In reviewing my GAME plan, some progress has been made. My first goal is to engage students in real world issues. My plan is to find an on line collaborative project for my students. This week I settled on digital storytelling as part of our folklore unit. I found a great site to get me started (http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/index.html) but would still like to find another class that might be interested in participating in a project with us. In the meantime, my class just completed a project based on a real issue in our school. Our school counselor teaches classes and works with individual students on problems such as work habits and friendship issues. Recently there has been a spike in the number of guidance requests due to problems between friends. Third graders recently completed a language arts unit on friendship, so students broke into groups to review the books we read and identify the theme of each. We created a jigsaw lesson on the SMART board to share and record all of the themes. Then students typed letters to the guidance counselor sharing what they learned about making/keeping friends and the books that support their ideas. The counselor has access to each student’s hard drive so she can read the letters in digital form and respond to them in their digital folder. This isn’t exactly the collaborative project I was hoping to start, but it did address a real issue in the life of a third grader and provide students with an authentic audience.
For my second goal, advocating, modeling, and teaching the safe and ethical use of digital information, I have not worked on the actions laid out last week. However, I am meeting with four teachers on Friday who recently had SMART boards installed in their rooms. They have asked me to show them some ways I use that technology with my students. I plan to walk them through my day and share the recent lessons I did with my class on note-taking, evaluating web sites, and concept mapping. Hopefully this discussion will lead to a “technology support group” of sorts.
The plan has had to be revised a little but by reviewing it each week, I stay focused on my goals. I can definitely see the benefit of creating written GAME plans with students but the key is to regularly monitor the plans.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteI do hope that your digital storytelling project involves the type of collaboration that you are hoping for, but the letters to the guidance counselor sounds like an excellent way to introduce students to the concept of collaboration in learning. Not only did they have the chance to review their new knowledge and apply it to events around them, but their first form of collaboration truly shows them the value of collaborating—working together to improve the situation for everyone. While not large scale, hopefully this close-to-home collaboration project will excite them about the possibilities of what it can mean in someone else’s life.
I have also found that the weekly monitoring of the GAME plan seems to come quickly, but helps to stay on track. When starting the GAME plan process does seem like it would be best to choose a time frame, long or short, to allow the appropriate amount of time between each.
Paula
Paula,
ReplyDeleteYour folklore unit via digital storytelling sounds interesting. Will they research folklore and then create something that demonstrates what a folklore is through video? How exciting to create a story through this tech tool.
I am sure your students are better friends to one another now that they experienced a lesson in friendship. Have you thought about blogging so that students can journal their feelings and thoughts about friendship?
Paula,
ReplyDeleteStarting with a small project was a great confidence boost for me. It went really well and now I hope to slowly build up to larger scale projects.
Christina
Cristina,
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about having students create their own version of a familiar story. In our unit we read several different types and versions of stories. In particular, we have many versions of Cinderella and the Three Little Pigs. This unit gives students a great deal of choice when it comes to writing because they can create their own pourquoi tale, tall tale, fable, or fairy tale. They could create a new version of one of the tales or extend an ending.
I do think the students learned valuable lessons about friendship. It will be interesting to see if the number of guidance requests decrease. Like you, I would like to begin blogging but have not yet introduced this to my students.
Thanks for your comments,
Christina
Christina,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. I visited the Digital Story Telling site that you found and think it will be a great resource for you and your students. What do you imagine your students will be doing for the folklore unit? Will they be writing their own stories? I've always thought it would be fun to have students write a fractured fairy tale. Here is a resource I found, if you are interested. http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/fractured-fairy-tales-30062.html. Here is a another way students wrote their stories: http://www.tooter4kids.com/classroom/fractured_fairy_tales.htm#The%20Three%20Little%20PigsC.
I also want to say kudos on your Friendship activity. Last year I had very similar issues with my students. I too attempted engaging my class in various friendship activities, but never really felt like they were tremendously successful. I like how your kids collaborated with the guidance counselor. I am sure it was rewarding for her to see the successes of your students. I am not sure if you are interested, but I thought of a way to infuse technology into a friendship activity I do with my students. Usually, I write each child's name on a pendant and then the kids pass it around and write nice things about each other. I call them "Friendship Flags." They are always so excited to see what others wrote about them. Why not instead, have each child draw a self portrait or write their name in funky letters and scan it into a VoiceThread. Students would be required to write nice things on five of their classmates images.
Sarah Nofo,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea about the using voicethread so that students can comment on each other's self portraits. I would like to use your idea at the beginning of the school year to reinforce respect and friendship. Thanks!
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the resources and the great Voice Thread idea!
I would like to try using the digital storytelling. I hope you will post some of your best students' works for us all to see. I love the fact the students are digital natives and can use these tools way better than we ever could dream of. Just the other day, as I was trying to teach my students how to use movie maker and audacity they turned around and taught me how to do more things on movie maker than I knew. They are willing to try out every button and to explore to find everything there is to be found and the amazing thing is that they can do it faster and better than we ever could.
ReplyDelete