It doesn’t seem possible that we are well into the last quarter of the school year and headed quickly toward SOL testing.  It can’t possibly be time to begin talking about next year, but it is!  I’ve revived the “Fuzzy Slippers” Blog, in hopes that it can carry us through the 4th quarter and also the summer if you have a small amount of time to devote to Professional Development.  I will write it, you will come, right?

Final decisions on new hardware and software have not yet been made, but we are far enough along in the process that I fell like I can make some fairly accurate predictions.  So I’m going to start heading in that direction.

We will be upgrading to MS Office 2007 – that’s for sure.  The software has been purchased during this year and all our computers will be upgraded over the summer. I hear that the admin side computers will be upgraded as well.   Word 2007 has a different look, but I think you will get used to it quickly.  At a later date, I will provide you with some tutorials and other resources so that you will be “ready” when you return in August.  If you are using an older version at home, this may be a good time to think about an upgrade to MSOffice 2007.  The student/teacher/education edition is fairly reasonable in price. 

I beleive that Scholastic Keys will not be upgraded to 2007 and therefore will be deleted from our matrix.  This decision is not final, but the wind is blowing in that direction.  I know many of you – espeically K-2 use Scholastic Keys frequently.  Our subsitute will be Pixie.  Pixie is a software we have really not used very much since we own KidPix.  Schools that don’t own KidPix have grown to like Pixie and it does have some features which make is useful as a tool for all students K-5.  Best of all, there are many activities building in, and a “Trading Post” where you can find activities created by other teachers and add ones that you create. 

Professional Development

April 23, 2009

http://www.tech4learning.com/pixie

Tutorials:

Introduction to Pixie (1)

http://www.recipes4success.com/index.php?page_ac=view&type=tutorials&ref_id=185008

Painting in Pixie (1.2)

http://www.recipes4success.com/index.php?page_ac=view&type=tutorials&ref_id=185012

Multiplication Activities (2)

http://www.recipes4success.com/index.php?page_ac=view&type=tutorials&ref_id=305009

Tools:  Rubric Maker, Graphic Organizer Maker, Citation Maker

http://www.recipes4success.com/index.php?v=pl&page_ac=view&type=tools

Technology Integration with Pixie (Trading Post, Lessons, Activities)

(You will need to create a login to use the Trading Post to find already created activities.)

http://www.tech4learning.com/pixie/integration

Digital Photos

Your AV Workstation contains a card reader.  It reads the major types of memory cards from digital cameras. 

Pics4Learning – Copyright free photographs

http://www.pics4learning.com/

Lesson Plans

http://www.pics4learning.com/lessonplans.php

Microsoft Photo Editor

Tutorial

http://cite.nwmissouri.edu/phototutorial.htm

Our new printer has arrived.  Please say “thanks” to the PTA for this definite luxury item.  We can now print standard size (36″x24″) posters and not have to make a trip to the Materials Center at the other end of the county.  Actually, now there is one at the Round Hill Center, but we won’t even have to drive there!  Our rolls of paper are 24″ so that is the max of one dimension.  You can actually go a bit larger than 36″ for the other, but for now let’s stick to 24″ by 36″.

Our paper is suitable for heat laminating  (this paper is more expensive) but we figured it will be worth it in the long run.

We spent a lot of time last year talking about Visual Literacy and this poster printer can be a huge part of that.  I know some of you are already thinking about posters for your room so I wanted to give you some information as you get started.

The printer will be attached to one workstation in the lab so you will need to come to the lab to print.  You won’t be able to send a print job from your room.  You can create your posters wherever you choose, but you will need to come to the lab to print them.

Your posters will need to be PowerPoint or PDF files.  All the evidence points to PowerPoint being the friendliest application for poster printing.  If you already have something created in Word then we can change it to PDF for printing. At school, you can use CutePDF which is installed on your AV machine.  If you are a PC user, you can download CutePDF for free and use it at home.  If you are a Mac user (like me) it is already built in to your operating system.

If you are creating something new, USE POWERPOINT. If you don’t have PowerPoint at home, you can create in Google Presentation – and export to PowerPoint.  The only drawback to this work-around is that your poster will have to be landscape rather than portrait.

Another option for anyone who does not have Microsoft Office is to use the free open source equivalent:  Open Office.  I have it from reliable sources that this transfers seamlessly back and forth to Office 2000 which we are currently using at school.

If you are planning to purchase Microsoft Office for home, be sure to purchase the education edition which is more reasonably priced.  If you’re not sure where to purchase, send me an email.

There are many tutorials on the web, but this one covers the basics:

Creating a Poster With PowerPoint

At the moment, our new printer is still in the box.  I hope to have it up and running for you by your first day back.  So once you’ve read the tutorial, you should be ready to start designing your posters.  Posters are perfect for Marzano’s non-linguistic representations – mind maps, strategies, graphic organizers, etc.  Posters are also great motivational tools and can be used for any curriculum area.

You can find some Visual Literacy Resources here:

Visual Literacy

Internet Resources for Marzano

Nonlinguistic Representations

And some ideas for posters, here:

Famous People Posters

Motivational Posters

Economic Posters

Scientific Research Posters

A Gazillion Posters

Virginia Studies Poster Sets

More ideas to come.  This should get you started.  If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me an email.

I really hope that everyone has had a chance to create a delicious account for themselves.  It is one very useful tool for teachers to keep track of their bookmarks.  You can search at home, search in your classroom and still find the bookmark when you come to the computer lab.  It’s easy to set up and use and a great Web 2.0 tool.

If you haven’t set up your account yet, the video in my last post will still show you how, but delicious has undergone a facelift.  You can now access the site using

http://delicious.com (no periods, no www)

and the site looks a bit different.  Two things to notice:  your personal bookmarks are under the “Bookmarks” tab at the top, and to post a new bookmark you need to look to the right and click “Save a New Bookmark”

We are all so busy.  Even in the summer, it seems as if I never have enough time to finish the things I’ve planned to do.  I’m taking an online course on Digital Portfolios, I’m spending time with family and friends, reading as many books as possible, doing some political work, and taking on some household projects, too. As always, I’m trying to learn some new technology skills and finding that I do best with short explanations.

The summer is absolutely FLYING by and in the spirit of “short” I’ll be sending you a few, short, (less than ten minute) tech tips . . .  The main point will be to introduce you to some new Web 2.0 tools which you may find useful in your work with students.

Number one is about the bookmarking tool – del.icio.us  With this tool you can keep your bookmarks available whatever computer you are using – home, school, classroom, office, computer lab, etc.  The video will also introduce you to “tagging” which is the web 2.0 system for organizing multiple pieces of information.

The video can be accessed on the school webpage in the “For Teachers” channel.    To see it here, just click the word “Download” below.

Download

More info:

Excellent Help Files
http://del.icio.us/help/

A More Detailed Screencast Tutorial
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=7c623fbd095b4a565b5b

I love online courses.  I like being able to work in my bedroom slippers and bathrobe.  That was the original inspiration for doing professional development with “Fuzzy Slippers.”  The only thing I don’t like about online courses is I like to have a visual image of who I’m “talking” to on the discussion boards.

I’m taking a Blackboard course now and I’m trying to encourage everyone to post a picture on their BB homepage.  I created a short screencast to explain how to do it.

Download

Ice day! No share fair board at home? TRT Share Fair scheduled for tomorrow? No problem. Put on your fuzzy slippers and create your Share Fair Project on the internet! Check out the pages to the right.  Please leave a comment so I know that you’ve been here.

Here’s a short video to explain the easiest ways to reduce your spam/junk mail.

Think Pair Share Part 2

“Reflection” seems to be one of the new buzz words in education. Every graduate level course seems to include “reflections” of one sort or another. I’m not sure I go for the word “reflect”. I think for me it’s probably just “thinking time.” When my son was little, he would lay in bed at night and ask me questions. I would be in my room, but our house is small so the bedrooms are close together. So it was sort of like the “John Boy Goodnight Thing” that used to be on the TV show The Waltons: “Mom, will you fix me strawberries for breakfast?’ and then “Mom, can I get a skateboard?” and then “Mom, why are snowflakes not alike.”

Finally, I would say “Joseph, no more questions, I need to have my “thinking time” – which was the few minutes of quiet when I would review the day and start to think about tomorrow. So to me, that’s what “reflections” really are – just a fancy term for thinking time.

Yesterday, one of our students was wearing what I thought was a very funny tee shirt. It included ten reasons for not coming to school and one was “the flying monkeys are annoying me” and another was “I needed to reflect on what I learned yesterday.”

When I work with fifth graders in Writers Club, it is easy to see that (at least these particular) students are not very good at working together. They have trouble remaining on task, difficulty with a conversation, are not able to divide a task into parts, are not comfortable saying “I think . . .” or asking “Do you think . . .” They are also not comfortable sharing their work.

So in the spirit of reflecting, here are a few more thoughts/resources on Think Pair Share:

1. We need to really spend time teaching students to work cooperatively. It is a skill that has to be learned.

2. Working comfortably in pairs comes before working comfortably in a group of 4 or 5.

3. Creating the climate for successful cooperative learning activities does not happen automatically.

Here is a great summary of Think Pair Share. I hope you will have time to read it.

http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/think/index.html

We do math worksheets each day. Here’s a way to do one in pairs:

Assign a math worksheet and ask students to work in pairs.
One of the students does the first problem while the second acts as a coach.
Then, students switch roles for the second problem.
When they finish the second problem, they get together with another pair and check answers.
When both pairs have agreed on the answers, ask them to shake hands and continue working in pairs on the next two problems.

Here’s a variation for test review called “Tea Party”:

Students form two concentric circles or two lines facing each other. You ask a question (on test content) and students discuss the answer with the student facing them. After one minute, the outside circle or one line moves to the right so that students have new partners. Then pose a second question for them to discuss. Continue with five or more questions. For a little variation, students can write questions on cards to review for a test through this “Tea Party” method.

Please comment and tell about a “Think Pair Share” Activity that’s been successful for your class.
Here’s one from Writers Club: Because we only have an hour each week, we don’t have enough time for the pre-writing activity, draft, edit and revise, proofread, publish cycle. So I often give a pair of students a completed pre-writing activity – basically the web already filled in with main idea, supporting ideas, and details.
Here’s a picture.

 
One member of the pair is the typist and one member is the director. Together they agree on sentences and the typist types the first draft. Revising, editing and proofreading are done together before the final draft is printed.

Please share an activity or idea that you use.

Well, we’ve all heard of Think Pair Share. I don’t really know who originally came up with the idea*, I’ll have to do a little research on that, but I know it’s been around for a long time. I’ve done some internet searching and I think there are probably enough T-P-S activities to last us until we retire – I’ve been amazed. Granted, I will be retiring before many of you, but I think there are enough to last even the youngest among us!

Over the next few posts we’ll be extending some T-P-S activities and also looking at how we can use T-P-S with our laptop carts.

*Warning! Train of thought interruption . . . .

Of course once I said I would find out who “invented” Think Pair Share, it was more obscure than I thought, but I found the answer in the most modern of places – You Tube. I was watching a video on hand signals to use with Think Pair Share – which sounded sort of dopey to me, but this teacher insisted that her middle school kids “loved” them, so I’ll take her word for it . . . if you’re interested, be sure to ask me and I’ll show you or you can check out (at home) the You Tube video here.

Anyway, at the end of her video on the hand signals, she made a tribute to Frank Lyman as the “inventor of Think Pair Share” and “wait time” and turns out she’s correct. Professor Frank Lyman (University of Maryland) created and wrote about the strategy in 1981. I assume the information is correct, although I have been unable to verify. You can read about it here.

**Warning! Second train of thought interruption . . . I’ve been thinking of Christmas gifts and looking through catalogs. I happened to find something I had never seen before and I thought it would make a great gift for the men in my life. See what you think. Check it out here!

OK, I promise no more interruptions to this post. Back to Think Pair Share.

There are several things that I really like about Think Pair Share. First, the research is in and it IS authentic cooperative learning. Second, you can do it “on the fly” and in any subject area. And finally there are some quick and easy ways to change-up your pairs as you go.

One of the questions that came up in last week’s faculty meeting was strategies for setting up groups. Even for setting up pairs there seem to be a number of strategies to make sure that the same kids don’t end up as pairs all the time. One I found interesting is “Clock Buddies.” Here’s the link to a description, complete with downloadable “clock sheet.”

Clock Buddies

In the course of this post I got interested in how you could actually generate random pairs each time you did a think-pair-share activity (OK, I started college as a math major) and it turns out you can actually purchase software with spinners and randomizers and all manner of devices for setting up groups and pairs. Check it out here.

But here’s an easier way . . . number your students 1 – 25 (they’re probably already numbered) and then put 1-25 in this excel spreadsheet and it will generate a random list for the day. Go to the site, add it to your favorites and when you check your email in the morning, print yourself a pairs list “for the day”. Tomorrow you can generate a new one . . .

Random Number Generator

Or if you’d rather generate a list that contains your students’ names, you can use this list randomizer. Just copy and past your student list (one name to a line) and it will generate a random list which you can print and pair off.

Random List Generator

So for today, think about how you are going to set up your pairs (or groups) and then we’ll actually talk about some group activities.

Want to know a little more about setting up groups. Click here.

What are your thoughts? How do you set up your groups? What things work? How do you handle the student that makes things difficult for the group?

Marzano Handbook:  Module 12 (pp 159 – 172)

Where to start with Learning Groups?  Getting ready for Cooperative Learning!

No matter what you call it – learning groups, collaborative learning, cooperative learning, group projects, think-pair-share, it’s always been a scary concept for me.  Having spent most of my teaching career as a special education teacher, the idea of letting loose of a group of students to talk, confer, plan, create, goof off, was always a scary thought for me and it was always noisy, too.  I liked being in charge.  I liked when I was talking and everyone else was listening.  I admit it, I had trouble with “group projects.” 

Even as an adult learner, I have had problems with “Group Projects.”  I want to be in charge of the group and I want it done to my specifications.  I have always preferred to work by myself and not in a group, so I truly have struggled to make sense of the collaborative learning piece both for myself and for our students. 

And even though I saw myself as the “sage on the stage” who imparted all the great wisdom to my students, the research says CLEARLY that I was fooling myself.  The research shows clearly (and it’s not a little research, it’s a lot) that cooperative learning is effective in improving achievement.  Students who work in cooperative groups consistently outperform those who don’t and adding competition to the mix does nothing to enhance achievement.

The research also shows that the groups should be small and should be organized in different ways for different purposes.  But that’s further down the road from where I am. 

I do see that students need to be taught to work together cooperatively.  And I sense that these skills are becoming more important all the time – not only for success in the world of education, but also for success in the world of work – for those jobs they’ll have that don’t exist yet, for those jobs that we probably don’t really understand yet. 

Marzano characterized groups as formal, informal and base groups and this blog post will focus on “informal” groups – the kind that are formed for a specific or immediate need and last for a few minutes or for the length of a task or project. 

Some Marzano suggestions for when informal groups might be used:

• to check students’ understanding of new content
• to clarify expectations or directions for an assignment
• to review a skill
• to check homework
• to provide an opportunity for students to process information
• to provide closure on an activity

So before we get ready to actually try some “cooperative learning” activities, the question for this post is  are our classes and rooms ready to be successful with cooperative learning activities?

Laura Chandler says this:

I think the most important thing a teacher can do that first week of school is to establish a warm and caring atmosphere in his or her classroom. You’ll need to build an atmosphere of trust, where students can feel free to be themselves without worrying that classmates will make fun of them. At the same time, you need to establish clear strategies for classroom management right from the very beginning. There are many ways to accomplish these goals, and I’m going to share a few of my favorites. In particular, it’s important to establish good classroom management and build both team and class spirit. You’ll also want to consider how to seat your students in cooperative learning teams.

Here are some resources for “Class and Team Building.”

Team Building Activities for Elementary Students

http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00001819.shtml

Tips for Building a Classroom Community

http://www.inspiringteachers.com/tips/beginning/community.html

Who remembers “sponge activites?”  Here are 3 that will encourage team building:

http://www.teachersnetwork.org/ntol/howto/start/teambuild.htm

So my question for your comments:

1.  do you have a classroom where a student feels free to be themselves with no fear of being made fun of?  If you do, how did you get it that way?  If you don’t what are the obstacles?  How can you/we change the climate?

2.  have you done an “informal group” activity this week?  what? how? next?