Reading Across State Lines Round 2 -Final Project

Engine-Uity, Ltd.

http://www.engine-uity.com/

Reading Across State Lines- Round 2 (Week 7)

Materials/Resources: 

           - Interactive Notebooks

           - Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson

            -Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African                                   Americans by Kadir Nelson

            -Willing to Be Disturbed   by Margaret J. Wheatley 

Lesson:

·  

·     Introduction Whole Class/partners

·     Warm Up

·      To start out with I will pull up three images related to the Reconstruction. I just did a Google Image search for the images (there are plenty to choose from there).

·     With these images students will participate in the Visual Thinking/MTV Routine See- Think- Wonder

·     Students true in their Interactive Gifted Notebook to page_____(next page of Chasing Lincoln’s Killer) and create three vertical columns (See-Think-Wonder).

·     Students will be asked to take two minutes and record on everything they SEE.

·     In pairs students will share what they have recorded and encourage to add anything from their partners list that they may have missed.

·     Students will be asked to take two minutes and record on everything they THINK.

·     In pairs students will discuss their list.

·     Students will be asked to take two minutes and record on everything they Wonder.

·     In pairs students will discuss their list .

Heart of the Lesson:

·     -Read aloud and discuss Chapter 5 /Reconstruction of Heartand Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson.

·     Example Questions and Talking Points (There maybe other questions that come to mind that morning):

·     -Page 19-What are some the issues might caused for African Americans by the laws in slavery times-most black folks couldn’t own property, vote, learn to read…..?

·     -Page 20- “The Confederate dollar wasn’t worth a cup of red Georgia clay.” I will talk about this in hopes to make it clear to the students.

·     -Page 20- In you words tell your partner how the ol’ master was a crook.

·          -Then tell your partner how the ol’ master would have justified his actions.

·     -Page 21- What was the meaning of –“The North had won the Civil War had won the Civil War; but the South, it won Reconstruction.” What evidence was shared in this piece proofs that?

·     -At this point, I will model with ex-slave and using Center of Viewpoint Routine .

·     -Then, I will assign students roles: plantation owner and ex-Union solider and have them complete one of these routines.

·     Circle of View Point

·     1. I am thinking of [name the event/issue] from the point of view of…

·     2. I think…[describe the topic from your viewpoint. Be an actor—take on the character of your viewpoint]. Because…[explain your reasoning]

·     3. A question/concern I have from this viewpoint is…”

·     Students with the same role will get together to discuss their responses.

   

·     Closure

·     Students will meet for a discussion group. Sharing how their roles point of view is the same or different roles. They will be encouraged to explain their thinking.    

·     Independent: Read "Willing to Be Disturbed"     

·     
Model: I will return to text and model my thinking of how an ex-slave might have benefited form this artcle.
Then Students will respond to the prompt in your Interactive Gifted Notebook.

·     Prompt: Write a letter from the student in 2015 to someone in your role back during The Southern Reconstruction using the knowledge from the pieces we have read and our discussion. The following were meant to be rough drafts and the focus was content. 

Reading Across State Lines-Round 2 (Week 6)

Link to the Virtual Field Trip of Ford's Theatre

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/Live/fordstheatre150.cfm

Reading Across State Lines- Round 2 (Week 4)

Here is the link to the registration for the Discovery Education Virtual Field Trip on April 26th at 1:00pm.

Reading Across State Lines- Round 2 (Week 3)

The following photos were taken by Mrs. Hemmer in Iowa during our Skype conversations. 

Reading Across State Lines-Round 2 (Week 2)

As for our Edmodo Group, I did want to make it clear that Mrs. Hemmer and I are both posting discussion questions and responding to comments. I personally feel that the latter is so important no matter what age you are working with. I have worked with and have been apart of several online learning communities and that feedback much like face to face is so important. It is important to remember that just, because a community is online does not mean the most of the same rules do not apply. People what to know what they have said was heard and matters.  Mrs. Hemmer is a rock star in this area!!

Also, I love capturing my students deep in thought and into what they are working on. Here are few photos I couldn't resist taking. 

Reading Across State LInes- Round 2 -Week 1

For those interested in reading about Reading Across State Lines 2011:
Reading Across State Lines -Florida and Iowa (Part 1)

Reading Across State Lines -Florida and Iowa (Part 2)

Reading Across State Lines-Florida and Iowa (Part 2)

During my first couple of years teaching, I remember a veteran teacher stressing the importance of staying flexible in this job. This Thursday with virtual literature circles was a prime example of why that principle is important. Since my 5th grade students only attend Gifted once a week we could only meet with the 5th graders in Iowa on Thursday. However, both schools have schedules we have to compete with and things come up. This week we had to deal with the fact that Iowa had a play that was being presented during their reading blocks. So what we did was hold both book talks (video conferences) simultaneously, but in different rooms to divide the sound. We had attempted to hold them at the same time and same room a couple of weeks ago, but that made it difficult to hear. Holding them in different rooms solved the sound issue, but created a few others. Since I could not leave my students alone to video conference with Ms. Hill I had to come up with a place on campus that was fairly quiet and had an adult near by so my students had supervision. With that, I asked our nurse and nurse’s assistant if my students could use this clinic for their meeting on Do the Funky Pickle. We have used the clinic for recording podcast and creating video clips in the past and these two ladies are always willing to help us out. Our later video conference was scheduled during a high traffic time in the clinic so I asked a pre-k teacher and a parent of one of the students if they could hold the video conference in her room. She too could not have been more accommodating. I am so lucky to work with a group of people who see the value of what we do and are so willing to help out. This solution did allow us to hear much better and helped keep students on task. Being off task had not been a huge issue for either group, but it did cut down on the momentary distractions we were experiencing in both groups.

Another observation, I had was that the conversations during the video conferences are becoming much more in depth. The students at first seemed willing to just share their job for the week and the conversations were a bit flat. However, as we get to know each other and make our way through the books I am watching the students interactions with each other and these books deepen. My student have been seeking time at lunch, at dismissal or just stopping by my room to discuss what is going on with the characters in their book. These brief interaction are playing a role in the video conferences as well. Rather than just sitting and listening to one student after another present their work they are now asking questions, commenting on the work presented and/or asking others to explain their thinking. One of my biggest joys, as an educator, is watching students take hold of not just what they are learning, but the learning process itself.

With that said, I believe that learning does take place in the process, but that is not without thought towards standards and benchmarks. In our laboratory, we build in as many cross curriculum learning standards into an activity as possible. As we make our way through these virtual literature circles, with our friends from Iowa, we are honing skills on the following list of standards: NETS Standards, Florida Framework for Gifted Students K-12 and Grade 5 Sunshine State Standards for Language Arts. Due to the amount of standards covered with this project and the students' engagement level this endeavor has been an amazing use of class time. I can't wait to see where the rest of our journey will take us. To our friends in Iowa, we will see see you all on Thursday.

Reading Across State Lines-Florida and Iowa (Part 1)

This fall, during Rock Our World, Oneco’s Gifted Program's fifth graders spoke with Gina Hill’s fifth graders from Aquin Catholic Elementary School in Cascade, Iowa. While the students were chatting we noticed that they seemed to enjoy discussing literature. Right in the middle of this chat Ms. Hill and I discussed doing some sort of book project this spring. Then in early January Ms. Hill and I began to think through and plan things using email and Facebook. Both of use had dealt with Literature Circles in the past and shared the same vision. We did spend some time sharing different components of these circles and we were very similar. However, we had many questions that needed to be answered first. What were the reading levels of our individual students? Which books had already been devoured by our students? With those things considered, we threw several novels around and we finally decided on Do the Funky Pickle by Jerry Spenilli and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick. After the books were chosen, we decided that Ms. Hill would take most of the responsibilities for Do the Funky Pickle and my job would be to work with the students reading Homer P. Figg.


The next set of questions that needed to be answered had to do with that technology tools would server our needs best. Due to our experiences with Rock Our World we both had video conferencing capabilities. So how we would communicate synchronously was easy to answer. However, how the kids would receive and turn in assignments to a teacher thousands of miles away? How will the necessary asynchronous communication take place? We discussed several tools to preform these tasks, but ultimately ended up deciding on Moodle, the online course management system. I have a developed a few courses in the past using Moodle and are housed on my county's server. However, I needed to ask permission and for help from our Instructional Technology Department. We needed for Ms. Hill to be able to help create the course and for her students to also be enrolled in our Moodle. Lucky for me, they have always been very supportive and helpful when it comes to my endeavors. Since the Moodle was new to Ms. Hill, she took upon herself to visit Moodle.org and learn what she could from there. Between her investigation, a brief how to document I sent and a twenty minute iChat session we were up and running.


Then on Thursday, February 24th we began with some activities to build background knowledge for each book and we had set up to conducted video conferences. We attempted to hold them on two different computers in each of classrooms at the same time. We thought we would use Skype for one and iChat for the other. Through that experience we learned a few things. First, that although the kids were engaged the focused having these conferences happen simultaneously caused issues with being able to hear clearly. There was the need to keep asking students to repeat things, which we felt was wasting time. So we decide to divide them the next time. Along with that, for some reason we were struggling to keep the audio feed with our connection through Skype. We would lose the audio on one end, have to hang up and call back. We decided not to try to figure out why and that we would just be using iChat from now on.

For Week 2, we had a bit of a problem with our video conference schedule. The Oneco Gifted 5th grader only meet on Thursdays and the students in Iowa were being forced to go skiing Thursday, March 3. However, through the use of technology we did our best to keep the kids connected. On Wednesday, March 2nd Ms. Hill video taped her Do the Funky Pickle book talk, while I iChatted and recorded the Iowa book talk for Homer P. Then I video taped Oneco’s book talks on Thursday. Finally, we uploaded them into the Moodle for the other group to watch.


As for the Moodle the students seem to have adjusted very quickly to how things work and it is giving them some much needed experience with online course format. Another wonderful thing about Moodle, is that it can be edited and added to with ease when a need arise. For instance, we just added a text chat feature for our use during our next video conferencing session. This way while one group is iChatting the other group can also be engaged in a synchronous activity. Personally, I can not wait to see how that works out.

Overall, this whole experience has been amazing so far. Ms. Hill and her students from Iowa have been incredible and we appreciate the fact that they have been willing to take this adventure with us. Please stay tuned for further post on this adventure.