End of Year Reflection

We have actually been out of school for a week now, but as soon as I turned in grades and finished cleaning my room, I immediately headed up to Santa Barbara for a bachelorette party and a mini-vacation. Now home, I finally have some time to write a post to wrap up this school year and reflect on some of the tools I have tried this year. Here goes...

Top 5 (in no particular order)

1. Google Forms (1, 2, 3) - I love Forms. 
2. Focusing on "difficulties" while reading - I love this method because it really allowed me to remove the scaffolds I had been using all year with my students. I plan on introducing this earlier on next year, because it really helps to create a student-driven and student-centered classroom. 
3. Socratic Seminar - I know... it's kind of funny that I avoided this for so long, but I really enjoyed it. More importantly, my students really enjoyed it. On my end-of-year evaluations, one student wrote that I should do more activities that force the entire class to interact together (as opposed to just working in small groups); I think this is a perfect activity for doing just that. 
4. Doctopus and Goobric - Oh my goodness, the amount of time Doctopus and Goobric saved me in grading essays this semester! I can't even begin to express my love. 
5. Google Classroom - This one doesn't excite me that much, but since it is so easy to use AND it allows me to easily use Doctopus and Goobric, it is in my Top 5. 

Definitely Using/Trying Again

• TextHelp Study Skills
• Group Thesis Writing on Mini-Whiteboards
• Allowing students to choose their method of "active reading" - I like this a lot. However, I will not rely as heavily on it next year because I will move more quickly into focusing on "difficulties." BUT I think I will give students choice in marking/noting their individual difficulties, which is why I kept this in this particular list.
• In-class 1-page summaries to hold students accountable for their reading
• SparkNotes Reading Quiz
• Problem and Solution Projects
• Attending and maybe even presenting at the CATE Conference - We have all been through professional development that is not at all applicable to our classrooms. The beauty about CATE is that it is comprised of English teachers talking about the best things they are doing in their classrooms, so I was able to apply what I learned at CATE to my teaching almost immediately. Also, I think I eventually want to go into teacher training, so making sure I keep up my resume by presenting at these types of things is in my best interest. 
• Stand-Up Quiz
• Cognitive Strategy Snowballs
• The UCI Highlighter - Helping students SEE just how much they were relying on summarizing in their writing was a game-changer. I will use this with almost every writing assignment next year.
• Refocus Form
• Teaching students how to apologize
• The 20% Project
• TED Talks as a form of presentation

On the Fence

• Peardeck - I liked this a lot when I first used it, but then the second time, it didn't go as well. I think you just need to really know what you are doing and be sure that this is the best method of presentation to match your purpose. Also, this isn't something I would do all the time anyway, because part of its appeal to students is its novelty. 
• Newsela - Newsela has partnered with some big names in news, such as the Washington Post, which I like. I just have to figure out a better way to use this and present it to my students. 
• The rhetorical précis - I need to be honest: I absolutely hate the rhetorical précis as it has been stuffed down the throats of both high school educators and students. I hate it. I do. I am not against the real rhetorical précis as it has been used in higher ed institutions, and I understand that, in some disciplines, students are expected to frequently write them. For example, when my husband was in a Master's program at CSUSM in History, he had to write them weekly. However, what he wrote (and always earned A's on) never looked anything like the 4-sentence ridiculousness we feed to high school students. Now... since I undoubtedly will have to teach the précis in the future, I will use the method I used with my ELD 2 students. But I will still hate it. 
• Independent Reading Program - Don't throw virtual tomatoes at me. I like having an independent reading program. I just need to figure out how to better implement next year. That's all. That's why I'm on the fence. 
• Sentence Wall - I kept this up for a few weeks and then slowly started forgetting to highlight student sentences. I like this. I just need to make sure that, if I use it again, I implement it with fidelity from the beginning of the year.
• Fiction Jigsaw - Eh. I like this when in a bind, but I would much rather have students read the entire text.  
• Virtual Question Box - Only 2 students made use of this. I can't decide if I want to bother next year or not. It's not really hurting me to do it, but... I don't know... I need to decide.

Won't Bother

• Google Docs Websites - These were extremely easy. However, I mostly teach 11th grade, and my students are fairly proficient with other forms of technology. Next year, instead of allowing them to use Google Docs, I am going to force them to use something a little more complicated like Blogger or Tumblr. 
• Teacherspayteachers.com - Don't get me wrong. The lesson I got off of teacherspayteachers was awesome. My problem is that I don't really have time to peruse the website to find other resources I may want to use. They frequently send me emails about 10 free downloads, but I haven't taken advantage of any of them. I think it can be helpful, but... like I said, I won't bother using the site in the future. 
• Turnitin - This was the BIGGEST disappointment of the year! I had been rooting for my school to get Turnitin because I really wanted something that would catch plagiarism for me and save me time in Googling suspicious sentences. Unfortunately, it didn't catch everything (or even close to everything), and I still had to spend my time researching on my own. I had my online class use it throughout the semester, but I didn't bother having my English 11 classes use it after the initial assignment. 

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Next year, I will be at Fallbrook High School again. I plan to continue this blog, but I may introduce some changes. For now, I will be on a summer hiatus. I will see you back here in a couple of months. -Annie :)

Week 27: Using Feedback Immediately, Thanks to Google Forms

Well, I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I love Google Forms. Recently, I introduced Forms to my student teacher, and she called me a nerd after I sent an email her stating, "Remind me on Monday to show you the coolest thing about Google Forms." Here it is...

Immediate feedback!!!! 

Okay. Okay. I know you already know that you can get immediate feedback using Google Forms, but how often do you really take advantage of that fact? I've created forms that give students immediate feedback, and I've used Forms to help inform my instruction; however, this week, I managed to use the feedback I got through Forms to direct my instruction within the same class period.

When I was planning for ELD 2 this week, I decided that it was time to give my students a review list for their vocabulary because: 1) we have already gotten through all of the words on Averil Coxhead's Academic Word List; 2) it had been a while since their last review list; and 3) we weren't really doing anything new this week in terms of readings for me to pull vocabulary from. So, I sat down, started looking over the words from the last few lists, and tried to figure out what words my students needed extra help with. Then I realized, "This is stupid. Why am I trying to figure out what they need help with? Why don't I let them tell me what they need help with?" Enter Forms. :)

I created a simple form that included the words from the last 5 vocabulary lists. Each question was multiple choice, and the options were:

• I feel confident about this word.
• I know this word, but I feel like I could have a stronger understanding of this word.
• I do not feel confident about this word. 

Here is the finished product. 

At the start of class on Monday, I had my students log into Classroom and complete the form. It took them about 7-10 minutes to get through the 100 words listed. Then, as my paraprofessional led them through an activity on how to pronounce words in past tense, I checked out the results. 

As you know, Forms will automatically create a spreadsheet for you with all of the results. While this was helpful for this activity, it wasn't what I needed. What I needed - and what was extremely useful - was the summary of responses, which includes graphs of the responses. (To access this, in your results, you go to "Form" and then click on "Show summary of responses.") The summary gave me this:

With this, I was able to quickly scroll through all of the responses to see which words I should include in our review. For example, I could immediately see that I didn't need to include the word "investigate" (a word I probably would have included if I had not done this activity) because all of the students indicated that they already had a strong understanding of this word; whereas I should include the word "contrast" (a word I may not have included if I had not done this activity) because my students felt they needed more practice with it.

Using this method, I easily determined the 20 words for this week's list based on my students' needs.
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Ease of use: Creating the Form and using it in class were extremely easy and only took a few minutes each. You do need to have something to occupy the students if you want to be able to look over the form and pull the words (or whatever other information you are looking for) immediately, within the same class period. However, you could also do this from one day to the next.
Would I use this again: Yes, but I think I would have to be careful about it. If I did this on a regular basis, my students would wise up and tell me they didn't feel confident about the words they thought were the easiest. (I'm not being cynical; they actually said that after they did that activity and found out what I was doing with the information.)
Downsides: See above.
Applications: You could use this with any material you have covered. You could even use this before you teach the information to see what your students already know.
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