How the Backwards Bicycle is a Must See for Students and Teachers

Videos are a wonderful prompt for writing and class discussion. "The Backwards Brain Bicycle" by Smarter Every Day is my favorite video to begin a PD as well as totally accessible for my middle school students. The connections to be made are deep and rich. Watch it and see how many connections you can make to your own classroom!

The best rule of thumb for getting the discussion to be its best is for all individuals to write for 7-10 minutes after, making connections and expressing their thoughts. As Tom Ramano says in Clearing the Way, “During class discussions, I prefer to avoid the domino effect - the phenomenon that occurs when one student states an opinion emphatically and all the opinions after that one fall right in behind, unremarkably similar.” And so he always asks to his students to write prior to class discussion.

Great for the beginning of a faculty meeting or as a way of encouraging kids to not give up when faced with challenging learning.

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!

Creative Writing with Substance

Giving students an opportunity to write fiction is an important and empowering experience. Too often personal narrative, persuasive, and expository trump all other forms of writing in our classrooms. Meanwhile, we read multiple short stories and novels – all examples of creative narratives that we analyze and exalt. Having student analyze fiction, but not create it runs the risk of sending students a terrible message: the fiction they could write is inferior and not worth creating.

In order for students to really understand why authors do what they do, students must take on the role of the author. Good readers read as writers. When deciding the parameters of a creative writing assignment, I look to my reading standards, not just writing.

Pre-writing plays a key role:

Theme: Get short stories with substance by asking students to find an inspirational quotation on http://www.quotationspage.com/  and then create a plot that proves the theme to be true. Model an example, create plot charts, and let students conference just on the plot charts and ideas so they can refine and get feedback.

Character: By creating innovative and realistic characters, student practice characterization. Character profiles, like the one over at National Novel Writing Month’s teacher resources packet, gives students the scaffolding they need to flesh out their ideas. Use my lesson on the coronation scene from Frozen to help show students the versatility of dialogue.

Symbol: My students were really struggling with analyzing symbols. I wanted them to see symbols from the other point of view, as the author. I modeled with my own story – a stunning narrative that involved Brad Pitt buying me flowers.

Stage directions: This year, our district moved drama unit into the same grading period as our narrative reading and writing units, so I took this as an opportunity to change the short story to a script. Capitalizing on the standards for our grade level that asks students to analyze stage directions, we looked at models and students used them to establish characterization and symbols.

What’s more, the kids have fun! The creative process is engaging. Students are energized. The testing genres are killing our kids. They have voices and characters and worlds ready to be unleashed! Creative writing opens the doors to those worlds and lets kids speak through their characters.

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!

The Only Way You Will Need to Teach Symbolism

I finally got around to making and posting this video!

Use Technology to Make Exit Tickets Easier

If you’re like me, closure activities can easily fall by the wayside. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of debriefing. I know exit tickets can provide important reflection for students as well valuable feedback for my own teaching. All the research points to the importance of this part of the lesson cycle, but it also my own area of weakness. The three biggest roadblocks for me can easily be solved with technology:

Roadblock #1: We Forget!

I tend to teach until the bell interrupts me. Why not set an alarm 4 minutes prior to each bell to give students a chance to do the exit ticket? Set alarms on Outlook, cell phone or even your FitBit! FitBit vibrates on your wrist which lets you know you need to wrap up without the students thinking an alarm is the thing ending the lesson.

Roadblock #2: The Mountain of Paper!

With over 180 students, giving each student a Post-It creates a mountain that – admittedly – I usually hardly even read. Why not take advantage of a BYOD classroom? Use Padlet for groups or partners to post the exit ticket. Use the QR code already created within Padlet to share, create a shortened URL with a Chrome extension like bit.ly, or post a link to the class Edmodo or similar service. Keep exit tickets open like:

•           Each group posts the thing they feel they most understand and then the least
•           Post a picture - pile of rocks, a leaf, a bunch of puppies - and ask students to relate it to the day’s lesson.
•         Groups post their own question and answer. For example, working on character traits? Students create a character trait of a common text all the group members know (class novel, Disney movie, etc) and write the character’s name, a trait, and a piece of evidence.

 

Left side: My exit ticket prompt of a logical fallacy with various groups responding.
Right side: Setting to "lock" the padlet to "Can View" so people can't add to finished Padlet.

Roadblock #3: Accountability for students AND teacher

Nothing holds me more accountable than having an outside audience. Create a class Twitter account, encourage parents to follow - even for parents who do not have Twitter accounts, knowing that you are inviting people into your classroom digitally is a great way to leave a strong impression on parents! - and at the end of the school day Tweet out a selected response to your closure activity or the Padlet but make sure to CHANGE THE PRIVACY SETTING TO VIEW! Hashtag your school district when you have a particularly strong example, especially if there is a cute picture with it. Just be aware of privacy laws and don’t use students’ faces.