It's Common Sense!

On Friday I felt like I hit a home run. It was the first dance of the year AND the new Hunger Games movie was coming out. It was the perfect storm of distractions for the students. Oh and did I mention that our first vacation is next week? Yes, it was one of those Friday's teachers dread.

But, we were going to be working with primary sources, analyzing and using text as evidence to support our claims. However, with the insight of master teacher Phoebe Slater, we turned this into a highly engaging inquiry based role playing lesson.

We have been reading the book My Brother Sam is Dead by James and Christopher Collier. In the book a family from Redding Connecticut is  being torn apart by the Revolutionary War. The son who is living in New Haven leaves his family to join the Continental Army to the dismay of his loyalist father.

We used this as the spring board to set up the lesson. Jordy, my teaching partner and myself split the class into two groups, we have the loyalists from Redding Connecticut and the rebels from New Haven who are all receiving shipments of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet and the citizens are getting fired up. The loyalist are calling treason against Thomas Paine and are ready to go to New Haven to set the record strait. The people of New Haven are using this as a reason to fight and are gathering fellow rebels, organizing and storming into loyalist towns to take their weapons in preparations of the fight. 

The two towns (groups) were given excerpts of the text to use to find evidence to persuade the other town when they meet each other at the markets and to use the text to start protests. We are using the "Teaching Democracy" framework to help facilitate this inquiry the students are working on.  Let's just say the students were so excited and were so engaged in the text trying to start the revolution. The rebels have even started making hats to wear as they protest! 

    

November Challenge

I have been really excited about signing up for Thinglink and introducing it to my students. As I have been doing some research on how others are using it in the classroom I stumbled upon the Thinglink Appsmash November Challenge!

If you want to know more about Thinglink it is a powerful took to embed information, graphics, videos and audio to images. There are countless ways to use it in the classroom. Here is an example Thinglink that I grabbed off their website:




Here is the information about the app smash! I cannot wait to try it out:

http://thinglinkblog.com/2014/11/08/take-the-thinglink-app-smash-challenge/

First Thoughts on Rick Wormeli

Last week I was able to go and see Rick Wormeli at CVU with the VAMLE board. He was giving a presentation about standards based grading. I have really been thinking about the whole idea of teaching with "GRIT" which yes I know is a four letter word, but I think it really addresses the issue of teaching students to be independent, critically thinking, hard working people.

If you are unfamiliar with Wormeli, he has put out numerous books and articles from around current trends in education and school transformations. Here are his thoughts on standards based grading:




I am still reading about his ideas for standards based grading, but I know as a teacher I really struggle with the whole grading thing, how do I assess students and give them a number on a scale of 0-100 for an assessment and put it in grade book and then have that accurately tell the student and their families where they are in connection with the standard and enduring understanding that we are working on. I am feeling like as a teacher that only shows such a narrow perspective on how the student is doing and that I need a better way to communicate with families about the growth of their learner. I am excited by all of the work that is currently being done around the state on standards based grading and have great hopes for where this work is going.

One thing that made me go "woo hoo" inside was that he said the best way to show student growth is through the use of a portfolio. It made me smile on the inside knowing that the work that we are doing is on the right track.

Teamwork in The Middle

Ahhh...the time old teamwork. There is no better feeling then a collaborative learning activity that works the way that it is designed. Students working together, truly engaged and being thoughtful about their work. The true test of a collaborative learning project? Friday mornings!

As a teacher I am always trying to figure out how to get groups of students to work together. To treat each other with kindness and empathy while tackling a higher order thinking activity. Yesterday I had an AMAZING day. I had a VAMLE board meeting in Shelburne and was able to visit a dear friends 3rd grade classroom. As my very talented friend was going over expectations for group work with her students I was reminded in the importance of using visual indicators for students on what your expectations are. Students would give examples of the expectation for group work and she would then draw a symbol on the board. This is an old practice that I would do and then I unlearned the habit over the years. With this inspiration I thought that I would try it today.


So off I went. Students were going to work in collaborative groups to take the Mission Related Goals for our school district and creating student friendly posters to show what this teacher language means. Students were to work in groups of 6-8 students (which is a HUGE group) so we came up with group expectations and I came up with some "creative" visuals for students and this is what we came up with:

Students decided that they needed to make sure that everyone in their groups:

•  had a voice and a job/ role within the group
• one of roles of the group would be the thought checker who would check in with the group members
• that everyones ideas and questions should be shared
• finally that the groups should monitor their own volumes

I am very happy to say that it was one of the most successful group work times that we have had this year! I have some images of the final products students made that I will post later! 

I'm Doing It!

Hello world, ok maybe not world, maybe right now just me, but I have hope and I have to start somewhere. My name is Maura Kelly and I am a 7th grade humanities teacher at PAML in Vermont. I am also a graduate student at the University of Vermont in the Curriculum and Instruction program with a individualized concentration on technology integration.

I have created this blog for several reasons. First I have been craving a place to reflect. I find that in our busy day to day, and putting out our fires, we often only get done the things that are right in front of us. I have fallen into the trap of being in the rhythm of being at work,  reflecting on my day (and thinking about my grocery shopping list and lesson planning for the following day) while in the car from school and getting home, while forgetting to take the time to really stop and reflect actively in a semiformal way as a way to improve on my practice.

The second reason I am creating this blog is to share the things that are happening in my classroom and current trends in the technology integration world with other teachers. I am very interested in what works for teachers and love reading about new ways that others are integrating technology to increase student engagement and student learning outcomes. I want to share the things that are happening in my classroom and also things that I have found that I think are very interesting.

The third reason for creating this blog are sharing my thoughts and anecdotes about being a middle school teacher in a rural area of Vermont. So here is to a great year of reflecting, sharing and collaborating!