Using Cell Phones as A Classroom Response System

The ubiquitous cell phone has become the bane of many teachers and administrators. You know the scenario– students with their hands hidden in their laps or pockets, staring straight ahead, while still managing to send and receive text messages from friends in the classroom, or a classroom down the hall, or even beyond the confines of the building. In some districts, this usually leads to seizure of the offending phones or at least a few admonitions.

Maybe it’s time for teachers to look for ways to embrace the cell phone and turn it from a distraction into a tool to enhance instruction. A simple way to start exploring this possibility might be to use those cell phones as a type of classroom response system. A classroom response system allows students to respond to a teacher’s question by electronic means such as a “clicker“.

Poll Everywhere is a website that helps you accomplish the same task, but with student cell phones instead of clickers. Polleverywhere allows you to create a multiple choice poll question along with the possible choices. Students then select one of the choices and text that choice with their phones.

A good way to see the possibilities of using this would be to watch the video of a 9th grade history teacher (Greg Kulowiec) using Polleverywhere with his class. Notice how the graph changes as students text in their votes. The video is found on the blog Teaching With Classroom Response Systems. Also read the pedagogical observations found below the video.

You can set up a free PollEverywhere account for an audience of 30 students. This means that up to 30 people could respond to the poll at a time. For $15 a month, you can set up an account for an audience of 50.

For additional information, refer to the PollEverywhere FAQ at http://www.polleverywhere.com/faq

This Blog Is Mirrored

Several teachers have been unable to access this blog in their schools because of filtering software. If you’ve been having this problem, you can visit my mirrored blog at http://blog.esu15.org/mpruter/. If you haven’t been having trouble accessing the blog, you can continue to visit it here.

Differentiated Instruction Websites to Explore

The following links are placed here for a workshop on differentiation I’m doing this week. I’m not necessarily endorsing the information on any of these sites. I’m merely providing them for teachers in the workshop to explore and then report out on.

• Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)–Differentiated Instruction
• Differentiating for Advanced Learners Personalized Learning
• 11 Practical Ways to Guide Teachers Toward Differentiation
• Instructional Strategies–Differentiated Learning
• Gifted and Talented
• Differentiated Instruction and Anchor Activities
• Anchor Activities
• Partners in Learning–Differentiated Instruction
• Cubing and Think Dots
• RAFT Writing
• Best Practices–Learning Contracts
• How to Create and Use a Learning Contract
• Tiered Instruction
• More Differentiated Instruction Links

Quick Tip: Saving YouTube Videos To Show in Class

Those of you who check my blog on a regular basis have probably noticed I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks.  Conferences and other professional development opportunities seemed to congregate within a two week period in April.  Well now I’m back to begin sharing some of the things I’ve learned over the last couple of weeks.

The most recent conference I attended was the Nebraska Educational Technology Association (NETA) conference.  This is a premier conference attended by over 2000 Nebraska educators each year.  The NETA folks pulled off another great conference this year.

As many of you know, there is a lot of trash on YouTube, but there are also a lot of great resources for school.  YouTube is blocked in many of our schools, but what if you are searching YouTube from home and find a great video you want to use in your classroom.  At NETA I learned one method of saving a video to your computer or to a flash drive so that you can then show it in school.  Here are the steps:

1

You are searching YouTube and you come to a great video you’d like to download and save.  The URL might look something like what you see below:

2

Type the word kick between the www. and the word youtube and press Enter on your keyboard.  This will take you to the site KickYouTube where you will be able to start the process of downloading the video you just found.

3

At KickYouTube you will need to select a file format to save your video.  MP4 works with Quicktime players, FLV works with Adobe Flash Player or Real Player, AVI and MPG both work with Quicktime and Windows Media Player.  3GP works with Quicktime and Real Player.  If you’re not sure which format to choose, just experiment.  If one doesn’t work, delete the file and try a different format.

4

Next, click on the green Go button.

5

Next you will see a blue Down button.  This stands for download.  You will need to right click on the blue Down. You will get a drop down menu.  Choose “Save Link As” and then navigate to the place on your computer where you would like to save this file.

6

Now you can navigate to where you saved the file, open it and play it on whatever player you have installed on your computer.  If you saved it to a USB flash drive, you can take the file to school and play it on a computer there.  I hope this helps a few of you resolve your YouTube issues.

Quick Tip: Take A Number

Early in my teaching career I had the problem of several students wanting help at the same time.  Students would  sit at their desks with raised hands or stand in line at my desk.  Students wasted a lot of time waiting for help.  To address this problem, I used a “Take A Number” strategy.  I made a set of laminated cards individually numbered from 1-20.  The cards rested in a little box on my desk in numerical order with the number 1 card on top. Rather than standing in line or raising a hand, students took a number and then went back to their seats.  Once they returned to their seats they were expected to work on any other tasks they understood until their numbers were called for help.  It worked great for me!  Do any of you have other strategies for this type of problem?

Quick Tip: The Handshake Q & A

I came across a video of a teacher using a handshake strategy at Edutopia.  I used to do a similar Question and Answer Handshake with my students as they left the classroom at the end of the day.  The strategy provides another way to informally assess students, reinforce learnings, and nurture student/teacher relationships.

I tried embedding the video into this post, but didn’t have any luck.  You can find the video at http://www.edutopia.org/teacher-tips-classroom-management-handshake-video

Homework: Subject or Strategy?

I had the good fortune of hearing Dr. Lee Jenkins speak in McCook on March 16th.  Dr. Jenkins is the developer of the L to J process.  I first heard Dr. Jenkins in 2004.  He had a major impact on my teaching.  I used the L to J strategy in my fourth grade math class with great success.

In McCook, Dr. Jenkins brought up homework by asking the question, “Is homework a subject or a strategy?”   He contends that it is a strategy that we use to help students practice and master the skills and concepts we would like them to master.  If the purpose of homework is to practice, then mistakes on the homework should be viewed as temporary rather than permanent.  Students should have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and correct them.

Dr. Jenkins uses a “referee/coach” metaphor to help teachers think about their dual roles in the classroom.  Most of the time, teachers should be in the coaching role in order to help their students to higher levels of success.  “During coaching time, [teachers] sample items for informational learning and sample students for performance learning” (Jenkins, 2004, p. 107).  Homework and classroom work would be a couple of ways teachers could sample student learning and then coach them as needed.  Every once in awhile the teacher must take on the role of the referee.  In this role, the teacher will more formally assess the student’s mastery of the standard and assign a grade.

So if homework is practice and the teacher is the coach, why do we assign grades to homework?  The referee of a game doesn’t usually show up for the practices.  Therefore, shouldn’t grading take place once students have had ample opportunity to practice alongside a good coach?

Many teachers may think students won’t do the homework if there is not a grade associated with it.  Other teachers might be required by their districts’ grading policies to have weekly or daily grades.  These are legitimate concerns.  Dr. Jenkins offered one strategy shared with him by a high school teacher.  I see some merit in this.  Maybe it will work for some of you.

John McDonald’s Homework Policy

1. I give homework.
2. I don’t collect it or grade it.
3. Every time I give an assignment, the following day the students get a two question quiz on the homework.  I don’t use the same two questions for other sessions of the same course.

The policy isn’t perfect, especially if the students have been practicing mistakes on their homework.  Therefore it is important that students have had an opportunity to identify and correct mistakes before they are sent home with the assignment.  Feel free to share your thoughts on the controversial subject of homework and grades.

Reference

Jenkins, L. (2004).  Permission to forget and nine other root causes of America’s frustration with education. ASQ Quality Press:  Milwaukee

Student or Learner?

I am presently attending a training on the 21st Century learner.  Today the trainers shared three short videos that humorously demonstrated the difference between a “student” and a “learner.”  The videos can be found below.  I’ll share more information from this training in future posts.  Feel free to share any thoughts you might have about the messages found in the videos.

If YouTube is blocked in your school, you will be unable to view these videos.  Blocking sites opens up a whole other can of worms I’ll bring up in future posts.

Should the teacher also be a learner?

Nebraska Math Standards Draft Ready for Comment Today

The following information was sent to Nebraska administrators on March 20th.  Nebraska educators are encouraged to comment on the new standards.

“A draft of the revised Mathematics Standards is available for review and input March 23 – April 3.   Over the past several months, 100+ educators from across Nebraska have been working on a draft of revised Mathematics standards for grades K,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and High School.  We invite you to review and comment.  Please go to the following website http://www.nde.state.ne.us/math/documents/StandardsSurveyHomepage.html

“There are several helpful components on this web site:

• An introduction video detailing the organization of the standards document and corresponding rationale
• A PowerPoint accompanying the video including several key questions for survey participants to answer as they review the document
• The K-12 draft standards document
• The link to the electronic survey to provide input

“All schools are encouraged to participate.  Participants are able to comment as an individual or as a group.  Please remember this survey is to provide input on the content of the standards themselves – not on the statewide assessment.  Those pieces will come later.”

Choosing Important Words to Teach

We all know the importance of being intentional in addressing vocabulary in our classrooms.  Part of this intentional process is selecting the appropriate words to specifically teach.  Some words are more important to learn than others.  But how do we decide?

Fortunately, there is some guidance for us as we make these decisions.  Archer (2003) suggests we select words that:

1. Are unknown to students,
2. Are important to understanding the text, and
3. Are likely to be encountered in the future

Beck, McKeown, & Kucan (2002) have created a three tier model to help us think about which words to teach.  These three tiers do not coincide with the RTI three tier model that we’ve been discussing with our teachers, so don’t confuse the two.

Tier One words are basic words that are frequently encountered in life (i.e. clock, bed, radio, come, see).  Most students have the concept of these words and don’t need any specific instruction.  If a student is unfamiliar with a word in this tier, it is usually sufficient to just provide the definition or an example rather than explicitly teaching the word.  Not much time is spent in teaching Tier One words.

Tier Two words are also known as the “mortar words.”  These are the words that are high frequency academic words found across a variety of content areas and knowledge domains (i.e. fortunate, absurd, facilitate).  Tier Two words should receive instructional emphasis.  Language Arts teachers should include many Tier Two academic words in their instruction.  Language Arts teachers should not necessarily rely on the words chosen by the reading textbook publisher as the words with the most utility for students.  Many of the vocabulary words suggested in a reading textbook are rare words that can be expected to occur once or fewer times in a million words of school texts (Hiebert as cited in Lehr, Osborn, & Hiebert, 2004).

Tier Three words are low frequency words that are usually specific to a particular content area or knowledge domain (i.e. tundra, isotope, lathe, lava).  These words don’t generalize well to other content areas.  These are the “bricks” held together with “mortar” of the Tier Two, or academic, words.  Although content area teachers will spend more of their time teaching Tier Three words, they should also include some Tier Two words that generalize across subject areas.

Tier Three words are often easier to identify than Tier Two words.  Textbook publishers identify many of the content specific vocabulary (Tier Three) necessary for students to successfully comprehend the material.  Selecting Tier Two words is not as clear cut.  The suggested vocabulary in most reading textbooks is not always the best resource.  A better resource for finding high frequency academic words is Coxhead’s Academic Word List.  It consists of 570 word families which occur frequently over a wide range of academic texts.  Teachers  should use Coxhead’s list to begin dividing the instruction of these academic words across subject areas and grade levels.

Don’t leave vocabulary learning only to chance.  Teach the important words that matter today AND tomorrow.  Teach the words that drive comprehension of the key big ideas and provide an academic toolkit for long term academic proficiency (Feldman, 2009).

References

Archer, A. (2003).  Dr. Anita Archer: Vocabulary development.  Retrieved March 19, 2009 from http://www.fcoe.net/ela/pdf/Vocabulary/Anita%20Archer031.pdf

Feldman, K. (2009).  “Response to intervention and older struggling readers:  Special education reform as part of meaningful school improvement.” Educational Service Units Professional Development Organization.  Kearney, NE. 18 Feb. 2009.

Lehr, F., Osborn, J. and Hiebert, E. (2004).  Research-based practices in early reading series:  A focus on vocabulary.  Retrieved March 19, 2009 from http://www.prel.org/products/re_/ES0419bw.pdf