Georges Servat, age 15 months

Let's Dig In!

Hello, my name is Amy Servat, and my goal as your child's teacher is to get them to read like a writer and write like a reader.  I am also passionate about preparing them for high school and beyond.

Here are the books needed for this school year (book clubs will  pop up as well though):

Grade Level: The Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner
The Giver by Lois Lowry

PreAP: The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Night by Elie Wiesel
October Country by Ray Bradbury
Animal Farm by George Orwell

In addition to analyzing many different types of text, we will be writing an analytical response in the first nine weeks, a multi-paragraph expository essay in the second nine weeks, a persuasive (researched) text and a letter in the third nine weeks, and an analytical response and imaginative story in the fourth nine weeks.

Tool #11

Favorites


I have several favorites that I've learned about in this process.  I feel comfortable with Glogster and Animoto, two tools that honestly scared me before.  I also am impressed with Blogger.  I know that my students in the future will probably have at least one blog for Language Arts.  This is very exciting but also very intimidating right now as we begin to teach our students all about the responsibilities of digital citizenship.






Change in Learning

Now that I've been through this process, I can see that technology, although it is changing so much more rapidly than it used to, is somewhat less intimidating because it's mostly web-based.  This is great because students will be able to access it from anywhere.  All those years of programs that are incompatible with my computer or not accessible from home are gone!


I think I am much more comfortable with the idea of learning along with my students or even learning some of this stuff from my students.  Before this, I was kind of held back by my fear of the unknown, but it's not as intimidating as it was before.  This is probably because things seem so much more user-friendly than they used to be.


The changes I will need to make to accommodate the 21st century learner--1)teach digital citizenship early and often.  2)Develop a good system of keeping track of my technology.  3)  Make technology more of a "forethought" than an afterthought.  I want to redesign some of my favorite lessons to incorporate technology or to improve upon the technology that they already use.


Unexpected Outcomes


I really think I will be using a lot more of the tools at my disposal than I ever thought I would do voluntarily.  With Atomic Learning so accessible (I didn't realize the login was the same as for my SBISD stuff), I can go learn about things, get professional development credit, and, incredibly, not have to remember yet another password.  It sounds dumb, but many times I don't go to these sites because I cannot remember my password!  This is huge for me!!!

Tool #10

There are a few things that I want my students to understand about being good digital citizens:


1)  Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see (or in this case, read, see, and hear).  This old adage that my grandfather taught me still holds true.  They need to confirm information by looking at multiple sources in order to verify it and/or look at the source of the website itself, like they taught us to do at the staff development in August.


2)  Students cannot just use the first resource that they come to just because they want to get something over with.  They need to look at multiple sources.


3)  Students need to see models of good researching, have healthy skepticism, and follow-up with something every time they hear something (I can use the erroneous e-mails I receive and snopes.com as an example of this)


One of the resources that I plan to use instructionally is digitalcitizenship.net.  On this website, I found a great lesson entitled Foundational Lesson Plan #2--Digital Compass.


In it, you give each classroom group a "digital compass" that says things like "I don't know if it's right or wrong" and "Depends on the situation".  Then you give each group a list of scenarios and they have to discuss the right, wrong, etc. of each "digital situation".  Here's an example of one of the scenarios: 


Scenario #5 – An hour before class, a student remembers that a writing assignment is due. The
student goes to the library, logs on to a website, and copies/pastes information without giving
credit to the authors. Is using Internet materials without giving credit to the authors wrong?


I would use technology to teach it.  Not only would I go over the ethical dilemmas in the digital compass, but I would also use the movies on Brainpop to really drive the point home.  I want them to be savvy. In our persuasion unit, we discuss the importance of knowing about persuasion  techniques so that students will know when someone is trying to use those same techniques on them and they won't be taken in. Similarly, I would like them to see the value of healthy skepticism to make them smarter and savvier in general.  


There is another way I  use to drive this point home.  I use an article from The Houston Chronicle from Rick Casey entitled "Incredible Lawsuit Tales" about myths that have been circulating the internet since e-mail forwards became popular.  In it, Casey tells all of these so-called "true stories" and talks about how they are just myths.  Most of the students have heard at least one of these stories and have taken them as gospel.


I would also like the parents to know the pitfalls of believing everything they read by showing them these resources at Open House.  For example, I could show them the martinlutherking.org website that was actually created by white supremacists!!  I can also post these resources on my website.  If the parents know how to research, they will in turn reinforce the message to the students.

Tool #9

I think it's important to tie technology to the objective because it ensures that we are taking that extra step to incorporate technology instead of just relying on "the old way".  Of course, it is important to know the old way so that you can keep it as a back-up plan in case the technology fails.


Students need to be held accountable for their work at stations/centers because we need to know that they are doing the work, and we need to have a provable behavior.  In order to get on board with this, we need to ensure that we are on board with the "shifting paradigms" theory.  And, of course, we should be on board with it because times and paradigms are changing whether we like it or not.


I visited Thinkfinity, which had all kinds of educational games.  I liked the Essay Map because it put the outline into a more user-friendly format.  Students could create their Essay Maps and show them to me as their provable behavior.  This would be a great activity when we've finished our "pre-writing" but have not formally begun writing yet.


I also visited Comic Creator in Thinkfinity.  This was pretty cool.  Not only could my son use this at home (he LOVES Diary of a Wimpy Kid and would do this for fun), but my students could also do it as a provable behavior to show they've mastered a concept.  For example, they could write it to prove they know a certain vocabulary word.  They could write context clues and dream up situations in which those words/sentences can be used.  This is like a grown-up version of window panes in which we create one panel that illustrates a vocabulary word and what it means visually.


Students could be held accountable for both of these activities because there would be an actual product produced.


In the SBISD interactive database, I found many more flipcharts than I've seen before.  I also noticed the Classtools webtool.  I like the idea that I could host games on my blog.  To make students accountable, I could have them post something about the game to tell me how it went against another student.


I also saw that they have a Lexipedia webtool.  This webtool gives them the part of speech AND it relates the word to other words.  Students could be assigned certain words, and they could be accountable for them by creating a certain number of comics in Comic Creator as well as some related words in Lexipedia.


As far as the iPod Touches and iPad 2s are concerned, I know my students would enjoy the Flashcards App.  I usually hesitate to make them to flashcards because of all of the paper involved, but now they can make them and use them to review each other all in one sitting.


I also will love the Mad Libs app.  I already have them create their own Mad Libs in class, but this app will ensure that their Mad Libs make sense and are extra silly.  They will also be able to have more than one student fill out their Mad Libs.  This would be a great station because students are already chomping at the bit to share the Mad Libs that they've done, so accountability ought to be no problem.


I also love the Pages app.  Students will be able to use this to revise and edit their papers right on the device.  It will also save it to the iCloud so there will be no need for them to e-mail their final drafts.  They will even be able to print wirelessly.  I will definitely have to play around with this to see what the best way to do this would be.  It seems like it would work best with students during tutorials, but maybe I'll be able to use these in stations when we are doing very specific revision and editing changes, and the students will take turns changing their papers right on the device.

Tool #8

I learned many things about the Netbook:


Here are some examples:


1)  I can connect the Netbooks to my Activboard to show the class something


2)  There are 3 USB ports.


3)  They have a microphone port and a headphone jack.


4)  The network connector connects me to the SBISD network, and the tools are in the netbook cart.


I already have two iPads at home as well as an iTouch and a few iPods.  I even have an iPhone 4 and an Apple TV!  Therefore, I did not learn anything new about the Apple products except the bit about locking the screen so that it doesn't move with you.  That will be useful to use with the students when they are using it for projects, research, etc.


Managin the Netbooks, the iPad2s and the iTouches


I can assign students to certain netbooks.  I will need to number each one and have students check each one out and in before anyone is allowed to leave the class.  I need to establish the habit of making sure all materials are returned to the netbook cart as a prerequisite for dismissal.

Tool #7

I would definitely need to wait for the new technology to implement this tool, but here's what I plan to implement:

Content Objective: TLW survey another class in order to aggregate data about other students' reviews of books that they are critiquing literarily.

Timeline: 5th 6 weeks

Tools you plan to use:  Itouch and i pads; email; google doc/spreadsheets 

Brief Description:


Students will choose a book to critique and will post their titles on a Google Doc.  Then, students within the class and in other 7th grade PreAP LA classes will post comments about that book that they will in turn use in their literary critiques of that book.  They could ask certain questions about the book on their survey to insure that the "reviews" are thoughtful and indicative of critical thinking.


This can get them involved in a real-world type of dialogue about books that one might see on goodreads.com, amazon.com, or librarything.com.

Tool #6

On this tool, I had to check out certain educational tools that I can use in and out of the classroom in order to communicate with my students or have them communicate with me.

For example, we will be able to use Skype in the Classroom when we get out Netbooks. I can see that as an opportunity to talk to pen pals in a letter assignment. For example, for our letter assignment, we could pick a class in another school in another state. Then we can skype with them. We can also use Skype in the Classroom to see other students' projects in other schools.

Then I tried Wallwisher. Wallwisher is cool! I can have students post pictures that demonstrate a particular vocabulary concept. Students can double-click anywhere and put pictures in from Flickr.

Here's my Wallwisher account:

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/grammarqueen

I also joined Today's Meet. I created a room, Servat, for a year. So, students can comment on what they've learned from a certain assignment, or you could use it as an assignment. For example, if I assigned a commentary for the students to read for homework, they could post the claim of the commentary, facts from the commentary, the author's tone, etc.

It seems like this would only work for kids to do as homework on their own computers at home, at least until we have more resources in the classroom.

I guess kids could use their smartphones in the classroom, but you would have to arrange groups around the kids that actually had smartphones.

Here's my Today's Meet room:

http://www.todaysmeet.com/Servat