Remote Teaching Journey -- Assumptions and Conversations

 

One of my new routines for this year is link to the CNN10 news for the day in an open Google doc with a table where my scholars can add their name, plus their noticing and wondering.

The first day I added this to our schedule (Thursday this week), there was a story about housing in LA and how homeowners are converting two car garages into apartments. I made the assumption that this would not be an engaging part of the news show for 10 year-olds, but recommended it as connected to our social studies standards on the topic of Economics.

In our end-of-day Google Meet, I shared how surprised I was that many had connected with that news story in their notice/wonders. One girl piped up that she found it fascinating because she wants to be an architect. Another loved that people did this not just for the money, but to help people have a home near their work.

Lesson: Never Assume.

In a writing workshop lesson under the doc camera, we began creating our identity webs this week. As I made mine, I talked about identity as the story we tell about ourselves. When I meet someone new, one part of my story often begins with, "I am a teacher." 

I went on to explain that identity is also the things about us that people see, and I added "woman" and "kind of old" and "white skin" to my identity web. I explained that I often don't think of my identity of "woman" until I am in a place where that stands out, at the car repair shop, for instance, where I am likely the only woman there. I encouraged them to think of the parts of their identity that others see.

On Friday, we watched this video about Ibtihaj Muhammad, which led to conversations about the meaning of the words stereotype and bias, and then I read aloud The Proudest Blue. 

Lesson: My commitment to be an antiracist teacher will not be revealed in big splashy announcements about my commitment, but rather in all the small conversations we will have (planned and unplanned) throughout the year. Being an antiracist teacher is a way of life, not a lesson plan.

Thoughts on Teaching & Learning: Creating a Time Capsule

Over the past several weeks, I have found myself doing a lot of reflection trying to get this online teaching right.  I keep meaning to get my thoughts on paper but then get caught up in the day-to-day work of teaching in this pandemic era.  I know if I can catch my breath, there is a lot to learn and reflect on during this time. So, I decided that every day in May, I will share my thoughts on Teaching and Learning.  This is Day 8.

I've been thinking about how to help students capture this time in their life, without adding to the stress they may or may not be experiencing at home. I want to make sure that the have the opportunity to think and  make sense of all they are feeling if that is something that would be helpful for them right now. If I have learned one thing as a teacher for over 30 years, it is that students are ready to deal with things at different times and in different ways. I never want to push a child to deal with something difficult with an assignment that they are not ready to deal with.

So this week, I decided to assign a Time Capsule assignment for Social Studies.  I think this is an interesting way to have students think about how we learn about history and about primary sources of information. I know there are lots of prepackaged Time Capsule ideas out there but I wanted it to be more open-ended as I wasn't sure what each student would want to do.

So this week, I shared this assignment with students. (You probably won't be able to access the sound but you'll get the idea:-)

 I can tell by our informal conversations before read aloud today that students are really thinking hard about what to include and we've already had some great conversations around that.  Students talked about including special events that they've celebrated at home and capturing those in some way. Some students talked about including things they've learned and made. Some have been thinking about writing they may include. Some have considered what to include to show that schools were closed and learning was online.  Many were worried that they have to share this next week (our school year ends in 8 school days) and we talked about making this a living thing until the pandemic or the school closings are over.  That of course they might add things over the summer and many seemed very excited about that which tells me they see a real life purpose to this--a reason to do it beyond because it is a school assignment.

I have been thinking about what I would include in my Time Capsule if I end up creating one. I have many ideas and creating a time capsule reminds me a little bit of notebook writing--you live your life differently inside this piece of history, when you are constantly awake to what you might include, what is important to capture during these days at home. I am sure I'll get many more ideas as kids share their time capsules next week. 

Conversations About Community in 3rd Grade

A big theme in our Social Studies curriculum is Community.  I kicked off the study this week, I introduced the idea of community and the idea of learning community as an introduction to this yearlong study.  I wanted to have these conversations and this thinking started before we move into the content of local government, community resources, etc.  When we started our conversation, kids shared all they knew about community. I want them to understand the citizenship part of community--that everyone does his/her part and everyone works toward community goals while individuals still have more personal goals.  At the beginning of the conversation, kids seemed to know the content stuff of community (neighborhoods, parks, people, rules and laws) at a basic level which gave us a great start to our conversation.  Then we moved on.

I shared two pieces with the students that first day.  I wanted them to reframe their thinking a bit to think about what made a community work.  I told them I was going to share two pieces as part of our discussion about community and then we'd talk about how those tied in. I wanted them to use these as ways to add to their understanding of what makes a community.  These two pieces provided an amazing conversation about community and what it means to be part of a community.

Following this video conversation, I read the picture book The Little Hummingbird (Ann Marie) by Michael Nicoll Yahgulhanaas.  (Thanks Ann Marie Corgill for this recommendation!) This is a powerful story about a little hummingbird doing his part in the community.

These two pieces provided just the right stories for a great beginning conversation to add new thinking about their understandings of community.

The next day, we read What If Everybody Did That? by Ellen Javernick. This was a quick read that reminds us why we have rules by taking readers into different settings, thinking about not following a rule, and asking, "What if everybody did that?"  We then talked about all of the communities we are a part of and how each had their own goals, rules, etc. Kids mentioned school, sports teams, churches, neighborhoods, our city, etc.

On Day 3 of our conversation, I paired 2 other videos to share with students. I wanted to really focus on the idea of a Learning Community and how members of a community support one another.  This conversation also included goal setting.

We watched this amazing video from Pernille Ripp's 5th grade classroom: My Students' Classroom Vision. At the end of the clip, one of my students said, "I loved that video. It was the best." It was very powerful for them. We followed up with a conversation about being brave, being part of a learning community, individual goals, and community goals. I shared my own experiences--about how it was easy for me to meet a reading goal, as it was easy for me and I loved to read. But it was brave of me to set a running goal and to put myself out there when running was something I had to work hard at.  How the book I am writing is something that has been hard for me lately and it takes some brave to not just quit.  How when we know each others' goals (as in any community) it is easier to help each other meet them.   It was all very informal but thoughtful.  

I followed up with a clip of Kristin Chenoweth which I loved (I used the one with Kellee instead but like this one better.)

We talked about how Kristen Chenoweth was so good and how she celebrated this guest who was amazing. She cheered for her and was so happy that she was so amazing. How that says a lot about Kristen--she loves seeing others do well. Kids immediately talked about ways they support others and cheer them on when they are successful. They were as interested in Kristen as they were in the friends who must have been filming and wooohoooing throughout.

Finally, on Thursday I shared The Butterfly Video.  Thanks to Steve Peterson who shared this clip with me in a blog comment last week! It is brilliant and it fit in perfectly with the week's conversations.  Again, kids were glued.

Austin's Butterfly: Building Excellence in Student Work - Models, Critique, and Descriptive Feedback from Expeditionary Learning on Vimeo.

My favorite part of the follow-up conversation was the mention that, "Mrs. Christine, our art teacher would love this clip. Has she seen it?  I wonder if she has to do more than one draft? Does she get things right on the first try?"  We decided to email her the link to the video and our question right then. Of course she emailed back to let us know that, yes, she does many drafts for lots of things, even as an art teacher:-)

This week's conversations around community were really important for many reasons. I think the kids will understand the bigger communities of city, state, world, etc. because they have thought so much about their own communities. They understand that people make up a community and that our classroom is a community, a learning community.  They have a role to play in the community--for themselves and for the good of the group.

I can already tell that these videos and books have made an impact.  They keep coming up in conversation and I imagine they will continue to. Just like Caine's arcade, I imagine a few will become anchors for the year. Glad we began our conversation like this and am looking forward to the way the conversation evolves over the next eight months.

Social Studies and Science in Literature

Miss Rumphius has been thinking lots about how and when (and if) we teach science and social studies in elementary classrooms, which books might be best for instruction in these areas (math, too), and the power of letting kids play outside.

Here's some good news from my 5th grade classroom on all of those topics:

Before break, my students planted terrariums as a part of their environments unit in science. Every group got the same size container, the same amount of soil and the same kind and number of seeds. Each container got roughly the same amount of light. The variables in this experiment were how they planted the seeds and how much water they gave their seeds. We did observations sporadically and in no consistent format. I told them to date each entry, to write down how much they were watering, and to measure their new plants, but it became obvious that they didn't always take accurate notes. They also experimented with ways to keep their observations: on paper in their Environments Journal, with words in the Memos application on their handhelds, with pictures drawn in the Notepad application on their handhelds, with photos taken with the digital camera on their handhelds, or some combination of methods. When they tried to graph the amounts and dates they had watered the first terrariums, and the growth of their plants, it became clear to them that consistent, regular observations are important if you are going to do anything with your data!

After considering the biotic and abiotic factors in their terrariums, the students made plans for new, more successful terrariums to be planted after break. They also insisted on a regular schedule for observations, and we will create an observation form so that they are sure to gather all the information they will need when it comes time to share the results of their new experiment.

Sometimes, no matter how much instructional time it takes, it's important to deliberately plan for a failure so that students have the opportunity to do an experiment over again and improve their methods. (No, I didn't tell them that I planned for the first terrarium experiment to fail!! Sometimes it's also important to keep your teaching cards hidden!)

To give them a bigger example of the fact that science is not a tidy, works-the-way-you-planned kind of discipline, I read Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! by Kathleen Kudlinkski. I also want them to know that science is not DONE. There will be lots left to explore and discover when they grow up and become scientists.

I also read them A Seed is Sleepy and An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston. I asked them where they thought these books should be shelved in a library: fiction? nonfiction? science? gardens? birds? My students were in agreement that the two are nonfiction because of the inclusion of facts in the captions, but neither is the kind of book you would use to do research. Both books sparked lots of great discussion. At one point I was reminded of Scrotumgate. A student said humans don't have eggs. I corrected him and said that human females do indeed have eggs, and the student interrupted me to say, "yes, in their stomachs." No, I told him, not in our stomachs (that's where we digest food), in our ovaries. At a swift pace to head off any goofy embarrassment, I reminded them that even flowering plants have ovules and ovaries -- we learned that when we dissected flowers in 4th grade. The large picture of a chicken embryo in an egg caused another student to worry that he was eating baby chickens when he ate eggs, so we talked about the difference between a fertilized and an unfertilized egg. And then, thank goodness, it was time for P.E.!

About 1/3 of my class is involved in a weekly science enrichment pull-out. The rest of the class is working on a project for our preschool and kindergarten classes. I named the project "I See Science." We are taking pictures of anywhere in our everyday environments where we see science. (After another week or two of gathering pictures, we will create a picture book or multimedia project to share with the little kids.) An electrical outlet (the study of electricity), the geranium (biology), computers (computer science). Last week we took our cameras outside. We saw bumblebees, mud wasp nests, hyacinths blooming, a preying mantis egg case, chickadees, and budding trees and bushes. On the playground equipment, we found simple machines: ramps and pendulums and screws. I think they're getting the idea that wherever you look, you see science!

Rather than trying to cram the rest of this year's social studies content into the three weeks after break (before testing), I am going to use historical fiction (Blood on the River: James Town 1607 is our current read aloud), short nonfiction, and some videos and dvds to provide an overview of the remaining topics to build background knowledge that will help me to TEACH the concepts required by the state (after testing) rather than just COVERING the material (before testing). I'm really excited to share a book I found last week at Cover to Cover: Everybody's Revolution: A New Look at the People Who Won America's Freedom by Thomas Fleming. This book is full of great pictures, the text is very accessible, and his premise is perfect for my multicultural, multilingual classroom: What does the American Revolution have to do with me? Fleming highlights the contributions to the American Revolution of immigrants, blacks, Native Americans, women and children.

So that's my (rather windy) answer to the study that says we're not teaching science and social studies and our kids rarely get a chance to think.