Literacy Now

Do your students struggle with grammar? Mine often do. This admission sometimes feels like a dirty secret to be hidden away. Yet, the way the human brain processes language is fascinating—and incredibly intricate. In the push to meet goals and achieve grade level targets, perhaps we sometimes forget what a difficult task we are actually putting before our students. Considering the complexity of the English language, is it any wonder that it takes students a long time to master grammar skills?

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Practice is imperative to helping students improve their language abilities. Ideally, most of this practice will come as an integrated portion of reading and writing instruction. Using language skills in context, through real-life tasks, is always going to be the best way for students to gain deep understanding. That being said, teachers know that practice in any form can be helpful for students who are struggling.

Technology provides teachers and students with such varied opportunities to approach learning in different ways. With all the buzz around project-based learning and higher-order thinking, we may sometimes dismiss too quickly the ways in which simple practice can be utilized in the classroom, especially with struggling students. Even these basic activities can be applied in positive ways, and with a little creativity, extended to further enhance learning.
I recently had the opportunity to use the Grammar Pop app with my students. The app was designed by Mignon Fogarty, aka “Grammar Girl.” Many readers may be familiar with the Grammar Girl’s blog, Quick and Dirty Tips, which offers all kinds of useful grammar tidbits for adults and students. The app is game-based, requiring players to race against a clock to identify the parts of speech in increasingly complex sentences. As the game progresses, the player is able to earn rewards and unlock more difficult levels.

As far as educational game apps go, Grammar Pop is pretty typical. However, it addresses an area that many students struggle with, and grammar practice apps aren’t particularly plentiful. Grammar Pop fills a specific need, and will appeal to students who are more easily engaged through game-based learning, or who learn best through repetition. 

Apps such as Grammar Pop are excellent resources to provide for students when they have down time or as options for rewards and recess on rainy days. Every teacher understands that each minute in the classroom is valuable, and needs to be put to productive use. Keeping fun and engaging educational apps such as this one in supply can help fill in some of these small bits of time with opportunities to learn.

Not only can a practice app be used to keep students engaged in educational content, but they can also be used to spark an interest in students that leads to more in-depth inquiry. For instance, a student trying to achieve the next level on Grammar Pop, who doesn’t know how to identify a particular part of speech, could be encouraged to do some independent research in order to meet their goal. This app contains highly complex sentences in the higher levels, which may lead students to investigate beyond what they would normally study as part of their grade-level curriculum.

It can be tempting to dismiss out of hand any technology tools that don’t immediately appear to require those coveted higher-order thinking skills. But it is always important to realize that using technology effectively often isn’t about the technology at all—it is about how the technology is utilized. Viewing every available tool as an opening to create significant learning experiences ensures that students are not deprived of any opportunity to practice the skills they are working so hard to master, in any way that appeals to their specific learning needs.    

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom. 

Testing. Assessment. Data-driven instruction. In the world of education, we are surrounded by mandates. It is unfortunate that in many cases, high-stakes testing drives what teachers are required to do in the classroom with their students. I’ve heard people say, “Testing is the name of the game in schools today.”

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However, when you stop to think about it, one can’t help but wonder—are we getting the data that we need? Do we really know what our students are learning and where their gaps are?

Today’s students are savvy. They are masters of subterfuge. Because of the educational world in which they’ve been schooled, our learners have become adept at convincing us that they understand concepts and standards. Many of them have even become skilled enough to play “test.” How do we get to the heart of the matter and know what they know?

The Mystery
It is the practice in many schools and districts for teachers to be given common assessments to administer to their learners. As teachers, it is imperative that we really look at what those test are assessing. Is it truly assessing the standards that our students need to master? Are the questions equitable and free from personal interpretation? Do they accurately measure true growth? Chances are they are not.

Although we still administer those tests, we need to be sure that those tests are not the end of our data collection. As teachers, it is imperative that we take the time to look at each of our students. What does each learner need? How does each student learn? In what manner should students be able to demonstrate their learning? We need all of this data in order to provide the instructional support and challenge each student needs.

Overwhelm can quickly set in, whether we teach one class of students many different subjects, or we teach over one hundred different students each day. When you think about all of that information, it can be enough to send up the white flag of surrender. The good news is there are some very simple tools and strategies that can aid you in collecting all of these clues in order to solve the mystery of what each one of our student’s needs to learn.

Collecting Clues
Sometimes the simplest way to discover something about our students is just to ask them. When students understand that there is no judgment in the answers they give to your questions, but that you are just looking for better ways to educate them, you would be surprised at all they will tell you. This can be done in different ways. One way I gain insight into their thinking and perspective is just to give them open-ended prompts. Sometimes I ask my learners to explain what is going well in class and what changes in class would enhance their learning. Other times, I ask them to share their struggles.

Warning: Your students will be brutally honest. I have found that sometimes it is difficult to hear their evaluations. However, one thing that helps me maintain clarity is knowing that it is my job to facilitate their learning.

Sometimes I do these prompts as surveys on Google Drive. I set up a simple form for the students to complete as a starter or exit ticket. It takes very little class time yet yields great returns in pertinent information. All of the information is immediately saved in a spreadsheet for me to read at my convenience.

Instigating Investigation
Once we learn of students’ needs and help them set personal goals, we need to do formative checks along their learning journey. All of us are pressed for time in the classroom. These checks can be quick and simple, providing you with enough information to feed your instruction for the next day.

One of our favorite tools is TodaysMeet. This is a free online tool where you can open a chat room that lasts from hours to days to weeks to a year. No accounts are needed. If you have a guest speaker, conduct a demonstration, show a short video clip, or engage in a simulation, you need to know what your students are actually learning from that activity. Yes, those activities are enjoyable for everyone involved, but if they are taking valuable instructional time, they must also be relevant in moving students towards their learning goals.

Through TodaysMeet, every student has a voice as they discuss or backchannel, sharing their thoughts and ideas. As the teacher, you can follow the conversation in real time or go back later to review where there may be any misconceptions that need to be corrected. Because we have designed a supportive learning environment, students often correct one another’s misconceptions in the chat. It also provides students with a meaningful and authentic way to share and reflect upon their learning.

Another favorite tool of ours is Padlet, formerly called Wallwisher. I know that this tool may not be new to many educators, but it provides us with an opportunity to get quick and simple input from our students. Padlet is a digital wall where users can add posts of short bits of texts or embedded content. This is a fantastic way to have students do a diagnostic assessment of their understanding of a new standard. It can be revisited throughout a unit of study with students adding their new learning or questions they still have to the board.

I love that Padlet can also be embedded into our class wiki, blog, or website, giving the students and me an opportunity to easily access it from school, digital devices, or from home. Thanks to Padlet, I not only get important, easily-accessible data, there are no more Post-it notes falling off the chart, onto the floor, and sticking to the bottom of my shoes!

Another of our favorite tools for investigating each student’s depth of understanding is Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere enables users to actively engage in answering questions in different formats and provide real time results. The questions can be a poll, multiple choice, true-false or open-ended.  Responses can be given through cell phone texting or using online devices.

My learners love that they can use their devices to text answers. If your students don’t have devices at school, this can easily be done through classroom computers or Internet capable devices.  This is a great way to gather quick data on each of your students either at the beginning of class, in the middle of a lesson, or as an exit ticket.

We use the free version, which allows up to forty responses per poll. Since I teach multiple classes, I set up a different poll for each class. Creating a poll is very easy, so if you need to do a quick check to assess understanding, it will only take a few seconds.

Case Closed
As teachers, we know that for us to provide the best learning activities for our students, we must investigate for their strengths and weaknesses. Although this task can seem monstrous at times, by employing these few tools and practices, we’ll be on the road to solving the ongoing mystery of what our students know and what they need to know. Case closed.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com. 

I deal with bullying on a daily basis, year after year.  Some years are better than others, but regardless of the make-up of a particular group of students, it is inevitable that bullying will be an issue that comes up regularly. Whether the specific incidents are minor or major, short-lived or chronic, the effects can be devastating for all involved.

Coming into this school year, I knew that bullying could be a major concern with my new students. My school uses PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports), which focuses largely on recognizing and reinforcing positive behaviors. I wanted to do something proactive that fell in line with the beliefs of PBIS, and start changing the attitudes of my students before we had a serious problem on our hands.

Like most pre-teens, my students are fascinated with social media in its many forms. I decided to use it to my advantage by creating a "Say Something Nice" social media challenge. To kick things off, we watched the Kid President's Pep Talk video, which provides excellent opportunities for discussion on this topic. In the video, the Kid President implores other kids to "be more awesome."  We focused on the idea that kids can, and do, make a difference.  What they do is important, and they should be actively working towards being a positive force in the world.  Eventually, I brought the discussion around to ways my students could apply these ideas to how they treat the people in their lives.

Once my kids were thinking along these lines, I challenged them to show kindness to each other in their words and actions.  Not only that, but to actually notice when others were doing the same. I created a Facebook page and a Twitter account, which are dedicated to giving "Shout Outs" to students who have been observed showing kindness. These Shout Outs are displayed anonymously, as the whole point is to recognize the student who is being nice to someone else. 

Students can either send a message to the inbox of one of the social media accounts when they have observed a kindness, or they can fill out a paper slip and drop it in a box in the classroom.  School staff has also been invited to participate and give Shout Outs to students.  Every day, I collect the Shout Outs and post to the social media sites. I sent home a letter to parents with the website links, asking them to follow the pages. 

My students were a little leery at first.  But as I began posting the first few Shout Outs and bringing up the sites during class to read the posts, the enthusiasm began to build.  My students love seeing their own names come up on the pages, but they also love seeing the Shout Outs they've submitted getting published. 

It is still early in the year, but I am beginning to see a shift in my classroom climate. Students are not only being nicer to each other, they are paying attention to and focusing on the positive behaviors they see around them. They are beginning to be less interested in talking about each other, and more likely to talk to each other. We started small with just a couple of social media sites, but as the year progresses I hope to include more sites, and open the Shout Outs up to the younger classes in our building. Soon, I will turn management of the sites over to my students, so that they will be in full control of the project as it expands past the boundaries of our classroom, and spills out into the world. 

Effecting change rarely happens in a flash. Nor does it always begin as a grand scheme.  More often than not, a small shift in perspective gains momentum until it snowballs into transformation on a massive scale. What small step can you take? How will you encourage your students to be more awesome?

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom. 

With the adoption of Common Core, teachers have been inundated with the phrases like “career readiness” and “preparing students for their future.” Although these goals are lofty, they really are not new to the world of education. John Dewey stated, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”  These words still ring true today.

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What has changed is the world in which our students live. As teachers, it is our obligation to adapt to meet the needs of our digital age learners.

How do we do that when many of us were not educated in a time when technology was an embedded part of our everyday lives like it is for our students? Many teachers express to me feeling overwhelmed and fearful, not just by the sheer quantity of tools we have at our fingertips, but in knowing how to educate our students in a way that is effective and safe.

Where do we begin?

When tackling those trepidations, like with any other teaching practice, I believe it is crucial to begin with setting the foundation upon which all other digital practices will rest. That first step to preparing our students for the digital world is establishing safe practices that become lifelong habits for our students, inside and outside of the classroom walls. The fact is that students are already a part of a global, digital community. Our responsibility is to help them develop these habits within the safety and guidance of our classrooms.

When teachers mention to me the challenges that they face with students making wise and safe choices online, I always inquire about the basic groundwork that was laid before the students every touched a device. No educator would expect their student to build a skyscraper without first giving them the knowledge and skills to use the basic tools. We cannot do that with our digital tools either. They must learn how to safely use them before embarking on their learning journey supported with these digital tools.

Let’s Begin

I spend the first couple of weeks laying this foundation for my students. There are several practices that I would like to share with you, that I hope will enhance the conversations you are having with your students at the beginning of this new school year.

Student survey: On the first day of school my students take an interest survey where I can glean all types of information about them as learners and as overall individuals. One part of the survey asks them about their use of online tools, their devices, their perceptions, and their knowledge of digital safety. This gives me an inside peek into what they already know and gives be a jumping off point when we begin our conversation.

A student interest survey can easily been done on paper or through a digital tool. I use Google Forms (in Google Drive), as it is a very user-friendly way to create a survey that collects the data into a spreadsheet for the user. To begin, one only needs to have a Google account. Your account does not even need to be a Gmail account; you can use an existing email account.

Creating the survey only takes a few minutes to design and a few minutes for the students to complete, yet I get a wealth of knowledge on my students. (I also have a parent survey that the parents take the first week of school where I can gather crucial information from them regarding any of their trepidations and their input on digital practices at home and online expectations at school.)

Conversations: After knowing what my students’ (and their parents) level of knowledge is on digital practices, then we begin the conversation. I start with a strategy called a Brain Drain. This is an activity where students each have a sticky note. They are given three minutes to write down everything that they know on a topic (in this case, safe digital practices). Then after three minutes, the students do a turn and talk with a partner for three minutes sharing their ideas. After those three minutes conclude, the pairs share their ideas with the entire class and stick their ideas on our Brain Drain board.

This sharing time is where many topics about cyberbullying, netiquette, digital safety, and effective practices emerge. Some students have never thought about the ramifications of a Facebook post, Twitter tweet, or blog comment made in anger or frustration. Other students have had discussions about safety before. By pulling together our collective set of knowledge, the students get to explore the choices they have made and evaluate how they could have done better in the past.

My role in these conversations is one of moderator. I probe for clarification or justification of the statements that they make in order to guide students into thinking beyond the “what” they are saying into the “why” and “how.” This makes the conversation personal for the students. Does this take time? Absolutely! However, these conversations pay large dividends in the future because this topic rarely has to be revisited because the foundation has been firmly grounded.

Role play: Before architects build a building, they have plenty of time to practice and refine their skills with the guidance and support of mentors. We need to do the same for our students. Now that they have an understanding of basic practices that will enhance and support their learning, they need time to practice. I introduce examples of previous blogs, tweets, or projects that other students have created. As small groups they analyze these examples and then write a paper version of a blog post or tweet in response to the choices that the student made. By giving them opportunity to objectively look at posts, whether the writer made wise choices or not, instills in students the importance of looking at it from an audience’s point of view. Could their words be misinterpreted?  Would someone be offended by what was said or feel intimidated? Does that post support the learning of the author and the audience? Would that post improve someone else’s life in a positive way?

Giving students the ability to synthesize what we have discussed, then analyze and evaluate other’s work helps them to see the power of their choices.

Expectations: After the conversations and the role-playing, students work together to form our class expectations for online behavior. Just like the conversations, it is important that students have the opportunity to make their practices their own. Our role is one of facilitator to ensure that the students think about every aspect of online behavior, from safety practices to learning expectations. Because this is the students’ list, they have ownership of it. They designed it. Therefore, they hold everyone in our online community to those standards. If a student makes a poor choice, their peers take the time to kindly remind them to make some corrections.

Before I began allowing students to set these expectations, I spent much of my time “policing” and redirecting their choices.  However, since I have been given students the power to set their own expectations, I do not have to do any “policing” or enforcing. The students do that, leaving me the important task of focusing on their individual learning.

So although tackling preparing our students for their lives is not a new concept, the reality is that their lives are different than the ones that many of us have had. But by beginning with a strong foundation in digital practices with our guidance and support, our students will be building skyscrapers before we know it.

I have an incredible principal. I work in an urban district, and our school has struggled for years with AYP requirements, test scores, and the effects of poverty in our community. But every summer, when our staff comes back together and prepares for a new school year, our principal is ready and waiting for us. He never fails to find a positive outlook and an inspiring message to get us focused and motivated.

This year, his message to us was simple: "Bring it." These two little words are our motto, our mantra, our battle cry as we step into another year that is sure to bring both challenges and rewards. For the last couple weeks, "bring it" has echoed through our halls, our emails, and our social media messages—because I am also part of an incredible staff that has taken this phrase and decided not only to bring it, but to own it.

We have a lot of obstacles in front of us, but through those obstacles we have the opportunity to do great things. We must do whatever it takes to make our time at school an incredible and worthwhile experience for our students. It is time for us to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones, become innovative thinkers, and create a school and classroom environment that not only provides the necessary elements for success, but accepts nothing less.

This new slogan from my principal is perfectly timed. The introduction of the CCSS has prompted great change in schools, and we are not alone in the need to step up our game. Behind the new standards is the belief that students need to be better prepared for the real world. They need to be critical thinkers, capable of complex reasoning and independent problem-solving. In essence, our students need to be able to "bring it," too.  And if this is what we want our students to become, we not only need to model the behaviors for them, we must also give them the opportunity to develop the necessary skills. These abilities and experiences are the key to truly giving students the opportunity to invent their futures.

Technology plays a central role in this philosophy behind the CCSS. Technology skills are mentioned repeatedly throughout the standards, because they are imperative to functional literacy in today's world. But simply being able to use it is not enough. True digital literacy is being able to apply critical thinking abilities and manipulate technology to solve a problem or fill a need. So, how do we bring about the kind of learning that fosters the development of those skills?

On the surface, providing the necessary learning opportunities may seem incredibly difficult. But the truth is, these opportunities are everywhere if we just know what we are looking for.

Recently, registration opened for the Verizon Innovative App Challenge.  The challenge is for a group of up to five students at the middle or high school level, with the guidance of an advisor, to create a concept for an app. The app must incorporate STEM principles and fill a need in the school or the community of the kids who are creating the concept. The entries are judged based on the idea and the presentation, so the app doesn't actually have to be built and functional. This opens up the challenge to anyone, even those who don't have the detailed technical knowledge or resources required to create an app. The winners will receive up to $20,000 in grant money, tablets for the students involved, and the opportunity to work with experts to make the app a reality.  Proposals must be submitted by December 3, 2013.

Challenges such as this exist all over the Internet, and often don't require a lot of money to participate in. Such activities are an excellent method for pushing students to develop the skills they will need in the real world. It is imperative to give them the chance to become proficient in those skills by applying them to real-world problems. And yes, this also means giving them the freedom to struggle and fail before they get something right. 

By reaching outside the familiar world of our individual school or district and actively encouraging our students to be innovators in the wider world, we allow them the opportunity to strengthen and refine the necessary abilities to truly invent their futures and live their dreams. To me, that is what it really means to "bring it" in my classroom.

If you are interested in participating in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge, please visit the official website for the contest. You can also find other technology related contests on the Technology Student Association website.

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom.