Why learn Rhetorical Devices

PSA on Speaking and Lisstening

I will use my PSA  on Speaking and Listening at Lake George for Kindergarten Roundup Registration night next week.  The video was too large for Blogger so I am providing a link below.

PSA Speaking and Listening

PSA Focus: Why come to school?

For our most recent assignment to create a PSA, I've been collecting responses from teachers about the question, "Why do kids come to school if they no longer have to come there to get the information?" In my survey, I asked teachers to summarize their response with one word or phrase. Here's what a Wordle of what those responses looks like:

One of the other questions I asked was about which ideas teachers think are the most important ones to convey to their students, and I provided a list of 14 options, asking teachers to rank their top three choices. To get an overall sense of what teachers valued the most, I weighted the responses so that first-choice ideas got more points than third. Not surprisingly, skills such as problem-solving, responsibility, and adult accountability ranked the highest. I also found it interesting to see reading and writing literacy scoring ahead of content knowledge. It's nice to see that data validating what literacy experts have been saying over the past decade. Here's the accumulation of results, as well as a link to the interactive graph:

I've been very pleased to get nearly 40 responses to the survey so far. I shared it with colleagues at SUNY Plattsburgh as my goal is to provide them with a PSA that they can use to encourage the pre-service teachers in their education program. As is the case with most projects that I undertake, it now promises to take on a life of its own, thoroughly draining me of any last remaining time and energy that I had been reserving for a special occasion. But of course, I wouldn't have it any other way!

PSA : Experience Learning

Experience Learning 

Weebly web page, e portfolio

I would like to try to work with my students on creating a web page on Weebly to showcase their work, allowing me to look back at their work over the course of the year.  I currently have a Speech Notebook for each student that has practice work pages, brainstorming and project pages and things that they share in it.   It would be great to have a place that can have these things as well as audio and video recordings of their speaking at different times of the year.  I would like to share it with families and teachers and have students share with their classmates what they are working on.

Right now I have recordings on different computers and Ipads.  It would be great to have work all in one place. I am just hoping it is as easy to use as the preview Sarah shared says it is.  Has anyone else used Weebly to have students make web pages?

I would also like to try Scrible with a couple of older students who are working on listening to information in text and summarizing it into just a few key words.   I think they will like using this to find key information in text and to summarize.

Personal Learning- Organized

With scrible back on my radar I have been loving both its annotation and curation features.  It has quickly become a natural part of my routine, as I open articles from my Twitter Feed, keep up with blogs from my Feedly, or have suggested articles sent to me.  As I read I highlight what I see as relevant to what I am doing, make notes about application, and create tags for future reference.  Then I save it to my scrible library, knowing that I now have easy access to it.

This is just a quick and easy tool for me to stay organized- sometimes the hardest task in my world.  

Action Plan: Lino as a curation tool

Megan had introduced me to Lino about a month ago and I felt like the tool had a lot of potential, but wasn't sure how I would apply it. I wanted to make sure that when I used it that the tool matched my purpose. This week I had a unique situation arise where I had a class that wanted to take part in an essay contest that we had entered into in the past, but was no longer part of our curriculum. This essay contest used to take up many weeks of our curriculum and unfortunately we don't have that time to commit this year, so I needed to find a more efficient way of organizing and curating our information from multiple resources. I typically use Easybib for note-taking which is useful, but I wanted the students to be able to store videos, images, notes, all in one place in a quicker more efficient way. So, with the help of Megan we started digging into the nitty gritty of the tool and we were both amazed by the potential this tool offered. So, I set up an action plan to implement it in 5th grade.

I. Start with just one thing: en.linoit.com

II. Let the task drive the decision: I wanted student to be able to curate all of their information from a variety of resources and store them in one place. I wanted to teach the students how to make searching more efficient by adding a lino bookmarklet. The bookmarklet allows them to highlight information on a resource and add it to their notecard in lino. It even attaches a URL for the site once the information has been obtained.

III. Act more, and Analyze Less: I could have spent time worrying that this tool might fail and then we would be set back days (which we don't have). Instead I just decided to drive forward because I want students to have that toolbox of resources to use and although this tool might not be a perfect fit for everyone in the class at least now they are provided with another option to choose from.

Wish me luck!

Action Plan: Annotating online with Scrible

I spend a lot of time teaching/practicing text codes and annotations because it is a very important life skill.

So the TASK of text coding and annotating is driving my ACTION PLAN of checking out online annotation tools. I have not been successful previously; no online tool did what I really wanted. However, the SCRIBLE tool that was brought up in our class turned out to be great!

Scrible allows annotating and more. I like the multiple colored notes (Google docs only has one color), so each color can be a "text code." I also like the "annotation legend" that lists the "text codes."

My plan was to introduce Scrible to the students, get them signed up, and have them practice using the tools a little. We did that on a small excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird. (And thank you to Mrs. Olson for her help!) It worked great!

The next step is text coding and annotating web articles about the Jim Crow laws. They will use their Scrible notes to prepare for a discussion about the Jim Crow laws.

What does awesome look like?

After reading Megan's article on Leading the New Literacies, I started to think about awesome in LG.  Awesome is when students start to take the strategies you teach and use them in some other area or activity. So much of my focus is on strategies for good communication.

 At this time of year , I try to move from teaching just specific communication "skills " to have my Elementary students use their skills in a project or activity.  The article you shared had so much great insight into how you start.  I liked the idea of teaching parts of the technology along with skill development and then to have students choose what they will use to show learning or take skills a step further.  I am trying to incorporate the step by step building of technology skills into my lessons with the goal in mind that the students will choose from a menu to show and expand their own learning and carryover skills.  All year I have used fiction and non- fiction  literature to teach specific speaking, language and listening skills.  Using literature increases vocabulary knowledge, use of different kinds of language and the amount of language exposure for my classes.  This process of hearing stories is very interactive.  The students are listening and talking throughout the entire class.  They are practicing how to say things, talking about meaning and sharing their ideas in each class.

This article is just what I needed to expand and focus my teaching. I teach mostly our youngest students.  They need so many things to be successful learners.  They are asked to use the information that they have gained to work on good communication with their peers.  I have tried to incorporate use of technology to help them show learning, practice language, work on skill development and to be able to hear themselves when they speak and to share with others what they are working on.  

In looking at something else this week I found this graphic that I will put up in my class to show how we can use different tools to show our learning.

As we move forward I hope to have students showcase their learning to other audiences.  I have sent things home to parents but they should be doing that themselves more often.  One -to- one computing helps with this, as they each have their own email address to send things home with.  Of course some of my students do not have email or computers at home. They can also do this in other forms, maybe a class blog or webpage. Many things to think about!