Sunday, September 8, 2019

And finally... Flipgrid!

For those that follow me on #Twitter, you know I have been spending my summer learning about Flipgrid.  For those that don't know, Flipgrid is a platform that allows educators to post questions to students and allows those students to respond via video to both the teacher and each other.

Or at least on the most basic level, that is what it is. Truthfully there is far more power in this platform.  And that is what I have been learning over the summer - how to begin to incorporate Flipgrid into my classroom routines.  What has been wonderful is anytime I had a question, I could post it to #twitter and either someone in my #PLN or someone from Flipgrid itself would reply. In fact last night I wrote a direct message to Flipgrid about some settings and there was a reply to me within two hours!

I decided to start to incorporate this into my remediation class. This year I am teaching a class that focuses on Executive Function Skills and then applies those skills to writing. The students in this class have difficulties with organization, planning, prioritizing, noticing details... the very skills you need for both writing and to be a successful student.



On the first academic day of class, I gave the students a writing prompt: "You win $1 million. How do you spend the money?"  I told them I'd give them ten minutes and at the end of ten minutes they had to submit their response. They could not press 'post' until all 10 minutes were up and they weren't allowed to do anything else for those ten minutes.

After 10 minutes, they posted their writings. I gathered them into one document and as a class we analyzed them - not for anything more than word count. I gave the class the data and after some math, students calculated that the average length of a response was about 20 words, so as a class they wrote just about 2 words per minute.

We discussed the expected length of a 10 minute writing prompt as well as the outline.  At Marburn we use Keys to Literacy and talk about pre-writing as a major component of the writing process.  You can imagine the reactions: "Pre-writing doesn't work for me." "I just write my ideas and that's my sentences." "Why pre-write when I can just start writing!"  After some lessons about what pre-writing looks like, I introduced them to Flipgrid and told them we would be making a video to record their pre-writing. The prompt that day was, "What I did over the weekend."



Students took to the video format pretty well. I explained they would have up to one minute of time to introduce themselves and talk about their weekend in as much detail as they could. Later that day I was able to watch each video and comment back to each of them a summary of their video, with notes organized by day.  The next class period, I explained they would have three to five minutes to turn my notes into organized thoughts. Students took these teacher-generated comments and turned them into a top-down web. From there they did a two-minute written response to the original question.

What did they discover?  In those two minutes of writing, the average response was 32 words long meaning a student wrote an average of 16 words per minute.  One student was particularly stunned by the result: "So we wrote eight times more?" Yes - you wrote more words per minute AND more words overall even though you had 8 fewer minutes of 'writing' time. We talked about the amount of 'time on task' was exactly the same: 10 minutes. This broke down into 1 minute of a video, 3 minutes of summary (done by a teacher this time, with the knowledge that they would slowly add this skill in themselves), 4 minutes of building a top down web, and 2 minutes of writing.

It was a powerful lesson and one that I was so glad to present. Many of these students have not had an opportunity to see the 'why' behind the pre-writing. This process, with Flipgrid adding some technological support, gave them the justification.  I'm so excited to continue to explore Flipgrid and the educational applications it could provide!





Monday, September 2, 2019

Support Systems


This meme came across my feed recently. It's message has been rattling around my head the past week and I've really been reflecting on the meaning as it applies to my life. I am so blessed to have such a supportive system around me.



This to me boiled down to these questions:  Who takes care of you?  Who do you allow into your life? How do you let them help you?

For me the answer fell into many buckets:

My family: I am blessed with an amazing family. My wife and I just celebrated the 24th anniversary of our first date. We just watched our older child start college and our younger one start 8th grade. We all have different goals and dreams, and we all support each other. I have some crazy ones: between my ultra running, my teaching schedule, and my American Sign Language class, so many hours of my week are consumed by non-family events.

My wife and kids have similar craziness: work schedules, orchestra, college, my kid's home baking business... the list is exhaustive. It would be easy for everyone to say "sorry too busy" when one of us had a special event.

But we don't. We make sure to sit down and have dinner most nights and family game nights a few times a month. We get to school events. We attend all of the children's concerts. There is never a question of "are we going" but more of a "what time do we have to be home to get there on time?"

My school: I work at a school that encourages me to develop myself professionally. I really want to present more, and so the leaders of my school encouraged me to apply to present at AMLE 2019 for a third time. When we found out that my proposal was accepted, they celebrated as much as I did. When we discovered that the conference would happen the same week as our trip to Washington D.C, they looked for any way possible for me to attend. When that didn't work out, they said they expected me to present in 2020.

The administration challenges me to improve my craft and lets me develop the leadership skills I want to evolve and expand. When I have an idea or observation, I'm comfortable bringing it to my team leaders.

see you in Baltimore!

My friends: There are so many people in this category. I have friends that can join me on a long run and process my school day or some activities I have in mind. I have friends that I can go out to dinner with to vent or chat. I have friends that enjoy game nights and friends that I can just talk to over instant messenger since they are no longer local. Some of them I've only known a year or so, and others I have known since I was in high school. I value all of them and hope I bring as much value to their lives as they do to mine.

My #PLN: I can't count the number of times I have logged onto twitter with a question or idea and had replies within the hour. I don't understand why more teachers (or other professionals) do not take advantage of this resource. We build ideas on ideas, develop thoughts, and help share what worked for us. I'm launching my FlipGrid lessons this week SPECIFICALLY with feedback from people in my PLN. When I have a bad day, lesson, or idea, these people help me get back on track.

As we are getting into the opening stretch of the school year, I'd encourage you to think about your support group and how they will make your year amazing.