During our Everyday Math lessons to reach a wider audience, and to make student learning the focus rather than teacher instruction, I decided to turn a lesson on looking at a US census population map into a STAIR lesson (Stand Alone Instructional Resource). I used the free Infuse Learning site to make a quiz by typing in the outlined question prompts for the EDM lesson and saving it. Next, students simply open the Infuse Learning site and log into the room using the room number (which is always the same when you make an account) and their name. While they are doing this, I "play" the quiz which activates on the student iPads. Once the quiz is activated students can begin working at their own pace. Use both the Infuse Learning quiz and their Student Reference Journals to see the census map (which you can take a picture of and it will appear next to each question on Infuse Learning). As students work through the quiz and talk with collaborate with each other I am able to circulate the room to see how students are progressing and answer any questions. I am also receiving updates on student progress on the teacher screen for Infuse Learning. On this results page I can see how everyone is doing, which questions they've answered and what they answered. I can then download the results or email them to myself. The email feature is a quick one click action. Infuse Learning has been helpful to not only create STAIR lessons but also for a quick open response check for understanding. It's made life easier to keep track of students progress and also allows me to adjust my lessons as needed.
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Twitter Fiction is a writing style which limits a story to only 140 characters. I learned about this style of writing after doing some research that stemmed from curiosity when I was assigned to write a 55 word story in my masters program. I loved how writing only 55 words made me really look closely at my word choices. I knew that this kind of a challenge would be right up my students' alleys. I decided to bring this exercise to my writing workshop just after a long school break. Students were sharing events from their holiday orally when I introduced the Twitter writing activity. I briefly talked about how Twitter allows only 140 characters but that I would adapt their limit to 140 words. My students are in 3rd grade so I wanted to make sure the challenge wasn't about limiting their words to a low word count but rather that the focus would be on the goal of writing exactly 140 words. The results were great! At first students were unsure of what this would be like and they just started writing. We used the Pages App for the word count feature and then copied and pasted the writing back into the Google Doc for co-editing. Once students saw how many words they were typing they got more interested in the challenge. As students neared 140 words they started to get picky. They looked back at what they wrote with a critical eye and began to edit with intensity I have not seen before. They were excited and during partner feedback they gave feedback that was really useful which challenged the writers to adjust their writing again to make sure it fit 140 words and was a strong story. The next step is to ask them to rewrite the same story in only 55 words to attempt the 55 word story style. They are already anxious to start editing. Do you carry all your students writing notebooks home each night or stay late after school reading through their writing and offering feedback? Or maybe you don't give written feedback until the published piece is turned in. If this sounds like your situation then I've got an idea that will make it all easier. Google Docs allow students to write their stories online and you are able to comment and offer feedback from your computer at home or at the coffee shop or where ever you like to connect to the internet. I often find myself sitting next to a student and talking about their stories with them with our tech devices side by side. This allows us to both highlight and edit together and have discussions about their work without having to lean over their shoulders and invade their space. Google Docs not only make life easier for you but it offers quick feedback to your students. Students will love using Google Docs as well. The Revision History allows students to see the changes they make over the writing process and revert back to an earlier version if desired. This feature also has saved several of my students from the dreaded deleted story disaster. Somehow a few of my students managed to delete their stories and then do enough attempts to recover it that they couldn't simply press undo. Luckily they were able to revert to an earlier version and recover their lost work. Another plus of using Google Docs is that there is an iPad app for Google Drive making the student work even more accessible. |
Kate White
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