Week 16: CATE 2015 and the Stand-Up Quiz

CATE 2015

Yesterday, I was in San Jose, CA for the 2015 CATE conference. It was a whirlwind of a day, flying up and back in about 12 hours. At the conference, I presented on the PostSecret project that I do with my students. I was a little nervous - more about whether or not all of the technology would work than actually presenting - but it wound up going really well!

Thank you to all those who attended my session. I have been playing around with the PostSecret Universe app today. I came across this video. I don't know why, but when I saw it, I felt the need to share it with you. It exemplifies the connections that are possible and the lives that can be saved through PostSecret and the people of the PostSecret community. If you have any secrets dealing with suicide, you should consider showing this video to your students.

If you didn't attend my session, but you are curious about the project, here is the presentation. If you have questions about how I use the project in my classes or about implementing the project with your students, please just ask. I encourage you to try the project and make it work for you and your students. In fact, here is a secret from the new app with a very interesting idea for a class project...

If you have never attended the annual CATE conference, I encourage you to do so in the future. It is a gathering of English teachers from all across California (and sometimes other states as well) who come together to talk about all the good things they are doing in their classes. For an English teacher, it is one of the few conferences that feeds your soul and makes you excited about returning to the classroom the following Monday. Next year, the conference will be held in Costa Mesa (Orange County), so hopefully a few more of my colleagues from Fallbrook High School will be able to attend; it would be wonderful if we could get a Fallbrook cohort together to attend these conferences regularly. 

Stand-Up Quiz

Okay... so back to what's going on in my classroom... 

At the beginning of this past week, I decided I needed to change my Monday vocabulary routine in ELD 2. Usually, I would give the students their vocabulary worksheet (here's an example) and then go through a presentation in which I gave them the part of speech, definition, synonym, and antonym for each word. Most of the time, I would leave the synonym and antonym portion of the presentation blank and, while presenting, ask the class to think of a synonym and antonym for each word. While this worked, as you can imagine, it did not engage the entire class. I would have one or two students who would shout out words while the others sat and stared blankly at the screen. (This is not an easy activity for students in ELD 2 because of their limited vocabulary.) A couple of times, I tried to make it into a game and had my TA keep track of how many words each student came up with, but I wasn't really satisfied with this approach. I needed to do something, but I also didn't want to completely abandon our routine. 

As I was preparing for class on Sunday evening, I decided I would go through the entire presentation and only give them the part of speech and definition for each word, and then I would have the kids work in groups to come up with the synonym s and antonyms. "Perfect!" I thought. "This will ensure that each kid is actually thinking. But how then what do we do? How do they share out?" I'll admit that I didn't come up with a solution right then; I decided I could just figure it out in class the next day.

In class, I told the students about the change, and they did not protest. I gave them the information I had for them and then had them turn their desks into their groups. I expected to see them all start working immediately, but they just sat there. Even after I told them to get to work, gave them permission to use their phones, and handed some of them dictionaries, most of them still just sat there staring at their vocabulary worksheets. Only one group really started working as I had expected - each student began looking up the words, they discussed different options for synonyms and antonyms, and they made sure each group member had the words they chose; they talked to each other and helped each other just like you would expect any group to do. The other two groups (yes, there were only three groups because I only have thirteen students in the class; ridiculous... I know...) just sat there. After much prodding, one or two students in each of those two groups began looking up words and writing down information, but the students who began working didn't talk to their other group members about what they were doing; they just worked as if I hadn't told them to work in a group at all. 

I walked around. I prodded. I encouraged. I assigned tasks. I thought, "Maybe they just don't know how to work in a group..." But then I realized that I had had them work in groups a million times prior to this, and they had not had any problem doing so. I honestly have no idea what the problem was, but it was painful to watch. Tomorrow, I think I am just going to split up the words, assign a chunk to each student, and then have them share what they come up with at the end to their group; I would prefer that they come up with the synonyms and antonyms together, but... it just did not work for those two groups. If you have any suggestions to get them working together, please, please, please let me know.

Anyway, once they all finally had a synonym and antonym for each word, I wanted them to share out, so we could discuss them, and I could check to make sure they actually understood the vocabulary word. I decided to use the stand-up quiz to do so. This is a strategy that I have only used once or twice in my time as a teacher, but it was a go-to strategy for our former ELD 1 teacher. I always liked the strategy; I just never remembered to use it. Basically, you have the entire class stand up, and then you start asking them questions. When a student correctly answers a question, he/she (or his/her group or row, depending on how you want to structure the quiz and how many questions you have) may sit down. (Since my class is so small, I only let the individual who answered sit down after volunteering to give me a synonym and antonym for a word.) You keep asking questions until everyone is sitting down. 

Even though the group work did not go well, this went beautifully! The strategy was exactly what I was looking for. All of the students were actively engaged; they were raising their hands to give me words; they were checking their papers to make sure the words they had were correct. So, while I still need to re-think how I get my students to work in groups on this assignment, I am definitely going to make the stand-up quiz a staple in our vocabulary routine. (And I will probably try to start incorporating it into my English 11 classes, as well.)
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Ease of use: The stand-up quiz is on of the easiest formative assessments to include in your instruction. You can prepare questions in advance, or you can just come up with them on the spot. You don't need any extra space in your classroom, like you do for an activity like "lines of communication" or "inside-outside circles", since the students can just stand at their desks. Easy, easy, easy. You just have to remember to do it...
Would I use this again: Yep. As I said, I am going to start doing this on a weekly basis. (I may even do it more often than that.)
Downsides: You need to have something that holds the students accountable once they are sitting down. If you do an impromptu stand-up quiz, you should tell the students to write down the questions and answers (or something along those lines), so they don't tune out once they are sitting down.
Applications: You can pretty much do this with any topic in any subject area. I did this with synonyms and antonyms for vocabulary, but you can do it with anything you want. You can do it with questions from all levels of Bloom's taxonomy. You can do it with math questions. You can do it in P.E. You can ask questions, or you can ask the students to demonstrate some skill. It is one of those wonderful strategies that is applicable almost anywhere. 

Week 12: Some Technological Mishaps with Google Forms and Peardeck

So far with this blog, I've mostly written about things that have gone well, but now I think it is time to share some of the things that have caused me and my students problems, especially since I ran into a couple of them this past week.

Mistakes with Google Forms

As you know, I am pretty much in love with Google Forms because you can just do so much with it! However, as I am only human, our relationship has not been without some road bumps. At the end of last week, I had my students complete a form telling me who they wanted to work with for our new independent reading program. I had linked the form to the end of another form, and I made sure that I copied the correct link for each period since I had made the mistake of copying the wrong link in the past. When my students completed both forms in class on Friday, they were able to do so without any problems. After class, I patted myself on the back for not making any stupid mistakes with the forms.

And then, that afternoon, I opened up the students' responses to try to put them in groups...

That's when I realized my rather glaring mistake - in the original version of the form, I had the students tell me who they wanted to work with, but I forgot to include a box for them to write their names and check the box to have the form automatically collect their username. If I had done at least one of these two things, then I would've been okay, but as it was, I could see the students' answers for who they wanted to work with, but I had no idea who wrote down whose name. So much for being able to put them in groups over the weekend. 

"Not a problem," I thought. "I will just fix the form and have them fill it out again." So that's just what I did. I put the link back up on Google Classroom, and since I had to be out on Tuesday and Wednesday because I had to have a minor surgery on Tuesday morning, I emailed my substitute instructions on what I needed the kids to do. I made it clear that I wanted them to get this done in class, because I wanted to look at the form on Wednesday afternoon, so I would have the groups ready to go when I came back to school on Thursday. 

And then, that afternoon, I opened up the students' responses to try to put them in groups...

And this time it was even worse than before! The spreadsheet with the responses was blank! The kids hadn't completed the form. I was confused. I went back to Google Classroom to double-check I had in fact posted the link, and I discovered, of course, that I had posted the link to the first "Independent Reading" form instead of the second "Partners" form. Sigh... But then I realized that that shouldn't have mattered, because if the students had filled out the first form, they would have been given the link to the second form. I couldn't figure it out. I decided I would just try it a third time when I was back on Thursday.

On Thursday, I made double-triple-checked that I posted the correct link. I had the students in first period complete the form. Then second period rolled around, and I had those kids fill out the form as well. Since there were some issues with Google Drive and logging into the Chromebooks during second period, I decided to check the responses to make sure that everything was working.

I opened up the spreadsheet with the responses, and it was still blank! Or so I thought... At first, I was extremely confused. Google Forms had never failed me like this before. What was going on? How could this be happening when I needed it most? (Okay... in all honesty, I could have given the kids pieces of paper to write names down on, but I had to figure this out and make it work! I'd already invested too much time into this relationship to just throw in the towel when things got tough...) 

And then I happened to scroll down... and there they were! All of my students' responses - not just from Thursday, but from Wednesday as well! I realized that I had deleted the contents of the earlier rows when I forgot to have the students include their names; however, I didn't delete the rows themselves. Therefore, when my students filled in the form again on Wednesday, Google (correctly) recognized that this was the 30-something-ith person to fill out the form, and therefore, put their response in the corresponding row. Did I admit this to my students! No. I just told them it was working now. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. 

Moral of the story: make sure you always copy and paste the correct link for the form you want to send, and make sure that, if you need to delete information from the responses, that you delete the actual rows themselves instead of just the contents of the cells. 

Waste of Time with Peardeck

When I first tried Peardeck way back in Week 1 of this blog, I loved everything about it - the fact that it could take over students' screens, so they could follow along with a presentation; the fact that it was like an interactive Google Slides; the fact that I could use it to ask questions on the spot. And when I first used it with my students, they thought it was just as cool as I did. Honestly, though, I hadn't used it since, so I decided it was time to try it out again. 

As I mentioned, I was out this week until Thursday, so, once again, I was unable to make any copies. (I know... I don't know what it is with me and my inability to plan enough ahead to get my copies made...) We are just starting a new unit on The Awakening. In the past, I have just made the kids take notes on some background information on Kate Chopin and the novel before launching into the text itself. As you can imagine, this method is not the best for "hooking" the students into the text before we start reading. I knew I needed to do something differently this time, but, since I hadn't been able to plan it out in advance and make any copies, my options were somewhat limited. 

I decided to make an anticipation guide. (If you are unfamiliar with what an anticipation guide is, you can find some pretty good explanations here and here.) Usually, when I do an anticipation guide, I like to pair it with the activity "Take Sides," in which I actually have the students get up and move to one side of the classroom or the other depending on their stance on the statements on the guide. This time, I decided to use Peardeck to present the statements and have the students do a virtual "Take Sides" through the use of Peardeck's "Ask a Quick Question" capability. 

In creating the Peardeck, I looked up quotes on gender roles and chose ten that I liked. I put one quote on each slide. That was it, since the rest would be done "in the moment" with my classes. 

In first period, I began as I had planned. I had each student get a Chromebook and join the Peardeck presentation. I pulled up the first quote by Oscar Wilde: “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.” I read the quote out loud to the students, clicked on "Ask a Quick Question," and selected "Agree / Disagree." 

On the students screens, they were asked to drag a dot to one side of the screen if they agreed and to the other side of the screen if they disagreed. Then, I pulled up the students' responses. They quickly realized that we could see their dots move on the projector, so they had some fun moving their dots around before I locked their responses. The problem was that everybody's dot was just that - a dot; they were completely anonymous, and it was difficult to tell exactly how many were on each side. I called on a few people to share how they felt about the quote, but the majority of the class stayed quiet and hid in the anonymity of the dots up on the screen. In the remaining 10 minutes of class, we only got through half of the quotes. 

When second period rolled around, I knew I didn't want to do the activity the same way I had done it with first period. For the sake of time, I just had the students log in (since they were already on the Chromebooks anyway), and I clicked through the quotes and had them write down whether they agreed or disagreed. We did not discuss any of them, because I told the students we would do that the next day. We got through all ten quotes, and the kids had time to put their Chromebooks away before the bell rang. 

On Friday, I decided to finish up the quotes with first period the same way I had started with second period. Instead of having the students get their Chromebooks to follow along with the presentation, I just clicked through and had them write down whether they agreed or disagreed. Then, I went back to my old method of "Take Sides." I went to quote #5 where we had left off, and I asked the students to get up and move to the left side of the classroom if they agreed and the right side of the classroom if they disagreed. Then, we talked. This worked a million times better than using Peardeck for the same activity because we could actually see which students agreed and disagreed, which facilitated more of a discussion, because we didn't just have the same kids sharing their opinions on each quote. Plus, it got the students up and moving around, which is always a good thing. I did the activity the same way with second period, and it went extremely well. After the kids sat down, I asked them why they thought I had them do the activity, and they eventually came up with, "Because that's what the book's going to be about." Yep. They got it, and they were already engaged with the content. 

Courtesy of goodreads, the quotes I chose to use for the anticipation guide were:

1. “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.” ― Oscar Wilde
2. “We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” ― Gloria Steinem
3. “A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.” ― Charles Dickens
4. “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” ― Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume
5. “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
6. “When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.” ― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
7. “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.” ― Madonna
8. “A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.” ― Shashi Deshpande
9. “A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her posocial sense, you are damaging it-and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.” ― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us
10. “Playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. Noone can be any one thing all the time.” ― Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

Moral of the story: Sometimes, the old way is the best way. The activity took way longer than I wanted it to when I tried to do it through Peardeck, and, to top it off, it didn't engage the students. I could see using Peardeck for an activity like this if you teach an online class; in that scenario, it would work really well. However, in a face-to-face class, I much prefer the traditional "Take Sides" activity because it gets the kids up, out of their seats, and situates them in the classroom in a way which facilitates discussion and debate.