Speak Blog Update

The snow day has altered everyone's schedule.

I checked in with the English teacher, assuming that the dates we had down would have changed. Fortunately, they have. If not, I would have been double booked between that blog project, and the Reading project I am finishing.

The English teacher finished putting directions up on the site. I'm going to copy and paste them here.

Welcome to 9th grade's on-line discussion board for the Third and Fourth Marking Period of Speak. As it has become evident, this novel is one that teenagers can relate to, even if they have not been in the exact situation that Melinda was in. Speak is a very common novel that discussions center around because many, varying opinions can be brought forth.
As we always say in English class, you are entitled to your opinion, but for it to be valued, it must be supported with examples, experiences, and facts.

1. Click on your period's page.

2. Click on the "Discussion" tab and then on "Question" 1 and post your response. Each response must be at least five complete, detailed sentences written in standard, school-appropriate English. (Do not let the online version fool you! You are not texting, instant messaging, or leaving a message on a My-Space wall. This is an English class assignment.) Your response MUST have examples directly from the novel, i.e. "On page 102, Melinda says....".
3. Proceed through the rest of the questions following the above directions.

4. For questions 1-3, you will respond to your assigned partner. A response can follow different paths, for example:

• I agree/disagree with you because...
• You bring up a good point I never thought about which is.....This makes me think about....

Your response must be at least 2 sentences. You will recieve extra credit if the original person responds to the response.

• TO RESPOND, IN THE SUBJECT LINE, AFTER RE: DELTE "QUESTION 1" AND WRITE THE PERSON'S SCREEN-NAME.

5. For questions 4-6, you can choose any post to respond to; however you may not respond to an original post that already has two responses.

NOTICE: As everyone begins posting, it will be very obvious to me whether you have written an original post or you have picked out ideas to use from other posts.

There are some really good points here.

She begins by explaining the purpose of the project "As it has become evident, this novel is one that teenagers can relate to, even if they have not been in the exact situation that Melinda was in. Speak is a very common novel that discussions center around because many, varying opinions can be brought forth."

The directions are very clear. She is starting by having them respond to an assigned partner. That will get them into the habit of the project. After the first three questions, they will be free to respond to comments that they want to respond to, within limits.

She makes it very clear that students don't have to agree with one another to comment. Also, she clearly puts forth the expectation that students are to be original, but that they have to have information from the book to back them up.

I'm going to be working with the class next week on Friday to help everyone sign up for a username and password, and to get oriented to the site.

Reading Project--Day Eight

And it has been a long 8 days. The Reading teacher is beginning to feel that this project is dragging on interminably. I worry that that fact will possible lessen the likelyhood that she'll want to do another project. Part of the problem was two snow days, followed by a 2 hr delayed, coupled with one of the classes being skipped for a school assembly. Now, we just found out there will be a fire drill during that class tomorrow.

One of the problems with this project is having the students modify their articles. Many of them don't really understand the concept. They don't know how to make an article flow. When offered suggestions, they are inclined to ask you to repeat it word for word so they can copy it down.

This is partly because a lack of comprehension. I already blogged about why they are not really comprehending the articles clearly, so I won't repeat that here. But, because they are not comprehending them, they are not able to make meaningful or logical transitions, opening lines, or sign offs. If they don't know what they are talking about, they can't react to it or summarize it.

I kept thinking today that one thing I might do differently in the future is provide the students with a handful of report-ready articles. Then, the students could just browse through them and sign up. This would help speed up the project because a) students would pick an article more quickly because they would want to sign up before anyone took their article and b) students would not have to modify the articles at all. Those were probably the two most time consuming aspects of this assignment.

The Reading teacher seems optimistic that tomorrow will go better. They will be doing a paired reading tomorrow. In that activity, students will work in pairs and take turns. One partner will read from the teleprompter while the other reads along with a hard copy of the report and marks errors. This will give the students meaningful practice, and they will at least have a respite from typing and modifying (which has become frustrating for the teacher and the students).

Reading Project--Day Seven

Its so easy to let this blog slip on a snow day, and we've now had two. Day seven was actually Monday, and I neglected to post at the end of the day.

I think one of the down sides of this project specifically is the deadlines. Because the students can't easily send files home, and we cannot assume that even most students have access to computers or internet at home, we have to allow class time. It really isn't realistic to say, "If you don't finish part one today in class, do it for homework." As a result, we have different kids at different points. I think it gives the students who get ahead more downtime. It also gives this project a sense of dragging. This is a problem in general that needs to be addressed. It is hard to be a CFF school, or to have teachers try to infuse technology, or to try to take school outside of the classroom walls, when students are limited by lack of access. However, that is a battle for another day. For now, part of my job, as I see it, is to help teachers to plan projects in such a way as to work around that barrier instead of giving up and being limited by it.

Another problem is with engagement. We had students pick articles that we hoped would interest them and therefore lend themselves to engagement. However, the skill being addressed by this project is reading out loud. That requires practice. Based on the construct of the class, we are working with students who are not strong in this area. Like all students, when they are not strong at something, they don't want to do it over and over again, even though that is a great way to build up a skill.

As a result, students do not want to practice their readings. We encourage them and provide time. We've provided incentive in the form of having something interesting to read, and having to read it in front of an audience. However, those incentives do not seem to be enough for some of the students.

Something I need to reflect further on is how to engage students and make them want to practice doing something when they know that they are not strong at it. I know that most un-athletic kids won't practice football drills over and over because they feel they won't ever be good at football, and don't see a point. Perhaps this project needed more emphasis on a point--why do these students need to be adept at reading out loud. Also, going back to the idea of assessing them on improvement, I think many of them would benefit from a concrete goal. Its hard to be motivated by just "doing well." I think "doing better than last time in a measurable way" would work better.

I've finally had a chance to read through the reflections that the students wrote. I see what the Reading teacher meant by vague. Many of the comments are along the lines of "my pace was good" or "my pace was medium" or "I messed up a few words" or "I will improve by reading through the report next time."

At first I was inclined, as past posts indicate, to say that students were not taking advantage of this reflection. However, after reading the reflections, I don't really think that is the whole case. Once again, I've fallen into the "well they should know how to do that" mind frame. They are freshmen. They don't really know how to reflect, and they don't know how to self evaluate. In the future, I would like to see this project being with the class doing a group reflection. The teacher could play back an anonymous reading. Then, the whole class could critique it, point out what was done well, what needed work, and how the reader could improve. The teacher could record comments on the board, move them into categories, and then have students discuss if they are specific enough and how to improve the comments for a reflective paper.

Edit: 3:00 pm 1/29
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcn3kbwp_19dmzfcrcn
I've transferred three student reflections into a google document as an example

Reading Project--Day Six

Today was the due date for all students to have selected an article to read off of the teleprompter.

After finding an article, they have to modify it. They have to include a greeting, a sign off, and change around any words or wording that don't work for a spoken report. I have a few concerns.

Some of the students who finished early didn't want to take the extra time to practice. They will have in class practice time. But, they could have started practicing today. Some did. Others decided it was free "play on the internet time."

I see two possibilities for improving this in the future. 1) Give the students a chance to record and here themselves read this article. Either have the first recording be after finding and modifying an article, or tell students who finish early to record this in Audacity. That way, students could hear this article. They would have a better grasp on words they don't know how to pronounce, or awkward phrasing. 2) Put more of a premium on improvement. If students could use their reflections as a sort of check list, their practice would be more focused than just "read well." It would be "read so that you can work on these three specific things."

Another concern is that students are not even silently reading the articles. Many are. Some are skimming or picking articles with interesting topics. I think that for some, they will not fully read the article until the in class practice day. On the one hand, it will hopefully give them some concept of consequences for slacking. On the other, it will possibly hurt their confidence. I'm expecting some reactions of "this is too hard," or "this is pointless" from some students, not because its too hard, but because they did not take the steps to make it doable.

I came to the conclusion of not reading based on some things I saw. A few students did paste their articles into the teleprompter, making the text large enough for me to read from behind them. Some of the things I saw were phrases in parenthesis that made for awkward sentences, and large, often technical words.

Now that I think of it, some of that does come from a lack of thorough reading. Some of it probably comes form a lack of comprehension. Its not that the students are slacking (not all of them) and not trying to read. It is that they are so focused on reading aloud that they are missing meaning. They don't realize that something sounds awkward because they don't realize how it sounds at all. It is a string of words, and their goal is to get all of the words, not the sentence.

I talked to the Reading teacher about adding a component to the grade that reflected improvement on the specifics that students put in the reflection. She agreed that it was a good idea. However, she commented that most of the reflections are still very vague. They don't have specifics that students could work on. Also, she said that the things that students would need to be working on are often the things that they just don't do--perhaps things that they don't even realize they need to work on.

So, the students, by the sound of it, did not necessarily take full advantage of the reflection assignment. For me, the next thing I want to reflect on, is how to get students to take fuller advantage of that--in this or any other class.

Reading Project--Day Five

Just got back from my last class of the day with the reading project.

Something that struck me very early on, and that the Reading teacher said before we started, and that every teacher knows is true every year, is that the different classes have very different personalities as a group. And, that effects how quickly students work through assignments.

The Reading teacher, being more familiar with the kids, does phrase things differently, and handles distractions differently in each class. I think as a coach, I'm at a disadvantage that disadvantages my teachers. As a teacher, I knew what to expect from classes--not always, but I had a feel for them. I knew when something would need to be presented a little differently, or which student I needed to win over at the beginning to prevent half of the class from declaring a project a failure before giving it a chance.

As a coach, I walk into each new class blind. Certainly b the end of a project, I have a better feel for classes. And, if I do a second or third project with a teacher, I won't have that same initial speed bump.

I would like to, in the future, ask teachers to let me come in and watch and/or interact with a class for a day or two before getting down to the last stages of planning. I think most teachers will understand where I'm coming from. And, if a teacher is already letting me come in to work together on a project, he/she probably won't mind letting me get my feet wet first.

As far as the project today, one of the things we are dealing with is students working at very different paces. Partly this is do to ability level. Because the second part of the project was writing a reflection, some students zipped through it because they did not reflect very seriously. Others went very slowly because they were being more methodical. Some were able to work quickly because of typing skills. Others were held up because they only know the hunt and peck method (although I wonder if speed could have been improved by allowing them to type it all out on a phone with their thumbs.) Some write slowly because it is not a strength. Other write quickly because it is.

Differing speeds are also due to absences and, of course, schedule disruptions. Ideally, I would like to have the ability to allow students to work on this at home. But, students don't have access to email to send files home, and we can't expect every student to bring a jump drive to school. And, we can't expect every student to have access to a computer at home.

I still haven't had time to read any student reflections, so it's still too early to decide if students made use of the first part of the assignment. However, I did have one idea I would like to incorporate if we do this project again. We had students reflect on what areas of their reading need improvement and what they need to do to improve, but we are not specifically evaluating if they improve those areas. I think, in the future, I would like to see some part of the evaluation of the second reading based on their reflections from the first reading.

About half of the students moved on to finding articles to read for the taped, cueprompter reading. Many of them were unsure if reading about a crime was going to be school appropriate. The Reading teacher took it on a case by case basis.

I was also happy to see that, in addition to practice with reading and writing, and reflecting on their skills, some of the students were also gaining exposure to current events. Most of the students were very interested in the articles they selected since we told them to find something that interested them. Several students found current events articles that engaged them.

New Blog Project--Speak

I'm now working with the English teacher from earlier in the year. We tried to create a wiki project, but it didn't make it off the ground.

We're now doing a composite wiki/blog project. I would loved this to have been a ning project. I would also have liked to have looked into embedding a blog into a wiki. However, the ning project would require students to verify membership through a link in email for homework, and the teacher didn't want to bank on that happening in a timely fashion. And, I didn't want to risk not having this project up and ready to go--or having her think it wouldn't be--by saying "give me a day or two to figure out embedding a blog in a wiki."

So, we are using a wiki discussion board for the book Speak. This is very similar to the Kite Runner project, except with a different book. Also, it is planned out to be an 8 question project from the beginning.

We are using wikispaces instead of pbwiki. I liked pbwiki's format of putting comments directly on the page for this project, but pbwiki refused to acknowledge this teacher existed. So, rather than waste time trying to trouble shoot a problem I couldn't understand, I suggested wiki spaces. She ended up liking the ability to put multiple discussion threads on one page, so it worked out for the best.

I helped the teacher create a wiki. On the first day of the project we are going to have the students sign up for the wiki using mailinator addresses. Because of issues in the Science teacher's class, I suggested, and the English teacher agrees, she should tell the students that every time they forget their username/password, they will loose 10 points (it's a high point class, so that is not as bad as it sounds.)

She is going to have one wiki. The main page will be directions. Each class will have a page linked from the main page. The class's page will direct students to click on the discussion link at the top of the page, and to click on the appropriate discussion. From there, students will have to reply to the teacher's question.

She is working out what requirements she wants for the discussion. She wants to make sure every student gets responded to, and is considering having students assigned a classmate to respond to. However, she is also thinkking of just letting students respond to whoever they want. I suggested that, since she plans on doing 8 questions, she could try it both ways and see how each works. As long as she takes the time to fully explain any new rules for each question, she can try a variety of different methods. She might even find that method A works well with one class and fails in another.

We talked, as I did with the other English teacher, about how students don't really interact with one another in class. Even with open ended questions, those who want to respond or discuss, will only talk directly with the teacher. I'm hoping these projects will help teachers to help their students understand that they can learn from one another and that they can learn through debate, discussion, disagreement, and defending their own points of view.

One thing I seem to see is that some teachers, who are very competent, and very confident in what they teach, feel that they need to take a back seat to my opinion just because we are infusing technology into a lesson plan. In a way it's flattering that they value my opinion. For the most part, I try to redirect and ask leading questions to find out what they teacher's goal is for an assignment. After all, I could easily try to accomplish my own goals, but these aren't my classes. I hope that experience using the tech will show the teachers that they have every reason to be as confident because they are as competent.

Reading Project--Day Four

Day three was largely the same as day two. I oversaw the last of the students recording their reports. The students back in the Reading teacher's room continued to listen and work on their reflections.

Today I was back in the classroom to help students map their printers. This is a hassle, that has to be done for every student in every class, because the laptop images do not include it. The most serious part of the issue is that many of the machines will freeze during the process.

I also, for various reasons, was only able to use the LCD projector in one class. However, I think things went as smoothly as possible.

Class began with the Reading teacher passing out directions for the second part of the assignment while students logged on. This made the most logistical sense, but might not have been the best idea from a classroom management perspective. Students did pay attention to directions while waiting for their computers to boot up (they were very good about holding technical questions until she had finished speaking), but towards the end of class, as some students finished with the first part of the project, they didn't remember the directions for the second part (despite having handouts in front of them). However, had we waited until later in the class, there would have been five or so minutes of completely wasted downtime while we waited for computers to start up. Also, there would never have been a good stopping time, since students finished with the reflection at different times.

I walked the entire class through the mapping process as a group. i did it step by step, making sure to stress that if they did not follow directions, or if they tried to jump ahead, they would freeze their computers. In the first class, no one froze. It was a complete success.

In the second class, things did not go as smoothly. About a half dozen students ended up freezing and having to restart. Two students had restarted three times and were still not mapped by the end of class. However, based on experience, I knew that they could work on their reflections in word while waiting to see if the mapping would work or not. Basically, just the printer properties froze, but everything else was functioning. They would work for five minutes, check, and if the printer properties had frozen, I made them restart. For most students, this was successful--after a few minutes the printer was mapped. As I said, for two students, this didn't work.

The last class of the day was a bit more daunting. No one mapped successfully. The Reading teacher and I decided to save all of reports to my thumb drive and print them ourselves. This worked very well for a last second plan B. A few students left the mapping running in the background, and about five minutes before the bell, were getting the printers mapped successfully. The Reading teacher suggested that the delay might have been because of our distance to the printer.

I think this was one of those classes where the technology interferes with the learning. Having students stop to map a printer, or check on its progress, breaks the flow and concentration. However, it is a tech skill that they probably should have. I know several of the students will be able to map a printer without help in the future.

I've talked to the tech director and, over the summer, the school plans on having this added to the student image.

I look forward to reading over some of the student reflections and reflecting on the success of this project.