A Summer School Mentality: Focus on Essential Standards Learning

Summer school fascinates me since the teachers have much less time (six weeks) to cover a year’s worth of material (40 weeks)- about 15% of the total time. They have to decide what is critical content that will help the students to do well on the final or state exam. They reduce the over all content to get to the critical essential parts. They do not have time for students to do fun activities that do not promote the student learning. They do not have time for long projects that only peripherially add to the students learning. They do not have time for random web surfing but they do have time for specific web sites that serve a precise purpose. They may show a small three to five minute clip from a movie instead of showing the whole movie. The teachers realize that each class activity has to relate specifically to the course’s goal. Although many students are repeaters in the content, there are some students who are taking course for the first time since they want to get ahead in their schooling.

If summer school teachers can boil down the curriculum and the students can do well on the final or state exam, it means that much of what teachers do during the year may be non-essential.

Let’s all develop a summer school mentality so that we focus on essential learning.

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Super-educating a Document Camera/Elmo

Back when we had opaque projectors, we were happy to just project a book page, a picture, etc. Now the quality is so much better than you can super-educate with it. Some examples:

Using a pencil or pen point to focus attention on a precise part of an image or passage

Writing on a copy of a student paper as the class suggests comments for improvement.

Using pre-word processed mini-pieces of paper to add higher-level questions or comments to the shown item. Just put the piece of paper above or below the image or passage to be projected.

Using a sheet of paper to reveal line after line as the students read it. A teacher can do focused comprehension questions or improve speed reading.

Having a student draw what you are saying.

How else do you super-educate your use of an document camera or Elmo?

Technology as Device or Communication

I started my educational career by teaching Spanish. When I discovered computers (TRS-80), I realized that they could help with communication. I have always seen technology as a communication tool. It helps me to communicate better to my students, it empowers them to develop high-level thinking activities, and it permits me to let students know how they are doing academically.

I see technology not as a strange device that gets in my way but as an extension of how I am as an educator. I view each new technology through this lens: How it help me to better communicate? It helps me to judge the potential of a new technology for the classroom. For example, if my school prohibits cellphones in the classroom or my students cannot afford text messaging, then using a cellphone as a communication tool does not make sense to me. A videoconferencing tool like Skype that enables two people to talk to each other from any distance is a great communication tool.

How do you communication with technology? What lens do you use to evaluate new technology?

Formative Feedback: Rate your Feedback

Which of these best represents the feedback you give students:
_____1. Nothing
_____2. A grade / score
____ 3. A general praise such as “Good job!”
____ 4. A more specific praise such as “Good paragraph!”
____ 5. A very specific praise such as “Strong topic sentence supported by three different examples!”
____ 6. A general improvement such as “Do better next time!”
____ 7. A general improvement such as “Write better paragraphs!”
____ 8. A general improvement such as “Write stronger paragraph with a topic sentence that clearly indicates the point that you are going to prove.”

You get 1 point for #5 and 1 point for #8. You get a zero for all the others since they do not give the student specific information about how to improve.

What was your score? What will you do to do better the next time? How can you set up a specific help comments word processing file that you can cut and paste from?

Speaking World Languages Through Technology

I am trying to help my son get ready for his first year of teaching Spanish. He’ll have three preps. I am amazed that there are not more online resources to help him in a conversational manner. There are plenty of grammar and of vocabulary sites. I have not found any that promote communication. (I’m counting basic restaurant dialogues as vocabulary since students memorize the conversation.) I do not see collections of pictures that students can ask questions about, pretend to be the people in the situation, explain what is happening, etc. A picture of a statue of Don Quixote does not promote communication. A street scene with a store and people doing things encourages real language use. Likewise, I do not find many real conversations that he can play/download for his class. Sure commercial companies have teaser ones but I could not easily find real conversations (a great use for podcasting). So much technology and so little real life language use. So much technology being used for lower level skills but not for the actual purpose of language which is to being able to converse with another person.

How do you promote real conversations using technology in your World Language classroom?

Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle

Improve student learning through teacher’s decisions and technology – harry.g.tuttle at gmail

Monthly Archives: July 2007