Whose Voice is Heard?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 08:00:00 GMT

At this time of year, we see many people sharing their beginning of the year activities and strategies. You see tweets, blogs, Pinterest pins, Facebook posts, articles, and Back to School Conferences. Many people asked me how we started our year, so I shared some of our activities in the post Our First Day(s) of School. In that post I also explained that I felt like it's not so much about what you do as it is about how you do the activities. Are you nurturing a learning community that communicates, collaborates, thinks deeply, and puts the learning into the hands of your students?

As I mentioned in that previous post, one of the activities that we begin the first week of school is blogging. My students set the criteria for themselves. They know what is expected of them when they blog because they set those standards. Blogging is one of the most powerful ways for me to get to know my students, academically and personally. Through their writing, I get to know about their thoughts and expectations, their strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and dreams. They reflect on their own learning, discuss the things they wonder about, and generate meaningful conversations on a wide variety of topics.

I have written several posts about the drastic decline in my students' interest to read. When conducting a survey in math about favorite school subjects, reading has fallen at the bottom of the list every year for the last three years. So when a student posted the following comment in a blog last week, I saw an opportunity to facilitate a blog conversation with the class. He wrote,

I asked him to clarify what he meant and share his thoughts on those statements. He obviously understood the relevance that reading has in everyone's life when he replied with...

This was like throwing a match on extremely dry tinder. It ignited a heated discussion among my students who expressed their frustration in our prescriptive reading program and all of the different aspects of it. No one had ever asked them how they felt about it. They shared how much they wanted to be able to just read books, articles, blogs, comic books, and graphic novels for fun. I found it interesting that they began to formulate ideas of how to work around all of the required practices to include what they found meaningful. They weren't complaining, they were problem-solving. All of this dialogue was generated by one student who stuggles in reading because English is his second language and not spoken in the home.

This just reaffirmed what I already knew. Students need a voice....every student. This is their education. Let them discuss it, try new things, and find their own solutions. The learn to communicate effectively and critically analyze. It empowers them and sets them on a path of being a highly-motivated lifelong learner in spite of obstacles they may face.

When people ask me which tech tool I find most valuable, I find it difficult to come up with one tool because we use so many to support the diverse needs of my diverse students. However, with blogging, my students have an avenue to share, discuss, reflect, dream, plan, and debate. It has greatly enhanced the way I teach my students and the way that they learn. If I could only use one tool, blogging would be my choice. Because with blogging, my students each have a voice.

Weebly to the Rescue

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:46:00 GMT

As my students were putting the finishing touches on their collaborative PSAs that they were creating with students from across the country, we were reading There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. One of my goals this year is to bring more literature into our day in spite of our rigid schedule and prescriptive reading program. (See blog A Book in a Day) I select books that have high interest for the students in my class, that spur great conversations, and that reinforce the standards that we're studying. This book has many of the themes that that go along with the Coast to Coast Chronicles Edition 9's theme. The 200+ students wanted to create and collaborate on the theme of "Making a Difference." These PSAs were for The Coast to Coast Chronicles.

As we finished up our book, my learners asked if they could create different projects to go with the book that would also connect to their collaborative work on the Coast to Coast Chronicles. That's right...they asked to do these projects. They brainstormed all kinds of ideas about what they wanted to create. As with everything else, we only had a small amount of time that they could work on this project from start to finish. They wanted to publish "a digital poster that would hold their different projects." My first thought was that we would use Glogster. But after a few minutes, we discovered that it was blocked at school. One student said, "I wish we could just create a website or something." Great idea. That's when Weebly came to the rescue.

http://theresaboyinthegirlsbathroom.weebly.com/

Weebly is a free site (there is an upgraded paid version) that allows one to create websites. It has a very easy drag and drop interface that my students navigated very quickly. There are preset themes and templates to get you started. While two of my students started setting up the page for the class, the other students broke into pairs and began planning and writing their projects.

I conferred with each pair several times throughout this project. They knew that they were responsible for explaining what they were creating and why it supported the themes of the book and the Coast to Coast Chronicles. Several of them wanted to tell about the story and the themes through a certain character's point of view. After writing, and conferring with me, they decided that Voki would be a great way to publish this. (See blog on Voki). Another team wanted to use the camera and act out what they had learned from the book about bullying. They decided to publish is as a Voice Thread. Others wanted to write poetry. They wanted to create songs with their poetry. We pulled up Songify on my smart phone, they selected the music that they wanted to use, read their poetry into the phone and published their song.

http://theresaboyinthegirlsbathroom.weebly.com/

My learners were so excited about what they were creating because they felt like it was going to be a surprise to all of their collaborative Coast to Coast partners....a little something extra for this edition. Of all the tools used, the one that's holding it all together is Weebly. It may not be as flashy as a VoiceThread, Voki, or song, but without it my students' planning would have probably stopped short. It housed all of their creativity and supported so much learning. So although it probably won't be discussed much when the other students see our Weebly, my students know that it's the tool that made it all this student-directed learning possible.

Search results matching tags 'reading', 'technology', 'authentic writing', and 'student-directed learning'

Whose Voice is Heard?

Weebly to the Rescue