Technology in the Class

      Technology something that teachers both fear and love. The world is changing and technology is becoming a very constant thing in it but as teachers we have to walk a fine line with when to include it. There are some people who think Ipads and smartphones should be a regular thing in a classroom and actively a apart of their student's learning. While I agree with this idea I think that you must be careful not to alienate an populate of students who do not have access to these things. Schools do not always have the funds to provide technology to all students and it seems to me that technology is creating a greater gap between the haves and have nots.
     I do love technology and understand its purpose. Lesson plans can quickly become more interactive and there is so much more information to be discovered. I just don't think it's always realistic to assume that every student has technology at their house. If you make an assumption that a student has access to certain things at home then you may be discouraging them from trying because they will feel that they are always behind. I disagree with the use of smartphones in the classroom because there is no way to prevent all the distractions and once again you can't guarantee every student has one. I didn't have a cell phone until 8th grade and a smartphone until just this last August. I have experienced feeling left behind by my peers and sometimes in class a teacher would allow you to use your smartphone for something at which point I'd whip out my pretty cool slide phone and just pretend. A cell phone would just ask for kids to text each other or to instagram the classroom, which is exactly not the purpose of technology in the classroom. I like the idea of teachers having students place their cellphones in a basket in the beginning of class just so they are for sure not a distraction. There is some technology that is truly powerful in the classroom and that I love, which I will mention below but I think there is a time and place for it. If we teach students how to correctly use technology then it will become a powerful tool for their education and if we do not then it will just be a fancy place to take pictures and play games
     Ms. Cyz Approved Technology: 

1.  Diggo: I just recently learned about this one and it looks amazing! It's a place to organize all of your bookmarks. I have a million bookmarks and being able to organize them better will help me stay on top of the game.
2. Blogger: The site I'm using right now! Setting up a class blog is a great way to great a sense of community because it's under my name (or the class name) parents would not have to worry about privacy issue and they can always be a click away from seeing what is going on in the classroom.
3. Twitter: I htave a personal account but I want to think about adding a professional account. I think this is a wonderful way to connect to other teachers and learn from each other. Another great idea for using twitter is to have students make a twitter for a book character from a book they are reading and tweet like them.
4. Google Drive: A sixth grade sold me on the wonderfulness of google drive. This is an incredibly easy way to share documents with students or even create whole class writing work. An easy way to get around having kids make their own accounts is for a teacher to make a dummy account for the class and provide students with the password. 

These are just a few of the things that I think will be easy to incorporate into a classroom and I'm excited to find more technology as I continue my teaching journey. Please share some of your favorite technology in the comments section!         

Instructional Conversations

     When I first heard about instructional conversation, I thought it sounded like an easy task that involves having a conversations with students where you provide the information needed but that's not quite it. After completely my own instructional conversation I saw that it was so much more than what I originally thought. I recently did an instructional conversation with a small group of my 6th graders that went above and beyond my expectations.     Instructional conversations is such an important tool to have in your teaching toolbox because it has so many uses. One use that I find particularly important is building a sense of community. When having a conversation with students ideas are flowing and there is no right or wrong; instead we are listening to our peers and encouraging everyone to share. By creating a classroom where everyone's opinion matters, students will be more likely to want to share. Not only will my students learn from each other but I will too. I will get to hear my students ideas and theories in open environment. I want to make sure my students know that their ideas have value and that they can learn so much from their peers by listening to their ideas. Peter Johnson in Opening Minds brings up the idea of a dialogic classroom. . "A dialogic classroom is one in which there are lots of open questions and extended exchanges among students.  These are not classrooms based on the delivery of facts. They are classrooms in which there are multiple interpretations and perspectives-classrooms in which facts are considered in different contexts and in which people challenge each other's views and conclusions" (Johnston, 52). Students in the type of classroom setting will not have the pressure of simply learning and memorizing facts but they will instead engage in conversations that lead to learning, which in turn will create a community of knowledge explorers. This sense of community will help students feel safe when they share their ideas. I never want my students to feel like they cannot share their ideas or have fear that they will be rejected. By having the confidence and the comfort-ability to share their idea students are empowered- they realize they truly have a voice in the classroom. Another reason the instructional conversation is helpful particularly with language arts is it helps students use high order thinking skills to explore texts. Students will quickly see if they stop at the surface meaning of the text then their conversation will be dull but if they dig past that meaning they will have an incredibly enriched experiences. In the beginning a teacher will probably be needed to help further the conversation but as time goes on students will (hopefully) be able to prompt themselves and challenge each other to be critical of the books they are reading. Students are building confidence in their voice as well as learning to be able to support their thoughts.
 

    When I did my first instructional conversation I was very nervous; there are still things that I can improve on but I think that my student did benefit for the experience. We did a discussion about Esperanza Rising. Students used the questions from the previous night as a base of their conversation. The students were very excited to voice their opinions and that was wonderful however they seemed to only voice their opinions at me instead of bouncing off at each other. I hope the next time I do this to have students talk more to each other as opposed to just me; I may have to explain the idea of a book discussion to students. Students were passionate about the chapter and I was excited that they were empathising with the main character (something that we struggled with before). Their answers to the questions (both the ones they had worked on the night before and other questions I asked) showed the students were being critical of the text while making sure to included evidence for their thoughts. I want to help my students make more personal connections to the text during the next conversation (and perhaps this will help with students bouncing ideas off each other) and one way I can help students do this is to model it myself. My experience with the instructional conversation should me how it can help students build their voice but it did show me that I have to be very careful of my presence so I don’t take away from the empowering nature that students can benefit from.

Writing Instruction Reflection

     I was very worried about this whole project to begin with especially since my C.T only teaches writing in the afternoon when I'm already gone but it turns out that it was not so bad. My class has begun to read Esperanza Rising (an amazing book that you should definitely check out) and has to answer 4 questions with each reading assignment. The questions are high order thinking questions and we require the students to fill up the space. My C.T wants to prepare them for middle school and beyond when simple two sentences answers will just not do. I decided to use their writing for this assignment and found some pretty interesting things.

     I love Esperanza with a strong passion for many reason. It was the first book that I felt a connection to due to my Mexican heritage plus I thought it was a great story about rising above obstacles. I was pumped for my students to dive in and fall in love with both Esperanza and the Mexican culture, which is not happening as planned (poor Esperanza is not getting much love). The students are getting caught up on the Spanish words that are woven into the book and well to put it lightly they hate writing the response sheets. Yet we have to trudge on and they have to get used to doing assignments they don't necessarily like to do. When I first graded them with my C.T we did one together so I'd understand exactly what he was looking for and it was during this time I learned how smart students can be to get out of work. Some students used LARGE writing to fill the lines while others didn't even go to the end of one line before starting a new one. My C.T marked them down while sighing "They need to know this is not acceptable and the only way to do this is to take points off." After that first assignment I've seen some students flourish and others flounder,
which is why I waited until assignment 6 to use them for my reflection. At this point my students should know what is correct and what is not but it is interesting to see which ones are rising up to the challenge and those who are not.

     Carl Anderson preaches that in order to create meaningful lessons it is important to assess the students’ writing then create lessons that cater to those needs. An important thing that I want my students to learn is how to better utilize resources they have, specifically those for spelling. This lesson would be taught to the whole class because this is something that many students are struggling with. Even though using a dictionary is a simple task it needs to be taught so student can learn and appreciate this skill. Once students see that spelling does count for something for these assignments then hopefully they will make more of an effort.

     I’d like to work on students making their answer/writing relate to their own lives (finding a voice), this is one of the writing traits that Anderson says a lifelong writer possess. Some of my students do understand this idea and understand how to make sure this skill in their reading answers. I’d like to teach this in a small group setting so that my students can learn from each other. These lessons would be an example of guided practice beyond the lesson (Miller), which is where students will share their thinking process and work with each other. I like this way because it also helps build a sense of community among the writers with the students helping each other improve their writing.  

     Another lesson I want to do is specially for Student A. He would benefit greatly from a writing conference and perhaps something to be encouraged throughout this conference is that he is a writer who has ideas that are worth writing down and sharing. Some ideas I’d like to teach him on a one on one setting would be writing in complete sentences, reading back your writing to make sure it makes sense (revision), and crafting an answer that fully answers the question. I want to try an idea Debbie Miller had for reluctant writers where I would do the writing for him while he tells me the answer. This will show him how many ideas he actually have and hopefully encourage him to write more on his own. This will also take the pressure off when it comes to spelling and grammar errors. There would be other lessons to focus on the mechanics of writing but I first want to Student A to see his writing is worthwhile.