Monthly Archives: February 2011

LLED 320 – Developing Information Smarts: Update for Thursday, 24 Feb 2011

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Information Literacy Workshop

A huge thank you to Jo-Anne Naslund, Instructional Programs Librarian at the Education Library, for presenting today’s workshop, Developing Information Smarts: Inquiry in a Digital World.  The Education Library website has a page devoted to the LLED 320 course and that page can be found here.

As an introduction, Jo-Anne asked us to work with the material found in a document produced by the BCTLA Info Lit Task Force, The Points of Inquiry: A Framework for Information Literacy and the 21st Century Learner (Thanks to Kaela for the link – LH).  The task was to consider how each point of inquiry – connect & wonder, investigate, construct, express, and reflect – might play out in a lesson.

After the intro we got right down to work on the Developing Information Smarts Webquest, a task accessible via the Ed Lib’s LLED 320 web page.  The task addresses the four main aspects of the research process:

  1. Find & Select
  2. Analyse & Evaluate
  3. Record & Organize
  4. Communicate & Present

The day wrapped up with SMART Bingo and prizes to the winners!

Of course, to be info literate, you need to be able to use the hardware.  For some, that can be a real challenge…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ&feature=PlayList&p=AD1FFBF34A2FE141&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=15[/youtube]

Choice Literacy Website

If you can get your hardware working, please check out this website recommended to me by Dr. Marlene Asselin, the LLED 320 coordinator – Choice Literacy.  According to Marlene:

“It’s a rich and extensive collection of ideas from people on the ground – literacy leaders, coaches, and teachers.  It includes:

  • Workshop protocols for leading study groups, in-services, and workshops
  • Sample observation forms and needs assessment surveys
  • Professional quality video examples of best literacy practices from classrooms throughout the country
  • The newest writing from top authors in the field
  • Short, focused articles for use in workshop discussions and mentoring meetings
  • Year-long calendars and plans for leading new teacher initiatives
  • Themed booklists for content and genre study

That’s all for now.

– Lawrence

EDUC 310 – Inquiry Presentations, Day 2: Update for Wednesday, 23 February 2011

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Thanks to all of today’s presenters.  Our guest, Tony Clarke – one of the EDUC 310 Inquiry Project Coordinators, was impressed with your tasks.

Remember that your work is due to me today.  Please zip / compress all the relevant files into one folder and email them to me at lholbrook@sd43.bc.ca.

Thanks,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Poetry Playoffs, Reading Placemat, De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats, Whole Class Novels, and Lit Circles: Update for Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011

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We covered a lot of ground today.  Here’s the highlights:

Poetry Playoffs

After reviewing the 8 Ps of Powerful Presentations:

  • Proper Articulation
  • Pronunciation
  • Power
  • Pace
  • Pause
  • Pitch
  • Passion
  • Poise

I asked you to rehearse your best haiku in case you were one of the 8 contestants chosen to face off.  Here’s the draw and how it turned out:

Congratulations to Kira on her victory.  In a related story, check out this clip to see Anthony Bourdain enjoying a bowl of “mysterious meat” pho and a beer:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsSiA-JHm0U[/youtube]

If you search this blog using the keywords Poetry Playoffs, you’ll find information I’ve posted last year on how to run a the PP in your class, if you’re interested.

Wrapping Up Writing in the Classroom

I mentioned that we just touched on writing in the classroom.  Also, I urged you to consider the principles of effective writing instruction as you teach.  Penultimately, in an effort to address several comments that arose as I marked your LLED 320 Writing Assessment Tasks, I pointed you toward the ESL Standards document (2001) developed to assist teachers with the assessment of writing, reading, and oral language work completed by EAL / ESL students.  It’s structured similarly to the Performance Standards document we used in class and you can find it on the Ministry of Education ESL website or below:

Finally, if you’re interested in a great LA survey text that has a good section on Writing To Learn, I recommended that you check out Marion Crowhurst’s Language and Learning Across the Curriculum (LB1576 .C76 1993 in Ed LIb).

Factors That Help Students Develop As Readers

We ended our previous session with by having you consider the factors that you thought helped students develop as readers.  I asked you to put your ideas together and create a placemat with a group of three others and try to come up with 3 – 5 factors that all group members could agree on.  After sharing the ideas of several groups, we compared the responses with the research:

I asked you to consider our upcoming reading activities through the lens of those 4 factors.

Considering Whole Class Novel Studies Using Using De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

With your graphic organizer of Chapter 6 – Whole Class Novel from Student Diversity in hand, I asked you to consider the WCN through the lens of one of De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats.  After reading up on what type of thinking each hat represents using the handout below:

I asked for each group to report out on their thinking around WCNs.  To wrap up, we all put on our Blue Hat – the metacognitive hat – and discussed the process of using the 6 Thinking Hats.  It was pretty meta!

Lit Circles: Double-Entry Journal Task

One During-Reading activity that really promotes thoughtful engagement with lit circle books it journaling.  In an effort to model this process with you, I’m asking you to keep a Double-Entry Journal as a means to consider the lit circle activities we’re engaging in during class time.  The task will be completed in class and it’s due on Thursday, 3 March 2011.  Here’s the handout:

To this point you had experienced:

  • Book Talks
  • Time to Read (in class and at home)
  • Sticky Notes

I asked you to choose to of those ideas and to give me your thoughts on them in the My Thinking side of the journal.  We took 10 or so minutes in class to do this.

Lit Circles: Conversation Time

I modeled a Lit Circle conversation with the members of The Hunger Games reading group and utilizing a Fishbowl strategy.  After a quick debrief, I asked each reading group to meet and engage in a similar conversation.  The discussions were lively and could have run much longer than the time we had left in class.

That’s all for today.  As a good follow up to our in-class activities, I recommend reading Chapter 7 – Literature Circles: The Basics, the Big Ideas, and Beyond in Student Diversity. It provides more details on how Lit Circles addresses the factors that help students develop as readers and it illustrates a model of how one teacher uses Lit Circles in her classroom.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

EDUC 310 – Inquiry Presentations, Day 1: Update for Monday, 21 February 2011

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Thank you to all of today’s presenters.  Also, I appreciated the whole class feedback on how to improve the format of the presentation process for Wednesday.  In that session, we’ll use the 3-2-1 Synthesis pieces to introduce each speaker.

Speaking of Wednesday, here’s the Inquiry Project elements that are due to me on  that day:

  • Final Inquiry Project Paper (approximately 1500 words)
  • 3-2-1 Synthesis of Your Inquiry Project Paper
  • IF APPLICABLE: A copy of your supporting visual (Slideshow, Prezi, Popplet, or what not)

To save time for you and to aid in my collation of all these files, please compress – “zip” – all of your I.P.-related files together.  Mr. Pepper kindly found very short video clips that will show you how to do this on both Mac and PC platforms:

Mac

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YnP1sN-LJE[/youtube]

PC

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq3vdsCux-c[/youtube]

(P.S. – Hmmmmm.  I think it’s interesting that the PC tutorial is over twice as long as the Mac one.  Food for your ease-of-use thoughts, no? Feel free to comment below.  It’s been some time since I’ve had a commenter – LH.)

Lastly, I’ve compiled and categorized the questions you had for Debbie Gregg, HR Senior Manager of SD#43 (Coquitlam).  Here’s the list:

– Steve Jobs… er, Lawrence

LLED 320 – Haiku Revision, Lit Circle Books Out & Intro to the Reading Process: Update for Thursday, 17 Feb 2011

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Haiku Revision

To get you thinking haiku again, I asked you to watch two video clips – a funny one and a serious one – and to bring the 5 criteria for a powerful haiku we developed in class back to the front of your brain.  Here are the clips:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2268876[/vimeo]

Next, after a short review of the principles of effective writing instruction, we engaged in Author’s Club – a process for refining writing that I picked up at a writing workshop by Diana Cruchley.  Here’s the PDF I used to structure the Author’s Club work:

Here’s the PPT Slideshow I showed that served as a model mini-lesson on punctuation and line breaks in poetry:

For Tuesday’s class, please revise and create a good, final copy of your best haiku.  Be sure to staple the original draft versions of all 3 poems to your best copy page.

In Tuesday’s class we will have Poetry Playoff in which 8 (or more!  I have an idea.) randomly chosen poets will face off in a single-elimination tournament as a showcase for their haiku writing prowess.

Lit Circle Books Distribution

As the kick off to our work with Literature Circles, I organized the distribution of the texts we’re going to read.  Due to time constraints, I gave an in depth book talk of only one book – The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter, Sarah book talked Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and, for the rest, I only showed a book trailer or gave a quick blurb.

Here’s the list of in-depth book talks for most of the books in the kit:

Here are most of the book trailers and videos that I showed to “sell” the books:

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufQeRrPQAbg&feature=fvwrel[/youtube]

Boy in the Striped Pajamas (actually a movie trailer) by John Boyne

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBdalsgNHsM&feature=related[/youtube]

The Giver by Lois Lowry

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNL77KnIRI8[/youtube]

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TnxXoMpF3c[/youtube]

Schooled by Louis Sachar

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gVC14-hcw4[/youtube]

If you were away from class and didn’t grab a book, please see me on Tuesday to get one.

Prior Knowledge on the Reading Process

As class wound down, I asked you to consider what you to consider factors that help students to develop as readers.  You wrote your ideas on a numbered sheet of paper.  Please bring that sheet and the mind map / graphic organizer you created to represent Ch 6 – The Whole Class Novel in the Student Diversity text to class on Tuesday… along with your haikus.

Cheers,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Group Presentations, Day 2: Update for Tuesday, 15 February 2011

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Whole Class Novel Study Reading for Thursday’s Class

In preparation for our work looking at the reading process, please read Chapter 6: The Class Novel from the Student Diversity text and process the important information using a graphic organizer.  Bring your graphic organizer to class on Thursday, 17 February 2011.

Here’s the link to an online copy of Chapter 6: The Class Novel.

I suggest applying the mind mapping strategy presented in today’s session to this task.  You could use Popplet, a different online tool, or old school pencil & paper to complete your mind map.  Here’s a primer on mind mapping found on the very useful Instructional Strategies Online website, if you’d like more info on this powerful strategy.

Also, Barrie Bennett, a renowned author (Beyond Monet & Classroom Management) teacher educator from U of T – OISE, plays a lot with Mind Mapping.  Here’s a handout with some useful tips on how to MM:

Also, here’s a sample of a 1st year university student’s first attempt at mind mapping:

If you’d prefer to use a different graphic organizer [This is me differentiating instruction to meet your needs, by the way 🙂  Same content, different processes], there are many G.O.s that could suit this task.  Check some of them out here at Teacher Vision: Graphic Organizers.

Group Presentations

Thanks to all those who presented this afternoon’s engaging presentations.  Here are the titles along with the supporting files.  The handouts should provide a valuable resource during practicum, as you look for ways to engage the learners in your classes:

Critical Thinking Strategies for Viewing Films

Mind Mapping

Sort and Predict

Building From Clues

Think of a Time

Anticipation Guide

That’s all for today.  Cheers,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Funny Stuff

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One interesting (now there’s a teacher word!) aspect of working as a teacher is that all of life get’s filtered through your teacher lenses.  You can no longer read a book or marvel at a menu full of mspelled…er, misspelled words without thinking about how you could use what your experiencing in the classroom.

Several TCs have sent me LLED-related bits and pieces they’ve spied with their teacher eyes.  I’ve collected them here in this post.  I’ll let you decide how they connect with what we’ve been up to in 320 class.

Here are a couple cartoons:

Here’s a video clip or two:

Brian & The Spelling Bee

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1cYS6aGstU[/youtube]

Eddie Izzard – Learning French

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sQkEfAdfY[/youtube]

– Lawrence

EDUC 310 – Discussing The Drafts & Outlining the Presentations: Update for Monday, 14 Feb 2011

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Discussing the Drafts of Your Inquiry Project Report

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful participation in today’s peer editing session.  Hopefully, the feedback you received will help as you refine your paper and get it as near as humanly possible to 1499 words.  No small feat.

Just a reminder that I am assessing your piece.  As per the EDUC 310 Course Outline, your project should reflect an emerging ability to:

  • Engage substantively with a topic as reflected in careful reading of the literature and an understanding of significant issues, perspectives and assumptions
  • Position one self in relation to ideas discussed
  • Consider educational issues critically
  • Relate one’s learning to curriculum and pedagogy

So you can marvel at my chalkboard writing prowess, here’s a photo (courtesy of Devin) of the criteria from class:

Outlining the Presentations

I took the last few minutes of each group’s meeting time to go over the shape of the Inquiry Project Oral/Multi-Media Presentation and the One-Minute Inquiry Project Synthesis.  Here are the details:

Presenters

Monday, 21 February 2011 – SCARFE 210 from 10:00 am – Noon

  • Amber
  • Melanie
  • Christian
  • Lou
  • Alice
  • Kat K
  • Jennifer
  • Devin
  • Ian
  • Amanda
  • Farisha
  • Miguel
  • Leanne

Wednesday, 23 February 2011 – SCARFE 1003 rom 10:00 am – Noon

  • Sarah
  • Jeremy
  • Ross
  • Kat M
  • Jenna
  • Aaron
  • Lars
  • Shaun
  • Caitlin
  • Maria
  • Tyrel
  • Sally

Schedule

Each day will follow the same schedule.  During the concurrent presentations, 4 students will be presenting at the same time.  Non-presenters will choose who to see after hearing a short blurb about each project:

  • Concurrent Presentation #1 – 20 minutes
  • Concurrent Presentation #2 – 20 minutes
  • Break – 10 minutes
  • Concurrent Presentation #3 – 20 minutes
  • One-Minute 3*2*1Synthesis From All Presenters – 20 minutes

Guidelines for the Inquiry Project Oral/Multi-Media Presentation

  • GOAL: Highlight the NEED TO KNOW points from your Inquiry Project for your audience
  • 15 minutes to present + 5 minutes for Q & A
  • Must include a visual component (mind map, diorama, puppet show, diagram, graph,…)
  • Suggested Format: What? So What? Now What?
    • What?
      • What’s your question?
      • Where did your question come from? (Purpose)
      • What did you do? (Approach)
    • So What?
      • What did you learn?
      • What must TCs know about your findings?
    • Now What?
      • Where will you go from here?
      • Where to look for more info?
      • Where should TCs go from here?

One-Minute 3*2*1 Synthesis

This one-minute blurb is a quick review of your presentation for those who did not hear it in class.  It should include the following information from your Inquiry Project:

  • 3 – Big Ideas
  • 2 – Points to Ponder
  • 1 – Action for TCs to Take on Prac…or Beyond

Submission of Inquiry Project Papers and 3*2*1 Synthesis Blurbs

Please submit your paper and your 3*2*1 blurb to me via email on or before Wednesday, 23 February 2011.

Here’s how all the Presentation & Synthesis info looked like on the board (courtesy of Devin’s Android phone):

Thanks to Devin for both photos.

Cheers,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Group Presentations, Day 1: Update for Tuesday, 8 Feb 2011

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Group Presentations

Thanks to all those who presented this afternoon’s engaging presentations.  Here are the titles along with the supporting files.  The handouts should provide a valuable resource during practicum, as you look for ways to engage the learners in your classes:

1. Talk Show – Sarah, Amber, and Tyrel

2. Structured Academic Controversy – Leanne, Christian, and Andrew

3. Brainstorming – Kat K, Sally, and Jennifer

4. Exquisite Corpse – Maria, Lou, and Farisha

5. Find Someone Who (People Search) – Caitlin, Amanda, and Melanie

Unit Planning Conferences

Here’s a copy of the updated schedule (current as of 11:55 pm on Tuesday, 8 Feb 2011):

The goal of this conference is for you to get a chance to talk one-on-one about any ideas, questions, concerns and what not you have with respect to the unit you’ll be planning for the LLED 320 Integrated Unit Plan task.  To get the most out of our meeting time, please have bring the following to the meeting:

  • Subject and topic of your unit (Science & Water systems, for example)
  • Key PLOs related to your topic
  • Desired Results / KUD (Knowledge, Understanding, and Do/Skills) for your unit
  • Rough ideas on assessment for your unit.
  • Ideas on how you might be able to integrate some aspect of LA – writing, representing, reading, viewing, speaking, or listening – into one of the unit’s lessons

In addition, you might want to bring along a resource or two that you plan on using as you teach the unit.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

EDUC 310 – Inquiry Project Small Group Meetings: Update for Monday, 7 Feb 2011

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Thanks again to all those who attended this morning’s inquiry project check-in meetings.

The rough draft of your Inquiry Project 1500-word paper will be discussed in a small group meeting on Monday, 14 Feb.  Please make sure that you’ve emailed the draft of your paper to one member of your group a day or two before then so they can read it and prepare some feedback for you to discuss in Monday’s face-to-face meeting.

For Monday’s meeting, you may wish to bring a hard copy of the piece you read with your notes/suggestions on it or you may prefer to make the suggestions on an electronic copy and email that to the author after your discussion.  Whatever suits you and the author.

I didn’t get a chance to run this plan for rough draft revision by the member of the 10:00 – 10:30 am group – Sarah, Caitlin, Leanne, Amanda, and Tyrel – so I’ll catch up with them some time this week.

Also, we’ll take some time in our meetings on Monday, 14 Feb to talk about what the 10-minute multi-media presentation on your project and the one-page synthesis might look like.

Cheers,

– Lawrence