Knocking It Out of the Park

One of my students from my evening course "Computers and Students with Learning Disabilities", just got a 69/70 on his last assignment, a report on meningitis. Typically he scores in the 35/70 range, and has an adapted program. He and his mother feel the difference this time was the fact that he used a computer to research, plan and produce his assignment.

Instead of doing a regular pencil and paper book report, my student researched facts about meningitis on the Internet, and then used bubbl.us to create a web diagram to plan his report. His mother helped him move his report ideas around, but she reports to me that she didn't need to add to the content of his work. This is important, as it means that the content was all his. The student said he liked using the computer to plan the project because he didn't need to redo his work, just move ideas around.

Then my student used the pamphlet template in MS Word, and got images from either clip art, or the Internet (royalty free photos, I hope). After creating his pamphlet, he did an oral report on it, (this kid can talk up a storm) and handed in the pamphlet. Man, was he proud. I was proud of him too. In a future post, perhaps if I get permission, I will post his pamphlet.

Show me don't tell me

Show me don't tell me. That is one of my student's motto. In our gifted program, one of our students has developed an interest in bridge building. Using the Internet I found a lot of great resources on bridge building, including a site that already has a description of a grade-able activity, background information on bridges, instructions, materials list, and a criteria sheet. Here is the site:

http://www.ldcsb.on.ca/schools/cfe/rpt/menu.html

The site is called Rich Performance Tasks, and it is a Canadian made site, based on the Ontario curricular goals.

I then did a search on bridge building on YouTube, and found some great screen-capture videos of a video game that teaches bridge building. With these videos I was able to show the student how bridges are made up of a framework of beams and that their geometry determined how strong they are. We also discussed that bridges in reality needed to be made of materials used in the right way to make sure the bridge is made under budget:




This program is free from Download.com, and can be downloaded an reviewed here.

We also looked at another program that costs money, BridgeIt, and the student really liked the graphics, and felt that the cost (about $20 I think), was not too much for him to get if he really wanted it. I still like the free program, as free is my favourite price. Here is the video of BridgeIt below:




Finally we talked about how he could practice making bridges of different shapes using a combination of real building materials, and testing out new ideas first on the computer when looking for ways to improve his design. All in all, it was a nice lesson that married the experiences of the real world, and the learning that can come by experimenting the "virtual" world as a way to learn more.

Making Things Harder Than Necessary

Keep it simple. Adults and teachers especially want to keep it simple. With kids though, sometimes to do something cool, or something that will save them time, it pays to make an activity more difficult.



In our buddy class today, we learned about butterflies. I played a great video I found on YouTube:



I used MS Paint to teach students how to create pictures of butterflies using MS Paint. We could just draw a picture of a butterfly and print it, but instead I taught the students how to create a symmetrical butterfly. We first drew half of the butterfly; one wing and the body. Then we used the rectanglar select tool to select the wing. We copied it, by going edit -> copy, and then hit edit -> paste. Now we had two wings on the page, but the second wing was facing the wrong way. Then I taught the students to go Image ->flip/rotate, and taught what it meant to flip something horizontally, and what it meant to flip vertically, and what symmetry means. The kindergarteners we work with did the artistic drawing, but the grade 3's did all the selecting and flipping. All in all, it was a lesson that really "took flight!"

Samples of symmetrical butterflies to follow.

Keeping it 'In House"

I was at an excellent meeting yesterday, where computer contacts around the district are taking a very business oriented tool, the Microsoft SharePoint website program, and applying it to education. The new version of SharePoint has more features that mean less use of 3rd party services and software. For example, I like bubbleshare for making online picture slideshows. But once you put the photos out into the public space, then you give up control of them. They are the "property" of the third-party host. Third party stuff, (like this blog) is fine I think if you are an adult, however whenever possible schools should do their internet projects within direct control of the districts.

If my district didn't have SharePoint websites, would I use some other third-party web 2.0 host for student work? Yes, I would. It is important to teach kids how to be good digital citizens, and I think they should learn about this in their schools. In fact I still use some 3rd party hosts like VoiceThread for kids projects, however I go to great lengths to ensure the privacy of the student is protected, and that parents are making informed choices when they give permission for their students to do these kinds of projects. And by continuing to use these new and exciting applications, my district is responding by adding more functionality to our SharePoint websites. My two bits - keep internet projects in house when possible, but don't stop moving forward.

Heard it through the grapevine - Science 9

Oh I heard it through the grapevine, I think I'm teachin' Science 9...for summer school. I have a degree in Biology, and I think that I will do well with this course. I will be teaching students who didn't pass during the regular year, and so I have to cover a year's worth of Science in one month. Hmmmm...so what is the best way to cover some very abstract science concepts with struggling students?

The Superintendent for the Coquitlam School district, Tom Grant, took time out of his schedule to email me a list of free printable worksheets for a variety of high school subjects. Well, he didn't send it to me personally, but rather to all the principals, and my principal in turn passed it on to me. These great high school resources are found at teachersupport.ca. Turns out that although teachersupport.ca is an Ontario based educational website, it closely aligns with the NEW science 9 curriculum. How lucky is that?

My plan for each lessons will be to create each new lesson to be of the same format as the next.

1.) Have the students copy out the learning intentions for the day. Make sure they understand what it means. Put it on a blogsite made just for this course.

2.) Pre-teach the vocabulary (as much as possible) before beginning the lesson. Don't do all the vocabulary, maybe just 5 words per lesson. The goal is that they pass. Keep these 5 posted through the lesson. Refer to them - have the students make a "Woot Woot!" sound (or something) when we say the word reading aloud from the text so that it is fun and they are actively looking for this word. Perhaps even throw candy at them for being the first to locate these words in the text, and put it into their own words. Put these 5 words a day on the blogsite.

3.) Whenever possible, show a short 1-4 minute video from YouTube explaining the content. Embed the video in the course blogsite.

4.) Read the text. Answer questions from text, or fill in blackline master. Link to blackline master on blogsite.

5.) Students turn in short blackline master assignments or multiple choice / short answer assignments during class. Homework assignments only once every couple of days. Complete in class assignments are a must in order to pass.

6.) Give the class red, yellow, and green signs. When doing lesson, reading aloud from text, students hold up signs at the end of a subtopic or concept.

Green = I get it

Yellow = I sort of get it

Red = I don't understand it.

Greens help yellows, and I help reds. People need to get up and move. This will precede "complete in class" assignments. Off task behaviour = go work by yourself as you are interfering with other people's education. Summer plans are jeopardized by these actions. So are next year's plans.

7.) Have the students repeat the learning intentions for the day before they leave the class. It is their ticket out the door.

8.) Allow students to make comments or ask questions about homework on the blogsite. Specify what kinds of questions get posted, who will answer them, and how they are answered.

I will need a computer or laptop, and a projector. I will teach much of my lesson from the projector, and the day's notes go onto a blog for the end of the day. Stay tuned to see if I am actually teaching this course.

Hey, you can't take the blocks home..or can you?

My students in grade 3 are learning how to do subtraction with some regrouping. One of my students came to me and said he needs help understanding his 1's, 10's and 100's. He was using base ten blocks, (click here to see a picture from a math supply store if you don't know what base 10 blocks are)

So I got some advice from a friend of mine about finding some good math sites on line, and she referred me to this site:

http://nlvm.usu.edu/

It covers a lot of different grades, but requires that the teacher play around with it first. I especially liked the base ten blocks exercises for teaching adding and subtracting with regrouping. When you use base 10 blocks in the classroom, students need to exchange 10 one's for every stick of 10 when doing regrouping (carrying or borrowing). On the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, the stick of 10 blocks come apart before the children's eyes, so they can see what it really means to borrow from the 10's column when doing subtraction.

I just can't do it justice with words. Go to the site, and try it yourself. I don't think it need replace the blocks, however before introducing the topic of regrouping with base 10 blocks with the actual blocks themselves, I would consider doing it virtually. Try it yourself; this is one of the times I would say I like the virtual manipulative as much as I like the real deal.

Who couldn't do with a little phun in their life?

I wish, I wish. I wish my students could have "phun" in class.




This is a free program that simulates a lot of the physical features of our real world. With this program I could teach about gravity, mass, density, buoyancy, the three states of matter (or at least two of them), balance and center of gravity, shape and space, tessalations and patterns, simple machines, friction and more. However our computers don't have 3D accelleration I think (this may be a feature of having a graphics card). Apparently the program needs to have a graphics card, and all our refurbished dell computers use on-board audio and video.

I showed this video to my 3 year old, and he wanted to watch it twice. Then he went straight for his blocks. I showed it to the kids of a grade 4 and 5 class, and they were mesmerized! I told them that with parent permission they can get the program, and install it themselves at home if they have a newer computer (with parent permission of course). I guess I will have to put a pin in this one!


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