I was recently asked what I think is the most important aspect of my school's STEM model, and as I thought about it, it wasn't the science, technology, engineering, or math that we integrate into every content area, but rather the inquiry and curiosity that we encourage, foster, demonstrate and practice through our STEM model.
Students and teachers alike are curious about the world around them, hungry for more information about why things work the way they do and how to make them work even better. This curiosity is what ignites a passion for learning in our students and staff, and pushes us all to be innovative thinkers.
...and their importance in preparing students for success in a digital, connected world. These skills are incredibly important, and providing the time, structure and tools to practice them in school is crucial.
However, I would like to propose adding a 5th C to the list:
Without curiosity, students' intrinsic motivation for learning would be squelched. They would never wonder, never ask questions, never push themselves to try again after failing.... But, just as with the 4 Cs, or any skill, students need to see curiosity in action through teacher modeling, they need the time, structure and tools to practice channeling their curiosity into inquiry, research and learning, and they need meaningful ways to share their discoveries, challenges and reflections along the way.
Curiosity would also fit well with ISTE's NETS*S standards, as it goes hand-in-hand with each of the existing six standards (from which the 4 Cs are taken):
For English learners, curiosity and inquiry are especially important. Students who are developing their English language skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing may not yet be able to fully express their curiosity on a topic (according to second language acquisition theory, most learners begin forming simple questions in the speech emergence stage, after about one to three years of studying/learning English), however, their curiosity can help engage them in activities where they can authentically practice using academic vocabulary, asking questions, and sharing their own experiences on the topic.
You can help your English learners, among others, to access the content by pre-teaching and posting related academic vocabulary and engaging students in activities to activate their prior knowledge on a topic. ELs can also be partnered with other students who share the same L1 (home language), to facilitate discussion and questioning during activities. You can model and provide sentence starters for questions to help students express their curiosity in English.
There are some awesome ed tech tools out there for encouraging and harnessing curiosity.
One of my favorites is ThingLink (website and also a free iPad app), where a teacher or student can post a picture and ask a question related to the picture. Then, others can tag the picture with their questions, and the image (with the questions) is saved for continual reference and reflection. As students find answers to the questions, they can go back and post again, or add the URL of the site where they found the answer to their question.
Lino boards can be another cool tool for collecting information, posting questions or reporting findings.
Wonderopolis is a fantastic site that acts as a forum for questions and answers for people all over the world. You can browse hundreds of wonders of the day, or post your own. They even have an educator's sandbox where teachers can search for wonders related to certain topics. It's a great way to bring the 5 Cs to life (critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration and curiosity)!
As a part of a recent iPad planning day, I was fortunate to participate in a Google Hangout with some colleagues about the free iPad app Subtext and some tips and tricks for using it in the classroom.
Subtext is a free iPad app that allows teachers and students to share, annotate and discuss the same e-reading materials. Teachers can also add notes, discussion questions and quizzes to the reading, which students can see and respond to within Subtext.
I came away from this Google Hangout with some great ideas and resources for getting started with Subtext.
Getting started with Subtext:
Here's a helpful 5-minute introductory webinar from the Subtext website:
I am really excited to try out Subtext with two of my English learner classes - one of which is a small group of 6th graders, and the other is a 3rd grade class. Both groups are focused around social studies content, so I'll be using Subtext to share e-reading materials about WWII (Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr) and the three branches of the government.
In both classes, I am hoping to use Subtext to help facilitate a variation of literature circles. I haven't used literature circles with either of these classes yet this year, and I am still working to develop the specifics on how they might work best with Subtext. I'm thinking we'll all start out with the same literature circle roles to get the hang of how they work, and all of the cool ways we can use Subtext to make literature circle roles easier and more intuitive.
My favorite features of Subtext so far...
The app will read a text aloud to you (great for English learners!)
You can save and share websites to read together with students (free nonfiction!)
You can connect Subtext with your class Edmodo account for easy access
You can add a 'Save to Subtext' button to your browser's bookmarks toolbar to save material from the web to your shelf
How can technology be used to facilitate and enhance academic vocabulary teaching and learning? In my experience, a number of edtech apps and resources become powerful tools when partnered with Marzano's Six Steps (listed above). One of my new favorites that I'd like to highlight for you is Haiku Deck - a free iPad app that allows you to create powerful presentations using a few words and Creative Commons images.
My first experience using Haiku Deck with my English learners was when I created an illustrated WW2 vocabulary game to use with a group of 6th graders. Each slide contains a vocabulary word and related image, and students went head-to-head in an around the world-type game to see who could be the first to provide the correct definition for a given word. They loved it, and will be creating their own vocabulary games using Haiku Deck for a review next week.
My second experience with Haiku Deck was structured around homophones and the Frayer Model for vocabulary development. A 4th grade teacher and I met this past week to plan for a new unit, and we realized how powerful it would be to have students extend and share their learning of homophones by creating Haiku Decks with Frayer Model squares for each slide. Here's a sample Frayer Model:
Check out the tutorial I made for this lesson on Sophia.org for the screencasted explanation of my Haiku Deck: Homophone Vocabulary: http://www.sophia.org/vocabulary-and-haiku-deck-tutorial We are really looking forward to having our students create and share their own homophone vocabulary Haiku Decks this week! How have you used Haiku Deck? What are some other effective apps / resources you use to teach academic vocabulary? Please share your ideas, comments and questions in the comments below!
I love hearing about ways to do things better and more efficiently, especially when student learning is involved. This is probably a large part of why I love Twitter and Pinterest (as well as face-to-face collaboration) -- I love to get new ideas that I can try out in my classroom.
With that said, I've been thinking a lot about a goal that I set for my teaching at the beginning of this year: to provide more timely feedback to my students on their writing. I have found that there is never enough time to conference with all of the students in a given class period...and inevitably, there are always students who are waiting to talk with the teacher about their writing.
So, naturally, I was checking Twitter on a typical evening (probably sometime around 11pm) for ideas that might help me with my goal of providing more timely feedback on student writing....when, lo and behold, I came across a blog post from Amy Mayer of +FriedTechnology talking about Video Grading Using Google Docs and Jing. The article blew my mind. It was exactly what I was looking for!
The basic idea is that you use a screencasting tool, such as Jing (free!) or Camtasia (free trial), to record video and audio feedback / comments to each student about a piece of his or her digital writing.
I don't rehearse or script out what I want to say because I conduct the writing conference as if I were sitting down with the student to read through his or her writing together. Once I had done 3-4, I really started to get the hang of it and wasn't worried about making a mistake (it's more realistic that way!).
Upload each screencast to Screencast.com, which will create a link for the video.
Then, you post the link on their digital writing assignment in Google Docs using the comment feature.
Students can watch the screencast of your feedback when they have time (at home, at school, etc.), make any necessary revisions, and share or submit their next draft.
They can pause the video to make revisions or corrections to their work immediately, or they can replay the screencast at any time.
You've heard of flipped instruction? Well, this is a way to flip your feedback to students, so that they can become more self-directed, efficacious and resourceful writers.
Here is what the screencast looks like when the student clicks on the link:
And, here are a few samples of what the videos look like:
I am by no means an expert on screencasting, but it's been really cool to see the results of using video feedback with students' writing. Students are excited to watch my video comments for them and they are very efficient at making corrections and/or revisions while watching the video. I have also been using the video comments as a resource for follow-up writing conferences with students.
After completing several screencasted writing conferences on my 4th grade ELs' latest writing project, I have definitely honed in on a few areas of writing we're going to practice: organization, S-V agreement, complex sentences, and varying the beginning of sentences.
Screencasting has been a really helpful tool for my students and I, and I'd love to hear about other ways people use screencasting in their classrooms. Feel free to leave a comment below with your ideas, comments and questions!
