Room 105

We’ve been working on creating a portfolio of three pieces that show students’ improvement as writers since the beginning of the year. To push our technology skills and to share our pieces with a wider audience, we’re going to create a page on our blogs as an electronic portfolio.

The problem with this is, of course, accessing enough computers to make this work. Our computer problems have not improved; however, I’ve been able to borrow other teachers’ loaners quite often. I’ve decided to have students sign up on Monday to record voices for one of their pieces (a type of basic podcast) and have created directions for students to finish up the portfolios on their own time. We worked several days last week choosing pieces, reflecting over these pieces, and putting together a format that will be easy to copy and paste onto our blogs.

Unfortunately, not all students used their time wisely. Several have a difficult time following directions and needed frequent redirecting to the directions or to the examples I provided for them. It’s like they “do their own thing” and then get frustrated when I explain to them that they are on the wrong track. So much time is wasted when students refuse to pay attention to details. Others do exactly what they need to, so they become my “helpers” within the classroom.

My goal is to have the portfolio pages “published” by Jan. 30. I think I have enough slots open for recording before school, during SRB, and after school. I also want to put responsibility on students to work outside of school on a project. I give them plenty of work time for lengthy projects during class, but I also ask them to complete portions of projects outside of school. Again, responsibility for 7th graders is sometimes a daunting task, but with the demands of our world today, they aren’t too young by any means to push themselves, to prove they are hard workers, and to get a job done well for their “boss”.

Of course, one of my resolutions is to update my blog more. ‘Nuf said on that.

Students have been working on a research project based on topics we wanted to explore further after reading the book Al Capone Does My Shirts. Of course, Al Capone and Alcatraz are the most popular, but many students have also chosen the topics of Machine Gun Kelly, autism, and 1935 (the year the book takes place). The research will be shared either in newsletter format (via Publisher) or in poster form. Because of our struggles with our Gateway laptops, nearly half of my students are without computers, so I thought it would be in everyone’s best interest to offer a traditional “paper” project along with the technology. Some students with computers chose the poster; some students without laptops chose newsletters because I’ve been able to round up enough “loaners” from other teachers. (”Loaners” are computers that we were able to get back from Gateway and distribute to individual classrooms for use among all students instead of to distribute them back to individual students. So far it’s working.)

Students projects are their “tickets” in to view a part of the movie Escape from Alcatraz. We’ll be viewing portions of the ending which depict the famous escape made by Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin. If students do not come to class prepared, alternative arrangements will be made with other teachers so that those students sit within their classrooms and complete their projects. This is a one shot opportunity: Friday is the only day projects will be accepted. Why? We worked on research the entire week before Christmas break, and we’ve spent the past three days working on portions of the project as well. It’s time to see what my kids are made of … hopefully, the “carrot” will work.

Next up, Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry, but we still have a few details with students’ blogs to take care of next week – namely our electronic portfolio project and introducing commenting to the kids. This won’t be difficult as they are used to commenting on our book blog. Next week we’ll also be brainstorming questions we’d like to ask author Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts) as she will be answering questions from the students who participated in the book blog (3 schools this year).

I had planned to do a better job of updating the Room 105 blog at the start of our school year. As soon as my volleyball coaching duty went into full swing, time slipped away. Now we’re finished with our first quarter and are starting our second.

Technology-wise, the students have been introduced to Nicenet and most recently our book blog. I have done a lot more with the kids this year on face-to-face discussion and written discussion before introducing them to an online discussion space (the pictures I’ve included are of one of a fish bowl discussion my students did in September). Our book blog this year will cover the book Al Capone Does My Shirts, a terrific historical fiction novel set in 1935. The blog will involve 3 schools this year, instead of just 2, and my kids are excited about the project. Because I will not have all of my students blog every week (to avoid overwhelming students from the other 2 schools), we are doing a sort of discussion “wall” with Post-its. Students without laptops and those in the two sections that aren’t posting will write and respond to Post-it responses. We’ll see how this goes. We also might do some face-to-face or additional written conversation on the “off” weeks.

This quarter I also hope to get students writing on individual blogs and to begin work on an electronic portfolio. So far we’ve gathered a few pieces of writing and stored them in a WIP (works in progress) folder on students’ laptops. We’ll revisit some of these pieces this quarter and at the end of the semester to do some reflection on our writing improvement. Already students are keyboarding better and generating more ideas during a quick write. Because the 7th graders will take the writing test in February, I still need to have them write on paper, too, because the test is a pencil-paper test.

We started school on August 18; it seems hard to believe that it’s already time for us to be in the classroom. The first week went smoothly, and I look forward to working with all of my new students.

I’ve been going back and forth about having a “class” blog for each of my sections as opposed to individual blogs. However, when I tried to set up a “class” blog with multiple users, I began to second-guess myself and went back to the individual blog idea. For one, an individual blog will give students a way to use an e-portfolio, which is one of my goals this year since a colleague and I wrote and received a grant relating to digital portfolios. I’d like to go back to what I did a few years ago and have students post several specific pieces on their blog. Also, I would like students to use their blogs more often as a way of expressing themselves – similar to an online journal. The challenge will be making time for the blogs; however, I can help one step to go faster by setting up kids’ blogs beforehand. I’ve already started on the first 15.

Much of the first week is spent on establishing expectations, and I always include the students’ help in doing so. I’ve found that getting off to a positive start and letting students have a voice right away sets a good tone for the rest of the year. Behavior issues seem to be fewer, and we can get more accomplished later on by taking time to “set up our classroom”.