23 March 2015
I thought it was kind of an easy day until I started telling my husband about it. Here’s the agenda. The kids check it first thing everyday when they walk in the room.
Last week, we tried writing in small groups using the vocabulary words. I was disappointed, and only one class did well enough to get quiz credit for it. All the other classes were reminded on Friday that the vocab quizzes can be hard, and they are things to avoid if possible. This week, they knew what to expect, so I raised the bar: no more silly, middle school stories. Write a real, pre-AP worthy story, and don’t let the vocabulary words be so conspicuous (vocab word). Ten minutes.
I open a tab by typing “timer” in the browser, start a ten minute countdown timer on screen, drag it over and project it on the board.
The kids work in their accustomed teacher-arranged groups in a shared document I emailed to the whole class (only that period). In the Google Doc, the whole class can see and write at the same time (each group on a different page is working well right now).
I am looking back and forth between all five stories throughout the ten minutes. I can highlight, comment, Kaizena-record, give a link, or anything else while everyone in the group is working on the same small paragraph. The ability to teach writing while watching them organically create and problem-solve is amazing and opens up so many new approaches.
The kids then make corrections and discuss changes, grammatical, vocabulary-focused, or creative in nature, and they have to verbalize what they’re doing and approve one another’s work. They can learn from each other and from me all at the same time. The links are especially great because they will stay in the document, and any kid on the doc can go look at it again.
After ten minutes, I ask how much longer they need. Most say five minutes, but I go with three or four. There’s a completely different kind of involvement when we’re down to the last few minutes, and I start seeing some interesting language and expanded sentences.
Okay, I let them wind it down and have them jump over to blogger really quickly. We’re changing gears.
I’ve got a quick blog addition they need to make. Here’s the pic:
They go to blogger.com
Their Google log-ins will take them right to their blogs, and I tell them to click on the name of their research blog. Then Layout. Here’s my example, I show them:
Now to the right of Blog Posts, Click Add a Gadget. Now you will get to choose what kind of gadget, and this time choose Text. Come up with a quick title for this little spot where you’re going to write three sentences summarizing what you are researching. Now, here is a huge decision. They now have to nail it in three sentences for publication.
Someone always asks if they can change the name of their blog, so I show them mine or tell them to go to Settings - Basic and edit it there.
Then each one of them has to make a decision on whether to share their blogs or not. I’ve told them all along that if they wanted to share them, they could. Now they get to make that choice.
Go to bit.ly/blogstoshare
I just give them a few minutes before we move on. We jump right into grammar.
I project a workbook on screen while they get out their grammar notes. Then I quickly show them the review of simple subject and simple predicate before I start asking for volunteers to tell me what to underline, then picking kids seemingly at random, ask for answers from everyone in the class, giving strugglers more practice when I can, even better if they volunteer to take the last few extras in each set. It happens.
We do as many as we can and remind everyone how to get back to the practice exercises.
Then I mark how far each class got at the end of the period. They notice if they are ahead or behind.
I remind them of their homework and that the picture is on the blog on my site. Whew!
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