste the embed code from their recording into my class web page built using Weebly 

After the poems were posted I sent out a group e-mail to my parents and received nothing but positive feedback about the poems and the recordings.  Here is a link to the page where the poems were posted:

http://www.mrsebek.com/where-im-from-poems.html

I hope you are able to have your students record and share some of their own writing this year.  Audioboo was an easy and quick way to extend my students writing to real audiences who cared about their work.

 

Tone and Mood in Literature - Moving Beyond Paragraphs

I slammed my hand down on the desk.

"What are you doing?" I bellowed.

Frozen terrified stares looked at me, to fellow classmates and back to me.  Shock swallowed their breath and turned every fiber of attention to me, the psychotic teacher, standing in the middle of the room.

I stood up, waited another moment and then asked, "How did my tone affect your mood?"

A collective sigh lifted the tension, numerous hands went to chests and a few "Oh my Gods" slipped into the growing murmur of relief.

That's how we started talking about the concept of tone and mood.  The key idea being that an author's tone can affect your mood.  Often times students confuse the two ideas because they are so closely related so I wanted a concrete, shared experience that we could all refer to if there was any confusion between tone and mood.

That was about two weeks ago.  The students still talk about my tone that day.  They laugh about it now, though I still notice a hint of nervousness in their chuckles.

Students in sixth grade have to analyze pieces of literature for the tone the author used in a particular piece of writing.  It is a skill that is often tested on our state assessment, as I am sure it is in other states.  Also, in seventh grade, students have to be able to create well written responses to prompts using text evidence to support their viewpoint.

This has been a difficult concept for me to teach in the past.  This year I mashed together a continuum of lessons that builds towards those ideas.  So far I am very happy with the results.  Of course it all started with a very concrete understanding of the difference between tone and mood, as explained above.

Analysis of Tone in Art

So I want to invite students into the analysis of tone and mood.  A great way to get started is with this lesson idea from byrdseed.com which introduces the students to the ideas of finding implicit and explicit details in art. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Portrait_of_Dr._Gachet.jpg

Students look at the portrait and talk about how Dr. Gachet is feeling.  His feeling, or the tone of the piece, is an implicit detail, the evidence to support that thinking are the explicit details.  The students often say that Dr. Gachet is sad in the above portrait.  The tone of the portrait is sadness.  That is an implicit detail.  Then the students have to find the explicit evidence to prove that he is sad:  his frown, the dark colors, the hand on his face, his droopy eyes.

When students are finished they can begin to compose a short paragraph to describe the tone of the painting.  The implicit detail is the topic sentence.  The explicit details are the supporting sentences.  Very structured, well-thought out and meets the goals of our state learning objectives.  But with my students I wanted to continue to go deeper with the idea and to also show them that a well written paragraph is not always the end all be all of our class.

Analysis of Tones in Videogames

Motivating students often comes form tying into their interests.  Looking at outstanding art has its place, students need to be exposed to the work of the master artists.  But looking at still pictures can only hold their attention for so long.  (I wrote about keeping students attention in this blog post last year) So the next level of tone analysis tapped into their love of videogames, it could also include movie trailers as well.

The lesson comes from edutopia.com and requires students to watch video game trailers and analyze the tone of the trailer.

Using what the students learned from analyzing art, they watch the videos two or three times, use their tone word list to identify a suitable tone (implicit detail) and then find three explicit details from the video to support their thinking.

The Limbo preview leaves much more of an impact on them than Little Big Planet 2.  Some students will begin to put their hands over their ears when the musical dissonance increases towards the middle of the clip.

There is a high level of engagement when students are watching these previews and it is easy for them to remember their writing lessons from Dr. Gachet:  implicit is the topic sentence and explicit is the supporting sentences.

Analysis of Tone in Literature

The next piece was to take the concepts of tone and analyze written work; at least that is what the state wants us to do.  

Until now the students had been practicing in their notebooks with me walking around, spot checking their work.  I wanted a  quick way to gather data on their writing without taking home 140 sheets of paper. 

Thank you Google Forms.  I created a form and embedded it on my class website.  The form begins with a quick review of the concept of tone.  Then students read a short paragraph and write a well-formatted paragraph explaining their perspective on the tone of the paragraph.

When the students submit their form I get a spreadsheet that looks like this:

Now I can quickly assess how my students are doing with the concepts of tone and explicit and implicit details.

But like I said earlier, I do not want well structured paragraph writing to be the highest pinnacle of academic achievement in my room.  So enter one last piece to the puzzle:  humumet.  A concept I discovered while reading a post from classroots.org

Students skim The Conch Bearer for passages that display obvious tones. Students identify the tone (implicit detail), and then identify words (explicit details) on the page that could be used to create a the tone. They circle these words and then use art to edit out all the other words on the page with a picture that matches the new tone and/or narrative.

Below are examples of some of the work done in my class. I think you should be able to infer the tone based on their art and the words they chose.

My students still need more practice with writing well structured paragraphs based on analysis of an author's tone.  But I can honestly say that my students this year have a much better grasp of the difference between tone and mood and how explicit details work to explain implicit details. 

I hope you give some of these ideas a try.  It's the best way to honor the people who created them in the first place.

Teaching Design Thinking: Week One is in the Books

Tina Seeling writes in her new book inGenius that we keep telling our students that they can always invent their future but we ignore the fact that the heart of invention is creativity.  We do not teach creativity in schools.  We are selling our students an empty promise.

This year I have the unique challenge and thrill of teaching seventh and eighth grade students about creativity and problem solving.  For almost a decade I have been coaching students for creative problem solving competitions for Destination Imagination and Future Problem Solving.  However this is the first time I have had to design a class around those principles.

Thankfully creative people are so open to sharing.  I am borrowing heavily from the Stanford d.school K-12 site and from numerous e-mails to the Texas A&M University Institute for Applied Creativity.

My challenge this week was to embed two fundamental tenets of the class:  the opportunity for innovation is everywhere and to be a great problem solver you have to look at the challenge from different perspectives.

To begin our discussion on perspectives I used the Marshmallow Challenge.  I have used this challenge in class for a couple of years for a break away from the routine of school.  This year I used it to give the class a shared experience on the importance of perspective in problem solving.

I had eight groups of children attempt the challenge on Thursday, only three groups had a standing structure at the end of the eighteen minute time limit.  The lesson:  You forgot about the marshmallow.

The key to solving the challenge is to start with the marshmallow and build the structure from there.  The marshmallow is a metaphor for the people we are solving problems for - we can never forget to take their perspective into account when designing solutions to their problems.

We did the exact same challenge on Friday and seven of the eight groups had standing structures with the tallest being 24.5 inches.  They started with the marshmallow and worked their way down.

For homework this week the class had to post their reflections on the first week of class.  Here are their thoughts on the impact of the marshmallow challenge:

I learned that when solving problems, you should always be thinking about the person you're solving them for. 
Alice

In this past week I have learned to work better with others and--in the case of the marshmallow challenge--"always put the customer on top" (haha).
Ross

I learned that you should always be open minded and make several prototypes before the ta-da moment.
Tomas

Also I learned that everything we build has a marshmallow, all designs and innovations should cater to the customer, and that design plans should include several prototypes.
Saarang

We learned that good design has to go through many prototypes before reaching the final product, and that throughout the designing process the customer must always be kept in mind.
Michael

As the year goes on we will keep building on these concepts:  the world is ripe for innovation, fail fast and fail often and most importantly never forget the marshmallow.

Tech Integration - An Easy First Step

This a great post by Bill Ferriter a sixth grade ELA teacher from North Carolina. He posts a sentiment I have long agreed with:  technology has promised to fix education for 25 years and it has yet to do so. The only thing that will is great teaching.

What kids want is to be social, to share and to work together - is that really any surprise?  That is how we are hard wired to survive, that's how humanity evolved, in tribes - live together or die alone.

So the biggest tech improvement I think any teacher can make this year is the most basic:  move the desks. Allow conversation, allow collaboration. Then once you get to know the students, add in the technology that would best fit their needs; not the other way around.

My principal shared our state testing results earlier this week.  If my districts annual state test scores showed anything it's what we already know:  the kids are dying alone. Moving the desks together and allowing conversation isn't going to lower our scores.

When I am evaluated this school year on tech integration in my classroom I hope my evaluator takes into account that I integrate technology everyday. I leverage the power of sharing and communicating; our species greatest innovation.

Leveraging Hope

There is one universal constant that will hold true for as long as we continue to use the current model of education:  there is no day of school like the first day of school.

Is it because of the weird schedule and near fanaticism to get our first day attendance right?  Is it chemical induced euphoria created by the scent of all the new markers? Is it the awe inspired by perfect rows of unused crayons? Flat, pristine paper?  Is it the extra long lunches that give teachers just a few more minutes to catch their breath?  Is it the secret joy the teachers hold knowing the parents have homework filling out all the forms and cards? Is it because they only job of a school on the first day is to get them in, get them fed, get them home?

All those are good reasons why the first day is so abstractly different than any other day of the year.  But, what really makes the first day special is the one thing we can't see:  hope.

Every human being who walks into a school building on the first day of school is hopeful.  The slate has been wiped clean, we have all been given a fresh start.  We hope that we can be better teachers, better parents, better students, better administrators, better ____________________.

Our challenge, as communities, is to keep the hope alive in the building as long as possible.  How do we leverage hope?

It always starts with building relationships, communicating, talking to others, walking a mile in their shoes, seeing the world through their eyes, empathy, perspective, taking a different POV.

I read a great blog post by seventh grade history teacher Elizabeth Miller about how she is connecting with students on the first day of school.  Read her post, it's brilliant.  I already plan to steal parts of it.

The key to Elizabeth's idea and what I have done in my classroom, which I will share in a moment, is that the students have a chance to communicate.  We keep forgetting, as a society and a system, that human beings are meaning makers.  And we make meaning in a tribal setting.  Banding together, working together, surviving together is hard wired into our DNA.  You remember the old adage:  live together, die alone.  It's the same with school.  Students want to share, to talk, to collaborate and technology gives us one platform to live together.  Unfortunately we have created too many classrooms where students are dying alone; trapped in their own development.

In order to build on my students sense of hope I did three things:

• introduced myself to my students
• asked them to tell me about themselves
• sent a "letter of welcome" to each of their homes

The Introduction

Transitioning from elementary school to middle school is a big deal!  It is.  So I began my introduction with where I was 30 years ago, as a sixth grader in the early eighties and built from there.  Before a student ever steps foot in my class they know me.  Maybe, just maybe I have made them a little more hopeful about the upcoming school year.

The Survey

I created a Google Form and posted it on my website www.mrsebek.com  You are more than welcome to borrow the questions and format. I already have about 20 responses and I will share some patterns I am already noticing in a later blog. But I am very excited to be able to have something to talk to the students about, to build a connection with them, to build hope.

Letter of Welcome
In my district we use Skyward (I often call it Skynet in reference to the Terminator movies) as our online grade book. Skyward has many nice features but one I appreciate is the ability to e-mail all of my students parents at one time. Very convenient. So my letter of welcome was sent out yesterday, with a link to my website and a few words of hope and excitement about the upcoming year.

Hope. How do we keep it alive? How do we leverage it build communities and schools that succeed? I think it begins with building a community in your classroom. Connect to your students, allow them to connect with others and then build from there.

No day is as hopeful as the first day, maybe we can change that.

Light Up Imaginations

In 1941 the U.S. Air Force had a problem.  A problem that any Air Force did not need during a time of world wide combat escalation.  A large proportion of their aircrew trainees were not graduating, they could not pass their performance tests.  You want to talk about high stakes testing...scantrons and number two pencils have nothing on a young man behind the stick of a high powered plane taxiing down the runway.  The least of his problems is making dark neat marks inside the circle.

Enter JP Guilford, a psychology professor from the University of Southern California.  Guilford had been studying the diversity of individual differences in intelligence; he noticed that intelligence was a combination of multiple abilities.  Taking this into account, and based on his research of intelligence testing, he worked with Air Force on the development of a new idea: there were eight specific cognitive abilities that were needed to fly an airplane not just one  (Guilford went on to identify 180 different factors in determining ones level of cleverness).

The Air Force needed to be more divergent in their training.

I think we forget  sometimes about looking for divergent thinking in school.  We are victims of our own schooling, trained for years to play the game of "what does the teacher want?"  But like the trainers in the Air Force 70 years ago, we can remember to teach for more than just one right answer.

Educational writer and consultant Ian Gilbert shares some ideas in his book Why Do I Need A Teacher When I Have Google? 

Give students a list of words like the one below (which, like Ian Gilbert in his book, I just made up):

dog
earphones
pencil

The convergent teacher asks:  Which of these does not belong?  Simple. The dog because it is living and the other two are non-living.  But Gilbert, a self-proclaimed divergent thinker, pushes his students to think in new directions.

Why is each one the odd one out?
Why are all of them the odd one out?  Why are none of them the odd one out?
If you were to continue this sequence, what would be the fourth item added to the list and why?

Now transfer the list to a subject you teach.  Say science:

Why is your science lesson like a dog or earphones or a pencil?
What would you get if you combined all three together?

Social Studies:
Why should all three of these be legal forms of tender in Washington D.C.?
How would the world change if all three were banned from the United States?

The lesson from Guilford and his time with the US Air Force is that none of these divergent questions is any better than the other.  The charge to us as teachers is do we give equal footing to divergent answers in our classroom?  Do we light up imaginations with possibilites or dim them with right or wrong answers?

Design Thinking for Educators: My Reflections on Week 1

I just finished my first week in the Design Thinking for Educators Workshop sponsored by edutopia, IDEO and Riverdale County Schools.

This week we had to redesign the morning commute of someone we knew.  The project required us to interview the person to "...learn about how they feel, what they wish for, what gets in their way." Our job was to ask great questions, listen and learn. And to never be afraid to ask "Why?"

My user initially mentioned being tired in the morning and then the discussion drifted over to stress because of all the road construction going on in front of her school.

But the stress wasn't so much about the traffic but the feeling of having so much to do before her students arrived in the morning; she didn't have enough time to feel prepared for the day.  It's hard for her to stay late after school because she has three children of her own and they are involved in activities that she wants to be a part of.

So her biggest need was to lower her stress level by being prepared for the day. So that no matter what happens at home or during the commute, she is prepared for her day and happy to see the students walk in the door.

After interviewing her for about ten minutes I brainstormed six different ideas. Then, and this is a really cool part of the whole process, I went back to her with my ideas to get more feedback and understanding to what she really needed.

She looked over all of my ideas and found that she liked the combination of two separate ideas: an automated teaching assistant and a smartphone app.

She liked the idea of the AITA (Automated Integrated Teaching Assistant) managing the day to day shuffle of papers, copies and printing through a mobile app.  

AITA will save teachers many trips to the copy room and stressful mornings putting together last minute lesson plans for subs or even themselves.  Never again be frustrated by a colleague jamming the printer again!

These are the areas that seem to suck up the most time and lead to the biggest source of stress.  The mobile app feature was her idea when she thought how she could start AITA working on a project on her way in to work so that the copies or printing was done before she ever walked in the door.

Design thinking is much more than just solving problems.  The heart of the idea is seeing the world through other peoples eyes and understanding that opportunities for innovation are all around us - we just have to look.  That is, look with a different perspective.

What great life skills for students:  in one hour I had to understand another person's perspective, see the world through their eyes, design solutions with them in mind and then get their feedback to design the absolute best solution.  

It is not too late to take part in this great five week course that is free.  

Week 1: Design Thinking Mini-Challenge - Design Thinking for Educators:

The course is well set up and utilizes all the best parts of social media:  sharing and inspiring. It changes the focus of the learning when you know your work and feedback is going to be shared among a community of creators and problem solvers. No longer can you hide in the corner; you are accountable and others will be paying attention.