As promised, here are some photos from the trenches, the classrooms I have spent quite a bit of time in. It is through these photos and some short video clips that we can see that what we do each day as educators truly can make a difference! As I continue to check back with each of these classes, I plan to get more snapshots of the learning taking place! I will share as I do. In the meantime, if you have comments or questions about what we did, please feel free to contact me. It truly is a pleasure to work with teachers who want to grow so their students continue to grow!
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If you previously followed my Wordpress blog, then you may have seen this post Juggling Act, way back in November 2013. I was THRILLED when about 5 teachers took me up on my offer to work alongside them to provide feedback, try some new things, and troubleshoot together how to fit everything in. As an instructional coach, it's important to have buy-in when coaching teachers, and because I'm support for instruction in a site based management district, I need to be invited into schools. Not to mention, co-teaching requires time to plan and reflect together that might feel like "extra" time teachers don't have. Alas, every teacher I worked with was so inviting and their students were, are INCREDIBLE kids!
Snow days interrupted the first few classrooms I was welcomed into, however we'll be finding more days to work together. Some things I got to try that weren't part of my classroom days that I absolutely LOVED were our Discovery Ed Science Techbook and Blendspace! When it comes to new ways to do old things, I'm a nerd. I love learning all the new ways technology can make our lives, our jobs more efficient. Here's how these two tools helped me and the teachers I was working with! Discovery Ed Science Techbook was an engaging and interactive way to look at plant life cycles and animal life cycles in 3rd grade. One of the teachers I worked with stated that she didnt' have enough Science textbooks for each student, and the text book was boring to them anyhow. So we pulled up an interactive activity where students put pictures of the plants and animals into the correct life cycle stages. The students loved it, I mean LOVED it, and when they were given directions to draw their own life cycle diagram, each one of them was successful! I'll admit, I probably would've learned more and been more interested in Science as a kid had I had access to a book like this! Blendspace could possibly be the one thing I URGE all teachers to learn and use!!!! We have SO many resources these days, and constantly flipping back and forth between powerpoints, flilpcharts, internet, videos, documents, etc takes valuable time away from instruction. Blendspace is a cloud based program that allows you to create "lessons" in one place! I'm thinking of all the possibilities for teachers and students. We used Blendspace to create a writing lesson for 2nd graders, we used it just as our "visual" much like a Promethean flipchart, but the cool thing was we were able to show students examples of grade level writing, and each day we were able to add new pieces of student writing to share. It was so easy! The other great thing was during a math lesson, we wanted students to do some research about animal weights, and the teacher created a Blendspace with only 4 websites she wanted the students to search for their information. It made research safe, and the teacher knew each of the places students were looking for information had her approval! Thank you so much to the teachers (Mrs. Hall, Mrs. Chivers-White, Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Patrick, and Ms. Sylvester) who welcomed me into their classrooms! I learned so much and can't wait to come back and see the great things you continue to do! I hope I lived up to your expectations for the experience! Pictures from our time together coming soon! I haven't kept up with this blog very well. I actually have another professional blog on Wordpress where I update, well, at least try to update once a month. With daylight savings time just beginning and spring in the air, my goal is to only have one blog, and update it regularly with student work, teacher work, and share insights on my days as an instructional coach, educational leader, and lifetime learner.
In my district, we have provided opportunities for teachers to use weebly as a classroom website and blog, therefore I think it's important for me to shutdown my other blog and stick with this one. So, here's to new beginnings! A few weeks ago I left the students in Mrs. Pundt's class to continue working on their reflections for e portfolios. This process of creating e portfolios is time consuming, yet so worth it to build students' meta- cognitive skills. When I left the students I reflected on what we did that first day together and here are a few A-HAs: it's difficult for students to look back at their work and reflect on what they learned from a particular assignment or project; no matter the venue for writing students still need the teacher to model what is expected. Some technical A-Has we had were that due to bandwidth and server in the school, students should not all blog at the same time, it took a very long time for students to load images and write reflections if they were all trying to do it at once on their iPads. Once we realized how challenging it was for students to look back at work from the beginning of the year to reflect on, Mrs. Pundt decided to have her students do The Marshmallow Challenge and blog about that process including reflections on what they learned from it. This worked well. When I returned to the class they were ready to show me what they had done and could talk to me about the process they experienced in The Marshmallow Challenge, as well as their reflective writing skills! Since this was an experiment towards the end of the school year, we definitely learned some things so that we can assist teachers in implementing digital portfolios for next school year. The best thing was students took ownership of their learning and were excited to share their work with others At the beginning of the year while in a workshop about Challenged Based Learning I worked with a group of teachers on this project called The Marshmallow Challenge. I learned a lot from this activity. I learned that you have to work together as a team. Also, I learned that its not as easy as it sounds to build a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows. When I look back at this project I think about how participating in it helped me throughout the year. Not only did this project help me work as a team better, it also taught me that I have to work at creating things with unusual objects. The first time I did this it was hard, but I've done The Marshmallow Challenge two more times and I got better each time.
A portfolio is a collection of work. An ePortfolio is an electronic collection of work. While student portfolios have been around for nearly two decades, ePortfolios have been around at least one, but they are just starting to make headlines. ePortfolios are an electronic collection of artifacts or evidence that shows learning over time. Students can use ePortfolios for different purposes. One purpose is for learning and reflection on learning. Another purpose is to showcase products and use for accountability purposes. My work in getting started will focus on using ePortfolios for reflection of learning. Students may include writing samples, videos, pictures, projects, and observations from peers or teachers in their ePortfolio. The most important part of an ePortfolio is not to "dazzle" your audience with your product/artifact, but rather to reflect on why you chose to include that specific artifact, and what you learned from the process of developing it and your portfolio. ePortfolios should foster a sense of personal ownership of one's accomplishments, and encourage feelings of pride, responsibility, and dedication in students.
While I don't have a class of my own, as an instructional coach I am responsible for helping teachers improve their practices, as well as implement new practices. I am intrigued with the use of technology for reflecting on student work. Being reflective in my own work, and a huge advocate of formative feedback and assessment, I think portfolios, more precisely, electronic or digital portfolios are essential for 21st Century learning. I asked a third grade teacher if she would be willing to let me try some things with her students as the school year is winding down, she obliged.
I've researched how to get started, as well as observed students blogging to get a sense of what they already know and are able to do. I also had some A-Ha moments as I interacted with students blogging. A few key lessons we need to make sure we address; citing sources properly, plagiarism, and knowing your purpose for blogging. This particular group of third graders that I will work with in a few weeks is going to be using their blogs to reflect on learning this year. Because it's the end of the school year, I've asked their teacher to help them identify 4-6 assignments or projects they'd like to include in their eportfolio. Naturally though, you'd want to set the portfolios up at the beginning of a school year so students can choose work to reflect on and get feedback on throughout the year. While eportfolios can serve multiple purposes, we're going to begin using them for learning... meaning students will choose artifacts to post on their blog, reflect on the work, get feedback, and set goals for improvement. I want the focus to be on the process, rather than the product, especially at the elementary level. |
AuthorI'm Kristen, a dedicated and passionate learner and educational leader. This blog is the reflection of my work as an instructional coach. Archives
August 2015
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