Third grade is a big year. It's the last year students are part of the "lower grades" and it's the first year they are subject to taking the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress or CAASPP. As the long title suggests the test is long and grueling. It very much so reminds me of another terrible and long test, the dreaded: SAT. However, the SAT is designed to assess students twice the age of 3rd graders. Which makes me wonder-why are we making 9 year-olds take a test that would fatigue an 18 year-old? Test taking is hard. It's stressful, frustrating, and just plain awful. When I was a young student testing never affected me. But, when I got to college assessments of any kind became daunting and intimidating. Last year was my first year teaching 3rd grade and in my first year having to administer the CAASPP to my students. As my students took the test I started noticing many familiar symptoms: frustration, fatigue, and heightened anxiety. I knew that there had to be someway for my students to manage their feelings and be able to push past them so that they could perform well on these state tests. Next year I am moving to a new school site. I could see myself suggesting some strategies to the 3rd-5th grade team. I believe this work is important in order to give students language to voice how they're feeling. I want to keep trying different strategies and programs with students that incorporate socio-emotional learning in the classroom. One of my colleagues just received her yoga certification for educators. The breathing strategies and meditation practice could be a very powerful tool in addition to using language to express feelings.
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I think about Madonna singing Material Girl. She's a material girl living in a material world. Then I think about Cohort 16. We're transliterate educators living in a transliterate world. I found this infographic from UC San Diego. While the numbers might be a little different I think the message is spot on. We bombard ourselves with stimulation from a wide variety of data. We're addicts, but not necessarily in a bad way. We seek out information, game to improve our problem solving abilities, and connect with people near or far.
When I first started teaching the district didn't have a laptop ready for me, so I just used paper and pencil lessons. It didn't bother me, but I know me 21st century students were bored out of their minds. Fast forward to now where I have 1:1 student chromebooks, a chrome TV, and a district laptop for myself. Engagement is way up. Why? Because students are accessing information in a way that is exciting to them. My third graders have never know a life without tablets, social media, or smart phones. So, using technology in the classroom only acts to support the transliteracy skills that they've known in their lifetime. Being transliterate not only allows our students to thrive in the 21st century classroom, it also will prepare them for a modern career. This week I had the opportunity to dive deep into some capstone pages from innovators past. Seeing their work gives a clearer overview of where we are all headed on this crazy voyage. I had the pleasure of looking at two distinctly different capstones by Avrukin and Saelee. It was obvious in both projects that a lot of work had been done and they were both proud of their respective innovations. What was most interesting to me was how different their final products looked. On one hand Saelee had a LOTS of words, while Avrukin stayed with bullet points to guide readers to where they wanted to go. Both capstones were targeted towards educators differentiating instruction on some level. This information is highly geared towards educators.
Since my capstone is focused around socio-emotional learning I really think that my target audience is broader than educators. Parents, teachers, and older students may all find helpful information. Mental health is a big topic right now. Conversations need to happen in order for our students to learn how to cope, process, and conquer their educational goals. These conversations need to happen at a young age when students are most impressionable and can happen in the home or classroom. A classroom teacher can facilitate the beginning of these conversations and they can be continued at home if parents choose. This is going to be an important semester for collaboration. Teaching is one of the few careers that isn't cut throat and competitive (at least not in my experience). We are all hopefully here to support one another. I'm hoping that we will have in-class time to break out into small groups to voice frustrations, mourn losses of a failed attempt, and celebrate small victories together. July 17 isn't that far away. While it's exciting to know that we're all about to cross the finish line together. It is also stressful knowing that the culmination of all our hard work is about to be put on display.
Since we're such a close cohort I think it's really important that we set aside time for one another to meet outside of class. The 2 hours in class doesn't give enough time to dive deep and give meaningful feedback. Many of us live in Vallejo. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to meet somewhere or on Zoom. Summer session is especially exciting because we will not have to go to work. So, we can meet classmates over lunch or coffee like normal people. We're on a speeding bus without breaks. Just when we feel that we've conquered one way of doing something a new version is rolled out promising to be bigger, better, and faster. How do we keep up? How do we adapt? We don't. We find what works for us and run with it. Integrating technology into classrooms is no new concept. With TPACK we create a perfect storm of Technology, Content, and Pedagogy. We can use technology to make content more engaging for our modern students. For my project I can apply sensemaking out of the unseen or avoided tasks. One could assume that younger students do not feel the same sense of pressure when taking tests as older students do. Older students deal with midterms, cumulative final assessments, SATs, and ACTs. Their college careers depend on scoring well on these. Similarly, elementary school aged students are measured by their CAASPP scores. Which can create an overwhelming amount of stress at a young age. Feelings are hard to talk about. Students often feel upset, but will not voice how they feel to save face. Teachers have also seen students unable to perform to their the best of their abilities under pressure. These students need a way to manage stress and built the grit or perseverance in order to show their knowledge. Students need a lot of help in these situations to bridge the gap. I have a lot of big picture ideas for my prototype and how teachers can use it in their classrooms. I'm excited to develop lesson plans and videos that teachers can use in their classrooms. In our education world of standardized testing students should be able to take ownership of their emotions instead of letting them interfere with their learning.
Teachers coming into a training would be welcomed by soothing music. They will take the Westside Test Anxiety Scale on a device through Google Forms or a paper version. They will hold onto their score for later discussion. Students feel stress from home, standardized testing, and interactions with peers. Many of our students will allow this stress to affect their academic performance. We as educators need to support our students to turn these stressful situations into stories of success and grit. Students with high grit scores are more likely to persevere through difficult tasks to completion. Many of our students lack the emotional regulation to be successful on grueling standardized tests, such as the CAASPP. They become frustrated, overwhelmed, or just plain fatigued. Our job as educators is to supply students with an emotionally empowering toolkit to give them the energy and motivation to be successful when completing difficult tasks. During the Fall, I introduced students to some stress relieving and focusing strategies like taking several deep breaths, going for a quick walk, and taking sips of water. Initially students found these practices to be most helpful in difficult social situations with peers and siblings. In the Spring, I incorporated the Westside Test Anxiety Scale to measure students' stress levels around math tests. For their next math test we did a stress relieving GoNoodle followed by students completing the WTAS. Their scores were marginally lower. Throughout the week I positively reinforce behaviors through ClassDojo. I give points for: helping a struggling classmate, taking deep breaths, teamwork, being on task, participating, and perseverance. My favorite part of the model I've created is the branching Google Form. If a student scores high on the anxiety scale prior to taking a test then they are directed to a calming strategy video from GoNoodle before beginning their test. It's just an extra calming boost to help settle negative nerves. Technology is a powerful tool for education. I found it especially helpful to score and differentiate my student's test anxiety levels. The Google Form helps give instant feedback so teachers can give support where needed. If a student is feeling too tightly wound up then there is no learning happening. While feelings guru is not explicitly in our job description it makes up a huge portion of the day. What is gaming & gamification? What are you playing? What are your students playing? What are examples of gamification that we encounter regularly? How might you use game-based learning/gamification in your practice? Gamification is a great strategy to use in the classroom. It turns basic daily routines into games and friendly competitions, while game based learning integrates critical thinking and collaboration into content games. We play games on a regular basis. We assign points and create mini competitions. Our school uses the "dragon dollar." Students can redeem dollars at the student store. In the classroom students can gain points through Class Dojo. My favorite feature on Class Dojo is the ability to connect with parents. I've also tried Classcraft for this same purpose but found that it had too many moving parts for me to feel like I could handle it. My students and I explored it for two days in the classroom together, but in the end I decided that it wasn't the right choice for us. This isn't concept. People have been making content into games for a long time now. Some classics are Monopoly, Scrabble, and the classic online game: Oregon Trail. Did you really grow up in the 90s-00s if you didn't die of dysentery at least once? Our kids are gamers. They play video games at home and access educational apps on their devices. Most of my kids play Fortnight, Roblox, and a few other video games. They often play online with friends or random people. The most popular educational game they play is prodigy. These games promote the idea of failure as a first try, which is great for growth mindset. All of this inspired me to download some games on my phone for the first time in years. I forgot how satisfying it is to move on to the next level. They're just some word scramble and short term memory exercises, but I feel like I'm doing something more productive than just scrolling through social media. Also, I feel like this is a sure fired way to get carpal tunnel. This week I tried a bunch of tools. The one I'm most excited and intimidated by is Code.org. Kids get to code and create their own projects. There are also great lesson templates that do not require devices! Imagine being able to talk about coding concepts without even touching a computer. I really appreciated Flipped Classroom 101 and the Catlin Tucker articles. While flipping the classroom sounds amazing and would make classroom time more meaningful these two articles touched on how difficult it is for some students to access online content at home after a long day of school. But the "In-Class" Flip, presented by Jennifer Gonzalez, sounds like something I can get behind. The model sounds a lot like "Daily 5" where students rotate in small groups to practice various ELA skills. Instead switch out one of the rotations with a video introducing a new topic while you, the teacher, can work with a small group or monitor students. Add in an additional station so students can practice the new skill from the video. Depending on your class size you'll want about 4-6 stations.
I am using Powtoon create a video to intro a lesson on early California history. I chose Powtoon because it offered templates as well as a free trial. I would have used Adobe Spark but I've already used it. Powtoon was really tricky to use on my computer. When I tried to insert images it took me to settings. The Earth background came in and out of my recording. Overall it was really frustrating, but the end product came out okay. It's just a fancy powerpoint with music. From the videp students will go to NewsELa to read articles about Native Americans and the California Missions. Additional stations will be: California missions mapping, sequencing major Vallejo city events on a timeline, draw your vision of early Vallejo, and the final add-in station will be writing about the relationship between Vallejo and the missions. I'm waiting to try this lesson out with my Induction mentor on April 16, so she can see some of the new strategies we've been trying out here. It will also be nice to have an extra set of hands in case my students have a difficult time transitioning stations since that is not something we do often. Four letters: C, R, A, P. If I take nothing else away from the Baggio book, at least I will have CRAP. Contrast- creates a focal point, can show how items are different. Repetition- use it to make a presentation consistent Alignment- most people read from left to right that's how people see pictures, too Proximity- keep like items organized After going through this book it's really hard to watch other people give presentations. Like Brenna said in Session 4 it's kinda like drinking the "kool-aid." My eyes are open and I can't unsee other teacher's oddly formatted powerpoints or videos. At a recent staff meeting we watched a video about preparing our classrooms for the CAASPP test. It was a neat video made with Animaker. However, there was so much text on each slide that I couldn't keep up. It reminded me of being an undergrad when I would quietly take pictures of my professor's slides instead of taking notes because they would dump loads of information on a few slides. While the video had good intentions the delivery was hard to watch. My students are very bright but need words "chunked out" as Baggio says. Most people need information this way. Our phone numbers, social security numbers, and addresses are all chunked out. Thinking about the Informational Subcontext of the SITE model, information needs to be made simple enough for (all) people to follow along.
I don't use Google forms very often in my classroom, however given Scott's tutorials, Alice Keeler's blogs, and Control Alt Acheive's Add-on tutorial I've found some tricks that will really help. I created a form for my capstone to give students an anxiety rating scale survey. It gives me the average score for each student automatically. From there I would like it to assign each student a stress relieving strategy based on their score. Ultimately I think Google forms would be a great resource for reoccurring quizzes, parent feedback, creating stories through branching. When you really think about it the uses for Google forms are only limited by your own imagination or computer skills. However, like Alice Keeler says creating a Google form can be Ted-i-ous. Once you've created the forms though they're easily recyclable year to year with a few edits. I especially like that Google makes pie charts to show how students responded to each question. Some add-ons that caught my attention are: flubaroo (a grading tool), form values (for storing lists of names that you use often), and CheckItOut (for checking items in and out). CheckItOut seems like it could make managing my classroom library so much simpler. Currently, I have a spreadsheet with each student's name on it with the book they have checked out typed in next to it. It helps me keep track of where my books are, but I'm the one having to manage it along with everything else in the classroom. With CheckItOut my students could fill out the Google form and manage their books with out me. Which is great because I've essentially given up on where my books are. |
Catie GoldsteinInnovative Learning Master's Student. Teacher. Napper. Dog Petter. Archives
June 2019
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