August Literacy Strategy

Well I missed July. So I'll give two strategies for August and then pick up from here on out! 

The first one is a classic and fairly straightforward but it is a great note taking tool to teach! I've heard it called Cornell notes and also two column notes. All you do is have the students take notes on a reading where they record the main idea in one column and then 3 details/evidence in the other column. I also add a box at the bottom of the page where the students write a brief summary. I think the key with this strategy is to model what you mean by main idea, details, and summary. Also start with a very easy, high interest article. It's easy to assume that students know how to write a summary. But I've found this is often not the case!

My 2nd strategy is more of a writing strategy and also helps with processing. I may have talked about it before but it's a great tool in the classroom and can be used in multiple ways. It's called powerwrite. All that happens is you give the students a topic or a word and time them for 2 minutes. They have to write about the topic for the entire two minutes. They can write in complete sentences, bullet, or draw pictures. As long as they don't stop. I don't ever grade the powerwrites for accuracy. But after each one I have random students share with each other. And then sometimes I have random students share with the whole class. This helps to keep them accountable!

The new school year has started and I'm excited!! Welcome back!!

Literacy Strategies

In an effort to make myself post more often, I have decided to do one post a month on a literacy strategy that I use in my science classroom. Hopefully, I will post more than just once a month, but at least this forces me to get in a post and if nothing else will remind me to blog! So here is my June Strategy. I'm not sure the name of this strategy but I'm going to call it "Two article viewpoint" activity. In this activity the students work in pairs. They are each assigned an article on the same topic. One article is for an issue and one article is against an issue. Each student takes notes on their article. They then meet up and discuss/compare notes. Then together they write a 3-5 sentences summary of the issue.

This strategy is useful for preparing for a debate, and also to teach about reliability of sources and looking at who wrote the article/crediantials.  I just hand out a two column worksheet with a box at the bottom. Partner A reads first article and fills out the left column. Partner B reads article 2 and fills out the right hand column. Then pairs share and come up with a summary together. 

A simple strategy to help with reading /analyzing articles!

End of Semester Reflection

I know, I know! Once again its been too long in between posts. I am going to really work on doing shorter, more frequent posts/updates. I just re-read my last post and so I wanted to update about some of my goals. In particular my goal to work on incorporating concept maps into my classes.

Ecology End of Unit

Write Up Under Web

Ecology End of Unit

Ecology End of Unit

I have been concept map obsessed this semester! But it seems to be working! I am so impressed with the improvement I've seen. Not only on the students part, but also on my part. I've figured out what words to use and how to structure the directions. My favorite part of concept mapping is that I can really tell if the students understood the concepts or not. The level of thinking is so much higher than just regurgitating information from a textbook or the internet. As you will see from my pictures, it is also a really quick way to check for understanding and pick out big misconceptions or issues with content. For example, I could tell right away that my students were still struggling with heterogeneous mixtures vs. homogenous mixtures. So here's some pics to show you.

 

Enough with the concept maps!  The final project I ended this semester with was a joint project with Biology and Contemporary Literature. We used the Hunger Games as an anticipatory set and did a mini unit on Genetic Engineering, which culminated with a debate.  I feel like I ended on a positive note with high engagement. Time for vacation!   I'll try to update more once I've had my brain break! Happy Summer!!!

Semester Goals and Classroom Updates

Once again I'm behind on posting. I think I have a reasonable excuse since I just had a baby in November. This post will be a catch up!

I was out on maternity leave for the end of the fall semester. I came back in January in time for the start of the spring semester. Here are 5 goals I have:

1. Incorporate mind (concept) maps into all of my classes. 

2. Continue teaching reading and writing across content.

3. Increase the amount/quality of feedback I give students.

4. Deconstruct all worksheets into activities.

5. Go paperless. Continue to transfer all paper pencil graded work to assignments that can be posted electronically. 

I've done some things already to work toward these goals. Here's some things that have been going on in my classroom:

In personal finance to wrap up the intro unit on goals and time management I gave the students a set of words and had them make mind maps. It worked pretty well. I had several different levels of  out comes. One group came up with the idea of using stair steps between all of there words. They had a very elaborate. Thought process of how they organized their words and how they set up their stairs. Very cool!

In biology I've been teaching literature roles and am working up to doing a lit circle discussion from a section in he textbook. We practiced using an article about how a South American male Spider attracts females. The students ended up having a big discussion about spiders mating and were doing the roles without even knowing it. For example they were asking really good higher order thinking questions without me having to prompt them! Exciting!

The last thing that I think is cool is my plan for Valentines Day! I plan on focusing the whole day on chocolate. In chemistry we will do a lesson on the chemistry of chocolate, biology will focus on the environmental issues of chocolate production and how it's grown. And in personal finance we will do a lesson looking at the cost of buying a chocolate bar from the vending machine and how that money could be saved. The social studies teacher is going to do a lesson on chocolate in his economics class.  Always fun to try to get some cross-curricular connections going on! I'll post an update to let you know how it goes. 

Let's hope the next time I update it's warmer and spring is on it's way! I'm ready for this winter to end!

 

Big Post Its Are My Favorite Teaching Tool!

Once again I'm going to share a strategy I used with Big Post It notes. They're just so quick and easy. And the students seem to like using them. This year my district is really focusing on literacy strategies in all content. This is great for me because that's one of the things I love to do. My favorite class in grad school was Reading and Writing across the Curriculum. (Just a quick note: If you have never used the following two books, I strongly recommend getting them and looking through them. They have amazing strategies for incorporating reading into your classroom.
1.)  Daniels, H. , and S. Zemelman. Subjects matter, every teacher's guide to content-area reading. Heinemann Educational Books, 2004. print.

 2.) Tovani, C. . Do I really have to teach reading?, content comprehension, grades 6-12. Stenhouse Pub, 2004. print.

 But getting back to the Big Post Its and the pre-reading activity I did with my biology students...I first learned this strategy in my Grad school class and have done it several times but then I was inspired to try it again after going over it in my Science Curriculum meeting. The way the strategy works is that you pick out key words from a reading (the reading could be a textbook, or article, whatever you choose), in this case I used an article. I picked out about 8 words that I thought were big ideas from the article and then I gave the students the words. In groups of 3 or 4 they had to write the words spread out on a big post it. Then I had them round robin to draw lines connecting words and writing what the connection was between the words. Then at the bottom of the page they made a prediction about what the article would be about. The next step is that they read the article and then re-write their prediction to summarize the article. The following is the citation for the article I used:

I used this activity and article during my ecology unit as a way to talk about food webs and how everything is connected as well as discussing invasive species and how organisms affect each other. The following are some pictures of the Big Post It Activity

This activity worked really well and the students actually wanted to read the article and were interested! Also it was a good way to start thinking about what I want to do next...Mind Mapping! My next unit is cells and I think I am going to try to incorporate mind maps several times. This is something I've wanted to do but I've always struggled to make it work. The activity I did was a good way to have the students do a simple word connection activity which is the basis of a mind map. So maybe teaching mind mapping in small steps will help! Hopefully I'll have some cool pictures to post for my next entry!

A new year, new organization strategies!

The new school year is off and running! This year my number one goal is to increase my organization skills and eliminate the clutter! In the past one of the biggest challenges I've faced is keeping organized, neat, and managing my stacks of papers. My plan is to try to eliminate as much of the paper/pencil tasks and worksheets as possible. I know I am pretty lucky because my students have computers and we use a program called blackboard which makes it easy for me to put a lot of things online. But if you can I highly recommend doing as much on the computer as possible. This year I have started with several strategies and so far (its only been a week) they seem to be working effectively and I feel a little less of the "clutter stress". Plus an added bonus is that I feel like the grading is a lot more manageable and I can actually keep up! I had to put in a little up front work for some of these, but again I feel like I'm already seeing the pay off. So here's what I've been doing: 1. Online Warm Ups: I post my warm up questions (very simple, not meant to be hard,just a quick review or something to get students thinking) on blackboard. I have it set so that they don't show up until class starts. Then they go away 8 minutes after class starts. The students have the 8 minutes to complete the warm up then sit in their seats and wait for directions. I post a slide where it tells them what they need to have out for the day. So far this has done wonders for my tardy issues. If the student is late too bad, they don't get the daily 5 points. But at the same time when I have three kids walk in 5 minutes late it doesn't disrupt everything I've just said. It might seem like 8 minutes of wasted class time...but when you think about it it takes 8 minutes to start know matter how you do it. 8 minutes is not that long so the students do have to focus and jump on the warm up right when they come in. It seems to get their focus in the right place and gets the class period off to a good start! 2. I do as many assignments as I can where the students can post to blackboard electronically. Since I don't have my classroom during my plan time, I'm moving around a lot. Being able to access student work online instead of dragging a bag of papers around is so much easier. Added benefits: No sloppy handwriting to try to decipher and the students seem to prefer to type. 3. The only work I have students do by hand are participation type assignments. Except for their science journals. This is still a work in progress but here's what I'm doing so far. I have yet to find an online program to create a science journal that I really like. And I think its important for students to keep a journal in science. I'm doing any notes, lab data, observations, power writing activities, etc. I keep track of the assignments I give and then about once every week to two weeks my goal is to check for completion. I want the students to feel safe to write and observe in their journals. But I also want to ensure that they are doing the tasks I assign. So I'll see how this goes...I've tried the science journal every year and hope this is the year for success! That's all I have for organization. Wish me luck on an organized semester! Happy long weekend! Yay for Labor day!

Final Project at Middle College

Here is a link to the blog my students created about their social change project. There are pics and a few videos about the process. http://letmcsocialchangetheworld.tumblr.com/