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Category: In our classroom

Progressbook Alerts

Progressbook Alerts

After a long day of work, the last thing you think to do is check ProgressBook. But then a phone call rings in from the middle school. Apparently, your child has several missing assignments and the teacher is requesting they stay after school to complete them. Ugh!

There is a way to avoid this scenario!

ProgressBook allows you to set alerts that will come to your inbox when your child has a missing assignment or low mark. Setting these alerts will give you the freedom to forget about checking ProgressBook all the time. To make this process super easy I’ve created the following infographic. If you are not so tech savvy and would appreciate screenshot pictures of what the website will look like then use this Google Doc.

Access to Books

Access to Books

There are most likely 3,000 books in my classroom library currently. About a third of those are thanks to the retired teacher whose classroom I moved into last year. The rest of them have come from grant money, funded Donors Choose projects, Scholastic bonus points, teacher supply money, and my own personal money. Giving students access to books has always been an important part of my teaching philosophy. I started collecting books from a used bookstore when I was a college senior. Now the library is filled with a little bit of everything. I still continue to add books because I want students to always have access to the latest novels being published today.

Public libraries are the best source for finding what’s new. Who can afford to buy every new book they want to read? Owning books are wonderful, but borrowing books accomplished the task of reading. Did you know that you can now borrow books and audiobooks digitally? FREE!!!!! Let me tell you how.

Visit the Mansfield Public Library website and look for the link that takes you to their Digital Resources. From there you will find all the different apps that accept their eCard accounts to borrow materials. You can also use THIS LINK to go straight to the eCard sign-up page. Click on the green eCard link and fill out the information as directed.

Once you have an account they will show you the card number and a pin. You can access your account and change the pin to a more common password that you can remember. They will also send this information in an email so that you have it. With these numbers, you can now log in to any of the apps listed. My suggestions would be Cloud Libary and Hoopla. Both of these offer eBooks and audiobooks.

A word on audiobooks

Students choosing to use audiobooks for reading at home is a valid use of their time. However, if they are choosing to do this for every book then they will not gain quality reading skills for the 8th-grade level. An audiobook is a good idea when students have chosen a particularly long book that they are truly enjoying. It can also be a good way to keep up with assigned pages if they have fallen behind. Audiobooks are a great option when reading in the car isn’t possible, but they have a long road trip. Not every audiobook is going to be engaging to students. The best practice for listening to an audiobook is to also follow along in the printed book.

Hopefully, these directions give you a new way to get the latest books for free. There are also a few apps that provide tutorial videos for a number of career opportunities. I was amazed at all the options listed on the Lynda.com app.

If these directions don’t get you what you need please let me know. Leave a comment or send me an email. I’d be happy to help!

Happy Reading (Listening)!

Reading at Home

Reading at Home

When we discussed reading accountability at the start of the school year I shared an infographic with students. It explained that reading for at least 20 minutes a day during the school year will expose them to over a million words. Exposure to words is how we all get better at reading. Vocabulary is key. Knowing the meaning of words allows us to comprehend what we read. Knowing strategies for figuring out unknown words while we read is also a skill good readers possess.

So the simplest way to become a better reader is to practice it. Just like any other skill. Professional football players still show up to practice because even they can become better at their game. I shared an example with the kids Monday that even really good readers still need to look up unknown words. When I read Wonder I had never heard the word precept before; I understood the concept from the story but had never known the meaning of the word.  Once I looked it up I realized that my understanding was slightly off and with the true meaning I understood the author’s intent more clearly.

Reading at home is an important practice for students. The best way to get better at reading is to read.

Reading at home is not the only way to help increase reading skills. Here are a few activities to practice with reading, as well as a few websites and apps that can help.

Depth of Knowledge

The simplest comprehension questions ask us to recall important facts. If we can read something and then share the important parts then we have successfully comprehended the story. However, students often struggle to determine what’s important and what’s just part of the story. Characters and their actions that move the story forward are important. If a character stops to buy candy at the gas station it could be to show us that they have a sweet tooth, or share insight to the setting, or to have them interact with another important character. If they simply stop to buy candy and move on then there isn’t much important in that. However, students who connect to behaving similarily can feel like it should be important when it’s not.

Ask your child to recall the important parts of the story from the chapter or section that they just read. If it sounds like it may not be important to the overall story probe them for why they feel that was an important part. If they can defend it to show significance this is great practice for comprehension.

Being able to articulate why a character made a decision or acted in the way they did helps students see the big picture.

Vocabulary

If students are reading out loud and stumble on a word saying it for them is good. But then ask if they know what it means. Sometimes we just need to hear a word in order to recognize it; making exposure to words such a vital part of becoming a better reader. If they can’t tell you the meaning ask them if the context around the word can help them figure it out. Still unsure or can’t figure it out? Looking the word up in the dictionary is necessary.  Find a place in the house where you can write these words so your child will see them daily that can also help. It takes several times seeing a word and thinking about what it means before we add it to long-term memory.

A few websites that are good for simple word practice include:

FreeRice.com

Vocabulary.com *also has an app called PowerVocab

There are also several phone apps that are free word games. Any word game that is not just spelling words will help increase vocabulary. One that is great for middle school is called The World’s Worst Pet. It’s a strange name for an app, but it has helpful games to learn new words. You can also choose the level of words and increase as kids gain more knowledge.

Reading Websites

There are several websites that provide reading practice for kids whether they are in a classroom or at home. Often they require a login and have paid versions, but they also usually allow for free features as well. Here are some of my favorite sites:

ReadWorks.org is geared towards teachers, but their Article-A-Day option is great for at home.

FunBrain.com is another great site with books online and games for students to practice reading skills.

LearnOutLoud.com is a great place to find free audiobooks. Titles are mostly classic books, but those can be very exciting. When listening to an audiobook it is always best to have the physical book to look at while listening. This helps kids engage with vocabulary.

 

One Point Everyday

One Point Everyday

Welcome to a new school year! This time of year is similar to that of Christmas morning. It’s a day so many have anticipated for weeks. There are fun surprises and lots of new things happening. As a teacher, the fun happens in watching our new students participate in the lessons and activities we spent the summer creating. It’s like watching someone open a handmade gift. Teaching is our passion and we love to watch our students light up with excitement over learning.

However, not everyone comes to school with a positive attitude. We all have bad days. We all have days when school doesn’t feel so important when there are important matters happening at home. Life can get in the way of learning. But being at school can also be a safe place to be distracted. A place to feel encouraged, confident, and needed. What we learn at school can have a direct impact on our future. That’s why, even on bad days, it’s important to find the self-control and show up for class.

We can’t just show up physically, we have to all show up mentally, too. That’s why we would like to reward those students who choose to participate in class each day in a positive manner. The way we do this is by awarding each student, each day one point.

When you walk through the door, on time, your point is collected. Now you are tasked with being a positive presence and participant in order to keep that one point. Here is a typical expected scenario for a student who just walked into room 008:

Walk through the door and drop off my cell phone in the pocket with my number. I couldn’t find my pencil this morning, so I grabbed the one in my pocket and noticed the sign above said “highlighters needed,” so I grab that also. I head over to my desk, take a seat and begin to fill out my homework organizer for the day. After I’ve written the daily target I open my book and read.

This is a typical day to start class. If this student had been absent the day before they would have visited the absent file before heading to their seat and taken care of anything they might have missed. If this student finished their current book that morning at breakfast they would take the time to find a book from their future reading list, locate it in the library and check it out on a Chromebook. There are lots of different scenarios based on lots of different factors. However, notice that none of those include horsing around with other classmates, running around the classroom, walking in the room empty-handed, sitting at a table rather than a desk, hiding in a corner to check a Snap/text, or any other disruptive behavior. That’s because these disruptive behaviors would be grounds for losing the point for the day.

The objective is to be a positive presence and participant in our classroom. It doesn’t mean having all the right answers. If you had all the answers then we teachers wouldn’t have jobs! Being a positive presence means being friendly to classmates, sharing by raising your hand or waiting for someone to finish talking, helping someone when they need help. Participating is just as important if not the most important part of learning at school. When you choose to sit at your desk and not try you are making the conscious choice to not learn. Choosing not to learn is not ok in room 008! Asking for help is important, but sometimes we just need to get started and try something to work it out for ourselves. This can often teach us more than we expected. The standard in room 008 is that every student will try to provide an answer or idea for every assignment and activity. Sure we might need to ask a question first or go back and reread directions, but the expectation is to always try.

Here is another example of a student who might be having a bad day. Maybe they come in the room and get started like they are supposed to, but during the lesson, they keep talking to the person sitting next to them. That person is distracted and not learning anything along with the person doing the distracting talking, so now two people aren’t learning anything. Plus the class is starting to pay more attention to the talking rather than learning from the lesson. At this point, the teacher would stop the lesson and verbally tell that student, “Jay, you’ve lost your point. Please get focused.”

This is the equivalent of a verbal warning. The student recognizes they are not focused and now have two choices: get focused and earn the point back or continue to be disruptive and receive a consequence from the teacher. Earning the point back would mean this student changes their behavior, begins to pay attention to the lesson or activity and starts to show they are being a positive presence as well as being a positive participant. If the student can’t get it together and continues to be disruptive they may earn a lunch detention that day. If the disruptive behavior escalates and they can not handle being part of the class they will be sent to talk with Mr. Paramore or Mr. White. Either of these consequences will result in a phone call or email home.

The REWARD!

So you’ve racked up all these points throughout the quarter, but what does that mean? It means you’ve earned a FREE DAY! At the end of each quarter, so after quarter grades have been submitted (with the exception of 4th quarter) any student who has maintained 80% of their points will be invited to a FREE DAY. Our first free day will include a movie with popcorn, snacks, and drinks. Those who do not earn the free day will still have ELA class, with a teacher, and be expected to complete an assignment that day.

Each quarter students will start over with collecting points towards earning their free day. We hope that this will be a way for all students to have a positive experience this year in 8th grade ELA.

Blogging Expectations

Blogging Expectations

English Language Arts is a double class period. Generally, we will spend one period working on reading skills and one class period on writing skills. During longer projects, there may be an exception to this, but our daily routine will be spending one period on each topic. Blogging will be our weekly writing practice. For more information about why we choose blogging read this post. In addition to 4-5 extended essays, blogging will be a major part of each student’s grade.

The Process

Every Tuesday and Thursday we have a Chromebook cart signed out for our classroom. On Tuesdays, the expectation will be research and planning. We use Google Classroom to post each week’s prompt for the blog post. When students are first learning how to blog the prompts will be very important. The prompts are also a way to write about what we are currently reading. This makes reading assignments vital!

There are usually 3-4 different prompts to choose from, along with some questions to consider when writing. For example:

Write a letter/email to a character in your novel and explain to them why you agree or disagree with a decision they made in the story. Tell them how you might have done things differently and why. Explain to them why you feel this was a good or bad decision.

Students will choose a prompt that they have ideas about and begin gathering information. They will take their ideas and information and type them into a blog post planner. This will be a Google Doc shared with each student so that they have a template to work in each week. The expectation is that students can plan their writing and image ideas in a single, 48 minute class period.

Then on Thursday, students will take the plan and turn it into sentences and paragraphs. They will type directly into WordPress, our blogging platform, and before pressing the publish button they will spend time proofreading. There are digital tools we will teach them to use for help in this area and they will have opportunities to help each other.

Once the post has been published any extra time will be spent creating images to add to the content of their post. How to make images and the copyright rules about this process will all be taught in class. Any parents with a graphic design or marketing background would be welcome guests!

Be on the lookout each Thursday for a Remind text to visit the class blog for updates.

Grades

Writing is a skill with many levels. At the middle school, there are five major categories that the standards expect students to know how to do well. These categories include purpose, focus, organization, evidence, and elaboration. Of course, spelling and grammatical errors should also not be in excess.  As students gain knowledge about each of these categories their blogging grade will reflect their understanding of writing with these in mind. One of the great advantages of blogging is that there is always room to go back and make changes. If a professional blogger learns new information and recognizes that they didn’t include enough evidence based on the comments from the post, they can go back and make the writing stronger. The only exception to going back will be quarter deadlines. Once a quarter has passed there will be no more opportunities to change the grade given for a weekly post. The post can be rewritten or reworked as a new post in a new quarter, but the grade for the original will not be changed.

Aside from the content and writing skills being demonstrated, there is a word count expectation. Students needing modifications will be communicated with their personal expectation. Generally, all blog posts should contain multiple paragraphs of 500-1000 words. This expectation aligns with the base for standardized assessments. It’s important that every student learn to write in multiple paragraphs. Making it to the word count will help to increase their skills in providing evidence and elaboration.

The final expectation to note is that only published posts will receive a grade. So if there is a missing on Progressbook for a weekly blog post that may mean a student simply needs to finish then publish. However, it could also mean there isn’t anything written. As long as students have access to the internet and a device they have access to their blogs. If they need to stay after school for these 24 hours notice is required to be certain a teacher is able to stay.

Sharing

Writing for the teacher is not the best motivator. Writing for a worldwide audience is a motivator. In a separate post, I will provide detailed directions and a video about how family and friends can read and comment on the student blogs. We also collaborate with other middle school classrooms who blog from around the world that will stop by and read our blogs. We will return the favor and leave comments on their posts as well.

One of the first lessons in image creation will be creating a blog business card. Students will each receive 10 cards to hand out to family and friends in order to receive comments on their posts throughout the school year.

Another opportunity for students to have a large audience will be through our “Virtual Volunteers” program. We will be asking for family and friends who are willing to read blog posts weekly and leave engaging comments for the students. If this is something you or someone you know would like to be involved with please fill out this Google Form and read details on the program in this post.

 

This is going to be a great year of blogging! We are so excited to watch the students grow in their writing skills and be able to share this with the world!

Why We Blog

Why We Blog

For over a decade now, blogging has become an important way for people to gather information and find solutions to their problems. Nearly every major brand with an online presence has a blog as part of their website. This is because people have started to turn to blogs for answers. When we want to know the best tips for planning a trip we turn to a travel blog. When we are searching for new recipes or trying to follow a specific diet we turn to food blogs. If there is a topic where you can have a problem there is a blog that can help you find the answers. The number one purpose of a blog is to provide a solution to someone’s problem.

But how does all of this translate into an English class? Let me share some of the greatest advantages of using blogs as a writing curriculum.

Metacognition

This is the concept of thinking about our own thinking. It’s considered the highest level of thinking because you must first identify what you think. Then you must analyze where these thoughts came from and how they were formed. This process automatically happens when writing a blog post. Writing to provide a person with a solution starts by identifying a problem.

For example, you might ask yourself should I read A Wrinkle in Time before I go see the movie? It’s a popular book, it has won book awards, but would I enjoy reading it? I could easily jump on Google and look for a book review to help me make my decision. Book reviews are just one of the writing tasks students tackle on their blogs.

The process of writing a blog post requires students to think critically. Analysis questions tend to be the most difficult for students to correctly answer on standardized tests. Part of this is because these questions are often asked in two parts. If the first part is not answered correctly then the second part will not matter. Practice with analysis as often as possible is important. Analyzing what we read through a blog post helps to practice the skill assessed through the Part A, Part B type test questions.

Share your voice

Blogging tears down the walls of our classroom. With access to the Internet, our world becomes flat. Students have the opportunity to share their voice with a global audience. Working with other teachers from around the world who also blog with their students, give us an opportunity to learn about places in the world we may never experience. Collaborating with students from around the globe allows students to interact with cultures they might never encounter otherwise. Whether those cultures are from students living in a different state or a different country, hearing from other high schoolers can elicit empathy and a wider worldview.

Sharing your voice can also be an important way to express oneself. High school can be a time when childhood and adulthood begin to mingle and the lines are more blurred creating stress and overwhelm. Processing through the written word and hearing feedback through comments can help ease worries and fears. Finding a way to speak your mind helps to shape our thoughts that in turn motivate our actions.

Collaboration

In blogging, collaboration can come in two different varieties. The first is collaborating on a writing piece. Working together to share opinions or provide two different, possibly opposing viewpoints. Professional bloggers practice this often. Working with people who have a strength where you may have a weakness or inexperience allows for personal growth. It’s a great way to gain needed experience and strengthen a weakness.

Another way to collaborate is through commenting. Reading classmates’ blog posts and leaving them a comment that challenges or confirms their writing helps a writer to grow. When students are only ever hearing from their teachers they can become numb to their feedback. Writing for an audience of one, a teacher, can also be less of a motivation to write. Writing for a number of people who consistently comment letting the author know they are being read and making a difference for someone can be incredibly motivating.

Future Career Opportunities

Through my own professional blog, I have met a number of professional bloggers who now blog full time to provide for their families. A number of them have talked about not having a college degree, but having the motivation to learn a skill that would help them make a living. College is not always for everyone, and with the opportunities presented by the Internet to learn nearly any skill possible, it’s not always necessary. College is a good option, but with the increasing cost and academic skills necessary to succeed some students would be better to choose a trade and complete course work through the Career Center. Blogging in English would allow any student with the desire to learn graphic design or web design to gain some basic knowledge.

Those who are college-bound and seek jobs in technology blogging is a great foundation. Technology is a growing field where understanding the basics can provide someone with a wealth of knowledge to pursue more advanced degrees. Our blogging curriculum will teach students basic graphic design, the WordPress platform (which hosts 80% of websites), online etiquette, and even a few basic entrepreneurial concepts.

Writing skills

Last but not least, blogging weekly provides an opportunity to increase writing skills. Learning to write informational text can often be the most difficult, but when it is about topics students feel passionate about or have personal experience with it can be much easier. Writing an opinion can also be difficult because the audience expects that opinion to be backed up with evidence. It’s not enough to simply say I didn’t like it because it was dumb. Sharing your opinion with an audience you know is going to read what you have to say adds enough pressure to be sure your sources are relevant and strongly support your opinion. All of these are essential writing skills, as well as, part of the Ohio Standards for writing.

When starting our unit on argument writing I often like to share with the students that there is a possibility for them to one day negotiate their salary. When their boss asks them why they deserve a raise they may want these skills to defend that raise.  Writing skills can translate to speaking skills which are all useful in the workplace.

In my opinion, blogging in the classroom is a total package writing curriculum. There is so much for students to gain with this one weekly activity that I place a high value and importance on this assignment. It is my hope that students enjoy learning these skills and sharing their voice and hearing the voices of others that it feels less like an assignment and more like a passion.

 

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