Sway Summary Synthesis

Blended learning is more that tech integration; it is about tailoring or allowing students some control  to meet needs of diverse learners. Students benefit with explicit instruction about how to find the right Lexile levels for them with Newsela, Readworks, and/or Common Lit.

For the lesson below, ability grouping works well for partners or groups. When working

collaboratively, those discussions about the task model the internal discussions students will need to have in future independent work.

Google classroom? Use Google Slides!

1. Students select an article from a source. You can give specific text sets in Newsela to focus discussion on text that supports current novel being read.

2. Group reads, making notes for a GIST summary of who, what, where, when, why, how and then write a 20 word GIST. Blended learning involves online instruction: create a video modelling GIST summarizing with a common text.

3. Students create a collaborative Sway for the 5W and H and 20 word GIST. Since it is collaborative, they can all work on it at the same time. 

4. Students share in a discussion board in an LMS or a platform like Edmodo.

5. Students critique at least 2 articles. Reading the article, viewing the Sway, and responding with one of the stems:

• The summary needs more information about...
• The summary is strong because...
• I want to learn more about...
• This reminds me of...

6. Groups go back to revise Sway. 

Use template below if you wish! Have students click on website link and save to their own Office 365 account. 

A huge shout out to JMozi for being the perfect fellow ELA tech educator to collaborate with! Philosophical alignment + different enough brains to build upon each other + a mutual respect = this lesson we co-created!

Homework Alternative in a Learning Management System

New technology creates new opportunities, but how can we keep  ourselves from taking the technology and merely converting paper and pen tasks into digital ink? How can we use features in an LMS to change what we do, not just how we do things?

There are a couple key features to LMSs that offer an opportunity to embrace new and prepare students with 21st Century Skills.

Discussion Boards:
For a homework passage have students write 2 questions and 1 reponse on the text. Set the discussion board so that way students can't read anyone else's questions until they post their first question. This will keep them from merely copying questions. Additionally, if you see the same first question popping up from students, you know there was something confusing. Questions can be a variety: something they were genuinely confused by, something they are curious about that while related to the reading requires research, or an open ended question they think would stimulate conversation.

Model these three types in class and they request they do two different types. Provide sentence stems or sentence frames to help ELL or struggling students.

Something that you didn't understand:
I was confused when .... What did that mean?
Why did ....?
How did...?
What did the author mean by...?

Something that requires research:
I wonder....
How do you think...?


Open-ended questions examples:
Does this remind you of something from real life/literature?
Which character do you identify with and why?

Inforgraphics Made Easy

Easel.ly not only provides students with easy to create inforgraphics perfect for the classroom, it also provides teachers a very handy e-book guide. The guide shows teachers how to set up groups for students to login without providing an email address. All you have to do is create a login and they send you a link.

Additional tips and ideas:

• Have students start with a template if they have not had infographic-making experience
  
• There is already a place to insert a list of resources. My favorite resource for students to create MLA format is Purdue's OWL Lab.*
• Encourage students to link images and information back to their source material 
• Because students can get bogged down altering the aesthetics, create a classroom procedure of needing teacher approval before playing with color schemes and extras
• Because some tech- and content-savvy students finish early, I like to offer lesson add-ons for students. These are challenges for students to take and incorporate into their projects. It gives students another skill, keeps them engaged, and won't result in kids trying to rush through their work to get the opportunity to play a computer game. These are sort of like those 5 minute filler lessons that we teachers have when a class finishes a lesson early, but individualized. A great add-on for Easel.ly is asking students to Blabberize on of their images. They create the Blabberize and then hyperlink the image on the Easel.ly to the Blabberize. Students could also create a Vocaroo to hyperlink. 

*I know that many people like Easy Bib or Citation Machine, but I find that students tend to still have errors in their bibliographies AND no understanding of how to read the information in the bibliography. If I want my students to be able to use bibliographies as readers, I have to teach them how to write them. I would personally rather a student make an error in a bibliography entry they wrote than an error is one from Easy Bib. Just my two cents for my middle school ELA classroom.

Using Plickers for Status of the Class

Nancie Atwell's status of the class for determining which children are in which stages of the writing process can be applied to any class in which there is a multi-day and multi-step assignment.

You can create a Plicker question to represent the status options or create a blank Plicker question and ask it
on the fly. Use in art class, for PBL, writing workshop, etc.

It lets you instantly prioritize checking in/conferences, see if there are larger issues, and proactively take care of concerns before things spiral out of control. Additionally, if students need to peer conference, you have in your hand which students are looking for that and can pair them up easily.

Choose Your Own Adventure Prewriting Lesson 5: Submitting

How to get a word count for Power Point

It is hard to get an accurate word count for PowerPoint. A quick search of the Internet shows that the

suggested method of selecting the file's properties and then looking in details is inaccurate. However, since I asked for a minimum of 1000 words for the presentation and I wanted it ran through turnitin.com, I wanted to make sure I could get the word count receipt.

Students need only convert the PPT to PDF and then submit the PDF to turnitin.com.* It will check the originality and count every word. Students turn in the receipt and the actual presentation to Edmodo.

*I checked turnitin.com with a simple submission of the PowerPoint presentation without it being converted to PDF and it reflected the same word count found when using the properties feature.

Example from PPT using word count the properties>details feature vs. converting to PDF and using turnitin.com: 

Word count using properties: 50

Word count using PDF version on Turnitin.com: 1,728

Choose Your Own Adventure Revising and Editing Lesson 4: Beta Testing

After students complete the presentation, students participated in "Beta Testing" which is similar to the conferencing and revising found in writing workshop.

Each presentation needed two people to beta testers. I had them fill out a beta testing form:

Beta Testing

Owner of the presentation: Set your presentation to presentation mode.

Beta tester: click through the presentation. If you need to uncover a slide number, you can press the ESC key, record the number, and then resume presentation from that slide

Does the PPT have 2 deviations (5 for partners)?

Does the PPT have 3 themes that seem accurate (6 for partners?)

Issues with hyperlinks: (ex: it doesn’t work, description doesn’t lead you to the slide that would make sense, etc.)

Accuracy issues:

Spelling or grammar issues (make sure to include slide numbers!):

Areas where you would like more details, info, imagery, dialogue (this may  not be for everyone, but you should especially let people know if their storylines feel skimpy)

Choose Your Own Adventure Formatting and Drafting Lesson 3: Set up PPT, Hyperlinking, Narrative Voice

Now that you finished index cards that follow the plot as well as those that deviate,  it is time to start creating the the PowerPoint, make hyperlinks, and draft.

Choose Your Own Adventure Prewriting Lesson 2: Create deviations from the plot

After completing day one of prewriting, it is on to day two: Deviation day! The kids love playing the "what if?" game and not only get a good dose of creative writing but also are secretly analyzing how those decisions influence theme.

1. In my example, the plot took 8 cards, so I model with my first deviation and have that become card 9. I also show students how, if they want, they could have deviations within deviations.
2. Students determine the new theme. (see my method of teaching theme here)
3. I do make sure each child has only one of each card and lays out their outline to show how it makes sense. 

adding in the deviations

Go to the next day, creating the PowerPoints, linking, and drafting. 

Choose Your Own Adventure Prewriting Lesson 1: Set up the plot

What a way to get kids to work and enjoy themselves at the same time! Students liken this project to writing fanfiction. So many of them are so excited after our first day that they tell me "I can't wait for tomorrow!" In my version, students create Choose Your Own Adventure PowerPoints (Google districts can use Slides, of course) for A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is, to me, a great project for a Shakespeare play. What makes this different than the typical Choose Your Own Adventure is that my students are working from a text they have read, thus making this both creative writing as well as reading comprehension and analysis all in one. 

What Choose Your Own Adventure asks students to do:

- review a plot of the play

- write prose paraphrasing the poetic drama

- show an understanding of the plot following one character

- creatively write deviations from the main plot

- determine a potential theme of the play and how the theme changes if a character's actions change

- use Hyperlinks within a presentation to go to non-linear slides

Overview:

Day 1: create cards for accurate timeline
Day 2: create cards for deviations
Day 3: set up slides and hyperlinks
Day 4: draft accurate timeline
Day 5: draft deviations
Day 6: beta testing with revising
Day 7: submission

Day One:

1. I showed students a couple slides of an example. This gives students the big picture. The
example I use is for Theseus because students have to use a main character and Theseus, being a minor character, works well to model without giving or "stealing" the students' ideas. 

2. Students select a main character and write that name at the top of the paper. 

3. Students write a chronological list of all the decisions that character makes through the play. I encourage my students to use scene summaries and the play itself. I also have them sitting next to people who are doing the same character if they choose. That way they discuss and clarify what happened. I did set the students on a 10 minute timer for this portion so they would not lollygag. 

4. Modeling with my list of options by Theseus, I selected three places where I will have a deviation. The requirement for my students were 2 deviations which leads to 3 separate themes with a total of 1000 words if they worked as individuals and 5 deviations which leads to 6 separate themes with a total of 2000 words if they work in partners. Students selected theirs. I encouraged students who want to do more and make things more complex to do so.

5. With my own index cards I modeled creating just the timeline for what actually happened in the play. I leave the deviations blank. I model a couple cards and then showed the kids my completed set of 8. The rest of the class time was for the kids to finish theirs.  

Don't forget to see what I do Day 2 and Day 3. 

Here are how my example cards looked. I use cards because each card will match up with the PowerPoint slide. 

Cards: red numbers are what the card is,
blue is the card it will link to.
Card 1: title card

Cards are notes/outline.
Deviation Cards: for day 1,
students are only marking the
plot points that actually
 happened.  The blank is where 
the deviation will be filled in later.

Plot Point Cards: sometimes you
have so much information you
will need to split it up over several
 PPT slides or there is a setting
change. That is when you use 1 button.

Final slide includes the theme.

Thinglink to Annotate Tableaus

Inspired by the Royal Shakespeare Company's use of student created tableau to foster close reading, I knew it would be a perfect pairing with Thinglink.

Analyzes movement to connect to motivation

Students select a moment in time to create a freeze frame, snap a picture to create a moment in time from the text, and then annotate the decisions they made in body, facial expression, proximity, and movement. The app is stripped down compared to the website, but it is easy to use with a picture students take of themselves if it is all on one device.

Analyzes proximity to reveal conflict.

The trickiest part is actually on the teacher end. Thinglink limits the amount of groups - 3 - and students - 105. So if you have class sizes like mine and 6 classes, you can't make a group for each class or give every kid a login. I decided to have one student per group request I register. Because the registration produces a dummy e-mail, complex password, and then I have to have students insert the class invite code, there are some steps that the students must take logging in that would not be friendly for younger students, but once they were in and students got into the app, I had very few questions and students were able to work through it fairly quickly.

Citation of lines that show the moment in time.

I also like that this is a shorter assignment. Students did their first one about half a period. I think if we did a second one, we could probably get the kids down to 15 minutes now that they understand how to login and use the app.

Tagxedo to Analyze Diction

I'm a huge fan of diction analysis, and it is for sure an instructional emphasis in my classroom, which can sometimes make it feel redundant when we've been doing it all year long with every conceivable genre. That's the great thing about tech. You can have students do the same thing in tech that you've done in a very similar way on paper and the students don't even notice. The novelty makes the entire assignment feel fresh and creative. Gamification and tech, I've learned, are great ways to trick kids into practicing skills with renewed vigor!

My example created in the video. Super pretty, no? 

The end of the year we have fun with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. What better way to keep the kids engaged than by taking away the desks, putting on some fairy wings, and punning? 

The video pretty much says it all: add any text (I'm having my students pick a monologue from MSND) to Tagxedo , add the word cloud it into a presentation slide or word processor, pick out the 8-12 largest words, determine connections, write analysis for at least 5 of the words answering the question "Why?" - Why is this word being repeated? Why did the author choose this word and not ___?, save as a PDF and upload to whatever platform floats your boat!

QR Code Museum Pieces

Turn your classroom - or school library - into a museum.

Student created art

Students create museum pieces and museum placards that indicate the information required. Perfect for history, prereading for historical novels, or post-reading for self-selected texts where each child can share an artifact from a book.


I wish I could show the kids' faces. There were smiles all around!

Students learn about lutes

Here are the directions for it as I applied it to pre-reading for Midsummer Night's Dream in which students examined the Elizabethan Era - so much better than a lecture from the teacher, right?

How I used this:

Shakespeare Centers (set up in ability groups of 3-5 with two of each type of center runnign concurrently)
Center A: Students participated in Shakespeare Museum
Center B: Students explored The Globe with the Shakespeare's Globe 360 App
Center C: Card Sort - advanced groups paired Shakespearean insults to their 21st century prose versions while struggling students worked on literary terms matched to examples from All the World's a Stage

Using ReadWriteThink to Simplify Differentiation

Instead of lecture on Shakespeare, I devoted two days to research of choice. Students researched 15 interesting things about Shakespeare and his time and got to choose the product they made. Students could make a crossword with Crossword Creator or the Timeline. Simplify the amount of info and make a Cube.

Graphite Blog Post: 5 Ways to Flip Shakespeare

Please follow this link to the blog I wrote for Graphite!

Paper: the free app you never knew you absolutely needed

Paper touts itself as a note taking device - and what snazzy one! - and makes up for the weaknesses of some of the other note taking devices by seamlessly integrating pictures, annotations, and texts with an ease that required almost no time to acclimate to the user interface.

I love to take pictures at conferences, but with some of the other note-taking apps, taking a pic of the PowerPoint Slide and then annotating can be more of a hassle, making me lose valuable information. When using Paper, I can immediately begin writing on the picture, add text to the bottom, and be on my way.

It doesn't just stop at notes - which is what makes it so priceless! Lists and drawing diagrams. This makes it perfect for going upward into the higher level of Blooms by doing assignments like creating a charticle or diagram.

If Evernote and Doodle Splash had a baby that an elementary student could use, you'd have Paper. Just as versatile as its namesake, it is a must have for teachers and students. It goes right to the top of the list for students, who research shows are way more prone to taking a picture than typing something in an electronic planner, to be able to take a picture of the homework assignment on the board and quickly add whatever notes they need as well as interact with diagrams and other visuals they need throughout the day.

Lit Analysis Gamifiction with Make Dice Lite

What is Make Dice Lite?

Make Dice Lite in an iPad that allows the user to customize dice and use up to 6 at a time. To roll the dice, students can tap the screen or shake the iPad.

Lit Analysis Set Up

In groups of three to 4, students use 1 iPad to create two dice. The first die is whatever literary elements you want your students to analyze. I use character, conflict, symbol, theme, connect two topics, setting.

The second die is one about thematic topics. Examples from The Outsiders: violence, family, loyalty, redemption, social pressure, equality, etc. (Students can choose their own).

Roll the Die

Students roll the dice and create a question with those two things. Provide question stems or example for the different literary elements. EX:

Theme: What is the lesson we are supposed to learn about ______?

Symbol: What object in the text represents _____?

Setting: How does the setting contribute to the lesson we can learn about ______?

Two topics: How are _____ and _____ related?

For character and conflict, it so much depends on the topic I encourage my students to come up with their own way of asking. 

Gamification

Students number off A, B, and C. Students then complete to answer questions. Students take turn answering the question and give text support. For each question, 1 participant answers it and gives support. The other two people then rate the answer with evidence and explanation on a scale of 1-3. The person who answered the question get the combined score. The other group members can each get 1 bonus point for providing approved additional evidence. 

EX: How is setting related equality?

Student A: Tulsa is divided east and west in the novel. The rich Socs are on one side and the poor Greasers on the other, which keeps them separated and continues the idea that by being separated, they aren't able to take down the walls that divide them. If they got to know each other more, the inequality may not create hate. 

Student B: that was really good, I give a 3 out of 3.

Student C: I'm not clear on the theme you think Hinton has about equality so I say 2.

**Student A gets 5 points**

Student B: another thing that supports what you said as an answer is the setting of the dive-in. At the drive in the Socs get to sit in their cars while the greasers have to be out in the elements of the bleachers. 

*** student B gets a point ***

Student C: The school setting also supports that. Remember when Ponyboy talked about how he was in the more advanced classes? He pulled out a knife to dissect a frog and a Soc girl who was his lab partner was horrified. The way there is that divide in the classes at school also makes there be a divide int he social classes. 

*** Student C gets a point. It is now student B's turn to answer a question and try to get the three points ***

Text Smash/App Smash

With commonlit.org, creating a project-based learning experience is easy in that the website is organized by PBL questions! This makes it perfect for across text comparison and an opportunity for students to examine two texts answering the same question.

Thinking of across text comparison got me thinking of App Smashing - combining apps to make a project. So why not a text smash/app smash?

My instructions are specifically for The Outsiders, but check out my lesson flow on graphite to get a generic lesson that can fit no matter what whole class text your students have read.

Graphite Lesson:Sentence Combining with Simple Wikipedia

Students practice syntactical complexity with Simple Wikipedia articles. See lesson HERE! 

Graphite Lesson: Counterargument Smackdown!

With ProCon.org, Edmodo, and Socrative, students categorize major points and evidences on given topic in a lesson easily customizable to your goals and curricular needs. See the lesson here!

Poetry and Tech Unite!

Inspired by the Color Splash that Jonas sees in The Giver and this lesson on ReadWriteThink.org,
students analyze and create imagist poetry. You by no means need to do The Giver to do this lesson, but it is a nice companion lesson.

How to use this technique for Adobe Photoshop (or iPads):

1. Students analyze “The Red Wheelbarrow”. This website is my favorite collection of commentary on the poem and a wonderful resource for upper level students to see there is no one correct way to view a poem. Personally, I tend to analyze it as the poem itself depends upon the image and therefore the role of the poet is to take note of things we might otherwise ignore.
2.  Open Photoshop or Get a free color splash app. I have used the one from Kite Games Studio which let me get rid of the watermark after I reviewed it. 
3. After showing them what a finished product will look like, help students download a large image that allows for use with modification or take their own images using the iPad camera.
   
4. Open the image in Photoshop or upload the image into the app and have students select the focus of the photo by selecting one object to have color. The easiest way to do this is put a black and white layer of the image over it and use the eraser to erase that back and white layer so the color original shows through.
   
5. Once complete, students save the modified photo.
6. Students then write a vivid sentence describing the focus of their image AFTER the teacher has MODELED.
7. Using the handout on ReadWriteThink.org  as a guide, I put students into small groups to answer those questions. When students are able to receive feedback on their writing and hear the writing of others, everyone improves! Students use an app like Pic Collage to put their poem on their image. Don’t forget to have students add name and class period if you need. If you plan on sharing the images online, make sure students use only first name and last name initial.
8.  My favorite way to upload these types of media rich items is to also publish it at the same time. Create a Google Slides with blank slides – I like using a black background on all of them – and then have students upload the image onto a blank slide. (There are some issues with students not being able to access Google Folders on an iPad app. Ugh! I get around this by having students upload and submit their work via Edmodo and then have them take turns on the back PCs to upload on Slides. It is annoying, but I prefer it over me having to take the time to pull them off Edmodo! This year we are switching to Office 365 for the entire district, so I see if we can upload it onto the 365 version of PowerPoint. While putting the finished work on a presentation is not a necessary step, I do feel is rewarding and important part of the publishing process.) 
9. Change the usage rights of the presentation to view only and send a link to parents, Tweet it, and/or show the presentation in presentation mode while parents file in for Open House!
   

How to modify for PCs:

Instead of using color splash app, students can use Photoshop. There are a lot of YouTube videos and websites that feature multiple ways to do this. They can add the text on Photoshop as well!