Have you ever had a student who constantly interrupts, wants to be the class clown, doesn’t turn in homework but is still one of the brightest kids in your class? We have one of those in our 6th grade class this year. Our sixth grade team has four new teachers to the building and two first year teachers. This particular student has decided what classes and teachers he can identify with, the rest he does not try to behave. One of the first year teachers has had enough of his behavior and couldn’t take it anymore. She has given him referrals to the office 4 days in a row. During our daily team meeting we started to address this student’s behavior. The idea that came to mind was nothing less than inspired.
This student LOVES my class because he is a hands-on learner and is continually challenged to do more than the minimum. He wants to use technology for everything and doesn't understand why it isn't an option. He has even gone as far as telling a few of the new teachers they don't know how to teach because they don't use the classroom technology they have. He insists he would do his homework and be better in class if they used technology. With me, his class is typically one to two days ahead of all my other classes. So...I thought why not have him teach my rather difficult (behavior) 7th graders. This class has chronic issues with students shouting out answers, they aren’t in the seats during a lesson, not following directions and continually talk when they shouldn’t be. Hmmm…sounds just like his behavior.
Here is how it all played out:
Wednesday
· He is totally pumped about this idea. He thinks it is going to be so easy!
· He was given the 20-page packet that I made for the steps and process of creating a toy in our Inventor software.
· He was given a PowerPoint presentation that would be given at the start of class.
· He was given a lesson plan outline that he had to complete and return Thursday after school to be ready for his lesson Friday.
Thursday
· He finds me before school to say he has questions about this lesson plan when can he ask me. We plan on study hall time.
· During study hall he spends 40 minutes talking through how to create a lesson plan and make notes on his handouts.
-He took the PowerPoint and added audio, uploaded to authorstream and has his video ready for class. I was impressed that he wanted more than a PowerPoint, he thought the kids would like a video more! Of course, we had to do this together but a great way to get him to use technology in the classroom.
- He comments on how he had to read this and work on his plan for over 60 mins working on understanding the handouts last night. He wanted to go to the homecoming parade and had football practice and it was really hard to do all of it.
⁃ We talked about how teachers do this every single night and he looked at the science textbook and realized how little information was included in a teacher edition compared to student edition.
Friday
· I was doing hallway duty in the 7/8th grade hall. (I switch between 7/8 and 5/6 depending on where people are needed) He was going ballistic looking for me everywhere (6th grade hall) and flipping out that he couldn’t find me, he needed to create his starter page on my laptop. (I was thinking that this was a good panic for him, he needed to know what it felt like to need a question answered but no one available to do that.)
· He came in before school to create the starter page to display on the board when students come in to the classroom.
· He had to come in early from recess to be ready for his class (that couldn’t be planned better).
· He stood at the door taking attendance and letting students in as they were lined up and quiet.
· He monitored students and their progress on the starter, reminding them of certain steps he could see were not yet done.
· He did an excellent job at reminding students politely to check step 4 they missed something. Very proud of his patience here, patience is not usually his strong point!
· He started the lesson; the classroom was quiet and confused as to what was really going on. Many kids were asking me why he was teaching when he was a 6th grader and I kindly ignored him. Finally, he said I’m the teacher you can raise your hand and ask me if you have a question. Miss Watson is just observing today!! P.S. This was so funny for me!
· As the novelty of the situation began to wear off the students started behaving more like themselves, not raising hands, shouting out answers, not following along, and asking questions that didn’t relate to the lesson.
· I was starting to worry they might be too overwhelming as they were asking questions about why he was there or why they should listen to him.
- He asks why he should listen to one of his new teachers often, I like that students asked him but I didn’t want to shut him down.
- He answered the same way I would, he asked the student “is that going to help us in this lesson right now?” the kid answered no and he said “you can stay and talk to me after class if you have a question then”. I was so proud
*After the lesson and time to think, my student said he would not have known how to answer this question if he hadn’t heard me say it a million times to him. I am glad to know he is starting to process things and reflect at this point.
· He expressed his biggest fear was the students laughing at him. I want to make sure we go back to this point in our after the lesson conversation.
- I believe all teachers feel like this at some point in their teaching experience. We don’t want our kids to think we are stupid, make silly mistakes, don’t know what we are talking about or be laughed at. This is a fear tons of teachers have!
After the lesson
· He was given some reflection questions to think about and post back to me through his classroom website blog.
-In his blog he talked about how hard it was to create technology resources to use in the classroom when students aren't cooperative.
· He cannot stop trying to share all his feelings with the students in his class and his teachers. I had to actually tell him to stop talking about it and sit down so we can start our class!
· He went home and told his mom everything for about 50 minutes, I called to make sure she knew about the reflection and she thought he learned a lot of important lessons today.
· When he went to the football game on Friday night he couldn’t stop telling the counselor (his best friend’s mom) all the things the kids did and how they behaved. He wouldn’t stop talking!
Follow up
This cannot be the end for this student. He is amazingly bright and capable of doing anything he wants. We need to start differentiating his classroom materials so he is not just bored and following along in a textbook. Part of the challenge will be helping the new teachers understand that his behavior is a result of not being challenged. There is nothing wrong with pre-testing a student and challenging them to do more than the average student. I think we have a clean start with this student if we can show him that we care about him, we know he is smart, and we are going to challenge him appropriately. He needs more connections in the building with teachers who are willing to be a support for him. I believe my staff and my building is made of teachers who are willing to reach out and support him.
What I learned
I learned a lot in this process myself. I thought about my own instruction and how I incorporate technology. I have yet to convert all my previous powerpoints and notebook files into a more exciting application. I don't run to prezi because it takes so long to change content from PPT to prezi. I just haven't had the time to do all of them in a movie format either, I hesitate because there are not many times I just lecture. The times I really do have a powerpoint I have to alter the presentation depending on the group I have. Some require more information, some less, some more examples, some need longer wait time for questions etc. I found the video very engaging and the kids liked it, but they were not all paying attention either. I use an interactive whiteboard, I use technology and computers on a consistent basis, but there are still kids that are not engaged. The web 2.0 tools I asked him to use for this project really changed how he viewed academic content. He was loving his blog, his website and using authorstream to change a powerpoint to a movie. After all of this he suggested changing more of the interactive whiteboard notebooks and powerpoints into movies. I may try more movies that will create a more individualized lesson to engage students. I agree with his statement that teachers should use more technology, but now he understands how difficult it can be if your students fight you.
This student and I have a unique opportunity, we have three more years together. He will get to see my changes with technology and I can’t wait to see what he is like in 3 years.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Creating Websites as a Learning Portfolio
During this first quarter of school, I decided to try something new with one of my well-behaved group of 6th graders. I suspect most of these students will decide to continue with engineering during their middle school career and possibly even their high school career.
I thought, hey it would be cool to have a digital portfolio with my 6th graders to help them keep all their engineering information together from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade! The last thing a senior engineering student completes in engineering is a portfolio showcasing all of their work from their first course in 6th grade to the last course as a sr. To do this I decided to use a website creator that allowed me to monitor student websites and blogs with ultimate control being mine.
I tell my students about this project and they are pumped! They think this is the best thing they have ever heard and are very interested in how they will do it, what they will use, when they get to use it, etc. Then I realized just how much time getting these sites to a usable place was going to take. I stopped talking about them for about 5 school days. I wasn’t sure what in the world I was going to be able to do! Then, in class, one student raised his hand to ask when they would get to use their websites. GULP! I explained we just don’t have time to stop and set them up. I really wanted to do it, we just don’t have time to set up websites right now. Then he suggested maybe doing it after school or one evening. I thought yeah right, no one wants to do that! The kids all agreed. I was shocked. We looked at the calendar and realized there wasn’t a single day without a baseball, softball, soccer or football. Someone suggested doing a website party on Sunday night. So with the number of kids agreeing to attend, I set up our Sunday night event. Sunday night rolls around and 16/20 students are in my room working on websites. How many times can you get a class of students to come in and do EXTRA work willingly?
So here we are, 6 weeks into school, 3 weeks until the first unit of engineering is complete. Looking back at the idea of websites, I still think it was a good one. The entire idea has had its hiccups along the way. However, I think I have learned a lot in this experience. I was terrified to start something new and unclear especially with kids that I want to keep in my program!
Pros of student sites
• Kids are engaged
• Excited to share their learning
• Creating a community of learners
• Sharing information in their blogs they normally wouldn’t verbalize
• Creating a personalized learning space that has meaning to themselves
• Simple communication and display
• Love the website features (makes for easy websites and free publishing on their domain)
Cons of student sites
• In the start of blogs, my students were commenting and writing on random topics rather than what they should be.
• Takes time to set up and prepare each student
• Students need instruction to handle the website creator successfully
• Not always classroom related materials being put on the site
Examples of Journal Entries students are sharing with each other:
Example 1)
Today we got to upload our first picture to our site. My was a "Nerdy Smile." If you go to the parts section you can see it and a paragraph to go with it. Please go see it. I can’t wait to see what everyone else is making. I really like being able to use Inventor to make whatever I want. I am a little worried about making the pegboard, it looks kind of complicated. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do it by myself. Miss W has started to let us do things on our own, now I’m not sure that was a good idea!
Example 2)
Today I learned a lot about Inventor, but I feel that Inventor has many things that I have not learned about, like IAM. The fillet tool is amazing because it helped me make a car without sharp edges. I finished the checklist, and I saved four files; three were extruded, and one was a robot. I had trouble revolving, and drilling holes.
Example 3)
Today we worked on inventor again. We began our pegboard toy. I think I'm going to have fun on this project. I never realized how complicated it was to make something as simple as a baby toy, let alone a gadget such as an iphone or computer.
Students are starting to share their realizations, fears, questions, concerns etc. The other students are starting to respond and create discussions about topics that I don’t have time to cover in 9 weeks. They are creating personal connections to our material in a way I couldn’t even plan. I am finding my students are much more willing to put questions and fears out there when other students are responding to their blog pages. This experiment (that I was ready to throw out 3 days after I introduced it) has really changed the dynamics of my classroom. The students are creating more connections and honest evaluations of classwork. To me, this is an advanced skill for a 6th grader. So while there are occasional comments that remind me they are 6th graders, the overall content outweighs the random comments everyday.
Now, looking back, I don’t regret any of the days I gave up to make these websites an option for my students. I hope as they mature through the years their websites will become a reminder of where they started and where they want to go. I hope they are able to find this as a resource to communicate and partner with other students in our class and find inspiration from their peers.
I thought, hey it would be cool to have a digital portfolio with my 6th graders to help them keep all their engineering information together from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade! The last thing a senior engineering student completes in engineering is a portfolio showcasing all of their work from their first course in 6th grade to the last course as a sr. To do this I decided to use a website creator that allowed me to monitor student websites and blogs with ultimate control being mine.
I tell my students about this project and they are pumped! They think this is the best thing they have ever heard and are very interested in how they will do it, what they will use, when they get to use it, etc. Then I realized just how much time getting these sites to a usable place was going to take. I stopped talking about them for about 5 school days. I wasn’t sure what in the world I was going to be able to do! Then, in class, one student raised his hand to ask when they would get to use their websites. GULP! I explained we just don’t have time to stop and set them up. I really wanted to do it, we just don’t have time to set up websites right now. Then he suggested maybe doing it after school or one evening. I thought yeah right, no one wants to do that! The kids all agreed. I was shocked. We looked at the calendar and realized there wasn’t a single day without a baseball, softball, soccer or football. Someone suggested doing a website party on Sunday night. So with the number of kids agreeing to attend, I set up our Sunday night event. Sunday night rolls around and 16/20 students are in my room working on websites. How many times can you get a class of students to come in and do EXTRA work willingly?
So here we are, 6 weeks into school, 3 weeks until the first unit of engineering is complete. Looking back at the idea of websites, I still think it was a good one. The entire idea has had its hiccups along the way. However, I think I have learned a lot in this experience. I was terrified to start something new and unclear especially with kids that I want to keep in my program!
Pros of student sites
• Kids are engaged
• Excited to share their learning
• Creating a community of learners
• Sharing information in their blogs they normally wouldn’t verbalize
• Creating a personalized learning space that has meaning to themselves
• Simple communication and display
• Love the website features (makes for easy websites and free publishing on their domain)
Cons of student sites
• In the start of blogs, my students were commenting and writing on random topics rather than what they should be.
• Takes time to set up and prepare each student
• Students need instruction to handle the website creator successfully
• Not always classroom related materials being put on the site
Examples of Journal Entries students are sharing with each other:
Example 1)
Today we got to upload our first picture to our site. My was a "Nerdy Smile." If you go to the parts section you can see it and a paragraph to go with it. Please go see it. I can’t wait to see what everyone else is making. I really like being able to use Inventor to make whatever I want. I am a little worried about making the pegboard, it looks kind of complicated. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do it by myself. Miss W has started to let us do things on our own, now I’m not sure that was a good idea!
Example 2)
Today I learned a lot about Inventor, but I feel that Inventor has many things that I have not learned about, like IAM. The fillet tool is amazing because it helped me make a car without sharp edges. I finished the checklist, and I saved four files; three were extruded, and one was a robot. I had trouble revolving, and drilling holes.
Example 3)
Today we worked on inventor again. We began our pegboard toy. I think I'm going to have fun on this project. I never realized how complicated it was to make something as simple as a baby toy, let alone a gadget such as an iphone or computer.
Students are starting to share their realizations, fears, questions, concerns etc. The other students are starting to respond and create discussions about topics that I don’t have time to cover in 9 weeks. They are creating personal connections to our material in a way I couldn’t even plan. I am finding my students are much more willing to put questions and fears out there when other students are responding to their blog pages. This experiment (that I was ready to throw out 3 days after I introduced it) has really changed the dynamics of my classroom. The students are creating more connections and honest evaluations of classwork. To me, this is an advanced skill for a 6th grader. So while there are occasional comments that remind me they are 6th graders, the overall content outweighs the random comments everyday.
Now, looking back, I don’t regret any of the days I gave up to make these websites an option for my students. I hope as they mature through the years their websites will become a reminder of where they started and where they want to go. I hope they are able to find this as a resource to communicate and partner with other students in our class and find inspiration from their peers.
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