Why I Like the Netbooks

We are three months into our netbook pilot. As with any tool, you need to exercise your professional judgement. I can see some teachers opting to pull them out at any opportunity with a variety of activities that don't necessarily further students' understanding of concepts, or don't utilize the tool effectively. An example of that might be simply sending kids to a website (that is technology use right?!). That isn't the way that I have, or plan, to use the netbooks.

What I'm really excited about is the ability to go paperless. I've mentioned this previously here. If you follow #edchat on twitter you'll often see mentions of dropboxes, and other paperless tools. We have those in district, cutting out the need for many outside tools or sites. On Friday I opted to have the kiddos do a current events summary of an article on the space shuttle Endeavour (by the way, 2nd to last shuttle launch from NASA). After firing up the netbooks, the kids went to our class wiki to find the article. They opened the article, and most read it on the netbook. Since I had it in Word instead of as a PDF, they were able to highlight information right on the screen (some opted to print, but that was about 10-15% of the kids; I know you could highlight in a PDF assuming you have Acrobat... we just have Reader). Once they finished reading they started typing their summaries, saving them to their network drive. After that they dropped it into a folder in our class dropbox, which makes grading a snap.

Next year I'll likely do two different lessons on finding main ideas. The first will involve printing an article (integrating the netbooks, adding a printer as well- which can be a pain!) and highlighting or underlining on the page. We'll look at the underlined work to see if it encapsulates the article, as well as taking the time to debate which information is essential to understanding the article. The second lesson will be entirely paperless. Once we've worked on the skill, we'll integrate technology through practicing highlighting information (and possibly using the strikethrough tool). I see the possibilities, but also the glaring need to ensure they have success as readers and tech savvy students.

Monitor and Adjust

We do a ton of summary writing. Students have a chance to chose articles from a variety of news sources, identify main/supporting details, and then put it together in a short summary. I emphasize the word short, although it has been a struggle getting there. Condensing and filtering information is a difficult skill, and my kids have struggled striking the balance between too much and too little (at least at times).

What do you do? Last year I would have said that I would do some individual instruction, or whole group instruction. This year I've been going through their weekly current events, identifying gaps and issues, then pulling kids in small groups within their rotation. Instead of giving 6-7 kids the lesson again in an individual manner, I can do a small group or 2. Be direct in what is missing, and areas where they need to improve and then let them make necessary changes.

Since we revisited summary writing today, I'll be interested to see the quality of work that is turned in tomorrow. Just part of the process of monitoring student work, and adjusting instruction to help them grow.

I Like to Laugh

That isn't true. I love to laugh, and would laugh all day long if I could. The past few weeks have been rather hectic. After our midwinter break that spanned the end of one week and the beginning of the next, everything has been in overdrive. School has seemed to have everything coming at once, from budget talk to state tests to student share night. Added onto that was buying a house (doing all of the many things that go with that) and trying to rehab from a pulled quad (2 times). But all the while I've found some funny things to laugh about...

• Crazy hat day was yesterday, and one of my kiddos wore a cowboy/girl hat. She came running back from recess and gave a "yeee-haww" with her arm doing the lasso. It was quite funny, and she cracks me up.
• The comparison of the Sign of the Beaver to camping. I'm not sure that Matt, in the 1700's, was going to be heading to the General Store when he ran out of molasses, but perhaps if he were camping...
• I laughed when I saw that the focus of a new school was on technology. Personally, I believe my district is a fairly tech heavy district. I also know that I use technology A LOT. But I don't think either of us says "we are focusing on technology." Instead the focus is on great instruction that will help students grow as learners. Can technology help with that? Absolutely. My kids are using the Internet to find/read articles for current events. They are researching to add information to our class wiki. They are creating presentations and Photostory work to go with reading and writing they have done. We create audio versions of work using Audacity, and we do all sorts of things. But those are all extensions of the instruction I already provide. Could I provide great instruction without technology? Yes. But it would be an adjustment. I always wonder, how will technology make this lesson better? If it won't, then it isn't worth using at that time.
• "Wait a second, you mean I need to summarize all that I read (20 pages) by the end of the week?" Yes, yes you do.

Short Week, Deep Breath

My school district has a funky midwinter break. Instead of President's Day week off, we have the Thursday and Friday before Pres. Day off. We then get the holiday off, and are back at it on Tuesday. As a whole, I'm excited for the break. I've got lots to do, and some sleep to catch up on.

We got a bunch done during the short week, but yet didn't make a dent in the content that needs to be covered. Why the running in place? Well because of our current events summaries. Backing up to the Super Bowl, I sat down to read 60 summaries of news events written by my kids (52-3 if you subtract kids who forgot their articles). The summaries just weren't of the quality that the group can produce. In fact, the words I would use to describe the effort would be: thoughtless and lazy.

Each rotation got a chance to hear some of the student work, from sentences that don't make sense to seeing sight words misspelled (ie precedent oboma, priuseos). They also heard work that was significantly over grade level, ie plagiarized ("Hey that sounds like the author of my article!"). I did so carefully, not naming names and allowing kids to keep their dignity. But you can bet that everyone was embarrassed with the quality of work to some degree. Usually I'll let a misspelling or an awkward sentence slide, but the number of careless errors littering the papers was alarming (lacking periods, no capitalization, fragments, misspelling names from the title, etc).

So we re-did them. I re-taught how to find a main idea, how to craft a main idea into a sentence that makes sense, as well as how to put it all together. What was the result? Significantly improved summaries. I told them I'd take the higher of the two scores, and discard the other as that would likely confuse them more than help them. The combination of high expectations for student work, and explicit reteaching made the time useful for everyone.

Summarize This! (redux)

Oh how things can go wrong in an instant. The first rotation (of 3) went sideways very quickly. I spent too much time finishing a reading comprehension sheet from the day before, and reviewing whole group (with kids talking in groups to confirm their responses- since all had read the piece, and most were 3/4 done or further). The initial time had the kiddos sitting too long, and I ended up doing too much talking thereafter as I was modeling how to summarize.

Do they know how to summarize? Well they have been asked to summarize before, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they all know how to summarize. My goal was to be intentional in my modeling, engage then engage them through helping me put the parts of my summary together, and release them into independent practice on a chapter summary. Oy vey!

After talking too long the kids seemed lethargic. Most wrote a few sentences, but many were leading with supporting details and tossing in the kitchen sink. While we had talked (student-generated) about a summary being "only the main ideas, and details to support them," there were plenty of summaries that had gone askew.

How do I fix it? Well by providing more scaffolding this first time around. Some will need an in-between step from notes to summary. They will need an organizational tool/framework that will then allow them to move more seamlessly into writing. In this case, I will have a few photocopied for those that struggle transferring board-paper. Otherwise I will have the structure in Word on the projector (or in a flipchart), and they can copy that onto notebook paper (save some copies) and staple that to go with their summary. Additionally I am going to have them peer review their summaries- does it include a topic sentence? does it have supporting details? are the main ideas from the chapter included? is the writing clear to the reader? We'll see if this helps us along.

Summarize This! (Pre-Lesson)

We are wrapping up the first part of our first unit. We've been working on Geography, as it will help us moving forward in learning about American history and settlement. Later this week, and next, we'll start some work in the basal reader on Earthquakes and volcanoes (reading comprehension- sequence of events, main ideas). With each day I'm gaining a greater sense of how the puzzle fits together.

Tomorrow we will be creating some chapter summaries. Summaries are difficult to explain, let alone teach. But I am going to give it a whirl with some help from ReadWriteThink. We've done so much reading with tons of vocabulary that I worry it can all start to look like googly-glop (official terminology). What is most important? Well I am going to model creating a summary using a first person account of their western journey, which we read today. I'll then start to guide them into the chapter, talking about the biggest idea and moving from there (like a fishbone essentially- a core with spines coming off).

All of this will be a good review for an assessment we'll have on Thursday (content, not summary). From the summaries I'll be able to tell where folks are at with their writing, and where some are struggling as far as main idea identification.