This is a guest post by Jonah Salsich, a grade three teacher in Connecticut, USA. He and his students love buddy blogging with 2KM & 2KJ!

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Starting this September, I will be implementing The Daily 5 CAFE model as the key component of my literacy instruction.

The Daily CAFE

While I am very excited about the model in general – especially the potential for increased student independence, giving me more time to confer with students and get to know them as individual readers – one thing I’m not terribly excited about is “The Pensieve“ - the name for the conferring notebook that is essential to the CAFE approach.

The Pensieve

I have never been good with keeping papers organized. Digital files and folders just make more sense to me. My computer desktop is incredibly neat and compartmentalized, while my actual desktop can be a scary sight. I also like to be able to move lightly around the room. So, while I love the idea of having everything in a big binder that even I couldn’t lose, personally I’m not crazy about spreading it out on a desk and flipping between different tabs while conferring with a student.

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So, this summer I set about trying to make a “digital pensieve” for the iPad. My first thought was to use Evernote (much as Russ Goerend details here). I love the automatic syncing and the ability to access notes from any device that Evernote provides. However, I wanted to follow the conferring template from The CAFE Book, and currently Evernote doesn’t support any kind of rich text formatting or tables on the iPad so all the notes would have to be in plain text.

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After playing around with various apps and formats, I found that the pdf forms that come on The CAFE Book’s CD ROM are fillable. This means that text can be entered directly into the form’s fields by typing. PDF Expert is a fantastic universal app for reading and annotating pdf files. It is also the only app that allows you to enter text into fillable forms.

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Below is a slideshow tutorial of how I used PDF Expert and the fillable forms from The CAFE Book to make a digital pensieve:

(View in fullscreen for best resolution)

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While it may not be a perfect solution, I am hopeful that this set-up will meet my needs of; ease of use, portability, and access from any device. Here are what I see as the pros and cons:

Pros:

• Light and small – easy to work with in a variety of spaces
• Universal access to folders and files through Dropbox
• Can email forms for sharing with parents or colleagues
• Can add notes on desktops and laptops using Preview or Adobe Reader
• It’s cool! – more like Dumbledore’s magical pensieve

Cons:

• Light and small – easier to misplace?
• Can’t include audio files in folders like you can in Evernote (but you can’t do that with a paper notebook either…)
• Can only type text into fillable forms

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Do you have any suggestions or questions?

How have you modified “the pensieve” to meet your needs?

Most of my students are currently involved in the two week school swimming program. As is always the case, there are some students not particpating, so Kathleen Morris and I alternate between taking the swimmers and supervising the “non-swimmers”.

Traditionally, we complete a variety of “fill in” activities during this time with the non-swimmers, as there is no point running regular Literacy and Numeracy sessions when most students are at the pool. However, this time we decided we’d focus on teaching the students some new ICT skills and how to use a several web 2.0 tools.

Last week I introduced the students to Glogster. Glogster is an online tool that allows you to make free interactive posters, or “glogs”. The word glog is short for graphical blog. We signed up for a teacher account and then made individual accounts for the students within ours.

You can add text, images, photos, audio, video and special effects to create a glog, and finished glogs can be embedded into blogs so you can share them with everyone. Needless to say, the students loved it and were so engaged, many students even went home and produced glogs on their own.  Here’s a couple of examples of my Grade 2 student glogs:

 
This lesson got me thinking, how could Glogster be used for future Literacy lessons? Students could make glogs for…

- Start of the year “All About Me” projects

- Classroom rules

- Different reading strategies

- Book responses/book reviews

- Their school holidays

- Word/spelling lists

- Cyber safety posters

- “How to write a quality blog comment” poster

- Guided Reading responses

- Passion Projects

- Character profiles 

- Personal goal setting

The possibilities are endless and extend only as far as your imagination!

Have you used Glogster with your students before?

How else could Glogster be used in Literacy?

A couple of weeks ago Kathleen Morris and I were busy preparing for a presentation we’re giving to our staff next term. The message we are trying to get across is

The illiterate of the 21st century will be those who can only read and write across traditional platforms.

In our classroom we integrate technology into our daily Literacy program to cater for our students. Technology is not an “add-on” and we don’t feel pressured to include one-off ICT lessons. Our lessons are designed to include technology. Our planning sessions always involve us brainstorming how technology fits into the lesson focuses.  We find websites, web 2.0 tools, apps, stories and activities that help our students achieve their individual learning goals, in both Literacy and Numeracy.

We are lucky to have access to some great technological devices and our students are reaping the rewards while being engaged with their learning. Here’s a snapshot of what you might see if you wandered into our classroom during the two hour Literacy Block.

iPod Touches

- The iPod is the “Listen to Reading” component of our Daily 5 program. Students listen to stories (we like Story Home on iTunes) and write/draw a response.

- Students complete listening/following instructions activities, such as origami, which has proved very popular. We like How To videos on HowCast (through iTunes).

- Students test their comprehension skills by listening to a podcast or watching a video. They then complete a follow up activity, such as sequencing activities (eg. correctly sequencing the steps in a recipe). Again, HowCast has some great videos for students of all ages.

Classroom Computers 

- During our Reading Groups, we have a computer group each day. This is the “Work on Writing” component of the Daily 5. Students write a blog comment on our blog, reply to a comment or write a comment on one of our blogging buddies’ blogs.

- The focus of the computer activity is that the students carefully read the post they are commenting on and respond. They need to include questions in their comments and editing their comment is crucial. We often read these comments as a class during share time.

Interactive Whiteboard

- When we incorporate the interactive whiteboard into our Reading Groups, we use it as the “Word Work” component of the Daily 5. Check out this post I wrote recently for some word game ideas students enjoy.

iPads

- We have two iPads in our classroom and we’re experimenting with how to best use them. We’ve used them in Reading Groups several times, taking advantage of some great free apps for young students. We’ve used word games, stories etc and the students have also watched videos/shows with a particular literacy focus.

- Recently, we’ve been focussing on having the students ask questions during whole class sessions. For example, after we watch a BTN episode, rather than asking questions myself, the students come up with questions for the class about the episode. They’ve been encouraged to do this after watching a show or episode on the iPad too. It’s a great way to tune them in, develop their metacognitive skills and keep them engaged and focussed on the task.

Netbooks

- We are very fortunate to have recently received a bank of 20 netbooks in our classroom. Our students were so excited when they started using them in the last week of term! Kathleen and I are completing an “action research project” with the netbooks and we’re excited about the possibilities.

- Our new student bloggers have been using the netbooks to get started with their blogs.

- When school goes back we are going to train up a few students who will become ”techxperts”. They will help troubleshoot problems, assist students with difficulties with the netbooks etc.

- We’ve had the students use the netbooks for publishing stories, completing research and looking up definitions of words while reading.

- I set up a Livebinder which had the websites our students would need for the week. This is a good way to save sites and students can easily access them during the Literacy Block (and also for Numeracy).

- We’re also helping the students improve their typing skills. We had a session in the last week of term where the students used a few online typing activities, including Dance Mat Typing, Keyboard Climber and Type for Gold, and the room was absolutely silent! They were so engaged and keen to develop their typing skills and speed.

- We are looking forward to having our students work on projects and use a variety of web 2.0 tools on the netbooks next term. We have a great opportunity with these netbooks and we can’t wait to see what the students learn and create!

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This is just a brief overview of how we incorporate technology in our Literacy program. And, it goes without saying, our students read “traditional” books every day and regularly write with paper and pencils. Our priority is providing our students with a Literacy program that includes texts across all platforms. We are making them transliterate learners, that is, helping them to become literate across multiple forms of media.

We teach ICT skills explicitly and incidentally every day, and it is so rewarding to see our students’ using technology to further develop their reading and writing skills. As we often say, we’d be doing our students a disservice if we didn’t integrate technology into our program!

Do you have any tips for integrating technology into Literacy?

What is your favourite tech device to use with students in Literacy?

Do you have any ideas for how we can use the netbooks next term?

I first got an interactive whiteboard in my classroom in 2008. I was teaching Prep at the time and it was a steep learning curve to discover how I could best use it to engage my students and improve learning outcomes.

Fast forward three years and I am teaching Grade Two in an open classroom with Kathleen Morris. I love the enormous range of interactive websites and tools available for my students, and while I could manage to teach without an IWB, I wouldn’t want to! It is difficult to think of any lessons where Kathleen and I don’t utilise the IWB and our planning documents include many links to websites each week.

We use the IWB during our twenty minute blogging session every day, and it is often used for our CAFE reading strategy too. We also regularly use the IWB during our reading groups each week. We find websites for the children to use that either link to our weekly reading strategy or reinforce an ongoing skill. Thus, our literacy focuses are reinforced and practised consistently. These sites are saved in our favourites folder on the IWB, so students can access them at other times too.

Below are just a few of the games our students have used this year.

Read Write Think (Construct a Word) – This was used by some of our weaker readers, who were focussing on using beginning and ending sounds in words when reading.

Wall of Words – This game focuses on sequencing sentences correctly and adding correct punctuation. There are two levels of difficulty.

Alphabet Soup – Students need to read and comprehend a question and think of a possible answer using jumbled letters.

Synonyms Sam’s Lab – Great for extending students’ vocabulary by having them think of synonyms for a range of words.

The Magic Key (Code Calling) – Another good synonym game where students need to replace words with similar meanings.

Stories of the Dreaming – Our Integrated Studies topic this term is “Aboriginal Australia”, so we had students watch some dreamtime stories and formulate questions about the stories to ask each other.

What websites do your students use during Literacy?

Successful readers and writers need a sound knowledge of high frequency words.  

One problem some struggling readers have is that they often pause at high frequency words during reading, stopping the flow of the text. This affects their phrasing and fluency, and ultimately meaning from the text is lost if they are regularly stopping to solve words. Learning how to spell some high frequency words also proves tricky for these students. In order to help these students along, Kathleen Morris and I have set up a computer program for them to work through. Some of the websites my students use each week are Popcorn Words, Sight Words with Sampsonand Spelling City.

The idea is that the students use these engaging websites to focus on the words and hopefully retain them more readily. The students have a checklist to tick off when they have achieved the different lists of words on the websites.

Recent testing has been very positive and all of my lower students have improved their fluency and they are reading the high frequency words more automatically in texts. My “struggling spellers” have made solid progress in writing the words since last term. Of course, it is an ongoing process and continual support and monitoring for these students is needed.

We have a “Phonemic Awareness” teacher who works with small groups of like-needs students to improve their reading and spelling skills for half an hour each day. These students receive homework to do each week, so they are getting lots of hands-on, fun practice.

As well as using the websites, my students practise writing their words each week during reading groups. I also have flash cards to improve ”automatic recall”, word games and Integration Aides work with these students whenever possible. My students have individual spelling lists to work on at home and these are checked weekly. Using play doh and magnetic letters to make words, and writing on the interactive whiteboard are other methods we use to help the students retain high frequency words. 

How do you help your students improve their high frequency words in reading and writing?

I thought I’d share a quick idea I used in my classroom this week to help promote a love of reading.

Reading is a part of every classroom in every school. Some students love it, while it seems others simply read because we tell them to! To help students feel motivated to read, I have them selecting their own “good fit” books which I blogged about here.

I am passionate about instilling a love of reading into my students. My Literacy Block features reading books, blogs, listening to stories on iPods, reading with the teacher, reading to friends, retelling stories to our class mascot Leo, reading plays, recording interesting words in texts and more.

I talk about how much I love reading, and I often have my students give verbal retells of books they are reading. To promote reading, we made a VoiceThread this week and published it on our class blog. Several students were asked to give a brief summary of their current “good fit” book to record on the VoiceThread. The students loved hearing themselves and we have received a number of comments on the blog post from students, parents and teachers. It also generated a good discussion in the classroom, about what books are popular, which series’ the students are enjoying and what books the children have at home.

It has been wonderful that other teachers and students from around the world have added comments to the VoiceThread too! Check it out below.

How do you help students develop a love of reading?

While the concept of “explicit teaching” is not new or revolutionary, my school has been focussing on it heavily over the past couple of years. The emphasis is that it’s not just our instructions that should be explicit, but our class discussions, small groupwork and one-on-one teaching moments with individual students needs to be highly explicit and focussed.

To teach explicitly, I believe: Lessons are focussed, strategies are reinforced, connections are made, examples are provided, language is direct and consise and students are encouraged to reflect on their learning. The original goals of the lesson are always in my mind as I work with small groups and conduct roving conferences during activities. If I feel that the purpose of the lesson is becoming a little lost, I will stop the students and ask them “what are we learning about today?” This helps the students and me to refocus and concentrate our attention to the aims of the lesson. 

Importantly, when I teach explicitly, I try to only have one main focus and stick to it. I also give my students multiple opportunities to practise the skills I am reinforcing.

My team teaching partner, Kathleen Morris, and I regularly evaluate our teaching and determine how to get the most out of our students, and we both agree we have never taught in a more explict fashion. When we sit down to plan, we work out what our focus is (we often have a weekly focus in Literacy) and how our students can best achieve the learning outcomes. If we feel an idea or activity is a little vague or indirect, we scrap it. We really feel that most of our teaching hours need to be spent on explicit teaching and learning.

Some examples of how I teach Literacy explicitly are shown in the presentation below. 

Of course, sometimes a less explicit approach is necessary. It is important to remember that students need to also direct their own learning, and they benefit from “self discovery” and independence.  It is sometimes helpful for students to learn on their own without being guided through the process by their teacher. This allows students to focus on what they choose, and explain their learning, strategies and discoveries in a less structured and focussed environment.

I enjoy and see the rewards of explicit teaching and I’d love to hear how you teach explicitly in your classroom.

How do you teach explicitly?

I was lucky enough to be selected to attend the Google Teacher Academy in Sydney, Australia on April 20 and 21. The Google Teacher Academy (GTA) is a free professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies.

Educators who wish to attend the GTA completed an online application and 54 classroom teachers, ICT specialists, administrators and librarians from around the world were chosen to attend the Sydney event. Upon completion, the educators are classed as Google Certified Teachers (GCT).

Most of the Google Certified Teachers (GCT) from GTA Sydney

We were told to prepare for a huge day and a half of learning, and that certainly proved to be true! We were taken on a fast-paced journey through Google’s free products and other technologies and my head is still spinning from the experience! It would be impossible for me to blog about everything I learnt, so I have decided that this post will be a brief overview of the GTA program and I will blog about specific Google education tools in the coming weeks.

I was really impressed with the leaders at the GTA. They are clearly experts in their field and they presented the tools in a logical, practical, interesting and entertaining way. Here’s a snapshot of three tools we learnt more about:

1. Google Search – We learnt how to use the Google search engine more effectively, the key being to maximise the chances of finding what you are after quickly. A few tips included using Related Searches, the Wonder Wheel, Google alerts, Google Squared for research, Advanced Searches, being specific in Google Images, Similar Images, Google News Timeline, Readability, Google Books, Google Custom Search, Google Curriculum and Google Scholar.

2. Google Apps for Education – We learnt the differences between Apps (inside a domain) and apps (outside a domain). Schools can set up a domain for a year level/school (more appropriate for younger students) and individual accounts (for senior students) to store their own information, collaborate with friends or publish for the world. Students, teachers and staff can share ideas more quickly and get things done more effectively because they have access to the same powerful communication and sharing tools.

3. Google Sites – This is Google’s version of a wiki. Google Sites is a free and quick way to create and share a website. You can embed content, add gadgets (similar to widgets) and there is a big storage capacity. Schools can create class webpages. Click here for some ideas for how Google Sites could be used for teachers.

Other tools we learnt about include…

It is difficult to summarise such a huge day and a half of learning succinctly, but here are four really positive elements from the GTA that stood out for me.

We also got a giftbag with lots of cool Google freebies!

I had a great time at the GTA and feel very privileged to now be a GCT! In a way, the learning has only just started and I look forward to further investigation, reflection, collaboration and experimentation to realise the full potential Google tools and products can offer our students. So stay tuned for future GTA posts!

For Google Certified Teachers: What did you enjoy most about the GTA experience?

Other readers: What Google products do you use?

What Google tool would you like to know more about?