This year, both the ISB21 team and the Learning Coaches team have decided to do something different with our team meeting time. Sure, we’ll still handle nuts and bolts, work on our team goals, and collaborate to move our school forward, but we’ve also added something new: a book club.
At the end of last year, we started realizing that we are all doing a lot of professional reading, but we weren’t spending a lot of time discussing what we were leaning in depth because we were all reading something different (and because our meetings were so jam-packed already). So, we’re going to streamline things a little bit this year.
Inspired by Lee Kolbert’s online book discussions using Shelfari and Scott McLeod’sannual summer book club, we thought it would be most productive to devote one meeting a month to our reading. Instead of trying to do everything every meeting, we’re going to rotate topics each week: one week focusing on nuts and bolts, one week on team goals, one week on our collaborative projects, and one week on our book club.
Each month we’ll read one chapter of the book and one member of the team will be responsible for facilitating a discussion about our learning. Hopefully, we’ll be able to:
reflect on our reading to help us apply our learning and deepen our understanding;
make connections as a group that might not have sprung to mind if we were reading alone;
have a common base of understanding, which may help propel us to action, instead of feeling isolated or overwhelmed;
practice what we preach in the classroom, we’re always asking our students to discuss their reading, now it’s our turn!
In addition to the offline reading, we’ve set up a common tag for our coaching team and we’ve all subscribed to the RSS feed (and posted it on our team wiki and Moodle course). Each book club we’ll spend a little bit of time sharing our thoughts on the resources we’ve tagged.
I’m really excited to get started. I love that we’ve prioritized learning during our meeting time instead of allowing ourselves to get bogged down with daily business (so much of which can be handled in other ways).I also think it’s great that we’re making sure to read both online and print material. I’m sure we’ll end up using the Moodle discussion forums to keep our conversations going outside of team meeting time as well. I must admit, I think this is the first time I’ve ever been on a team (or should I say two!) that is so devoted to learning.
Does anyone else spend team meeting time in a book club? What did you think? What made it work? What are some pitfalls to avoid?
Living overseas in non-English speaking countries, I tend to stock up on books whenever I’m back in the US. Usually I start my Amazon order as soon as the school year starts (August/September), adding books for months, before I finally purchase sometime in May, scheduled to arrive at my parents’ house just in time for my annual visit. Of course, this monster order fluctuates throughout the year because I can usually find some of the more popular books here in my favorite bookstore, Kinokuniya.
All of this stockpiling usually leads to a heavy bookshelf (or two) bulging with books waiting to be read throughout the year. Unfortunately, I almost never get through all of them in one school year, but I love seeing them there, waiting to be read, so that when I finally have my chance, I’m usually so excited I devour them in days (most likely when we’re lounging at the beach during holidays).
As usual, I have a selection of books on display again this school year, a few of which I’ve been able to read during holidays, but many are still waiting for the perfect moment. Here are some highlights of what I’ve got on the shelf:
So, you can imagine how pleased I was to read the following on the very first page of The Black Swan:
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of those books have you read?” and the others – a very small minority – who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market will allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.
When I arrived at ISB last year, one of the first major projects I started with two of our wonderful grade 5 teachers was student blogging (um, and did I mention that we started blogging at the same time as participating in Chris Craft’sLife ‘Round Heredigital storytelling project?). I had come from a middle school position where every student in the school (grades six – eight) had their own individual student blog and was ready to continue that experience here.
What I didn’t know was that none of the teachers or students really had any experience blogging prior to my arrival (oops!). So, while they (both the teachers and the students) were absolutely fantastic at going with the flow and experimenting, I realized quite quickly that individual student blogs may not be the appropriate “first step” into the world of web 2.0 – especially at the elementary level.
So, over the course of last year I started to figure out an easier, more approachable, entry into participatory writing and reading online. I started with a grade 3 class, whose teacher, Betsy, was so flexible and ready to learn with me that we had so much fun getting this started with her students.
After that much more successful, and far less stressful, experience with Betsy’s class, I knew it wouldn’t be long before another teacher wanted to try something similar. And, just as I expected, my amazingly collaborative colleague, Sonja, approached me at the very beginning of this year to start a reading and writing project with her grade 4 students.
We started off much the same as last year’s grade 3 class, with one important difference: we focused on the importance of quality commenting before we gave the students their usernames and passwords for the class blog. We spent several lessons exploring our blogging buddies blogs, learning how to write an appropriate and fair comment, and building our understanding of blogging as conversation.
Interestingly, as soon as this class got started with their collaborative blog, more and more teachers have been asking me to help them set up a blog with their class. Just this week, I helped another fourth grade teacher, Kristen, set up her class blog and was amazed at how quickly her students were able to pick up the basics. At this point, I’ve got the introduction to blogging organized into five lessons (slightly revamped from last year’s version):
Lesson One:
For our first lesson we spent some time examining other quality blogs, looking mostly at Anne Davis’ excellent Blogging: It’s Elementary WebQuest (just for the blog links, mostly). Each table group had a chance to look at one of the blogs listed on the process page and followed a Visible Thinking routine called: See, Think, Wonder. Each time we had a focused discussion at the table groups (starting with the question: What do you see?) we came back to the full-class and shared our observations, thoughts and wonderings. This was a great way to help students understand the basics of a blog and the concept of blogging as writing.
At the end of this first lesson we developed a list of things we know about blogs:
Blogging is free
People can leave comments on a blog post
People can see other people’s comments on a blog post
If you are the author of a blog, you can edit or delete anything on the blog as long as you have the correct username and password
A lot of blogs have things in common: pictures, comments, links, dates, archives, calendar, videos, opinions, recent posts, author’s name, conversations
A blog is like a website EXCEPT that blogs invite conversation, opinions and ideas while websites usually just tell their ideas without any feedback
Even though many blogs have the same features, they have different information
Authors put links on their blog because they think their readers will like them
Blogging is like a conversation with other people – some people you might know, some people you might not know
Bloggers want their reader’s opinions
Everyone in the world can see our blog
Blogging is reading and writing
Lesson Two:
For our second and third lessons, we watched two public service announcements from the US. We start with a PSA called the Bulletin Board to focus on online safety:
We watch the video all the way through once, then have a “turn and talk” moment to see what we understand about the video after the first viewing. Next we watch the video very slowly, stopping at every event to check for understanding. Again we have a “turn and talk” moment for students to share their revised understanding. Finally, we watch the video all the way through and share what we’ve learned. We start creating a class list of questions we can ask ourselves before we post and things to remember about staying safe online, which will be finished after watching the second video during lesson 3.
Lesson 3:
This lesson focuses on responsible behavior and discussion is prompted by the PSA called The Talent Show:
We follow the same procedure as the second lesson, watching once all the way through, then stopping to ensure understanding and finishing with a full run through. At the end of this lesson, we complete our class list of questions to ask ourselves before we post anything online. Here is what grade 4 developed:
How will this affect my reputation (what people think of me)?
What will my friends or family think about me after they read (or see) this post?
Could someone find me (in real life) based on this information?
Who is going to look at this, and how are they going to interpret my words?
Is this inappropriate, immature or bullying?
Could I hurt someone else’s feelings with this post?
Would I say this to the person’s face?
What could be the consequences of this post?
What will I cause by writing this post? Be culturally sensitive.
Would I want someone to say this to me?
Do I have a good reason/purpose to do this?
Is this something I want everyone to see?
We also make a quick list of safety and responsibility tips to help us remember to follow the blogging guidelines outlined in our permission slip. Here is what grade 4 came up with:
Only post things that you would want everyone (in school, at home, in other countries) to know
Think about the future – what will people think a few days, weeks, months from now, if they read your post;
Don’t share personal information like: last name, mom’s maiden name, address, telephone number, password, birthdate, username, passport information, license plate number, picture of your face, full name of yourself or your friends
Choose a complicated password for others, but easy for you to remember
Think before you post
Use only your first or an avatar (made up name that represents you)
Don’t talk to strangers. Get a parent or an older brother or sister to help you.
Only say nice things about other people.
Treat other people the way you want to be treated.
If you think you will regret it, don’t post it
If you wouldn’t say it to a person’s face, do not post it online
Use appropriate language and good grammar and spelling
Think about your readers feelings (embarrassing) when you post online
Be culturally sensitive
Only post things that you can verify are true (no gossiping)
Lesson 4:
We usually model the process of writing a good comment, and then create a comment as a piece of shared writing with the class. After this process we develop our own list of quality comment characteristics. Here is what one grade 4 class came up with:
Constructive, but not hurtful
Think about the author and their purpose for their post before leaving a comment
Comments are always related to the content of the post
Personal connections to what the author wrote
Answer a question, or add meaningful information to the content topic
Follows the writing process – it’s like a mini piece of writing.
Use a comment sandwich: start with a positive, add constructive feedback, then finish with a positive.
Make your comment sandwich thick and tasty! Lots of meaningful, meaty thoughts that relate directly the content of the post to keep the blogger satisfied!
I love the idea of creating a comment sandwich – having the visual for the students has been extremely powerful, and focusing on commenting as part of the writing process has improved their commenting considerably (not as many “good job” posts as we had last year).
Lesson 5:
Once students are comfortable with the process of leaving meaningful comments, and have returned their parental permission slip, we introduce them to the actual process of writing blog posts. The basics of logging in, creating a new post, putting your post in the category for your name, and submitting for review. Usually we have the first post be a short introduction to the student.
I love the fact that having a category for each student makes it appear as if each student has their own blog (by listing the name categories in the sidebar) and that no posts will be published until the teacher can approve them after moderation. Such an easy and safe way to begin blogging!
That’s it! That’s how we’re starting to set up class blogs in grades 4 and 5 at ISB. So far we have 6 different classes set up:
I’m sure this is just the beginning! Most of these classes have already decided that if and when students are ready, they will be given the option to have their own individual blog.
Our next steps:
One thing that we still need to work out is how to embed the practice of blogging into the daily routine. We work with laptop carts – four per grade level, 12 laptops per cart – so teachers do not have 1:1 access and often have to schedule specific time with the carts. The organization and pre-planning necessary to naturally and easily use the tools can be cumbersome and frustrating for some teachers. Right now we’re thinking about using a rotational strategy – allowing small groups to use the laptops each day for regular reading and writing online.
Anyone have any thoughts on how to introduce blogging to elementary students? Or how to make rotational blogging and commenting practical and realistic for our teachers?
Mac Youngin by shapeshift
Playing on the Computer by fd
“…their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.” – Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.”
“When technology shifts, it bends the culture. Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word. The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book.
Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.”
Along with an older article from the New York Times,
“Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.
Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
It’s interesting to see more established publications trying to document and understand this shift in literacy, especially considering that many people still believe that literacy is solely being able to read and write in printed form.
This is something I would like to bring to our discussions of reading and writing at ISB. Although I make an effort to bookmark everything I come across, I’m sure I’ve missed quite a bit.
Do you have any resources, especially from more “established” or “traditional” media outlets, to share? I’m looking specifically for concrete, research-based (like this BECTA report or this recent MacArthur Report), examples or articles that would help people outside the educational technology field better understand this shift.
What are your thoughts on the concept of literacy? Does your school have a definition that reflects our changing and expanding understanding of literacy?
Over the past two and a half years I’ve been focusing on helping teachers make connections with other classes around the world. For the most part, our collaborations have been about general topics – book reports, water, persuasive writing, enhancing oral language, things that almost any classroom teacher would be able to connect with, and they’ve been great!
But this year, inspired by Clarence Fisher’s ThinWalls project, I’m looking for something new, something deeper. A real connection based on shared goals and common assessments. Something that will last longer than your average globally collaborative project. A classroom connection, based on specific curricular needs, that will last an entire school year.
I’m fortunate to be working with so many wonderful teachers at ISB and around the world that are willing to be patient and wait until we find just the rightclasseswithjusttherightneeds. They are willing to build these collaborations from the ground up, focusing on student learning, and taking the time to plan meaningful and authentic experiences for all involved.
In order to ensure that all classrooms involved share the same goal for the project, we are following the Understanding by Design model of curriculum planning. And to make sure that we’re all in it from the ground up, we’re planning via a Google Doc. Although I’ve used Google Docs at school with team members a lot, I haven’t yet used them for curriculum planning across time zones and schools. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works out.
So far, all of the project participants are listed on the Doc, with contact info and class details carefully noted. We have determined the basic focus of the unit and are starting to share tips and advice with each other. Over time, I’d love to use the Doc (or a Calendar) to plan common events or activities.
For example, here is what we have so far for this project (all a work in progress):
Enduring Understandings:
Good readers use strategies to deepen their understanding.
Good readers read fluently and with expression, paying particular attention to the conventions of grammar.
Authentic audiences encourage good reading and writing.
Collaboration and communication both inside and outside the classroom will prepare students for being productive citizens within our global society.
Essential Questions:
How do I use reading strategies to deepen my understanding?
Why is fluency important?
How does my audience influence or affect my reading and writing?
How does collaborating with others help me to learn?
Assessment:
Student self reflection
Teacher self reflection
Class blog as portfolio
GRASPS Task:
Goal: Your goal is to entertain your audience with personal stories about reading strategies
Role: Broadcasting team: On-Air Personality/Show Host, Producer, Writers, Mixing Team, Manager
Audience: Peers at ISB, both younger and same-age, partner classes around the world
Situation: You need to teach your audience effective reading strategies
Purpose: To collaborate with your team to effectively communicate reading strategies to a wide audience
Supporting activities ideas to build understanding (brainstorm):
commenting quality – rubric for commenting
specific points in the year where you pick an earlier piece of writing that you rework and link back to old version to see the growth
Planned activities to support learning (brainstorm):
Introduction to online safety
Introduction to blogging
Introduction to GarageBand/Audacity
Podcasting a written piece for fluency
Posting a podcast
Read a story from a book for practicing fluency to be podcast later
Developing quality commenting skills
Collaborative teaming to develop a podcast focused on reading strategies
Reflective pieces of writing on the blog
I love the idea of being able to plan a curricular unit for several classes all from one Google Doc. This is my idea of collaboration – everyone literally on the same page and working towards the same goals. Although I’ve done quite a few of these projects before, I usually ended coordinating via e-mail and never really “flattening” the planning process – I inadvertently usually had all planning go through me.
This type of process, with the project clearly outlined, is the way I would normally plan a project with a classroom teacher face-to-face. How amazing and easy it is to now do the same thing, anytime, anywhere, with a Google Doc!
I’m hoping that this transparency in planning, and the clarity in goals for the unit, will help us stay focused throughout the year and enable us to dig deeper with our students.
What do you think? Have you ever used a Google Doc to plan this way? Have you ever had shared curricular goals that are ongoing throughout the year with another class, in another country? How did it go?
I just had a fantastic meeting with two of our wonderful grade 5 teachers, Sandra and Diane, to brainstorm ways to naturally embed 21st century literacy skills into our (Lucy Caulkins) Readers’ Workshop (RW) units of study for next school year (Reading is a school focus for next year). The grade 5 team is looking for easy ways to promote student discussion about reading strategies and to deepen their conversations about the content they are learning while they’re reading.
Here’s what we came up with (and I would love to hear feedback):
The grade 5 students will create a Students Teaching Students podcast focused on helping other students learn and use quality strategies for reading. This is an educational podcast teaching other students how to become good readers using RW strategies that they learn over the course of the year.
This strand will continue throughout the whole school year with different sections of grade 5 (we have 7 grade 5 classes) leading different units of RW. All podcasts can be uploaded onto a common 5th grade reading-focused blog and added to iTunes for parents and other teachers to subscribe. The podcasts can also be shared with the 4th and 3rd grades so we have a built-in authentic audience (and we help vertical articulation too!). The project will be started with our first RW unit and continue throughout the year.
To allow for new teachers (we will have 4 new grade 5 teachers next year) to get comfortable with the process, we can differentiate: some classes can start with just listening to the podcasts, then when ready, students come in as “guest stars/speakers” on the “show,” eventually we can have many facilitators from all classes.
The project can be broken into 3 stages:
Stage 1: Focus on strategies.
Students Teaching Students podcast begins with 1 or 2 of our grade 5 classes to develop strong student facilitators and provide a model for good student-produced podcasts at ISB. The first stage is to focus on what strategies they are learning in RW and teach other students how the strategies help them become good readers. This can be a regular, short, podcast focusing on the critical aspects of RW they learn each week – the podcast station can be set up as a “center” in the classroom.
Stage 2: Focus on the content being learned in RW.
Have “guest stars/speakers” from other classrooms on the “show” to talk about the content they are reading and how they use different strategies to learn through reading. Student facilitators from the first two participating classes will lead these discussions on a weekly basis.
For this to work well, we will need to develop common prompts, thinking strategies and questions so that students will have a “handbook” for excellent podcasts. Eventually this could be entirely managed by students.
Stage 3: Focus on building excitement about reading.
Add book talks, book reviews, etc, using these same tools (or perhaps VoiceThread and other tools) to deepen learning about content, to make connections to other student readers, and to share more about what we’re reading. Start regularly connecting with students in other schools around the world to discuss and improve reading skills and strategies.
What do you think? How can we make this idea even better? Has this already been done (which would give me a great model to start from)? All feedback appreciated!
You can find out more about my professional experiences at my electronic portfolio, which I share with my husband, Alex, an ESL/English teacher. Or, if you prefer, you can visit:
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Please note: the views expressed here are my own and in no way represent the views of my employer.
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What I didn’t know was that none of the teachers or students really had any experience blogging prior to my arrival (oops!). So, while they (both the teachers and the students) were absolutely fantastic at going with the flow and experimenting, I realized quite quickly that individual student blogs may not be the appropriate “first step” into the world of web 2.0 – especially at the elementary level.
After that much more successful, and far less stressful, experience with Betsy’s class, I knew it wouldn’t be long before another teacher wanted to try something similar. And, just as I expected, my amazingly collaborative colleague, 
Hi! My name is Kim Cofino. 
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