Technology Integration - Planning and Writing Personal Narratives

I was inspired by one of our course readings to use technology to enhance the writing process.

In first grade writing, we are working on personal narratives. During the pre-writing process, students complete a graphic organizer by sketching or writing key words for each part of their story:

• ·      Beginning – who, when, where, what (including a lead)
• ·      First – What’s happening?
• ·      Next – The most exciting part of problem
• ·      Then – The solution
• ·      Finally – An ending that “jumps back in”

Pre-Writing and Planning

The objective for the lesson was:  Students will be able to complete their personal narrative graphic organizer and include strategies for voice (dialogue, font, !, inside story) in their graphic organizer.

Normally in class, once students complete their graphic organizers they have a chance to talk through their plan with a peer. I wanted to enhance this process by having them record their plan for their story and by allowing a peer to ask them questions and give advice as they progressed through their plan. Then, I let them listen to their recorded plan before and during the time they were writing their stories.

The recording process – students are getting proficient at working in Seesaw because we used it in an earlier project. It was easy for them to take of photo of their graphic organizer, then make an audio recording of their story plan as they talked it through with their partner.  I noticed students asking their partner questions like, “What did you do?” “What did you say?” and “How did you feel?” These are the types of questions I've used to coach them all year.  As they discussed the story, I still needed to do a lot coaching to get students to add the strategies for adding voice into their plan.  I have an example here of one pair of students talking through the process.  It’s interesting to notice how his partner started to ask questions after listening to my coaching. It will be interesting and exciting to see students take over more of this process as they have more practice.

Justin's Story Plan

As you may have noticed, if you listened to his recording, he was a rather reluctant participant in this process. Although you can't see the scowl on his face, you can hear a little frustration in my voice as I coach him to share his ideas.  At the time I was doubting whether all the time and effort we put into the pre-writing process was worth it.

Using our "digital" plan to write our stories
The next day, when we wrote our stories, Justin was the only student who listened to their pre-writing recording more than once. I noticed him going back to listen to his recording several times as he progressed through the writing process. He stayed focused on writing for the entire class time. He used the technology independently to support the writing process.  Normally, he rushes through the writing portion and does not include all the details he has in his plan. This time, Justin included the details in his plan and expand on them in his final draft.

His story was one of his best yet! He took the information from his plan and added to it to make it his own. He included several strategies for voice and wrote a focused story.

Here is his recording of the final product.

Justin's Personal Narrative

Lessons Learned
I've learned to be a little more patient as I try to integrate technology into the curriculum. I'm still working to be OK with the "messiness" that comes with using new technology for the first time. No matter how much I prepare and try to anticipate glitches, new issues arise when we use an app or website for the first time. I can't let that stop me from trying new ways to enhance learning via technology.

An editorial in today's (April 4, 2015) Lincoln Journal Star (LPS Tech Future Has Arrived) quotes Kirk Langer, LPS Technology Director, as he explains that the recently-approved LPS technology plan "would put digital technology "right in the DNA" of classroom instruction."  This makes it clear to me that as an educator, I have to do all I can to stay current in classroom instruction that works and technology integration. I need to make sure the technology is effectively leveraged to enhance teaching and learning.

The closing statement in this editorial is a perfect way to end this blog post:

"There's no doubt that the district's use of technology will change and evolve over time. But there never will be a moment quite like this one.  Now it begins."

Collaborative Project - Second Grade Research Reports

Second grade general Ed, ELL and Special Education students collaborated to share research projects. We used a keynote presentation introduce the project to students. Then had students work in teams to find pictures for their report and make their recordings. It was very helpful to have other teachers to share ideas and pointers as we learned to use the app.

 Keynote Presentation - Shadow Puppet Introduction

Lessons Learned

This was the first time we used Shadow Puppet – students caught on quickly and had no problems finding photos to go with each part of the research project. It was very time-consuming though. When we got to the recording part, we learned two important things:  First, make an indication on the report to show where you will switch to the next picture.  Second – you need a quiet place to record to avoid background noises.

Opportunities to Collaborate

It was helpful to be able to learn about this with other teachers and bounce ideas off each other as we went through the process.  I also loved seeing the work of the other second graders.

Two of my ELL Level 1 students were able to go to the general education classroom to help students in that larger group use Shadow Puppet…a great opportunity for them to practice using English language in an authentic environment.

I moved the finished products into the students’ Seesaw learning journals. Students can go back and listen to them and share them at any time. I also emailed finished products to their classroom teachers and parents.

Students were very excited about the process and the end product.  Their published work was excellent.

Taking it to the next level

We all debriefed after the project and thought that one way we could take students to a higher level of thinking /collaboration is to make the recordings a literacy center.  Students could listen to a peer’s recording and give them feedback.  The Seesaw journal allows you to make comments, so we could have students do a two stars and a wish type of feedback.

Creativity, Learning, ISTE Standards

ISTE Standards and Creativity

ISTE defines creativity as constructing knowledge and developing innovative products and processes using technology.  The R. Keith Sawyer article, Educating for Innovation, proposes that the key mission for schools in our knowledge society is to educate for creativity. He explains creativity is deeply social and that the best creative insights come from collaborative teams.  To foster student learning and creativity, he proposes using a disciplined improvisation teaching style that emphasizes students learning for deeper understanding through collaboration and unstructured (but scaffolded) group discussion. Students need to be taught to engage in effective collaborative discussions. 

One of our school’s focuses this year is to use Kagan cooperative learning strategies in our classrooms. This aligns with fostering creativity because these strategies help scaffold cooperative learning and can facilitate group discussion. The sentence frames that are part of our language arts curriculum are also extremely helpful tools for fostering collaborative discussions – but these are structured discussions. To teach for creativity, I’ll need to move toward more student-led group discussion.

Technology project based on ISTE

This week my first graders used their Seesaw learning journals to plan, then present their personal narratives.  For pre-writing they created a graphic organizer with sketches and key words to plan their story. They included strategies for adding voice (dialogue, inside story, feelings) in different parts (beginning, first, next, then, finally) of their graphic organizer.  Students took a photo of their organizer, stored it in their journal, then recorded themselves as they talked through their plan.  Their partner was encouraged to ask them questions as they spoke  (What did you do?  How did you feel? What did you say?). During the writing process, students listened to their plan before they wrote and several went back to listen to various parts as they progressed through their story. Once the stories were finalized, students worked with partners to practice reading them, get feedback, then record their finished story. Here’s how this project aligns with the ISTE rubric – the area that is missing is critical thinking/problem solving.  I need to find ways to include that standard in future projects.

Creativity and innovation: 

• Students applied existing knowledge to generate new ideas/products
• Students created original works as a means of personal/group expression 

Communication and collaboration:     

• Students used digital media to communicate and work collaboratively to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others
• Students interact, collaborate, and publish with peers using a variety of digital environments and media 

Digital citizenship:

• Students exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning and productivity 

Technology operations and concepts:

• Students understand and use technology systems
• Students use applications effectively and productively
• Students transfer

Educamp Omaha Reflections

On Saturday, March 20, 2015 I attended my first Educamp professional development session. The format was unique – the attendees determined what the educational sessions were by volunteering to facilitate the sessions.  Interesting concept, but it made it hard to know what you were “signing up” for as far as the sessions go.

I chose my fist session because it had a catchy title, “Rocks or Sucks.” The facilitator demonstrated a program or app that can be used to facilitate debate and/or discussions on a variety of topics. The topic is flashed on the screen, then participants move to one side of the room based on their feelings (rocks or sucks) toward that topic.  Once you get to your side, you have discussion with like-minded peers. Then the facilitator leads a large group discussion on the topic.  It’s kind of a technology-enhanced version of some of the Kagan strategies we use. It was interesting and a good way to get introduced to some of the other attendees. The groups I teach are so small that I don’t see it being that useful in my classroom, but it was interesting to see it in action.

The other session I attended was taught by a member of our class – Nan. There were only four people in the session and it was on using Edmodo. There were two high-school teachers and one other elementary school teacher in the group. They had not used Edmodo before, and I just started using it last week. Everyone got a nice overview, but we weren’t able to go deeply enough for anyone to move forward in their use of the technology.  Maybe that’s not the point of this type of professional development. From my perspective, what we saw and heard today was more of a conversation-starter and an opportunity to be aware of the huge variety of tways to use technology in the classroom. During lunch, when I met back up with the other teachers I know, we were all talking about what we experienced and sharing what we heard. There was a different type of energy and shared experience at this conference.

My biggest take-away from the session was more practice and a (little) deeper understanding of twitter. I appreciated the tweets from attendees because I got to see what was going on in the sessions I was not able to attend.  One session I’m sorry I missed told about a global storytelling project. I was able to follow other people’s tweets to find this project and get an overview and can dig deeper into it on my own.

Using Educreations to create a "flipped" lesson

I used Educreations to create an introductory lesson for adjectives. I plan to use it with my fourth grade students this week. I'll follow up this lesson with a keynote presentation that is aligned with language arts curriculum and some Kahoot! review exercises.

Here's the introductory lesson:

Educreations Adjective Lesson

I also used eduCanon.com to show the School House Rock video on adjectives. I love how this app gives you the ability to add review questions at certain points in the video.  It took me a while to figure it out, but I can see a lot of potential with this website. 


eduCanon Video and Quiz

My plan is to add this assignment on Edmodo - which I have not used yet. I'll be setting up students next week and am excited to see how to leverage this tool.

Fortunately, all my fourth grade students go to an after school tutoring program I coordinate, so I will have them watch these lessons at tutoring. It will be a great way to monitor their first-time use of this type of instruction.

Combining Traditional Literacies in the 21st Century

Combining Traditional Literacies in the 21^st Century

This article inspired me to take our writing lessons to a new level this quarter.  In ELL writing, we spend a lot of time using graphic organizers to plan our stories. We orally rehearse them, but students need a lot of support to include all the details they share orally into their written pieces. They also need a lot of support and modeling to revise their stories. Recording their oral rehearsal with a partner may be the added support they need to improve in these areas.

The Livescribe Smartpens used in this study seem like an amazing tool – I’d love to have the opportunity to try these sometime.  Since that is not an option right now, I plan to use either Educreations or Seesaw to take a photo of students’ completed graphic organizers and have them record their oral rehearsal.  I’ll need to practice more before I decide which will work best. I’m leaning toward using Seesaw because it’s an app I introduced to students and I want them to be more able to use it independently. Another advantage of using Seesaw is that they have their digital animal research stories stored in their Seesaw learning journals. This gives them an opportunity to go back and listen to them and any other work we choose to store in this app.  One concern I had about my digital story project was – if students don’t have opportunities to listen to/share their digital stories and get feedback on them, what is the purpose of creating the digital story? 

I’ll be starting this project with personal narrative writing when we get back to school next week. I’ll keep you “posted” on my progress and lessons learned.

I practiced creating my own digital graphic organizer on Popplet Lite. I believe any of my students (K-5) would be able to use this organizer because it allows drawing, photo, and text options for planning.  I found it a little hard to draw because the planning boxes are so small.  It is very easy to erase your drawings – I spent most of my drawing time erasing.  The option to add photos works great.  Throughout the year, we create Language Experience stories as a class. I photograph the steps in the story so students can use them to plan their stories. Earlier this year, my first graders built snowmen in class then wrote about their experience in a personal narrative. We recorded digital versions of these stories. I wish I would have know about Popplet Lite when we were doing this because it is a perfect way to let students use the photos from the experience to plan their stories.  I made an example of one students’ picture story to show how it could work.  When we did this in our class, I printed the students’ pictures so they could use them for planning – an expensive, no-tech option.  I’ll definitely have students use Popplet Lite for the next Language Experience story.

My First Twitter Experience

My first experience chatting on twitter was a bit overwhelming. I was extremely nervous about accidentally posting an uninformed comment for all to see.  I found myself looking for a friendly face and found one in Craig Kemp at #whatisschool. When I followed him he immediately welcomed me with a personal message! On his twitter feed (?) I found two very helpful items. One was a user-friendly introduction to twitter:

http://mrkempnz.com/2015/02/5-tips-for-managing-a-fast-paced-twitter-chat.html?utm_content=bufferea921&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The other told about a collaborative learning project called Mystery Skype. You partner with a mystery classroom and compete with each other (using yes/no questions) to figure out each other’s location. This project incorporates many ELL checklist items.  When you go to the site, they have a great video that provides a sense of this project. I’d love to find a way to fit this in at the end of the school year.

http://mrkempnz.com/2014/11/what-is-mystery-skype-8-steps-to-get-started.html

This twitter experience and my experience incorporating new apps and learning activities in my classroom make it apparent that teachers have a responsibility to keep up with technology and continually find new ways to use it in instruction and learning.  I’m also appreciating how time-consuming and challenging this task is. 

As much as I’ve enjoyed learning about new apps and starting to implement them in instruction and learning; I’ve been frustrated at how long it takes me to understand them deeply enough to include them in our lessons.  I don’t want to be tripping over technology while I get the students up and running.  However, I don’t always have a deep enough understanding of the technology to anticipate all the “bumps in the road” before instructing.

So…some of the many questions rolling around in my head are:

How will teachers who don’t have the benefit of professional development (like this course) and opportunities to collaborate with other teachers keep up?  How will curriculum and professional development change to make teachers more effective and competent in technology integration? How can we leverage technology integration ideas by grade-level or subject matter so teachers aren’t reinventing the wheel?