Reflections on Fourth Grade Posts

My fourth graders posted their writing last week. Read their funny stories on our blog. I am impressed with their sense of humor. Many stories are genuinely funny. This week, I am giving them time throughout the day to sign on and leave comments for each other.

Reflections on this process:

• Typing skills, or lack thereof, really slowed the process down. I am not satisfied taking a whole writing period, or two, to type. I think I will have them post one out of every three writings. Another option may be to scan their handwritten copies.
• Students have to sign in with their email address to post. Their email is (firstnamelastinitial).alsup@think.com, along with a password. Some students are signing in without a problem. Others (15 of my 20?) are taking forever to sign in and/or can't remember how to do it. I made each a laminated cheat sheet to keep in their desks, but the process is tough for them to get used to. Again, a huge time-suck.
  
• I really like that my students get a chance to comment on each other's writing. Doing this through the blog is very motivating. Some of my lowest writers are finding errors and are giving feedback through a comment.
  
• I have wondered whether this is the best way to post student work. With everyone posting within a couple of days, the first ones to post become "old" very fast and are sent to the second page. I tagged each with their name so that you could click on a student to read their writing. If I post on my website, readers can't comment. I don't think a wiki is appropriate. Maybe blogger is not the best for education. I looked at blogmeister and am not crazy about the look of it. I have looked at edublogs, that may be a better option in the future. Just mulling it around.
• The hit map and cluster map are awesome! Kids are checking every couple of days to see who else has read. I told a funny story to my fourth graders about me and my college roommate, Neil, who is now a teacher in San Francisco. We looked at the hit map last week and there was a hit in San Fransisco, about 5 of my kids yell out, "Neil!" It is so exciting to see them making connections to the larger community. Seeing the hit map has really changed their perspective of the world.

Feedback? Comments? Insights?

Fourth Grade posts

My fourth grade class began posting their funny stories on our room 24 blog. With the help of Joe, I used Adobe Pro to export their writing as a jpg files. They posted those along with a short reflection on the project. Four are posted today, the other sixteen by Friday! They are very excited and are already leaving comments. The layout of the posts don't look like I want them to, I may tweak them a little this weekend. Check them out and PLEASE leave a comment. It means so much to my students when they see that they are being read.

--Jeff

Slideshare test

This is a test on embedding a slideshare of a pdf file. I would like to use this so students could post their writing on our blog, along with a posted reflection on the piece.

A Collaborative Effort

On Thursday, I presented my wiki, alsupibworldschoolunits.wikispaces.com, to my grade level team, principal, learning coordinator and UCD site professor. I looked at this project in a much different light in preparation for showing others.

First, I realized that my vision of adding all of the units for all grade levels is much too ambitious. I decided that I would add the units for my grade level as the year progresses and invite others to add theirs as they see value to the wiki. The wiki still shows all of the grade levels in the navigation on the left side, but I'm not going to add any units, unless a grade level is really interested in having them there. (Better yet, I am going to show them how to do it.)

Second, the wiki is of real value if it is a collaborative effort. In order to bring others on, they need to see the potential of it. I don't think the wiki shows much potential when you see the units without any reflection or student work. It isn't much more than another place to house the units. As I am teaching the unit on the Solar System I am adding resources, screen shots of our work and a screencast of a review of a previous lesson. During the presentation I think this showed that the wiki can be used as a way to reflect, as well as collaborate.

Some interesting questions/comments came up along the way that I didn't anticipate. First, Lynn, my principal asked whether this would be a site for just teachers or for parents as well. I think it is for teachers, but made us all think about the potential for more parent participation in the development process of these units. They may be able to provide a unique reflection piece to the units. Our special ed provider for the grade level saw the great collaborative potential. She thought that she could view the wiki before it is taught and add scaffolding/accommodations for her students. Our UCD site professor who works with all of the TCs (Teacher Candidates) in the building has an exchange professor from Asia that she wants to come see all of the great new technology in our district. She took note of the url for the wiki and our global learners blog and is going to show us off.

Thoughts?

Follow Up

Using the SmartBoard during lessons definitely engages students. Today we discussed yesterday's introduction to the Solar System. The use of yesterday's slides provided visual cues that brought the discussion right to the point and allowed us to move forward very quickly. Without this technology I would be referring to something I wrote on the white board yesterday, but is now long gone.



I experimented with TuneTalk Stereo for the iPod. It is a microphone that plugs directly into the bottom of the iPod, records and saves the recording as a file on the iPod. When you sync, the file is uploaded to iTunes so you can edit it and use it as you like. The sound quality is surprisingly good. I carried the iPod around the room as I facilitated the review and one of my students was advancing slides on the SmartBoard. TuneTalk could be used to get student reactions during a field trip. It could also be used to measure fluency in primary students or for my fourth graders to record read alouds for our pre-school reading buddies. Student recordings could be burned on to a CD at the end of the year as a measure of progress or just a great keepsake. What other tools are teachers finding to make their instruction more engaging? Are there tools for the SmartBoard that you are using every day with your students?

Irony

Ironic is the word I would use to describe today's introduction to the solar system.

I had asked my students to name a system so we could talk about the necessary components in a system and how if one component wasn't working the whole system breaks down. I had great plans to do this on my SmartBoard and it wasn't orienting correctly! (My system broke down.) I went old-school and made a list on my Not So Smart Board with Expo pens. As we were having this great discussion I commented that this would be great if my SmartBoard were working. With the encouragement from my students, I gave it one more try and it worked. I still don't know what the issue was.

This was the first time using it in a lesson, and I was playing with tools as I went. The screen shade is a great one. There is another screen where we created a list of all of the parts of the solar system that they currently know. I am planning on using this to compare what we know now to what we know at the end of the unit. I am realizing that a great benefit to the SmartBoard is the ability to capture everything that would normally be lost on the white board or on pages of flip chart paper. Capturing and sharing ideas on blogs like this one is great as well.

Alsup Fourth Grade Wikispace

I have created a wiki for the fourth grade to engage in online collaboration around the creation of our IB units. This seems like a perfect way for us to continue to develop these units and have our information in one place with the ability to pull it up any time. This summer I have worked on developing two units specifically: I Am Seeing Stars, a study of the Solar System and, A Timeline Study of History, a study of historical people of Colorado. I have done these on my own without consulting anyone... hardly a collaborative effort. But, I am hoping that this space will encourage everyone who has taught these units, or anyone else for that matter, to go in and add information, great ideas, resources and inspiration.

I am also hoping that this will better enable the current third grade team to go in and add any insight that they have from teaching these units last year. Third and Fourth grade teams loop, so the Units of Inquiry that I will be teaching this year were taught by this year's third grade teachers. I have found it very difficult to continue to improve these units when I only see them every other year. It is also very difficult to carve out time in our busy schedules for two grade level teams to collaborate in a "traditional" way to improve the units.

The units are not complete. I inserted information that teams worked on in the development of the planners, essential questions, student questions, summative assessments etc. Then I added specific lessons at the very bottom of the page (number 10). I Am Seeing Stars uses much of the resources from a fourth grade FOSS science kit. I am working on adding online resources and adding documents to the unit that teachers would need as they are teaching, guiding questions for journal entries for example. I also have found videos on each of the planets and downloaded those videos on to the ipod. Students will be able to pick up an ipod, look for the playlist on their planet, and view 2 or 3 short videos on that planet. This would be one of the way students will be gathering information about a planet they are studying.

A Timeline Study of History focuses on the influential people of Colorado from prehistoric times to the development of Farming and Ranching. I have been working on this chronologically so the first few lessons are very well developed, and the last few haven't been developed at all yet.

Again, I did this without any input and have been anxious to get this out there so the collaboration could begin. I believe you have to request to join the space. Click on the link below and join the process!