Get the Kids Moving: White House Rallies, IPad Movies, Classwide Twitter and Philosophical Chairs.... In One Unit!!!!

It's Friday night and oh my..... I deserve a weekend! This week was one of those where the kids were AMAZING but the job was stressful. I have certainly earned some blogging time, some Netflix and a glass (or two) of wine!
As I've mentioned in past posts, I just finished a huge unit on foreign policy. Although we don't actually have the History Alive! Series at my school, through the wonders of technology, I have stumbled upon all the resources online. I used this unit last year and this year I really owned it, reworked it and put my spin on it. The unit presents students with a foreign policy dilemma for the first five presidents. Students are given four different scenarios to choose from as they consider how they would have acted if they were president. Students work in groups and once they decide how they would have reacted they are to complete a processing activity. The book has them protesting in front of the White House for every dilemma and although I loved the idea, last year the kids got bored of the protest quickly. So here is what I did:
1. Dilemma 1: What should John Adams do about the French and the XYZ Affair?
Using my cheap whiteboards, the kids had to come up with a slogan that they would chant at a protest rally. I told them that at the rally they would be interviewed by the press and would have to tell the reporter what they think John Adams should do and why he should do it. I gave it a CCSS flare by telling them for their reason they had to cite textual evidence. I projected the White House onto the Smartboard, split the class in half and interviewed them. They looooved it! One kid told me it was his favorite lesson all year. My favorite slogan was, "Don't hate....negotiate!" I videotaped all the segments so I could make a full foreign policy movie at the end of the unit.

2. Dilemma #2: What should Thomas Jefferson do about the Barbary Pirates?
The kids had the same directions and options but instead they had to make 30 second commercials urging the president to listen to their foreign policy advice. I used iMovie to put all these movies together, with the protest and showed the whole thing at the end. I would show you these but I'm really a stickler of showing my kids' faces. Take my word for it..... They are hysterical!
3. Dilemma 3: What should James Madison do about the British impressing our soldiers?
This time, the kiddos took part in an analog Twitter conversation. As a group, the kids came up with a Twitter handle and hashtag that would explain their stance on involvement with the British. They then wrote a Tweet about their opinions. After this, each student was given three sticky notes. They had to comment on the group before them, the group after them and a group of their choice. They had to agree or disagree using textual evidence.

This really turned out to be a great way to process. They were able to work together and then process individually. After we did this I felt like is till needed to spend some time on the War of 1812 so I showed the kiddos this.....

OMG..... The kids giggled all thought this. To show them how perspective plays a major role in the story of us, I showed them this....

They loooooved this!
4. Dilemma 4: What should James Madison do about the new Latin American countries?
For this, I tried my hand at Philosophical Chairs and I was so proud of my kiddos. I had four corners of the classroom, one for each option they could choose from. They each went to the corner and started to defend their cases with textual evidence. Whenever they stopped believing with their side, they were able to move to a new corner. For the first time, I though this went so well. I can't wait to use it in other debates as well. I love the simplicity of it and the lack of set up. The kids loved that I let them sit on the desk. It's the simple things:)
All in all, it was one of those units that you poured your blood and soul into and in the end it returned the feeling threefold. And of course, there was this......

Click here for the foreign policy activities.
Click here for the reading.

Posted with Blogsy

High/Low Linky Party

I am tired and ready to go to bed but its 6:56.  Maybe I'll convince the boy that we should cuddle in bed and watch TV.... and maybe Mommy will close her eyes..... and snore just a little bit.  Here is my High/Low contribution for the month.  Click on the picture to link on up!

http://www.teachertothecore.blogspot.com/2013/03/hi-low-linky-party.html

Fine.... I'll Make My Own Professional Development!

Being in education as long as I have I know that one of the biggest complaints is professional development opportunities. As a social studies teacher I have had to sit through hours of district wide professional development and none of it was geared for the social studies specifically. Don't get me wrong, I have learned invaluable tools from workshops on behavior management, dealing with difficult parents and writing across the curriculum but sometimes I would love to listen to someone talk about teaching social studies. We do have state social studies conferences but with shrinking budgets we can't afford to send nine social studies teachers and provided them with substitutes. I have started sending my people in pairs and rotating by grade but this means that a whopping two people get to see best practices in action.

 Next year, I think I'm going to present at our local conference just so I can get free admission. It is never below me to sell my wares for a free seat. This dilemma has always sent me outside of my district walls to become better at my profession. I do believe that although it is the job of my district to train me in the things it wants me to focus on and implement, ultimately I am the one who chose this profession and I should be willing to do the work to remain at the top of my game. Luckily, we are living in an age where professional development is at our finger tips and creating a professional learning network goes beyond your town, your state and your region. Although I focused on social studies here, most of this list can easily be tailored to every subject.

 So.... How have I created my own professional development opportunities?

 1. Twitter.....

 I know a lot of you already use Twitter for professional development but I am writing this post for the newbie. Twitter isn't just all about reading about what people ate for lunch (you can actually really learn more about people's lunch choices on Instagram:) ). I am on Twitter solely for education (except for following my boys from Supernatural.... Sorry, guilty pleasures). First, there are some amazing people to follow on Twitter like Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) and Tony Baldasaro (@baldy7) Just reading their Tweets can offer you PD for a week. Once you get deeper into Twitter, you use the hashtags (#) to follow conversations. I am a big fan of #sschat and #edchat. As a social studies teacher, if you go to Twitter on Monday nights at 7pm and follow #sschat you will take part in a conversation that usually revolves around topics like getting rid of textbooks or how to use primary sources in your classroom. Checking in on your Twitter feed can easily stretch to an hour. Cybraryman, an amazing education resource on the web, offers this immense list of education hashtags to follow so other subjects rejoice!!!

 2. The Teaching Channel

 OMG!!! If you have visited my blog before you might have seen the professional development videos I curated for my department and if you looked at them at all you would have seen 95% of the videos came from the Teaching Channel. They are just amazing. It is more than just a bunch of "experts" telling me how to do something. These videos are of real teachers implementing real best practices into their classrooms. I can't even tell you the amount of ideas I have gotten from this website and I looooove their focus on the Common Core. It is still such a vague idea, especially for my subject, I love being able to see teachers succeeding at implementing in their classrooms. I really love how they offer something for everyone.

 3. Teacher Cast

 I have never really understood the point of podcasting until I found the wealth of educational podcasts. My favorite has to be Teacher Cast. They host podcasts just under an hour that focus on current topics in education and they recently just did an awesome chat on primary sources in the classroom. The best thing about the podcasts is the versatility of listening. You can find these podcasts in iTunes so I downloaded them to my phone and listen to them in the car. Even if you don't have a smartphone, though, you can listen straight from your computer. I listened to the primary source on while I was setting up my classroom in the morning and then finished it while I wrote a teacher observation.

Some other podcasts I follow are:
 Bam! Radio - I love these because they last less than fifteen minutes and are packed with information.

 Teacher's Aid

 4. ITunes U

 Now, if you don't have and iPhone or iPad you can't do this one.... Sorry to be a techno snob. On ITunesU you can download "courses". That are published by universities and websites. Once you download them they get stored in your library.

 My absolute favorite course is for Edutopia. They have organized all their amazing videos by topic.

 Most of the videos are less than 15 minutes so I love watching one before I go to bed at night.

 I'm not sure how your district allows you to track and submit PD but here in NH we are totally about local control. We have our immediate supervisor sign off on our portfolios and then the district gives the nod to the state. I have begun to write up all the time I spend on these activities to document them for PD hours. I use Google Drive to document the pod casts, links and dates. I can then submit this to my superior for PD hours.


I won't lie, I have done a lot of work to organize all this. It is my passion so I enjoy doing it but my digital scrap booking and cleaning my house has taken a hit for this passion. The best thing, though, is after I hear a wonderful podcast or find some amazing resource on Twitter, it puts a little spring back in my step and for a fleeting moment I gain back that feeling I had my first year teaching, I become optimistic and hopeful again, and to be honest, that feeling is addicting. I don't mind working hard to feel that over and over.

 Lastly ... I'm really excited because others feel the professional development void and created EdCamp and in three weeks I am going to one in New Hampshire. Yeah for teachers being resourceful!

Tweet

Shameless Pitch :)

So...... I really hate when people start to fill their perfectly fabulous blogs with what amounts to daily advertisements for their Teachers Pay Teachers Store. I promise I will never do that..... But.......

I've been really delving into the topic of claim and counterclaim as I build a new AndrewJackson unit that is so Common Core Aligned the Common Core better step back... I mean it!

To help my kiddos build a strong argument I created, what I think, is a pretty good interactive notebook foldable for claim and counterclaim.

Pretty cover, eh? So... Mosey on over to my TPT store and check it out. It might be a wonderful gift for Easter baskets or at least as part of your egg hunt. I heard the kids are really loving the Common Core these days.... You may want to pick this up early for Christmas :)

 

Posted with Blogsy

Leveling Up! My Hand At Gameification

Ha!!!! i was writing a new blog post about small group instruction (i know, the excitement!!!!!) and I went to link to this post and realized i had never moved it over from my old blog on Weebly. Enjoy!!!!

Although our Constituional Convention simulation was successful, my kiddos lost interest about three quarters of the way through. Some days I really wish we had a block schedule because these simulations really benefit from not being split into multiple parts. I tend to lose the kiddos' interest after two periods.

I left school after the third day knowing that I had to plow through the 3/5 Compromise, choosing an executive, the Bill of Rights and Federalists and AntiFederalists. I really didn't think the kiddos were up for whole group instruction but I had some pretty good resources from History Alive that focused on HOT questions. I promised myself that I was going to get my daughter and drive home with the cell phone and radio off until I could come up with a game plan. How could I have my kiddos works through some reading comprehension and get to conference with them in small groups or individually to help them understand the material? I have had a real interest in gaming in the classroom and decided why didn't I treat the lesson like a video game. The midgets love to earn kudos and rewards! To cash in on this I created Level Up. The reading and questions were broken into seven sections so I created seven levels of this video game. I created a learning target for each section and changed it into a mastery questions, (i.e. I have mastered and understanding of the 3/5 Compromise.). For each mastery concept, I created a title, (i.e. Magnificient Negotiator, Population Analayst, etc.) and I created a nifty badge that I printed out on a color printer.

I set up the classroom in groups but in the center I had set up six desks with a teacher chair in the middle. I roped it off and labeled it with a sign that said, "Do Not Sit Here! Leveling Up Station". That sign got my gamers' attention. They were just buzzing at the possibility of what this lesson might entail.

Students would work in small groups or individually to answer the questions for each section. After they had finished the questions for one or two sections( I did my best to stagger them so I wasn't inundated) the kiddos would come up to the Leveling Station. Here I was able to accomplish the middle school teacher's dream of working with children in very small groups. If students had difficulty with the section I was able to give them redirection and send them back for corrections. If they got the answers correct they got their badge and were able to Level Up. Each badge was pasted onto a sheet and the completion of that sheet was confirmation of their grade which was 70/70.

O to the M to the G .... The kids loooooved it! At first they pretended the badges didn't matter but then they really started to get jazzed by them. The two favorites were "College Graduate" and "I finished the Constitutional Convention and all I got was this lousy badge." Badge. Some of my ASD kiddos were literally buzzing with excitement at this. "Mrs. Wilkins, I can't believe you made these badges. They are so cool!"

In the end I got everything I wanted. I didn't have to do any whole group instruction and kids worked at their own pace. If a kid came up to me twice with wrong answers I was able to do some one on one guided reading with those individuals and sometimes was able to simply explain the concept to them but in a much more casual and useful conversation than a whole group lecture. I had a two really interesting byproducts that I hadn't planned for. As the students moved through the leveling, students that were taking longer and were struggling, felt comfortable asking if they could just stay at the Leveling Up Station and get more intense help from me. Because I was working with children in a staggered fashion, this was totally able to happen. I had other students whose groups were not good influences for them (cheating, too much talking, etc.) and they also felt comfortable asking if they could work at the station. I never could have predicted the station would be an oasis.

I will probably do this activity about once a unit. The kiddos have begged to do it again but I know that they will get sick of it if it is the norm. My proudest badge that I wear was earned because even though 95% of the kiddos really loved it, I saw excitement and pride from that group of boys that a haven't yet decided to be achievers and usually get lost in the larger group. After their friends left the classroom a couple hung back to let me know how much they liked learning this way. One of my quiet tough nuts came a little closer to me and quietly said, "I wish we could do this all the time."

I also know it was a good idea because my husband, the math teacher used it in his class the very next day and another math teacher implemented it in his classroom before I even finished my lesson. Sometimes you come up with the winner!

 

Posted with Blogsy