For many teachers, the art of leading a class through new material in a lecture setting is still their primary way to facilitate learning in students. While some teachers are striving to go towards a “no-lectures’ style of teaching, many current teachers don’t find that to be comfortable. Through the use of technology, many other alternatives exist that can fill that gap between traditional lectures and 21st-century style teaching. One methodology that I have been exploring, with good results, is the use of student devices and interactive lecture/presentation programs. I have specifically been using Nearpod, and to a much lesser extent Pear Deck, to lead my students though notes exploring new material. These interactive presentation programs allow a teacher to hold onto the core benefits of a lecture style lesson, while more actively engaging students, checking for understanding, and gaining real-time and post-lesson data to better inform future instruction. Interactive presentation programs such as Nearpod are easy-to-use ways to bring your lecture into the modern educational model of learning. Through the use of Nearpod, I am able to use my own lecture slides (either from Slides or PowerPoint), but insert activities, formative assessment, and other interactive content right into the presentation itself. The lesson is then streamed out to all the student devices in your classroom, giving each student a copy of the lesson for them to look at as either they themselves or the teacher controls the pace of the lesson. The types of activities available to incorporate into the lesson are expansive, including Quizzes, Fill-in-the-Blanks, Surveys, Drawings, Websites, Animations/Simulations, Maps, Videos, and many others. These activities generate real-time and post-lesson data that can be used immediately, or later, to inform instruction. It helps facilitate whole-class engagement and offers ways to track and keep an eye on student progress as well. Taking the time to convert old lecture lessons to interactive lessons is a breeze, and the benefits are enormous. It’s well worth the investment, for the teacher, and their students. Don’t be afraid to try something new, it might just become a hit! Today's thoughts come to us from Mr. Justin Bush. Justin is a science teacher at Pike High School.
0 Comments
My first year of teaching was a whirlwind with late nights and a pile of paper that never seemed to get any shorter. I felt like I spent every other day battling my classroom management plan as students continued to act in ways that I never thought possible. I went into survival mode, using lessons that had been used by other teachers for years without being revised. Or I was creating assignments where students had to stay in their seats the entire class to avoid any misbehavior. By the end of the year I was excited to be through that first year of teaching, but by the time the new school year rolled around I found myself bored with my lessons. Then I was thinking, “If I’m bored with teaching these lessons then there is no way that my students are enjoying this.” To be honest, this has me completely freaked out. I want my students to enjoy history and to enjoy learning. I am fortunate that World History is not a course that has been forced into standardized testing. I do not have to worry about my students mastering a specific skill set in order to show that our school is being successful. I have always wanted my class to be a space where students can create and explore history. There are so many fabulous times in World History to learn about, that they should have endless potential for exploration. Only after one year of teaching I felt like I had gotten away from what I believe is important in a classroom. That first year of teaching is difficult and the lessons I had created were good, but they could be better. Looking back at that first year I realize that now is the time to get back to what my vision is for my classroom. This is not going to happen over night, and it may even take months. But this is going to be my chance to really create something that is going to be engaging for my students. I want my students to be able to problem solve and think critically so they will be know how history is impacting their daily lives. They need to build skills that they are going to use once they leave PHS and are thrown out into the real work. The stack of endless papers needs to dwindle as the years go on. Moving towards a paperless classroom (or close to paperless) is going to be key to a successful redesign. Utilizing Canvas is going to help get rid of the stack of papers while students are able to build the desired technology skills. But, it is more than not having worksheets that are online, it is about creating collaborative activities that allow students to explore and analyze major themes in history. Today's thoughts come to us from Ms. Ali Ranallo. Ali is in her second year teaching at Pike High School. She graduated from Butler University in 2016 and started working at Pike the following school year. She teaches in the social studies department and has both U.S. History and World History classes. This school year has been full of new beginnings for me as I’ve experienced the high school setting for the first time as a librarian and settled into my new position at my new school. One area that I was nervous about with the transition to high school was teaching research skills. I came from an elementary school setting with very little time (due to scheduling) to do work on inquiry based research projects to the high school that values research, co-teaching, and has fantastic database offerings for student use. The library already had a great program in place, so that has been extremely helpful. It has taken me quite some time just to figure out what resources are available and to familiarize myself with them. The high school is much larger so just learning the building, the routines, and building relationships with staff and students has been my first priorities. Currently, I’ve been working on a course in Canvas that will provide all high school students the resources they need for library and technology information. Another goal of mine is to create a library website (I have started on this using wixsite) so that I can keep students, staff, and families up to date with information, share new technologies, and of course brag on students. I am hoping this will also force me to blog and reflect more often in written format. Being at the high school and part of the DLC has allowed me to attend professional development meetings that have been highly valuable. It’s great to make connections through PLNs but having the chance to learn and discuss with others has been phenomenal. We are moving forward as a district with motivated and dedicated educators and that inspires me too. This move has been incredibly rewarding and continues to push me to better myself as an educator and librarian Today’s thoughts come from Shelly Smith. Shelly is the Pike High School librarian. Most recently she was the librarian at Guion Creek Elementary in MSD Pike Township. Shelly has been an educator for more than 15 years. She taught at the primary level before receiving her MLS and moving into a school library position. Shelly lives in Plainfield and enjoys spending time with her family, fur babies, and traveling to the beach. When you teach at a large school, one should never have problems getting their steps in, right, wrong, so I thought. I am participating in the school’s step challenge and comparing last week steps to this week, what happened? Oh! My Goodness! Well, my right knee hurts and so my steps went down, and I really wasn’t focused. (Is this an excuse?) I want to challenge myself to do one thing different to get back on the right track again. Are you all up for the challenge to do one thing different to increase your step production. Yes! Here is mine. I am going to walk continuously for 10 minutes during my plan period or at lunchtime each day for a week to see if my steps increase. Another challenge is to play my favorite song. Bust a move and dance around, and see how many steps I can add. Today's thoughts come to us from Ms. Felicia Gooden.
Too often, millennials and the next generation are described as apathetic. One only needs to look at the large social movements of today to realize that this is not the case. From #blacklivesmatter to #metoo our students are involved. What better way to empower our students than to encourage them to write about topics that matter to them, and to allow them to make meaningful connections to movements of social change? Under the old paradigm, students were given the tools to research an issue. They played the role of disconnected observer of their topic. Now students have the opportunity and agency to to be part of the change. Resource Review: www.tolerance.org Tolerance.org is a great resource from the Southern Poverty Law Center. It connects teachers with resources to engage students on topics such as race, gender/sexuality bias, immigration, and religion discrimination. This site is a one stop shop with excellent teaching materials such as Write to the Source. Write to the Source provides texts and prompts for students to make connections on bias-based issues and these writings could easily transform into meaningful social media postings. Today's thoughts are from Mr. Chad Heck. Chad is the school librarian at Pike High School’s freshman campus. His professional interests include inquiry, digital citizenship, and civil rights. Follow him on Twitter @4theloveofheck Paper has been a hot topic in my school lately. There is much talk of rationing and finger pointing as to who is responsible for overuse and waste, but perhaps this is just the call to change we need? I often tell my history students that America has a long track record of both innovation and laziness. We make awesome things that change the world but usually only after we have traveled down all paths of least resistance and blown through what we assumed to be inexhaustible natural resources along the way. Many educators are resistant to change and we hold on to the status quo until the bitter end because the tried and true will always be with us and who has time to learn new ways of doing things anyway? What does any of this have to do with paper? Maybe a short-term inconvenience can be just that push you need to evaluate your practices, take assignments online and stop running reams of paper through those oh so dependable copy machines. Think about the last 500 copies you made. What were they for? What did that assignment accomplish? How many ended up on your floor or are still haunting the wire baskets underneath your desks? How many are you still hounding your kids to turn in? I have to admit, I fail this litmus test. I have a lot assignments on paper that don’t need to be. I still struggle against the worksheet demon on a regular basis. I tell myself that these are useful tools that will get the students to read and understand the content, that the important part is the process of completing the assignment not the finished document. Try though I might, all my kids care about is turning it in and will use all savage means at their disposal to get it done and off their radars. More often that not, both sides see these assignments as proof of work, not proof of learning. In the end, I end up speed grading a stack of kindling. Even if the kids are honestly working their way through the questions, are those questions you really wanted to ask or just the ones that were already available? How can we change this? If your school is like mine they have invested heavily in a Learning Management System (LMS), or online learning environment, and are begging and pleading with you to use it. This does not have to be done overnight. I am in the process of dropping those tried and true worksheets and creating assignments in Canvas (my school’s LMS) for my students. One of my recent favorites is dropping various media into a quiz for my students. I can upload a video clip I would have otherwise shown on the big screen and have kids type in their responses to a writing prompt even give them a quick battery of multiple choice or matching questions. Now I am asking my questions and pushing their understanding while no longer carrying around three inches of notebook paper. All the quick formative assessments I didn’t give before because I didn’t want to waste an entire sheet of paper on or sort through are now easily accessible and I can type back a quick comment or response. I can set up assignments so that they are only accessible during class time or can be finished from home. Yes, there has been a learning curve and yes, it has taken a fair amount of time to set up my new assignments but once upon a time it took me a while to create all those paper assignments too. I will never be able to break up with the copy machine altogether, but the more I work to reduce my paper consumption I also find myself rethinking and improving my lessons and assignments and am finally starting to meet my students in the digital world in which they live. Today's thoughts are brought to us by Mr. Andy Lawrence. Andy is in his 4th year teaching US History and Sociology at Pike High School following a nine year stint in middle school. He also coaches baseball, has an encyclopedic knowledge of princess movies and Kidz Bop music thanks to his daughters, and believes that the completion of all household chores becomes bearable with the addition of an audiobook |
Archives
April 2018
Categories |