Give me liberty...

Like last year, we are doing speeches for the loyalist and patriot sides of the American revolution. It was good fun last year, integrating persuasive writing with history content. We taped them and kids loved them.

This year we just kicked it off. Kids were psyched to start. I randomly generate which side they are on- odds/evens for each side and random.org for the number generator. They then read about people on each side, paying special notice to the characteristics of those people and their reasoning behind their point of view. It was interesting to hear kids talk about the points of view, particularly as their perspective changed while reading. "I thought it would be good to be rich and protected, but these guys are mean. They just sound like they are protecting themselves" one said about the loyalists.

The notion of seeing many perspectives was a pipe dream at the start of the year. Now it is realized, or something like it.

Sub plans for yourself

I'm in the midst of prepping for a short leave of two weeks (possibly less). My wife and I are expecting out first child which is incredibly exciting. Simultaneously I am incredibly nervous about leaving my classroom. The only time I've had a substitute is when I was a new teacher visiting other mentor teacher classrooms. Otherwise, 1 day with a sub? No more than 2.

I love my grade level and want the best for my kids. Just doing worksheets or busy work is unacceptable- as it always should be! So how do you make sure the sub helps your kids get to where you want? That is the big $1,000 question.

My plans have my objectives and have an overall layout. I've broken down tasks that I might have kids do seamlessly. Instead I've built in extensions to keep kids moving and interested. Our work is with the colonies, so they'll do some additional research beyond the textbook in graphing population growth among other things.

The irony in this is that the leave was to start last week. Instead I've been using the plans. It helps me see where my planning needs some work, and how I could do things differently.

No Way He Makes It...

My kids are pretty good at making predictions. I think it is a skill that many kids become fairly adept at, largely because they do so on a daily basis. The real trouble comes in supporting our predictions with evidence. We've gone over this process before. It goes something like this...

Me: Ok, so we've established the problem to be that he is taking a shot from half court to win a million dollars. What do you think will happen?

Student: Well he makes it obviously.

Me: Fantastic! He makes the shot, he wins the million dollars. What makes you think that? It is a long distance shot.

Student: Well, all kids stories end happily.

Right! I forgot! Most kids stories to that point tend to end relatively happily. Then it becomes a matter of teasing out the other details... he wasn't good until he got a coach. He really wants to make it, and he is listening to his coach... often coaches make you better, hence you'll be more likely to make it than before!

If you've read the blog before, I am a fan of Dan Meyer's WCYDWT (what can you do with this). The idea is to take banal problems, and bring them to life using the "technology that is ubiquitous." Often problems lack relevance or provide too much information, eliminating the need for creative problem solving. He uses this for math, but I'm going to use it to illustrate predictions in reading and how to write those out with evidence. 

We are going to watch the final 10.8 seconds of the 2008 National Championship Game with the title of the video out of sight (Kansas vs. Memphis.. linked above). We'll start with what information we already have: 2 point game, guy from the leading team at the foul line about to shoot 2 shots. What are the possible outcomes of this situation? He could make both, miss both, or make 1 of 2. Now what information might you need to make a prediction? We'll look at how he has done on the season, and how he has done in this game. From there we'll make some guesses.

After that we'll watch until 4 seconds to go. The 3 point shot is about to go off. We'll repeat the process. What could happen? What information do you need? We're dealing with real life, not simply a kids book. In this case the statistics (if looked at longitudinally) actually lead towards the actual result, the making of the 3 point shot. He had been awful to that point, yet making the 3 pointer would bring he really close to his average, something they have worked on before. It doesn't matter what the prediction is, as long as they reference the evidence leading in that direction... we're going beyond "Well, I just think so."

Where does it go from there? We then apply that to modified passages on 3 settlements- Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth. They don't include the last 2-3 paragraphs that tell how it ended for the settlement (and few have the background knowledge to know the outcome). They'll make predictions, support it with evidence, and rank each from most to least likely to be successful. We'll post them on our online discussion board, and have a virtual (as well as in-class) debate about success. I'm excited for it.

Ant Farm

While we aren't getting an ant farm for the classroom, we are starting to read about the colonies. I'm particularly excited about it because of how I am planning to integrate technology. Previously I had kids read about 8 different explorers then compare them, and present a "Best Explorer" project. The project was done entirely paperless, and it worked out very well (albeit a little long because of snow). The products that the kids made were great, accomplishing the objective of comparing and contrasting explorers based on particularly information areas (background, motives, impact on native people). Kids also, for the most part, did a nice job making clear evaluations of who was best and why. Those that didn't were largely mired in presenting information and not connecting the dots in their presentation (not particularly egregious).

Where everything steps into high gear is with the colonies project. This will not be entirely paperless, but we'll cut back on the paper use quite a bit. My objective is for kids to analyze information describing the colonies. Working in reverse, I'll be assessing them two-fold:

1) by looking at a group (2 people to maximize participation) PhotoStory product advertising one of the colonies, and persuading people to live there (*assuming you can get in your time machine and go back to the 1600-1700's).
2) by looking at a short paragraph written independently explaining why someone would want to live in one of the other colonies (not the one they did in part one).

Assessment part one feeds into part two. They get a chance to work together in analyzing a colony in part one, which will be a more formal check for understanding. Part two allows for the kids to stand alone. We'll use the Photostory presentations as a jigsaw type of activity, which will also shorten the overall length that they need to read. Since Photostory is on each of the netbooks, I am pretty excited about how this should take off. Now I just need to create the storyboard for them to use!

Looking Back at Assessment

I spent 2 hours in my classroom today. I was filing some student work, hanging some things on my bulletin board, and downloading my social studies assessments. I've grouped a few of the chapters together, and have clear understandings I want my kids to have. The next logical question is, how are you going to assess your kids?

Last year I think I blindly looked at the assessments. I knew they existed, and used them in full or totally changed them to fit my teaching. Even more interesting is that I only casually looked at the assessment prior to my instruction. While it worked, it really wasn't my best practice. Saying that a question "is really dumb" after the fact doesn't really help you direct your instruction. Instead you craft an assessment to meet your instruction, which is ridiculously backwards not to mention short-sighted.

What am I doing now? Looking at the questions that the textbook has for assessment for the three chapters I am molding together. From there I am deciding what fits with our reading goals, as well as the big social studies understandings the kids need to walk away with. The questions that are simple recall of knowledge get dropped, and others are potentially crafted. More importantly I have the kids using the book during the assessment- using it as the text that kids will draw conclusions, evaluate information, etc (reading skills we are practicing). Huge change from a year ago- thankfully!

The Reading-Writing Connection

I wish that I had a Reader's Workshop. I do, in some respects, with my homeroom kids. But I wish I was able to implement it with the remainder of my kids. Why? Because I think it is a fantastic way to teach reading. In the workshop you provide mini-lessons geared towards the needs of your kiddos, from which you are able to individually monitor as needed. You can also use reader's notebooks to track the thinking of your students as they employ the strategies you've taught.

My reading instruction is currently heavily dependent on writing. Why? Writing is my main method of assessing their comprehension. In some ways this is great. It gets them actively engaged in processing the information they are reading. Additionally I find that writing is a way that forces them to fully communicate their thinking, something they might not otherwise do.

The main pitfall is that it is time consuming. Using writing also requires that kids are able to write in some capacity. I've fallen into this mode where I have kids writing a bit too much, instead of using other methods of assessing their comprehension. Right now we are taking information from three different colonies and describing them as though we were there. They need to use information from their FQR (fact/question/response) sheet to help them in their writing. But instead of going deeper with the reading, we get bogged down in the writing. Thankfully I have reading going home on a near nightly basis.

Pushing Ahead

We had our assessment on explorers today. I coarsely looked through them, but was fairly pleased with the result. The questions that were missed tended to be those that required some close reading of the question (exp: "where did Columbus BELIEVE he reached?") or the text (religious beliefs). I haven't even thought about the writing yet, but I'm hopeful.

Coming up next we are traveling to the early colonies. What is a colony? What was colonial life like? I sat down and mapped out my outcomes for the unit. What I need to look at is the list of reading gle's I want to hit, and how I am going to accomplish that. Comparing and contrasting will be one of the main things, as the various colonies are detailed in the text. Since we've done that once, I'll be excited to see the next round come a bit easier.