Elementary School in the 21st Century- Brian Crosby

How does the Pedagogy Change? How does that School look?

Session Wiki

Conversation Description:

School/pedagogy needs to change, adapt, modernize is the siren call. We will briefly look at and/or discuss examples of lessons, technology use, and projects in elementary school today. Then use the bulk of our time attempting to outline what a “changed” vision for elementary school could and should be. Is there anything that stays the same? Should we approach this from no cost matters, or try to do it for the same or lower cost? Reading instruction … what changes? What doesn’t? Math? Other subjects? What about the building? Probably can’t raze them all and build new … so? What equipment/tools? We could dream big, but I’m thinking we might want to look at a model that is doable? What else? We can build a wiki so the thinking/planning can be archived and continued after the time runs out. as well as accessed and added to by those attending off site.

How things have changes over time? Since 1900 how much things have really changed? Nurses, factory workers, electricians, business… Could they just step into a job from today?

How about a student from 100 years ago. Could a student from 100 years ago step into a school from today? Chalkboard, books…

Schools need to change FUNDAMENTALLY…

How should a school essentially look like today?
Pedagogy?
Standards? / Curriculum?
Assessment? / Accountability?
Does size matter?
Facilities? / Equipment?
Which subjects are taught / are not taught?
Decision-making
Magnet school / school with-in school?
Extra-curricular Programs? Sports, arts, scouts, various clubs / interest groups
Local / Global Connections / outreach?
Parent / Home Connection?

We have to show teachers the changes in the world in order for them to understand why to use the tools (technology). Why would we want to change, if we (school) is doing great with Test scores.  It is more about the change in the world, than doing great in the current (past) way of doing things (assessing, standardized testing, world of the 20th century).

- Recommendation of movie Waiting for Superman (2010)

Who has the power? Parents (what if they are disconnected)? Who will be making the changes? School Boards, Parents, Administrators?

-Assessment piece driving instruction

Resource integration for working with the whole child.

Focus group with parents. – Start a discussion ABOUT EDUCATION!!!

What about the business component? What kind of graduates do they need? Global, critical thinkers…

Supporting teachers. They are the connectors to communicate with the community and parents. How does the support need to look like to be effective?

Where are the classrooms(schools) that are making a difference? We need to follow graduates like Science Leadership Academy to see how they do/lead once they are out in the real world.

Is there room for the basics? When do we start the BIG change? In elementary school we still need to teach writing and reading basics. How can we wrap change around that?

Passion is an important component to change. Passion of teachers spill over to the students. That passion might not be Technology for some teachers… and that is ok…

The need for teachers, superintendents, administrators to CONTINUE to learn. Visionary leadership creates the vision and structure AND create time and budget allocation to make it happen. The responsibility can not only be on teachers.  The principal is responsible for the learning climate of his/her school.

We have to start with the STUDENT in the design process of the 21st Century school should look like. How can we prepare them for tests and fail to prepare them for the world that awaits them.

-Who are the clients of schools? Students, communities, parents?

Transformative learning…not doing the same thing with a different tool. We need to get to the point that teachers/educators/administrators/decision makers understand that there is a revolution going on in the world (outside of many/most walls of physical schools). We need to find out how to let them see that teaching/learning the same way than “before” needs to be transformed, completely rethought.

We have a responsibility to collect, document and disseminate classroom examples. Show the leaders who are fearful or reluctant that other are DOING IT.

-Buy collaboration time as part of professional development funding.

-Recommendation for Quest Atlantis for elementary school. Design your own learning opportunities, use others design, free, 21st Century.

-Prepare the students for the world that THEY (students) live in.

One of our first grade classes read the book Flat Stanley by Jim Brown. They sent paper Flat Stanleys to relatives and friends around the country and received images and stories back.

Paper Flat Stanley

Then, inspired by the “worldwide” success” of the “other first grade class’” podcast episode of the Magic Tree House, the six year olds wanted to create their own recording.

As a class their brainstormed with their teacher a storyline so every one of them could have a segment in the recording. It came natural to them that they wanted to be flattened by their SmartBoard and be mailed around the world.

As their homework assignment, they were to pick a location of their choosing and to borrow a book from the library about that location. They could also use the internet to research their destination. Together with their parents they read the book and wrote a short script that needed to include:

• The location (City, State, Country, and/or Continent)
• How did they get there (transportation)?
• What did they do at that location?
• How did they get back home?

They were also given the reminder that

This is an audio recording, so the children need to think about the senses and sound effects they can use to help portray the mood. How did it feel to be mailed? how did it sound and smell at the places. What did they see?

Recording with Garageband

Take a listen and follow these first graders to London (England), Antarctica, Alabama (USA), Space, Israel, Tokyo (Japan), North Pole, Illinois (USA), New York (USA), Hollywood (USA) and Michigan (USA).

Please take the time to let these six year olds know where you are from by leaving a comment. Having a worldwide audience does matter!

Cross posted on TechLearning Advisor Blog
Podcasting has been around for a while now. It has also made it’s entry into the world of schools. Teachers of younger students are venturing into the world of digital storytelling in the classroom and are recording their students digitally.

The benefits for students to practice skills such as the following are part of a growing list.

• listening
• speaking
• presenting
• comprehension
• storytelling
• performance
• voice acting
• oral fluency
• media
• technology

I believe that there is an added bonus, one that we are just beginning to explore with the younger crowd is the benefit of a having a worldwide audience. The process of creating and recording a podcast is only one part of it. The opportunity to having their work disseminate on a bigger scale is just starting to be possible as teachers are growing and expanding their PLN (Personal Learning Network).  This network can literally span the world through social network sites such as blogs, Nings and twitter.

I am curious to find out if having a global audience makes a difference to six year olds or not?

Does having a Global Audience make a difference?

Once our podcast MP3 file was created, I embedded the file into a blog post on Langwitches and sent an announcement on my Twitter network with the invitation to listen to the audio and leave a comment with their geographic location.

Over the weekend, comments with observations, encouragement, and commendation were pouring in. I tracked the location of the commenters on a Google Map.

The following school day, students were sitting at their desks listening eagerly to me read the comments for them. In addition I showed them the location on the map. I made it a point to remind them that “their” voices were traveling and reaching to far away places.

There were comments from:

• USA
• Argentina
• Scotland
• England
• Spain
• Germany
• Turkey
• China
• India
• Bangladesh
• Thailand
• Australia
• New Zealand

There were a few words that students immediately picked up on and were thrilled to hear over and over again in several comments. They were especially intrigued by the word “professional”. Proud giggles were heard when commenters told them they sounded like 4th or 5th graders and that college professors would let their student teachers listen to their voices as an example. They would be teaching others who were much older than themselves.

Andrea Hernandez from EdtechWorkshop suggested to create a Wordle from all the comments that were left on the blog. As always I am amazed how a word cloud can shed light in an instant on a “bunch of text”.

Wordle created from comments left by listeners of 1st Grade podcast

As we were reading the comments, we also talked about and noted differences among our commenters. Not only where they were coming from, but also if we could figure out, if they were male/female, teachers/parents/grandparents or elementary school level, middle school or at the university level.

During the day, as I met these first graders at different times in the hallway of the school, I was asked as they were passing by, if someone else had listened to”their” voices and where they were from.

At the end of the day, the same first graders were part of a Skype call with another first grade class from  North Carolina. When I asked them, if they had any questions to ask our Skype partners, immediately a hand shot up wanting to know: “if the teacher and the students from North Carolina were “fans” of ours and had listened to our podcast?” Since, the class in North Carolina had not heard it, we immediately sent the blog link to them to check it out.

Here are quotes from journal entries of these podcasting six year olds (Word for word, I only took the liberty and used spell check before posting )

When I heard those compliments, it made me feel happy and very excited. I loved hearing those compliments.

When I heard about the replies, I felt great. Just amazing, so good. They said so much good words. I loved it very much.

I was very happy when I heard them. I liked all the comments about Jack and Annie.

When people texted us, I felt so happy and surprised. I t was fun when I heard one text that they were a big fan.

My class did a very great podcast. People all over earth made us happy. They were nice to us. Yes, they were!

So so so so so so so so soooooooo great! And I liked it so much that I want to explode like a volcano.

When I saw the Wordle, I felt really unbelievable. It was cool!

I felt very happy when I heard they thought we did great. I did not feel sad, I felt excited.

It was fun making a podcast. When we made a podcast, it was good. When they sent us stuff, it was fun.

I felt proud of myself because we got so many comments. I liked them all, because they make me happy because they are very kind and nice.

So, what do you think? Does it matter to a six year old to have a worldwide audience? Does an audience beyond his/her teacher and parents influence student’s motivation and excitement for learning reading, writing, speaking and listening skills?

If you have not thought of podcasting with your younger elementary school students, I encourage you to think again.

The first graders at my school had listened to the second grade podcast about animals, and had really enjoyed their story.They were especially thrilled that the second graders had received so many comments from teachers around the world. Believe it or not, but having an audience matters… even to 6 year olds.

They were enthusiastic and eager to record their own voices to get them “into other people’s computers and iPods” too.

I had started reading a chapter book called Vacation under the Volcano by Mary Pope Osborne from the Magic Tree House series with them.

The idea was to pretend that we were interviewing Jack and Annie, the two main characters, about their latest adventure that had taken them to Pompeii.

We read one chapter at a time and discussed as a class,  what happened as we were reading. After each   reading, I typed up all the questions and answers that students had came up with. The following time I went to their classroom, we recorded these questions and answers from the “script”.

I rotated all students to be either the interviewer, Jack (boys) and Annie (girls). I also had them record several segments as a class chant together (ex. gasping, “no children allowed”), which they seemed to enjoy very much.

Recording with Garageband

I had several students at a time come to the back of the class and record directly into Garageband, while the other students were silently working on classroom work or reading a book. A few times, I also took them out into the hallway, if the teacher had another activity planned in the classroom.

• I was amazed how cooperative and attentive to what was going on with the recording in the back of the room while it was not their turn.
• Several students started to take a real interest in the editing part of the podcast too. They were verifying that I was editing out any clicking noises that were included when I stopped the recording segment, or if a word was repeated twice.
• If they were not happy with their recording, they asked to record over it for a second, third or fourth time.
• Shy and quiet students were coming out of their shell. Their classmates were surprised and impressed of these new “podcast” voices they were hearing from them.

Recording in the Hallway

Recording:

• After demonstrating the difference in the sound of their voices and fluency, students agreed to NOT read off the script.
• I read one sentence at a time to the student who was to record. I let them practice saying the sentence out loud and coached them with their volume, melody and to use different acting voices.
• Some students needed to have sentences split into parts. Putting each sentence back together made it sound seamless in the recording.
• I could tell a drastic improvement among students in their confidence level and voice expression as we progressed in the book.

After class,

• I “cleaned” the recording tracks
• added music and  sound effects

The class couldn’t wait to hear the entire recording the next day. They wanted to hear the audio from start to finish, including the newest chapter clips. They begged to hear it again and again from the beginning and not only the added part. By the time we reached the end of the book they had heard the podcast over 20 times.

Skills addressed:

• listening
• speaking
• presenting
• comprehension
• storytelling
• performance
• voice acting
• oral fluency
• media
• technology

Take a “listen” and leave a comment to these first graders who worked very hard and enthusiastically on their recording. Let them know where you are from too. We will create a google map with placemarks to show how far their voices reached.

Thank you for leaving our first graders comments. You are making a worldwide audience real for them and are keeping them motivated. We are tracking them on our Google Map. Once you leave a comment with your location, we will add you to our Google Map.

View MJGDS- 1st Grade Podcast: Magic Tree House in a larger map

I had the pleasure of observing a wonderful first grade teacher today, Mrs. L. She is seamlessly integrating authentic data, math and her SmartBoard into daily lessons as well as making and connecting year long concepts.

Students at our school are encouraged to bring non perishable food items on Fridays for donation to the local food pantry. The teacher created  a simple page in SmartBoard notebook:

• Added the “grid-medium”  paper as the background
• Added numbers on the left side, starting with 1 at the bottom

• After counting the donated food items, choose the shape tool in your toolbar to draw a bar as tall the the number of the bars counted.

• choose the bucket tool
• select “solid fill”
• choose the desired color
• click inside the bar to fill it with previously selected color

Each rectangle is one square wide and exactly as many squares tall as the food items collected each week.

Each week students count out load the food items collected. They sort them into different categories, such as pasta, cereals, cans, etc. One student comes up to the SmartBoard and creates a rectangle, representing the number of overall items collected. The rectangle is than moved to be placed adjacent to the last week’s bar.

The teacher asks questions such as:

• Which week had the most/least items collected?
• How many items did this/last week have (three weeks ago?)?
• How many more did the”green” week have than the “blue” week?
• Let’s compare the “red” and the “blue” week. Which one has fewer/more items?
• What sentence can we say about the week in “yellow”?

The teacher also lets students come up to the board to use their fingers to count “how many more” one rectangle has than another. You can allow them to physically drag one week’s rectangle over another to see which color looks out on top (make sure that the longer rectangle is on the bottom layer (right click > order > send to back)

As she is introducing new math concepts throughout the week, the teacher adds new related questions to the weekly update session of the Food Donation graph.

Download the SmartBoard Notebook file

It is the time of year again, when Jose, the famous travel bear, hits the road.

This year, Jose will be traveling with two new travel companions (elementary school teachers from San Jose Episcopal Day School) to Italy. They will be live blogging on the  SJEDS travels to Italy blog.

If you are new to reading the Langwitches blog,check out Jose’s previous adventures on his archived travel blogs

• Jose travels to China
• Jose travels to Egypt
• Jose travels to Latin America

This is a great opportunity to continue following Jose’s adventures and discoveries of new lands, peoples and cultures. Although I am working at a new school this year, I am following along with a third and sixth grade class through daily readings and commenting on the travel blog. We are hoping to also connect via a Skype conference with the travelers.

I want to encourage you to integrate Jose’s Italy blog into your daily routine from October 5th – October 13th by following along with text, images and videos!

Many other bears have followed Jose’s inspiration and are traveling on their own. You can learn about their travel destinations and adventures on the Teddy Bears Around the World blog. Why not join and add your own travel adventures.

Kindergarten students are graphing everyday. They are learning terms, such as block graphs, image graphs, more than, less than, most, and least. The classes are going “out in the field” (around school) to survey and record other students and teachers about their preferences.

Together with their teachers, they are graphing on paper, on the SmartBoard, even with M & Ms.

Students are identifying and working with columns and rows in order to create a class graph of different colored M & Ms. They are counting the amount of M & M of one color they received, adding them together and transferring that number to the class graph on the SmartBoard. Tapping on the cell shade reveals one M & M of that particular color underneath.

Logistics of creating the graph:

1. Insert a table with as many rows as you have students. Add as many columns as the maximum of M& Ms that students could receive
2. Add a photo of a student in first cell of each row
3. Insert the rest of the rows with an image of one color M & M
4. Add cell shades to each cell that contains an image of the M & M

Download the M&M Smartboard notebook.

The teachers also created  SB tables and just filled in the cells with a background color, creating a bar graph when each student records their preference. Each day they have different surveys that they graph.

Logistics of creating the graph:

1. Insert a table with as many rows and columns as needed
2. Fill a header (or bottom) row with clipart from the Gallery (or screenshots) that will represent possible answers for the survey
3. Fill the rest of the columns with a background color and cover with a cell share (right click or apple click) then select “add cell shade”

2nd Graders have moved on from their Maps and Globes unit to learning about communities. Their investigation started out with looking at a map of our planet Earth at night.

We zoomed in to look at urban and rural areas and compared cities, like Jacksonville and Buenos Aires. the teacher then guided the students to come up with nouns that were found in rural and urban areas. These nouns were entered in a Wordle to create the Word Cloud below. The more one noun was mentioned by the students, the larger the word appears in the cloud.

The school subscribes to the Discovery Education Video Streaming service. We picked an age appropriate video clip about City, Suburb, and Rural Communities.

Each movie was divided into several segments. The objective of the lesson was to learn to extract information from a different media than a text book. In addition to learn about and work  with different media information, students also were working with different note taking methods.

Students were equipped with a paper, pencil and a clipboard, while watching the first segment, introducing the different communities and explaining general differences, . We started watching the video until a student yelled out “Atzor” (Stop in Hebrew), then summarized what they had heard and everybody wrote it on their notepaper. We had a notebook paper up on the big screen too to help with spelling. Students then called out “Lech” (Go in Hebrew) when everyone was done to continue to video. Notes were full sentences.

The second video clip was about life in the cities. Students, again, stopped the movie when they felt important information was being communicated. We then took a screenshot (with Skitch) and dragged it into a SmartBoard Notebook. The class made sure, by forwarding or rewinding the video,  to find just the right image / screenshot that was representative and was going to help them remember the information.

We watched and listened to the third video clip and extracted keywords to help us learn about suburbs.

The next step will be to continue watching the Rural segments of the video, taking notes and then compare and contrast all three communities in a Venn Diagram by moving the images or text in the appropriate areas according if they belong in one or more categories or not.

2nd Grade is off to a great start in the school year. They are exploring maps and globes. Why are maps useful? When do you use a globe instead of a map? What is a map key and how does it help us?
More and more students are becoming familiar with their families’ GPS systems too, whether in the car or on cell phones.

Let’s put these new learned skills to use by taking a screenshot of a map from the school’s surrounding area and creating our own map key? Homework had been to pay special attention to landmarks and sites as students were taken or dropped off at school.

Each student chose a landmark, decided on a symbol to represent and then adding it to the map key with an appropriate text label. Once in the map key “box”, a copy of the symbol was placed on the correct spot of the map.

2nd graders are using the SmartBoard to create and edit their own map key. Here is a screenshot of the map in progress.

The very talented Jane Cassette has created a wonderful SmartBoard notebook file for her Kindergarten class. She wanted to create a way to make her daily calendar time more interactive and personalized.

Now why is this calendar any different that the poster bulletin board type most elementary school classrooms use?

Image by riaskiff

SmartBoard Calendar has the ability to

• engage students by customizing objects on the calendar (ex. students pictures)
• individualize to students’ need
• create your “own” calendar from scratch. More ownership of product
• allow students to manipulate and create “what if” scenarios

• Birthday children get to write their own names and pick their own “Birthday clipart”
• Individual students write numbers of each calendar day
• Choose special clipart for holidays, field trips
• Students use “infinite cloned” weather clipart to drag and drop the daily weather into the calendar.

Who is absent today?

• Personalize who is missing at school today by inserting an image
• Math: Counting, addition and subtraction practice

Number of Days in School:

• “Ones” and “Tens” sticks are infinite cloned. Students add one additional stick to the Ones column. When they reach ten sticks, they exchange it for one “tens” and move it to the appropriate column.

Sight Word Practice:

• Students can practice writing sight words
• Once sight words are written, they turn into objects, that can be manipulated, resized, moved.

Sight Word Game:

Use cell shades (right click and “add cell shade)  to cover a sight word for the students to guess.

Building & Blending Words:

• add letters that students drag and drop into the box to form new words

Sight Word Scramble:

• scramble any words and have students drag and drop these letter to unscramble the sight words

Counting and Skip Counting Practice:

• This is a pre-made Multiplication grid directly out of the Notebook software Gallery. Just search for “Hundred Square” under open up the “Interactive and Multimedia folder”
• students push a number and the square turns another color

Download the calendar notebook file (courtesy of Jane Cassette). If you like her calender idea , re-tweet and send her her a comment through twitter @janecassette