Twitterpated with Learning

Teachers,

Here is your weekly dose of “5-Point Friday.

Twitterpated with Learning—

As teachers we should always be the head learner in our classroom. It can be anything, but we should learn something and then let our students what we have learned. Take a few minutes each week and talk to your students about something you learned and see how interested they are in it. That is one of the reasons I do this 5 point Friday each week. I figure that I should be learning something often and sharing it. One way I have kept up with learning new things is on Twitter. It seems silly to spend a little time on social media to learn about education, but it is a hot place for educational topics, if you know how to look. Many of the top education specialists, professors, administrators, and teachers like you are building a personal learning network to learn and grow from professionally. If you are interested, start small and take 5 minutes a week and do a little skimming and reading. So how do you start? Start by opening a twitter account at twitter.com. In your description write that you are a teacher and a few fun things about you. You can add to it or change it later. Add a picture. Then you are ready to do a little learning. Start by tweeting something and following a few people. Use the search and search a few people and click follow. If you have friends on twitter, follow them also. Here are a few suggestions. @gandersen07 @kimheki @dixie_sun @gcouros @alicekeeler @jmattmiller @burgess_shelley @bethhouf @burgessdave

Once you are following other teachers read a few tweets here and there and reply back to them to let them know your thoughts. to do that you hit the reply button and it will automatically add their name. Then you can write a short note and send it on its way. Check back later for a reply. You can also retweet their tweet to share it with your followers. If you have none, we will get you some. If you follow me, I will follow you and so will many of the others you follow. I will get into how to get into chats with other teachers around the world from our same grade level or just with educators in general. But that is another time.

Quote I’m pondering —

"If you have an arrogance that you have nothing new to learn, do not expect your students to have any different attitude." ― George Couros

What I’m watching —

The Death Crawl

When we think we can’t go another step or do one more thing.

Favorite Article This Week —

Data confirm the reason teachers should nag parents about missed assignments: it works

Parent communication is important as we teach students. Keeping them the loop about how they are doing in class can help their student do better.

A Big Thank You —

Thank you Alma and Third Grade. Third grade had the idea of doing a pep rally for testing to get the 3-5 grade students excited and ready for the test. Alma ran with it and had the younger grades make posters and shot the footage for the video. Then she put together the pep rally and  gauntlet of high fives in the hallway. What a wonderful show of support to our upper grades knowing that everyone is behind them. Thank you third grade for the idea, and thank you All for making it a reality. Thank you for supporting our students. Thank you.

I appreciate all of you and your hard work. Have a wonderful weekend.

And Now A Thought About Fluency

Teachers,

Here is your weekly dose of “5-Point Friday. 

And Now A Thought About Fluency —

Kim and I have been going to a Literacy Training. There was a part of the training that was an ah-ha moment for me. I read about Fluency and how important it is leading up to comprehension. Fluency is only how fast a text is read out loud, but it also includes accuracy and prosody. Students should read as fast as they talk. There is a WPM guide that tells us how fast that should be according to grade level, but a generally it should be as fast as a student talks. Faster than that, they are just reading as fast as they can and comprehension suffers. Accuracy brings in words, vocabulary and context and provides meaning to words students recognize as well as context to the text. If words are missed or misread, the meaning of the story could get lost. Prosody is the way stories are read. The voice fluctuation, the raising and lowering of the voice, sounding like the voices that are speaking the words on the page, and reading not only the words, but the punctuation. Storytelling. Put all these things together and we get fluency. Without each of these things, comprehension goes down. Now to the ah-ha moment. As we learned about all this, we thought about how we read books with students and listen to them stumble over words, help correct them if they say a words or sentence wrong, and in the end have them tell us what they read. If the student is reading a book they are not fluent in and are struggling reading words and do not know the vocabulary, should we expect them to understand what they read each time? They need to work on comprehension, but fluency is a big part of being able to understand the meaning of a text. So what do we do? If they do not comprehend what has been read, is the fluency getting in the way? Would choral reading help them understand better as they listen and read? Just a thought. If a student does not comprehend what is going on in a story, it might be because of their fluency. I know you are all working on amazing things with your students. This was just an moment of clarity for me. You just happen to be on the reading end of my thoughts. Thank you for bearing with me.

Quote I’m pondering —

“I not only use all the brains I have, but all the brains I can borrow.” -Woodrow Wilson

What I’m watching —

Decorah Eagle Camera

I have been watching this pair of eagles for about 5 years. They build their nest in January and February. Mom lays 2-3 eggs the middle of February, about 3-4 days apart and the two share their time siting on the eggs. Good lesson on sharing. Both boy and girl sits on the eggs. About the middle of March they hatch and we get to watch the parents feed fish and rabbits and other yummy foods to their young. Then about the middle of May the little ones start to stretch their wings and by the last day of school they are off and the nest is empty until January. And it is all live. They do have saved videos in two hour segments that they post so you can see what happens at night, or when something special happens you can refer back to it. Amazing.

Favorite Article This Week —

Dad’s Special Lunch Bag Drawings Help ‘Shy’ Son

These are some of the most amazing drawings, and they are on lunch bags. This is an amazing, talented dad. 

A Big Thank You —

Thank you Alma. Seriously you have done amazing things with our school. The coaching that happens when you put your magic touch and persistence on a situation. I have learned a lot from you. You have taught us all amazing things. It does take willingness and hard work on the part of the people you work with, but the fruits of your labors are evident and priceless for our school and the students. Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you.

I appreciate all of you and your hard work. Have a wonderful weekend.

Do You Know Where You Are?

Teachers,
Here is your weekly dose of “5-Point Friday.

Do You Know Where You Are? —
Here is another tech lesson that you might want to know, or not. On your phone is a wonderful program that helps locate where you are. This is very helpful when using maps so you can find someplace, when using the Krispy Kreme app so you can find the nearest Krispy Kreme, and if you have the right app, it can help you find out where your car is parked in the Walmart parking lot. The helpfulness of this program changes when you find out that it might be geotagging your pictures, tagging where you are on Facebook or Instagram, or other location options for apps you use. I see the problem with this being that anyone that has access to that picture can see where it was taken. Where you are on vacation, at the local hangout, at your house... the geotag actually is part of the picture. So to disable that you need to turn off the location services on your phone.

On an android phone it is all combined so when you turn it off, you will also turn off the location services for maps and apps that you want to help you using location services. You can turn it off in Settings>Location. There is history that keeps track of where you have been and Reporting that gives apps access to your position. Turning off history will prevent it from keeping location information. If you turn off reporting, it will not geotag your pictures, but it will also not let you see where you are on the map.

On an iPhone you go to settings>privacy>location services and disable specific location services for specific apps. It will give you options like never, while using app, and always. Always means if the app is in the background it will use your battery while keeping track of where you are. You will want location services for maps, weather, find my iPhone, and magic guide if you are a Disneyland fan. Photos, Facebook, Instagram, twitter, camera and other social media apps should be set to never.
If you have a windows phone, you will go to settings>location services and turn it off. It is similar to android that when you turn it off, it turns off the maps location services.

Remember to pay attention to the pop ups on your phone when it asks if you want apps to monitor your location. Most apps do not need it. Game apps have started to ask for location services so they can see if there are players near you. That also shows others where you are. Don't get freaked out about this, but be security minded, especially if you have kids that use a smart phone.

Bonus: there are apps to help track your kids. Make sure those apps have location services a turned on. My kids know that their phones are trackers also, and they do the same to me. Location services are awesome when you going somewhere and you want to use the maps feature, but can be a detriment when others can see where you are. Have a safe and secure day.

Quote I’m pondering —
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." -Steve Jobs

Favorite Article This Week —
Teaching Text Structures
Text structures is huge when reading everything, except narratives. I found this article with its accompanying video and slideshow. I hope you enjoy it.

Second Favorite Article This Week —
DOK in Content Areas
I know, two articles? Where is the video to make us better people? I loved both of there articles. Sorry Here are some charts that help show what DOK looks like in different content areas. I know some of you are working on DOK questions in your lessons.

A Big Thank You —
Thank you Alma. Thank you for all the work you put in for everyone to be better teachers. You always have a full schedule taking care of coaching and finding resources for teachers. We know how hard you work make if everyone better. We appreciate all the time you put in and the help you give. Thank you for all you do for our school. Thank you.

I appreciate all of you and your hard work. Have a wonderful weekend.

Professional Learning Community

Teachers,
Here is your weekly dose of “5-Point Friday.”

Professional Learning Community —
What can I say about PLC’s that has not already been said? Well, the name says it all We are professionals and should be treated and act as such. We should always be learning and growing as teachers to benefit ourselves and especially our students. We are a community of teachers trying to do our best to teach our students. So we move into our Team meetings to build our Professional Learning Community. As we worked together this week I have noticed there has been great work on our GVC’s and Learning Targets. In a couple weeks, Annette will be here to work with 3-5 grade on focusing our GVC’s and targets. We will look at building formative assessments to make sure we are testing what the are teaching and finding out the information we want to know from our students. As we finish this training, Alma and I will work with the younger grades to help focus our targets and assessments. I don't want you to think this will be a ton of more work. GVC’s and Learning targets need to be reviewed and refined often. This is one reason we look at GVC’s and Learning Targets each week as well as the tests we are giving. I had a great question asked this week. Do we need a test every week to discuss the data? No. We will work with the data we have and discuss interventions and extensions. We will discuss students and their needs. The data should confirm who needs what and then we plan our next steps. The CSIP is what we use to document what we are doing. I appreciate all your help and work.

Quote I’m pondering —
“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe."
—Winston Churchill

What I’m watching —
Audri's Rube Goldberg Monster Trap
When we inspire students, they go home and want to do more. That is the ultimate homework. Something they do themselves because of what a teacher did to inspire them. I do not know if it was a teacher that inspired Audri. But if it was…

Favorite Article This Week —
100 Percent is Overrated
This article quotes one of my favorite educators, Jo Boaler. She is a Professor of Math at Stanford and has done research on how Math should be taught. It is a change from what is traditional math teaching. I was fortunate to take an online math course from her about How to teach math. Her research is fascinating. If you are interested, I have the videos on my Google Drive I can share.

A Big Thank You —
Kirby is the man. He keeps our school clean, in working order, and well stocked. We have a few issues, but those are beyond Kirby’s control. He has taken this school and made it a work of art. The halls are always clean and the students are always taken care of in the lunchroom. He may say he doesn’t like opening milks, but I am sure he does deep down… really deep down. He loves this school. He loves making sure we are all taken care of. He is the man behind the scenes that makes our school run smoothly. Thank you Kirby. Thank you for all you do.

Thank you teachers for all you do. I appreciate all your hard work. Have a wonderfully long weekend.