Showcase Supplies??

I do not see any supplies requested for your Showcase presentation.  If this need changes, please see Brittany McWilliams by November 30th.

PLC Showcase

At the end of our semester of work, all PLCs will be showcasing their work at the Wyandotte High School PLC Showcase on Wednesday, December 12th in the Social Hall.  The showcase will be a public demonstration of our learning, collaboration, and results.  Each PLC will showcase work that reflects how your learning and collaboration has impacted student learning.  Each PLC is encouraged to be creative and innovative in their demonstration (student examples would be highly encouraged); however, please be sure the following are addressed through your presentation -
    PLC Focus

Collaborative Actions   

Summary of PLC Learning

Impact on Student Learning

Connections to Future Teaching and Learning

In addition, all staff will have an opportunity to visit each demonstration during the Showcase.  Many outside guests will also be in attendance.  

If your PLC requires any kind of additional resources, please submit any requests for those materials via the comment section to this blog entry by NOVEMBER 9th. You will receive these materials by or before your November 28th meeting, so you will have AT LEAST two weeks to work on organizing your demonstration.

Update on the Research Paper process

My students are beginning to utilize Notestar well.  I think the seniors are finally starting to see the benefit of planning and organizing their research.  We have been using Read Write Think's webbing tool for organizing their ideas. I don't like it as well as Inspiration (which isn't on the kids laptops this year).  Its pretty basic, but there is no saving and going back in to edit which is its major flaw.  They kids need to be prepared to finish all their planning in one session or the risk losing info.

The biggest problem I am trying to conquer with my Seniors right now is time management when it comes to a long term project.  A lot of them are letting deadlines get away from them, so I have been playing with some project organizer tools to figure out what to recommend for them.  I am trying out Trello and Zoho. Another possibility is the Lazy Meter, which I have used in the past.

New Adventures in Technology

I have been attempting to use some new types of technology including Notestar & Blogger. 

Ms. Burks turned me on to Notestar (notestar.4teachers.org) as a tool for helping students organize and save their research notes.  I believe it will also create their Works Cited page for them when they are completely finished with their research.  We believed this would be beneficial since:
1. We & our students do not enjoy creating Works Cited (besides work smarter, not harder right?).
2.  Our students have difficulty keeping their materials in a safe place.
3. It allows them to copy and paste a quote which may help them incorporate outside info. into their papers.

Helpful Hints from my fumbles:
*Email students their username & password AND have them save it to a sticky note on their Dashboard
*Be sure you have created a Project for students AND assigned it to them
*Be sure students have put in their topics (in the Topic Box & the Description Box)
*Be sure students click 'Create' to really create & save their note
* Also, as a way to prevent plagiarism and force students to think more about their research, I require 3 parts on each 'Notecard': quote, paraphrase quote, how this info. relates to your topic


Ms. Burks also turned me on to Blogger (seeing a pattern here?- I think it's obvious who the expert is).  I have decided to have my freshmen respond to their journal prompts on Blogger.  Now, I will definitely try to help you avoid some headaches with this process.

1.  Have students create Google Accounts
                       *Some of my students needed a verification code via a text message.  I used my phone and borrowed another student's phone in order to obtain these.
                       *Make students save this info. on a Dashboard sticky note (Re-inforce the fact that you cannot access this information for them!)
                       *Create a Google Form with the following (required) fields- Name/ Email/Hour (make sure they put in an accurate email address/ spelled correctly) Make students write down which email they put in the Google Doc
                       *Create a Blog
                       *Copy and paste the emails from the Google Form into the "Add authors" box on the Blog.  Be sure to put a comma after each email. Send the invitation.
                       *Have students check the email account they put in the Google Doc (thus why you had them write it down, esp. if this is done in a later class which I would recommend).
                       *In the email from you, students should find a link.  They will click on that link and it will take them to another page.  On this page, there will be a link at the top- DO NOT CLICK (this is just the view the blog- they won't be able to publish anything to it).  Under that link you will see a statement similar to this: To join this blog as an author click here (the 'here' will be in blue).  This is what students need to click on to be an author on the blog.
                        *Have student do their post in a Word Document (you may want to assign a word count requirement)
                         *Have students copy and paste their post into the blog and publish
                         *Encourage fellow staff to visit the blog and respond to student posts
                         *There is a way to remove a post if it is inappropriate or if you want them to revise it first (I think you just change it to a Draft- but like I said Ms. Burks is the expert)

Hope this helps & I will keep you abreast of our progress:)

Status Update

We started to discuss the ways to attack the writing process and what we can do to support the brainstorming process.  Jason is looking for ways to attack new vocabulary.  My personal goal is find the strategy we had to break down a question-- I can't remember its name.  I think it was a part of our Wyandotte First materials.  I think it could be powerful to marry those strategies with our technology.  The ability to breakdown a question is a skill that will help students both inside and outside of the classroom.  Giving them the ability to tackle a problem is a necessary skill for survival.  Whether it is for an essay test or figuring out what to do if you are short on rent, you have to be able to tackle a problem and look at it from all sides. At this stage, I think the only measure we can have is if we are prepared to implement some aspect of our research in the classroom in the coming week, we aren't quite to the point to apply it to students yet.

Entry 8.29

1)  What are we going to do over the next week that contributes to our PLC learning topic?

Investigate methods for dissecting questions, so students know what they are answering before they begin writing. **Possibly using the highlighting functions of word.

Increase student vocabulary, so they can increase comprehension and thereby have a better foundation to write from.** Possibly using dictionary shortcuts when reading material online.

Look for ways to use technology for pre-writing: see if Inspiration can be put on student computers, look for a software similar to "Dragonfly" that allows speech to text on the regular laptops.

2)  How does this contribute to student learning?

Students cannot write about that which they do not know or understand, so by equipping them with the skills and resources to figure out difficult passages or questions we will help them prepare for the writing process.  The use of software such as Inspiration and Dragonfly will make the writing process more accessible for students who possess stronger visual or auditory skills.

3)  How will the impact of this week’s work be measured?

Emphasis will be on "Ideas & Content" to make sure students are actually answering the prompt or question and not writing random, irrelevant information.  We will also be looking for connections to the text that indicate a basic understanding of the ideas presented.

1.) Over the next week I will key on essential vocabulary that is required to comprehend the text and incorporate it into the writing process. Not only do they need to understand the writing process, but they need to maximize their writing. Six trait writing rubric is helpful in this area (word choice), but initially they need to understand the first step (background knowledge, APK (KWL) and pre-write. We must get them understand the process, so we start at the very beginning. Get them to begin to pre-write effectively while incorporating new and creative vocabulary.

2.) Students learning, writing and vocabulary are intertwined. If they can harness and manipulate an extensive vocabulary their writing will have more meaning and depth. If their writing has more meaning and depth then we can focus on the key components required for comprehension, but they first need to understand the writing process (brainstorm, pre-write, revise-edit, publish - at the very least)

3.) The new vocabulary used effectively in new writing amplifies the comprehension of the learner, but they need to brainstorm to produce a sloppy copy to revise and edit before vocabulary can become the main focus. They have to learn the process first.