Discovering Play

It seems that the classroom has many influences and pressures that in turn become the influences and pressures on our students.  As a math and science teacher, I feel the constraints of testing windows, lesson plans, assessments, grading and making sure my students are best prepared for what's next academically.  In that pressure we tend to take everything very seriously and expect nine year olds to take it just as seriously.  I am passionate about my job, educating my students and making sure they are doing the best they possibly can each and everyday.  Yet, in all the education business that all of us are focused on, we sometimes forget about who our kids are.  They are our nine year olds.  Let us not forget what it means to be nine, to be a kid. So it needs to be asked, where is the play?

Play has become a dirty word in school.  I use it daily to get kids back on task, by saying, "quit playing, quit playing around, etc."  With all we have to do there does not seem a place or time for play.  Albert Einstein told us, "Play is the highest form of research."  We know that play can lead to creativity, exploration, build relationships and enrich our lives.  Why can't playing and learning happen together?

Some Chicago colleagues and I were so inspired by Kevin Carroll's 2014 ISTE keynote about his journey and the themes of play, creativity, and relationships that led to his great success.  We decided this was something our kids must experience as well.  Kevin was kind enough to invite us to his Chi-Talk Event in which he and his team worked to inspire Chicago's kids to listen, learn and lead and rise up.  Kevin's work is truly where it started, we simply hope to continue his great work.

Ben Kovacs and I decide to work on a unit of study for our students at two very different schools.  Ben works on the North side and I work on the South side, yet play is universal to us all, we decided the plan could be collaborative and reach all kids no matter their zip code. We worked to create the #ChicagoPlay site to host our inspiration, essential ideas and questions, and our kids' work. We hoped to use Kevin's inspiring work and then allow our students to play again.  We aspire to have our students become ambassadors of play and bring it to others.  But first, we had to bring it back to them.  We started by having kids define play, what it means to them and its feelings and emotions.  We let them see a great video from Kevin's work at Nike about Tag and play.  The truth is, they struggled.  No one has asked them about play, many of them have lost touch with play.  After blogging, we looked at which words we saw the most using a word cloud.

We have work to do around play.  But it's the best kind of work, it's thoughtful, inspiring, creative, imaginative, freeing.  My students next task was to think outside of the box, literally.  We used the book,  Not a Box by Antoiniette Portis.  In this book, the box can become anything you imagine.  My students were nine again when we read and predicted what the box was going to be on each page.  My students then had a chance to recreate, Not a Box using their imaginations and the Book Creator app.   Just as the rabbit in the story is pictured simply in the box so were my students.  Then they used their imaginations to create something much better than a box.  

One of my students commented after finishing our work for the day with play, "I haven't used my imagination this much in a really long time."  It's time to let them play.

I AM....Powerful

I was lucky enough to attend Kevin Carroll's keynote at the ISTE conference this summer and hear his powerful story about how play impacted his life trajectory.  Then I was fortunate to attend his inspiring Chicago event, #CHITALK in which he worked with athletes and other's who had a Chicago connection and had inspiring successes to share with Chicago's youth.   Angela Davis was one of the first speakers and she talked about affirmations and having the kids state who they are, who they want to be seen as, and who they want to grow to become, all powerful stuff.  She had them complete it with simply stating, "I AM..." and then the word or phrase.

Angela Davis at #CHITALK inspiring students.

Angela and the entire team at #CHITALK inspired all day.  This inspiration paired with the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and the murder of Mike Brown made me realize that students in my class needed to examine the way they are viewed by others and self, and how they wanted to be viewed.  We discussed the terms and ideas that they have heard about them and other young people and in my students' case other young black people.  We came up with terms both positive and negative about young people.  Then we took on the task of creating a bank of words about how my students wanted to be viewed, what words represented who they wanted to become and what they wanted the world to know about them as individuals.

We did the activity first with students taking each other's pictures, using the PicART app and placing the I am words over the photo.  

These turned out well, but I wanted to make this into a more powerful piece that included the connection to Chicago, my kids and their powerful affirmations.  Our class set of iPad 2's do not have the best camera, so I simply used my iPhone to take each students picture again, all with the green background.  I then stopped on my way home from work and took a shot of the city skyline.  I then used Keynote to create a more dynamic font for the I AM statements.  I built the font over the photo then add the student photo via green screen to iMovie.  From here I found the inspirational song from American Authors. 

The best part is my students LOVED IT.  And Angela Davis was kind enough to tweet them about how inspired she was by them.   Their first step into becoming who they say they are and seeing other's value their vision.  

Learning Space Matters

Last year was my first year with mobile furniture with fourth graders.  There was so much we learned together about learning, space, relationships and ourselves as people.  One of my biggest take aways was simple.  When you let kids be in charge, they are empowered.  They are empowered to learn, empowered to find or create space they want or need, they are empowered to ask for more, and they are empowered to learn more.

It could easily be seen as a project about space and furniture.  But it was always a project about learning, relationships, and valuing the learner.  What my students told me time and time again via survey, conversation or with action was when I have a choice, when my voice matters, when I am in control as the learner, I will be at my best.  When I am a part of a community, when my person is valued, when I can build relationships, I can also learn.

Furniture was the tool that amplified what my classroom community valued.  It allowed most of my kids to create a space that worked for their learning as individuals and as members of a group. It made the shift to a more student centered space, it made more of the space about learning, it made my students reflect more on what they needed to do their best in multiple learning experiences.

Here is some of their work!

Digital Tools in the Math Classroom

Last year, I was able to having my math block work on a four center rotation for students.  The biggest difference this year is I do not have a math curriculum to follow, so I am blending a variety of resources to meet the Common Core State Standards and still meet my students' needs and only have three centers with about five more minutes at each one. Here is how I have designed my math block with technology tools to support my students, allow them to explain their thinking or practice skills.

Teacher Center

My students load an Explain Everything file that I have created with the lesson and practice problems they will complete with me at the teacher center.  I can make my file in Google Drive, export as a PDF and then load into Explain Everything.  Once I have changed it to an Explain Everything project I upload to Dropbox and my students easily downloaded from Dropbox to their iPad.  This workflow allows my students to all have the lesson on their personal device along with the projected version and with the Explain Everything tools they can work right in the file.  Students can then save their work to their device to reference later.  Although I haven't attempted this yet, the Explain Everything files can also be uploaded to Youtube for students for future use, or for absent students.  Explain Everything is a tool to grow with as it allow video, pictures, voice recording over slides and other tools I hope to use with my students as we advance in our math work.

Example of a PDF loaded to students via Explain Everything.

Independent Work Center

My students complete independent work from a variety of sources, but mostly use paper and pencil at the Independent Work Center.  I find that students like to write with their finger, but also can get a lot done with paper and pencil.  The work my students do here is mostly review problems of previous lesson's skills.  I am using Everyday Math math boxes, although I am assigning pages out of sequence and only relevant problems to my students learning so far this year.  They are also working in St Math, which is a great conceptual program that is image based and viewed by students as puzzles that can be organized by strand by teachers via the website.  My students get access to problems that are interactive and can see puzzle progress as well as percentage progress.  The program is also helpful for teachers as it shows areas of struggle for students in hurdle, shows time on task for students, and completion level by student.  I am also using Learn Zillion to review skills or reteach skills with students.  Learn Zillion not only has a rich bank of resource videos that are organized well, but they play on students' iPads.  Teachers can favorite lessons or strands, create assignments and due dates for individuals or classes.  They also have guided practice and quizzes if that is of interest,  I build a practice set of problems for the skill for students that is differentiated based on the group's current ability level.  Learn Zillion allows you to have student log in and teachers can assign videos to specific students or all students.  It's a great way to review concepts, allow students to practice and target lessons based on student need.

Problem Solving Center

My final center is a problem solving.  This has a mixture of word problems, math games and video lessons with practice.  I have my students solve real world math word problems via Doceri.  The students use Doceri as a whiteboard to solve the problem, but also talk through their problem solving process.  The standards of mathematical practice are exhibited on many levels when students solve and discuss their thinking.  My students are also using Doceri to record math game scores and practicing target skills.  Everyday Math games are a great tool for students to practice and also allow variety of problems with cards or dice. I also add components to games, for example, my students were practicing making and saying large numbers with the EM game Number Top It, but because they also needed practice with expanded form and written form, I added that as a score sheet component.

Below is an example of a student problem solving!

Song as a Form of Protest

Each year at my school students work on a unit of study around a social justice topic as a final project of the year.  At the end of the unit of study, the grade level works together to create a performance to exhibit learning.  As a team of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders this year our unit of study was "Song as a Form of Protest" through history.  We each took a time period to explore with our grade level students.

My students focused on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  We started our exploration with the PBS video American Experience Soundtrack for a Revolution.  Students were able to hear first hand accounts from people from this era and specifically at each of our three major events: Lunch Counter protests, The Children's March in Birmingham and March on Washington.  Our students had a chance to look at a few events they have never explored and familiar events through a different lens by examining how song impacted the movements.  

Next, students explored one of the events they were most interested in with a group and a teacher facilitator.  The students used a graphic organizer to identify key ideas. We used the search engine Kidrex and this created Google Document graphic organizer for students to note take.

Once students had a foundation of understand for the history of each event, they then did an image search to represent and share the story of the events.  Students did this search in groups and saved images directly to their own iPad.  Once the images were saved they placed all the images in a shared Dropbox folder.  This allowed all the students in the group to benefit from each other's searches and finds.  Students then worked independently or with a partner to create an iMovie with images.  We then took one as a group and wrote the script for the voiceover from the research portion to create a narrated movie.  Students then determined as a group a song from the research that best represented their event.

Below are two of the three videos, once the space opens on Vimeo I will add the final video!  I am so proud of the work and they loved sharing their learning with the school and now with you!

Birmingham Childrens from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.







Lunch Counter from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.

Schoology Discussions in Science

My class has been using Schoology as our classroom Learning Management System all year.  It has so many great features that makes it easy to gather work, give quizzes, give students feedback and communicate with my students.  The feature that I have been exploring lately is the discussions.

Jennie Magiera shared her love for this feature with me a while ago, but using it with students has been really powerful.  Setting up the discussion is very easy, it is located in the Resource section, under Personal.  Simply select, name, and post to the course you want to have the discussion.

Students see the discussion as an upcoming event.  Once the students join the discussion they add comments by pressing the plus sign in the corner, or can add comments to other students' posts. The discussion formats to nest the comments under the original post that makes reading and seeing conversations within the discussion easy.

I use discussions for different purposes, but for science I have been using them as my opening KWL idea generator.  We started a Land and Water unit recently and my students brainstormed alone first then added ideas to the Schoology discussion.  They start "know" comments with K: and "want to know" or "wonder" with a W: so we can determine which category the comment belongs under for the conversation.

So far these features are similar to most other discussion tools you could use with students, but the best feature is the "filter by user" tab at the top of the discussion.  This tool allows the teacher to not only see the number of comments by user, but highlights the student's comments to quickly find and view student by student comments.  I used this tool to easily grade 30 students contribution to the KWL conversation and see the quality of contributions.  Some students only had three comments but all were high quality and shared content understanding, another student may have ten comments but are low quality, "I agree," or "I had the same question."  Not only does it make evaluating the discussion easy, it can be used as a coaching tool for students.  Students can learn to be a stronger contributor to a conversation by seeing a filtered view of the bigger discussion.

Unlike other discussion tools, Schoology archives the discussions and they remain available and organized in the Resource section.  These could be used as a portfolio type of item to show a student's growth in discussions over time.   They could also be shared with students who may be absent on the actual day of discussion to review and add ideas after the initial discussion.  I will share the original KWL discussion with students after the unit of study to compare the new concepts and learning.  I want students to be able to see the growth in their understanding from experiences in the Land and Water unit.

#PLAYDATE14 Learning

I was so thrilled to have three solid hours this weekend to "play" with some tools that I was familiar with but had not had the chance to dig in and explore.  I am so grateful for my fabulous team of PLAYDATE organizers for putting on an event that allows educators to geek out, hang out and learn together.

Google Scripts
I was able to spend some time exploring more with Google scripts during my first session.  Although the scripts are complicated it is a great way to share Google documents with students or groups of students and also stay organized in a paperless classroom.  Andrew Stillman has created a wonderful site to learn about scripts at New Visions CloudLab.  I plan to use Doctopus to share documents for my research groups in the next few weeks.  Not only was I able to play with scripts more, people shared amazing uses of scripts during the playoff.  My favorite was a teacher using mood check ins with students and then create a FormMule to email her a reminder to discuss any issues with students who indicated a problem.  Easy to track, easy to remember and simple once installed.  Jennie Magiera shared some new and exciting features are coming from the genius team of script writers in the next few weeks!

MaKey Makey
I have been wanting to explore some of the hot "makers" items out there, but did not have access or the resources until PLAYDATE.  Bill Steinbach was extremely generous and brought a trove of makers materials from his own classroom and let teachers explore and play.  He truly made the session a makers space.  I was able to explore the Makey Makey tools with other educators and I am so excited to get them for my students.  The basics of a circuit, conductors, and electronics are all at work with these fun tools.  The front and back of the Makey Makey let students see a simplified version of the task and the "behind the scenes" version of it for more advanced understanding.

Educators
Beyond any tools or session was the learning that happened by working with others.  I was able to talk to educators in every session and share ideas, hear new ideas, learn, brainstorm, problem solve and laugh in every case.  We were able to celebrate our discoveries together and learn even more from those who shared on twitter and at the playoff. Just as that was one of the best parts of my day, I want to remember to give that gift to my students when they learn and explore.  Learning is playful, exciting, joyful, social and fun.