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Activity: Socratic Seminar

5th Grade - Concert Preparation

My students are deep in concert preparation right now. I also only see my kiddos once per week so I didn't want to completely veer off our routine, but I did implement a "mini" Socratic Seminar. Instead of sitting in a circle discussing things, we stayed in our concert practice spots but still held an open discussion as a class. We discussed different things within their concert pieces such as: their perceived mood of the piece; what is the text trying to tell us; how does this song make you feel; what areas do you need to practice to feel more confident? We then used these answers and our discussion to lead our rehearsal. Based on their responses, we were able to better align the needs of the practice.

Changes: I can see many other ways to use the Socratic Seminar in my classroom that would be more "real" as a round-table type discussion. Using this method of teaching would work well as a discussion on student's favorite types of music and favorite musicians/bands/rappers. Giving the students an opportunity to talk about "their" musical style is important cause it comes up often in class, especially with middle school.

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Activity: Gallery

Writer's Workshop always seems to be a chunk of the day where I could use more time. The students are always very proud of themselves when they journal a beautiful picture with details, add words, sentences, labels, etc. Unfortunately, the students only see their work and nobody else's work. I decided to implement a modified gallery walk at the end of our Writer's Workshop time today. The students were instructed to look at their friends' work, try to read their labels and sentences, find one thing they like from a journal, and one thing they would like to incorporate in their journal next time. The kiddos were incredibly excited to share their journals. I heard them repeatedly say "come look at mine, I did...." It gave them an opportunity to show ownership and be proud for all of their hard work. When the kiddos came back to the carpet they shared, but it led to a lot of people sharing similar things.

Next time I may change the gallery where students will stand by their journal, talk about it, and answer questions during the gallery. We may not have enough time to get through everybody's work, but at least they can share with the class and see some people's examples.

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Activity: Inside Circle Outside Circle
Right now with my 1st graders I have just been beginning to introduce musical note names with my advanced group of students. I found that my students needed a lot of repetition, but were getting very antsy with me doing the repeating. I decided to implement inside outside circle to allow them to review the new content, allow students the opportunity to teach, and allow students the opportunity to learn from each other. Another benefit was I had mixed classes (select students from 3 different classes) so it was also a great opportunity for students to interact with students in other classrooms. I found the first time I tried this technique I had mixed results. At the 1st grade level they needed very explicit instructions with how to set up, and how to rotate. Students often would not want to rotate, but rather stay with a friend or partner they were comfortable with. I feel like as this activity is repeated they would become much more comfortable with this process. I also found that despite me asking them to discuss with their partner, students were really excited to prove to me they knew the answer, rather than teaching or learning with their partner. I tried a similar activity later in the week, this time allowing them to stay with the same partner for longer. This allowed for more success for my students as they had more time to develop the feeling of being on the same team. I would definitely continue to use this activity for this person, but would like to continue to practice it with students so that setup and expectations become quicker and easy to understand for my students.

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Shari Bishop 5th Grade Gifted, Talented, Enrichment Class

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Shari Bishop 5th Grade Gifted, Talented, Enrichment Class

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Activity: Student Gallery Walk

I was working on a project with my 5th grade group where they chose an environmental issue and created a Pecha Kucha presentation in Google slides about what it is and the effects. A Pecha Kucha is a set number of slides and time frame. Each slide has very little text and photos. The framework helps students to present information without reading from the slides. We just finished up the unit where students presented to at least one other person in class. I added the gallery walk element this year to give students an opportunity to view others work and draw conclusions from their slides only. My classroom is just off of a large foyer with benches all the way around. Each student set up their Chromebook and played their slideshow when we all came to their location.

I was impressed with the depth of reflection and observations that students had by the time we were at the end of the walk. At first it took some modeling and guidance, but by the end they were discussing how the pictures were a theme and brought out different emotions. They were also very positive and were commenting on others work more than usual. Time and silence was an important element. It did make one of my students uncomfortable to be silent throughout so many presentations, but I think it was a positive thing for her :)

The next time I do this I would model the process in my room before beginning the gallery walk. This would help students be more comfortable with the process and give more quality feedback with the first presentations.

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Activity: Origami Cube
Focus: Team Building

Reflection:
I decided to be brave and try the Origami Cube with 4th graders. During the month of October, we had been focusing on unity, teamwork, and collaboration. I thought the Origami Cube would be a great class activity to try and portray all the characteristics that go along with those topics. During our discussion, we talked about what is should look like, feel like and sound like when working independently and together as a group. For example, students need to work at a pace that is comfortable for them, ask for help when necessary, and be willing to help others if you are confident in your folding skills. Before sending the kids off to work, I explained the process and what their cube SHOULD look like at the end. In order for them to work at a pace that was best fit for them, I provided two different resources: 1. I walked them through the instructions on the paper copy. 2. I also uploaded a video of the folding process. Many students choose this method as they were able to pause and rewind the video as needed while they were folding their papers. Some students caught on very quickly and finished folding correctly in one or two attempts, others needed additional support from me or their classmates. Only a few students were able to construct the cube. Therefore, I made it a "group" challenge. Each person in the group (6) had to put at least one of the "flaps" in while constructing the cube. Therefore, everyone felt as though they contributed to the assignment! At the end, we talked about some of the "feelings" they experienced during the challenge. Many of them felt stressed out while they saw others completing it easier than they were, even though they were able to fold their sheet on their own by the end. I related that to the classroom. It doesn't matter how fast you complete an assignment or a test, just complete it at your own pace without worrying about others. It doesn't matter how fast it takes you, so long as you finish it.

Changes: If I had to do it again, I would try to find an "easier" method to putting the cube together so a larger population of the class would be able to complete the task individually.

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Marceia Andreasen, CAPS Teacher Education

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Marceia Andreasen, CAPS Teacher Education

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Activity: Juggle

Reflection:

I took my seniors through the juggle activity to model a first day ice breaker activity that they could add to their own teacher tool kits. I did the juggle exactly how we did it in class for AB1.  We set the pattern in the same way and used the 'here you go' and 'thank you _____' dialogue. (It took them a few rounds to call me Marceia - lol) I added in balls as we went, getting up to 5 at one time. We stopped at various points to discuss what they were noticing in terms of what made it easier, what was challenging, what the activity was fostering etc. In the final round I set the expectation that the heart shaped ball could not drop. We debriefed after that final round as well.

The juggle went really well. Not only did the students enjoy the activity, but It also lead to discussion about building a culture for learning and how this activity could illustrate that. We discussed the importance of movement and the affect of high stakes (not dropping the heart ball) on students citing both positive and negative, which led to a great discussion on growth mindset. They discussed modifications like rolling the ball for younger students and how it could be used for academic learning like perhaps vocabulary words or as an exit activity.

The next time I do this I will have the students model this as an academic tool or as an exit assessment activity as they had discusses. I'm curious to see what they come up with!  I also plan to add in the string component to remind them of the culture building aspect of the experience.  I will also add a reflection assignment piece to this experience so they can consider the components that are important to creating a learning culture and be mindful of the intentional things that teachers do to ensure this in their classrooms. I would also be certain to specify the hard rule of underhand toss - luckily Joey found me some tennis balls to replace the softballs I was going to bring. Without the slight modification we may have needed some stitches ;)

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Activity: Inside Outside Circle

Reflection:
I gave the inside outside circle a try in my classroom of 3rd graders. I used it as part of my morning meeting. The students shared with each other about their past weekend. Every Monday morning we all take turns sharing about our weekend, although in the past we have always done it where one student shares aloud to the whole class. With the inside outside circle it seemed like the students were willing to share so much more and elaborate more on the events of their weekend. I believe this was because of the one on one conversation versus sharing to the whole group. The conversation between two students versus whole group also lead to more opportunities for the listener to relate and make connections with each other's weekends as well. The inside outside circle could be used for so much more than just sharing about a weekend. I look forward to using it not only in future morning meetings, but also as a tool for instruction.

If I were to make any changes, it would be that I make a clear cut off time before we start for when the students have to finish up their share. Some students would drag on about their share in extreme detail and could talk for an hour. Looking back, I now know that making a clear cut off time from the start would definitely help the process of switching much easier and I wouldn't have to interrupt students in the middle of their share.

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Activity: Halloween Costume Contest - changed to a Play Costume design to teach about what a character is

During our face to face meeting, the Halloween Costume Contest was one of my least favorite activities because of how open ended it was.  I have always thrived on clear and concise instructions to complete my tasks.  So this activity brought me most out of my comfort zone, which is why I wanted to bring it to my classroom.  I think some of the best learning can be done when we are stretched outside of our comfort zone.

Of course bringing this to Kindergarten, the activity looked a bit different.  During Halloween week, my students worked a lot with the story, "Room on the Broom".  I took the concept of designing our own Halloween costumes from class, and instructed my kindergarteners to design their own costumes for their character as we acted out the story, "Room on the Broom".  Each student got to select the character they wanted to be and then they had one single instruction, to design a costume fitting for their character.  Other times, I would have given them templates or specific guidelines on how to create their costumes.  But this time I just let them go, much like we were let go in our Halloween Costume Contest Activity.  The outcome was fantastic, for the most part ;)  Remembering a piece from one of the principles of learning, "don't ever do what the learner can do",  I let them create their own costume for their character.  It was great to see their creative sides flourish.  Some made quite elaborate costumes, while others were very simple, but still achieved what was asked of them.

Overall, the activity went very well.  Students impressed me with their creativity!  While it wasn't introduced at all as a contest for the best costume, my kindergarteners were quick to notice what their peers were doing and wanted to change their costume to "be better" like their friends.  This led me to thinking about a follow up lesson or perhaps a pre-cursor lesson on fairness and how we are not all alike, but instead how very different we are.  Doing it again, that is one thing I would change.  Also, instead of making each child create their own costume, it would be fun to put all the "frogs" together, all the "witches" together etc. to have them create a single costume together that each could use when it was their turn to perform their play.  The plays ended up going very well and my kindergartners are now all familiar with what a character in a story is :)

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I took some of the teaching strategies from the Origami activity and blended it with a modified version of “Inquiring Minds.” I randomly placed students into groups of three or four and each group needed to work through a style of equation they were seeing for the first time. They had a few minutes to try to solve their equation, then we would come back together as a class and discuss each problem. I pre-taught that some of the groups would not be able to make it all the way through their equation, but that was OK! They would need to write down a question to ask the class to help solve their equation. In our class we call these learning opportunities. I reminded them of the group work requirement for our class, that I can ask a question of anyone in their group. Also, they were not allowed to ask me any questions once they began working together. Before they began working on their equation, they were to introduce themselves (we practice shaking hands and making eye contact). After their introductions they were to answer the open ended question, “What is one good thing that you have experienced today?” - it was 7th hour. Once we came back together as a class, I reminded them how some of their classmates may be nervous to respond, so we need to keep all of our reactions and answers positive and encouraging. If someone has a question for the class and someone else had that same question-let them know!

The activity went really well! We were able to hear from each student in class! When it was their groups turn to talk about their solution, some non-typical talkers offered information right off the bat. I was able to direct a simple question to others that were hesitant to talk for their group. I did have to give some direction to stay on task with the introductions and “Inquiring Minds” question. We talked about how they felt knowing ahead of time they might not get to the final answer. Followed that up with, “Doesn’t that happen with homework?” “How did it feel to experience that together vs. on your own at home?” At this point I had an “Ah-Ha” moment/question? What does it look like to have accountability groups outside of class?

I would change how the students displayed their work. They gave me verbal steps and directions at the smartboard for how to work through the equation. It would have saved time to be able to use a document camera to discuss the work they had already completed.

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Activity: Inside Outside Circle

Reflection: I tried the inside outside circle as a review activity with my 10th graders. I had all of my students write down one question that they still have or think someone else may about our chapter on populations. The class I tried this with was a little hectic and the students had difficulty making circles within their groups. I put my class two groups. I found out very quickly my groups were too large. The students then began to move in their circles and came up with answers or more questions together. After the students moved in the circles, I then had them find someone they have not talked to yet and switch questions. To end the activity in large group discussion, I had all students sit in their desks with the question they had, read it out loud, and give an answer or ask for help. When they answered we had students with the same question pass their card forward. This allowed me to find the information that students had a more challenging time making connections with and what we needed to spend a little more time on. Students gave me verbal feedback that they did enjoy the activity and also thought if we completed it again, it would go more smoothly.

Changes: Next time, I will have much smaller groups and do this activity without something content related. This would also allow the class and I to practice the activity before discussing more difficult information and questions. I would do this closer to the beginning of the trimester as a “get to know” activity and make sure students are introducing themselves. Putting my class in smaller groups would allow for us to have more adequate space, because we did run into that issue with one group. I may also do a Google forms reflection after the activity to get feedback from all of my students.

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Activity: Group Juggle.

Reflection: I did this activity to prepare students for collaborative critical thinking stations for math. The plan is to give students a short information or story with various numbers involved and open ended areas where data could be implemented by the students. Students will be instructed to write a math problem associated with the data, and discuss their problem with their partner as well as have their partner solve the problem they created.

During this last week of the Group Juggle activity, proceeded to do this activity during our morning meeting. Each time we finished this we had a discussion on how it went. I started by telling the class our goal was to not drop the ball and to pass it to the next partner. Students did well with this part, but a few students dropping the ball. We talked about how when this happened, students went out of their spot to help the other student. This lead to great discussion on how it is okay (and even natural) for us to want to help others, and how at times we were even able to complete the cycle faster than if the person who dropped it went to get it. Students also brainstormed as a class how they could improve their time and accuracy and gave several helpful answers, with no "try harder" comments. I was very impressed with this, as all I did was sit back and made sure we didn't go over time.

What I could have done differently: I feel like I could have added more balls sooner, as well as add a timer on the SMART Board, to help give them that sense of urgency in a safe environment (this would have been done the second or third day, not the first). I didn't add more balls because I didn't want add too much anxiety to my perfectionist students right away and wanted to set the foundation with our first discussion after our first activity. I will also mention that , even though this wasn't in much control, was have more students join in. I had seven students absent throughout the week, and a few of those students coming in late throughout the day as well. I could have done this activity again during snack time, or in-between content areas. I will do this next week if I have this many students out again, but hopefully that won't happen again.

Going forward: I plan to get a roll of string and have them toss the roll, and hold onto a part of it, similar to how we did it our first F2F meeting. The purpose of this will help set the foundation for group projects in science, as well as our math partner groups and partner work or review discussions, and also relate this to how our overall learning environment feels and can flow. I will be asking them the following questions:
1. What does it mean to be accountable? How can you help keep yourself and your partner accountable?
2. Were we all still connected if someone let go of the string? What happened when someone let go of the string? How can we fix it?
3. How can we ensure that we all stay connected as a class?

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Activity: Student Work Gallery Walk

This week students were working on describing the cultural characteristics of Asia. To practice this learning target, students selected a country in Asia to research and created a “Google Doodle.” For their assignment, each letter in the word Google needed to visually represent a cultural characteristic found in the country they researched (examples: language, food, clothing, sports, daily life, etc). Next, students wrote a caption for each letter describing the characteristic in detail.

After students created their doodles, we had a “Google Doodle Gallery Walk.” Each student displayed their drawing on their desk and then visited the drawings of their classmates. They were instructed to visit a minimum of 4 drawings and record at least two things they learned about the culture of that country on their gallery walk forms. However, almost every student visited more than four of their classmates drawings.

Overall I thought this activity went well! I have done gallery walks before, but I have not done it with student work. I modeled this lesson after the gallery walk we did during our face to face on growth mindset. During our growth mindset gallery walk, I liked how we were asked to represent the same concept, yet each of our representations were different. I noticed the same thing during my students culture gallery walk. Each Google Doodle was unique, and the cultural elements students chose to represent were unique. I liked how the gallery walk activity allowed students to first research on their own and then learn from their classmates. It was also great to have students up and moving!

There are a few changes I would make the next time I do this activity. The first is giving students more time to complete the gallery walk. I also allowed students to select their own country. The pro of this was student choice. The con was I had several Google Doodles on China, India, and Japan, and every few on other Asian countries. Students began to notice this as well during their Gallery walk. Next time I would like to have a plan in place that allows students to select their country, but encourages students to select different countries. Finally, since students had the opportunity to look at each other’s work, I think it would be beneficial to add a reflection element at the end of this lesson. Questions could include “What is something you think you did well? What is something you could improve on or push yourself to extend your learning on?” Then I could give students an opportunity to revise or add on to their Google Doodle.

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Activity: Inquiring Minds

Reflection: Another learner shared their transfer journal with me, being I was not able to attend class this past weekend. I chose to implement an inquiring minds activity in science class as part of a review session before our science test. Each student was given a blank note card to start. I shared two examples I made ahead of time as visual examples. Students were instructed to write 1 question or statement about one of our 13 vocabulary words on the lined side of the note card. Some examples that I heard were:
1. A person who uses scientific knowledge to design useful things is called an?
2. The plan for making something is called?
3. Something that connects and disconnects a circuit:
On the back side of the note card they then put the correct vocab word that matched their definition on the front.
Next, students walked around and found a partner to ask their question to. Both students read their questions and tried to answer the opposite persons question. Once they both read and answered, they switched cards and went on to find another partner, and repeated the switch process. We did this for about 10 minutes. Overall, I was impressed with how well students were able to turn definitions into questions with such little practice. The activity did get loud, but I was happy with how they seemed to be enjoying something new and how on task they remained. It was low prep and a great way for students to take responsibility for their learning.

Changes: One change for next time would be to have my para and I go around and quickly check each students card before the "quiz, quiz, trade" began. As I was walking around during the activity, I had to change a few students questions because they either did not make sense or were not worded correctly to match the original definition. Another thing I would do is introduce this activity with a non academic subject, so students could get the hang of it first.

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Activity: Inside out circle

Reflection:  I did this activity for my morning meeting activity every morning this week.  Forming two circles was way more difficult than I anticipated. We ended up with two blobs. The forming of circles was a lesson in following directions! Once situated in our two circles we first talked about the difference between clockwise and counter clockwise. The first day I had them share about what they did over the weekend, and on day two I had them share family Halloween traditions.  The activity couldn't have gone any better.  The students were highly engaged and truly seem interested in what their classmates were sharing.  They loved the fact that it was something their teacher learned to do over the weekend.

Changes: I certainly need to find a better way of forming circles.  I don't have the best space for this activity without having to push desks out of the way.  For 2nd graders it would really be nice if there were permanent circles on the floor, not sure how the custodians would feel about that however.  If I were to want a better space I could either go outside, into the hallway, or even walk them down to the gym. Lastly I think in one of my first math lessons of the year I would emphasize clockwise and counter clockwise a little more. I would tell them that we are going to use this in an activity the next day.

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Activity: Group Juggle

Reflection: I did this activity as a part of my morning meeting.  I prefaced it by talking about how during the day we have a lot coming at us and a lot going on.  I talked about how we are all a class working together.  The activity went well, a few objects were dropped and after a quick reminder to throw under hand it went smoothly.  After we had a discussion about how it went.  My class had some of the same observations we did as far as what worked and what didn't go well.  We brought it back by talking about how we can work together as a team and how when we do that how well the activity went and how well our class could do through out the year.

Changes: I would like to do this activity with students more towards the beginning of the year. I think this is a fantastic week one activity for students. I would also stress the importance of throwing under hand before I start the activity next time.

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Activity:
Act It Out-Reading Class
During our first weekend, one of the biggest aha’s that I had was the importance and effectiveness of high student engagement. I decided to use the same learning style we did during the Halloween Costume Contest by having students engage in acting during reading class. Our two comprehension skills for the week were predicting and theme. I developed scenarios for groups of 4 students that included a title, acting roles, and a step-by-step scenario. I formed groups using candy colors and gave them 10 minutes to practice. I made a simple graphic organizer to go along with this where I guided students through making a prediction after hearing the title of each skit, checking the prediction after watching the skit, and coming up with the theme or lesson learned.

Reflection:
Overall, it went much better than I expected for the first time! I saw firsthand how community building and content learning do not have to be separate. I witnessed students navigating how to be fair in selecting roles and working as a team to practice and add dialogue. Never before have I had students report that they were continuing our lesson at recess, but I had a group that was so excited to perform that they spent time at recess practicing together too. I surveyed my students after the lesson to see if they would like to do “Act It Out” again and saw nearly all thumbs up and tons of cheers. From the content standpoint, I feel this was an excellent way to introduce the comprehension skills because they had 6 separate situations to practice predicting and identifying the theme, which is much more than they would have had otherwise.

Changes:
One change I would make is having a little more control of matching students up in each group. Most groups were very successful, but I had one group who was very shy and didn’t have a vocal leader or outgoing personality to help other students come out of their shells. I also had to extend this lesson into two days because the first day modeling took longer than I anticipated. In the future, I would do more modeling with how to add dialogue to give the audience more context.

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Activity: "Who Knew!"
Class: 6th grade computers

Reflection: I did this activity during the first part of my class. I stressed at the beginning that students would need to branch out of their friend groups and talk to other classmates, along with asking multiple questions in order to find questions in common with other students.  Overall, I think the activity went well. I overheard students asking classmates multiple questions to find common items. I was proud of how the students communicated with one another.
Changes:
While giving the instructions, I would remind students that commonalities cannot be repeated. Also, I would remind students that their sheets need to be still while sitting in a circle. While sitting in a circle at the end, I would ask individuals to share some commonalities they didn't know they had with other classmates.