Week 2: TextHelp Study Skills (Google Add-on), Group Thesis Writing on Mini-Whiteboards, and Re-Teaching Plagiarism

Texthelp Study Skills (Google Add-on)

Texthelp Study Skills is a Google add-on that is basically a fancy highlighting tool. The thing that makes it really is that, after you are done highlighting a document, you can click "Collect highlights", which then creates a new document with just your highlighted material. When I showed this feature to my students, a collective "Whoa..." swept the room, and some students even applauded me. 

In order to install it, all you need to do is open up a Google Doc, click "Add-ons", select "Get add-ons...", search for "Texthelp Study Skills", and then click the "+Free" button to install. You can only use it in Google Docs, so your students will need a Google account in order to take advantage of it. (If your school doesn't provide GAFE accounts for your students, I highly recommend you have them create gmail accounts. This way they can create a professional email address (so you don't have to worry about getting emails from addresses such as "whataredrugs420"), and they can have access to all of Google Drive.)

When using this add-on in class, I had to play around with my directions and what I wanted my students to do in order to make the most out of the highlighting tools. First, I chose an article I wanted them to read and pasted it into a Google Doc. Then, I came up with instructions that would walk them through using the highlighting tool and highlighting their document. I decided to highlight some of the information in the directions because then, when students collected their highlights, the highlights would be organized underneath each specific direction. Here is what I shared with my students, here is an example of a highlighted copy, and here is the collected highlights document generated from the highlighted copy.

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Ease of use: As I mentioned, the directions took some figuring out on my part. However, in terms of students actually using it, they got it after I showed it to them once.
Would I use this again: Yes, especially because I really like that I don't have to make a million copies of the different articles I want my students to read. I actually had students read 2 different assigned articles using this method. Then, I had them search for another article to read using the same method. (Here is the assignment for when I had them find their own article.)
Downsides: Everything is digital, so for students who prefer reading on paper versus a computer screen, this isn't a good tool. For this reason, I wouldn't recommend it for texts longer than a couple of pages.
Applications: Active reading for any short text (informational texts, short stories, poems, etc.)

Group Thesis Writing on Mini-Whiteboards

Using mini-whiteboards in class (especially in my class) is definitely not a new concept, nor is group-writing; however, group-writing ON mini-whiteboards ... Man! Why didn't I think of this sooner???

Usually, when I have my students group-write, I give them a big piece of butcher paper, I make each student use a different color, and I tell the students that I want to see each color equally in the final product. The problem? They are writing in markers on butcher paper, which doesn't really promote revision, because despite what I tell them about writing in pencil first, they never do, which means when they make a mistake, they need to cross it out with marker, which makes the poster look bad, so then they ask for a new piece of butcher paper and have to start all over again. 

With whiteboards, when students make a mistake, they just erase it and start over. Writing on a whiteboard feels less like a project, so students are more willing to write things down and take chances than they are when they are writing in marker on butcher paper. 

But the best part? I was walking around from group to group the entire time, telling them they needed to revise, asking them what they thought was wrong with their current thesis, and giving them suggestions for how to improve their next draft; I didn't give them directions for the next step until they had a stellar thesis. When they work with the butcher paper, it is as much of a hassle for me when they have to start over as it is for them, so I when I check their work, I don't make them revise it if it is decent. I usually collect the posters, read through them that day, and then give them fresh paper the next day to fix their mistakes. With this process, kids go through 2-3 revisions over the span of a couple of days and still usually come away with less than an A+ product. However, with the whiteboards, each group went through 4+ revisions in the span of one class period and walked away having written an A+ thesis. 

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Ease of use: This is extremely easy to implement in the classroom. I literally just passed out whiteboards and markers, told the students I wanted them to write a thesis on the assigned topic, and then they worked for the entire period while I walked around helping them. It took absolutely no prep time other than the 5 minutes that I spent what I was going to do in class that day. (I don't usually recommend only planning for 5 minutes, but in this case, it worked out.)
Would I use this again: Yes! Now I just need bigger whiteboards, so they can write entire body paragraphs on them...
Downsides: In theory, if you don't have mini-whiteboards, that would be a downside. However, you can just put a blank piece of paper in a page protector, and it works almost just as well as a whiteboard. I got all of my whiteboards for $1 each at Big Lots; you just have to be on the lookout for deals like that, and you need to buy at least 10 of them when you come across those deals. Other than that, there are no downsides.
Applications: Writing instruction and revision (plus all the other millions of applications for mini-whiteboards in the classroom)

Re-Teaching Plagiarism

Last week, my students turned in a piece of process-writing, which I graded quickly in order to get back to them this week, so they could write a similar on-demand assignment. (I had a 5-day turnaround on the essays, which is my fastest turnaround time ever.) This was really my students' first big process-writing assignment, and even though we worked on them for an entire week (not to mention all of the prep work we did throughout the unit leading up to the assignment), I had 5 students who plagiarized parts of their assignment. 5 students! I will usually have 1 or 2, at the most, who cheat on this first assignment, but 5??? 

I was shocked, annoyed, frustrated, angry, and a whole slew of other adjectives... not just because so many students had cheated, but because I really drive my policies on cheating and plagiarism home during the first week of school. On the second day of school, I have students complete a worksheet on cheating and plagiarism, which we then discuss as a class and students keep in the front of their notebook, along with their syllabus, for reference throughout the rest of the year. I also have them take this plagiarism test because it does a really good job of explaining what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. On top of all of that, I repeatedly tell the students that I will catch them if they cheat - even if they have never been caught before, I will catch them. 

Usually, when I come across a plagiarized essay, I confront the student, fill out an honor code violation form, and give the student a zero on the assignment, as per school policy. This time, however, I decided to do things a little differently, mainly because none of the essays were 100% plagiarized - they all had plagiarized sentences woven into their own writing. I realized this was a teachable moment, and if I simply proceeded as I usually did, I would lose that moment. 

I confronted each of the students after class, but instead of just telling them the consequences, I told them they had to come in at lunch that day. When they came in, I made them get on a computer. First, I made them look up the definition of "plagiarism" (mainly because one of the boys was really mad and didn't think he had done anything wrong). We talked about the fact that plagiarism is both stealing someone else's words and stealing someone else's ideas. Then, I had them highlight all of the portions of their essays that were plagiarized. I explained to them how to include citations in order to avoid plagiarism, and I told them I wanted them to revise their essays and turn them back into me by the end of the week. Also, I decided to give them partial credit on the assignment, as opposed to a zero. A zero would have brought them all down to ~40% in the class, which then would've caused them to give up completely for the rest of the semester. By giving them partial credit, they are all still passing; this way I ensure they don't lose hope, and I also (hopefully) ensure they never plagiarize again.

Week 1: Peardeck, Google Docs Websites, Peer Reviews with Google Forms, Newsela, and Going "Sarcasm-Free"

This week, I am pleased to report that I actually tried out quite a few "new things" in my classroom!

Peardeck

On Monday, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a follow-up session to the Google Summit in Coronado on October 4th and 5th. During the session on Monday, one of the other teachers presented on peardeck, a Google App that allows you to present directly to your students' screens and easily facilitates in-the-moment formative assessments. (For a brief tutorial on how to use peardeck in your classroom, check out this video.)

Due to the fact that I was in the meeting all day, I didn't have a chance to submit the copies I needed for Tuesday before the deadline. Normally, I would have resigned myself to either changing my lesson plan or sneaking down to the copy room to make the copies myself; however, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity for me to try out peardeck! Luckily, I had reserved the Chromebooks all week because my students were working on argumentative essays in relation to The Crucible, so I didn't have to worry about not having a device for each student.

I made a short 4-slide peardeck that allowed me to walk my students through the rubric for this assignment. (We'd already gone over the criteria with other activities throughout the writing process, but I wanted to emphasize that, for this particular essay, I was going to focus my grading on only 4 of the 10 criteria because I wanted to use this essay to make sure they understood including the opposing viewpoint and addressing the opposing viewpoint with a counterargument.) For the purpose of the activity, peardeck was extremely helpful. I was able to easily present the information I needed to, while keeping the students involved and engaged. More importantly, I was able to use a formative assessment to see whether or not my students understood which criteria they would be graded on, and the best part was that I could IMMEDIATELY address any misconceptions my students had! It was awesome! In the words of my 2nd period TA: "This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time."
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Ease of use: I'm pretty sure my 90-year-old grandmother could make a peardeck (if I showed her how, of course).
Would I use this again: Absolutely!!!
Downsides: I don't think that access to technology is an issue, because kids can access peardeck on their phones. If not every student in the class has a smartphone, that is actually better because it then forces them to group up and collaborate! Win, win! The only downside I can see (and this almost happened to me) is that in the even either the WiFi goes down or their is some kind of glitch with Google Drive, you won't be able to use it. However, this is the case with most technology, so I don't really see it as a deterrent.
Applications: Any formative assessment ever.

Google Docs Websites

With the project I mentioned above, in the past, I had my students create physical newspapers, and I even gave them extra credit if they made them look old. (You know, because the kids always have a lot of fun burning the papers and dying them with coffee, and I always enjoy having my classroom smell like burnt coffee for a few days after the projects are due.) This year, I decided to give them the option of turning the newspaper into a website, because at the Google Summit, I learned how extremely easy it is to turn a Google Doc into a website. 

Okay. I guess I shouldn't say I "learned" it at the Google Summit, because I was always aware that that was a possibility, but I had never really thought through what I would use that feature in Google Docs for. But now, I was thinking about it, and I realized that since I was forcing my students to type their essays in Google Docs and peer edit them in Google Docs, then I might as well also give them the option of publishing them in Google Docs instead of forcing them to print them out, cut them up, and glue them together into a newspaper. 

When I presented the project to the students, I mentioned to them that they would have either option and that I would show them how to create the website later on. Well, that day wound up being this past Wednesday. After I walked my students in 1st period through the process of creating the website (i.e., opening Google Docs, clicking on "File", and then clicking on "Publish to the web...", all 5 groups in the class decided to go that route instead of creating the traditional paper copy. 3 out of 5 groups in 2nd period created websites as well. 

Here is a student sample. You will notice that the formatting isn't great (nor is some of the writing), but considering this is the first time they put together a website, and they did so in 1 day, I don't think it's too bad.

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Ease of use: My 90-year-old grandmother could definitely do this, and I don't think I'd even have to walk her through it. (I would just have to write down step-by-step directions for her.) 

Would I use this again: Heck yes!

Downsides: A student in 1 of the 2 groups that created the actual newspaper was worried about organizing her group and getting all of the pieces together to glue into the newspaper. I told her she could just do the website, but she told me, "But that's too easy!" So, I guess it's not great for the really kinesthetic people who need to make things with their hands. 

Applications: Student or staff websites. Actually, this is a great place to start for teachers who want to make a website but have no idea how, because, for this, if you can create a decent looking Word document, you can create a website; it may be extremely basic in appearance, but it will be a website, nonetheless.

Peer Reviews with Google Forms

On Thursday, I had my students peer review each others' newspapers. In the past, I've done similar activities through surveymonkey, but since I never want to have to pay for anything I don't absolutely need, I am stuck with a limited version of surveymonkey which only allows me to make surveys of up to 10 questions and doesn't allow me to download a spreadsheet of the responses. With Google Forms, I can make forms with as many questions as I want, and, what's more, the information is saved in a spreadsheet right in my drive! How cool is that???

Now, I have made and used forms before, so that wasn't new to me. The thing that was new was that I made 3 forms - one to review the a group's newspaper, one to review a specific article in that newspaper, and one to vote on the best newspaper in the class - and (now here's the kicker) I linked them so that students would finish one form and immediately be directed to the next one! (Okay. I'm reading what I just wrote, and I can see how that doesn't really seem that cool... just trust me - it's really cool.) Basically, you can customize the end message that students get after they submit the form, so you can use that message to give them instructions on what to do next.

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Ease of use: I don't think my grandmother could do this. You have to be somewhat proficient at creating forms to do something like this. However, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials out there on creating forms, like this and this. There is definitely a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it's a piece of cake (specifically, 7-layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting). 

Would I use this again: Yes. The beauty of Google Forms (and anything Google, for that matter), is that once it's made - once you've struggled through it one time - you can click "File" + "Make a copy...", and you automatically have a new form that is exactly the same as the amazing form you just made. If you don't want to get too crazy with forms, you can make some general form that you can use on a regular basis, like this, and then you never have to make another form for all eternity, or you can go crazy with forms and tailor them to your every need. (I think I am falling in love with forms...)

Downsides: I will be honest: I ran into 2 problems when I did this with my class. The first (which I'm sure many of you can already guess) was that I had some students submit the first form and then close the tab without reading the message directing them to the next form. Then, I had to individually send students the links to the other forms because they didn't read the instructions. (Sigh... there's always a few in every class, aren't there?) The second problem was that, half-way through 1st period, I decided I wanted to make separate forms for 2nd period because then I would have a separate set of spreadsheets with the results from each class. Since I was rushing to copy and re-link the forms during the passing period, I, of course, messed up the links, and the forms for 2nd period wound up being out of order. The first few students who worked through the form on reviewing the newspaper were taken directly to the form to vote on the best newspaper; at the end of that form, they received the message, "Congratulations! You are done! :)"; thus, they thought they were done, even though they had not yet reviewed the a specific article. (I guess I just should have been happy that they were reading the directions, unlike the students in 1st period.) To solve this problem, I turned to tinyurl, created bite-size versions of the original URL's, and just wrote them on the board and posted them on our class page on Edmodo. Like I said above, I would use this again; I think the process will get smoother as both I and my students get more comfortable with it.

Applications: Forms seems most valuable as an assessment tool - whether you are using it to assess your students or you are using it to have your students assess each other or even you. If you get really crazy with forms, you can create quizzes that will take students to different questions, depending upon their answer to a question (kind of like a "build your own adventure" novel). This seems a little complicated for me right now, but I may try it out in the future.

Newsela

Newsela is a website that presents current events in a range of lexiles. Basically, you can choose an article, and then you can adjust the lexile depending upon your (or your students') reading level. Since I have my ELD 2 class complete current events on a weekly basis, I decided to create accounts for them with Newsela. 

I thought that my students would be really excited when I showed them the site, because they often have trouble finding articles that they can understand; however, the truth is that they didn't really understand what Newsela was or what I was showing them. They just thought it was another site that they could use to find articles for their current events. After re-teaching and walking them through adjusting the lexile of an article, I saw a few light bulbs turn on. However, we will see if, in the long-run, the students actually make use of the site. 

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Ease of use: For a teacher, it is extremely easy because you just have to create an account, and then you can access all of the articles. Getting the students logged in, however, is a little more difficult because you have to create the class and then give them a code. Once you're in, it is really easy to find interesting articles and adjust the reading level.

Would I use it again: Yes. I am going to continue to encourage my ELD students to use it. 

Disadvantages: In my experience, anything that requires students to create an account and log in is immediately at a disadvantage because it means the students actually have to remember their usernames and passwords. Fortunately, it is easy to reset student passwords, but still... I don't really see why you have to make an account in the first place...

Applications: Current events (obviously). You can also use it to assign students specific articles. Some of the articles have quizzes for students to take when they are done reading, so that's pretty cool.

Going "Sarcasm-Free"

Let me start by saying that this will be an ongoing effort on my part. It went pretty well this week. I did speak to the student I originally offended; he actually approached me the next day in class and apologized for taking my comment so seriously. He said he actually appreciates my sarcasm, but he was just having a bad day. Nevertheless, I am going to stick to my word and continue on with this effort. 

I will admit that I did tell a student his hat looked stupid. I wasn't sarcastic; I was completely honest. I felt as if it was my responsibility to tell this student that he looked absolutely ridiculous, because he thought he looked really cool. (The problem was that he has a mohawk, and he put his hat on on top of his mohawk... so his hat was sticking up a good 4 inches from the top of his head...) When he asked some of the girls in class what they thought, they admitted that it looked stupid. Therefore, I don't really see this as being "mean" to a student, since I was really just helping him out. 

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Ease of use: It is actually really difficult for me to not be sarcastic. One of my students asked me why I always look so stressed out. I asked him if I look stressed out when he is asking me a lot of questions, and he said yes. I really had to bite my tongue because this is a student who always asks A LOT of questions - most of which he could probably figure out for himself if he just tried. I had to refrain from making some sarcastic response, and, instead, I was as honest as I could be with him, without insulting him. I told him something along the lines of, "There are a lot of very needy students in this class, and sometimes it is difficult to answer the same question multiple times. But it's okay, because I'm glad that you are all asking questions."

Would I use this again: Yes. 

Downsides: None, actually. Yes. I am not as funny anymore, but isn't that worth it, if I'm not insulting my students? I think so. And I still think I'm pretty funny. 

Applications: Life. I had already removed sarcasm from my personal relationships outside of the classroom. Now, I think I just need to work on taking it out of my interactions with my colleagues...

So It Begins...

As a teacher, I make a lot of mistakes. I make little mistakes that nobody notices. I make big mistakes that I have to flounder through and play off. When I make these mistakes in front of my students, I try to admit to them, in order to model that it is ok to mess up, that is is impossible to do everything right all the time, and that the important thing is to learn from those mistakes and move on. 

Yesterday, I made a big mistake. I insulted a student. And it wasn’t just a sly, underhanded remark that nobody heard; it was a witty interjection that half (if not more) of the class caught and chuckled at. 

My students in English 11 have been working on writing editorials and letters to the editor, with partners. The idea is for them to work on incorporating the opposing viewpoint and addressing the opposing viewpoint with a counterargument in order to strengthen their overall argument. They are all working on Google Docs, and in class on Monday, I had them share their essays with me, so I would be able to monitor their progress.

When I went through the essays on Monday night, I was not surprised by the fact that many of the students had little to nothing done, despite the fact that they had had the entire class period to work that day (not to mention time on Friday and over the weekend). One of the students with very little done was Burt*, who I also have in my zero period online English class because he is making up English 9. Burt is an extremely bright student with a passion for drama, but, when it comes to actually getting his work done in class, Burt has a lot of room for improvement. I’ve spoken to him in the past about this, and I always get the same story - “You don’t need to worry about me, Ms. Lewis. I’ll get it done.” And then I wait. And wait. And wait.

In class on Wednesday, the students were sharing their essays with their partners via Google Docs. They were each on ChromeBooks, and they were supposed to be reading their partner’s essay and commenting on it. As I was looking over another student’s work, I heard a girl say, “Burt, where are you going?” in reference to where he was navigating on his screen. Before I even had time to think and stop myself, “Nowhere” slipped out of my mouth. I had just said Burt was going nowhere, and I had said it out loud, and a lot of students heard me and laughed. 

I registered what I said, but, as Burt is usually game for such banter, I didn’t feel too guilty about it. I also didn’t apologize right away, which was an even bigger mistake than saying it in the first place. I had just modeled to my students that it was okay to bully Burt in my classroom. Big mistake. 

At the end of the period, when I was back at my desk, I saw that Burt had replied to a comment I’d left on his essay the night before. The comment read, “The comment you made actually really hurt.” BIG MISTAKE.

I looked up in time to see Burt slipping out the door, with a dejected look on his face. The usually confident young man had turned into a sullen teenager because of something I had said! Me! The teacher who vowed to never say anything mean to her students! What had I done? 

When I got home after school, I stumbled across a phenomenal blog written by Grant Wiggins about a veteran teacher who shadowed 2 students for 2 days. One of the takeaways from the experience was that, if the teacher could go back in time, she would have made her classroom a sarcasm-free zone. I read this and immediately knew what I had to do. I emailed Burt an apology explaining my comment and why I was worried about him; I also told him that I would attempt to no longer say anything mean to or about my students, and I wanted him to hold me accountable to that. 

So, this is one of my new things for this week. 

I’ve started this blog as an experiment. Every week, I am going to try to do at least one new thing in the classroom. Not something that nobody has ever done before - that would be ridiculous - but something new for me and my students. Sometimes, I will focus on strategies; other times, I will focus on technology; other times, I will focus on more personal goals.

At the end of each week, I will blog about how my new thing went for that week - what went well, what went horribly, what I can improve upon, what I will do differently next time, etc. I am hoping that I will be able to keep my teaching dynamic and engaging, but I am also hoping that you will be able to learn something from this as well. Since I will be trying out all kinds of different things and telling you what works and doesn’t work, I hope that you will be able to use my experiences to help guide the decisions you make in your own classrooms. 

I would also like this blog to serve as a dialogue between educators around the country (and possibly the world). If you have questions for me, please ask! If there is something you aren’t sure about, but you’d like me to try, let me know. I will do my best to incorporate your suggestions into my teaching (within reason, of course - I am an English and English Language Development teacher, so I won’t take off-the-wall suggestions that aren’t applicable to my subject area).

*student's name changed for privacy