How Educating Parents, Educated Me

Last week I had my final for my leadership class.  At the end of last year's class we each had to pick a project to incorporate a new program, training, education, etc... into our district or our site for this school year.  There are a group of teachers from our district that were enrolled in this class with me.  They are a group of amazing educators, all passionate about what they do.  They have taught me how to better present myself.  Our group project goal was, to get more parents involved in parent trainings that were held district wide.  I've never presented at another school site, let alone, an audience of people that I had not met before.

Our parent trainings were in Common Core, in some circles, uttering these words is a death sentence.  In others, they are the best two words recently introduced into the education system.  Our group was broken into teams, myself and another educator were in charge of educating our parents in common core math.  This was where I challenged myself.  My masters is in reading, I've been a GLAD trainer, science trainer, and currently a Thinking Maps trainer focusing on writing.  I can say, I've never been a math trainer, or felt I was very strong in math, myself.  One of the activities that we presented was, take one standard and follow it from kindergarten to sixth grade.  The students who attended had fun trying to solve the problems for each grade level.  Parents occasionally struggled with terminology or how to execute the problem.  I felt after that evening more families saw how students had to have a conceptual understanding to move onto the next grade level math standards.  I also saw adults and children who approached the same problem very differently.

 For our final we had to present a PowerPoint and discuss what we had worked on this school year.  There were a panel of 2 people from the Orange County Department of Education who were judging us, along with a person from the year 1 leadership class who watched us.  In this class I worked on "seeking out challenging opportunities that test my own skills and abilities."  Which I sure did.

I'm happy to report, that I passed my class.  

But going through this process I began to think about how each of us interpret a math problem and it's solution.  I've always known every child does not think the same.  I've, also, always asked students about their thinking, but I think so often the other students tune out.  It's difficult for a first grader to articulate what they are thinking.  So, I began using the app Educreations.  Students began to be able to articulate their thinking.

The app looks like this.  When I signed up it was free.  You can upgrade to the pro which has an annual fee.

When we began word problems, I modeled several times how to solve problems, how to pull out the important information, and how I would write the word problem in a number sentence.  I still had many in the class that just couldn't figure out which numbers to use and what to do with those numbers.  So, I started taking pictures of the word problem and having students who were consistently solving the problems correctly think out loud and record themselves doing so.  I would then play these back for the class.   When I played them back the class was silent (anything on the SmartBoard and it has their attention) and I'd hear some "Ohs!" as it played.  I believe playing other student's thinking for the class really helped kids who weren't getting it, get it.  Here is a quick example:

Word Problem

What is nice about this, once I taught the children how to use this app, I could continue teaching the whole class and they could use educreations on their own.  

What I also learned when doing this is, sometimes, students are confused.  Here is an example of that:

Word Problem

This child was consistently getting them right, but he always had "extra stuff".  After watching this, I understood that he thought he had to make a number bond somewhere in his problem.  He did not understand that number bonds are used with purpose.  So, I had a mini lesson with him to help him understand this.  

Educreations could easily be incorporated into other subjects.  I found it just lent itself so nicely to math.  

If you can't get on the internet in your district once you download the app, you can do exactly what my students did without internet connection.   Educreations also has lessons that have been shared by others that you have access to, but you would need to have internet in order to view these.  

And those of you that have a SmartBoard, and your school is not an apple school.   If you bring in your own ipad and do this, you can purchase a VGA Adapter and then you can watch what your students have created on your SmartBoard.  I purchased my adapter on Amazon for less that $20.  

Educreations is a simple app that you might find useful in your teaching.  We often don't have time to listen to each one of our student's thinking process, but using this app it sure did help me listen to a few more students I might not have had time for.

Don't forget to take a look at my TeachersPayTeachers store:  Gina Hickerson's Store

      

Twitter? Why do I need that?

So, I spent another Saturday in EdCamp and on top of that drove over an hour to get there.  Crazy, I know.  But the learning!!!  So, at the last EdCamp, everyone kept telling the audience, as a teacher, twitter is very powerful.  I've had a twitter account for years, but just "didn't get it".  I've now been active on it for a few months, but have only been "lurking" as I found out today.  When I look up "lurking" in the urban dictionary, the definition is:

Ok, yes that defines my "activity" on twitter. 

I've watched youtube videos to learn how to use twitter.  I learned some things.  This is the one I found most useful  https://www.youtube.com/watch?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0mLVEvIWa8 all of the ones by OpenSesame were helpful. But I still had some unanswered questions and so did the audience in EdCamp. 

So, attending EdCamp today I went to a session on Twitter and had my questions answered.  You might have those same questions.

Why the hashtag?  Answer:  the words after the hashtag make it easy to search for items of interest.  a great one to search is #edchat.  So much great info!

Why do some tweets start with @?  Answer:  a person's handle (username) has that sign in front of it.  For example I'm @Gina_Hickerson.  So some tweets start that way, because they are "tagging" that person in their tweet.

How do I know who I'm talking to?  Answer:  If you want to talk to someone, include that person's handle somewhere within the tweet, then that person sees your tweet along with people who follow both of you.  If you want all of your followers to see your tweet, just tweet.  If you want all of their followers to see what you say, you have to put a period in front of the handle, for example, .@Gina_Hickerson.  If you'd like to talk to someone privately, first of all, you can only have a private messages with people that you follow and they follow you.   Go to the upper left hand corner and click on message.  Put the other person's handle in and then press next.  You can then privately message them.

I try to follow a stream of conversation, but sometimes it doesn't make sense, why?  Answer:  If you are looking at twitter on your phone you won't see everyone's tweet, if you are using a computer you will.

It is a little overwhelming, how do I follow a chat?  Answer:  Open www.tweetdeck.com, on tweetdeck you can create lists.  For instance on the below picture I created EdCamp Perris list, so I could read the tweets as they came through during EdCamp. 

This will be extremely useful when you are part of an EdChat. 

What's an EdChat?  Answer:  An educator will pose educational questions and set a time that people can tweet answers and share resources.  Below is an example:



When you respond, you have to let followers know which question you are answering.  So, if I'm answering question 1, I'd begin my tweet with A1: then my response, you also need to include the name of the EdChat with a hashtag, for example if I want to chat on Google Apps for Education The hashtag is #gafechat.  Also, when tweeting in an EdChat use Ss to refer to students, Ts for teachers, and As for administrators. 

Want to see upcoming edchats?  Here's a great link:  edchat schedule

I found this information very helpful.  I will probably continue to be a lurker, until I feel more comfortable, but now I "get" twitter.  If you'd like to play with twitter, feel free to follow me and I will follow you back.  My handle is @Gina_Hickerson.

Don't forget to check out my TPT store:  Gina Hickerson



Symbaloo

I recently completed a webinar on useful websites for teachers.  One of the most useful I thought was called symbaloo.com.  This is a website that you can bookmark websites you frequent and you can categorize them.  It makes it really easy to have all of your websites in one location.  It's also super easy to set up.  I put on all the websites I use frequently, also websites I want to explore further.  For esample, my ELA webmix looks like this:

The tutorial is super quick and super easy.  You can either take a look at my pages (they call them webmixes) and if you want my whole webmix you can add it and it will appear in your symbaloo page.  Or creating your own is easy.  Adding a tile is simple, you just click in the middle of the tile, then choose create a tile.  I find it most easy to open the website I want in another window, copy the address and then paste it into the box asking for the website address.  Most of the time an image will automatically pop up on your tile.  One thing I didn't catch on right away, is if the image doesn't include the name of the website you might want to include that, so in the next box "name on the tile" type the name you want and check the box "show text".  When you do this anything you want to name it, will appear.  If a picture doesn't automatically appear you can then design your own, with a color background and choices of icons.  You can also lock webmixes, so if you were to share your link people couldn't see any of the locked ones.  Here are my symbaloo links if you'd like to take a look at mine:
Math          English Language Arts       Science       History and Social Studies      Art     
Thinking Maps        
I have mine categorized by subject.  Of course many of the sites are geared to primary, but I do know I have some that I haven't played with yet which might also be upper grade appropriate. 

I've also created a page of my own personal favorites, like pinterest, TPT, I won't share that one with you.  I've only been playing with it for a few months, so I don't have a whole lot.   I'm sure mine will be growing.  You can continue to use my links, but if you were planning on building your own symbaloo, it might save you time seeing what I have and copying my links.  Have fun!

You might also want to visit my TeachersPayTeachers store.  If you like what you see, don't forget to follow me.

Also, did you know if you leave feedback for items that you purchase on TPT you earn credits?  You earn 1 credit for each dollar spent.  Every 100 credits is equivalent to $5.  Then when you go to check out you can apply your credits and it deducts that amount from your total.  Before you leave negative feedback to any seller you should contact the seller first, they may not be aware of your concerns.  For instance type-o's can be fixed and then re-uploaded, you get the fixed version and any updates the seller makes. 

Teaching Conferences

I love going to conferences.  I always feel like there is something to learn.  Yesterday, I went to a conference, I won't say which one, but it was a waste of my time.  If you are reading this and you are someone who provides professional development, I'm going to let you know what you shouldn't do. The presenter started off saying, "I know you already do this, but it's a good reminder."  If we already know how to do it, why are we paying to listen to you tell us how?  This presenter started out by telling us, we have different kind of learners in our classroom and went into detail as to what kind and what each learner needs.  (Duh!)  Next subject, when we'd like our students to partner share, make sure they are looking at each other, we can do this by telling students to have eye to eye contact, ear to ear sharing, or knee to knee.  (Come on!  Teachers fresh out of student teaching know this!)  This whole thing, plus him introducing himself and telling us about his teaching experience took 1 hour.  (REALLY?!)
We then go on and he instructs us that student writing is a great way to find out what students know about a subject and what they are curious about.  (I gave up a Saturday for this?)  He then has the audience model what he's teaching us about.  Which was to write letters to each other as a way to have students dialogue about the subject.  He gave us a subject and we wrote to other teachers at our table on his choice of a subject "aliens".  This took us up to break.  Now the sells pitch.  He was so gracious to bring the publisher of his books and guess what?  They were selling all of his books in the lobby.  How convenient!  (Can you hear my sarcasm?)
The break was supposed to be 15 minutes, it went on for 25 minutes.  (Please honor our time!)  He tries to get our attention at the conclusion of the break (I know, I know, teachers are the worse) when the audience does not quiet down, he passes the mic to someone in the audience and she uses her attention getting strategy to draw the audience back to attention.  Ok, so now an audience member has us back from break.  He shares for 45 minutes which schools throughout the country he has worked with and letters he has seen or received from students.  Show us 1-3 that get us laughing and break up the day, NOT 45 minutes worth of student letters.
We are to again model what students should be doing, which is to find a question to answer.  He gave us 15 minutes to hear each other's questions and pick one.  Now it's time to investigate and find the answers to our questions.  30 minutes for this activity, which we needed since so many of us were on the internet and it took so long to search.  Time to share out, he picks teams from the audience to share their question and the answers they found.  Guess what?  He doesn't pick one or two, for us to get the idea and move on.  No, instead, we have to listen to 6 different teams share out their question and the answers they found.
Lunch time!  I stayed for lunch and then I left.   I always say I can learn something from a conference.  This is what I learned: When presenting honor your audience's time.   Saying we have a 15 minute break, stick to that.  When giving examples give one or two, to get the idea, NOT 6!  Don't start a training with "You already know this" and then review learning styles and how students should partner share.  (ARGH!)
I apologize that this month's post is more of a rant, but I think we've all experienced these types of presenters and the frustration one feels, after giving up their time, or pay their hard earned money. I know there is an app out there called rate your instructor.  Is there one out there called "Rate your Presenter"?  If not, someone ought to create it, I'd pay for it.

Don't forget to visit my store at:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gina-Hickerson
If you'd like to email me my email address is:  hickerson.gina@gmail.com

Good Teaching Conference in San Diego

I always get inspired when I go to a teaching conference.  If you've never been to a Good Teaching Conference in your state, I would suggest you try to go at least once.  They invite presenters who are very knowledgeable.  I've always left with new ideas and things I want to try with my own class.

I learned about a few free resources that I thought others who were not aware of may benefit from.  Did you know if you go to http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/ then click on the subject there are videos for students and most of them have extension activities.  They also tell you which standards they are aligned to.  A great resource to be aware of.

The next website is http://betterlesson.com/.  This site has lessons that great teachers have created.

Then there was https://www.mydigitalchalkboard.org/.  Another site where lessons are posted.  You do have to join the community to have access to their lessons.  You can choose your lesson and topic.

One of the sessions I went to was how to put Engineering into STEM in the primary grades.  A resource she spoke about was http://eie.org/.  This is a resource for purchasing lessons.  She did say if you were interested in the binder, you could purchase just that, then go to the 99 Cents Store to purchase all of the supplies, rather than purchasing the whole kit.  She says she's bought 5 of them and the first time she bought the kit.  The next 4 she only purchased the binder and said she was able to find 99% of the items used in the engineering binder at the 99 Cents Store. 

I thought I'd share these resources with you as most of them are free.   Thanks for visiting. 

Edcamp is Awesome!!!!

Have you ever heard of edcamp?  I hadn't.  In the class I take, one of my classmates organized an edcamp at his school and encouraged us all to come.  It was local at Los Alamitos High School, so I decided to take a look.  I talked my fourth grade teacher friend into attending with me.  I was pretty sure I wouldn't get much out of it, he being a high school computer science teacher and myself a first grade teacher.  Boy, was I wrong!  So it begins with networking in the morning with munchies and coffee.  We are then directed to write down anything we'd like to learn more about or any topic we'd like to facilitate.  Then we are directed to place them on the following board:



We placed any post its with topics we'd like to or felt comfortable facilitating on the orange sign.






And anything we'd like to learn about on the purple sign.





There were a few people working the board, what I mean by this is, they were moving the post-its into similar topic groups.  Once it was time to begin, we were told to either look at the board or log-in to view the computer board.  We then picked which sessions we would attend and were encouraged not to sit through something we didn't find useful.  We sat through three sessions.  In those sessions the facilitator would begin by asking, what everyone's questions were and writing them on the board, then we'd go through and see if anyone in the room could answer those questions.  Smartboards and computers are on, so people could share ideas via the web, google docs, what ever.  It was within one of these sessions I learned about the app https://tellagami.com/.  An SDC teacher who has a non-communicative autism class was very excited to share her finding.  So, you can get the free app, which has limited characters and backgrounds, but the most limiting is that it only allows for 30 seconds of voice recording or text to speech (which is what her students were using).  If you upgrade to tellagami edu, you will get 90 seconds of voice or text to voice recording.  It is $4.99 and the app looks like this:

So I was so excited to get started, I began to use it on Monday.  The standard we are working on in science is how animals thrive in their environment.  So we had a home project where students created a habitat and then brought it to school.  I took a picture of the habitat, the students created their character then they spoke about their habitat.  I then put the link in a QR Reader maker, I used this free link to do that:  http://goqr.me/#t=url downloaded it and also put the link above that, with the child's name.  I then attached them to their project and asked parents to download a free qr reader for open house.  What a hit!  I work at a school where 97% of students are on free lunch, so I wasn't sure how many parents had smartphones.  I have a class of 27, 25 parents showed up, only 6 of those did not have a smartphone.  The rest did and when they watched their child's tellagami they loved it.  Here are a couple, either use your qr reader or the link to watch them.
https://tellagami.com/gami/6QKDCI/                                 https://tellagami.com/gami/W5AK81/
                                 

This was very easy to do.  In 2 days a few minutes each day, I created a class of 27 of these.  I used my phone or ipad then emailed the link to myself, after school I put them in the qr maker.  It was easy and I wowed my parents.  I also had principal walk throughs the day before open house, the principals, superintedent and assistant superintedent walked through my class and they were wowed, also!  You should have seen them going around with their QR Readers listening to the different mini reports.   If you've never heard of this app you've got to give it a try!


If you are interested in ed camp, you can get more information here:
http://edcamp.wikispaces.com/

Here is a super short youtube of the event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOuIsqTBOjM

And don't forget to check out my TPT store:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gina-Hickerson

Reading with Our Littles

Use this link to see TPT's store wide sale.  Going on February 25th!

TPT store wide sale! February 25th!

I am a little bored of making the Engage NY assessments, I'm almost done with kindergarten, but I just can't bear to think about working on it.

So I'm doing something a little more fun.  Our district has not adopted new ELA textbooks in quite a while.  So we are still in OpenCourt.  It's the one that looks like this:

I have a group of high readers, the decodables are just way to easy for them.  So, my partner teacher pulled out this book.  What we found is that the questions that are asked are mostly connecting text to self, very few text dependent questions.  So, I sat down and started working on making little books for each of these stories, trying my best to only have 1 text to self question, the rest are text dependent where our young learners have to refer back to the text.  I often, orally ask them for the evidence to support their answers, now I'm trying to do it with paper and pencil.  If you'd like to look at one, visit my tpt page:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Comprehension-Questions-to-Arnold-Lobels-Strange-Bumps-1687620.  It's the Arnold Lobel story, Strange Bumps.  I've made every book similar trying to have 6 questions on the inside and one on the back, trying my best to make the one on the back the text to self, and making it the fun question.  My group of high readers have completed a few.  I am pleased with what I'm getting.  I often have to ask them to go back and write in a complete sentence, other than that, they are answering the questions and I see them looking through the book to find the answers.  I have only a few more stories and then it will be complete, once complete I will post on TPT.

March 2015, they are now complete, take a look:  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Comprehension-Questions-for-OpenCourt-First-Grade-1724636
Thanks for visiting!