Positive Sticks & Prepping for Smarter Balanced Assessment

On Monday the entire Pulaski Community School District staff attended a professional development day which placed a large focus on the battle against bullying (with a new initiative called: Pulaski Kindness) and what to expect with the upcoming Smarter Balanced Assessment.

One of our district's major initiatives, related to bullying, is trying to instill being a more positive person.  We learned that bullying occurs, but that we can challenge it with positivity.  In our classroom, we always try to instill a community-like learning environment, but having students work collaboratively with nearly every classmate, no matter their expertise on a particular subject.  We instill that it is critical to be respectful to everyone, even if they are not your best friend.  We like to think that this has worked in creating a positive learning environment. 

In addition to some posters that are throughout our room, after Monday's professional development, we have chosen to add a new anti-bullying tactic, in the form of "Positive Sticks."  We plan on using these positive sticks when either a student feels compelled to do something kind OR when a negative behavior needs to be corrected with a positive one.  It is still in the experiment phase (just began it yesterday).  We are hoping to move it from being a silly thing, to something students enjoy doing, to something they will do without having to use a positive stick to come up with a positive idea.

The next item we had a professional discussion about was the upcoming implementation of Smarter Balanced Assessment, which will will roll out in 2014 and replace the current state testing (WKCE).  While we have been learning about this assessment for well over a year now in professional discussions and meetings, this past meeting was the first time we met as a K-12 district (pretty cool) to learn.  

Our biggest take away was two things:

1. Students need to be better prepared type for extended periods of time.  We have to provide our students with more typing experience, and not just when the time presents itself to do a writing project.  We have to encourage proficient typing skills, starting now.
2. The entire test is web-based, and will require an extensive writing portions, not just in the ELA section, but also math.  Students will have to describe what they know about a particular topic.

For fun (at least we thought so), we had our students explain my mistake to the following exponent problem in math yesterday.  They had to use their best thinking and writing skills to explain the mistakes I had made, even thought I justified the same answer twice.

The pictures that follow are a just a handful of examples of the exceptional descriptions that our students created.  They did awesome, considering it was one of the first times that we really forced them to think and write.

**This is definitely a skill we plan on integrating into future assessments and problems as we work towards finishing off the school year.**

Valentine's Day Delivery Inventions and Boxes

Too often Valentine's Day gets passed up with older students...well not ours.  We introduced our project/idea right at the beginning of January, with very little directions or suggested ideas.  We asked our students to create a Valentine's Day box to place on top of our cabinets (space is limited in our classroom).  With a box on top of our cabinets, we estimated that one would have to reach approximately 8 feet up to deliver a Valentine's Day card.  Students were not allowed to stand on chairs or counters to deliver their cards.  They were instructed to create "something" that would reach high up and drop a card in.  The following video shows you just how creative our students got with this.

**Currently the video is not showing, but the YouTube link is: http://goo.gl/RTN5r**

The above video proves that Valentine's Day can be both fun (for older students) and engaging.  This project is just an introduction piece to our upcoming invention unit where students will invent something from recycled materials used to solve a common problem around their houses or lives.  This project proves that while one project might look very similar to another, construction and planning make a big difference in success.  

Of the created inventions, most worked like a charm.  We wish you could have been here to listen to all the hooting and hollering (not even sarcastic) when a delivery mechanism worked!

Good times.

A Common Core Way to Compare and Contrast: Hugo vs. The Invention of Hugo Cabret

On Monday our class began watching the movie "Hugo."  Hugo is the movie based on the Brian Selznick novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which as a class we spent reading during the entire month of January as a build-up to our upcoming Renewable Invention Unit.  Now we realize that watching a movie to compare and contrast versus a novel is not a new, up and coming idea; however, it is one strategy suggested in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to use when teaching students to compare novels to other mediums of related media.  

As said at the beginning, we have only began the movie.  To make the movie more of an educational experience, we are delivering it in 30 minute segments.  While watching the movie students are filling in a series of Venn-Diagrams (see to the right) with as much information that seems similar or different from the book.  We are finding that many students are able to find several similarities and tons of differences.  

This movie is standing the test of time, or the age-old teacher saying, "The movie is not the same as the book."  Our students are seeing that this could not be more true.  The movie and book are way different from each other.  The book goes into more detail about certain characters, while the movie neglects to have some of those "certain" characters.  The movie creates much more drama and even suggests hints of "love," while the book does none of this, other than Hugo Cabret's love of his father and automaton.  

Our next step, after watching the movie in two more 30 segment chunks, will be to take all of the information we gathered (which is an unbelievable amount) and begin making sense of it.  Our goal is to have students write precise and detailed papers, which convey more than just movie versus book.  We also want them to recognize some of the major differences, which are beginning to outnumber the similarities.  We also want our students to begin writing more creatively, than just one paragraph with similarities and one paragraph with differences.  

We are excited to see what happens next, as we begin our next significant writing piece.