Mini-lessons

After much thought and struggle, I completely changed my topic for my mini-lessons. Originally, I was thinking about targeting something in the area of reading fluency. I struggled with attempting to find creative strategies. I then thought about creating my lessons on simple machines. Again, even though I could think of creative ways to extend the learning, I was struggling to come up with a solid approach. I then settled on European Explorers. I think I have my ideas worked out. However, I'm struggling to find ways to extend learning on this topic. Too late now! 

Blog Reflection

This semester has been my first attempt at blogging for academic purposes. A few years back I attempted to blog for fun as a way to have an online journal. After a few weeks, I struggled to keep it going. The challenge was being motivated to write down my thoughts when I knew no one was reading my posts. The purpose of the blog was for personal reflection on happenings in my life, not for others to read. However, for this class, there was the obvious accountability of having others commenting on my posts. This added “pressure” kept me engaged and thinking about what to write. I continually checked for postings of my group using Feedly, and I enjoyed reading and commenting on those posts. This continual involvement made the process of posting, monitoring, and responding quite efficient and manageable.

I do wonder if the same type of interactions would be achievable by having a group blog. As I think about how to implement this type of activity in my instruction, having multiple locations for students to search seems cumbersome. I believe having all students posting on the same blog/discussion board/platform, similar to the discussion boards used in GoView, would be easiest to manage at the elementary level. I have had success using Padlet as a means of sharing reflections, but with the changes at Padlet, I believe finding an alternative means of sharing discussions will be necessary. These blogging assignments have given me some ideas moving forward.

I found the blogging assignments added an additional level of comprehension. First, I spent additional effort analyzing my responses prior to posting. Peer pressure still works. Second, reading posts by my group members provided greater understandings of the readings. I benefited from reading someone else’s thoughts and interpretations. Third, by responding to posts, I was forced to analyze the opinions of others and find a way to respond either in support or in disagreement.

In regards to the course readings, I found most of them to be informative. The articles that provided me with some of the most practical, as well as insightful, information were those on how to search more effectively with Google and those explaining the Growth Mindset. Prior to the reading on Google searches, I was unaware of the various methods and shortcuts to make searches more effective and efficient. I particularly enjoyed learning about the reverse image search feature. I found the Growth Mindset articles to be inspirational and something that I need to review every so often throughout the school year. The wide range of topics also was enjoyable. Each week there was always a new topic that triggered ideas to improve my instruction.

Inquiry Learning

For the past nine years, I have been a special education collaborative teacher working with third and fourth graders. Over the course of these years, inquiry learning has always been a component of lessons with the use of essential questions in each content area. However, we now have moved beyond just having these lesson-focused questions to where we are constantly encouraging students to be active and engaged learners who ask questions and attempt to find solutions individually or with peers as a community of learners. A few years ago we began implementing Dan Meyer’s Three-Act Tasks during our math class once a week. The majority of the students enjoyed the process of asking any questions they wanted about the first task. My favorite part is always observing and listening to the discussions regarding which questions are the most poignant towards finding an ultimate solution. This year our social studies classes were highly engaged while learning about the siege of Boston in 1775-1776, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and life on the Oregon Trail because they had problems to discuss and attempt to solve, build models, and tried to strategize as if they were participants. I believe inquiry learning goes beyond just the facts that anyone can look up on some website. Inquiry learning requires students and teachers who are willing to ask tough questions and have opportunities to interact with the facts to promote engagement, interest, and understanding of topics.



I have been trying to determine what my lessons will be about. This has actually been a very challenging activity for me this week. At this current moment, I believe I am going to focus my mini-lessons on reading fluency. This is an area that I have been attempting to move from a weakness to a strength, so I’m going to give it a try. There are eight principles of inquiry-based learning that I will attempt to address in my three mini-lessons.

Authenticity - When it comes to the reading fluently, the importance and relevance need to be made clear. Reading is a skill one uses throughout their lives whether within the school walls or beyond. It allows the individual to comprehend ideas, entertain, communicate, and gain greater knowledge. As one becomes more fluent, internal motivation rises, leading to the desire to read more. However, poor fluency leads to poor comprehension and a loss of motivation.

Deep Understanding - In my experiences with reading fluency, many students struggle not because they don’t know their letter-sound correspondence but because they lack strategies to determine the sounds of vowels. Providing students the opportunity to understand that they do have a great base upon which to build, is a way to understand and focus on their weaknesses. Helping students see the flaws in their preconceived ideas pertaining to their reading inability, hopefully, begins the process of building up their confidence and engagement. From this point, developing individual reading goals with the students takes them to that deep understanding of themselves as readers and learners.

Assessment - Using a variety of assessments provides the opportunity to check in on individual growth and progress towards their goals. I’m not quite sure how to address this at this time. Some ideas include using vocaroo.com and rate themselves based on a rubric, providing peer feedback with a glow and a grow, etc.

Appropriate Use of Technology - We are fortunate that all students in our district have access to myon.com which provides thousands of high-interest digital books which are read by a human reader. Students love them. This technology gives students the opportunity to listen to books on their independent and instructional reading level. There are a great number of strategies to use that include listening to a passage and then re-reading it independently, attempting to keep up with the audio reader and highlighted words, etc. Technology motivates students in school or at home. Having access to these sites at home provides an opportunity to continue the learning with parents, siblings, grandparents, whomever. Also, creating individual Google Docs, students can record challenging words but also attempt to determine the meaning of those words using various strategies.

Performances of Understanding - Providing students opportunity to actually read aloud a paragraph or page they have practiced or described main elements of their reading are strategies I am thinking about incorporating to fulfill this principle. Still working this out.

Connecting with Experts - I like the idea of Skyping with an author or enjoying a read aloud with the media specialist. In each instance, providing the students' opportunity to ask questions such as, “Why did you read the dialogue that way?” can give great insight for students struggling with reading fluency.

Student/Learner Success - Student success will be determined by each individual’s progress towards their goals. Students will be able to use multiple methods; a video recording using screencastify, reading one on one, or audio recording using audacity, screencastify, or vocaroo.

Ethical Citizenship - Incorporating copyright laws and digital citizenship components into my first mini-lesson seems appropriate. For these mini-lessons, I envision students accessing various websites and providing them with information on how to be safe consumers of information.

Goal Reflection

It’s time to reflect on my progress towards my goals. To do so, first, let me repost my goals.

1) At the end of the summer semester, I will have established a platform upon which to build my professional learning network.
2) At the end of the summer semester, I will be able to identify and use four new web 2.0 tools for improving my professional learning network.
3) At the end of the summer semester, I will be able to infuse newly acquired knowledge into weekly lessons through the 2018-2019 school year to improve the learning of ALL students.

So far during this summer semester, I feel that I am making adequate progress towards these goals. Goal 1) I have begun creating my PLN through this blogging site by adding many, but not too many, RSS feeds. These include Twitter and blogging feeds. In addition, I have been conducting searches and adding quality sites to my Symbaloo webmixes. Goal 2) prior to this semester, I had not used Symbaloo, Blogger, Weebly, or Twitter for PLN purposes. I plan to continue to improve my use of these sites as well as look for others that will enhance my PLN. Goal 3) my knowledge of these platforms has definitely opened my eyes to how I can incorporate them into my classroom. For one, I have discovered that Weebly has an education component that provides teachers with the ability to create a class website and the ability to manage student accounts. Using curation sites such as Symbaloo and Scoop.it allow students access to teacher recommended sites for games, research, worksheets, online links, etc. I especially like the ability to differentiate links based on the needs of individual students.

This week I have read articles related to the importance of having a growth mindset. (I have needed a growth mindset since the beginning of this summer semester.) It is easy to become overwhelmed and frustrated with technology and the complexities of the platforms associated with them. It’s easy to have a fixed mindset. However, we must remind ourselves that old dogs CAN learn new tricks. Carol Dweck tells us that our "brian is like a muscle and can grow over time."  Being an old dog, I need to remind myself of this fact.  In her article "Even Geniuses Work Hard", Dweck encourages teachers to embed the word "yet" at the end of "I cannot do that" sentences.  "I do not know how to embed a live Twitter feed into blogger yet," or "I do not know how to create a Weebly site yet," are personal examples from this semester. By adding that one word, I give myself the power to persevere and find ways to overcome these deficits.  The greatest benefit of this technological age is having access to tutorials via YouTube, websites, Q and A’s with those more knowledgeable, and other self-help resources. These resources help us overcome the “yet.” There is great satisfaction in completing a task which you previously could not do or were scared to attempt.

Letting Go

This past November, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Georgia Ed Tech Conference. The best presentation I heard happened to be the very first presentation on day one. Jaime Casap, the Chief Educational Evangelist at Google, gave an inspiring talk about changing the educational model from one with students regurgitating and memorizing facts to one that is inquiry driven. He stated that education is no broken but just needs to be tweaked. Advancements in technology have altered the way the new generation of students learn. Students, through open source materials, can be their own problem solvers. He stated that this shift should encourage us not to ask what our students want to be when they grow up but to ask what problems do they want to solve. (Video worth watching Jaime Casap National Conference Keynote 2016)

There are two reasons I make reference to Jaime Casap. The first is that I read an article by Grant Wiggins titled Great Teaching Means Letting Go. The second is that I watched a discussion led by Chris Lehmann focused of inquiry learning. Both of these media discuss the changing face of education and the need for educators to adapt to these changes. In the article, Wiggins discusses the need for students to transfer learned concepts and strategies to various situations. He emphasizes the importance of students working independently with the teacher’s role being one of inquiry asking students about “what they did, why, and what did and didn’t work” (Wiggins, 2016). In the podcast, Lehmann shares his belief that learning needs to be inquiry driven. Teachers need to ask questions that go beyond their own understanding and encourage students to do the same. Lehmann states technology has transformed teachers from being a source of knowledge to being mentors who build caring systems and structures to support student centered learning environments. Casap’s GAETC talk completely supports the ideas and beliefs shared by Lehmann and Wiggins. All three believe that good teaching need to be inquiry driven with Lehmann and Casap going further by including educational technology as a key component.

As I spend the summer weeks decompressing the 2017-2018 and then preparing for the 2018-2019 school year, these ideas are and will be at the forefront of my analysis and preparation.

FRIT 7234 Post 3

Searching the interwebs has become a necessary part of my world and probably the world of most educators. After completing the Google Challenge on multiple days, I realized that my search techniques are effective for finding the necessary information but a bit “messy”. I understand how to use keywords and multiple phrases to find the answers to the questions. What I don’t know are all the ins and outs of Google’s searching shortcuts. I have decided to spend some time in the coming weeks learning how to incorporate two or three shortcuts to improve my searching skills. I think the asterisk, quotation marks, and colon will be the three I will begin using.

What I’m realizing is that these “shortcuts” can help narrow the abundance of information to a better collection of credible sources. In today’s world where anybody can be an author, the more tools we have to decipher reliable sources from garbage the better. Finding information on any topic is possible, but the reliability of the source must always be questioned.

Back to a brief reflection on my searching pattern. I recently read the article, “The Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future” and began thinking about how I conduct internet searches. I’m not going to lie, there are times (more often than not) where I will type in the actual question I am trying to answer. After reading the aforementioned article, I fall into a category of searchers who bounce from site to site, skimming content, and sometimes squirreling away PDFs to print off and read at a later time. I think much of my search behavior stems from having such limited time due to my profession, family responsibilities, and lack of free time.

Interestingly enough, some of my searching techniques are similar to teenagers. According to the article “How Teens Do Research in the Digital World,” teenagers often want to find answers quickly, lack patience and persistence when searching topics, and conduct searches based on questions. This occasionally occurs during my research as well. Another issue with teens doing research is that results can be reiterations of similar content. Debbie Abilock recommends using the method of triangulation to avoid this. Triangulation involves locating three different points of view pertaining to a topic.

Having been born in 1976, I’ve been labeled as a member of Generation X, arguably the greatest name for a generation since “The Greatest Generation.” People with birth dates beginning in 1993 are known as the Google Generation. Those born during this year and the years after have never known a world without the internet. Their first stop for information: “Okay Google.”

With the advancement of the internet, Google searches have become an integral element of our daily lives too. From checking weather, to ordering toilet paper, to consuming news, to connecting with friends, to researching any possible topic; the internet has become an element we can’t live without. I guess that makes us all adopted members of the Google Generation.

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I don’t mean to be Captain Obvious, but I’m sure we all have experienced the overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips when we are online. Having watched Infowhelm, I now have an understanding for why I have this feeling. This video shares an interesting perspective of the amount of information that is stored on the web. I3 stacks of books to Pluto if all was printed! (How many pages per book?) With so much “information” coming at us through social media, blogs, podcasts, emails, videos, etc., how do we discern facts from “alternative facts,” relevant from irrelevant, worthy of digesting from junk?

To some degree we all have strategies for guiding us through this process. As teachers with limited time, finding efficient strategies is necessary. To this purpose, I found Byan Alexander’s article regarding “info wrangling” extremely relevant. His system of receiving “inputs” from various sources, reflecting on that information, and then sharing thoughtful reflections tackles this filtering of information. However, his depth of “inputs” is extreme for me. Narrowing down these inputs to a handful of quality sources seems more effective. Karen Lirenman in The Journey from Digital Literacy to Digital Fluency discusses her success using Twitter. As Lirenman built her PLN on Twitter, she discovered a wealth of inspiration from like-minded educators. She also embraced one main element discussed in Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning, and that is that you should embrace failures.

Upon reading Karen Lirenman’s article, I found that she has ideas related to my goals. She states that she is “gaining knowledge, and looking for ways to tweak the growth of others to better suit my own growth,” and “trying to be the innovator instead of the follower.” I share the same desires.

FRIT 7234 Post 1

FRIT 7234 First Task

I must say that I’m pretty excited to get going with my classes this semester.  In particular, I’m looking forward to learning about new web 2.0 tools that I have yet discovered….and learning about them at the pool.  

With this being said, I need to create some goals for my Information Fluency & Inquiry Learning class.  Upon reading through the class syllabus and spending some time thinking about what I would like to achieve, I have created the following goals.  

1) At the end of the summer semester I will have established a platform upon which to build my professional learning network

2) At the end of the summer semester I will be able to identify and use four new web 2.0 tools for improving my professional learning network

3) At the end of the summer semester I will be able to infuse newly acquired knowledge into weekly lessons through the 2018-2019 school year to improve the learning of ALL students.