Our Adventures with Instagram

     The end of the school year is a challenge for both students and teachers - both are counting down the days until summer break. I try to keep the structure of the day the same, but introduce some new things to keep everyone interested. My colleague, who teaches the math and science block, had the kids do an inquiry investigation making an impact-proof container for a raw egg, and then conducted the launches the last couple days of school. Anyway, we were chatting one day and I was telling her that I was feeling the need to encourage our students to keep reading over the summer, and that I had read about a teacher who used Instagram to connect with her students.  My colleague, who has a child in fourth grade, said that many of the kids in fourth and fifth grade were already on Instagram, and that might be a great way to reach out to them.
   I did a little checking on our technology policies, and found that it was okay to start an account, but we needed to commit to regularly updating it so that parents and students would find it helpful. We were willing to try that. I would do the reading and writing posts, and she and our other colleague would do some math and science posts.
    The other thing we did is send out a letter to parents of our outgoing fifth graders and also to the upcoming fifth graders letting them know about our idea. We set it up so we have to approve anyone who wants to follow us, so not anyone can see our posts. My colleague also suggested that we create a Facebook page that is linked to our Instagram account, since more parents are on Facebook than on Instagram.
     After sending out our letter, we were surprised and delighted to see how many parents signed up to follow us! We started this the last two weeks of school (which helped keep us engaged during that time), and we started taking pictures of student work and of course, the progress of the egg launch. I posted pictures of shared stories, social studies projects,  and recommendations written for the incoming fifth graders by the current fifth graders. The kids seemed to really like seeing their work on Instagram, and would often comment on the pictures.
     We've been out of school for a little over a week now, and it's been very easy to post a picture of a book every day. I go to the library often, and every time I'm there, I take about 5-7 pictures of book covers that I can use each day. I'm trying to remember to include different genres and multicultural books, both current titles, and ones that I loved as a child.
     I'm also trying to include a journal idea each day. I have no idea if any students will do any writing over the summer, but since many parents are following us on Facebook, it may encourage some of them to help their kids give it a try.
    The real test of this will be in the fall, when we start to get to know the new group of fifth graders. I'm very interested to know how many tried the book or journaling suggestions, or tried the real life math and science ideas my colleagues are posting. We're hoping this added connection will give both parents and students a bigger picture of what goes on in our fifth grade classes, and in turn, this will make our school community stronger.

Animating Poetry

   We've just finished a poetry unit, and in addition to turning in hand-written copies, I've encouraged the students to type at least one poem into their Kidblog, and also to consider animating one on Animoto. I used Animoto a couple of years ago to make book trailers, but hadn't used it since. However, at a recent meeting I was at, the presenter was going over tech tools kids could use to publish their writing, and I remembered the fun we'd had making book trailers. Luckily there was a bunch of work time at that meeting, so I set up another Animoto account, and got my kids going on it the next day.
     Animoto is designed to put pictures and text to music, playing completed works like a very short movie. My students typed in their poems, selected some pictures or short video clips that Animoto provides, and then selected music to go along with their work.  If they had done this from their own home computers, they could have pulled in their own music or photos, but I kept it simple to start with, just using what Animoto provides.
     Here's an example of a poem for two voices that two girls did: Animoto soccer poem.

If you want to try this with your students, here is hopefully the fastest way to set up an Animoto account. I first signed up for a free two-week trial. Then I went to their free 6 month trial for educators page. Once you sign up there, they will send you a code to type in when you set up your account. They recommend setting up a new gmail address for Animoto, which I did, and then I set up my student accounts. They say you can set up 50 student accounts, but I just set up 8, because it's a little time-consuming, and I decided the kids could all share these accounts, which has been fine so far. To set up the student accounts, you will need to log out of your account, and then click "sign up" for each new student account. As per another Animoto recommendation, all the student accounts are my gmail address with the addition of +1, +2, etc.. (that's a plus sign), so if my email was mrsquist@gmail.com, my first student account would be mrsquist+1@gmail.com. In order to keep things simple, all the student accounts have the same password. We had a discussion about only working on your work and respecting the work of the other students sharing the accounts by not editing anything that wasn't yours.

The students have really enjoyed selecting backgrounds and music for their poems, and I like the creative thinking that goes with those choices. Students whose poems are about darker subjects have had to think about what style of music would best represent their topic. We've chatted about whether songs with words are too distracting when you're reading a poem, so maybe a choice of instrumental music would be better.

Several students have also made book trailers to "advertise" a book they've read. They storyboard out what they want to say, giving a teaser about what the book is about, but not revealing the ending, and then type it in just like the poems.  There are certainly other online tools kids can use to publish their writing, but Animoto is very easy once you set it up, and the results are fun to see.

Speed Dating With Books

Last week I decided it was time to start a new round of literature circles, but instead of me giving the book talks before kids chose what they wanted to read, I tried an idea I got from someone (maybe Donalyn Miller?).  I told the kids we were going to be doing some speed dating (lots of giggles – it is spring in fifth grade) but with books. There were probably some disappointed kids, but also a few who were no doubt relieved.  Anyway, the gist of speed dating with books is to spend a couple of minutes looking at the cover, reading the back blurb, and then reading as much as you can of the book before the timer goes off. Make a note of your first impression, and then move on to the next book.

I had ten different books set out, and handed out some writing paper for notes.  I set the timer for three minutes, and the reading began. After the timer went off, I encouraged them to give it a rating of some kind (my ESL colleague suggested the standard 5 star rating, which worked really well), and then the kids all moved over one chair. I set the timer again, and the kids started in on the next book.  It was one of the quietest 30 minutes I’ve had recently, and I am pretty sure some kids read more in that 30 minutes than they usually do at school.  When they were all done, I had them rank their first three choices, and then I put them into groups based on their choices.

I would definitely do this again – I think at this point in the year, the kids know themselves as readers well enough to be able to make a decision without my giving the book talk. Some kids still chose books that I am not sure they’ll be able to finish, but for the most part, I kept them with their choices. We’ll see if they are still happy with their choices when they’re done with the book!

Tweets about Reading

It's been a while since I've done any blogging, and I think part of that is because I'm not sure I've done anything really new and different to blog about. My fifth graders are moving along, and we've been working on writing realistic fiction stories, and reading responses, and creating posters with nonfiction text features just to try and mix up the way they write about their reading. But it's now the middle of February, and things that were once fresh seem to be not so fresh, and I think both students and their teachers start looking for ways to mix up the daily work a bit.

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, and found a link to a poster called "101 Ways to Show What You Know." I squinted at it on my phone, but I was intrigued. I needed some new ideas for students to write about with their reading, but the standard one-paragraph response was old for all of us.  (Here's a link to that poster.)  And then it hit me: it was a short week, and the kids wouldn't have had as much time for reading, so they needed something short. Like a tweet. Even though I don't have a class Twitter page, the kids could still write a couple of 140-character tweets about the plot, the setting, characters or character change, or if it was nonfiction, something interesting that captured their attention about whatever it was their book was about. I assigned them the job of writing at least two tweets, and they could include an appropriate hashtag, probably using the book title.

They seemed to love it. For one thing, they were thrilled it wasn't 140 words, just characters, including spaces between words. Then I had them type them into our Kidblog page, so they could see what other kids had written. I was taken with how funny I thought many of them were, but also how much information they could put into a short response. Below are some of the results:

The ring: twist it once or twist it twice, but think twice before you twist it #Monster Ring
Big Gruff is totes too big for the troll so Gruff throws the troll off the bridge #Fat Billy Goats

Just Hates Ms.Godfrey because he just hates her #Big Nate

Monsters, Nightmares, Dangerous Gods, Can't I have a normal life#Percy Jackson

He paid $5.00 for a kiss? o.m.g #kissing booth #Dork Diary

The Story Of Helen Keller Was SO SAD Cause Helen Keller Was Blind And Deaf # SO SAD

I don't want to go to another school next year, I'm going to fail school so I can stay with my teacher #failschool#mrteruptfallsagain

I've got a request in to see if I can set up a class Twitter account, so more families could see some of these ideas, but for now, the kids can read them on Kidblog. I will certainly try this again this year, because it made writing a reading response a bit more fun. 

Talking and Writing About Reading

My best friend since eight grade happens to be a middle school librarian, and whenever we get together, we eventually talk shop. She's got lots of great ideas about book titles and writing about books, and this summer when we were traveling together to celebrate a milestone birthday (we're two weeks apart in age), she mentioned a book they'd gotten in at their library called Getting Beyond Interesting: Teaching Students the Vocabulary of Appeal to Discuss Their Reading by Olga M. Nesi. While it's aimed more at middle school, I figured that I could use it in fifth grade, and boy, have I ever.

The first or second day of school, I had students do a writing response to a picture book I read. I gave them a few guidelines, but I really just needed a baseline sample for what kinds of writing they could do about their reading. Most wrote a couple of vague sentences, and none were in any way outstanding in their analysis. The day after, I started introducing the terms that Nesi uses in her book: tone, pace, characterization, and story line. I had the students write down a general definition of each in their reading notebooks for reference, and then I handed out a "bookmark"from Nesi's book with the different terms and some examples of each. For tone, students could choose from bittersweet, humorous, melancholy, etc... Pace included gentle, lively, or fast. Characterization included describing characters as believable and relatable, or quirky, among others. Story line asked students to think about whether the story was more action based or character based, and we discussed what that might look like in a story. As I read the day's story, students were given time to check off terms on their bookmarks that they thought fit the story we were reading.

After a group discussion of what they thought the story was in each category, we proceeded to write a short paragraph using these terms. What a difference having some language to use made in these paragraphs! Students were talking about why they thought the pace was gentle, or why the tone was bittersweet. Having some terms to use made them analyze their reading more closely and made their discussion more specific; instead of saying, "I really liked the book," now they were able to tell what it was about the book that made them like it.

Eventually, we moved to writing a paragraph about one of the terms, instead of all of them in one paragraph. This has allowed students to deepen their thinking, giving several examples to support their thinking rather than just one. Their final writing project this trimester is a literary essay, and for that, they will need to pick three of the four terms, write paragraphs to support their thinking, and include an introduction and conclusion. We have talked about what happens if you didn't like the book, and how you could say, for example, that the pace was slow, which did (or did not) fit the story, and that you don't like books with a slow pace because they don't capture your attention (or whatever your reason is). As the year goes on, I hope that the usage of the terms becomes more automatic, and that kids will be talking about them when they recommend books to one another. Having some vocabulary to discuss their thinking has really made a difference in my classroom this year.

Word Art

One of the areas we know we need to work on as a school is vocabulary. With a number of second language speakers, this becomes even more important, and with the increasing academic vocabulary as the students move up through the grade levels, knowing the meanings of words is critical.  While I love learning about words, this love isn’t always shared by my students, and I’ve given a lot of thought to ways to make learning new words more engaging, and not just a “drag out the dictionary and copy down the meaning” exercise.

One thing I tried this week was “Word Art”, another idea I got from the book Learning in the Fast Lane, by Suzy Pepper Rollins.  Kids take the word and use it to draw something that represents the meaning of the word but still incorporates the letters. I used the vocabulary words from our first social studies unit on First Americans, and gave the kids a choice about which word to illustrate. Many chose “migration”, and used the letters to show the word “moving” across the paper. One student illustrated “nomad” by having all the letters walking with feet. One of my Muslim students chose “stereotype” and included a picture of a woman in a headscarf using the letter “o”. I think this would be a fun activity to use in any subject area, and I plan to have it as an independent activity during guided reading and intervention times. I posted them on the wall so students will have a chance to see how others illustrated each word, and also so the current unit’s vocabulary is on display while we are in that unit. My colleague found a bunch of adding machine tape and we cut up long strips for the kids to use, which they also enjoyed. I’d recommend this if you’re looking for something a little different to do with vocabulary!

Six-Word Memoirs

The school year has begun, and this year I’ve looped up to fifth grade with my two groups of kids from last year. So far I have loved coming back and just starting in – it seems like we just had a long weekend, and we’re back at it. But one of my concerns was making sure that fifth grade didn’t just feel like a repeat of fourth grade, so I knew I had to alter the routine a bit, and start with something we didn’t do last year. 

The May 2014 issue of The Reading Teacher featured an article called “Every Word is on Trial: Six-Word Memoirs in the Classroom,” by Jane M. Saunders and Emily E. Smith. Students work to come up with six words that describe them or something they are interested in, and then find an image to enhance their memoir. That sounded like something doable (six words isn’t many), fun (computer lab), and it would be a great way to start and finish a writing project the first week.

Following the suggestions in the article, we first looked at Ernest Hemingway’s famous memoir, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  It was a great place to start, as we did a lot of inferencing about what he could have meant. I then pulled up some examples on brainpickings.org of elementary six-word memoirs (www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/09/six-word-memoirs-students), which gave my students some ideas for their work. I was careful to stop at the middle school level, as some of the examples are a little racier than I wanted to share with my class.  Then students all worked to come up with several examples, discussing with classmates if they were short a word or had too many. It was fun to see the discussions of how to condense ideas, or how to change words around to get the best effect. Punctuation also becomes important if you aren’t writing complete sentences, so some students experimented with colons and commas.

After choosing the memoir they liked best, we headed into the computer lab. The article gives many great suggestions of how to present the memoirs, but in the end, I just had students open up a Word document, and then we searched for images on Flickr as they did in the article. Once an image was selected, students dragged them into the Word document, and then typed the memoir below the image. We printed them off in black and white, and then students had the option of using colored pencils to make them more colorful. 

I hung them all up outside our room, and students have really enjoyed reading what others have written. Several staff members have also commented on how nicely they turned out. One colleague suggested doing this periodically throughout the year and using them as a chronicle of fifth grade, which I really like. I also think students could do this as a short way of synthesizing information from other subject areas. I’m going to experiment with this writing form throughout the year and see what I think. For now, it was a great way to start our new year off together.  

Here is my example that I showed the students.