03.06.10
Worth the Watch…
An Open Letter to Educators (check it out):
If you thought that was good this response is also pretty darn good!
Read This (About Readicide!)
I came across this great publication called Reversing Readicide. It’s a must read for educators who see their students turned off to reading. It’s also a must read for parents who are noticing their children getting turned off to reading. The article lists four factors that cause readicide in our students and gives ideas to reverse the trends! Check it out.
Mr. González
Check my Homework Section to see what we are doing in Science and check my online progress reports to find out exactly what your child is missing.
Do Grades Help or Hinder Learning?
As our 2nd trimester comes to an end and I prepare final grades I’m left wondering if grades and marks like grades help or hinder learning. I began to wonder about grades and homework after reading some articles written by Alfie Kohn. After reading, Changing the Homework Default I bought Kohn’s book, The Homework Myth (it’s on my to read list). The article alone has led me to do something I was very close to doing anyway, stop giving homework. In my 19 year career I have seen the harm that homework does to families so I mostly stopped giving my students homework aside from allowing more time to finish assignments they didn’t get to finish in class and the occasional blogging homework to encourage reflection. Before reading Kohn’s article I thought homework was beneficial and necessary for learning. Besides there were always a few parents who asked for homework for their child each year. My students will always have the option of doing follow-up or make-up or blog work at home but I’m going to make that purely optional. So yes, my only homework assignments, blogging, are no longer going to be assigned for homework. We are blogging in class and that has made the experience more rich largely because more students are actually doing it!
That was a rather easy change to make and I believe it will be met mostly positively. My next planned change is a bit larger. I was very impressed by Kohn’s article, From Degrading to De-Grading! What impressed me is that it showed me the solution to a problem I’ve been seeing year after year, namely student failure. I have not been happy with the amount of low grades students get in my classes and few of the many things I’ve tried changing in the way I teach have remedied the situation. In other words, no matter what I try I still have students who fail. Sad thing is that in learning failing is essential! It’s when we fail at something and keep trying that we get better and learn. And the part that has been difficult for me to swallow is that I know the work students are doing in my classes is good! I can see their learning everyday and yet if an assignment is missed, lost, or not completed that child gets a low mark and a low average labeling him or her a failure. That is so wrong! So I’m currently reading Punished by Rewards, the Problem with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praises, and other Bribes. I also got The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and Tougher Standards (also added to my reading list). My goal is to create an atmosphere where my students will learn and be excited about learning without worrying about grades. I don’t want to discourage children with anything considered a low mark. So many kids get turned off to learning because of a low grade.
I will be sending a letter home with students to share with parents my plan for grading in the 3rd and last trimester of this year. Since I can’t do away with all grades, much as I’d like, I will implement an evaluation scheme much like the elementary where I will let families know how students are learning the WA state Science standards with which my curriculum aligns. More on that later. In the meantime I’ve put together a short survey, just six questions, to see what parents believe about grades and learning.
Click here to take a survey on grades and learning. Thank you!
Mr. Gonzalez
02.21.10
PLN’s and PLC’s
When teachers use Twitter they form Professional Learning Networks or PLN’s with hundreds and sometimes thousands of other teachers. What an incredible way to share resources and discuss current topics facing educators. Last Tuesday hundreds of teachers from all over the US and maybe even the world got together from 4pm to 5pm PST to chat about teacher evaluation through a twitter hashtag we call #edchat. That hashtag allows us all to type our ideas, questions, answers, and responses so that we can all see them. It goes fast and furious but what a way to spend an hour!
While participating in last week’s discussion and reading the questions and responses I started to reflect on my own experiences with improving myself as an educator. I have to admit that having my principal observe me a few times a year helps me because there’s another adult in the room giving me insight into how I’m doing. Some years I meet with my principal and we discuss my goals for the year and what I need to achieve those goals. That also has been very helpful. So how can I get that more often? I mean there are many of us teachers to one principal, right? So why don’t the teachers help themselves as a team?
That’s where my Professional Learning Community or PLC has come in so handy. In our small district we have five teachers who teach Science for grades 6 through 12. For the past five years we’ve formed a PLC where we have done different styles of lesson study where we observe each other, talk about how students are learning in our classes, and how we can improve. It has been much more powerful than “evaluation” and it’s not like having your boss giving you a “formal” observation.
I love lesson study. A PLC chooses a lesson or topic of study. One teacher teaches the lesson observed by the rest of the team. The team focuses the observation on students and how they are learning, or not, the topic of the lesson. The teachers meet to debrief the lesson where they tweak it so another can teach it. The PLC debriefs again, tweaks again, and a third teacher teaches the lesson again. Doing this really helps improve one lesson at a time. This type of lesson study had to happen rather quickly since the teachers are teaching the same lesson. Teaching the same lesson is not easy when we all teach different grade levels and different sciences though.
So we tried a new type of lesson study. We would teach a similar topic that maybe crossed over all grade levels or we taught a topic with slightly different lessons depending on grade level. We would videotape the lessons. We would then meet for a full day to watch the videos and give each other feedback. We used a Science Classroom Observation Guide (SCOG) that we got from the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership (NCOSP).
That was very beneficial but we still needed to add another component. We used an NCOSP protocol for looking at student work. We would bring student samples from the lesson, usually a formative assessment, to see if students were learning the concept. We ended up cutting the video segment of our day short so that we could spend more time looking at the student work. The next step was to determine how we could improve our lessons to help students understand the Science concepts better. Now that has been powerful. And that, I believe, is how teacher evaluation should happen. By opening up our doors and working together we can improve and mentor each other.
How does your district or school evaluate teachers? How do your teachers do professional development? Let us know by leaving a comment.
02.15.10
How to Motivate Students?
Thanks to @web20classroom, @ShellTerrell, and @tomwhitby for hosting a great session this morning with Alfie Kohn, @alfiekohn (with backchanneling still going on at #kohnlive), where we got to ask questions about grades, homework, standardized testing, the state of education and reform, and teacher preparation. For those of you who are wondering what the @ symbols mean and why the weird nicknames, they are twitter handles. I’m @educatoral. I started following those amazing educators on twitter and it’s blasted my professional development to places where I’ve wanted to go but didn’t have the time, money or resources to get to on my own. We call this a Professional Learning Network or PLN that I joined by following people on twitter. By joining and forming a PLN I have been getting access to valuable resources and great minds to bounce ideas off of.
Also on twitter are words preceded by a # and those can also be followed or tuned in to by those interested in those topics. I think what I heard from Kohn this morning is helping me get to a place in my teaching that I’ve been dreaming of for years. At least I think I’m getting closer. Another great resource for educators and parents that @web20classroom, @ShellTerrell, and @tomwhitby have put together is the Educator’s PLN. Check it out.
I also want to thank @cybraryman1 and@iteachgrade2 for our follow up twitter conversations. Your words have helped me incredibly.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to take part in several years of Learn & Serve America grants to have my 6th graders monitor the water quality of our neighborhood creek. One thing that I’ve been learning through participating in service-learning is that students are motivated by having control in their education. Reminds me of a blog I read recently where studies found that people are most motivated by being able to make progress, be they adults in an office or students in a classroom. Imagine a ladder where the top rung is a classroom where students and teachers make decisions together and the lowest rung is where students are pretty much told everything they will be doing. In other words, the lowest rung on the ladder is the traditional classroom.
I never managed to get higher than the lowest rungs on the ladder. I mean, I have curriculum I have to teach and I have lesson plans that I’ve created that my students need. After all, I’m the professional in my classroom, aren’t I? But still there was a part of me that wanted to move up that ladder. But how? And how do I get past my fears? (The fear of chaos in the classroom, of not having a plan for 30 restless minds.)
Then came Alfie Kohn and his books, dvd’s and interviews on subjects such as homework and grading. The things I’ve read or heard Kohn say resonated with me. I mean, I’ve never been one to give my students too many tests and I’ve always hated grading. Grades have been the part of my job I would easily give up. I’ve seen the things Kohn was talking about. I’ve never heard a student on Facebook say that he or she enjoyed doing homework and my own students will blog in the classroom in a heartbeat but over 93% of them will not do the same assignment when it’s homework. I mean even those who have a computer at home or have a cell phone will not blog when it’s homework. So when Kohn says that research shows that there is no benefit to giving homework and that homework in fact makes learning a chore and saps the love of learning from our children I became interested.
I was also interested when Kohn recommends that we do away with grades. I was ready to jump on that train so I planned to do away with my letter grades and switch to just giving students a score on whether or not they understand the standards I’m supposed to teach. While I think my idea is a good one and a good next step Kohn meant getting rid of all grades and scores. Oh. I see. Giving students written feedback in the form of narratives is much more effective, but as Kohn has found when that narrative is followed or preceded by a letter grade or number score it is ignored. So Kohn envisions education where there are no rewards or punishments, and grades are rewards and punishments.
Okay so I can stop giving homework because I now have some research to support that is a good way to go. I can also stop giving letter grades and score students purely on the state standards. I can do that because our elementary scores students that way so parents and students will be familiar with it. I can’t quite do away with scoring students completely because as a teacher I am expected to assess my students in ways that our grading system will accept. Until we change that I’ll work within the constraints I am given. But will that be enough?
I don’t think eliminating homework and cutting down on grades will be enough to motivate my students to learn. I think what I can do is to empower them by letting them make decisions about how they are learning. Sure I have a curriculum that I have to use but I need to figure out how to give my students the ability to choose how they learn it. Can I do that? If my students work under the same parameters that I have, the standards and the equipment or kits that I have for them to learn it, it might just work. I mean I have a PLN that constantly provides me with new Web 2.0 tools so that I can differentiate in ways that my students tell me they need to learn. I can also ask students how they would like to be assessed to show me that they’ve learned the standards.
My fear has always been not having a plan and watching my students lose control. But what about having a plan and then having my students completely change it, or come up with something they would prefer. How much choice can we give our students? How can I do this? These are the questions I’m toiling with right now.
Please share your thoughts or ideas by leaving a comment.
Al Gonzalez
To Block or Not to Block
I took this from an email message I shared with teachers.
I’ve been dealing with the opposite problem in my classroom as I learn about new web 2.0 tools and can’t use them because they are blocked by our filter. Our tech guy came to my room to help me have access just in my room to blogs and social websites because too often the websites I need to use with students are blocked because we incorrectly try to block access to facebook, myspace, twitter and other personal blogs. Even though we need to stop access to inappropriate sites I think blocking social networking websites is wrong and it makes my job more difficult.
I too don’t allow students to access facebook and other such sites during class but luckily in my room I can see all my computers from anywhere in the room just by turning around. It’s much harder for kids to sneak that in my situation. But I do have kids blog and glog and I use Moodle and wikis and diigo and twitter and Ning and drop.io and others that I’m testing. So blocking makes it difficult for my students to use these Web 2.0 tools.
What it boils down to then is a class management issue. It doesn’t matter what the student is doing, chewing gum, wearing a hat, passing notes, texting, using facebook, playing computer games, etc, if they are supposed to be doing an assignment and they are off task they need to be redirected. If a student is constantly redirected and does not improve or change that negative behavior it becomes continual willful disobedience and it moves up in the discipline scale.
As more and more 21st century web 2.0 tools become available and useful in the classroom, whether it’s to teach students how to use the tech they will need to succeed in their future or whether it’s to motivate students by having them use the tools they use for fun anyway, we need to be able to use them in our classrooms and computer labs. So I say don’t block these websites. Allow access to web 2.0 and social networking sites so those teachers who are embracing those technologies in the classroom can do so unhampered.
02.04.10
My Prezi
To view the show use the play arrow/triangle at the bottom of the Prezi. Advance from section to section at your speed until you reach the end. It’s pretty cool! Leave me a comment letting me know what you think about Prezi.
01.31.10
Blogging and the 21st Century
Why do I assign homework by having students blog? And what in the world is a glog? If you’ve asked yourself these questions maybe this blog post will help. I remember just a few years ago how parents and teachers started to worry when our children were using MySpace to create a presence on the Internet. MySpace provided regular, non-techy, people a way to create a very stylized website where they could easily post pictures and keep friends and family updated with what they were up to. Parents and teachers had to monitor Internet use for our children and educate them because there were too many people posting inappropriate content to their MySpace. Since the point of creating a web presence with MySpace was to share it with the world it was very easy for our children to stumble upon this inappropriate material. Schools, driven by fear, tried sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to block MySpace. Parents did too. Things got better though because now students have Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and other safer ways to build their web presence, stay in touch with friends and family. Connecting with family and friends online is highly motivating to our students.
One thing we can see for sure is that social media is ubiquitous. Many people are staying connected through some online service, often through their smart phones, that businesses are making use of these new technologies. And it seems that those who are afraid of these changes are those who didn’t grow up with them, those who are baby boomers, the digital dinosaurs; and even some of my generation, the generation X’ers who are digital immigrants. Our children, the net generation or millennials who are digital natives, don’t fear it, quite the contrary they live it. Now I don’t even begin to know how old a child should be when she or he gets the first cell phone, or the first online account but I do know that blocking access to those things isn’t going to help them. My job as a teacher is to show my students appropriate ways to use the current technologies to learn, create and share. Darn, I’m showing them that what they use for recreation can also be used in school. Our job is to help children traverse their online experiences safely and using good common sense to protect themselves. That’s what marks the 21st century.
The news media is radically changing as professional reporters aren’t the only ones reporting news anymore. So many people are getting their news from other people who blog or tweet or post on Facebook before they tune in to the regular news. And they can do it anywhere! Television, radio and newspapers are no longer the only way for us to find out what is going on in the world. And where ever there is a cell phone, especially with a camera, news will spread even if those around would prefer to keep it secret or quiet. It’s a new world.
That is why I hope that I am embracing this new world, this new way of learning, creating and sharing. Reading a newspaper, hearing a news radio show, or watching a TV news report used to be one way. You had to turn to your family, friends and coworkers to discuss what you were reading, listening to, or watching. Now people all over the world can share their thoughts and ideas with each other by leaving comments on blogs, retweeting on Twitter, or making comments on Facebook. I have been listening to what astronauts are doing daily on the International Space Station because I follow them on Twitter! I retweet what I find exciting with those who follow me so there are thousands of people on Earth who can keep track of what’s happening up there daily and so easily! My students can do a Science lab, write about it on their blog, and get a comment from other students in New York, Canada or other parts of the world letting them know what they think about our lab!
I personally have learned so much from the incredible educators and administrators I follow on Twitter and gain so much from all the wonderful resources they share with me and all the other educators who are part of what we call our Professional Learning Network (PLN). Fancy phrase and acronym for groups of teachers all over the world sharing resources and ideas with each other. That’s how I am learning and I know many of my students learn that way so I am making that part of my classroom routine.
So why blog about what you are learning in Science? Because if you write down on paper or in your notebook and turn in to me, the teacher, then I will read it and either grade it or give feedback or both. Me, just the teacher. If I have students read each other’s work and evaluate each other’s work then they get another’s view and feedback. Nice. But if they blog what they are learning they can get each other’s views and feedback, my views and feedback plus the possibility of views and feedback from students all over the world. It’s not just about the final grade, it’s about the learning.
Okay, you get it now, so what’s a glog? Seeing as how so many of my students are visual learners and seeing as how so much of what people create now includes more right brain, artistic types of products I give my students the choice to just write their responses on paper, type it into their blog, or use glog to make a poster-like, media-rich post. Glogs give students the ability to answer my Science prompts and questions by creating an online poster full of pictures, songs, movies and text, which they can still post on their blogs! It’s pretty awesome. Here’s a response about density blog. Now here is another response to the density question but in glog form.
So in my Science classes students get assigned a few to several Science prompts or questions for homework each trimester to reflect on what they’ve learned in class, or share what they’ve learned in class. It allows me, and whoever else reads their work, to see if students are understanding the concepts we are studying in class. Students get the choice of how they want to submit their homework, I’ve told students they can even text me their responses if they wish! So encourage your children to do their Science homework and if they want, they can blog about anything else they want in between assignments. This is their century to shine so I want them to make their school blogs their own.
Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.
Mr. González
Check my Homework Section to see what we are doing in Science and check my online progress reports to find out exactly what your child is missing.
This is a Wordle of this blog post:
01.30.10
Midterm – Full of Chances
Monday, Feb 1, is our official midterm day. The half way point of our trimester and our entire year! This is a good time for reflection. As your teacher I am continually asking myself, “what can I do to make Science meaningful for my students?” And, “how can I communicate with my students and their families to help them succeed?” As students you should be asking yourselves, “am I doing the best I can to get the most out of my education?” Some of my 6th, 7th, and 8th graders tell me that they don’t see how what they are doing now affects their future. I mean the far away future. Some have their far away future plans all squared away so they can start finding ways to make sure they can make those futures come true right now. If you are having difficulties seeing far into the future for yourself, then work on getting the most out of your education right now until you have a clearer plan for your far away future. That way, no matter what you decide to do you will have what you need to make your dreams come true.
So at this time of reflection, as you get progress reports and papers back, as you choose work samples for your portfolios for student-led conferences in March, make sure that you are doing all you can do right now to get the most out of this wonderful opportunity we call education. Parents, the best way you can help your child is by making sure he or she knows how to help him or herself. Parents typically ask their children if they have homework. Many children will respond with a quick no so the next question should be concerning class work that didn’t get done in class or work that can be improved upon. The problem I see with students is that they want to forget about the work they didn’t finish in class or the work that can be improved. I tell my students that missing work and work that can be improved will not go away so the quicker they finish it or make it better and turn it in, the better! If you wait too long then you get a progress report with a lower grade than what you could have had. It’s so much easier to finish something or make something better sooner than later. The thing I love about midterm and what I remind students is that the grades you see on your progress reports or on Skyward are completely fixable! So take this wonderful opportunity to catch up, make up and stay caught up so that you can show what you are learning in school and have some good grades as well.
Let me know what you think? Leave a comment sharing your thoughts and/or experiences.
Mr. González
Check my Homework Section to see what we are doing in Science and check my online progress reports to find out exactly what your child is missing.
01.02.10
2010!
Welcome to twenty ten! I had to post today because today is a palindrome – 01-02-2010 or 0102 2010. Cool.
Monday we’re all back at school and that means it’s time to get back into the groove of things. I will have progress reports for my 7th and 8th graders so they can catch up if need be. I will hand out paper copies to everyone on Monday. Many 7th and 8th graders need to work on their blogging homework. Sixth graders will work on self-assessment so they can see where they’re at. I’ll get them a progress report before the end of the first week of the new year. Many 6th graders also need to work on their blogging homework. Monday I will post progress reports online as well so that as students do catch up work they can see their grade improve.
Students can use the Homework Section of my website as well as my Moodle to make-up or redo any assignment.
See you all in a couple of days!
Mr. González
Check my Homework Section to see what we are doing in Science and check my online progress reports to find out exactly what your child is missing.
Visit this page often to find out what’s going on in my classes! And feel free to leave a comment.
Use the links to the right to find what you need
