Ed Camp Baltimore-- September 27, 2014

Yesterday, I went to Ed Camp Baltimore.  This was my first officially Ed Camp experience, and I LOVED it!  Have you heard of this type of professional development?  It is an "unconference."  You can read about it directly on the Ed Camp Baltimore website, but I'll also give you my version of the day's events.

Here's my take on the event-

Registration

The technology coordinator at my school informed the staff about the Ed Camp Baltimore conference.  I knew that she had gone since its inception, and at her recommendation, I wanted to check it out.  I was planning on registering a couple weeks prior to the event, but at that point, I wasn't ready to commit to attending.  A few days ago, I decided I wanted to attend.  The event was FREE, so unfortunately they were out of tickets.  Luckily, I joined the waitlist and a spot opened up!  

The Schedule is Created
When you arrive at an Ed Camp conference, all the participants are gathered in a common area and that is when the schedule is set for the day.  I know that sounds weird, right.  The schedule is not set prior to the day of the event, nor are the presenters.  Anyone who has an idea can put a sign up with their idea, and it might become a session for the day.  I put up a topic for discussing writing instruction and assessment with a connection to Google Docs.  Initially, my session was combined with another session on discussing everything Google Apps for Education (GAFE), but some more shifting occurred, and I got to have my session too.   Once the schedule was set, it was all compiled on a Google Doc.  Here was our final schedule for the day.  Check out the photo gallery from Ed Camp 2012 for a better idea of how this scheduling works.  

The Sessions Begin 
Everyone chooses a session that sounds good to them.  You head to the room of your chosen session and the person that suggested the topic presents.  Often times, the floor is opened so other teachers that have expertise on the subject can share their ideas.  The GAFE session was the first session I attended.  Then I led a discussion about writing during session 2.  There was so much of value at the sessions that I attended that I am going to dedicate full blog posts to new apps and websites that will revolutionize your teaching.

Smackdown
After the first two sessions, everyone joined in the auditorium for a smackdown of resources that they find helpful.  This was so informative!  Anyone could go up to the front and share something with the group.  A recorder was also taking notes for the group.  I would definitely recommend you look at the list of resources from the smackdown.

Back for More
After lunch on your own, it is back for two more afternoon sessions.  This followed the same format as the sessions above.  One thing that is stressed at an "unconference" is that you are free to switch sessions at any time.  The motto goes something like this- If you aren't learning or contributing, use your two feet to take you somewhere else.  This means that you can get the most out of your day.  Another great aspect of this conference is that all the notes were online.  There was a shared Google Doc for each session (again use the links on the schedule page).  That way, if there were multiple sessions you wanted to attend, you could easily benefit from them by looking at the notes later.

Closing
After all the sessions, we congregated in the auditorium for a raffle.  The event had no advertisers, but there were sponsors who offered numerous prizes.

Key Takeaways
I think one of my main takeaways is that there is a rich community of educators that stay connected through technology.  For example, there many who stay connected on Twitter, and I want to be part of that community of educators, both to learn from them and to add to the conversation.

I also want to blog more regularly.  It is something that I have been doing more for myself, but I want my voice to be part of this online community of educators.  Yesterday I read a really great post by Jenna Shaw, a member of this year's Ed Camp Baltimore Organizing Committee.  She talked about this exact concept in her post "Connected Responsibility."   She says, "If I am to truly be connected to others, it must be a consistent effort that rises above some of the individual difficulties I experience with inspiration, time, and effort, in order to ensure that the community I am helping to connect is able to share their voice."  I wholeheartedly agree with this.  Blogging, like so many other aspects of education, is time consuming.  It is something that I want to schedule into my week just like I schedule in planning and grading.

Looking Ahead
Are you looking for an Ed Camp experience?
MSDE is hosting an Ed Camp in Baltimore on February 7.   Not from Baltimore? Look up Ed Camps in your area.  They are happening all over the world!

Collaborize Classroom

        Technology is a very important part of educating well rounded, 21st century learners. More and more, technology skills are becoming part of employment requirements. According to the Iowa Department of Education, “technological literacy supports preparation of students as global citizens capable of self-directed learning in preparation for an ever-changing world.” Using technology in the classroom has to extend beyond word processing skills to really be useful to the students. Technological literacy should also incorporate cooperative learning. Students will need to know how to interact with their peers in an online environment, be it through commenting on blogs or participating in a discussion board.

         There is one website that I was recently exposed to that meets all of the requirements above: Collaborize Classroom. This free web tool allows teachers to create a website and then have online polling or class discussions. With chromebooks in the classroom, I can see the students engaging in class using this tool more readily and easily than hand raising allows. It also seems to be well designed for educators. When you register, Collaborize Classroom provides you with three discussions to get started. The first one is “Establishing Expectations for Behavior: Dos and Don’ts for Online Student Communication.” This is a great way to start an online discussion board. It rivals the class expectations discussion that many teachers have using chart paper at the beginning of the year. This topic shows me that Collaborize Classroom is designed with teachers in mind. They are just moving successful teaching practices to an online platform. The second step (as they call it on the website) is “Maintaining a Safe Space Online: Which Behaviors are Most Important.” These two online discussions are not only helping the students learn appropriate online behaviors, but they are also teaching the students how to use this website. As opposed to opening a new Google Doc and taking notes, we get to participate in polls and see the results. Using this tool for polling and class discussions would allow us to meet the same curricular goals in a 21st century way.

         As I was playing around with this tool, I saw one potential drawback. I was hoping that I could create a different website for each class I teach, but it seems like that is not possible. Instead, they have an option to create groups. It is difficult to know if that will meet my needs until I try it. I do want some separation between my classes, though. When I receive my class lists in August, I will be able to actually create my “groups” and see how it works.




Here is a screenshot of my newly created Collaborize website:



I also recommend that you check it out yourself. This is not a sponsored post, just a website that I found recently that I think will be a useful classroom tool. I hope you find it to be useful as well.


http://www.collaborizeclassroom.com/

Tried it Tuesday- Pennant Banner

I am so excited to link up with Fourth Grade Flipper for this week's "Tried it Tuesday."

The project:  Make a banner for a baby shower.  It turned out great, and now I am happy to offer it as a freebie.  

My Banner: 

You will notice that I have the mother's name above the "baby shower" banner.  If you want to add the name or spell out something for your classroom, then you should buy the A-Z Banner.  At this point, I have not done any punctuation marks.  If you would like punctuation, just shoot me an email.  I will be happy to accommodate special requests.  My banner was a grey chevron with navy accents.  In the example below, I have used pink chevron and black accents. 

Here's what I did:

1.  I opened powerpoint and changed the orientation to 8.5 x 11.  In my version of powerpoint it is under the "themes" tab at the top.  Then you choose "Page Setup."  Here is what it looks like:

2.  Insert a triangle.  I deleted the text boxes first because I like looking at a clean sheet; however, I don't think they would actually impede this process.  The triangle defaults to blue.  I wanted to fill mine with some awesome digital paper I got from Miss Nelson.  

3.  In order to fill it with the digital paper, you need to right click on the shape and choose "format shape."  This will pull up the following menu:

You need to choose the picture of the digital paper from your hard drive (or wherever you have it stored) and then it will fill the shape.  Can you believe it is that easy?

4.  Then you can use the very small green circle at the top to rotate your shape 180 degrees.  This is what it will look like:

You can see the faint blue line around the outside still.  That is what we will take care of next.  

5.  You want to double click on the shape, choose line, and then change the color and weight of the line to make it more to your liking.  I am going with black for this example:

6.  Finally, I added a circle (made the fill white and changed the line to dotted) and put a fancy letter in the middle.  To insert the letter you will need to right click and "edit text." I chose a fun font from Kevin and Amanda and made it 150 pt.  Here is what it would look like after that step:

Note: my font defaulted to white on a white background, so I needed to highlight it and change it to black. 

So that is how I "tried it" this "Tuesday" (actually more like last Tuesday).  I hung my banner with tulle from Michaels.  The picture above isn't great due to the lighting, but I got so many compliments on it.   I am so excited about my new A-Z Banner.  I hope you like it, and if you want to buy it, it is currently on sale!

Teaching Anne Frank

I have begun teaching Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl with my 8th graders.  I did my typical pre-reading activity.  One that I like to do with most of the historical literature that we read- a mini-research project.  I ended up not having the students write expository papers, as I originally intended, but instead make a visual display (powerpoint, prezi, poster, etc) about the topic that they chose.  I had a list of topics that would help the students understand the history of World War 2 in order to better understand and engage in the book. Although this method merely gives students a glimpse into a time period and set of events that they still don't fully understand, I feel it is enough to pique their interests.  Here is the list of topics that I have the students research:

Topic

Conditions in Europe leading up to World War II

Hitler's rise to power and his political beliefs

The Nazi Party in Germany

Concentration camps and death camps, esp. Bergen-Belsen

Jewish religious holidays and the Star of David

The S. S. and the Gestapo (the green police)

Kristallnacht

Restrictions on Jewish-German life in the 1930's

The invasion of Holland and the treatment of the Jews in the Netherlands

The Resistance movement during World War II

Anne Frank and the people with whom she went into hiding & The Secret Annex (the place in which the Frank family hid)

Hitler's defeat and death

D-Day

The liberation of the concentration camps

The students will also be studying this topic in Social Studies class, but we read the diary slightly before they get to it in Social Studies.  As part of the unit, we also take a trip to the Holocaust museum.  This helps bring their understanding full circle.

Last year was my first year teaching the book, and I felt as though it wasn't as drenched in the history as I expected it to be.  Don't get me wrong, there is the obvious oppression of the Jews in Holland, as seen by the fact that the Franks had to go into hiding in the first place, but this was more about Anne's life in the Secret Annexe.  I decided to do some research about the diary as a piece of literature.  Anne Frank was obviously a gifted writer, but I wanted to somehow bring our study of this book out of the, "So that is what life was like back then" mindset.  I did a google search for, "Anne Frank literary criticism" in my initial attempts to find something helpful.  What I found was, in my opinion, a gold mine.  Francine Prose has published a book in which she delves into this exact topic- Anne Frank as literature.  It is enlightening to read more about how this diary was created.  It was the first time that I learned, as Prose puts it, "She [Anne] decided that she wanted the book to be published, and she went back to the beginning and she re-wrote all the entries she wrote as a 13-year-old, except of course now she was a 15-year-old." From that perspective, Anne was more than a girl writing her diary.  She was a writer.  She made choices about what to include in this "re-written" version.  After having discovered these resources, I decided the lesson would be better to do with the kids at the end of the book.  Throughout their reading, I will encourage them to look at Anne's word choice and use of figurative language.  However, I would like this discussion to come after they have read the whole book, as it did for me.  The links are below so you can check them out.


(the interview) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113198365
(an excerpt) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113198365
(Otto Frank's letters) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7400998


Update:
I have now created and taught this lesson twice, and I did it under the overarching question, "Is Anne Frank Literature?"  I gave students some background information using excerpts from John Johnson's document "What is 'Literature'?"  We then simplified the ideas down to the following three-

After creating this list, students are challenged to decide if they think Anne Frank's Diary is literature.  Another aspect of the discussion, from Johnson is "are all three traits required for something to be literature?" so we discuss that as well.  In the conversation, we talk about the fact that Anne edited her diary and planned on it being a published book.  It is quite interesting to see students' ideas on all of these aspects of literature and Anne Frank.  I do this lesson with my 8th graders, and it is a little bit of a struggle for them to grasp the initial concepts, but by the end of the lesson, students have had a rich discussion about Anne Frank.  One other difference from my original post is that I don't wait until we have finished reading the diary, but I do fit this in somewhere near the end.  

Expository Writing and The Book Whisperer

I have obviously not stuck to my goal of blogging once a week, so thank you for sticking by my side!  So many wonderful things have happened so far this year, and as always, life has been overcome with busyness.  There are a few things that inspired me to pick up my laptop and write a post today.

First of all, I have started to read Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer.  It was talked about on many blogs this summer, and I have chosen it for my professional development book this year.  Donalyn is an inspiration to all teachers, readers, and parents.  I love what she says about inspiring young readers and making a reader out of anyone and everyone.  Basically, to awaken the inner reader, you need to give the kids time to read books and help them find books they enjoy.  She has her students read 40 books a year.  I have my students read for fun, but most of them are still in the phase of reading just to fulfill the requirement.  Another crucial step is that you (as the teacher, reader, or parent) need to help students find books that they will enjoy.  Donalyn has an extensive classroom library and knowledge of books.  While I enjoy reading, and have a small classroom library, I do not have the knowledge that I feel I need to help my students find books.  I love the idea of putting my books in bins by genre and knowing the level, but it is overwhelming to know where to begin.  I hope that this will be something that I can spend more time on throughout the year and summer (I know, I'm really thinking ahead).  I want to inspire my students and create life-long readers within my classroom.  Thank you, Donalyn, for your wise words.

I also want to talk about writing.  Throughout my years as a teacher, I have had my students do countless writing assignments.  This year I made a very specific writing plan for my students, so they knew what to expect.  I have about two assignments in each genre- expository, narrative , and argumentative.  It is interesting though, that the majority of my past assignments have been narrative and argumentative.  So now it is time to teach my students how to write an expository essay.  The goal of the assignment is to build background knowledge for reading Anne Frank's Diary.  I had about ten topic choices, and instead of assigning them, I let students pick what they wanted to research.  I gave them some website resources, directed them to use easybib, and told them to start with general note taking.  At this point, I need to figure out the next step.  In doing some research, I have determined that I want to review the organizational patterns, as these are often used as organizations for expository essays.  I was thinking of doing a foldable, so that is what I am in search of now.  Even though we are primarily using chromebooks this year and going "paper-free," I think switching things up will invigorate the class.   After reviewing the organizational patterns, I would like the students to pick an organization for their essay and start drafting.  I decided that I would complete the assignment as well, to model it for my students, and it is quite difficult.  Most of the topics have lots of information and require background knowledge to fully understand them.  Why is it so easy to make a powerpoint or a prezi, but not to take that same information and write it into a paper?   I am sure the students do this in Social Studies all the time, and yet, now it is designed to help them build background information.  What are your thoughts?  Have you ever done anything like this before?  Let me know because I am thinking that this might not be the best way to teach expository writing.  Maybe the students already need to have sufficient prior knowledge to write a cohesive paper.

Hope to hear your ideas!

Classroom Reveal

Linking up with

I don't know about you, but it has been a whirlwind since school started on September 3rd.  Thursday night was Back to School Night, and since I had my room all spiffied up (again), I thought I would take my classroom reveal shots.  I have used quite a few strategies and decorating schemes that I originally found on Blogs.  I am not sure where I found most of these ideas, but you will notice some chevron fabric which I LOVE and the NOISE sign.

This is the area behind my desk.  I love my letters lamp that I got from Kohl's a couple years ago, even though the plug behind it is an eye-sore.  I also have my Read Chart here.  I made it this year, instead of buying it, to save a buck.  I think it turned out perfectly.  You can almost see one of the lines already has twenty stickers...that student read all those books this summer!  I count their yearly reading from June-May, so that they can have an accurate total of how many books they read in a year.  Here are some other fun things- an electronic hole puncher, which was a birthday gift from my husband a few years ago,  a Jack Russell Terrier calendar in honor of my pup, and my stuffed animal corner with my favorite...BEES.   Under my Work Expectations poster you can also (sort of) see a collage and birthday card that a student made for me.  She made numerous copies of my picture from the yearbook and collaged it with pictures of Beyonce, because we share a birthday.  Isn't that fun; I feel so loved!

  
This is my sideboard.  It is right across from the bulletin board that you just saw.  You can see that I had some fun with clothespins.  My NOISE sign I made with clothespins and ribbon because I thought it would be easier to turn the letter around.  I have only had to turn letters three times so far.  Hopefully this trend continues!  At the top of the board are comma posters that I made.  Even though they are a little hard to read from students' seats, they are still a good reference.  You can also see the film photo frame.  Inside, I have put pictures of my advisees and their interests.  Two of my purchases from VistaPrint are also displayed on this board: Absent Postcards and Agenda Magnet.  To read more about my VistaPrint finds check out this previous post.

I also decided to do jobs this year.  Here is a close up of my signs.  I use Rick Morris' student number concept, so that is why the clothes pins have numbers, not names.  This will make for a more seamless start to next year.  Other than adding a few clothespins to account for a different number of students in each class, they will already be made.  And a quick shout out to my wonderful mom and sister who helped me color 60 clothespins :)

Interested in these signs?  Let me know, I'll email them to you.  

I also used clothespins for my passes.  How simple and less germy for sure.











For the front of my room, I have decided to show before and after photos.  I think that this is the most significant change I have made.  I love the cohesion between the two chevron covered boards.  I got the figurative language signs from TpT.  Check them out here. All the other posters I have made.

These 6+1 Trait posters are in my TpT store. Also, don't miss my fancy hot pink pencil sharpener.  So far it totally lives up to the hype!

Now I am off to enjoy a lovely weekend.  Make sure to take some time to relax and rejuvenate on your days off.

September Currently

So, today is my birthday.  I had a very special day at school, with one student not only remembering my birthday, but making brownies and bringing me a gift of books for my classroom library (oh and let's not forget the collage of my face mixed in with Beyonce's-who shares my birthday).  In addition to all that fun, two classes sang to me and countless students and teachers wished me a happy birthday.  On that note, I am already loving my new pencil sharpener.  I got the awesome new hot pink one.  It really does work!  I have never had a sharpener that was so effective.

It is also my second day of school.  To help break the ice yesterday, I had my students do a September Currently.  Then I read through them and the kids had to guess who wrote it.  It was quite fun.  I can't wait to have them try it on their blogs (which I haven't yet set up).  I thought that it was only fitting for me to get in on the action.

Because I am thinking of "plan, plan, plan(ing)," I better go do that now.  It has certainly been a busy couple of days, and I still have much to do tonight.

Link up at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade's Blog.  If this is your first time joining a "currently" you might need a tutorial (like I did).  Find a great one at Chickadee Jubilee's Blog.