Visually Representing Data in the Elementary Classroom

According to the post written by Fanguy on Piktochart’s blog, “Humans are visual creatures - half of our brain is dedicated to visual functions...What’s even more impressive is that as images are processed simultaneously, we process them 60,000 times faster than we process text” (Infographics as a visual learning tool section). Especially for my younger students, who often still struggle with reading, using visuals in my lessons is more important to have effective instruction in my classroom.

My favorite way to help students represent data in visual ways is through the use of data notebooks. This past school year, I went to a conference at Lake of the Ozarks and one of the sessions I attended was about using data notebooks with elementary students. I, along with another teacher that attended with me, are working on putting together data notebooks for our grade levels to use with our students. Especially since my grade level is moving to standards based grading next year, using these data notebooks with students will really help students visualize their learning progress. Students will start by taking a pretest for each standard (as we get to it in our pacing guide) and graphing their results. Then students will continue to chart/graph their score on each data point (assignment) that we do throughout the standard, and finally on a post-test. This will allow students to visually see how they are progressing through each standard in third grade.

In addition to these student data notebooks, my students also graph their DRA data and progress on AR reading goals. I feel like this is a great way for students to start understanding what all of their “grades” mean and to feel more connected to their learning.

References: Fanguy, W. (n.d.). Using infographics in the classroom. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from https://piktochart.com/blog/using-infographics-classroom/

Learning to Search Online

Teaching third grade students how to effectively, and safely, search online is a big undertaking in my district. However, it is a skill that students will use for the rest of their lives. How often do you search out the answer to something on Google on a daily basis? I know I use Google search at least 2-3 times per day. My students come to me with very limited experience using technology in the school setting. The kindergarten through second grade teachers in my building have access to a full laptop cart, but do not use it. They have 2-3 desktop computers in their classroom that occasionally students rotate through throughout the day on certain programs, but like I said, their experience is limited. When they come to third grade, they are 1:1 with laptop devices. Not only do I use many hours of instructional time teaching them how to properly log-in, unplug, plug in, and store their computers, but I also have to teach them basic Internet skills.

In addition to learning the difference between Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, one of the first things I teach them is basic online search skills. My students use Google Chrome for everything, so we start by explaining the differences and similarities between searching in the Google address bar (which is the same as searching on Google.com) and typing in a specific website in the address bar. The next thing I do is teach them how to use keywords. This is a difficult skill for third graders! I actually have my entire classroom library inventoried online, and students can “check out” books from our classroom just like they would a library. I use this site to help students practice using keywords. Because my students are so young and need a bit of extra scaffolding, I then provide them with a tile on their Symbaloo page (they set this as their homepage the first day) called "Safe Search" that links them to different safe-search sites. Students are then allowed to use any of our safe-search sites for research throughout the school year. All of these strategies help me and my students get started successfully and responsibly searching online, a skill they will use for the remainder of their lives.

Literacy in Other Content Areas

In my classroom, I incorporate literacy into every content area. It isn’t always easy, but I feel as if it will help my students be more well-rounded adults in the future. Not only will integrating literacy help them into adulthood, but it also saves me time. At the elementary level, we are expected to teach so many things in such a short amount of time. The students are at school for 7 hours each day. One hour of that seven hour day is spent at specials, thirty minutes at lunch, and another thirty minutes at recess. When you add in the transition times, bathroom breaks, the time it takes to unpack and do lunch count and then pack up at the end of the day, that leaves about 4.5 hours left for instruction. That isn’t a lot of time to fit in reading, grammar, writing, spelling, vocabulary, math, science, social studies, handwriting, technology, and all of the other things we are asked to teach our students. This is why integrating literacy into other content areas is so important.

Obviously, my literacy block is full of literacy. This is primarily when my reading instruction occurs and students work in literacy stations (vocabulary, spelling, handwriting, grammar skills, reading skills). In my math block, I have my students take notes for each new math lesson, which is almost every day. This note taking has students practicing handwriting skills as well as note taking skills, which is important when reading and writing about nonfiction texts. Learning to write down the most important ideas and facts will help them with nonfiction reading in the future and in our classroom. The other subject I teach is science, and I use reading, writing, and vocabulary during my science class with my students. Each quarter students have vocab words that go along with our science unit for that quarter. Students practice these words all quarter long using digital tools such as Quizlet and Kahoot. We also spend a lot of time in nonfiction texts learning about our topics. Instead of me doing all of the teaching, I like using science as a more investigative approach and having kids research the most important things. For example, our fourth quarter unit in science is matter. I give the kids that topic and the vocab words, and have them use resources to find what they think is important about the topic. Then, they write about what they have found or present their information to their class in another way, such as Google Slides. I’ve found that incorporating literacy in all of these ways allows me to meet all of my standards with the limited amount of instructional time I am given.

Digital Tools for Reading and Writing

According to Frey, Fisher, and Gonzalez (2010), “In literacy 2.0, we need to equip students with the cognitive tools that allow them to produce and share knowledge - using sounds, images, and texts - and the technological tools that provide them the means to do so” (p. 72). There are so many of these technological tools available that it can be overwhelming at times to figure out what is the best tool to use with our students. There are two tools that I would like to review and discuss how I would use them into my reading and writing curriculum in third grade.

The first tool I would like to discuss is ReadWorks. I have not used ReadWorks in my classroom, but there are a couple of other teachers in my building that have used it with their students. After exploring ReadWorks a bit more, there are many things I discovered I like about it. My first idea of how to use this resource is as a station during our literacy block. With my third graders, I have found that choice stations are the best way to go to get them exposed to different types of literacy activities and allow me to work with small groups while others are working with a group or independently. I love the Article-A-Day feature of ReadWorks and how it exposes students to a different reading assignment each day, and also includes response questions. The ability to choose a passage by grade level or Lexile level and assign it to different students is also beneficial, as is the audio feature available on many of the passages. These features would allow me to differentiate my instruction to the variety of leveled learners in my classroom. I also like that there are many different genres represented and ReadWorks would expose my students to many different types of reading and meet many of our reading standards when they not only read the passages but answer the corresponding questions.  

The second tool that I looked over was Epic! Books for Kids. After doing a little research over the weekend, I introduced Epic to my students this week. They absolutely love it and are begging for more time on Epic! I use this during station time or as an early finisher activity, and I love that it has built-in comprehension quizzes. Not only can I set the student’s reading levels individually, but I can also track their progress. It shows me how long they spent on each book, and how many pages they’ve flipped (so I can see if they spent 15 minutes flipping pages back and forth 1,000 times or if they just read the 10 pages of the book in 15 minutes). Epic also has a built-in incentive program - moving the students up “levels” and unlocking special features on each level. The only thing I do not like about Epic is that there are “educational videos”, which can be disabled, but somehow my students have found a glitch and can watch them even when I have them disabled. Although many of the videos are great and would be a great addition to a science or social studies unit, I have a few students (boys) who like to just watch the Lego or Minecraft videos, which apparently are educational in some way. Other than that, I’m loving using Epic in my classroom to increase my student’s exposure to books of all types (and audiobooks too)!

Frey, N., Fisher, D., & Gonzalez, A. (2010). Literacy 2.0: Reading and writing in 21st century classrooms. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Literacy in the 21st Century Classroom

Education is a constantly changing field. Not only do the rules, requirements, and expectations change for teachers, but they also change for students. Literacy is just one aspect of education that has drastically changed over the years. Yes, students are still expected to read, write, and practice spelling. However, how teachers teach these subjects and areas is very different than when I was in elementary school 15 years ago. Back then, students had very separate “subjects” and times of day for literacy. We had a certain time for reading, a certain time and textbook for grammar/language, and a certain time and textbook for spelling. Writing was also another subject that was worked on separately. Now, balanced literacy is the main focus in our elementary schools. We, as teachers, try to incorporate all of these subjects intertwined throughout our day. Spelling and grammar are integrated within writing, and reading contains all of these “subjects” as well.

A huge aspect of literacy that should be taught in our 21st Century Classrooms, but many overlook, is the aspect of digital literacy. As quoted by Murray in his post “Technology in the Classroom: What is Digital Literacy”, digital literacy is defined as, “the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet”. Throughout their time teaching literacy in the classroom, teachers should be incorporating digital skills, citizenship, and tools. Students need appropriate exposure to technology, and need to learn that there is more to technology than games and cell phones. Many of the jobs that our students will have will require the use of digital literacy - creating something digital or using a new digital program, typing something, and/or communicating professionally through electronic means. That is why I feel that digital literacy is a type of literacy that simply can not be overlooked in the 21st Century Classroom.

Murray, J. Technology in the classroom: What is digital literacy? Retrieved from http://www.teachhub.com/technology-classroom-what-digital-literacy

Twitter Chats

Although I had been a member of Twitter for years, I never really took advantage of all it had to offer. Through studying Personal Learning Networks with Dr. Diana Dell in the course I am taking, I had the opportunity to participate in two Twitter chats. Although this was a great experience and I learned some awesome things, I can't say that I was satisfied enough to make participating in Twitter chats a routine in my PLN.

The first thing I would say is that I wouldn't be able to handle participating in a Twitter chat without using a program such as Participate Learning (click the image below for a blog post about using this site). By going to Participate Learning's website, I was able to easily see when a chat would be taking place, join a chat, and stay connected with notifications of when I am mentioned, retweeted, or liked. It also allowed me to keep up with the large flow of Tweets that were coming in as a result of the chat. I looked in to some other tools available to help manage Twitter chats, but Participate Learning was by far my favorite. I can even log-in at a later date and see transcripts of chats I may have missed.

The first Twitter chat I participated in was #3rdchat, which I loved because it was completely focused on third grade topics and I knew I would be conversing with educators who deal with similarly aged students. There were 39 participants and it lasted for an hour. The topic that was discussed was one I am passionate about anyways - classroom design.

It was very easy for me to get involved in this chat and share my thoughts, as well as comment on other participants' responses. #3rdchat used a Q1/A1 format, where they would post a question (Q1) and as you answered the question, you would put A1 in front of your answer to signify which question you were responding to. I like how questions were posted in a picture format (like shown below), because it made them stand out from other Tweets that were appearing in my feed.

Overall, in #3rdchat, there was great conversation going and I was really interested in the topic and hearing everyone's responses. I was able to converse back and forth with a few people who had questions for me, and I was even able to share a picture of my classroom that people enjoyed (because I was at school while participating).

The second chat I participated in was #MOedchat. This chat had 64 participants from all over Missouri, and some who had even moved away but were still participating. They used the same Q1/A1 format, and I really liked how they posted all of the questions a couple of days before so I could start thinking of some responses.

Although I did get some good information and ideas from #MOedchat, I did not find it as valuable as #3rdchat. I'm not sure if that was due to the larger amount of participants or the topic, but about halfway through I started to feel like I was wasting my time.

Overall, there were a few things that bothered me about Twitter chats. First, many participants got off topic and would make tweets to the group that had nothing to do with the questions or answers. For instance, during #MOedchat, several started talking about the Olympics, putting their kids to bed, and posting tons of memes (images with text on them) about random things. That was very distracting to me and took away from what I felt was the purpose of being there - to discuss things in education. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people tweeting about those things, I just didn't feel like our Twitter chat was the place for it.

Second, I sometimes found it hard to say what I wanted with the character limit. Often I was only a few characters off (it's not like I was writing a novel), but I had to spend so much time trying to figure out how to shorten my response to get it to send. Along with that, I'm just not a fan of all the abbreviations and shortened words used in order to get someones point across. Spelling the word "for" with the number 4 and the word "you" with the letter "u" just bothers me when we are all adults and professionals.

Lastly, I was not a fan of how fast (and sometimes slow) the Twitter chat seemed to move. Long after question 3 (Q3) had been posted, people were still sending in responses for Q1 - probably because they were trying to get it to fit in the character limit. ;)

In summary, participating in Twitter chats was a good experience from me. I learned things and got new ideas, and was able to share some ideas as well. I will still be searching for chats to participate in, but I will be looking closely at the topics to decide whether or not I will participate. I will also be looking for chats that start at 8:00pm or earlier, as they last an hour and then I feel rushed to get ready for the next day and get to bed (especially during the school year). If you haven't tried a Twitter chat yet, I encourage you to do it. Try it. It's not for everyone, but you will most likely learn some valuable things and who knows, you may love it!

PLN Reflection

This week I was asked to reflect on my journey to building a PLN. In order to do this most effectivley, I created this infographic using Piktochart. Enjoy!