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. 

For many of us, summer is a time when we can clear our minds and truly think about our teaching practice. Questions like “What was successful?” or “Where can we grow?” ring in our minds even when our bodies may be engaged in fun summertime activities. Like many of you, my mind also delves into thinking about the possibilities for the upcoming school year. We peruse Pinterest or other digital mediums for new ideas or practices. With new ideas often come the questions that begin with “What if…?”

What if students didn’t sit in a desk all day listening to teachers talk? Learning is an action verb, so shouldn’t students be active to truly learn? How actively involved are students if the teacher is doing all the work and the students are passive? We know that our students become experts at playing school: appearing to be engaged in class when a teacher is talking while being a million miles away mentally. Wouldn’t that change if students had the opportunity to work with their peers, both locally and globally?

Students could share their strengths for the benefit of others while developing in an area of their weaknesses by collaborating with their peers. They could ask questions of one another and get many more perspectives beside the one that a teacher might have. If students are actively involved in learning, they won’t be able to go unnoticed and slip between those proverbial classroom cracks.

What if learning weren’t a “one-size-fits-all” proposition where every child is doing the exact same things at the exact same time? What if students actually had a choice in how they learn content?

We know that students have different learning styles; they learn best across different modalities and learning environments. Some students may learn best by reading and writing a reflection while others may learn best by creating something new to show their learning. Others may benefit from creating podcasts, videos, or interviews.

What if students were given the opportunity to share their mastery of learning standards in a way that was meaningful for them? What could happen if we let students create their own rubrics, break down standards, and assess one another?

Students would become experts at understanding standards while understanding where they stand on the learning continuum. Instead of every student creating the same teacher-directed project with very little variety or ownership, students can build an entire interactive digital world in Minecraft while others publish an anthology of writing or create a board game for peers to play. They learn how to take what they have learned and apply it in a way that is meaningful to them and impactful for those around them. With these opportunities, students gain a much deeper understanding of the content and how it fits within the framework of their lives.

What if students became their own advocates for learning? What if, while they are with us, they learn how to articulate their learning?

Students need the tools to communicate successfully with educators and other adults how they learn best. They need to be equipped with the terminology and research to argue for the types of learning experiences they need to get the most out of their education. If our students spend a school year discovering themselves as learners—their strengths, weakness, and goals—they build the confidence and the ability to explain to anyone not just what they need as learners but also why they need it.

So the question that may be ringing in your head is whether this works within a regular classroom of a diverse population of students. What does it look like? How can it be managed with everything else we juggle as teachers? I would love to show you what happens when students take the driver’s seat in their own learning. Be sure to join me on Sunday, July 19, at 9:00 a.m. at ILA’s Annual Conference for my session, “License to Learn: Putting Students in the Driver’s Seat of Their Own Learning.” I’ll be sharing many of my students’ stories, their projects, and our adventures down the “what if…?” path. I hope to see you there.

Julie D. Ramsay is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?”: Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3–8. She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog, eduflections.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this regular 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. 

For many of us, the school year is winding down. Memes about exhaustion dominate social media and checklists of end-of-year duties and tasks fill our email boxes. For teachers, students, and parents, it feels like a mad dash to the finish line in the school year marathon. How will we not just survive but thrive with our students until the last minute of the last day together?

In our classroom, my students and I designed one last engaging project as an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of many of their ELA content standards coupled with the  International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Students.

In collaboration with the social studies classes which were creating decade projects for a living timeline of the time periods they studied this academic year, my students created “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories of historical fiction; each student was tasked with creating a story set in the decade they were working on in their social studies classes. With these stories, students had the ability to provide readers with an interactive reading experience. As an active character throughout the adventure, readers made choices along the way that shaped the final outcome of their story.

As a writer, students employed standards in informational text, research, citing textual evidence, and domain-specific vocabulary in conjunction with narrative writing. The complexity of this project challenged my writers as each student created multiple storylines to provide readers with an engaging reading experience.

This project required learners to understand writing organization. I created a graphic organizer to help them see the basic outline of a choose-your-own-adventure story. They created an opening scenario with two options from which the reader could choose. Each of those choices had two additional scenarios for the reader, and each of those choices concluded the story. As with everything else in our classroom, students could go beyond the expectations we set as a group if they were so inclined.

Students worked in Google Drive to create their outlines, curate historical information to weave into their narratives, create a bibliography, and write their drafts. In addition to these reading and writing standards, students agreed that they also wanted to hone their skills in providing specific actionable feedback to their peers. Through this feedback—comments on Google Drive—students were able to demonstrate the ability to analyze another’s writing and provide in-depth, specific suggestions on how the writer could improve his/her writing. As their teacher, I was impressed with the complexity of understanding students demonstrated and how they strove to help each peer publish their best possible project.

As challenging as these stories were for students to create, we wanted to find the best tool to publish (and showcase) their amazing projects. Enter inklewriter. This Web-based tool is designed specifically for this type of interactive story. The user interface was very intuitive for my learners to create links to continue the story for each choice a reader might make. My students set up using their district Google accounts.

It should be mentioned that inklewriter is currently in Beta. We did experience some glitches while the students were trying to publish. My students discovered they could usually log out and log back in or even move to a different device to continue their work.

The students enjoyed this project so much they couldn’t wait to share it. Inklewriter, like many tools today, provides a way to easily share stories across different tools and platforms. Students inserted links of their final projects into their Google Drive documents and their blogs. Then we designated a day in class just for sharing. We borrowed a Chromebook cart and each student opened his or her published stories. Learners rotated through the different stories around the classroom in what my students nicknamed “reading-go-round.”

They had a blast reading one another’s stories. Many of them expressed to me that this was their favorite project of the year. Was it complex? Yes. Did it challenge them? Absolutely. But the students never complained or lost focus. This gave them an avenue to apply what they’ve learned this year in a meaningful way for an authentic audience. It was the perfect end to a yearlong epic adventure of learning.

Wishing all the best as you end what I’m sure was an amazing adventure with your students!

Julie D. Ramsay is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?”: Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3–8. She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog, eduflections.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this regular 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. 

As the end of the school year approaches, there are many things I know I am going to miss. Each Friday, for example, my students and I enjoy free reading and informal book chats. This is a time when students share something they are reading and truly enjoying. It could be a blog post, a comic book, or a traditional book that has sparked their imaginations. Although I plan for us to spend about half of a class period on this reading and chatting time, rarely do we limit ourselves to that time. Active discussions occur when students begin asking one another questions and making connections with other things they have been reading.

As I reflect back over the year, I notice a shift in my students’ reading patterns. At the beginning, they would usually choose a quick read. As the year progressed, their choices have become complex, more of an investment. An increased number of students are choosing books to share and discuss. They enjoy the ongoing dialogue. Students search on OverDrive, iBook, or Kindle or go to the school library to find (or put their name on the waiting list for) a book that a peer recommended. I have read so many amazing books this year because of student recommendations. One student said she needed to create a list to get her through the summer with great books!

Although our school hosts a digital forum for book discussion through our learning management system, many of my students spend a large portion of their summer traveling and at camps, away from access to the book forum. That’s why each spring our class has a “book tasting”—an opportunity for students to collect suggestions from their classmates.

My students admitted they have varied tastes depending on what is going on in their lives at the time. That was the perfect portal for introducing the book tasting. Each student created a recipe for a book he or she wanted to share that was also one others may not have heard of. They looked at recipes to determine what elements needed to be included in this style of writing in addition to what elements of the book should tempt the reader with their scrumptious literary dish. The day before the book tasting, each student brought their recipe and a copy of their book to share. Because I teach multiple classes, I included the books from the students in all of my classes to give them a wider selection.

When students arrive on the day of our book tasting, we have the classroom set up like a diner, complete with red-checked tablecloths, ’50s rock and roll music, and vases of daisies on the tables. Each diner is given a blank menu that has three sections: appetizers, for those books we want to try; entrées, for books that are “meaty” investments; and desserts, for books that are light, quick, and fun reads.

Students dove into their platter of books, reading the recipe and a portion of the book and discussing it with other readers in their party. Students were really drawn into some books, unwilling to relinquish them to others at their table. After 10 minutes or so of preview reading and discussion, they would receive a new platter of books to savor and discuss with one another. In the course of the period, students “tasted” at least 40 new books and almost all of the students had written down more ideas for their independent (and summer) reading than their menus could hold.

Through a book tasting, my students created a personalized reading list of books loved and recommended by their peers. Enough books to fill those summer days with adventure, imagination, and learning.

Julie D. Ramsay is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?”: Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3–8. She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog, eduflections.

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this regular 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 today’s transient world, our classrooms have more diversity than ever before. We have students from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and beliefs. Our students have needs across the learning continuum: Some are performing above grade-level standards and some are below grade-level standards, some have exceptional needs and some are English learners. How do we meet the needs of our diverse population while keeping students focused and motivated with a thirst to learn more?

Not every child will have the highest GPA or be the star basketball player. But every student in our class is growing and improving. As a teacher of middle-level learners, one of the keys to promoting each student’s growth is truly getting to know each of them. Some students, regardless of our good intentions, shy away from public praise or encouragement. They do not want to be singled out in front of peers and opened up for (potential) embarrassment. Other students seem to thrive on the validation of their growth and hard work.

The answer I have found is to tap into some of the tech tools we are already using as a way for students to share their successes, big or small. Sometimes in their learning, our students are missing the forest for the trees. Validation goes a long way toward pointing out the amount of growth a student is making; growth that student would have missed had we not taken a moment to point it out, publicly or privately. Validation goes a long way toward keeping students moving forward and not giving up on their quest to improve.

One way my students share success is through the class’s participation on Twitter, which has become an integral part of our classroom learning. In addition to connecting and learning with their global peers and writing mentors, students can share their successes, no matter how small. Mindful of the 140-character limit, my English learners and exceptional education students search for the right words and thoughts they want to post. Because posting on Twitter is a regular classroom routine, those students who do not want to be singled out with praise feel comfortable posting their successes. That simple act of sharing with the world validates sometimes hard-fought success. Other times, it opens up a discussion among students in other parts of the world, enriching the learning of all.

Likewise, much of our class time is spent in small-group or one-on-one conferring. To document students’ needs and for students to set their personal growth, we use the app Confer. With Confer, one has the ability to e-mail a contact when data are collected. Confer is also a vital part of our learning practice. My students and I collect data, discuss the data, and then set a small, actionable goal, making their learning transparent. They know the target and have outlined a plan to reach that goal. Students often refer to Confer as they are working and occasionally request to send an e-mail to a parent, previous teacher, or administrator to show how much they have grown in a short period of time.

I am also a huge proponent of student blogging. Through encouragement and guidance, my students become reflective on their learning. They learn to share their goals, their plans, and their successes along the way. Although creating this supportive community takes practice, by sharing, students become supportive of one another. They cheer one another on, give encouragement, demonstrate empathy, and provide that “been-there-done-that” or “you-can-do-it-too” support. As the teacher, this is priceless to observe.

These are some of the ways my students celebrate their successes. I’m sure when you look at your classroom routines, you may see other celebration possibilities to meet your students’ needs. The point is, we are taking the time to validate and celebrate each success.

Julie D. Ramsay is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of “Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?”: Collaborating in Class and Online, Grades 3–8. She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog, eduflections.

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. 

Let’s face it, educators are no longer the sole proprietor and expert of the classroom. But the truth is if Google can replace us, we are no longer doing our job. Our role in the classroom is to teach our students how to apply content knowledge to solve problems. We promote skills like critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. Those are not necessarily skills that come naturally to our students. 

We live in a time where boundaries of learning are being pushed. With the myriad of digital tools at their fingertips, students have the ability to connect and collaborate with peers both locally and globally. Students have access to experts in any field. Because of the social lives they lead, they crave feedback. Yet, efforts at collaboration often lead anywhere from shutdowns to meltdowns.

We hear our colleagues extolling the virtues of connecting students for collaborative learning and it may cause us to wonder what is going wrong in our classroom. The truth is that everyone, no matter how well-intentioned, enters with certain expectations and perceptions. Many students expect to walk into a group situation where everyone is working on the same goal doing the exact same thing as their fellow group members. That’s not collaboration, that’s cooperation or compliance.

True collaboration comes when each member in a collaborative group brings his/her strengths, ideas, experiences, and knowledge to share with the group. Everyone contributes towards the common goal using their unique talents for the good of the entire group.

As teachers, a great majority of us have experienced the same frustration our students have when trying to collaborate with our colleagues. I thought I would take an opportunity to share with you some of the practices my students have learned through our years collaborating with peers both locally and globally.  By preparing these in advance, their likelihood of success is greatly improved.

Communicate expectations up front. The first step my students take when forming a new collaboration partnership is to outline a list of the norms and expectations that they have for their upcoming project. They discuss timelines, deadlines, behaviors, work ethic, and accountability to the group. Through these conversations, they have the opportunity to share their goals and their concerns about their impending work together. This dialogue lets every member know before they begin the first step exactly where they are headed. It not only helps them create a relationship with one another where they feel safe to be transparent in their thinking, but also connect with one another as individuals on a deeper level. Although this may seem time consuming in an already jammed packed learning day, the group will make up the time in the long run as their project will not suffer from constant derailing due to miscommunication.

Remain flexible.  Things happen. People get sick. Schedules get rearranged. Parents set appointments.  We understand this is part of life, but sometimes students get frustrated when a deadline isn’t met by a teammate, one member seems to fail in following through with their part of a project, or they miss an appointment for real time communication. Often when a student comes to me aggravated because something has disrupted their project, we can lean on the strong foundation that they set in the beginning. Once they open that dialogue, the learners discover a solution together that’s often stronger than their initial plan. They learn to listen to one another, have patience, and pull their resources to reach towards their common goal.

Keep an open mind. We understand not everyone is like us. However, many students, in spite of being globally connected, often live under the false premise that everyone is like them. I’ve discovered over the last several years that this is often the most challenging part of collaboration for students. Students may feel they are the expert, the smartest, the most organized, the most creative, and/or the most talented individual in the group. That’s why I believe collaboration is an integral part of the learning process. Students need to have experience with students who in many ways may not be like them. No single person is who they are with the talents they have without the guidance and input of others. We become the best version of ourselves by working and learning with others.

By preparing our students in advance for the shifts they will need to make in order to successfully collaborate with the peers, both in the classroom and through digital means, we give them the tools to open a world of learning possibilities. Through collaboration, students find commonalities with a diverse community of learners and apply content knowledge and higher order thinking skills for an authentic audience while becoming the strongest version of themselves. Collaboration, although challenging at times, is well worth the investment for us, our students, and the future.

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. She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, AL. 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.