Tech Tool

With the unexpected two days off of school I was able to play around with some tech tools I've been wanting to try. I signed up for a website called showbie (www.showbie.com). This website is like a dropbox where I can send my students attachments and they don't have to sign up with an email. It works like this: I signed up with my email and I create classes. Each class has a class code that I give to my students. They go to the website and put their name and the code and they can access what I've posted. I can post assignments and attach pdf, keynotes etc. The students can access whatever I post and then upload their work right to the folder.

I forsee myself posting articles or other pdfs and having students access it through showbie. Then they can open the pdf in adobe reader or noteability and write over it, take notes etc. Then they can turn in whatever they wrote on the pdf to showbie. With our copy budge limited I think this would be a great tool to share articles/files with my students. I also think they will be able to access and annotate more files than they were able to before. I signed myself up as a student as well just to practice and it was very simple to use. We have shared Ipads in 5th grade but I don't think that will be a problem since they have to login each time anyways. I am excited to try this new tool and I think my students will be able to access more learning tools.

Triumphs and Troubles

Triumph: Back to school for two days before another 2 days off from the cold was a success. The students were so well behaved and ready to work. It was great seeing them and I could tell they were ready to be back also. Although we needed to take a few more brain breaks than usual, we got a lot done those two days we were back. Hopefully the great behavior continues after 2 snow/cold days off!


Trouble: We are starting an intensive reading program during our WIN time. We are going to be grouping students by ability and picking a theme to create a unit around. I chose to focus on the Olympics. Although I am finding a lot of good supplemental articles and books it has been really hard to find an anchor text I could use for book groups. I was hoping to find 1-2 chapter books that were fiction that were Olympic or sports themed. I think I settled on a couple but I have to see if they are good read. Any ideas on sports related chapter books at a 5th grade level would be much appreciated!

Technology Week C

This week when students were done with their projects I had them try coggle ( http://coggle.it/). This is an online mind mapping tool. You do need an account but I had my students sign into my account so they were all saved under my name. Students were able to create a mind map of their choice this first time. Students had to think of a topic for the center and then coming off of that were items related. You can make it as big as you want with as many layers as you want. I can definitely see this being use for a brainstorming tool, organizing tool or collaboration tool. Multiple people can open up the same coggle and work on it at one time so you could incorporate group work with this. I hope to try it with more academic topics soon.

I've also been talking with another 5th grade teacher who has 1-1 Ipads in her room. Her and one of her students showed me 3 tools they use all the time. She said they are a must if I am going to use the Ipads more often. The first one is dropbox. She uploads pdfs, articles, worksheets etc to the dropbox and sends them to her students. Then her students log in and are able to pull up that sheet. If they need to write on that sheet they then open the sheet in adobe reader. The students are so quick to do this now it if a quick process. Then if they need to turn it in they open showbie (I think you need to go to the website and sign up for it). They can save their pdfs that they wrote on and upload them to showbie which sends it right to the teacher. This is a great way to save paper or to share items someone finds without printing everything. I can imagine scanning part of a book or paragraph and then having students use that in some way. These are all tools I will be looking into more.

Marzano Classroom Management

After reading Marzano's Classroom Management chapter I chose two goals to work on regarding management. As a school we have been working on using learning goals and rubrics for lessons. I have also been using rubrics for behavior and management as well. If we are going to be working in a group I use the learning goal as our target and then together we usually create a behavior rubric for what our group should be doing. Usually I say "what should your group be doing if you are going to meet this goal?" They are quick to come up with ideas. We use our grading E, M, P, DN scale to rate their behavior. Usually I only fill out the E and M parts of the rubric because I expect they are at that level. Ideas that would go on the rubric would be help others in your group or share ideas and listen.  At then end they can give themselves a P if they did not meet those expectations. This allows some balance in dominance vs cooperation which Marzano talked about. Students are involved in the process and set their own goals for behavior some times using this system (pg 100).

Another goal I had was creating a procedure for homework that is consistent. I felt like I did something different every day with homework. Sometimes they would turn it in to the inbox, sometimes they kept it, sometimes I didn't even go over it that day. Last week I tried to be more consistent and create a routine we could all get use to. If there was homework I would have them pull it out at the beginning of that class (math or reading). That way I will make sure I can check to see who has it done and go over it and give feedback right away. I found if they just put it in the inbox I would not get to it for a couple days and the students wouldn't know if they did it correct in a timely manner. I'm hoping to get this routine down to about the first 5-7 minutes of the class and check their homework, go over a couple answers and then turn it in so I can keep track of who has it done and the students get feedback right away. Marzano stresses the importance of creating routines for everyday activities so the students and the classroom as a whole is productive and orderly (pg 89).

Marzano strategies

This week in math we created a study guide with notes on types of triangles. We did a group talk about triangles at first then we listed some of the names of triangles. We then took notes on classifying each triangle and drew an example. We then did lab sheets and book pages and the students could use their notes. I think the only reason why the note were so beneficial was because they actually used them while they were doing independent work. I know there have been times when we have taken notes but then never came back to them. I intend on using these notes again so they are beneficial to the kids.

I also worked on non linguistic representation. This week we are studying the prefixes mono bi and uni. I gave the student two words that have those prefixes. They had to look up the definition and then create a picture that represented the word. For some students this was very hard because some of the words were difficult to represent with a picture. The pictures they came up with were really creative. They explanations they had to go with their pictures showed me they really thought about the word. I also used non-linguistic representation in math class. We were reviewing geometry words. They had to create those words (quadrilateral etc) with their bodies. You could see them really thinking about how to move their bodies to make those shapes. It also showed me right away if they remembered what the words meant.

I'm still working on the homework and feedback. Today I made sure we corrected the homework we did the night before so they could get feedback. I think the feedback was good for them to have but the struggle I have is how long it takes to correct. It goes into our lesson time so maybe I could think of a way they could correct it on their own or when they are done with their work.

Triumphs and troubles

Triumph: conferences were a success! I had a lot of positive interactions with parents and many had good things to say about the year. I knew I had to be prepared with things the students were doing well and things they need to work on. I was very happy with how they went and it feels good to be on the same page.

Troubles: this is my first year teaching 5th grade and I feel like I can't plan far ahead because I don't know what's coming up next and there is only enough time to prepare for about 1 week at a time. I know next year will be better since I will have taught the curriculum already so I have to keep reminding myself that if I can't plan for longer time chunks that is ok.

Marzano Effective Teaching Strategies

While reading the chapter on instructional strategies there were a few ideas that surprised me. The first idea that really stuck out to me was how effective tutoring was on the Hattie table. I wouldn’t have thought of this being that effective. After thinking about it I could see it being effective especially if it is one on one tutoring. They are getting extra practice at their level. I was also surprised to see how effective homework is. This is such a controversial topic and this is my first year using homework routinely. I think I need to make sure they get feedback every time to make it really meaningful. I was not surprised to see similarities and differences being one of the most effective strategies on Marzano’s table. This concept involves kids thinking deeply and making connections to what they read. I can understand why this is so effective. I was a little surprised to see how high note taking and summarizing was on the list. I think this is something that doesn’t get used as much especially in the lower grades, instead I think we just get right into the doing.

The strategies I want to implement more in my classroom over the next few weeks are:

1. Summarizing and note taking

2. Homework and practice

3. Nonlinguistic representation