Mar
2019

The Ghost of Lost Reflections

categories: Documenting Learning

Back in December, during Winter Break, I read Hacking Homework by Starr Sackstein and Connie Hamilton. I read it on my phone, thinking it would be great to highlight and screenshot as I read, to be able to go back and document what I learned from the book. I read it on the plane and ABSOLUTELY LOVED it. I must have taken about 30 screenshots, had tons of ideas floating through my head while I read, and I finished the book, cover to cover, in about 2 hours. It completely captivated me. So you’re probably wondering…where’s the blog post???

I never wrote it.

Time passed. School started. Life continued. I shared some of what I learned with my colleagues and launched an activity with my students based on some of what I read. But I never fully captured my learning because I consumed too much too quickly and didn’t properly document my thinking in the moment. You’d think I would learn from my own teaching, that a picture alone is not an authentic artifact of learning. I didn’t allow myself the time to sit with it, think about it, ask questions, and reflect why I even highlighted something in the first place.

Today I began my first Ampeduca course, Step by Step Guide: Learning About Blogging for your Students. Module 1 was an introduction with important terms, and then Module 2 started talking about things teachers will discover once they start reading blogs. I immediately took this screenshot, that teachers who read blog will get better at…

I LOVED this. I thought to myself: This is what excites me most about blogging with my students. How often do I hear my students say, “Mrs. Thompson, I’m done! I’ve written, I’ve edited, I’ve submitted, I’m done.” From now on, I would love to hear, “Mrs. Thompson, I’ve written, I’ve edited, I’ve shared, I’m ready to begin the conversation and get feedback!”

I was about to click the Mark as completed button, to move onto the next lesson. But then thought, WAIT! I have to capture this! Don’t make the same mistake twice! Start a blog post, save it as a draft, annotate the screenshot, DO SOMETHING! But don’t let the time pass with a screenshot sitting amongst millions of others in a folder waiting to become the ghost of lost reflections.

I guess one might say I’m learning 🙂


Mar
2019

A Great Problem to Have

categories: Documenting Learning

So much has been happening in my class, that it feels like I have TOO much to blog about for one post…that’s a really great problem to have, and definitely not one I ever would have imagined having when I started this journey. Just a few short months ago I worried I wouldn’t have enough to say!

So, let me fill you in…

This past week my students and I read Hana’s Suitcase by Karen Levine. We were reading this book in anticipation of Emil Sher‘s visit to our school, to speak to grades 5-8 about his experience of turning Hana’s Suitcase into a play.

I decided to try something a little different for this reading experience. Keeping Sketchnoting Tip #3 in mind, I asked my students to sketchnote as I read the story. What stood out to them? What images, words, symbols, etc. could be used to help capture the text in another way. Each time we read, the students ran to get their papers and pencils to draw. It comes as no surprise that no two sketchnotes were the same. Yet they all told their own story in their own way.

Emil’s visit was extremely captivating and he taught us many things playwrights need to consider when turning a book into a play (stay tuned…he has inspired some exciting new Language Arts activities based on this!)

After Emil’s presentation, my students and I sat together and decided we wanted to tweet about our experience. The first thing we did was look at the pictures we’d taken to see which one was the best representation of our learning. The students discussed the pros and cons of each image, and settled on this picture, since it showed Emil, the book, and a larger image of Hana’s suitcase.

Next, we discussed what needed to be included in our tweet. What did we want to tell people? Who should we mention? What hashtags should we use to amplify our post?

 

We made this list first, writing down all the suggestions they came up with. But we weren’t sure if all these people had Twitter, or if these hashtags would be helpful in amplifying our tweet.

 

 

 

After a quick search, we were able to discover which we could find and what should be included.

 

 

Through collaboration, we eventually tweeted this:

But our learning didn’t end there. This morning, when we checked on the activity of our tweet, we found that someone had retweeted our tweet….but who? and what did they say??

Thank goodness we know that “tools are our friends” 🙂 A quick Google Translate helped us know what this person’s Twitter name was, and what they had to say about our post…almost.

 

Now we needed to figure out if this person could add value to our learning.

Students made suggestions, and after exploring the Twitter page more, we discovered their website, Kokoro, which finally identified them as a Japanese Holocaust Resource Centre. The students are so excited to continue amplifying their learning by reaching out and seeing what other connections we can make through this centre.


Mar
2019

Teaching and Documenting and Personalizing..Oh My!

categories: Documenting Learning, Personalized Learning

As I’ve mentioned before, we often ask students to write a reflection on their work and encourage them to set goals for themselves. But do we actually teach them how to look at their work critically?

As I’ve been learning, documenting FOR learning can be really helpful for students to see and compare their work over time, to see where they have grown, and what patterns they’re able to uncover. Sometimes though, reflecting on one piece of work is important too, and it is a skill that needs to be taught.

As a Language Arts teacher, I believe strongly in providing useful, detailed feedback for my students. I’ve spent hours creating rubrics, provide comments and tips throughout their work, and hand them back in the hopes that they will read what I’ve written, take it to heart, and then apply it to their next writing piece. And what happens when I hand back a graded assignment?? The students flip right to their mark, ignore all the comments, and then tuck their work into the depths of their locker, where it turns into a crumpled mess, only to reemerge at the end of the school year when we clean out their lockers!

I tried a few new techniques on my last writing assignment. The first was inspired by Jennifer Gonzalez from The Cult Of Pedagogy, around the #SinglePointRubric. I created the rubric below for my grade 5 short story writing piece.

As you can see, I also added a link at the bottom of the document. This linked to a Google Form to scaffold the reflection process for the students. I got this idea from Emily Aierstok from Read It, Write It, Learn It, who also gave me the idea to highlight areas where editing needed to be done, rather than correct it myself.

With these three additions, the students had much more interaction with their work than they normally did in the past. They actually had to read my comments to understand why something was highlighted, they actually had to make edits to their work, putting into practice right away what they needed to work on, and they then had to think about their learning and then write about it to make their learning visible.

With this grading format and editing procedure, I was also able to personalize the feedback and goals for each student as well. While some need to work on sentence fluency and figurative language, others are still working towards properly punctuation and capitalizing their sentences. With the digital rubric, I was also able to link to tutorials I created for different skills on EdPuzzle.

So now what? At this point, all the work I’ve done with my students around documenting learning have been isolated lessons that relate to each other, but aren’t all living in one place. I think at this point in the year, the easiest thing would be to create Google Documents for each student, where they will add their work so far, and then continue to add as we do more work and practice around documenting their learning.

 


Feb
2019

Documenting Learning

categories: Documenting Learning

I have chosen to focus on documenting learning for my Principal Qualification Program practicum project.

There are a few goals I have set for myself in order to complete this project:

  1. Create a bank of lessons that teachers can use to begin documenting learning with their classes.
  2. Use these lessons myself with my own students to get them to begin documenting their own learning.
  3. Invite parents in at the end of the year in a mock ‘Student-led conference’/visiting day to get their feedback and thoughts compared to regular parent/teacher conferences

However, these last few weeks I’ve found myself in an interesting place, where I have failed to keep up with my own documentation of my documentation with students of their documentation of learning. Did you follow that?

Even though I started this project in January, this is my first time actually writing about it and documenting my progress. On February 26. 2 days shy of March. Blogging as a form of documentation is new for me. I recently read somewhere (I will link it when I find it) about the 21/90 rule – it takes 21 days to develop a habit, and 90 days to develop a lifestyle. I guess it makes sense then that I am going through some ups and downs of documenting my progress. Blogging as documentation has not yet become a habit for me. But it’s all part of the journey.

I believe it’s always better late than never, so here is a quick(ish) recap of what I’ve done so far.

I decided to begin with the topic of ‘Authentic Artifacts of Learning’ with my students. During a recent field trip, I took lots of photos of my students participating in various activities. Once we returned to school, instead of having students write a reflection of what they liked, what they didn’t like, or what they learned, I asked them to choose a picture or two (if one existed) that was a good representation of something they learned while on the trip. They acknowledged that a picture alone is not evidence of learning – that it needed “something else” to raise it’s quality and authenticity as an artifact of learning.

Here are some examples of what they came up with:

This student has started to work on annotating an image to add meaning for readers. I can see she enjoyed feeding the birds, knows what they are called, and what she needs to do in order to feed them. I am not sure though, if this is new knowledge for her or not. A follow up discussion would have to be had in order to ask questions I’m still wondering about. This feedback will be helpful for her the next time she chooses to include an image as documentation.

 

This excerpt comes from another student’s work. She did not choose to use any image, and seems to be stuck in the traditional end of field trip reflection format. I think she had fun, based on what she’s written. I know they did a scavenger hunt, but I’m not sure what they were looking for. I also know there was something to do with beaver fur, however I still have lots of questions.

 

The student below chose to draw her own representation of the day. From her text, I can see that she is not clear on what the birds are called, and that she has learned that some plants are edible for people and have health benefits, even if we don’t like the taste.

 

Finally, this student added labels to the picture and also added text on either side to go into even more detail about what he learned. I believe this would be a really helpful example to guide other students as to how they can clearly show their learning.

Although no students chose to do so, the option to make a video recording was also discussed, and hopefully some students will opt for this at another occasion.

My next step will be to repeat this activity with a new set of images, once a discussion has been had and feedback has been given. As we compile the different artifacts, students will see the documentation OF their learning of subject matter, and will begin to take ownership of what they document and how to move towards documenting AS and FOR learning.


Jan
2019

The Only Cure Is More Sketchnoting!

categories: Personalized Learning, Reflections

I am at the very beginning of my sketchnoting journey. I have never, not even once, made a sketchnote. At this moment, I believe sketchnoting is drawing images to represent ideas we hear about or read about. They can be connected in various ways to tell a story and document what we know in a moment in time.

I’ve seen people participating in sketchnoting challenges on Twitter, but I have not yet delved deep into it. I am intrigued by it though, as I am on my other journey of personalizing learning. I have students in my class who I think, with my current understanding, will benefit greatly from sketchnoting. I have a feeling as soon as I start, I’ll be infected with #sketchnotefever!

To introduce us to sketchnoting, Silvia walked us through her sketchnoting tips, all the while, we made our own visual representations using Paper by WeTransfer. It took a few minutes to get into my groove…but I’m hooked.

So, without further delay, here is my first sketchnote:

Looking at my work, I can say that I can confidently and thoroughly explain each image that I’ve drawn. I can hear Silvia in the back of my mind talking through each of these tips. I know that I am a visual learner, and I believe I could look back at this image and summarize what I learned much quicker than if I was looking at a document of notes. I can only imagine what this can do for some of my students…and so instead of writing those ideas…I’ve made a sketchnote of it!

In one day I have realized that I find this tool very therapeutic and useful.

I can’t wait to introduce it to my students.


Jan
2019

The Documenting Process

categories: Personalized Learning, Reflections

Although I’ve written some blog posts both here and on my classroom blog in an effort to document my learning and the learning of my students, I’ve never consciously thought about the actual process of documenting. Today, some colleagues and I, who are participating in an incredible learning cohort with Silvia Tolisano, focused in on the three phases of documentation: Pre-documentation, During Documentation, and Post-Documentation.

During the pre-documentation phase, we met with Julie, a grade 3 teacher, whose class we would be documenting learning in. (In hindsight, I wish I had taken some pictures of this step.) She shared her goals for the lesson, articulating the learning she was hoping to capture. First, she wanted to see if students could answer open-ended multiplication problems. She was curious to see if the students could show their mathematical thinking in pictures, numbers and words. She also mentioned how it was a class-wide learning goal for students to work together cooperatively, take risks and show leadership skills.

As was to be expected, the magic happened in the classroom!

Mathematical Thinking

Many groups gravitated towards using pictures to start off when solving the problem. Eventually, these pictures lead to math phrases and equations. All the while, there was a lot of discussion between group members about what to write and how. Although they may not have written it down on their paper, listening in to the conversation was evidence that many students understood their task. There were some groups that chose not to draw pictures and used numbers instead. There was only one group that clearly organized and identified their thinking as pictures, numbers and words, even though their question did not specifically ask for it.

              

Cooperative Learning and Risk-Taking

I witnessed an amazing moment of cooperative learning and risk-taking. Something I’ve witnessed in my own classroom is the reluctance for students to listen to each other’s ideas and try them out. There is often a desire to have their idea listened to, their example used, their writing on the sheet, that they often miss the point of the activity. Watch how these two students listened and ultimately cooperated to come to a conclusion.

Personalized Learning

Although this wasn’t necessarily one of Julie’s identified goals for her lesson, I chose to focus on this for my own learning, as this is the lens through which I am constantly looking in my own classroom. It was amazing to see students working on different questions depending on where they are in their learning. It was also interesting to see how they tackled such an open ended task. They each used their own strategies, tools and voices to tackle the problem in their own unique way. As mentioned above, some used pictures, some numbers, and one group even used manipulatives to help demonstrate their understanding. When I noticed some responses that didn’t quite make sense on paper, I was able to ask these groups for further clarification. With this extra step, students were able to show that although their writing did not convey the “correct” answer, they were more than capable of explaining their understanding thoroughly.

    

It felt new and familiar at the same time to be documenting another class’s learning. The pre-documenting phase of this process is the one I have overlooked in the past. However, I see now that this important step in this process completely organized what I wanted to capture, how I would capture it, and even organized this post long before I ever put it into writing. I imagine this may be the step that many tend to omit, but I see its value now and promise to at least try to do it more often in the future 🙂


Dec
2018

For the Love of Reading

categories: Personalized Learning

I have always been an avid reader. I think it’s in my blood. If you’d ask me to draw a picture of my grandmother, it would be of her sitting on the couch, or on a chair, anywhere, with a book in her hand. Her purse always seemed extra heavy when I’d pick it up, because there was inevitably at least one novel tucked inside. The many bookshelves, drawers and cabinets throughout her house were packed to the brim with books. So I think I come by it naturally.

Reading is what I always make time for as part of my self-care and well-being. And I always strive to get my students to develop their own love of reading as well. I wrote this latest blog post sharing the Book Tasting activity I did with my class. I wanted to share some resources with parents and students to help them find those “just right” books, that meet the interest level AND reading level of each individual child.

I created the following screencast, which was also uploaded to the blog, to walk parents through the process of searching for the best books for their child, or checking to see if a book is appropriate for their child to read independently, using Accelerated Reader Bookfinder.

I wholeheartedly believe that students should feel free to read what interests them. I also recognize that while some books may be appealing to students, the vocabulary used can cause frustration, which is the opposite of what one should feel when they read. With this tool, if a child wants to read a book outside their ZPD, they can always look for other ways of reading that book, such as with an audiobook or reading together with a parent.

I have made screencasts before, however never on a Chromebook. So my first step was to find a compatible program. I ended up using Screencastify which has a free add-on for Chrome. It was really simple to use, and automatically saves your videos to Google Drive.

 

I made a quick outline for myself before I started, yet after the first couple of attempts, I realized I needed more information and kept adding to my outline until I came up with the image to the right. This helped me stay on track and ensure I knew what I wanted to include in what order. Even with this though, I still needed to stop and rerecord multiple times! I decided not to make a script as I wanted to sound authentic and less like I was reading off a paper. I may try this though for the next one, as I’m not sure I was as fluid as I could have been.

 

I really enjoyed making a screencast. I think having the visual will be helpful for students and parents as they get more used to this helpful tool. It also serves as a good example for my students of how they can teach their peers about a useful tool or topic in a succinct, clear and simple way. I hope that when students come back from the much needed break, there will be a few risk-takers who can model screencasting for their peers.

 


Dec
2018

Where Am I Going? Where Have I Been?

categories: Personalized Learning, Reflections

January 7, 2008 was the first day of my first teaching job in Vancouver. I graduated with my B.Ed in 2007 and started working towards my Master’s right away. After being away from the school setting for a year, I realized the best place to learn what I needed to learn was to actually be in the classroom. In university the message had always been, ‘Take whatever job you are offered and then figure out how you’ll teach it.’ I followed this advice and spent the first 6 months of my career covering a grade 1 Hebrew class maternity leave. I was definitely less than qualified to teach this class, but I took the job and did the very best I could.

I continued to wear many hats with various names in the first 10 years of my teaching: Morah Melissa, the Hebrew teacher, Mademoiselle Melissa, the French teacher, Ms. Melissa the P.E, Gym, and Art teacher, the Tech Integration Specialist, Ms. Anders, the grade 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 teacher, and now finally, Mrs. Thompson, the grade 5 teacher and Teaching and Learning Coordinator.

No matter what the students have called me, and no matter what I have taught, I have always striven to be the expert in one area for both my students and my peers: learning. Looking back, I can’t believe how far I have come, yet at the same time, I still feel like a novice with so much to learn.

This year in particular feels like one where I have stretched myself and will continue to push myself to learn. There are moments (many, actually) when I feel overwhelmed by all the ideas floating in my head, the to-do lists, the trials, and the errors. I’m sure this feeling isn’t new, and I wish I had something to look back on to say, How did I do this before? And so this post was born! It may be 11 years late, but better late than never!

What have I learned so far this year:

  • DOCUMENTING OF, FOR and AS LEARNING IS IMPORTANT – for myself and for my students! (Thanks, Silvia) This is one that I know in my heart, that I have felt for a long time, AND have not yet figured out how to best do it. I have started to write a few blog posts on this blog, as well as on my class blog, and I have also amped-up my use of Twitter to connect and build my PLN. I’ve participated in some chats, shared ideas from my own classroom, crowd-sourced for myself and for my colleagues, and never stop feeling excited when I have a new notification about someone acknowledging something I’ve shared! But I definitely have not been doing all this as much as I should be. Fortunately, my Head of School, Jon Mitzmacher, has a blog where he has documented his own blogging journey, and I have learned from some of his first posts, just how far I can go. I have now made a commitment to myself (and added it into my calendar) to blog at least once a week. I know that this will only enhance my practice as a teacher, and will allow me to continue playing the role of the lead learner. Knowing that this is a direction we would like our students to start following, I must take the time to figure out just how to make it a priority so I can then help them as they learn to find the authenticity and value in documenting their learning.
  • PERSONALIZED LEARNING IS IMPORTANT – it’s not necessarily easy to do at first, and I’m not great at it yet, but I am committed to figuring it out! I started by trying to understand who my students were as learners, and to help them to understand themselves to know exactly what they need to be successful. It was important for me to first build an environment in my classroom where students knew that being “different” was actually normal, and that fairness has absolutely nothing to do with being equal. This info-graphic from Brookes Publishing really helped me explain the concept to students in a way that made sense to them. Next, it was about creating opportunities in my classroom where students had more voice. I attempted to make Must Do, May Do lists in my math class, but after listening to these videos from Learning Personalized (this site has been a wealth of information for me throughout my learning journey as a whole), I realized that as the teacher, I still had too much of a role in what the students were doing. I am definitely differentiating, which is important, but students still do not have as much of a say in WHAT they learn, and HOW. The closest I have come has been introducing Genius Hour to my class, and they LOVE IT. Even though they know we only do Genius Hour on Wednesdays, they ask on a daily basis if we can do it during class. Today my students earned a class party as part of our Gotcha! reward system (I’ll have to write a post about this soon) and guess what they chose to do during their free time?…work on their Genius Hour Projects! They are interested, motivated, self-directed, reading, writing, creating, documenting and reflecting (on flipgrid) and *gasp* learning!

So where do I go from here?

I need to stick to my blogging goal. Not just for now, but for always.

I need to continue building my own understanding of what personalized learning looks like, sounds like, and feels like. I need to find out what I am holding onto from more “traditional” teaching or what the system I work in is holding onto, so I can better understand what needs to stay and what can go to make room for personalized learning. Math really seems to be the class where I am struggling the most. I imagine letting go of ‘teaching by the unit’ has something to do with it, but I need to research more, try more, fail more, and crowd-source more. I can imagine nothing better than students coming into every class, every day, with the same excitement and enthusiasm for every task as they currently do for Genius Hour. That’s when I’ll know that I’ve been successful…and I can’t wait!


Nov
2018

The Oxymoron of Leadership

categories: Reflections

I am currently taking my Principal’s Qualifications and am required to write a reflection after each module. It has been on my mind since the start of the course that these reflections get posted to one person, yet there is so much more we all could be getting out of these reflections if there was more value placed on them by making them public- where they can stop being reflections for the sake of reflecting, but can become reflections for discussion and growth. In an effort to practice what I’m preaching, here is a copy of what I wrote in my most recent reflection:

__________________________________________________________________________

If there were to be a module where my passion lies, it would be with Module 4, specifically around the use of technology.

Technology has always been an area where I have felt comfortable. A new tool can come out, and I feel completely safe playing around, clicking buttons, navigating pages and simply figuring it out. The more experience I’ve had with this, the less fear I have to accidentally do something wrong.

Because of my comfort level, I have always been drawn to new and innovative technology-based tools that I can use in the classroom with my students. When I did my teaching practicum in 2005, I was fortunate to be placed in a school that had a shared laptop cart. I created a webquest for my grade 1-2 split class to virtually explore the different cities Terry Fox ran his marathon, and then write an imaginary journal from his perspective of the things they saw on their journey. This was the spark for the path I would follow for the rest of my career up until this point.

In 2007 I moved to Vancouver to pursue a Masters in Educational Technology. I was then hired as the Technology Integration Specialist at a school there. I attended workshops on iPad integration, participated in large EdTech conferences all over Canada and the US, and eventually moved to Ottawa where again, part of my responsibilities are dedicated to helping teachers integrate innovative practices into their classrooms, including but not limited to, technology. More than anything, I want to help them reduce their fear of “clicking on something wrong.”

I get that I may not be the norm. There are many teachers, both young and not as young, who feel intimidated by technology. However, after listening to this week’s group talk about the changes our students are likely to experience in their future, I can’t help but stand up and yell from the rooftops that it is imperative that teachers and administrators become literate in the language of now. Even in the last few months, I have upped my own online presence and realize that we have so much to benefit from the world of educators. Why limit ourselves to those in our school? Those in our board? Those in our city or even country?

This reflection in and of itself has no value if the only person I can share it with is my professor. That’s why I have also posted it to my blog. Perhaps this is a larger dialogue that needs to happen. Perhaps other people have ideas to share that will help me develop my thoughts even more. Perhaps I am completely off on my thinking. But I’ll never know if I don’t put it out there for others to comment on and reflect with me.

As potential future administrators, wouldn’t it be great to speak to other people around the world going through the same process? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to hear from those who have completed the process and are just beginning the next phase of their career? Why then, are we limited to posting our reflections inside a closed platform?

As one of my mentors, Silvia Tolisano, has taught me, technology is just the tool. There are always new things coming out and new ways of doing things. What’s important is that you know how to handle those things when they do come so that you are moving with the times, not falling behind them. We have a huge responsibility and a huge opportunity. As future leaders, we must be the leaders.


Nov
2018

The Modern (Jewish) Teacher’s Guide to Guilt

categories: Reflections

About 6 years ago I read a book called, “The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt” by Ruth Andrew Ellenson, in which different Jewish female writers tell hilarious stories of the guilt they’ve grown to feel in various life situations.

The past few weeks of my at-school, and out-of-school, life have been stressful. Report cards can do that to a staff. Then add on all the other commitments teachers take on, and we could write our own book.

In an effort to deal with my own guilt of needing to push things to the bottom of my to-do list (like this blog) I’m writing this post as a placeholder to say…

I’m still here.

I will be writing again soon.

Anyone who feels the same as I do, raise your hand, and let’s not feel guilty together!