Shannon's+Journal

Our first meeting this fall...(Friday September 14,2012.) We met together as a team to discuss how to tackle our ideas around improving student achievement using oral language and technology. It was clear to us that children, especially in early primary, would be much better at showing their understanding of a text when given the chance to talk over the chance to write it down on paper. The problem became how best to demonstrate what we already know to be good teaching practice, let the kids talk about what they know and understand. We also strongly felt that our students would be able to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills and deeper comprehension of texts when given the chance to record their answers using technology, in our case, I-pads. We also love the idea that the students would become independent with, and accountable for their own learning. Once trained, the kids would be recording their knowledge and we as teachers could use the recordings for assessment purposes.

Our first order of business was to decide which reading comprehension strategy to begin with. My grade one teaching partner and I thougth that making self-to-text connections would be a great place to begin. We then created learning goals and success criteria for everything that the kids would need to be successful with making connections, giving feedback (strengths & weaknesses), using the technology effectively and safely and finally the criteria for actually getting the technology to do what we wanted (i.e. record the kids making connections and giving feedback). We created posters with clip-art so that our early readers could use the success criteria checklists independently further down the road. We generated posters for the following; 1. Making an effective connection. We gave the kids prompts to start their connection, In the story,... This makes me think of a time when.... and What I understand because I made this connection (the metacognition component!) 2. Giving strengths, arrows to someone who just made a connection. We chose 4 criteria that we felt should be evident when children make connections. These included; I like the way your talked in full sentences. I like the way you talked about something important from the story (to help with deeper connections). I like the way you used the connections checklist (success criteria) to make an effective connection. I like the way your connection helps me understand the story betters (i.e. how the character is feeling, or what the character might do next). 3 Giving arrows, things to work on. We decided to keep things simple and to do exactly the same feedback from the strengths but change the wording to... You need to speak in full sentences....etc. 4. Step by step instructions for how to record using the I-pads. 5. Success criteria for the care and handling of the I-pads themselves.

Our goal was to begin using these posters (goals and criteria) to explicity teacher the children how to make solid connections, and to record them using the I-pads. We planned to spend time together exploring books we chose that we felt the kids could specifically connect to given their age and experience. We would use these texts to model, guide, share and eventually make connections independently that would be recorded for assessment purposes.

We will let you know how it goes....

Wednesday October 3, 2012.

We have been explicitly teaching and modeling the goals and criteria for making effective, meaningful connections using the posters talked about in my first journal entry. We feel very strongly that the students have a solid set of criteria for making their connections in an organized, succinct and meaningful way. We began the process of releasing the responsibility to the students this week by having them record their connections and feedback using the I-pads. It was very informative to see and hear how the students are progressing with this reading comprehension strategy.

Overall the kids are using the success criteria posters effectively. We did notice that the kids need more modeling with two things in particular. We noticed that many of the kids leave out the title of the text when beginning the connection. That is an easy fix! Instead of saying in the story....., they need to practice saying in the story Frankline Goes to School (or whatever text they are making connecions to).

Another common omission was when students would say what happened in the story but they left out the impact that the event had on the character. So for example, they students would say, "In the story Franklin Goes to School, Franklin didn't want to go to school. This makes me think of a time when I didn't want to go to daycare. I understand how Franklin is feeling." We have gone back to improve these connections by modeling it this way, "In the story Franklin Goes to School Franklin didn't want to go to school. He felt very nervous. This makes me think of a time when I didn't want to go to daycare. I was worried about going. I think I understand how Franklin is feeling becasue we both felt worried about going somewhere.".

Having the students' connections recorded using the technology gives us so much valuable information to go back to and improve upon.