Third graders reading and BYOT

I spent the last three days preaching to our third graders about reading.   Reading is a skill that has to be mastered no matter what! Everything I'm doing as a 21st learner requires a high level of reading and writing skills.  I believe our biggest problem is not can our students read but can they evaluate what they are reading.  However, our students aren't ever going to be able to participate in the 21st if they do not develop better reading skills at an early age.
Only  44% of my third graders read at grade level by mid-year this year.  Amazing we had only two students not pass our state test, something seems wrong.  I, myself completely understand this false sense of security.  I made great grades in high school and thought I was very prepared for college only to find out I was way off the mark.  That is what our state standardized test is doing to our students.  Ok, back to my preaching this week.  Each third grade class was visited by me in the library with a quick speech and a review of the accelerated reader goal setting system we have in place.  Every student is suppose to understand their goal and reach their goal and this is a huge priority of mind. The media specialist, classroom teacher, and myself sat down with each third grader and double checked their understanding of the system and reminded them of their responsibilities to reach their goal.  I had several students in tears because the truth is they are under performing and they need to be told and that's my job. AR will get 90% of your readers on grade level if you use it properly, my belief.  I've had great success as a teacher, parent, and administrator with the program.  However, our third graders this year just aren't up to the task.  I'm not sure why, so I'm helping to attack the problem by constant reminders and checking up on the students.  Another great use of your smart phone and lunch room duty - monitor goals.
Today, I had a short conversation with one of our teachers about their doctoral program and she had to write her first scholarly paper. I have never been a very good writer because of have a tendency to go off topic, change tenses too much, not want to edit, and be too editorial.  It's the main reason I haven't started a doctoral program yet.   What caused me to think about her question was the content and her textbook.  Is a textbook really a credible tool for the social political environment in education today?  If it's a book it's probably slanted one way or the other because no one in the field of politics today is writing anything with just the facts or ideas in the middle.

BYOT:
Wifi is starting to work better for fourth graders.
Next step:  Develop ideas to integrate technology into the school day for our teachers.
Get third graders on grade level in reading according to Star Reading.
Get someone to develop a digital storytelling project with me.

Productivity

One of my daily quest is how to be more productive.  I have hundreds of ideas and tasks I wish I could complete, but many days I've just spend time getting people together for a meeting.  The video below is a big help to start being more productive tomorrow.

The Wifi story continues!

This weekend I had a terrible time running.  The pain in my left hip and knee was awful.  I thought to myself I'm just getting old, but the minute I made it home walking most of the five mile trip, I fired up the internet.  I quickly learned that I probably had a weak left hip and I needed to strengthen it.  The weirdest thing about this is the exercises made my hip feel better immediately.  Balance, if one part of the system isn't working right everything becomes painful.  Today, Will and I learned that the two wifi networks have different passwords and that's why we are having a hard time.  A few letters was causing students, teachers, and an administrator great anguish.
I'm very excited that Will is going to attempt to allow his students to bring their devices everyday.  I really believe that he will finds ways to integrate and not try to add something to his plate.

I'm trying my first MOOC, massive online open course, for the next six weeks.  I'm trying a pre-calculus class to refresh my mathematics skills to help my daughter next year, but also I'm very curious how MOOCs actually work.  If you are unfamiliar MOOC are all the rage in the online education world.  Universities are putting courses online for anyone to take for free.  The MOOC I signed up for through Coursea wanted you to sign up to use an assessment system that would monitor your quiz and give you feedback on how to improve by the answers you gave - that would cost $50, but you do not have to use that device.  The first lecture was a 11 minute video that wasn't bad or great but as introductions to a course go it was OK.  You did have to agree to a code of conduct, have due dates for quizzes, and the normal stuff of taking a class.  I'm very interested in the grade and will anyone give me credit for taking the class.



BYOT - Our director of technology came and spoke to our tech group.  His willingness to come and speak was great, but he needs to work on his mission.  I think he is spread to thin to truly help us and he is doing his best at the moment.  I think he will help us but like everything else these days it takes time.  I still do not understand the wireless.  I walked into my mother inlaws on Saturday in Augusta and her wireless, that I set up at Christmas, worked great for all of our devices, apple and Chrome Book.  We didn't even have to re-enter the password.  Why will that not work at school?
I am very grateful to two of my teachers for taking time out of their busy schedule each week to try and make BYOT work.  I still believe this is the only way for public education to move into the 21st century learning.

Reflections on BYOT

A day off is always a great time to seek balance in your life.  However, we moved into a new chapter of our life with a new puppy on Saturday.  Puppies bring joy to my heart, but also bring discipline to my words because I understand how easy it is to create the wrong dog by how you treat him.

This leads me into BYOT.  What I've learned with second graders.  After two days of dealing with technical problems I realize that students will be patient to use these devices.  We had lots of moments to get upset, abandon the program, or this is not worth the hassle.  I'm sure every new program goes through those moments, but the excitement of the students has sold me.  On student's mother said, "She could not sleep last night she was so excited about bringing her ipod to school and using it in class."  We must capitalize on that excitement and make sure we plan for engaging lessons with their devices.  I'm not sure if the excitement is coming from being able to play games or the feeling of newness, but it's excitement about school in second grade.  Second and third grades are the grades I believe we start losing students, so anything we can do to gain their interest let's do it.
I was finally able to get Socarative(a great classroom interactive tool for BYOT) working with about seven students, but conquering the technical issues was the hardest part of the day.  We have come to the conclusions that some devices are not going to work on our network.

My orginal belief was that the students need to understand how to log in and how to understand wifi, etc...  Not anymore that can come later.  The next class the parents will have to come to a meeting to discuss, logging in to the network, teaching their child how to use their device, purchase some apps, and understand a 21st century learners responsibilities.  We only had two parents attend our night time meeting, but we've had about 20 devices in two classes show up with signed permissions.

We've heard about the achievement gap but the technology divide is going to be the fastest than we ever thought about.  Both issues are very obvious in our title one school.
 

Next steps:
I do not think our teachers really know what to do with the devices.  They aren't sure how to integrate them into their lessons.  Next goal is to help facilitate that with my two pilot classrooms.
Next week, I suggest grouping the students into centers with CAFE or math activities.

Technology Tuesday is working so far.  I have the director of technology coming to speak tomorrow to help us with technical issues and discuss the counties technology goals.  Also, I will talk with him about the twitter account for the school.  The next week I'm going to invite just beginners for a 101 lesson on their device.

I'm excited about Edcanvas in Google Chrome for creating lessons and presentations.  I've made Powerpoints, Prez's, and tried just about everything, but nothing is faster to create than with Edcanvas.  If you use Google Chrome the site will give you access to google docs, you tube, and google search right on the site and then you just drag and drop.  Unbelievably quick, looks great, and then with google chrome you can use it on any device.  Edcanvas is worth a try!!

Reading Suggestions

Reading is a passion that I don't have enough time to enjoy.  I didn't realize I enjoyed reading until I starting teaching and starting sharing all the books I've read.  As an administrator, I haven't had a daily audience to share my enjoyment.  I do share with some of my teachers when I can, but it's not the same.  The following are three books that I enjoyed over the last month.

Everyone has a challenging student or two but why are they so challenging.  Most of us go to our own experiences like: my mother would have, or I wouldn't have been able to sit down for a week if I said that.  Students don't wake up in the morning and decide to be a challenge to you.  So why are they such a challenge, Behavior Code attempts to give you strategies to decipher patterns and behaviors so they can get back on track.

The Behavior Code 

 A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most

 Challenging Students

Jessica Minahan and Nancy Rappaport, MD

Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout

Radioactive-Marie-Pierre-Curie-Fallout

Why, because am a curious learner and they changed the 

world we live in today.  Their discoveries help my beloved 

smart phone and of course help end World War 2.  Your time

 will not be wasted with this great read.

Knucklehead-Almost-Stories-Growing-Scieszka/
Why, Stinky Cheese and The story of the Three Little Pigs from the perspective of the Wolf, he wrote them.  A very quick read that helps you have hope for those boys in your class that don't seem to be paying any attention to you.  They too could turn out to make a living as an author.

A very strange group of books, but they will feel you with hope, inspiration, and something to talk about.

Stan

Balance became overloaded this week at the GaETC conference.  The Georgia educational technology conference was full of time grabbing ideas.  Ideas that having a learning curve that takes time.  I planned and went at the conference with a focus BYOD and things I could bring back to the teachers, IDEAS.  I learned a lot about BYOD and it's not about students bringing technology to school.  It's the new pencil and paper on hyper speed.  BYOD is really about teachers engaging their students differently.  Our students today have grown up with digital devices - tv, video games, smart phones, apps, and the list goes on.  However, the question is are teachers and administrators growing along with the students. Not sure?  If that were the case, it looks like they would be begging for more devices.  The problem is what is occurring to me at this moment- where to start - what can I commit too - and what is worthy of our time  - my vote is for true engagement.   Every cross grade level meeting I in the same thing keeps coming up - the students aren't retaining the information.  Second grade teachers adding and subtracting, but when they get to third grade they don't know how and the same thing goes all the way up and down the spectrum.  I think BYOD is the answer to engagement along with the new common cores focus on explaining (why?). This is my how for the moment.
My plan is to start engaging our teachers with not technology tools but engagement activities.
1.  Todaysmeet to get our feet wet.  Stop over planning and try things---- Every meeting we have introduce some with the idea of better engagement as a learner.
2. Focus on BYOD with Susan and Will - every week make sure something is progressing.
3. Ipad plan - teachers?  bring their iPad and discuss
4. Twice a month have a technology meeting with Mrs. Vick - invite all staff that would like to share and learn - back channel the focus of the meeting.
5.  Push Twitter and a school account. - call Evan

October 22-26

This week was very crazy!  Barely a moment to take a breath and remember what I'm doing.  However, I did get to complete some great interventions with a 5th grade student.  He's not a great reader and we used You tube to research a topic and he was able to get some great supporting details for his paper from videos.

Another bright spot, our school received some good kudos for RTi.  I think the auditor liked how we focused on Tier I instruction with tier 1 and then intervened with interventions for students not meeting those benchmarks.  We even did training to support the teachers on the Tier I instruction over five years.  We still need to get better how we analysis student problems and how to do classroom interventions.

I was able to sneak out for a short Professional learning seminar at our county about teaching common core math.  Power point of meeting.  The discussion was about the mathematical practice and not the standards.  A big part of the change to the common core is stressing how our teachers are teaching.  This was a great presentation to help make sure we are emphasizes the process before we ever start worry about the new PARCC or Common Core assessments.

The ART and SCIENCE of teaching

Ted talk above only 14 minutes - Good listen to start you thinking about the art and science of teaching.

RTI - response to intervention
Next week our RTI process will be audited by an outside agency.  I don't like be audited because I know that everything we do at school is never documented on paper.  What educator has time to document everything we do.  Yes, I try most days to document interventions and strategy discussions about students; however, no general protocol is followed or process really in place.  We have one rule, treat every student like they were your own.  That rule has teachers intervening with all students.  You could say that our classrooms are already Tier 2, so it's very hard to implement something new for tier 3 because they are already doing everything they can possibly do for that student.
I become frustrated because I know that we should be making the next move toward understanding the science part of education, but we do not.  Collecting data with 24 8 year olds in a classroom can be challenging when you are learning new content to teach.  Teachers need more time to practice stop and listen to feedback like a sports team practices or a broadway production prepares for a performance.
Last year we used Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov to add some new techniques to their tool box.  I could walk the building last year and see teachers trying the techniques, I talked with them to see if they thought they were helpful.  I did everything an administrator could do to support them.  Well this year two new programs have been thrown at them Daily Five and the new Common Core standards have made them forget to work on those techniques.
With those ideas in mind, now through in a behavior problem on top of someone trying to understand how to design their classroom with educational science.  My analogy is what happens at the World series if someone runs on the field, that person is surrounded by security and removed from the field.  However, in the classroom, we have to learn how to differentiate or create a new behavior plan for that student.  Don't think of this as a compliant, because I love it.  The public and the people creating a lot of policy, my opinion, do not understand how challenging teaching is today.
Our best teacher by the art method has trouble filling our a tier 2 strategy sheet and our best teacher by the science method makes parents mad monthly.  Then I spend my time correcting those things instead of pushing forward new ideas.  It's like asking the University of Alabama to not have a football team next year because they have such a great team.  If you're very successful at what you do, but you want me to do something differently with less time and money.
I'm trying to start a dialogue that isn't about complaining but balancing science and art to make teaching work today.  That involves using technology, creating rti - researched based tool boxes, classroom mgt techniques, and discussing the fine points of the art of teaching.

Tonight
Leadership 2.0 with Eric Sheninger and Joe Mazza 
I really enjoyed listening to fellow educators that are making social media work for them.  I believe starting and getting the engine going is the hardest part.  I'm going to work on a plan tomorrow to set up a school twitter account,  work on google forms for collecting lunch counts, and get back to work on my RTI google site.  
I have to be the role model and leader to get teachers involved with social media and one more to do is get the BYOD classrooms ready to start after Thanksgiving.

Trying - Leadership 2.0 edweb.net free online seminars tonight.
Leadership 2.0 Free Webinar

Balance - Friday in the cafeteria I taught a kindergartener how to balance his spork (spoon and fork together) on his finger.  I explained that you had to find the fulcrum.  I showed him and he keep repeating the word fulcrum over and over.  I loved it and he did too!  He had learned something new and he immediately had to share with everyone he could at the table or adults walking through the cafeteria.  On the flip side, I get so excited reading twitter feeds and blogs that my mind started to spin.  Just like the kid in the cafeteria, I want to share, but share what?  Who has time for another idea?  Another task? Another program to learn?  Everyone seems to just be keeping their heads above water daily, when are we supposed to learn something new? I tried Voicethread, which didn't open on most computers in the building.  Our google docs stall and the message trying to reach google comes up.  I've decided not to scream and throw all computers in the lake.  Instead I've decided to write a blog.  Why? Because the new connected world is about sharing and it's time to start.  My goal is to create focus and balance in my professional life.  If someone once walked between the twin towers, I can at least give the tools of our new connected world a try.