Locating and Partnering with Co-Teacher

For the past four years I have traveled to Managua, Nicaragua to serve on a mission team. We visit neighborhoods to meet the residents and hand out toiletries, and then we go to the local church and present a program. Afterwards we feed the children at the program—usually 150-200 children. I am in love with the country of Nicaragua and feel homesick for it when I have to return to the states.  

Each year when I return, I present to the students at my school. My goal is to make them love Nicaragua as much as I do and to truly appreciate the lifestyle they live in the United States.

While searching on www.education.skype.com I first looked for people who would peer edit with my students.  I made a few initial contacts but heard nothing, so I created my own project, inviting a class of middle school students to partner with my students and collaborate on writing. I was pleased to get a reply from a man from Costa Rica. Guido Toro is a journalist and audiovisual producer. He currently serves as the director of El Imparcial newspaper, a local paper in Costa Rica. He also produces news for other media companies in the radio and TV field. He expressed interest in a collaborative project, and I was excited to have a partner in Central America so near to Nicaragua. (Mr. Toro’s profile is available at http://education.skype.com/users/13765#/users/13765/?tab=favourites&_suid%3D400)

Because of Mr. Toro’s position, I had to tweak my idea a little, and I have decided to use Mr. Toro initially as a guest speaker through Skype and then have him conference with students via Skype on their video productions of the elderly, which I described in my last blog.

Mr. Toro can offer my students technical advice about producing short human interest “video stories” in the initial teleconference, then when stories are posted on line, he can view the videos and conference with production crews to give feedback and advice on editing. The school web page will be used to post student videos. Mr. Toro will be able to view the videos here, then we will use Skype to conference in small production groups.  (The school website can be viewed at http://okhms.nelson.kyschools.us/index.htm .)

 I want my students to learn video production and human interest storytelling, but I also want them to develop an appreciation for the culture of Central America in addition to the photos, stories and artifacts that I bring home from my visits to Nicaragua. Therefore, part of the assessment will involve a look at student attitudes toward that area of the world, and Mr. Toro will share more than just technical knowledge—he will be sharing anecdotes and personal experiences. Most of the assessment for the video storytelling collaborative aspect with Mr. Toro will be affective as well. The video stories will be evaluated according to a rubric that students establish, but I would like to have an indication of the value students place on the knowledge they gain from Mr. Toro. They will be required to write down any information they gain from Mr. Toro and tell how they were able to use this information in their production.

Kentucky Core Academic Standards that will be addressed follow.
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly. 

1. Come to discussions prepared, having read or researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence on the topic, text, or issue to probe and reflect on ideas under discussion.
2. Follow rules for collegial discussions, track progress toward specific goals and deadlines, and define individual roles as needed.
3. Pose questions that elicit elaboration and respond to others’ questions and comments with relevant observations and ideas that bring the discussion back on topic as needed.
4. Acknowledge new information expressed by others and, when warranted, modify their own views.

My second collaborating educator is Ann Kelley, 8^th grade communication arts teacher in Lamar, Missouri, near the home of Mark Twain.

Skype address: http://education.skype.com/users/13709

School e-mail address: akelley@lamar.k12.mo.us

 Ann Kelley and I will be leading book groups with 8^th graders in our respective schools. We will select books that related to our geographical area in some way—she mentioned Mark Twain since he lived near her town, and I thought about Cynthia Rylant, who writes about life in rural areas.

At the beginning of the year we will start out book groups, reading two books a quarter—one she selects and one I select. We will have one Skype book discussion group with our students to compare and discuss these books. The next semester, our students will select the two books that will be read. Being able to discuss the culture of the geographic area with people from that area will be valuable for our students.

Assessment will be done through student participation and comments during the Skype discussion and through extended written response questions that require students to compare the two novels read.

Kentucky Core Academic Standards addressed:

Reading 1: Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Reading 2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

Reading 5: Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

Service Learning Project: Telling Your Story

Elderly people have acquired knowledge through experience, and our students could benefit from this. In this service learning unit, students will get to know an elderly person in their community and will use technology to help this person tell his or her story. These digital stories will then be posted on-line and will be available for viewing at the local public library and nursing homes in our area. Sixth through eighth graders in the technology (STLP) club will be conducting interviews in pairs at a local nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

To view this entire project, open the following document:

 https://acrobat.com/#d=N8zekf9MSibUUcmMEbAmlw

Using On-Line Resources in the Classroom

Getting to know your students is easy in a language arts classroom where students spend so much of their time writing about themselves, discussing books that related to them personally, and composing poems about their hopes and dreams. Next school year I am hoping to use technology as an additional way to learn about my students and to have them get to know more about someone else.

I am planning a digital storytelling unit in which they use available technology to record audio, video, and embed pictures and other documents in order tell a story about themselves. Once they have learned the technology and the basic format of a human interest piece, I want them to find someone else to interview--a grandparent, community figure, someone with a story to tell--and have them use technology to tell the story of that person. Two on-line resources I have found for digital storytelling are:

http://www.storycenter.org/

http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory/
This project will change how I teach because it will be my first attempt to embrace technology in my classroom. I have worked extensively with a Smart Board and had my students in the computer lab for years working on Microsoft Word and Publisher, but these are relatively simple uses of technology. Creating digital stories will be a stretch for me. I have noticed with my own teenage daughter that the new craze is to make movies and post them to You Tube, and I think I could use the interest students have in movie-making to teach them basic narrative formats and human-interest feature stories.  Creating digital stories is a ready-made way to publish student work to a wide audience. We have a daily news program at my school, and I think our digital stories would be a nice addition to the morning news. Writing pieces typed on a word processor were much more difficult to "publish" to the school audience.School Tube has an example of  telling someone's story that I think would be a good example for my students.

Engaging Learners

For the past two years at my school, we have been  studying the methods described in Robert Marzano's Classroom Instruction that Works. The methods are research-based techniques that encourage rigorous learning. Since I tested and saw the validity of these techniques, I decided to read The Highly Engaged Classroom, also by Marzano and Debra Pickering.

One strategy I currently use to engage students is through personal connection. I make it a point to talk to them and get to know them personally. Relationship building with students is essential if you want to engage them in your classroom. In The Highly Engaged Classroom, chapter 2, Marzano discusses the importance of building positive student-teacher relationships in order to get them engaged.

Another strategy is through having them keep track of their own progress so that they know where they are now and where they need to be. Giving them more responsibility for their own learning is important. This is an instructional technique that is described in Classroom Instruction that Works and in The Highly Engaged Classroom, chapter 5.

A third strategy is through time management. Keeping the pace of instruction moving by changing activities often and allowing for little "down" time is an effective way to keep students engaged. This is mentioned in chapter 2 of The Highly Engaged Classroom.