The Read Report Lives

Since the new semester has begun and both my preps are working on research papers, I have a little more time to be a better blogger.  It will, of course, catch back up to me when these papers are due.

I haven't done a Read Report in a really long time (about a year), but I have been checking up on my Feedly and saving posts.

This will be a nice way to refresh my memory about things.

Going all the way back to October of 2015, Jennifer Gonzales, gave her Big List of Class Discussion Strategies.  She breaks them down by high-prep, low-prep, and ongoing strategies.  Of the high-prep strategies mentioned, my favorite and the one that has basically replaced my attempts at Socratic Seminars is Philosophical Chairs.  I haven't done one in a while, but I plan to do so soon with the anticipation guide for The Joy Luck Club.  I find that anticipation guides are good ways to incorporate Philosophical Chairs.  I usually give them a "worksheet" where they can mark where they stand on a big idea or theme from the novel.  I also usually have them write down why they agree/disagree.  Then, usually the next day, we move about the room and defend our positions, seeing if we can persuade others with our analysis to move on over to our side.

Jacqui Murray also wrote in October of 2015.  Her post was about Let[ting] Student Learn from Failure.  I think this one caught my eye way back when because I completely agree that it is necessary.  I tell my kids all the time that we learn best from our mistakes, but that doesn't seem to deter their fear of failure.  She suggests many things in the post, but the two that stood out to me were her comments on the "Mulligan Rule" and letting students see you fail.  Now, the former is something I offer, but probably not explicitly enough since no one ever takes me up on it.  So, I need to find a way to make it clear that students can resubmit essays or projects to make them better.  The latter is something my students see me do all the time.  It usually appears in the typos of the work I present to them, but it can run the gamut all the way up to a lesson that just totally bombs.

Again back in October 2015, my friend Crystal Kirch talked about the TeachMeet she did with her colleagues.  They "had three 2-minute sessions of teachers sharing something awesome they do in their classes with technology followed by 1-minute of reflection and debriefing with colleagues."  So, each session was probably around 5 minutes, for a total of 15.  I would love to do this with my staff.  I think I'm going to take it to my tech committee and see what they think before I go to the admin to ask for time.

Another Jacqui Murray post (still 2015, but I've moved on up to November at least), talk about what she thinks are the 5 Best Typing Tutors.  The ability to type on a normal keyboard, rather than one on a smart phone, is a skill that is severly lacking in many students.  I honestly feel that we need to bring back some technology course that many schools and districts have done away with.  These skills are especially pertinent with the onslaught of 1:1 programs.

We finally jettison into 206 (February) with a post from EdTechTeam about Google's Revision History.  I love this tool, not only for fixing my own mistakes, but to catch kids who I suspect of plaigarizing their work from another student.  If things go into a document in one fell swoop with minimal entries in the revision history, it stinks of copy and paste.

Going back a month with a post from Jennifer Scott about Living in the Learing Moment.  She talks about when to sit and give synchronous feedback to students and when we roam around the room.  This is something that I think I will always struggle with, but am better at than I was when I started my blended-learning endeavors.  I think if I can get my workload down, I could feel more able to roam around the room than I already am.  I use many different "formulas" to keep myself out on the floor with my students.  Somethings I do the half-and-half:  5 minutes at my desk and then 5 minutes on the floor.  Other times, especially if I'm grading, I do the quota:  After every X number of assignments, I'll get up and roam around the room.

I think I'll leave it there for now.  Maybe in a day or two I can work on getting all caught up.

Kid President #2

Source: Wikimedia

It's actually #3.  Or, it is for my students.  I didn't model blogging for them last time (shame on me).  But since it has been a while from my last post, I decided to do it for them today.  It's not that I haven't had anything to say.  I've just been busy.  I'm sure all of you more than understand that.  I envy those of you who are better blog stewards than I am.

So, this time around, I had my students read #8 in the book:  "Focus on the Awesome."  One thing that I think that is awesome is that my students are blogging.  They don't all particularly enjoy it yet (but they will), but one thing I've noticed about my students over the years, anything that is different = hard = don't want to do it.  Once it becomes easier for them, I anticipate that they will enjoy it.

Another thing that I think is awesome is the fact that one of the authors of the book is now following me on Twitter.  Never thought that one day I would get excited about who was following me on Twitter.  But then again, I never really thought I would be anywhere near active on Twitter either.

I'm hoping that the students will eventually not need the prompts I come up with the help them write their reflections, but here are the prompts they can mix and match for this particular assignment:

3. Reflect on #8: “Focus on the Awesome”
1. Do you agree with Brad and Kid President? Should we focus on the awesome?
2. What might be some benefits on focusing on the awesome?
3. What might make it difficult to focus on the awesome?
4. Who is someone in your life that helps you to remember to focus on the awesome?

I do agree with Brad Montague (the one now following me on Twitter) and Robby Novak.  We should focus on the awesome.  It makes you feel better mentally, which will only help you feel better physically.  It's not particularly easy to do, especially if you're predisposed to being negative.  It's going to take practice.

There are some days that will happen where it just seems like nothing is going right.  Those days might make it difficult to focus on the awesome.  But, the fact that you can survive days like that and come out on the other side is pretty awesome if you think about it.

I think Robby Novak himself is a pretty good reminder to focus on the awesome.  I especially feel this way since I've learned that he and his biological sister both have the same "Brittle Bone Disease" and were adopted by the Novaks.  If he can focus on the awesome, I certainly can.  The people who are currently in my life that help me to focus on the awesome are my best friend of 20 years, Christel, and her two boys (her youngest has a smile that can't be called anything other than awesome), and my students.  My students can also make it hard to focus on the awesome, depending on the day and/or period, but the fact that I can be a part of their lives and maybe make a difference for them is absolutely awesome.

Read Report for September 2015 Part 1

I've been so busy, sometimes doing my headless chicken impression, that I haven't found the time to do a Read Report since August.  I don't really have the time now, but I'm doing it anyways.

First up is a post by Catlin Tucker about a redesign of her gradebook.  Instead of the traditional grading categories, she moved to a skills-based category system.  I think the idea is interesting, and if I didn't have a department policy about grade categories, I might give something similar a try.

So, I discovered the Cult of Pedagogy.  This particular post is about ineffective teaching strategies.  It talks about moving beyond and away from teaching the way were were taught and the rationale behind why you should get ride of each strategy and what you can do instead.  The first strategy mentioned is popcorn reading, which I sometimes am still guilty of using.

Andi McNair talked about failure.  This one caught my eye because so many students seem to be terrified of failure.  Trying to get them to take risks is often very difficult to do.  There is a really great "poster" in this post that I don't want to infringe on its copyright, so I didn't post it here.



Jacqui, over at Ask a Tech Teacher, did a post about writing a novel on Twitter.  Using a 140 character limit is a good way of helping the students become more concise writers.




That's it for what I read in September.  I still have to go back and read some stuff from the beginning of September.  I'll try and do that quickly and get some interesting posts from my feedly to you.