Literacy Now

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

In October’s column, “How Do We Know What They Know?,” I shared some ways that we can assess our students to determine exactly what they know and design our instruction to meet those needs. But, now that we have that data, where do we go next?

Often, when you are looking at a class of twenty five students that means you have twenty five different areas of need. If you are teaching an English Language Arts class, that is often compounded by the fact that each student has a different level of mastery in the standards of grammar and mechanics, reading, and writing. If you broke those broad areas down even further, the sheer volume of data that we would have for one class becomes mind-boggling. Does contemplating this cause anyone else to become overcome with overwhelm?

Getting Directions

The world of a teacher involves so much more than just the face-to-face time we have with our learners. Our attention and energy are pulled in so many directions, threatening to cause us to derail in our true mission: meeting the needs of each and every learner, each and every day. At times, it’s tempting to return to whole-group instruction simply because it is easier to manage the time. No matter how well we plan and schedule, the reality is that we live in a world with students, students who are always changing. How do we balance time and provide students with meaningful, personalized feedback to direct their growth?

The great advantage of living in the digital age is that there are tools that can help us meet our needs. The real trick is finding the ones that can easily be embedded to support not only our teaching practice, but also the individualized instruction our learners need to continue down the path of their learning journey.

One fabulous feedback option is through their individual blogs. Those of you who are familiar with my classroom know that blogging is an integral part of the learning process for my students. They use their blogs to reflect on their learning, connect with their global peers, publish their writing, set personal goals, and share their voices with the world. My learners are voracious writers because their writing is meaningful and purposeful. They have an authentic audience who will respond and push them to think deeper. And as amazing as all of this student-directed learning is, on KidBlog, the home of all of this fabulous-ness, my favorite feature is the private commenting.

With KidBlog, you can set the safety standards of who can view blogs or make comments and when they live online. For my students, I have the setting where every post and comment must be read and approved by me. With it set in this way. I read everything that my students are writing. Once a post is approved, the blog administrator (classroom teacher) has the ability to submit comments to students that can only be viewed by the blog’s author.

Private comments are the perfect opportunity to ask probing questions, redirect a line of thinking, conduct some reteaching, or provide a new link for further study. Many times, my comments request that the students make changes in a comment on their original post. Because blog posts and comments are published chronologically, it shows a student’s growth while also documenting the feedback and dialogue. Often my students will look back on a previous line of learning on one of their different blog posts as a reminder of their growth and how to push themselves further down the learning path.

A Different Route

While providing feedback on blog posts is a fantastic way to personalize instruction, most times those conversations are asynchronous. The dialogue may take place throughout the course of several days. However, there are times when synchronous conversation is needed. My students are involved in much collaborative writing. In those cases, since more than one student is working on a piece of writing, timely, synchronous feedback becomes more crucial to keep each individual headed in the right direction.

p: jonny goldstein via photopin cc

Enter Google Drive. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the benefits of Drive and probably use it yourself. However, the ability to have multiple students working on one document or presentation from different devices or locations takes collaboration to a whole different level. I can have one student curled up on the floor with pillows and his iPad while another one is sitting at a classroom desktop computer and another student is sitting at their desk using their smartphone all working on the same document at the same time.

I teach in a district where every student (and teacher) already has an assigned Google account. However, there are several tutorials online about how to assign students accounts using only one teacher Gmail account. All notifications will be sent to the teacher’s account, not the students’.

Once the students are logged on, one student from the group will need to invite the other students and the teacher to share and edit that document. Then students can begin working on their part of the document. What is fantastic about this option is that anyone invited can also make comments, which appear on the side of the document or presentation. That means that as the teacher, you can confer with many different students while they are writing from your computer (I usually have multiple tabs open and work on several pieces at the same time). Each collaborator is assigned a different color so that you can see the changes being made while they are making them.

You can reteach, redirect, and cause them to probe deeper. Your learners can respond to your comments; now you are having a synchronous conversation about their writing as they are writing. They can ask one another (or you) questions about the choices that are being made before they get to the end of writing their first draft. Once they have worked with the ideas from one comment, a student can mark it resolved.

The first time my students experience the synchronous conversation while they are writing, they are ecstatic. One student told me that this was the coolest thing she had ever done in school. I asked her to explain and she replied, “Well, with Drive, I’m able to see my writing from different people’s perspective. The comments make me think harder while I’m writing so I get a better piece when I’m done. I like that.”

Today’s digital age students live in a world of “right now.” They crave that instant feedback. Through Drive, I am able to give them guidance while not hovering over their shoulder. The feedback is timely and relevant for each student. Furthermore, the dialogue and learning are documented throughout each writing project providing a clear view of a student’s growth.

Full Speed Ahead

I realize that the options for providing student feedback are numerous. My intent was to provide you a map demonstrating how digital tools can support your drive to providing your learners meaningful, individualized, and timely feedback.

I am always on a hunt for new ideas. If you have a tool that you love using to provide feedback for your learners, please share it with all of us in a comment. With all of these ideas, before we know it, we’ll all be on the road headed to timely, personalized feedback for our students.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com. 

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A year and a half ago, I sat in my classroom on a late summer day and stared with trepidation at the giant vault-like cart that held the 24 iPads I would soon be integrating into my classroom. I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to enhance student learning through new technology, but it was already an overwhelming task. Here I was, with a new set of standards to teach, no curriculum to guide me in doing so, and a whole lot of devices which required me to change just about every aspect of how I taught. These concerns were only heightened as I came to realize that integrating technology into an upper elementary classroom largely focused on language arts instruction created challenges I had not anticipated.

p: teachingsagittarian via photopin cc

Ways to accomplish tasks digitally are pretty easy to dream up when it comes to math and science. But it is a little trickier with language arts. Sure, reading eBooks, doing research and typing instead of hand writing essays were no-brainers. But language arts instruction encompasses so much more, and truly incorporating mobile devices in such a way that made them vital to the learning process was a bit daunting. Especially once I came to realize that there was an obvious lack of language arts apps for older students. I needed graphic organizers, writing reference tools, games that reinforced language arts concepts. But few existed.

Fortunately, the incredible minds at ReadWriteThink.org have finally come to my rescue—and yours, too! If you are unfamiliar with ReadWriteThink.org, it is an amazing website bursting with free lesson plans and aids for teaching language arts. They also have wonderful online tools to help students practice language arts concepts. These have begun to be transformed into wonderful apps that are a huge relief to those of us who are working so hard to mesh technology with reading and writing instruction. My students and I have been using the apps in our classroom, and here are our thoughts:

Trading Cards is by far our favorite app of the bunch. Students enter the name of a topic, person, character, place, etc. The app then generates a trading card, and the student is prompted to answer some questions about their topic. The questions are excellent, and ensure that the student has a real understanding of the subject. The answers are then inserted into the card, and a picture is added to complete the project. My students first used this app while working on a social studies assignment that involved researching a famous event in history, and I asked them to do a trading card once they felt their knowledge was enough to teach the class. Many soon learned that they weren't quite ready to create a presentation and that more research and discussion was in order—the questions helped them to realize that they did not know their topic as well as they should.

Trading Cards is an excellent classroom tool that can be applied in so many creative ways. Saving, sharing, and printing the cards is very simple, and the app is even designed to allow for multiple users on the same device.

Venn Diagram is another ReadWriteThink.org app, and it is so simple, yet so necessary! It is really difficult to create a usable and readable Venn diagram on a tablet without using an app. This one fills the need perfectly. The default setting is for two rings, but a third ring can be added as necessary, and different colors can be utilized. Students create labels that contain the information to be sorted, and these can range in size depending on the needs of the user. It is very easy to use, and all of the ReadWriteThink.org apps provide easy sharing and storage options for finished products.

The RWT Timeline app is exactly what it sounds like, and it was the one I was most excited to see in the App Store. I use timelines often with my students, and I had tried several different methods for creating them digitally—with lackluster results, at best. Timeline allows students to create simple timelines with dates, details, and even pictures. It is very user-friendly, and my students were even able to edit their work without any difficulty. I was thrilled with how easy it was to create and share the timelines that so often accompany our research projects and book reports.

As if the apps already covered here weren't enough, ReadWriteThink.org also has three poetry apps on offer: Acrostic Poem, Diamante Poem, and Theme Poem. Each allows students to create original poetry in a different form, and they are versatile enough to use with younger students as well as older ones. The apps walk users through how to create the unique type of poem, making it fun for students and effortless for teachers. My students especially enjoyed the Theme Poem app, which offers a collection of shapes and figures to use as backgrounds in the finished products.

Alphabet Organizer is an app that is aimed at younger readers, and therefore my students did not spend any time with it. It is designed to allow students to enter words and pictures that are associated with each letter of the alphabet. The app is outside my range of expertise, but I am sure it has been designed with just as much thought and care as all the rest of the apps from ReadWriteThink.org  and would be worth downloading.

All of these apps are incredible resources for teachers who want to incorporate technology into their language arts instruction—students are practicing the application of new concepts and creating products to show their learning, using both technology and higher order thinking skills. In fact, these apps are so well-designed that students can use them independently—students are not only provided with necessary tools, but with instructional content that guides them through the process of applying skills and concepts.

With this collection, language arts concepts for older students are finally getting the attention they need in the world of mobile devices. We have enjoyed using them in our classroom immensely, and hope you will find them just as useful as we have!

The International Reading Association partners with the National Council of Teachers of English and Verizon Thinkfinity to produce ReadWriteThink.org, a website devoted to providing literacy instruction and interactive resources for grades K–12.

New to me in the past year is the opportunity to participate in a Twitter book club. If you have not had the opportunity, why not try this for yourself? On the last Sunday of each month, teachers, librarians, and book lovers gather for #titletalk. The time is 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, and the November event is scheduled for this Sunday, November 24. At the time and date go to Twitter and search for #titletalk. A topic announced at the beginning of the hour guides all participating. For example, one session I participated in was on historical fiction.

The tweets start flying fast and furiously. You can find new titles in each session that you can bring to your classroom or library. The fun part, though, is developing a virtual friendship with folks all over the globe. You really gain camaraderie with librarians, classroom teachers, and college professors. The next time you attend a conference (like IRA 2014 in New Orleans) you can seek out your virtual friends and you have an instant connection!

#Titletalk was founded by Colby Sharp (@colbysharp on Twitter) and Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks on Twitter). The chats are archived, so if you miss the time and date you can still catch up at http://titletalk.wikispaces.com.  There are two videos to help beginners join in, and on the right hand column is a list of the past chats. Scroll through until you find the date of the conversation you want. Because the tweets are so fast, this is a great way to go back and review book titles that have been discussed. 

More great chats include:

• The Sharp-Schu book club (#sharpshu on Twitter) was founded by Colby Sharp and John Schumacher (@MrSchuReads on Twitter).
• #Txlchat focuses on library issues in Texas. It is held the 2nd & 4th Tuesday from 8:00-9:00 Central Standard Time. Visit the archives and read more information at http://txlchat.wikispaces.com/TXLchat+Archives.
• IRA hosts bimonthly Twitter chats using the #IRAchat hashtag.  Past chats have included digital writing in the classroom with Julie D. Ramsay (Thursday, July 18 at 8:00 p.m. EST), International Literacy Day and “inventing your future” with Bill Hader and America’s Promise (Monday, September 9 at 8:00 p.m. EST), and informational reading and writing with Seymour Simon and Jennifer Altieri (Thursday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m. EST). Read the archives at https://storify.com/iratoday, and follow #IRAchat on Twitter to see when the next chat will be.

So why not try it? Whatever the topic winds up being, you know it’s gonna be a good conversation!

Marjie Podzielinski is a librarian at Coulson Tough School in The Woodlands, Texas, marjiepodge@yahoo.com.

Teaching in ACTion is a series from the Advisory Committee of Teachers (ACT), an International Reading Association committee comprised of exemplary reading and literacy teachers from around the world. Educators who best exemplify the mission of IRA are chosen from a pool of applicants to serve a three-year term. Among other responsibilities, the main charge of ACT is to be the conduit between IRA’s members and the board of directors.

ACT invites member to engage in the conversation by sending responses to us. ACT’s goal is to get a feel for how members feel about current hot topics, so that we may better serve members by sharing their concerns with the board of directors.

Do your students struggle with grammar? Mine often do. This admission sometimes feels like a dirty secret to be hidden away. Yet, the way the human brain processes language is fascinating—and incredibly intricate. In the push to meet goals and achieve grade level targets, perhaps we sometimes forget what a difficult task we are actually putting before our students. Considering the complexity of the English language, is it any wonder that it takes students a long time to master grammar skills?

p: barbaranixon via photopin cc

Practice is imperative to helping students improve their language abilities. Ideally, most of this practice will come as an integrated portion of reading and writing instruction. Using language skills in context, through real-life tasks, is always going to be the best way for students to gain deep understanding. That being said, teachers know that practice in any form can be helpful for students who are struggling.

Technology provides teachers and students with such varied opportunities to approach learning in different ways. With all the buzz around project-based learning and higher-order thinking, we may sometimes dismiss too quickly the ways in which simple practice can be utilized in the classroom, especially with struggling students. Even these basic activities can be applied in positive ways, and with a little creativity, extended to further enhance learning.
I recently had the opportunity to use the Grammar Pop app with my students. The app was designed by Mignon Fogarty, aka “Grammar Girl.” Many readers may be familiar with the Grammar Girl’s blog, Quick and Dirty Tips, which offers all kinds of useful grammar tidbits for adults and students. The app is game-based, requiring players to race against a clock to identify the parts of speech in increasingly complex sentences. As the game progresses, the player is able to earn rewards and unlock more difficult levels.

As far as educational game apps go, Grammar Pop is pretty typical. However, it addresses an area that many students struggle with, and grammar practice apps aren’t particularly plentiful. Grammar Pop fills a specific need, and will appeal to students who are more easily engaged through game-based learning, or who learn best through repetition. 

Apps such as Grammar Pop are excellent resources to provide for students when they have down time or as options for rewards and recess on rainy days. Every teacher understands that each minute in the classroom is valuable, and needs to be put to productive use. Keeping fun and engaging educational apps such as this one in supply can help fill in some of these small bits of time with opportunities to learn.

Not only can a practice app be used to keep students engaged in educational content, but they can also be used to spark an interest in students that leads to more in-depth inquiry. For instance, a student trying to achieve the next level on Grammar Pop, who doesn’t know how to identify a particular part of speech, could be encouraged to do some independent research in order to meet their goal. This app contains highly complex sentences in the higher levels, which may lead students to investigate beyond what they would normally study as part of their grade-level curriculum.

It can be tempting to dismiss out of hand any technology tools that don’t immediately appear to require those coveted higher-order thinking skills. But it is always important to realize that using technology effectively often isn’t about the technology at all—it is about how the technology is utilized. Viewing every available tool as an opening to create significant learning experiences ensures that students are not deprived of any opportunity to practice the skills they are working so hard to master, in any way that appeals to their specific learning needs.    

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom. 

Testing. Assessment. Data-driven instruction. In the world of education, we are surrounded by mandates. It is unfortunate that in many cases, high-stakes testing drives what teachers are required to do in the classroom with their students. I’ve heard people say, “Testing is the name of the game in schools today.”

p: cwasteson via photopin cc

However, when you stop to think about it, one can’t help but wonder—are we getting the data that we need? Do we really know what our students are learning and where their gaps are?

Today’s students are savvy. They are masters of subterfuge. Because of the educational world in which they’ve been schooled, our learners have become adept at convincing us that they understand concepts and standards. Many of them have even become skilled enough to play “test.” How do we get to the heart of the matter and know what they know?

The Mystery
It is the practice in many schools and districts for teachers to be given common assessments to administer to their learners. As teachers, it is imperative that we really look at what those test are assessing. Is it truly assessing the standards that our students need to master? Are the questions equitable and free from personal interpretation? Do they accurately measure true growth? Chances are they are not.

Although we still administer those tests, we need to be sure that those tests are not the end of our data collection. As teachers, it is imperative that we take the time to look at each of our students. What does each learner need? How does each student learn? In what manner should students be able to demonstrate their learning? We need all of this data in order to provide the instructional support and challenge each student needs.

Overwhelm can quickly set in, whether we teach one class of students many different subjects, or we teach over one hundred different students each day. When you think about all of that information, it can be enough to send up the white flag of surrender. The good news is there are some very simple tools and strategies that can aid you in collecting all of these clues in order to solve the mystery of what each one of our student’s needs to learn.

Collecting Clues
Sometimes the simplest way to discover something about our students is just to ask them. When students understand that there is no judgment in the answers they give to your questions, but that you are just looking for better ways to educate them, you would be surprised at all they will tell you. This can be done in different ways. One way I gain insight into their thinking and perspective is just to give them open-ended prompts. Sometimes I ask my learners to explain what is going well in class and what changes in class would enhance their learning. Other times, I ask them to share their struggles.

Warning: Your students will be brutally honest. I have found that sometimes it is difficult to hear their evaluations. However, one thing that helps me maintain clarity is knowing that it is my job to facilitate their learning.

Sometimes I do these prompts as surveys on Google Drive. I set up a simple form for the students to complete as a starter or exit ticket. It takes very little class time yet yields great returns in pertinent information. All of the information is immediately saved in a spreadsheet for me to read at my convenience.

Instigating Investigation
Once we learn of students’ needs and help them set personal goals, we need to do formative checks along their learning journey. All of us are pressed for time in the classroom. These checks can be quick and simple, providing you with enough information to feed your instruction for the next day.

One of our favorite tools is TodaysMeet. This is a free online tool where you can open a chat room that lasts from hours to days to weeks to a year. No accounts are needed. If you have a guest speaker, conduct a demonstration, show a short video clip, or engage in a simulation, you need to know what your students are actually learning from that activity. Yes, those activities are enjoyable for everyone involved, but if they are taking valuable instructional time, they must also be relevant in moving students towards their learning goals.

Through TodaysMeet, every student has a voice as they discuss or backchannel, sharing their thoughts and ideas. As the teacher, you can follow the conversation in real time or go back later to review where there may be any misconceptions that need to be corrected. Because we have designed a supportive learning environment, students often correct one another’s misconceptions in the chat. It also provides students with a meaningful and authentic way to share and reflect upon their learning.

Another favorite tool of ours is Padlet, formerly called Wallwisher. I know that this tool may not be new to many educators, but it provides us with an opportunity to get quick and simple input from our students. Padlet is a digital wall where users can add posts of short bits of texts or embedded content. This is a fantastic way to have students do a diagnostic assessment of their understanding of a new standard. It can be revisited throughout a unit of study with students adding their new learning or questions they still have to the board.

I love that Padlet can also be embedded into our class wiki, blog, or website, giving the students and me an opportunity to easily access it from school, digital devices, or from home. Thanks to Padlet, I not only get important, easily-accessible data, there are no more Post-it notes falling off the chart, onto the floor, and sticking to the bottom of my shoes!

Another of our favorite tools for investigating each student’s depth of understanding is Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere enables users to actively engage in answering questions in different formats and provide real time results. The questions can be a poll, multiple choice, true-false or open-ended.  Responses can be given through cell phone texting or using online devices.

My learners love that they can use their devices to text answers. If your students don’t have devices at school, this can easily be done through classroom computers or Internet capable devices.  This is a great way to gather quick data on each of your students either at the beginning of class, in the middle of a lesson, or as an exit ticket.

We use the free version, which allows up to forty responses per poll. Since I teach multiple classes, I set up a different poll for each class. Creating a poll is very easy, so if you need to do a quick check to assess understanding, it will only take a few seconds.

Case Closed
As teachers, we know that for us to provide the best learning activities for our students, we must investigate for their strengths and weaknesses. Although this task can seem monstrous at times, by employing these few tools and practices, we’ll be on the road to solving the ongoing mystery of what our students know and what they need to know. Case closed.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.