Tag Archives: students

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Using the I-PICK Strategy in the Library

Our teachers LOVE the I-PICK strategy for finding good fit books.  I must say that it is a strategy that just makes sense.  It doesn’t focus on one aspect of locating a book that matches a reader and it adjusts to whatever the purpose is for finding a book whether it’s independent reading or reading with a partner.

The I-PICK strategy stands for:

  • I choose my book
  • Purpose: Why am a I choosing a book today?
  • Interest:  What are the things that I like or want to learn about?  What holds my attention?
  • Comprehend:  Do I understand what’s going on by reading the words and pictures?
  • Know:  Do I know enough of the words to understand what’s going on?

Students often learn this strategy in their classrooms, and I typically do a follow-up lesson in the library to build a connection that this is a strategy that goes beyond the classroom.  This year, it seems I’m doing this lesson with almost every grade.  I’m trying to build connection even beyond the school during our time together.

We start with a quick brainstorm of all of the places where we can find books.  Students have named places such as school library, public library, bookstores (Barnes & Noble and Avid Bookshop), yard sales, thrift shops, and online.  Then, I shared a story about my own visit to the bookstore this summer to choose a book.  I wove in several things that I see students do, but honestly, that I also do.  After each bullet point that I shared, we paused and asked: “Does that make this a good fit book for me?”  The answer was usually “no, not completely” because each of these bullets is a piece of the puzzle of finding a good fit book and they all work together in order to make the puzzle complete.

mirandus

  • I went to Avid Bookshop to choose a chapter book, so I focused on that section of the store
  • I pulled a book off of the shelf that had a red cover because that’s my favorite color.  (The book happened to be Circus Mirandus)
  • I took the jacket off because there was a picture hiding underneath and I started to notice things like the flying girl, the mysterious man in a jacket and hat, the tent with a sun on it, etc.
  • I read the inside jacket flap about the book
  • I read the first three chapters of the book because they were short
  • All along the way, I stayed interested in the book.  I felt connected to what it was about.  I understood what was going on.
  • I bought the book and loved it!

I don’t want to pretend that the I-PICK strategy is a linear process because it’s not.  I don’t go from beginning to end of this strategy every time I choose a book.  I often bounce around in the process.  However, most of these pieces are usually there when I pick a book.  I don’t pick a book because it’s on my Lexile level.  I don’t choose a book because of how many points I get for the book.  I don’t choose a book because someone puts it on a list and tells me that I have to read it.  I choose my book because I’m genuinely interested in it and it speaks to my personality as a reader.  I think the I-PICK strategy surfaces some of the steps that readers often do and puts them into an easy to remember formula for readers to think about as they select books.

The purpose can always change.  Sometimes a reader may be looking for a book to read with a family member, so the independent comprehension or “knowing the words” doesn’t matter as much.  The interest step is always there no matter the purpose.  I want student to always seek books that interest them or spark their curiosity.

After our quick brainstorm and bookshop story on the carpet.  I moved students to tables.  On the tables are stacks of books pulled from all areas of the library.  The idea is for students to practice the IPICK strategy in a small setting first.  I know that not every student is going to find a book that interests them on the tables and that is totally ok.  I do let them move from table to table if they aren’t finding an interest.  Most students do find something because I choose such a variety, but some just don’t connect to what they see.  The teachers and I roam around and ask students about what is catching their eye and what they’ve done to see if it’s a good fit.  We might listen to them read a bit, talk about their interests, or share something they’ve learned from the book.

The next part is my favorite.  I ask students about what else interests them or what else they hope to take with them from the library today.  This is where I really get to focus the library on their individual interests.  Sometimes it’s very broad such as “a picture book” but sometimes it is extremely specific like “Pete the Cat”.  No matter what they say I direct them to a part of the library with their shelf marker to start searching for that good fit book using the IPICK strategy.

In the end, many students do in fact find books that fit their “reading level”, but more importantly find a book that they are excited about as they leave the library.  Some students still leave the library with a 300 page book even though they are reading on a lower level, but to me, it’s part of the process.  I can continue to share strategies for choosing books, talk about purpose, and most importantly help readers make a connection to the books that truly interest them.  It’s not perfect, but it’s a big step in how we each choose the books that we read.

 

 

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Sharing Our Math Strategies Using Educreations

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Second grade has spent some time tinkering with Educreations.  Educreations is a screencasting tool for iPad as well as a limited web-based program for computers.  Teachers can create an account and then have students join their class similar to Edmodo or Google Classroom.  As students login and save their work, the teacher can easily see each student’s work in the admin panel.  With Educreations, students can create a screencast about pretty  much anything.  They can draw or type, upload their own photographs as backgrounds, and search for existing photos for backgrounds.  Each movement on the screen as well as the audio is recorded and saved as a flash video.  Each video has a link to make it easy to share a student’s work online with the world.

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Math is not one of the main areas that develops into collaborative projects in the library.  I think we naturally gravitate to reading, language arts, science, and social studies.  However, I would love to support math in the library!  This year we made one of our school improvement plan goals centered on something that could potentially be a project for the library.

Students will utilize personal learning devices to create math instructional videos that demonstrate ways to solve math problems. These will be shared within and outside the school community.

A few teachers have been exploring this, but the 2nd grade team decided to take this on as a grade level project.  After tinkering with the app in the library, I asked teachers to setup a class account and have students join their class.  To help them, I made a screencast:

When students arrived for the 2nd lesson in the library, we quickly reviewed the many buttons in Educreations.  The students did all of this review based on the tinkering that they did in lesson one.  I reminded them that this 2nd work time was not about tinkering.  It was about focusing on using Educreations to show our mathematical thinking.  I reminded students that this would be very different than just solving a problem on a piece of paper or a computer.  Showing our thinking means that we have to talk about what is going on inside our heads.  During our mini lesson, I created a quick example to show them what I mean by sharing what is in our heads.

educreations example

 

The teachers and I gave students 3 math problems to choose from for their first practice tutorial:  14 + 18, 26 + 13, and 57 + 39.  I did this lesson with 2 classes at a time, so we paired students together on an iPad.  One partner wrote one of the math problems down, created a tutorial, logged in to his/her account to save, and then logged out.  The other partner was there for technical support.  Then, the students switched roles.  They did this back and forth until time ran out.

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The main problem we ran into was when students would forget to logout of their account.  The next student would record a video and then it would save that video into the other students account.  When you press logout, the videos disappear from the iPad because they save into the individual student account.  This became a great piece of learning that I built into lessons with other classes.  I think it will just take some practice to remember these specific steps of saving.  Also, if there are existing Educreations videos on the iPad when a student opens the app, those should be deleted before the student logs in.  Otherwise, those practice videos get saved into the student’s account.  It’s not a big deal, but it does cause their account to be a bit messy and it takes up storage.

Students were very productive and focused during the recording of the tutorials.  There was almost no questions about how to use Educreations.  I was able to see a big benefit from taking time to tinker in the first lesson, and it is something that I want to continue to experiment with.

Now, teachers are reserving iPads to use in their classrooms so that students can continue to create math tutorials.  I sent a follow up email to teachers to let them know that I am happy to work with small groups, individual students, or even the whole class again if needed.  Some of the teachers want to schedule another series of lessons using word problems instead of basic addition problems.  When we do this, we will use the camera to take a picture of the word problem and make it the background.

 

 

Riley's math problem I Educreations_ - https___www.educreations.com_lesson_

Check out how Riley solved 57 + 39.

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The Power of Tinkering Before Assigning a Project

Educreations Day 2 (2)One of my library goals this year is to give students, teachers, and families opportunities to dream, tinker, create, and share.  That has meant many things during the course of this year, but one of the things that so many of our teachers are embracing with me is intentionally planning time for students to tinker with a new tool before we ask them to create a project with it.

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During collaborative meetings and virtual planning with teachers, I often ask if we can build in time for students to explore a technology tool with no limits, rules, or assignments.  The only assignment is to push as many buttons as you can and see what you can figure out about that tool.  In addition, there is an expectation that students will pass on their expertise to others as they figure something out through tinkering.

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There have been several instances of this type of tinkering happening this year.  Ms. Hocking gave her Kindergarten students time to tinker with storykit.  All of third grade tinkered with Puppet Pals before a folktale project.

This week, first grade is also taking time to tinker with the Puppet Pals app as they prepare for an opinion writing assignment in English Language Arts.

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Finally, 2nd grade is about to start creating math screencast tutorials using the Educreations app for iPad.

As I’ve facilitated these tinkering sessions, I’ve started to adjust how the sessions run.  We start on the floor to talk about tinkering.  Students share some knowledge about what they already know about tinkering.  Some of the responses I’ve heard are:  a time to explore, a time to be busy, and figuring things out.  I follow this with my own understanding of tinkering.  I establish two big ground rules: 1. Push every button you see in an app and see what it does.  2. Share what you learn.

In most classes, I breeze through the app with very little explanation of what I’m doing just so that students get a quick preview of what they will be looking at and what they might end up with.  In Educreations, I wrote 2+2=____ and then drew out a picture of how I solved that math problem.  I didn’t talk about clicking on colors, the microphone, or really anything.  I just wanted them to get a quick view of the end result.

Then, students had a large chunk of time to explore on the iPads.  For 2nd grade, we did this in pairs, but some classes have been individuals.  My role was to walk around and observe.  A few students were tempted to ask me how to do something, but I responded with a “give it a try”.  Very rarely did I do something for a student.  The only time I intervened was when students needed help getting the app up and running or if the iPad had a technical problem.

As I observed, I would stop and ask students questions like “What did you figure out?” or “Why did you choose to do that in that way?” or “Now that you’ve seen how that works, would you do it a different way next time?”.  These were common questions that I used again and again and they certainly were not ones that I started with.  I was very tempted at first to just jump in and show students something, but I learned to step back and ask questions that allowed students to show what they know.

I saw students naturally leaning over and helping other students, but during my observations, I sometimes saw an opportunity for 2 students to partner and share their learning.  This was another role for me to serve as a connector between students.

The energy level was high, and there was some frustration.  However, I did not see any student give up, get completely off task, or leave without learning something about  how the app worked.

At the closing of each lesson, we gathered back on the floor.  I connected an iPad to the projector and had students come and demo their learning for the rest to see.  We tried to move as quickly as possible to share as many tips as we could.  A big observation for me during this time was how attentive students were.  I’ve never seen students watch a peer presenter with such focus.  Usually, they are having side conversations or tuning out to think about other things.  This time they were watching, listening, and giving connection signals if they had also figured out that part of the app.  If time allowed, I had students turn to one another on the carpet and share even more that they had discovered.  During the closing, I tried to connect what students had discovered with the actual project that we would be implementing next.  For example, a student did a demo of how you can erase while you are recording and I added that this might be a tool you would use while modeling subtraction in a video.

Now that this time of tinkering has happened, our next step is to do the work.  First grade will use Puppet Pals to create opinion puppet shows and 2nd grade will create math tutorials to share.  I’m eager to see how productive students are now that they have had time to get familiar with the app before a curriculum standard expectation was placed on them.  My want to continue to explore the power of tinkering and how it can support the work that we are trying to achieve with students.

 

 

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September 11th: A Global Perspective

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Each year our 5th graders take an entire day to explore the tragic events of September 11, 2001.  Each year, the students become more and more removed from the topic because they weren’t even born at the time of the tragedy.  The events of September 11 and the impact they had on our war on terrorism are part of the 5th grade social studies standards, but we also spend a great deal of time at our school on social emotional learning and how we support one another in a community.

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Each year I write a blog post about how we teach September 11th, and each year there is a new addition or a new angle in which to explore the day.  This year, students opened the day in their classrooms by talking about everyday heroes.  They shared where their own families work and how each of us can be an everyday hero.

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Then, students split into 4 groups and rotated through 4 experiences every 30 minutes which were facilitated by me and the classroom teachers.

Experience 1:  Haiku poetry.  With Ms. Mullins, students learned about the unlikely heroes of the day including dogs.  They studied the poetry form of haiku and how a brief 3-line poem with 17 syllables can magically express a feeling or an image.  They focused their haiku on heroes.  They didn’t have to specifically write about the heroes of 9/11, but many chose to.

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Experience 2:  Response to tragedy from afar.  With Ms. Selleck, students looked at how people around the country and the world responded to the tragic events of 9/11.  It was a time that people wanted to take action and do something to help.  Children wrote letters, drew pictures, and made cards.  The Maasai people of Africa offered 14 cows as a gift for America.  Ms. Selleck shared Carmen Agra Deedy’s story 14 Cows of America and students considered how people who weren’t even in our country wanted to help.  This posed an interesting question of how we might respond to the tragedies taking place every day in other countries.

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Experience 3:  Heroes of 9/11.  There were so many heroes that stepped forward on 9/11 and many of those heroes lost their lives in the process.  At this experience, students took a look at many example of heroes and read the story Fireboat by Maira Kalman.  Students learned about this old fireboat first launched in 1931 and how it was called to duty on 9/11 to help pump water to fight the fires.  Students designed a drawing to represent the many heroes that took action on 9/11.

Experience 4: The events of 9/11.  This is the most sensitive of the experiences for students because we all react differently to seeing the tragedy of 9/11.  Over the years, I’ve developed a pathfinder of sites that explore 9/11 from multiple angles.  There are interactive timelines, eyewitness accounts, actual video footage of the day, oral histories of memories from victims’ family members, virtual tours of the memorials, and cartoon videos explaining the events in kid-friendly language.  We start with a video:

This video frames that on 9/11 we remember but we also take action to create good in the world.  I invite students to view the various resources and reflect on what they might do to create good instead of evil.  At the bottom of the pathfinder there is a padlet where students can record their actions that they want to take.  During this experience, I always tell students that they don’t have to watch any of the videos.  They can also take a break at any moment if the tragedy just becomes too much to handle.

This year, 2 new pieces were added to this experience.  First, Gretchen Thomas, a UGA teacher in instructional technology, brought one of her #EDIT2000 classes to support students.  This was a piece that I’ve always felt was missing from the pathfinder experience.  September 11th is such a heavy topic, and I do worry about how kids are processing the information.  With these UGA students, we were able to pair every 5th grader with a UGA student to have reflective conversation about each website, video, and story that students experienced.  UGA students shared their own understanding of 9/11 as well as their own memories of being in elementary school when it happened.

 

I’ve also been thinking a lot about global thinking, global collaboration, and global perspectives.  This year, I decided to make a Flipgrid well in advance of today.  Through social media, I’ve been sharing the Flipgrid in the hopes that multiple people will share their own perspectives of 9/11.  While there wasn’t an overwhelming response to share stories, the stories that were shared were powerful.  The students in Gretchen Thomas’s class shared their own memories of being in elementary school at the time.  These stories included very personal connections to the tragedy such as family members who were in New York on the day of the tragedy and a student coming into New York on a plane from another country and being diverted to Canada.  Several librarians stepped up to share stories as well.  Beth Miller of Georgia shared her story of working in the World Trade Center during the bombing in the 1990’s and how she had family and friends who were in the towers on 9/11.  Her family made it but several friends did not.  Elissa Malespina of New Jersey shared the story of her husband being in New York on 9/11.  He was on one of the last trains coming into the city.  It was chilling to think how many people have been affected by 9/11 in very personal ways.  Even if you don’t have a personal connection, there are many stories about where people were when the tragedy happened.  I wish that I could talk about every story on this Flipgrid because each one is meaningful in its own way.  Please take time to listen to these stories and feel free to add your own.

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This Flipgrid was a part of the pathfinder but it was also a place that students recorded their own thoughts at the end of the day.  Students spent some time reflecting in classrooms.  Then, they came out into the 5th grade hallway with iPads to record their reflections on the Flipgrid.  Another of Gretchen’s UGA classes came to assist with this process.  I had instructions typed up with the Flipgrid code and we got as many students recorded as possible at the end of the day.  Students loved collaborating with students from UGA to create their videos.

I think that this project has such potential for a global collaborative project.  What would it be like if students in another country shared the tragedies taking place in their own countries?  What would happen if our students in the  US considered how they could respond to the tragedies taking place in other countries?  What are people’s perspectives on 9/11 from other countries around the world?  What do everyday heroes look like around the globe?

My hope is that this project can continue in some way this year.  If it doesn’t, I hope that next year’s layer that gets added on is developing a more global perspective on tragedies around our world and how we respond to those tragedies as a global society.

 

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Expecting the Miraculous Now and in the New Year

photo (4)Over the summer of 2013, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance reader copy of Flora & Ulysses:  The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo.  She is by far one of favorite authors because her words always seem to speak to me in some way beyond just the story.  On p. 130, I came across a quote that I have honestly carried with me in my heart and mind since reading it.  In fact, it has become a motto that I embrace in our school library because it exemplifies the brand that our library represents.

“All things are possible,” said Dr. Meescham.  “When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day.  Or every third day.  Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day.  But still, we expected it.  You see what I’m saying?  Even when it didn’t happen, we were expecting it.  We knew the miraculous would come.” ~Kate DiCamillo

Expect the miraculous.  It’s the phrase that I cheezily say to myself as I enter school each day.  It’s what I remind myself of when I sit down to plan with teachers.  It’s what I whisper to myself in the midst of a technology fail.  It’s what came out of my mouth in a recent interview with School Library Journal:

For wary school librarians, Plemmons adds, “My philosophy is, if we don’t expect miraculous things to happen in our libraries, then we’re just limiting ourselves. Why totally shut a door when we don’t know where it leads to?”

I don’t want to put limits on what kids are allowed to do just because I might not be an expert in a particular tool or concept.  I’m willing to try anything new with any age of students and expect that something great will happen even if it’s not what I imagined happening in my head.  In Invent to Learn, Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager say,

“It is unacceptable and unnecessary to deny children the opportunity to work on something they are passionate about because the teacher is not an expert in that particular field.”

Looking back through my posts of 2013, I see so many incredible things that happened in our library because we (myself, students, teachers, families, connected educators, and special guests) expected the miraculous.  Here are just a few:

  • 5th graders working together to design, plan, persuade, collect, paint, and dedicate during the Little Free Library project.  We now have 2 Little Free Libraries thanks to their hard work.  We went into the project with so many unknowns, but we always expected that the libraries would exist in our community.  Check out the posts!
  • 2nd graders developing their writing skills through blogging and connecting with students in Van Meter, Iowa.  This project included a miraculous connection with author/illustrator Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw.  Check out the posts!  Post 1  Post 2   Post 3

  • 3rd graders engaging in action research to solve a real-world problem at our school.  Their investigations included webcam observations, indoor and outdoor observation, skyping with Cornell University and a former Barrow Buddy via Skype, and email communication with other experts.  Their work resulted in many attempts at saving birds from crashing into our school windows.  Post 1  Post 2
  • 1st graders using Twitter to write persuasive messages about our environment.  Check out the post!
  • Multiple connections for special events like World Read Aloud Day, World Book Night, Dia de los Ninos, Read for the Record, and Talk Like a Pirate Day.
  • Students purchasing books for our library with their very own student book budgets.  Check out the post!

  • Students from throughout the school crowd-sourcing a poem using Google Forms for Poem In Your Pocket Day.  Check out the post!
  • Our annual Poem In Your Pocket Days live on Adobe Connect with viewers in multiple states and countries.  Post 1   Post 2
  • Kindergarten students becoming experts inTux Paint and making an informational video to teach others to use the program.  They even connected with students in Van Meter, Iowa to share their expertise.  Post 1  Post 2

  • Moving into a brand new library and working together to learn how to use it.  Check out the post!
  • The entire 4th grade working together in the library over several days to research explorers and Native Americans as well as challenge their thinking about heroes and villains.  Check out the post!
  • 2nd graders using Thinglink to publish monster stories.  Check out the post!
  • A Picture Book Month Smackdown with 2 authors and schools in 5 different states.  Check out the post!

  • After our district decided not to buy a 3D printer, we continued expecting the miraculous.  Miraculously, Donors Choose and Makerbot created a partnership and overnight a 3D printer was funded for our library!  Check out the post!
  • Classes in every grade level committed to exploring computer programming during the Hour of Code.  I’m expecting more miraculous things to come out of this one hour experience.  Post 1  Post 2
  • Our very first student-made design was printed on our 3D printer.  Grant and I expected the miraculous (even though we were prepared for failure).  Check out the post!

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When we give kids the space to explore, the tools to create, the connections to expertise and collaboration, and a global audience to share with, miraculous things will happen.  I know that not everyone believes this.  Recently, an article was published in the Athens Banner Herald highlighting out Hour of Code activities.  In the article, I was quoted saying:

“I encourage them to think about how coders aren’t afraid to make mistakes,” Plemmons said. And when they do make a mistake, they work with their peers to fix it.

Even though I try to avoid reading online comments (and I wish I had used the word failure instead of mistake), I was disturbed by one commenter’s post.  She said:

Such a lax attitude is not acceptable in my book. I am afraid to make mistakes in my work so I make sure all possibilities are considered and all details are addressed and included. I also make great effort to anticipate any questions my clients may have and am ready with an answer before I sit down at a meeting. I don’t need to ask others to help me fix any problems; I’ve already fixed them.

It’s good to tell kids to relax and not worry about making a mistake as they learn, but that real work for hire must be near perfect without wasting a lot of people’s time or your own.

The most disturbing part of this comment to me was the notion that giving kids space to fail, step back, re-evaluate, and try again is having a lax attitude.  Many major companies encourage their employees to fail early and fail often. This allows their employees the freedom to be innovative and take risks knowing that those risks are what unveil the latest great ideas. By failing early, learning from failure, and fine tuning their products, companies are able to release the best quality product that they can. In the digital world, companies continue to listen to the consumer and push out updates to improve any mistakes or ideas that they missed. This is the same kind of situation with students. They aren’t publishing final products online that are full of mistakes. Rather, they are attempting to make the computer do what they want it to do, trying some code, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and fine tuning their work. No one sits down and makes a perfect product without first failing.  Expecting the miraculous certainly doesn’t mean that you are expecting things to be perfect on the first try.

I was reminded of the importance of failure when I was recently reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.  Reynolds says:

“The fear of making a mistake, risking an error, or being told you are wrong is constantly with us. And that’s a shame. Making mistakes is not the same thing as being creative, but if you are not willing to make mistakes, then it is impossible to be truly creative. If your state of mind is coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will always settle for the safe solutions–the solutions already applied many times before.”

“Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We worked on our art, sometimes for hours without a break, because it was in us, although we didn’t intellectualize it. As we got older, fears crept in along with doubts, self censoring, and overthinking.”

In 2014, I am going to continue expecting the miraculous with my students, my collaborators, my families, and my peers.  We will embrace our failures, learn from them, and continue to create innovative work together.

I am going to start 2014 by asking my students, “What miraculous things do you expect in 2014?”  They will record their responses on a Flipgrid.  I invite you to add your own expectations to the same Flipgrid.  Go ahead.  Give it a try.  Expect the miraculous.

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