It’s been a jam-packed 2 days, let me tell you.

If you’ve never attended a MACUL conference, my apologies.  You don’t know what you’re missing.  I think they know that March is about the time when teachers start feeling the burn-0ut.  They know.  We’ve got standardized testing coming up (right after Spring Break, mind you!) and teachers are starting to feel the pinch.  What better way to re-charge our batteries than to hold a conference chalk-full of tech tools that we can start using in our classrooms and get our creative juices going?  Throw in some amazing sessions, some outstanding keynote speakers, add in Twitter to share all the goods, and BAM–we are ready to go.

Going to these conferences really reminds me why I became a teacher in the first place.  Being in such a positive and supportive environment with teachers from all over the country really does something to you.  I am grateful to have such supporting admin to allow me to attend this and look forward to more conferences in the future.

Thank you, #MACUL18.  I really, really needed this.

Ok, so one of the unique things we do at my high school is have what we call a Moral Focus every month.  Each month has a different Moral focus which allows teachers and students to discuss and partake in activities that will help them become better people.  November’s Moral Focus is Gratitude, and I think everyone can always use a little reminder about what they should be grateful for, don’t you?

I started class of by showing my students a video for our Do Now.  Once it was finished, I had them jot down 5 things they were grateful for in their Do Now notebooks.  Once they wrote their 5, they had to select their favorite and write it on the back whiteboard, which was serving as our Gratitude Board.  This way, there was always a reminder as they walked through the door.

After all students from each hour wrote their entries, our Gratitude Board looked great! I plan on allowing them to add as they wish during the month.  Later this month, we will work on writing letters to someone who has made a difference in our lives to show our gratitude.  I look forward to reading them and hearing their stories of when their recipients get them! 🙂

Oh, happy day! I totally felt like this on Friday when we presented our book trailers!

It’s been a long journey, through reading our novels, planning our trailers, then creating them on the iPads, but they did it.  I was so proud of them! This was a first-time journey for both them and me, but I think it turned out wonderfully.  Were the trailers perfect? No. But going from no experience on iMovie to creating a trailer using the Project feature on iMovie (not the Trailer option), they were able to do great work.  Some things I learned along the way:

1.  Daily conferencing is crucial! Being a Resource room, we couldn’t work on the trailers for any straight consecutive days because of other work we had, but I had to communicate with them often to make sure they were understanding what to do as well as staying on task.  There were a couple of students who reaaaally waited until the last minute to get their reading done.

2.  Be firm about the order of things being done! I purposefully made searching for images and music towards the end because I knew they’d spend the most time doing that.  I required that a book summary be done after the reading, then the storyboards be completed.  Some students wanted to skip right to finding pictures after their summary, which was a no-go.

3. Having an iMovie tutorial saved my life.  I found a great video on YouTube which did a fantastic job of explaining iMovie on the iPads in a short and sweet video.  I posted this on our class Edmodo site so the students could reference it as often as needed.  Even though I had it there, I still had kids ask me, “Miss! How do make the picture show longer?” My response: “The tutorial explains how to do it–go watch it again.”  And the video tutorial was only a few minutes long, so it wasn’t a big deal to go back and watch it over again.

4. Have deadlines! By having these, students were always aware at what point they should be in their book trailer creation process. Too much lagging (as some of them learned the hard way) really hurt them later as they struggled to get caught up.

5.  Make a big deal about their finished products.  I threw a “book trailer premier” party on Friday, presenting everyone’s trailers to the class.  I brought in popcorn for everyone to munch on while we watched them.  I know for middle schoolers it was probably not that big of a deal to do that (or at least some acted like it), but I wanted them to celebrate the work they put into them.

One thing I did as we watched the trailers was distribute Peer Evaluation sheets to each student.  Everyone got six of them in order to evaluate everyone else’s besides themselves.  They were to point out one good thing, one suggestion, and whether or not they would read the book based on the book trailer.  I did this because I thought each student could get feedback from their peers, which could hold more weight than my own feedback, potentially.  Plus, I wanted students to analyze each other’s work instead of just “watching” them.

Last, I created a Google Form for students to do a self-assessment on this project.  I did this not only for them to think about their own work, but to give me an idea as to what they liked/didn’t like.  From their submissions, all of them said they’d prefer to do a book trailer in the future over a written assignment/report.  I’m very pleased that it was worth it to them.  Hard work really does pay off.  🙂

Writing a book summary.

Finishing his reading…

Planning his trailer.

In the early portions of storyboarding. Some tweaks were made along the way.

Searching for images.

Recording his narration.

Book trailer.

Showtime. 🙂

Saying nice things about their classmate’s video (while enjoying some popcorn). 🙂

And although they begged me not to show their trailers, I thought one wouldn’t hurt. 😉

So I’ve had several people ask me how Innovation Day went in my classroom.  To put it simply, it was awesome!

Let me give you a run-down of our agenda for that day.  From talking to the students the day before, they knew they were to come to my room first thing after dropping off their bags and coats in their lockers.  These kids came bombarding into my room as if they had downed a few bottles of Mountain Dew.  They reminded me of my kids on Christmas morning, waiting to open their presents.  They were very excited, to say the least.  As soon as they all arrived, I kept getting asked, “When are we gonna start?” I must’ve told them “after the announcements” about 10 times.  The kids were walking around asking each other what they were going to work on.  Our poor principal.  He never stood the chance of his announcements being heard that day.  At least from my group.

After what seemed like an eternity, the announcements were over and I explained to them how it was going to work.  Students would be able to work on their project until 11:07 (lunch), they would eat lunch in the cafeteria, come back up, and work more until about 2.  At that point, the students would present their work and fill out a Reflection Sheet regarding their Innovation Day projects.  I distributed materials, which consisted of popsicle sticks, glue, Legos, Kinex, iPads, latptops, and action figures.  Some students brought in their own action figures.  Another brought in her personal (and very nice) laptop from home.  They got right to work.

I had to give some assistance to one student as he was trying to navigate Minecraft on the iPads for the first time ever.  Although my own kids at home are obsessed with that game, I don’t know much about playing it myself.  Fortunately, together we were able to figure it out and he was building in a matter of no time.

So as you’re envisioning and taking all this in, I would like to mention a few glitches I hit along the way, before I go back to painting my portrait of middle school bliss.  First was materials.  As I mentioned before, my kids don’t have a lot.  Since a few of them had mentioned using Legos, I had to find enough to endure hours of building for multiple students.  Thanks to the help of a very generous donor (thank you, Heather Gauck!), I was able to get enough.  Yes, I did end up purchasing used Legos online a few days before as well, just to make sure there was enough.  Besides the problem with materials, I had one student who was just so darn indecisive.  Actually, let me re-phrase that.  He didn’t want to take the time to think of a project to work on.  First he had come up with one project.  Then he changed his mind.  Then he told me to pick a project for him.  Then, that morning, he asked if it was ok for him to work on a 3D model of the Eiffel Tower with another student who actually bought it to work on himself.  The other student had agreed to let him work on it with him, although I let my one student know that was irresponsible of him.

Another unfortunate thing was that our principal wasn’t able to stop in and see us work.  I know this wasn’t his fault–that day was a crazy day and he had to handle business with different students and their parents.  I know how much he’d talked about wanting to see them all in action, so I let him know afterwards how it went.

One last problem I ran into was a technology issue (go figure).  I would ominously label this section Me vs. The Help Desk. So let me give you a little background info super quickly.  There have been times in the past when I’ve needed either an update or some software downloaded to my school laptop.  I’ve called the Help Desk and they’ve been able to download it as we spoke over the phone.  Instantaneously.  I’ve never really had to wait for more than a day for a software download.  A week before Innovation Day, I let the Help Desk know that I wanted to download Reflector onto my laptop. I briefly explained what it was and was told they’d get back to me.  A day later, I received a phone call telling me the dongle would cost yada yada dollars.  I told them they were mistaken–there was no hardware needed.  I tried to explain again, all while the lady was writing it down on her end.  Fast forward another day. I was told I had to wait to get the ok from our district tech person.  I followed up with e-mails asking if it would be something they could do by Friday, since I needed it for the students to present their iPad projects.  No answer.  From anybody.  I saw that my e-mails were being read, just not replied to.  I e-mailed the tech lady again and the Help Desk again. No answer.  Finally, Friday came around and I still had no answer.  We ended up putting the iPads on the ELMO and tried to present that way.  It worked alright, but it got blurry when the students were navigating through their projects and the ELMO couldn’t keep up with their motions fast enough.  It wasn’t until the middle of that next week that I got an answer that it couldn’t be done.  I don’t even want to get into how mad I was. Yeah, I kinda figured when you didn’t answer my e-mails for days that it wasn’t going to happen.

Ok, enough.  The good events of that day outweighed the bad by far.  The kids were so excited to work on their projects.  I brought in some snacks, one of my students brought in some snacks, and we played music the whole time.  I actually had two students who asked to stay during lunch, they were that much into their projects.  “You have to eat!” I told them.  “Miss, we got food here.” (pointing to the bags of chips and pop up front).  So I let them stay.  The rest of the kids went to get their lunch and asked to bring them back up to the room to eat and work at the same time.  During passing time, we had several students stop in, ask what we were doing, and then asked if they could stay also.

When lunch was over, I could see a slight shift in their momentum.  It slowed down a bit, but not much.  They had been working several hours already and I was surprised how focused they still were.  However, there was a little more checking out others’ projects and offering help, which I was totally fine with.  They all made it back to their projects eventually and continued until they were finished.

There was one point where one of my students had a catastrophe.  He was working on a stop-motion movie, using Lego figures.  I had installed an app called myCreate, which is specifically for stop-motion movies.  Somehow, my student hit the wrong button and everything erased.  Everything.  He had about 200 screenshots in the making and it was all gone in a second.  Other students tried to help get it back, I tried, but it was gone.  He was heartbroken and wanted to give up.  I told him he still had a few hours and could start another one.  Initially, he was dead-set against it.  All he said was he would never finish on time and that it was no use. I told him he had already created a great movie and knew he could do it again.  I felt sooooo bad for him! He kind of moped around for a while, looking at others working on their projects.  All the while, I would remind him that he was very talented and could start a new one.  Even if he never finished it, he could have something great to show.  Eventually, after about 15 minutes, he started rummaging through Legos again, looking for figurines.  After about 5 minutes, he started getting back into the swing of things.  I offered to save his work several times.  Each time, he declined. He was too busy working. 😉

Before it was time to present, I had them fill out their reflection sheets, which had them think about what they learned during this process.  When it was time to present, each student came to the front, explained what they worked on, and told us what they learned.  Most of the students said their projects were harder to do than they thought.  There was more involved and they had to modify what they did to make it the way they wanted.  My one student who lost all his work said he learned not to push the wrong button. 😉  Although he didn’t want to mention it, he also figured out how to create an “explosion” in his movie by holding up a transparent orange Lego piece up to the camera and take a shot like that.  I never would’ve thought of that.  He did.  He also said that even though you mess up, you can still keep going and make something just as good.  It was definitely a “proud mama” moment for me. You can see his movie here.

Building the Eiffel Tower

Making stop-motion movies!

Minecrafting. 🙂

Creating a slideshow to sing to. 🙂

Teamwork.

Getting it juuust right…

Mission accomplished!

Writing their post-project reflections.

Presenting his Minecraft castle.

Entertained by the stop-motion movies.

Watching the awesome movies that were created.

 

You can watch a short video clip here.

So, what did I learn? I learned that setting aside one day for students to work on something that interests them was totally worth it.  Not only did they get to explore their interests, but we grew more as family.  No one was at odds at anyone else that day.  If anything, there was more collaboration and teamwork than I’d ever seen from any of them.  Yes, I had some trouble along the way, but it was totally outweighed by the good. And yeah, it got noisy at times.  But it was a good kind of noise.  Laughing, complimenting, talking to others and themselves, as they figured out the best way to achieve their goal.  Even the kids who have had the most behavior problems this whole year had a blast.  Better yet, they were the ones making others laugh the most and created some of the best movies.  It was jaw-dropping.  The last part of their reflection sheets asked them this: Do you have any suggestions for this project?  Every single one of them stated pretty much the same thing: I hope we can do this again.  Would I do this again next year?  You can bet on it.

Tell me this wasn’t all of you guys the first morning back to school after Spring Break.  Uh huh….thought so.

While I was not the most excited to get up and tackle the school day today, I was excited about being able to introduce Innovation Day 2013 to my students.  I was given the ok to bring my principal to bring them up during lunch, so I did in order to get them all in one spot and explain everything.  At first, students didn’t really understand what was going on. They heard “you won’t go to any of your classes that day” and “you’ll work on a project that interests you,” but, somehow, couldn’t put both of them together to make sense.  I had to explain it a few times until they finally got it.

Next, I gave them some handouts, explaining what it was so they would be able to show their parents and talk to them about what was happening.  On the back of one, I listed some ideas of what kinds of projects they could choose to work on.  I figured they would have trouble coming up with some ideas.  By the time lunch was over, some students had already picked out their project.  Others started talking about different ideas they had.

I do have one concern regarding the project.  Supplies.  The students are to bring in their own and the school would provide the rest, such as laptops to work on, chart paper, markers, etc.  However, one of my students asked me, “Miss, what if we don’t have any supplies? I don’t have anything.”  My heart dropped.  I knew this was going to come up with some of my students.  If I had the money, I would by all the supplies myself.  God knows I’ve spent my own money tons of times before.  But times are tough.  I have four children to feed and my district hasn’t given me the raise they promised me in years.  At this point, I will keep encouraging them to think about what project they’d like to do.  Then I can better gauge what items I’ll need.  I may have to ask for help in the form of donations eventually.  Regardless, I want to make it an amazing day for them.

Keep your fingers crossed, friends.

…is what you’re probably saying to me right now.  Sooooo yeahhhh, see, what had happened was…. Ok, enough beating around the bush.  I’m a bad blogger.  Bad, bad blogger.  I know what you’re thinking:  “Where’ve you been, Miss Rivas? What happened to you?”

Life happened, folks.  Life.

Just a quick little view into the mayhem I call my life: My house sprung a leak and ruined my family room, I found out my homeowner’s didn’t cover the damage, I had to cancel my planned wedding, ended up getting married by the courts instead, was taking 2 grad classes as well as a 12 week class through my school district, all while trying to work as a full-time teacher and raise 4 children.

My apologies, friend.

So, as Nacho Libre would say, “Let’s get down to the neety-greety.”

What have we been doing up in Room 204-A lately?  My biggest thing has been introducing our next big project: book trailers.  No, you’re not experiencing deja vu, we’re doing book trailers.  Again.  The first time we did these, it was a hot mess.  I tried using the school laptops for this.  I thought it would be easier using Windows Movie Maker.  This was the biggest waste of time ever.  First of all, the laptops at our school suck, to put it lightly.  Software needed upgrading (0nly able to be done by our oxymoronic “Help Desk”), keys were missing, along with lagging of our network.  Rather than burying the evidence, I decided to go for a round 2.  This time:  iMovie on the iPads.

I should’ve done this from jump, but I was hesitant about the students’ abilities to use the app.  This time, I would present the project to them once again, only with (hopefully) more seamless results.  The first thing I did was create a video to intro the project. (Side note:  I attended the 2013 MACUL conference in Detroit a few weeks ago.  While my roomies were out networking after the conference, I was holed up in my hotel room working on this video.  It took me FOREVER to get it done just right! [Read: to my standards.])  Surprisingly, the students didn’t smother me with the excuses and teeth-sucking that I expected.  They accepted it.  One student even said, “Miss, I wanted to learn how to use this anyways, so I can make my own videos.” EXCELLENT.  All hope is not lost.

Letting the video sink in…

I proceeded to lead my little minions angels down to the library and choose the novel they’d be reporting on.  Basically, it’ll look like this:

• Students read self-chosen novels
• Students give a basic written summary of their novel, using the 5Ws as a guide
• Students plan their narrative, using their storyboard template
• Narratives are recorded and imported into iMovie
• Video is captured, using digital cameras
• Video is imported into iMovie
• Images are imported
• Music is imported
• Video is finalized
• All videos are presented to class as a whole. Popcorn is provided.

Book Trailer Rubric

 Chapter 2:  Innovation Day, 2013

So, as I stated earlier, I was very fortunate to have had the chance to go to the MACUL conference in Detroit a few weeks ago.  Among the plethora of information/ideas that was thrown at me was one that I found particularly interesting.  I’d never heard of an Innovation Day before (also known as FedEx Days), but was drawn to the whole concept.  In a nutshell, it’s an entire day dedicated to students creating a project of whatever interests them.  It could be building a 3D model of something, painting a picture, composing an original song, whatever.  The only requirements are that they have to produce something to present (whether it’s a slideshow, the art itself, a speech, etc.) and they have to mention what they learned from the whole process.  Upon doing some more research on this, and with the help of the information I got at MACUL, I found this website from Stump the Teacher  that explained it more in depth and this video from RSA, which also does an excellent job explaining, courtesy of the speech Dan Pink gave.

After e-mailing my principal with my proposal, I was surprised to get an e-mail back very quickly, telling me he was in full support of this.  Now my goal is to compile a list of possible projects, since I know the first words out of their mouths will be, “What can we do?” And “anything you want” is too broad for them.  They just need a gentle nudge.  As of now, I’m planning on doing this later this month with all my students with IEPs.  We will spend the entire day in my classroom, working on projects.  I. Can. Not. WAIT.  I’m getting antsy just thinking about it.  More to come.

So, that’s what’s going on.  I will attempt to keep you posted more regularly.  Time management is not my forte.

I’d like to think of it as a work in progress.  🙂

No, I promise I haven’t broken up with you. I just finished the two Master’s classes I’ve been taking, with the last major assignments due this past week. Priorities, man. Priorities.

So, Miss Rivas, what has the wonderful world of Extended Core been up to lately? Let’s start with our class blog, Operation X.

The students are progressing nicely. The first few entries were a little shaky, but that was expected. I was trying to teach the concepts of using a blog, how to edit their blog entries, and how to add more “meat” to them as well. After reviewing previous entries as a class, I think the students have a better idea of what I’m looking for in their blog entries. I have been trying to keep the topics interesting in order to motivate them to write. Their topic for this week’s entry is about their New Year’s resolutions. I’m still struggling a little with those students who aren’t giving me much to work with. For example, one of the questions they have to answer for their blog entry this week is: “What do you think are some good things about starting a new year?” Right away, I had one student answer out loud after I read this to the class, “There’s nothing really good about it, Miss. It’s just like a regular day for me.” This, of course, made me rephrase the question and urge him to think deeper in to it. Besides, “idk” is not an acceptable answer to this. I’d like them to focus on actually checking their spelling with the spell check (versus just checking the box on their blog checklist) and adding more to their peer comments. Most comments are very short. I’d like them to expand on their replies.

Next, our E-Pal project, which we do every other week. We’ve hit a few bumps along the road with this. As I’ve stated before, this is my first year doing E-Pals with my students as well as our partner school in New Jersey. Since we’ve started, I’ve had two students exit my Extended Core class, leaving two students on the other end with no E-Pal. Two of my X-Core students volunteered to take on two E-Pals, which was very thoughtful of them to do. Also, between my class and the other class, there are some e-mail addresses that got screwed up along the way. This prompted a mini lesson on saving contacts to e-mail. While most students have yet to get a response, the ones that did were excited to read their e-mails. Today I had one of my students check his mail and see that his E-Pal wrote back to him. Coming from the same student who griped about this ongoing assignment earlier in the year, he was very excited today as he read his letter aloud to the class. After he read it, the discussion went sort of like this:

Student: “Miss, can I write him back?”

Me: “Yes, we will be writing them back next week. This week we’re doing blog entries, remember?”

Student: “I want to write him back, though.”

Me: “That’s good, and you will. You’re supposed to be working on your blog right now.”

Student: “He’s gonna think I’m being rude if I don’t…”

Me: “I promise he won’t think you’re being rude. Now get to work.”

I have to admit, however, I was excited that he was excited about his E-Pal. His view on this assignment has done a 180. I think once we get over these little obstacles, they will enjoy E-Paling more.

Last update is on the flipped classroom components I’m doing in my room. So far, the students have all been working on the same unit, all at their own pace. The majority of students are testing out and passing, and for those that don’t, they’re going back and re-learning it until they’ve mastered it. We’ve been taking baby steps with this and I’m comfortable with that. I’m teaching a new process and content at the same time, for the first time ever. I’m pleased with the progress they’re making. The Parts of Speech unit was given to them not only because they all desperately need it (especially with some major essays coming up in English class), but because it was a good way to intro the flipped classroom. Since my last post, I’ve gone from posting individual videos on Edmodo to creating tutorials on Sophia.org. What I love about Sophia.org is that I can create a group of activities for students to do pertaining to the lesson they’re learning. For example, with their adverbs lesson, I uploaded an intro video of an adverbs song being sung by a band. After that, their next step was to view the actual screencast done by myself, explaining what “how” adverbs were and how to identify them. Students are stilling filling out their SSS Packets as they watch the videos. Next, I posted a “how” adverb quiz via Google Forms for them to fill out. Last, I posted a link to another website which allows them to practice adverbs in a game format.

A student listens to a tutorial on Sophia.org

Another student fills out his SSS Packet while watching my tutorial.

The videos I’m making are slowly morphing into a better product. When I made my first video (*cringe*), I carefully scripted it out, timed the presentation just so, and recorded it very seriously (an adverb!). Since then, I’ve let that go. The script idea went to the wayside. I felt a lot more comfortable just presenting it on the spot. I’m able to let my personality come through more doing it this way, which the students have noticed (either that, or their giggles that escape while they’re watching mean that they’re laughing AT me. I choose to stay in denial). The one major discouraging part about doing this is, again, the technology we have in the class. The laptops are in bad shape, are slower than molasses, and are in dire need of updates. I’ve contacted our “Help Desk” several times, only to get chewed out and asked why I’m not taking better care of them. Whatever. That’s another entire blog post in itself. I would’ve liked to have the kids create a Wordle on the “how” adverbs they’ve learned so far, but unfortunatley, some laptops don’t have Java/Flash updates, so there went that idea. What sucks is that I demonstrated on my teacher laptop how to do it and they were actually looking forward to doing this activity.

$%#@&!

So anyhoo, that’s the latest and greatest on the Adventures of Extended Core. Tomorrow the students should be finishing up the “when” adverbs tutorial and solidifying what they’ve learned by playing some adverbs games in class. Hopefully, I’ll remember to post how I’ve been incorporating flipped videos with student IEPs. This is, after all, the focus for this year.

Wish me luck. *heavy sigh*

Wow.  I seriously underestimated the video-making process for my flipped classroom library.

I know I’m a newbie at the video recording anyway, but I am still trying to figure out how Camtasia works.  I did a PowerPoint on adjectives, then used the Camtasia to narrate through it.  That alone was an eye-opener for me.  I can’t tell you how many “takes” I did because my script was off from the PowerPoint at the time.  When it was finally finished, I went back to edit it.  There were a lot of long pauses that were unnecessary and I wanted to clip those out.  Ha.

It didn’t go down as smoothly as I’d hoped.  Regardless, I published what I had and had my students watch it and complete their SSS packets simultaneously.  I’m still trying to figure out how to save the videos to the flash drives.  I’ll have to tinker with that tonight.

A student filling out his Adjectives SSS packet while listening to my video. 🙂

One thing I was successfully able to do, however, was update our class Leaderboard.  If you’ve followed my earlier posts, you’ll know that I’m trying to gamify my classroom.  The students start at zero points and earn their way to the top level (or, an A in the gradebook).  The kids made up their own player name and earn privileges for leveling up.  Today, one of my students earned some free time on the laptop.  Now that the students are seeing this in action with the leaderboard and badges, I’m hoping it’ll light a fire under them to keep working.

Our leaderboard. 🙂

Last thing I wanted to bring up was our quiz review last Friday.  The kids were going to be quizzed on Math vocabulary.  I had created a Quizlet to help them study and posted it on my student Facebook study group page.  The morning of, I decided to post a question on the ELMO and gave my students the possible word choices.  They all wrote down their answers on their whiteboards and when I counted to three, they all raised their whiteboards.  I tried to study with them as much as I could before the quiz, offering little mnemonic devices to help them remember.  As I stated before, sometimes, just using the stuff in my room works just as well as the technology.  🙂

“One, two, three…show me the money!” 🙂

P.S.-All but one student aced their vocab quiz.  🙂

*insert Mission Impossible theme song here*

So my class has been practicing getting used to the flipped classroom components by watching the videos in class and filling out their SSS Packets.  We are about halfway through our Parts of Speech unit and so far it’s been going really well.  I just purchased a small lot of flash drives off eBay to save the videos on for those students that don’t have internet but have a computer at home.  We will be starting the adjectives part of the unit Monday.  We finished up the verbs portion earlier this week, and the kids struggled a little bit on the linking verbs concept.  To help them with this, I found this website to help solidify the concept.  This really helped them when they decided to test out.

Learning about helping/linking verbs.

I’m starting to create videos for all the different goals and objectives the students have, which is a challenge, to say the least.  For example, I’ve started scripting how to fill out a plot map, how to find main idea and three supporting details, and inferencing.  I’m not gonna lie–it’s been really time consuming for me for a couple of reasons.  First, I’m still trying to figure out how to use the Camtasia software I won earlier this month.  Also, I’m looking for additional videos to go along with each of mine.  Possibly looking for short YouTube clips of movies to prompt students about these different things.  The good thing is, once I have the videos, I have them.

My students will also be (re)sending their E-Pals letters to their recipients in NJ.  Their teacher told me they just got back to school last Thursday.  She had no power for 12 days! I can’t even imagine.  So my students started their e-mail drafts earlier this week, using a checklist to check their writings because that is something they ALL struggle with! They’re so used to writing and turning in.  I’m hoping this gets them into the habit of self-checking!

Checking his work before he submits his e-mail. 🙂

Finishing up her rough draft.

Tomorrow is Friday (thank God), and I’m having my students work on their goals and objectives for the hour.  I’ve already compiled work in separate folders for each student, meaning they will each be working on something different tomorrow in class. I will also be student conferencing while they work.  Let’s hope everything goes according to plan!  Well, this week has dragged on enough.  Conferences were craptacular, as usual, and I was in PLC meetings all day.  Needless to say, I’m spent.  So, having absolutely no life whatsoever and sitting here in my onesie jammies with footies, I am going to bed at 9:15pm.

Hey, don’t knock it.  They’re really comfy jammies.

First and foremost, I’d like give a big OOH-RAH to all my fellow Devil Dogs today.  Happy 237th birthday, Marines! Today, I raise my glass to you!

Next, I’d like to update you on how it’s going with my semi-flipped classroom.  The unit is on parts of speech, and that’s broken down into categories.  We’re still in the intro stages of it all, but the students took their first quiz after learning the entire lesson on the different forms of nouns via videos.  All except one aced it.  For the one that didn’t do so well, I told her to go back and watch the videos again.  Then, she’d have the opportunity to re-take the quiz.  When I sat down and reviewed with her, she understood better when she was verbally giving me her answer.  However, I wanted her to try it on her own.  First, because we just started and I wanted her to work independently.  Second, I knew she didn’t do well the first time because she was socializing rather than learning.  Most of my students are almost finished (if they aren’t already) with the verbs portion of the unit.  My one student who is a little ahead of the game is doing online activities during class to apply what he’s learned from the videos.  He asked to test out of this lesson early, because he said he had it down.  Although I was a bit hesitant, I let him take the quiz.  He didn’t do well.  The linking verbs concept was a little tricky for him, so he’s practicing some more before re-taking the quiz at a later date.  But he had the choice to test out early, which he liked.  As I stated before, each student is working at his/her own pace, which is one of the biggest advantages of the flipped classroom model.  I can work with my students individually to monitor their progress or answer any questions they have, but they’re all engaged in their own tasks at the same time.  It’s great.  🙂

Thursday, we had the ever-longed-for parent/teacher conferences.  I LOVE sitting in a gym for 4 1/2 hours waiting for parents to show up.  It’s my favorite.  And for the record, only 2 of my parents showed up.  Yeah.  Anyhoo, for the two that did, I had my teacher iPad propped up, showing all the pictures I’ve taken during the year so far of their students in a slideshow.  The parents seemed to like it.  🙂  My plan for this next marking period is to continue taking pictures, especially of student work, and documenting it in Evernote.  Because each student will have their own “notebook,”  they will have the ability to show their parents their work (along with any audio clips) during conferences, so it’s more student-led.  I’m actually giddy about doing this.  We’ll see how it pans out.

I also had my students start on ScootPad on Thursday.  For those of you who haven’t tried it, it’s a website geared for K-5 students so they can learn and strengthen math and reading skills.  Although I teach 8th grade Resource, my students are (on average) at the 3rd grade reading level, so this is just right for them.  I’ve grouped students according to their reading level and had them start on their lessons.  Best of all, it’s free.

Last, on Friday, I had my students set up a Symbaloo account.  Symbaloo is a bookmarking site that keeps track of all your favorite websites in one place.  Since my students are using various websites, they will add all these sites onto their Symbaloo page so they’re accessible with a click of a button.  The website tiles are iPhone/iPad app-ish, making it visually appealing as well.  Tiles are editable and can be categorized.

On Monday, I plan on introducing this marking period’s project to them.  They will be doing Book Shares that will be due by the end of the marking period.  Each student will read a novel at his/her Lexile level.  When they’re finished, they will create a Glog, Prezi, or movie trailer using iMovie.  I’m working on rubrics, finding examples, and writing out objectives for these this weekend.

Holy crap, I’m going to be busy.

So, on that note, I’m off to tinker with my Camtasia software that I won last Saturday at EdCampGR.  I’ll post some videos as soon as I can get them up and edited. To my liking. It may be a while.  Ciao for now!