Reflections on CATE

So last month, I attended the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) Conference with a few colleagues.

First, and ironically, it was last, Kwame Alexander - poet and Newberry Award winner for The Crossover - spoke at the last keynote.  He started with a reading of his poem, "In My Closet, On the Top Shelf, Is a Silver Box", which left me gutted emotionally.  I then went and bought all his non children's books and read that poem to my classes.  They felt it too.  I highly suggest looking into his poetry, especially with National Poetry Month occurring next month.  I will be reading a poem a day to my students.  Any suggestions?

Looking back through my notes, these are a few things that stood out to me.

A session about independent reading by Amy Matt.  That is something that my department holds sacred as 5% of a student's overall grade, but something we especially struggle with.  I'm definitely using some of her materials to incorporate them into my Book Review blogs.  I'm also going to try out the speed dating idea at some point (probably next year to be honest).  I think I'm also going to take time, once, maybe twice, a week to have students read in class.  I may start this with my 11th graders after next week.  I'm also going to set individual reading goals for my students instead of a one size fits all.  This is easy to do in the Accelerated Reader program we use.

I had a couple of dud sessions.  Particularly those that promised to help reduce the amount of work in grading.  I have a book I bought a few years ago that I've never read that I need to find.  Something about not working harder than your students are.

I found out about another Reading and Tracking tool, similar to Actively Learn and Owl Eyes, called  CommonLit.  If we don't end up expanding or renewing our Actively Learn account, I may check it out next year and give it a try.  I signed up just in case, and to maybe use some of their questions.  I'm always on the look out for good questions.

I found out about the app, Serial Reader, from Jennifer Naumann.  It breaks down classic lit into bite sized chunks.  The app will send them a 20 minute (or less) section of a book daily.

I went to a session by the Zen Teacher and every teacher should check out his site.  I bought the book, and he has inspired me to be better about taking care of myself.  I've mediated much more consistently (even if it's only for a few minutes) than I ever have.

The awesome Catlin Tucker was there for a keynote.  I really like her story time idea.  I need to go to the bookstore and look through the children's books for some good ones that could teach teenagers good lessons. I think I'll read one to them each month and then have them reflect on them in a blog.

I had a really good time in my last session about unlocking Shakespeare's rhetoric.  The presenters,
Kelly Boske and Melinda Malaspino, did a great job and I wish one of the colleges down here did a Globe Academy.  I might try a few of the techniques with my 10th grade honors class when we read A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Though, to tell the truth, after that session, I'm getting the hankering to teach Taming of the Shrew again.

Stay tuned for a Kid President blog, I'm having my students do one for the first time in a while today.

Add-Ons Can Save Lives, Or At Least Time

It's been awhile since I've made a post about anything other than Kid President.  It's been a very busy year.  I no longer have to worry about my Master's Degree, but I'm department chair this year and become a site rep for the union.  We also have had a lot of administrative absences for various reasons and a few of us have been picking up some of the slack when we can.

Last week, my Safe School Ambassador "club" hosted an Anti-Bullying Week.  That kept me pretty busy, but that's a kind of busy that is definitely worthwhile.  We got some help from one of the AVID classes and created a "Take What You Need, Give What You Can" board to share

#takewhatyouneed #givewhatyoucan #endbullying #bpawsitive

A photo posted by Miss Barron (@missbarronsfhs) on Oct 24, 2016 at 2:30pm PDT

I'm, as always, behind in my grading.  One thing that helped me so far this year is a Google Doc add-on called JoeZoo.  It's not perfect.  It would be great if you could go from giving grammatical feedback on an assignment, to grading it (using a rubric to give it a grade) instead of having to go back to the start screen.  But, if you use many of the same rubrics for different assignments, it's pretty handy.  I just had to set up my districts narrative rubric once, and now I can use it with multiple assignments.  It saved me a lot of time and it will show the students the areas they need to work on.

It also integrates with your Google Classroom (GC), so you don't need to enter in all your students and assignments.  If you have them in GC, it's there in JoeZoo.  I still suggest edits for mistake students make because the feedback function is not foolproof.

I discovered two new Docs add-ons the other day as well that I'm pretty excited about, though like JoeZoo, they aren't foolproof (apparently, it's nigh on impossible for AIs to identify comma splices).  These two add-ons have similar functions:  proofreading.  One is called GradeProof and the other is Proofread Bot.

GradeProof Screengrab

GradeProof reminds me of Grammarly in function and aesthetic.  I really like it.  It gives statistical information too like how many words, sentences, etc. the paper has.  It also gives a readability score and a "grade level".  The grade level isn't really what most teachers would consider a grade level.  What it is is a number of years it is estimated one would have to be in school in order to underestand the text.  So, my students and I figured out that the higher a readability percentage, the lower the grade level was.

Proofread Bot is interesting in that it explains the error and why it shouldn't be made.  I like that about it because it teaches along with guiding you through corrections that maybe should be made. This tool in particular could assist students in self (and peer) editing. Here's a video to see it in action:

I was a little surprised to hear about the change in name for GAFE to G Suite.  I'm curious how that will affect the Ed Tech world.  For instance, will EdTechTeam rename their GAFESummits?

The First (Half) Week of School 2016

I didn't sleep in any day, at all, during the summer.  I always woke up in the 6 or 7 o' clock hour. Every. Single. Day.  I find this very unfortunate.

It seems to be a trend that is continuing even after the school year has started because now I'm waking up somewhere in the 5 o' clock hour.

But, it's back to the "grindstone".  Though this grindstone isn't making a lot of noise.  So far, my students are soooooo quiet.  It's kind of disconcerting really.

I'm teaching the same preps this year (English 11 College Prep and English 10 Honors), but they flip flop back and forth between periods, which is kind of annoying and will probably get more so when we start doing different activities.  A minor issue, I know.

So, a post on the Breakout EDU facebook group rolled through in the days before school started from Sally Hoyt about a back to school digital breakout she did with her students.  She gave me permission to modify it, so I did and gave it a try.

Like Sally, I started out with a Google Form student survey.  Once the students were done with the survey and had clicked SUBMIT, there was a link to the 3-lock digital breakout I'd created for them.

Many of the students didn't read the confirmation page and closed the tab, which created some problems, but we navigated through them.

I had clues built into the data validation for each lock.

The first lock was a date lock, and I followed Sally's Breakout and chose Back to School Night.  Ours happen to be on the same night.  Many of the kids thought the clue about going back to school meant that day: the first day of school.  Some kids were getting upset with me because they didn't understand and thought they had to put in the date I gave in the example so they would type the date in the correct format, which of course, didn't work.

I followed Sally's example, to a point, with the directional lock as well and used it to lead them to Google Classroom.  I had given them a sheet with all the codes for all the Apps we would be using in class, which included Classroom.  The clue talked about how if you couldn't find your way, you may need to GOOGLE your way to the CLASSROOM.  Some of the kids picked up on the clue right away, others thought they had to find the coordinates to the school on Google Maps.

Once they were in Classroom, there was an announcement with a link to this document:

Many of the kids figured out the code, but couldn't quite figure out (read:  were not reading the help text for the lock) and were writing out the entire word instead of the first letters.

I'd given the kids a half sheet of paper "introducing" myself and telling them they could find more about me on my website (one of the pages on my site is titled "About Me").  Where the following infographic about myself could be found.  I borrowed this idea too.  I thought it was cute.

If the kids paid close enough attention to what I talked about in note (how many schools I've taught at, how many degrees I have, how many Google certifications I have, and how many colleges I've been to), they would pick up on the numbers and order for the 4-digit lock.

I had one girl figured it out, on accident, by deducing that few meant 3, multiple meant 2 (for her at least; but hey, it worked!), etc. from how I worded my clues.  I might need to be a bit more vague next time.

Once they had all the locks right, they clicked NEXT and that lead them to...

I decided to add a few questions to gauge how students felt about the Digital Breakout.  Here is a sampling of some of the results:

I had a few kids report that they liked nothing about it, but many of them said they liked the challenge, some liked how "sneaky" I was with my clues, and many of them liked the mystery of it.

A lot of the kids realized that the objective was to hit all four of the "Cs": Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Communication.  Some missed out on the communication part because they were trying to do it alone.

Overall, I think the Breakout was a success.  I think I'm going to do one for The Crucible.  I think I'll do the "old-fashioned" Breakout for that.  I need to find one for a book that has already been done and modify it.  It would make me feel a little more confident in trying it out than if I tried to do one from complete scratch.

The Breakout didn't take up the whole period, so I had a Kahoot all about me and the room ready to go.  The kids really had fun with this one despite the fact that they'd just met me.  I used it to point out where the station for staplers, sharpeners, and a hole punch is; and, how to go about turning in late work or getting their absent work, etc.  Here were my two favorite questions, the first one comes right after a question about whether or not I have a sense of humor:




The next two days, I spent practicing some of the Apps we will be using during the school year with the students.  We used Google Classroom both days as the springboard for the other three.  I really like the new topics feature they added, by the way.

First up was a diagnostics assessment on NoRedInk.  This is an online grammar learning tool that I found out about from Esther Wojcicki when she came to present at our district on Moonshots (bought the book, have the book, haven't read it yet).  Four of the five classes are having the most trouble with connecting clauses with colons and semicolons.  My 4th period needs help there too, but they were having more trouble with active and passive voice.  So, I now know what my first official NoRedInk assignments will be for the students.

Then it was Verso.  I really like Verso.  I discovered it last year during CUE after having a hallway chat with my friend Crystal Kirch before we headed to lunch with another friend.  I could have sworn I blogged about using it last year.  Apparently, I had meant to and never did.  I really love Verso, and the kids seemed to like it last year in the few times we used it.  I plan to pretty much use it for any online class discussions this year.  The students' responses are anonymous to students, but not the teacher.  The kids mentioned how they liked the idea of anonymity because that way they would feel more confident and comfortable responding honestly and thoughtfully knowing that other students don't know what response is theirs, but they can't be mean to each other with impunity since they are accountable to the teacher who can tell who said what.

Here is the video that the students watched for their first "flip" (What Verso calls an activity) that they did as practice.  There was an accompanying question:

Lastly, I introduced them to Actively Learn.  As I blogged about last school year, I really like Actively Learn.  My school is test piloting it with a Team plan for 6 of us, so I get some special goodies this year.  One thing I noticed is that when I sync my Google Classroom classes with it and then create an assignment, it creates a draft for the assignment in my Google Classroom.  That was really cool.  For this practice session with the kids, I chose a current event article from the catalog on music and how it affects the brain.  It has only two questions, which I thought was perfect for practicing.

I was really surprised at how thoughtful and thorough many of the answers were from the students, especially from my 11th graders.  Many of them wrote quite a bit.  They seemed to like when I went over to the computer and started grading their answers and they would get the feedback in front of them already.

A similar product to Actively Learn reached out to me over the summer through Twitter about their product and this blog.  They talked about my readership.  I wasn't aware I had a readership.  Readership are you out there?  Would love to hear from you.

The product is called OwlEyes, and it is certainly worth a look.  Their slogan on their home page is: Read. Annotate. Collaborate.  It's completely free and houses a bunch of readings from the public domain, and they were going to be adding (should have already added at this point) some texts from Project Gutenberg.  It seems really interesting, and if I didn't already have Actively Learn, I'd probably give it a try with my class. But, we are paying for Actively Learn, and I don't want to overwhelm my students with Apps that carry a similar purpose.  I did sign up anyways, just in case.  I like having my username saved.  I also liked how they have some analysis already embedded into their texts.

Here are two short videos that Samantha over at Owl Eyes sent me:

Two months of turmoil....tranquility tested.

I know.  Trust me, I know.  It's been over two months now since I last blogged.  I'm sorry for those that actually read what I put out there.

I'm just going to be bluntly honest (not that that I'm often not), and tell you this last month, in particular, has been emotionally taxing.  I was hoping to get caught up on my grading during the holiday break, and while I did in the last week get the 5 sets of 5 blog posts and 4 comments graded, I ended up having to deal with something a little more pertinent, particularly that first week.

The Sunday before Christmas, I got into a car accident, or more accurately, I was forced into a car accident.  I've been dealing with the aftermath ever since.  I'm physically okay for the most part, just lots of trips to the chiropractor.  And, the logistics of everything but bodily injury have been taken care of.  But, emotionally--between thinking I was going to die (yup, she went there) and already being stretched thin emotionally with work and my graduate work and having to replace the life saving car that I had had for 9 years (a very pretty blue Honda Civic that I called Belle) with a new car (a very pretty blue Kia Soul named Luna)--it has been noticeably draining.  

But now that the semester is over, all the grades are in (well, all except maybe two, but that depends on if I get an essay on the positive effects of procrastination from a particular someone on Monday morning, and if one student is out of the hospital and can take their final--I hope that is the case), and I finished the working draft of my section of a group literature review for my graduate group's action research project on badges in education, I have a little time to sit down and do some reflecting on my teaching through the written word.

Let me start with the most important tech tool EdTechTeam Google Summit I mentioned in my last post gave me.  I've used it with my 10th-grade honors students a few times now.  I love it, and the kids are still making up their minds about it, but let me--if you don't already know about it--introduce you to ActivelyLearn.  

There are different pricing level's, but there is a free level, which my account reverts to tomorrow (I think) after getting a free trial upgrade from the summit.  You can find some content that comes with questions and notes built in; you can start completely from scratch or add your questions and comments to the ones that already exist.  You can add media right into the story.  I put pictures and videos in the margin notes, which was  helpful with "Murders in the Rue Morgue".  You can also add media and directions to the beginning of the story, like this video I added for "The Tell-Tale Heart".

The aspect I enjoy most about ActivelyLearn though is the ability to grade by question, rather than student.  This is immensely helpful in seeing where the weaknesses and needs are for the class.  For example, for "The Raven" (we just finished a unit of Edgar Allan Poe if you didn't guess), I had added a question about the setting of the poem.  If I was grading it student-by-student, all questions at once, I might not have caught the fact that many of them were forgetting that setting is both time AND place and address it with them.  I was also grading as they were reading and answering questions so, in some cases, they were getting real-time feedback from me on their answers.

I also like the fact that teachers can reset students' answers, or that students can request this themselves.  That way you can give them a chance to get it right.  Sometimes they still don't get it.

I was tempted to give him points for persistence.

But, they often come up with answers that make you chuckle.

As a Walking Dead fan, I enjoyed this answer.

ActivelyLearn integrates well with  Google Classroom.  You can set up your assignments for Classroom from ActivelyLearn.  You can also pull your roster to create the class from Classroom as well.  

You don't have to be an English teacher.  They have content for various subject areas and grade levels, and--depending on your price plan--you can upload your own text.  I highly suggest you check it out and, at least, give it a try.  I'm probably going to try it with my 11th graders for "The Battle with Mr. Covey" and "The Lowest Animal".

I think I'll leave it there for now.  I'll follow up with a quick post about the fun we had reading "Masque of the Red Death" in my next post.

Blending Doctopus and Goobric with Google Classroom

Not a very inventive title, but an accurate one.

So, I just graded my first set of research papers using Doctopus so I can use the Goobric grading rubric.  It was....pretty dang awesome.  It made grading the essays a lot easier and less irritating than I remember them being in the past. 

What Doctopus is is a free way to use your Google Drive via sheets to handle Google Document assignments from your students.  Here is a quick video on what Doctopus is:

I had never looked into Doctopus before since I use Google Classroom, but the prospect of being able to use Goobric to grade some projects intrigued me, especially for the 11th grade research essay.  This essay took up a month of instruction and is worth a lot of points for the students.  Here is a video about using Goobric that includes some direction.

I did a little research to find out about Doctopus and Goobric (The two go hand-in-hand).  I was particularly looking for ways to incorporate it with Classroom and found some blog posts.  Here are two good ones I found:  one from Richard Bryne and one from Jennie Magiera.  There I found some very useful "How To" videos.

Now, I'm not sure how often I'll be able to use Goobric for grading because it's department policy to use the district's 6-point grading rubric for essays, which is holistic.  Goobric is not really set up for holistic grading, but this was definitely worth sharing.

CUE the Recovery

I love CUE.  I really do.  I love the CUE Conference, and I want to go every year.  Yet, I need time to recover and sort through all the information I gathered. 

I hope to have some more information and neat tricks, etc. for you from CUE in the coming weeks as I disseminate and try out different things, but we're going through WASC right now, so things are a little crazy, and I'm a little behind in my grading.

One thing I do want to share that I've tried out with my 11th grade students is Pear Deck.  Pear Deck allows you to broadcast your presentation to and integrate interaction with the students and their devices (Chromebooks in my case).  So, instead of students following along on the screen with your PowerPoint or Google Slide, you can have them following along directly on their own screen (works with anything that has a web browser) and even have them answer questions that you can then project up onto the board.

Here are some videos about it that I found.

There is a free version and a premium version.  I'm currently doing a 30 day trial of the premium version to see if it will be worth the cost.  I'll give my opinion on it when I make the decision.