Forecasting Marks

Sometimes you have to just get out of the way, and let your students work.  Sometimes you must creep around the classroom, observing but unseen....like a NINJA!  If your students see you, tell them "you can't see me, I am a ninja" and move on.

I tried to stay out of the way as when I walked around, the majority of the questions needed to be answered by reviewing my instructions, the screencast, or the samples of work I provided.  By getting out of the way, or forcing the students to walk across the room to get my help, often students would talk to a neighbour or just review the instructions themselves.

But sometimes, it pays to go around the room and make forecasts.  Because of the nature of my course, I would often get 120 assignments at a time on my desk.  My course was short, approx. 7.5 weeks, so I had to mark all the assignments, and turn them around really quickly.  So, to save myself time, I would take my markbook around the room with me, and then talk with students about their work.  I would always refer to the criteria, or the broad strokes of the assignment.  I was careful not to compare them to any other students, but to what I felt they were capable of accomplishing in class, if they applied themselves.  I would then "forecast" their mark, usually a score out of 5 (Not Meeting Expectations, Minimally Meeting, Meeting, Fully Meeting, or Exceeding Expectations).  Often, students would ask, how do I get a higher score?  I would then ask them to think about their work ethic, quality of work, the criteria of the assignment.  They usually found their own answer.  Sometimes when they were doing really well, we would talk about "taking it to the next level" and I would tell the kid to relax, they are doing well, but what could they do to go beyond the assignment based on their interest.

As a result, I saved myself time on marking (changing forecasts is easy if you write in pencil, or save it to a spreasheet), and I usually got better quality work from my students when they turned it in at the end of the given time.

Assessment comes from the latin "to sit beside".  I think that this method of gathering marks was my favourite.  It enabled me to focus kids on what mattered, and I got to know them better.

Colorful Writing Practice

I was thinking about how to help struggling writers using technology in the classroom.  One thought I had was about was probably the obvious choice - MS Word.  True you could use any word processor, but this is what I am given, and lots of people have it in their homes.  So, I use what I have.

Kids who have problems with handwriting (or even teachers, like yours truly) like using word processors because when you strike the key, the letters always look the same time after time. But there are other ways to use the word processor to help. 

As a primary teacher, I used to walk around the class, and I would help kids by scribing some of their work if it looked like they needed help keeping up, getting ideas down before they forgot them, organizing their sentences, or to just keep the momentum of their writing going.  Not every kid needed help, but there was only one "me" walking around.  A bit of legwork needed, for sure.

 I was thinking, what if we put a struggling writer in front of a computer.  Then, when I needed to help scribe, I could just type what the kid dictates.  I can type way faster than I can write, and as their typing speed improves they would need less help.  But, also perhaps I could change the color of my text.  If they wrote in one color, and I wrote in another color, when you zoom, back you could see how much you are helping the student, and how much they are capable of themselves.  Over time you could compare this with other assignments, and have a quick visual check by looking at the size of the color blocks to see if the student is writing more on their own, still needing the same amount of support, or needing more support.  You could see if they always need help in the beginnings, or the endings of stories - and if that were the case, you could make that a focus in your next writing lesson.

Below I have taken 3 samples (not real writing samples at this point) and zoomed out.  In the first sample we see lots of green, the teacher's writing color.  The next one has less green, and the third sample has less still, with much of the green appearing at the ends of paragraphs and the story itself.  This might mean the student is improving in being able to write more details, but needs help writing concluding statements.

 

Now if only I could find someone who could try this out, and tell me if it helped them and their students with writing.

What Kids Think about Sharing their Writing

This week I had my students share their writing assignments with each other over the Internet. Our purpose was to improve the quality of our writing through peer editing. I created a document library on our SharePoint website for the class, and taught the kids how to check documents in and out of the website. This is not unlike what the teachers at our school do for our report cards. Here is the result of a survey I asked the kids to take. It was an anonymous survey, and 39 of 57 students answered:




The results may be a bit hard to see, but if you enlarge the image you can read the results of the 3 questions I asked the kids.

97% of the students in my class who responded to a short survey feel that using a SharePoint document library to share their work for peer editing improved the quality of their own written work.

About half of them feel it improved the length of their written work.

97% of them feel that they had something to offer their peers in the form of editing advice that would make a measureable improvement in their work “some of the time” to “almost all of the time.”

I also felt that interest was high during the days we were editing each others' work, and that behaviour problems were virtually non-existent. I feel that the students were interested and engaged in their work.

When I showed these results to one class' homeroom teacher, she said "Ok, but now where do we get a class set of computers for my class?" While I admit we don't have the class of computers on wheels, I think we know that kids enjoy and benefit from peer editing, and that perhaps other classes will book our second computer lab 1 period a day, for a week. Perhaps a teacher will assign it as a homework project. Like that old baseball movie says "If you build it, they will come."

Excitement Over Something We Already Have

Yesterday I had plans to do a power point presentation on using SharePoint websites for virtual classrooms. During the first workshop on Learning Disabled Students one of our staff members talked about how some students have written output problems. I mentioned that MS Word 2003 has built in voice recognition software. That means you talk, and MS Word types, (after you train the computer first). They were astounded, as no one had heard this feature existed in MS Word. It is not as good as some of the third party software titles out there that do speech to text better, but it is something we already have on our computers. No added cost; no waiting for installation or implementation. Some of the student services people thought that this was something they will implement immediately.

How can we get the word out about these features on commonly used pieces of software that will help our students? I will do my part, and blog it!

I think my next pro-d will be about professional reading. If all the teachers in my staff subscribed to one blog each on the topic of their field of education, we would be the most up-to-date middle school in the Province. Plus, by subscribing to blogs, we would be learning in small, easy to digest bites. Middle school practice is designed for people to share out information, and so one good idea can get spread through a team and then a whole staff very quickly.

We shouldn't stop reading books. We should just start reading blogs.

Can you say that again? And again?

    One of my students in my "Computers and Students with Learning Disabilities" (let's call him Mike) just had a bit of a breakthrough in tonight's course. It was the last night of the course, and it was the best night yet. Mike has CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder). This means that when he hears things, somehow the signal gets turned around in his brain so that he doesn't hear the sounds that enter his ear. He also has trouble with his vision, and sometimes what he see also gets turned around.   

    

     When I asked Mike if he preferred to read or listen to a story, he said listen - with his right ear.  When I asked him if he would rather speak an answer, write an answer, or type an answer, he said....type!  Mike displayed a good sense of how to navigate menus (file -> save, or edit -> copy), and type at a decent speed for a student about 13 years old.  So I thought of ways for him to do his work using a computer to help.

     

    Mike was showing some good skills with photo editing using a simple graphics program.  I wanted him to use a digital camera to tell a story, as he could use photographs to tell stories with less typing, than just writing out a story alone.  I also showed him how he could use royalty free pictures and VoiceThread.com or PowerPoint to create simple presentations with either voice narration or typed explanations.  Mike was pleased.

      Mike's mom reported that Mike had difficulties remembering step-by-step instructions, such as "resizing a photo" (about 4 steps).  As our lab has Audacity on each station, and many of our computer stations have headphones, I decided to use Mike's preference for audio instructions and skills with a computer to give him a way to remember step-by-step instructions.  I used Audacity to record the steps as an mp3 (sound) file.  Mike put on his headphones, but only on the right ear.  He played the steps using Windows Media Player, and pressed pause when he finished listening to a step.  Mike was able to resize a photo listening only to the recorded instructions; he listened, paused the instructions, did that one step, and went back to listen to the next step!  

     Mike's mom said she was pleased to see that he could do instructions step-by-step by listening to an MP3 file of instructions, but wondered how Mike could do this in class?  I suggested an iPod!  Some models of ipod have microphones to make a recording.  He could ask the teacher to make a recording of Mike's instructions, pausing after each step.  Then Mike could play it back, listening to just the right headphone in class, and pause the track at each step.  By using headphones on his iPod, he would not be disturbing others.  He could then save the file on his computer and his iPod to listen to it again in the future.  My hope is that someday Mike records his own instructions, and becomes able to teach himself.

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Selling ideas to others...

Right now I am in the middle of working with iMovie on my mac at home. It all began a couple of weeks ago with a suggestion I made at a meeting. I had made a video to teach a lesson on guitar, as I had a substitute teacher coming in for a lesson. I sat in front of my web cam, taught the lesson, saved it , burned it onto a DVD with our schools external burner, and voila! Lesson is ready. In the meeting with the primary teachers, we were talking about the 6 traits of effective writing, and how we wished we could get a literacy support teacher in our school. I thought it would be cool to videotape a well known teacher modelling these writing techniques in a lesson. Then we could have it on DVD, look back on it when we wanted to, etc. So, I got a little time out of the class, Shirley Ann Rubis came to teach a lesson (thank you Shirley Ann), and within 1.5 hrs we filmed a great writing lesson aimed at primary students. Now what is the next important part?

Music. I have to pick some good music, and insert some thoughtful, possibly clever or funny sub-titles. Why? Because I believe that if my colleagues see a nicely put together presentation, they will be more impressed than if they just saw the raw footage. Is this a really terrible thing to think?

wii remote = whiteboard!

Mobile post sent by jagill using Utterz. Replies. mp3

I take comics very seriously - as should all teachers!

I loved comic books as a kid. My faves were Archie, Spiderman, Sgt. Rock, Daredevil, Superman, and Conan the Barbarian. I know, Conan is definitely not rated "G", but hey I was a pre-teen boy once!

But there is a lot we can teach kids using comic books. I am using this website:

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

I am going to use this page with two classes, acting as "buddy classes". Both classes will go into the lab, and create a simple 3 frame comic together. They will be a class of Grade 3's (the big buddies), and a class of Kindergarteners. Using click and drag, the K's will select and place the characters, and the grade 3's will support their writing. We will teach:

1. How stories have a beginning, middle and end.



2. That you must plan the ending before you plan the middle. How else will you know where to go with your story?



3. That when you are writing a story, the authour can show the audience what all the characters are saying AND what they are thinking, but other characters are not allowed to know what each other are thinking.
   

Here is a sample:

This is a lot of deep thinking about writing. And, we could tackle all sorts of social or academic topics, even at the middle school level and beyond. Comics are powerful. Just don't read them for silent reading class every day. Hey you! Get a chapter book for tomorrow.....

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Computer Projectors Poetry Writing - Staircase Poems

This is not a computer lesson, but is a lesson I used a computer to teach. I have managed to wrangle a computer projector for my classroom. No big deal you say? In the elementary classrooms in my district, this kind of thing is rare. By using the computer and projector to teach my lesson I was able to:

1.) Save my lesson for the future -why re-invent the wheel
2.) E-mail it to an absent student (ok, not yet, but once I get their parent's email, no problem)
3.) Print it off and give it as a fill in the blanks note-taking practice to students who find writing a challenging experience.
4.) Share the lesson with another teacher (our Student Services teacher who walked in and said she liked the lesson and wanted a copy)

5.) Had this been a Science lesson, I could have taken the classroom notes, and by blanking out key words, I could have used sections of it for a test. This saves time, and ensures that the content that students study is closely tied to the tests they take.

Staircase Writing

Today we are practicing adding more details to our writing. We are going to make a sentence more interesting by adding one detail (an adjective) to the line for each new line. The end result is a kind of poem that looks like a staircase.

Example:
My pen.
My red pen.
My skinny, red pen.
My smooth, skinny, red pen.
My favourite, smooth, skinny, red pen.
My pen.

Here is another sample, which I left blank.

A dog.
A ____ dog
A____, ____ dog
A ____ , ____,____ dog
A____, ____ , ____, ____ dog
A dog.

This lesson was well recieved by my class of grade 3's, and the students with writing difficulites who were given print-offs of the notes and samples were able to keep pace with the rest of the class. Many of the students wanted to show off their creativity when the lesson was over, and all seemed to enjoy the lesson.

It is my hope that more computer projectors trickle down to the elementary level as time goes by. They are an invaluable teaching tool.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
2007 James J. Gill