October 28th- November 8th
It's time to start our second round of blogging! What are you learning about?
Between HMH, CCSS Content Based Training, GaETC, AI, and all our individualized research for “EMPOWERing Students for School and Life”,
we are being inundated with Professional Learning!
So let’s continue to share, expand, and learn from each other by responding to (through Blog OR Vlog) any one of the following prompts:
What have you learned this month that promotes the Empowerment of our students? How are you applying it?
What have you learned that you are curious about but presents challenges in practical application? What are the obstacles?
In what ways have you integrated technology or AI tools into your classroom to enhance student empowerment? What successes or challenges have you encountered?
How are you balancing the implementation of new learning strategies or materials with maintaining consistency for your students? What advice would you give to colleagues struggling with this balance?
What aspect of recent professional learning has challenged your previous assumptions about teaching or learning? How has this shift in perspective affected your approach to student empowerment?
Have really researched how to teach vocabulary? And are we explicitly teaching too many words? This vocabulary routine came from LETRS.
ReplyDelete1. Pronounce the word, write it, and read it. After modeling this have the students orally pronounce the word, then discuss the properties of the word ( number of syllables or phonemes)
2. Tell the students what the word means by giving a STUDENT FRIENDLY definition.
3. Use the word several times while giving examples of it's use and saying what it is not. Describe situations where the student may hear that word.
4. Ask questions about the word's meaning that can be answered yes or not.
5. Elicit word use by the student.( orally or written0
This should be done with 3-5 words per reading selection before reading. You should not explicitly teach all the vocabulary in the selection ( just mention those during the reading)
This should take only a few minutes per word.
Thank you for expanding on the routine! I am excited to focus on less words and go deeper with these vocabulary words.
DeleteThe deep teaching of vocabulary words has truly been an inspiration. I'm recognizing that kids are identifying and understanding the meaning of terms across the curriculum and with real-life connections. With less words to focus on, the kids really grasp and understand the meaning of the term in isolation, as well as in the text!
DeleteI love using Diffit! I use it to create reading passages for students based on my standard, a topic, a website, a video, text/pdf I already have, or even just a straight vocabulary list. The free version has a lot to choose from, but can be a little limited. They do have monthly freebies, but you have to be careful as to which ones are truly free to use. Diffit will create the passage, give you an image, write a bullet point summary, a list of vocabulary words, multiple choice questions, short answer questions, and open ended prompts. It will then organize all of these resources on a worksheet of your choosing.
ReplyDeleteOne benefit of Diffit is the different ways to structure the resources. They create worksheets to summarize learning, acquire vocabulary, use reading strategies, use writing strategies (I like the CER and ACE), text analysis, collaboration, and critical thinking. They have partnered with Ditch That Textbook and Too Cool for Middle School to create resources as well.
What I have found this past week that really got me excited, is that they will now add these resources into a google form- that you can 100% edit to fit your students and class! It is in the free version at the moment, but I am unsure how long this will last. I used my substandard and let it write a grade appropriate information text (it will do fiction as well). I then was able to adjust the specific information and questionsing I wanted my students to use with the reading passage. By having this create in google forms, the multiple choice questions will automatically grade! Plus it becomes super simple to add to Google Classroom as a graded assignment based on prior learning or as another way to acquire new information.
Since you showed that to me earlier this week, I can't wait to try it out!
DeleteThis sounds great and I can't wait to explore using Diffit. Can I see something created for you as an example?
DeleteThis seems great!! You will have to show me how it works? Also, does it auto grade the assignments?
DeleteWhat have you learned that you are curious about but presents challenges in practical application? What are the obstacles?
ReplyDeleteMay students access Notebook LM to create podcasts? Or is this forbidden fruit? :) I think this would be a game changer in ACE Projects!
I think it is forbidden fruit for them at the moment but.... you could use it with your content to create a podcast for them to listen to. Think about science or social studies content that you would like them to know more about. You could have them create an infographic based on content from the podcast ( of course you would teach note taking skills for listening to)
DeleteI love that idea! Thank you!! :)
DeleteIn what ways have you integrated technology or AI tools into your classroom to enhance student empowerment? What successes or challenges have you encountered?
ReplyDeleteI've particularly enjoyed experimenting with Claude to enhance my teaching materials. Claude helped with creating custom graphs for student assignments. Unlike my experience with ChatGPT, Claude is capable of generating visual aids. It did take some trial and error to get exactly what I needed. Once I learned to be very specific with my requirements in my prompts, the graphs turned out to be exactly what I needed. Although it took more time upfront to learn it, it saved me time with having to create or adapt something to be what I needed and will continue to save me time in the future! I have been much more impressed with Claude than ChatGPT. Thanks Lisa for encouraging me to try it!
YES! Math is the hardest to find with AI-visuals as well as correct calculations/problems. I have dabbled with Claude, and I'm happy to see a step up from ChatGPT. Monelle told me about using Claude with her ACE projects, so I checked it out. I, too, am more impressed with Claude than ChatGPT.
DeleteI have not used AI to help with enhancing math materials and creating custom graphs. My students love anything that includes their names or specific details from our class so I think I will try using Claude to create some for us too. I also agree that Claude gives better more "polished" results than what I get when using ChatGPT.
DeleteI haven't used this for visual aids, yet. I will definitely try that out. I feel that Claude provides me better comprehension questions, so I use it for that.
DeleteWhat aspect of recent professional learning has challenged your previous assumptions about teaching or learning? How has this shift in perspective affected your approach to student empowerment?
ReplyDeleteLast week, I attended a district wide ELA meeting for middle schools. One of the things that I found interesting was the "acceptance" of text being multimodal versus print only. Initially, as an ELA teacher who LOVES to read, I was thinking, "does this bother me, is this what reading is becoming"? Then I realized that education might finally be catching up to the reality of our students as they are bombarded with media (literacy) and we need to accept that text for our students is very different than traditional thoughts about text. As I continued to ponder
(thank you Edgar Allan Poe), I realized that presenting images and videos might be the bridge that students need to become better readers of traditional text while becoming better at critical thinking as they are evaluating and synthesizing information. I need to keep this in mind going forward. At the same time it is my HOPE that this bridge might better connect text (my world) to media (their world) for student empowerment.
Scary but true! SO true! Students and WE have to be able to "read" different texts and in different ways in order to understand the shifting world around us.
DeleteThe importance of listening comprehension is finally getting the importance that it needs..... I am happy that they are moving in this direction.
DeleteIt is interesting you bring this up because my Visual and Media Literacy class for grad school is all about this right now. This week we watched some videos explaining visual and media literacy and some of the statistics were shocking!
DeleteHere is a little snippet from my discussion with my classmates this week: "Our students consume visual media for over seven hours daily, yet our instruction remains predominantly text-based. The challenge we face isn't to replace traditional literacy but to expand what it means to be literate in today's world. Our students deserve an approach that acknowledges both textual and visual forms of communication."
Multimodel is key for different learners. I am that student that learns and enjoys more when it is in a different format than print. This is a step toward getting all learners involved.
DeleteThis week I have experimented with Notebook LM . It has the ability to summarize notes, create briefings, or create podcasts of material uploaded . You may also copy and paste your own text. I am wondering if this might be an option to use with our reading text to summarize some of the text for students or allow students to listen to it in a creative format. I know our HMH text can be lengthy. Could we practice listening comprehension by putting some of the text into podcast format? Maybe we could use snippets of the text for listening. I am thinking of how to integrate this resource that might be engaging for students.
ReplyDeleteHere, here! :)
ReplyDeleteHow are you balancing the implementation of new learning strategies or materials with maintaining consistency for your students?
ReplyDeleteHMH has a TON of resources, and at times it gets difficult selecting the best one to use or I try different resources each week to see, which one is more adaptable to the unit and module test. Still searching........ What has helped me and getting feedback from my data meeting, collaborating with Mrs. South, and other colleagues have helped me formulate new ideas that I can implement into the classroom. Most importantly, is not to overload the students and to have your assignments be as consistent as possible. I think this creates a more productive classroom routine.
Bynghum, HMH does have a lot of information to explore and assign. In addition to collaborating with our peers, I also ask my students what they enjoy after each story and unit as that gets them a bit more involved (they love to critique) and their feedback has given me some good suggestions to use as I move forward both this year and next year.
DeleteI agree with you Bynghum. HMH has so many resources that it gets difficult to choose what will work best. There has been a lot of trial and error as I am learning. I also thinking having consistent assignments help the students and the learning coaches. Along with talking to our colleagues here, I also have joined several HMH Facebook groups which give insights from other teachers in the same grade levels and has been very helpful.
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ReplyDeleteWhat have you learned this month that promotes the Empowerment of our students? How are you applying it?
ReplyDeleteI discovered a new resource on Progress Learning. It is a classroom game called Think or Swim. It is on the left side under reports called "classroom game". You set up the game by choosing the subject and between 2-5 standards (each standard includes 5 questions). Then divide the class into teams. The students take turns selecting a shell to reveal a question and earn points by writing the correct answer and holding it up. I am using it with my students to review and remediate in a fun and engaging way.
I was super excited to learn about the podcast creation feature in Notebook LM. I created one for my 5th graders on William McKinley, and I thought it was amazing! It was a little challenging getting the file to them in a way that didn't block, lock up, or glitch. I finally put it in a Google Slide and it worked fine. I was disappointed though. My students didn't respond as awestruck as I was. I'm looking for ways to get them more interested in this because I know it's a format they will need to be accustomed to in the near future. I would love your input!
ReplyDeleteI'm so learning so many things from the blogs and my colleagues!!! I was playing around with Kami, and Mrs. South showed me something that she learned from GAETC. You can post an assignment in Kami, the kiddos can read it, you can also select AI and Kami will generate questions that go along with the story that you posted! I thought this was fantastic, because I was looking for a way to allow my students to practice their fluency skills, as well as include a little comprehension.
ReplyDelete