STEM and Collaboration

This week I read Elementary Schools participate in STEM.

This article focused on a public school that has monthly STEM programs for every grade level. Each grade is designated a day (ex: 1st Thursday of each month is 4th Grade's Day). The program takes place after school. Students are completing projects using a variety of "tools" such as plastic spoons, rubber bands, cardboard, popsical sticks, etc. Students are broken up into group and are given a goal or objective to work on. This month students were building a catapult to try and shoot plastic golf balls into a net. The theme was March Madness.

The ESL teacher attends the programs in order to assist her L2 students. I think this is fantastic that the teacher is spending additional time outside of the school day to help her students succeed.

Many of the articles I have read during this course have emphasized how beneficial group work can be for ESL students. Anxiety lessens, and the L2s can learn from their peers. They are also able to practice their speech and have peers correct them in a low stress environment. There are also learning important group work habits and skills. This program is no exception to any of this. I love that the school is promoting collaboration.

My district is planning on starting a variety of after school programs next year. I think a STEM centered one would be a great addition.

Digital Parent Night

This week I read: Strategies for Supporting ELL Students in Math 

The title caught my interest, however the article was getting pretty dry and wasn't providing any "new" information. The strategies were very basic; "if students are engaged they'll do better". While that is true, I wouldn't say it is a ground breaking revolution.

I was about to hit the back button to look at other article suggestions until I read this:

"...Compton Unified (the school in the article) has digital parent nights to help familiarize families with the technology being used to support their children."

Wow. What an incredible, yet simple idea. How helpful this could be in getting parents involved, and really closing the gap between home and school. It could be overwhelming to look at a teacher's website list and try to decide how each one works, what the login is, why it is used, etc. Compound that with that limited English proficiency. Yikes! The easy option would be to leave the websites at school. Have a "Digital Parent Night" would be beneficial to ALL parents.

The end of the article mentioned that this school Compton Unified also has a great set-up for professional development. The PD is ongoing all year, and teachers chose what sessions they are interested in, and pick times that best fit them. This gives the teachers more accountability and motivation for the technologies they are choosing to be trained on.

So, although this article didn't provide any helpful math strategies...it still did give me two great ideas for how my district could better meet the needs of teachers and parents.

Let's Keep "Book Reports" in the Past

This week I enjoyed this article, How To Enhance Book Reports Using Technology. Raise your hand if you remember completing one, or multiple, book reports in your K-12 education; having to meet page requirements, number of word requirements, getting more caught up on having the correct margin sizes and line spacing, rather than which events to mention....I've been there, I'm sure some or many of you have been as well.

There is no denying that book reports carry value. They do give you insight to how well your students comprehending what they read. They do give great practice in the mechanics of writing. But, if your students are dreading the task...how much value are they getting from a book report? These types of tasks turn students away from reading.

This article provided excellent examples of different ways to have your students create a book report, rather than just writing a book report. Some of my favorites included:

Having students pair up and create videos or podcasts interviewing one another about their books. I have my students do this informally and they LOVE it.

Create a website/blog. Students would use this all year, reporting on different books they read. They could include audio recordings, videos, drawings or photos. However they felt was the best way to get the important information across.

Virtual Book Shelf. Using a website such as, Goodreads, to review books and track what books they have read. How great would this be for students to look back on at the end of the year and see how many books they read?! What a great accomplishment!

Create a Book Trailer or Poster. This is similar to a movie trailer or poster. The goal is to try and persuade others to read the given book.

I thought about how great some of these alternatives would be for ELLs. Reading and Writing are already not the easiest tasks when learning a new language. Book reports require both. The flexibility in type of assignment could relieve a lot of anxiety, as well as build confidence.

So which alternative are you most likely to try?

Supporting L2 Writers with Google Docs

This week I enjoyed reading the article Seven Ways to Use Google Docs to Support Bilingual Student Writers.

I felt like this was an appropriate read for this week after looking into Digital Storytelling, and how writing can be a challenge for ELLs. This article was based on a classroom containing students in grades 9-11, speaking 4 different languages, including English, Arabic, French and Ukrainian. The classroom is 1:1 with iPads. Every class starts by using an RSS Feed to find and read news articles. The article selections vary from student to student. The language and topics of the articles are also student specific.

Students will then partner up and share what the article was about, if it was credible and why it was credible. This is such a fantastic way to practice comprehension, speaking and critical thinking. The teacher posts the questions, along with sentence starters, in the front of the room using Google Slides. The students then copy and paste sections of their articles to a shared Google Doc. The teacher will post what she is looking for that day. The example in the article was proof as to why their article seemed credible, or why it didn't. The best part about using a Google Doc for this assignment is the real time feature.

Some other ways this teacher uses Google Docs includes

• Sharing a link to reading or video and having students add comments or annotations to the shared document
• Students create rubrics to use when reading articles
• Shared Writing...students work together to construct one paper. Google Docs has a revision history that can show the teacher which students did what. This also works as a great model for struggling students. They can watch their peer form sentences to gain a better upstanding of the task and then jump in and join when they are ready.
• Using Google Translate and looking up definitions of words and images of word.
• This one gave me a great idea for my students. I would love to give my first graders a list of words and their job would be to find images that matched the words. This would give me insight on if they understood the word/were reading the word correctly.
• Feedback! Feedback can happen in real time. It also can happen in the form of comments on the side bar rather than red pen all over a students "final copy". 

Finally I would like to end with this quote from the article. I think it sums up not only this post...but this entire blog perfectly:

"Digital-based tools not only help prepare linguistically-diverse students to compose and communicate in the 21st century, but they are also necessary to promote greater equity through increased access to rich and meaningful writing instruction."

-Christina Ponzio

School Isn't Just for Students

This week I came across this article: Parents upset over daytime adult classes at Nordstrom. 
This came from a newspaper in California, The Morgan Hill Times. 

Here is a little overview of the article...an elementary school began offering ESL classes for parents of students. The classes were originally in the evening twice a week, but after many requests the class times were moved to 8:30-10:30am, still twice a week. The idea was that parents would drop off their children for school. and they would then enter their own classroom to receive English instruction. The goals were to build English skills, as well as parent involvement. Sounds like a great idea...

...well not everyone felt that way. The article discussed how there were a few parents very upset over the new time the parent ESL classes were offered...during the school day. There were immediate safety concerns regarding the increased number of adults in the school. The district was taking safety precautions, such as background checks and fingerprinting but that wasn't enough to ease the fears some parents had. 

I found myself feeling conflicted reading this article. I loved the idea of offering the parent ESL classes. I think this is such an amazing resource. You can tell the school really has their students' best interests in mind. They truly are going above and beyond to meet their students' needs. However, the parents aren't raising concerns without reason. We unfortunately live in a world where comfort has somewhat been lost. It often bothers me that school shootings have become so common that most don't even make national headlines. That's scary. 

Without having any background on this school I would think that school had a good idea about the type of parents they had. I would hope they wouldn't decide to offer these classes during school hours if they felt like their students and faculty would be at risk in any way. 

Nonetheless, I do find myself "siding" with the school district. I think this is a phenomenal resource and I would love to hear a follow up regarding any success they had. 

Using Video in the Classroom

This week I read this article: Response: The Best Ways to Use Video in Class by Larry Ferrlazo.

I think this is a topic that has a lot of different opinions surrounding it. Do videos provide additional educational benefits or are they simply a time filler? There really is no correct answer...it all depends on how effectively the videos are utilized. This article provided a vast variety of different ways video could be used to benefit students. The article covered everything from showing videos and movies, to having students create videos.

I think back to some of the videos I was shown in my K-12 education...I have vivid memories of watching School House Rock, Bill Nye the Science Guy and The Magic School Bus. There are a lot of things I feel like I better understand and remember because of some of these videos. For example, I can tell you how a bill becomes a law (I may sing the process, but nonetheless I could still tell you). If you aren't familiar with my reference, or want to take a walk down memory lane...enjoy the video below.

This article really emphasized how many different ways there are to successfully use video. The great thing is, is that this a tool that can be used for students of all ages. Students can create videos to show and explain their understanding of various topics. I can think of so many ways my students could do this.  One thing I would love to try is having them make a video of a word problem using real life manipulatives. Something we have done in the past is using a book and a movie to compare and contrast. We always do this with The Polar Express before winter break...the class loves it! 

I'd love to hear about some ways you use, or would like to use video in the classroom.