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Teachers Who Design

Classroom
Projects. Decor. Design.

The Dreaded Make-Up Work

8/31/2016

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Make-Up Work
One of the little idiosyncrasies of teaching that you might not really think about until you’re in the thick of it...make-up work! How do I distribute it? How do I keep up with it? What is the best, easiest way to do this? I’ve been teaching for almost 9 years, and I feel like I’m JUST starting to get a system that works. It’s been a beast.

Since I teach middle school students, I have the ability to put most of the responsibility on my students, but I have little ways of reminding and helping them out.

Mr. T Make-Up Work Crate
Here’s my Mr. T Make-Up Work Crate. Sure, I could have just called it the Make-Up Work Crate, but where’s the fun in that? I teach middle school, people. And, I also like to make it fun for myself. “Go see Mr. T for your make-up work! You better make sure you do it; you don’t want to make him mad.” Do these students know who Mr. T. is? Maybe not at first, but they do now. #boompopcultureeducation

How it works
In the crate, I have 31 file folders labeled with numbered tabs. Each represents a day of the month. If a student is absent, they go check the date(s) on which they were absent. Inside the numbered folder, they’ll find the assignment, a note, or info on what we did that day. I also make the disclaimer that if nothing is in there, they make sure and double check with me. (Again, the responsibility is on them.) I do have to make sure to place my assignments in the crate, but it actually works pretty well because it keeps junk from building up on my desk. I just put it in the crate. #teacherhack

Safeguard
An additional safeguard I have to kind of help them out is the way I mark absences. Our online attendance system doesn't have a simple way of seeing who was absent the day before, and with 130 students, it's likely I'll forget who was absent. 

So, I kick it old school by putting my seating charts inside clear protective sheets. I still take roll online afterward, but while students are working on their Bellwork assignment, I physically write an A on the seating chart desk of the student who is absent that day with a Vis-a-Vis*.

​*Disclaimer, I do not use an overhead projector, #neverforget , but I do still have these charming markers in my arsenal!


This technique is helpful because the next day, I can see a simple visual reminder of who was absent the day before by viewing the big, fat A on their seating chart. Then, I can just wipe it clean each day and we're good to go.
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Do you have any suggestions?
Again, this is the best system that has worked for me in the last 9 years, but I’d love to hear how you distribute make-up work in your class. I’m always trying to tweak or innovate for the sake of my students, the flow of our classroom, and element of design.
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Film School

8/24/2016

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For the last several years, our 7th grade English Language Arts and Reading classes have been starting the year with a little something different. We call it Film School. Imagine telling students that they’re going to watch a movie the first week of school. You guessed it-- lots of eyes widening and cheering.

Now, you might be thinking, “I can’t show a movie the first week of school! That’s crazy! There’s no merit in that!” Ahhh, but  you’d be wrong.

Why?
Before we dive into novels, poetry, and short stories, mediums that can often be intimidating to unsure readers, we review the literary elements of plot through the medium of film. More importantly, we use film as a kind of framework to allow all of our students to begin on a level playing field. From here on, we’ll always have that one example we’ve all seen and can go back to for reference. It’s a great way to engage, but also empower timid readers. A lot of students will tune out if you start right off the bat with an in-depth story; whereas, starting with a film provides more interest and a kind of safety net for all learners.
The Origin
Several years ago, we used the film school to help introduce literary elements, but over the last few years, we’ve tweaked it after realizing that using it as a review and pre-assessment tool would hopefully be more beneficial. This will be the third year that we’re watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the 1971 original, not the creepy, newer Johnny Depp version). We’ve also had classes use The Princess Bride, and we’re already scheming for a new one next year. (Got any ideas?? I’m thinking Little Giants?) Also, I’ve used a Willy Wonka theme in my classroom for the last five years, so that’s a plus too!

How it Works
Basically, we’ve created a document, a sort of interactive learning guide with purposeful questions and activities that will act as a pre-assessment tool for us. We are going to assume they know terms like protagonist, conflict, and setting, which they should, according to our state skills, and we’ll ask them to apply their current knowledge to the film. Instead of reading something or asking them to define those literary terms, like we normally might at the beginning of the year (#snoozefest), we’ll create more in depth questions like:

- After struggling with his problems, what epiphany does Charlie have about himself or the situation?  
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How do Charlie’s choices affect the resolution?
- What is the setting of the film and how do you know?
- What examples can you give of these kinds of conflict? (Label each as either external conflict or internal conflict)
Character vs. Character:
Character vs. Self:
Character vs. Society:
- What is the mood/tone during the Wonkatania scene?  How do these elements contribute to the mood/tone? (Music?  Lighting?  Character’s actions?  Character’s words?)
The Benefits
After the film, we’ll see what they know and move on from there. It’s a great way to provide a non-threatening, non-traditional pre-assessment. Now, we’ll all have seen the same movie, and we can continue using it as an example as we learn our new terminology and concepts throughout the year. For example, maybe we start learning about characterization in a few weeks. All I have to do is ask them to think back to the film...HELLO, Veruca Salt! A great example to use when studying indirect characterization. 

I highly recommend it! Maybe you can use a film school at some point this year, or maybe you have an innovative tool that you use. We’d love to hear from you!


Megan
7th Grade ELAR


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Teacher Retreat

8/17/2016

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  This past summer, my fellow 7th grade ELA teammates and I took a little trip. No, not that kind of trip. At the end of the school year, we decided to take a purposeful innovation retreat: a time we’d set aside to reflect, dream, design, and organize. A few weeks prior, my wonderful principal had taken the lead teachers at my school on a similar retreat to design our staff development for the upcoming year, and it was a great time of bonding and designing. I thought I’d take a cue from him, and plan a retreat with my own PLC (7th grade English Language Arts and Reading). 

 We’d been inspired by George Couros’ book, The Innovator’s Mindset. He challenged us to not just create something new, but to truly innovate- to create learning environments and ideas that are better and empowering for students. So that was our goal. What new and better things can we dream up and implement next year?

  We spent three days and two nights at an Airbnb I found online in a neighboring city. We had to pay for it on our own, as most teachers are accustomed to, but it really wasn’t bad when split three ways- about $75 for the trip. And although it was only a 40 minute drive, it felt nice to be in a new setting with fresh inspiration.

  Of course, we had a tentative schedule because we’re all squiggles. (Read more about squiggles here. )

  Take a look at the schedule we followed.

  As you can see, we set aside time to dream and design. Often times during the school year, we find that our dreaming time is shortened due to the fact that we actually have to get crap done. We don’t have time to just sit around for an hour or two and say, “Oh...okay, what if we did this!? Or what about that?” I mean, don’t get me wrong, we do that A LOT, but we really don’t have long periods of time to do that. And we’re usually dreaming when we should actually be detailing next week’s lesson plans.
 Likewise, our designing time is sometimes commandeered by thoughts like, “We really need to teach this, so let’s just do what we did last year because we have to teach it next week, and we really don’t have time to create or dream-up the cool thing we would’ve wanted to do.” I’m being real here. Being creative and innovative takes time, and that doesn’t always come easily to educators. A balance of dreaming and design is key. That was our hope in this retreat-- to really spend time doing both.
 I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend doing this with your team if you can. Maybe you can’t do an overnight, but you could have a day or two over the summer that you set aside to get to know each other, hang out, dream, and design. Or, do you have another way you balance dreaming with designing? What about those of you who don't have a team? How do you balance design time? I’d love to hear from you.
 With all of our required professional development, sometimes it’s hard to take the time we need to dream. Or, if you’re like me, you’d rather spend most of your time dreaming than nail down the details. We’re hoping that some of the things we purposefully designed this summer will be much more powerful and empowering in our classes this year. We’ll be posting about those ideas too, so stay tuned!

Megan
7th Grade ELAR

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New Worlds Project

8/12/2016

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 The Idea
I enjoy blurring the lines between content areas when possible. It makes sense. That’s how life is. Things aren’t broken up by subject area. In the real world, we don’t encounter things in neat compartments. As I walk around a museum, watch a documentary, or read an article, the science and math and history and language arts aren’t categorized. They are mixed together. All different content areas jumbled together in one learning experience.

It was with this in mind that I approached the other 6th grade teachers on my team this past school year. I had a very basic scenario in mind. No real details, just an idea. The situation was that the students would be sent to recently discovered habitable planets to set up a new civilization. Earth, for whatever reason, wouldn’t sustain life beyond the current generation. It’s a situation that I’m sure has been used in a myriad of projects, but I told my team I wanted to find a way to take that situation, and incorporate elements from all of our classes. They not only agreed to take on the project, they instantly began thinking of how they could incorporate their content into the work.

The Process
As a team, we had three official meetings and several impromptu conversations about the project. Each team member worked on refining the scenario and working out the logistics. We trimmed the fat, cutting out parts of the assignment that proved to be too logistically challenging or confusing.
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We decided to commit two full days to the New Worlds Project. We also decided to forego the students’ usual class schedules. Instead, each student would be placed in a group, and the groups would stay together all day going through rotations in each of our classrooms. While they were in our room, they would focus on our particular aspect of the assignment but could also work on project components from the other subjects.

Once we agreed on the basic scenario and schedule for the two days, we planned the specific tasks the students would be given in our classrooms that were connected to the content area that we teach. We came up with general objectives for each class, then we all worked individually on the finer details. We met one last time after we had concrete ideas of what groups would accomplish in our rotation on day 1 and day 2.

We used Google Classroom to facilitate the project. Each teacher involved was added as a teacher in the Classroom with posting/editing privileges. We uploaded information the students would need in our class. The template for the final presentation was distributed via Google Classroom also.

After a month of planning, we launched the New Worlds Project on a Wednesday and Thursday in June. Overall, it was a success. A majority of the students were engaged and enthusiastic about it. There was enough work for each group that all members were forced to pull their weight. There were plenty of things we noticed that would need to be changed or modified if we did the assignment again, but it went well.  

Ideal Conditions
I know this couldn’t have happened everywhere. The stars had to align to pull this off. Beyond having teachers and administrators who readily buy into these kinds of projects, I tried to identify the other factors that made this possible. First, all 6th grade teachers are broken up into teams. We have one teacher from each content area and we share students. Another logistical hurdle was avoided because all 6th grade teachers in the building have the same planning periods and lunch. So not only do we share students, we also have classes at the same time. This allowed us to plan together for the project and accommodated our alternative project schedule and groupings.

Something else that was evident after the planning began was that we had a nice blend of strengths among the teachers involved. I tend to have my head in the clouds with projects. I’m getting better as a get further along in my career, but I have a tendency to be hit with an idea, and throw it on my students before ironing out all the details. Sometimes it leads to impactful lessons. Often though, I find myself in the middle of them thinking about all the things that would have made it better. For this project, because we were planning as a group, the details people were focused on, well, the details. They acted as a tether to reality for those of us who can drift away in grand ideas.

Another factor was the timing. In the future, I would like to plan more of these at various times throughout the year, but for this initial experiment, it helped that it was close to the end of the year. Standardized tests were finished, most units were wrapping up, and frankly, we were all looking for educational activities that would engage students who were already on summer break mentally.

The Final Product

Here is a link to the presentation that gives a basic description of what the students did in each classroom. The presentation was shared with each teacher involved so they could add the summary slide for their content area. It was shown in every class at the beginning of the first day.
https://goo.gl/L6wXFi

Also, here’s a link to the presentation that was shared with the students on the day of the project. Once the students involved were given time during 1st period to join the Google Classroom for the project, I uploaded this and created copies for each student so they could edit their group’s presentation.
https://goo.gl/cdCjjb

Finally, here are two examples of the students’ finished work.
https://goo.gl/5G57Q0

Nathan Garvin
6th Grade English
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