Ahead But Behind

I'm in the midst of reading "Simon Bloom the Gravity Keeper." In it, the character becomes the "keeper" of the Teacher's Manuel for Physics. He essentially is able to control the physics of the world around him. At one point Simon asks his dad about the Theory of Relativity, to which his dad replies about how every object exists in time and space, but it is all relative (and continues onward).

That helped me put my teaching into context (somewhat). We're nowhere near where we were last year as far as content. I think by now we were entering into the colonies, and we haven't even compared specific explorers yet. That being said, I feel like we have actually covered more and practiced a wider variety of reading skills. I'm not sure that my level of instruction, or assessment, was where it is currently (not to mention the fact that it still needs to improve). While we are behind with respect to content, we are ahead with respect to our ability as readers. Some might see that negatively because of the vast amount that needs to be covered. That, of course, is all relative.

We'll likely do less with explorers the next 10 days. We have a text with a wide variety of information about 9 different explorers. From there we'll also branch out to find other points of view. We'll work on questioning, comparing/contrasting, and evaluating. The ultimate takeaway is the fact that explorers had a variety of impacts (effects) because of their exploring- and not all of them are good. For every discovery there is making native people slaves, or stealing their land. It is a far cry from the mixed interaction they experienced last year as part of the Oregon Trail ("we traded with the native people!").

Novel Study is Coming!

Who is excited about novel study? I am! I am! I'm ready to roll it out next week. We'll do some book selection on Friday and Monday, followed by starting our reading on Tuesday. My kids, for the most part, enjoy reading. Bringing out some different novels will allow me to guide them through some work on characters, setting, plot, and problem/solution. It will also give me a chance to see how they respond to open ended questions where they need to infer/predict/evaluate/analyze and use text evidence in support of the response.

Novel study does divide up my reading time a little bit. Instead of a full 60 minute block of time, kids will read for 15-20 minutes. After that they'll transition into the social studies work. I need to acquire a few copies of books we'll be using. The books we'll be using are...

• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Lightning Thief
• Frindle
• Letters From Rifka
• Rules

More to come!

Informing Instruction

We had a short assessment on Friday. The purpose was two-fold: first to see if the big ideas of why Europeans explored was catching on, and the second was to see if we were reading for smaller details (or merely taking in big picture stuff). The results were really interesting. Even though I can have conversations until I am blue in the face, some students will still rely on prior knowledge to answer questions. We can talk about how gold was used wanted by home countries because of its value as currency (and building up armies etc). Those are details from our text. But when we take the assessment the response is: "it was used for trade" or "it was used to buy stuff." The former is prior knowledge from 4th Grade and experience on the Oregon Trail (Social Studies is Native Americans, particularly those of the Northwest). The latter is vague, still prior knowledge, or possibly the connection of currency to spending. Neither work since they have little to do with the reading we did, and aren't really accurate in the 1400's.

In the big picture, we need to do some more thinking about how the explorers interacting with the native people (often but not always disease, slaves, acrimonious, etc). Those will come in the next section when we start comparing specific explorers, and looking at what it was that they did. But for now I know that we need some work re-reading. We'll do some work looking at questions for keywords, then reading to find particular pieces of information. After some demo/guided work, we'll work on it. The questions will work from minor details to thinking about that information in the bigger picture.

Is it a wholesale issue? Not necessarily. But we'll all work on it in order to slow down, be specific and clear in our responses, and hopefully make some improvement.

Swim, Swim, SWIM!

I'll admit that I am treading water right now. I'm trying to swim, but the water is occasionally going over my eyes and ears. In the past 2 weeks I've graded 64 common district assessments for reading- both literary and informational. Once I got into a groove with those, the scoring/grading went far better. Now I have 64 writing assessments to go through, along with a smattering of other items (current events, book projects, etc). Oh, and grades are due Wednesday!

I found the reading assessments to be most interesting. It is a combination of multiple choice and open response where during and after reading. Two of my groups did well, really hurdling the assessment with ease. The other group had a few issues that I was caught off guard by- responses that just didn't match all of the work they have done this year. That led me to wonder whether the assessment was accurate, or whether there might be other factors. Turns out that they had been doing another assessment in an earlier content area. While I was aware of it, I didn't figure that the assessment earlier in the day would have a drastic impact. That being said, I elected to have a few of them retake the assessment (same assessment- they hadn't seen answers yet). The result was that virtually all performed as they had throughout the year, some perfect or near perfect.

And still I continue to swim...

Favorite Books Read in 2010

I read quite a few kids books during 2010. I really picked up steam during the summer, and carried that through into the fall/winter. Below are so of my favorites, all of which fit into the intermediate reader category....

1. Percy Jackson series- I loved the first 2 books, mildly enjoyed the second 2 books, and loved the final book. The Last Olympian was really entertaining, and all of the books were fast paced. Consequently they have been really popular in my classroom.
2. Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation- I really enjoyed this book. The themes of accepting others, and believing you can do anything were bright and shining. Plus there was a huge fantasy/comic book feel to it.
3. The I,Q Series- Roland Smith did a fantastic job with the first two books in this series. He was able to mesh current events (re: terrorism & surveillance) with kids in fast paced stories. I'm also a political science geek, so this was right up my alley.
4. Mysterious Benedict Society #3- I enjoyed the whole series, but read the 3rd book at the start of 2010. I enjoyed finding out new details about each of the characters, and finding out how Mr. Benedict would thwart his brother's sinister plans.
5. When You Reach Me- Rebecca Stead did a fantastic job putting this book together. It is relatively short, but takes a little while to really understand the plot.
6. The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg- Historical fiction written around the time of the civil war. Homer goes on an adventure to save his brother who has been sold into the civil war by an angry/worthless uncle. Funny yet believable.

google forms

I have moved into the digital age. I've now got a smartphone, and with that I'm far more able to check twitter. Typically I will stumble across something that might be interesting or promising and star it for later viewing (like when I am at my laptop!). This morning I stumbled across a re-tweet from Web20classroom, someone who passes along a plethora of stuff on a daily basis. The post was in regards to a google doc someone had created about using Google Forms in the classroom.

I hadn't even thought about using Google Forms. In fact, I'll confess that I'd never used Google Forms before. But I messed around with it this morning, and am considering using it with a small test group of students in the coming weeks. To the left you'll see an image of a small test form I created. I wanted to see the mechanics of the process... and here is my understanding.

• Start by creating a form through Google Docs.
• You toy around with the questions you want your kids to fill out or respond to.
• You can make the questions required or optional.
• Then you link it to a website (perhaps a class website or wiki- I'll likely do both, duplicity is a good thing). You can email it to your users also, but I am not sure that I'll do that as of yet.
• Then you get to the best part... once the kids go online to type in their responses, they submit it... populating a Google Docs spreadsheet for you! How great! Instead of the paper trail, you've now got it all in one place. I can then email feedback if you wanted to go that route.

How do I envision using it? I'll likely use it for my weekly Fact/Question/Response sheets during our novel study. I might also use it for my end of year reading/literacy surveys. I'll start by using a test group of 5-10 kids, some from each of my rotation groups. Then I'll likely use it as an option- if you want the paper version you can use it, otherwise go the online version (that way I don't have the issue of student access which is inevitable, even though it is far from the majority for me). I'm excited. A new idea to test out.