BreakoutEDU on the 1st Day of School? Why Not!!

BreakoutEDU on the 1st Day of School? Why Not!!

I designed a Breakout for the first day of school, and the energy was electric. The kids have been begging for another one, every day since. After participating in a BreakoutEDU session at the Stanislaus GAFE Summit this summer, I was intrigued. In order to really understand all the pieces though, I had to make my own. That’s just how this girl’s brain works!

I started out by thinking of the things I would normally do the first day: Put students in ABC order by their first name, have them join my Google Classroom, get them to explore my website, etc… Then I worked out how to make those tasks into clues. It took me many pages of scratch paper, a Google drawing, and several hours of my summer to put it all together, but it was so worth it!!

Here is my map with all of the pieces, put together on a Google Drawing.

I started it off with a Google form I wanted to them to fill out so I could get to know them better. At the end, they saw the following message. My intent here was to get them familiar with the logo.

Next I had them line up in ABC order by first name to get their class numbers. I recorded their names on the number chart, and put the list right underneath this sequence of numbers on the board. This would lead them to the 5 letter word lock.

Then, I showed them the Google Form that would be their lockbox for the day (My next breakout will be with a physical box and locks, but the digital one worked great too!). Each lock is set with Data Validation so they had to put in the exact code in order to break out.

I explained how a Breakout worked and that a key piece would be teamwork. I made it clear that for this Breakout, they could help each other, share ideas, and that the whole class was one team. It was helpful that each student had a chance to enter the codes in on their own Chromebook so that they all felt success.

The date lock came from this poster I had on one of my bulletin boards. I put the Breakout logo on the bottom as a clue, but it was the last clue they discovered!

To get to the directional lock, they needed to join my Google Classroom and open their first assignment. I posted the Classroom logo with my class code in several places around the room. The students had never participated in a Breakout before, so I gave them more hints than I will in the future.

The discovery of this lock took about 15 minutes, and went something like this:

Me: Does anyone know what this logo is? (Pointing to the Classroom logo)

Them: Yeah, Google Classroom.

Me: Hmmmmmm.

Them: (Not getting the hint)

Me: (5 min later) So… Has anyone joined my Google Classroom yet?

Them: No, how do you do that?

Me: I don’t know, can anyone figure it out?

(They used Classroom last year so they knew how to get to it)

Them: OK, I’m in classroom, but I don’t see yours! How do we find it?

Me: I don’t know! Is there anything on the screen that will help?

Them: (The excitement is building, and buzzing around the room) Hey! Click the plus sign!!!!

Them: It says I need a code!!! What is your code??!!!

Me: I don’t know!! How can you figure it out?

One of them: (Yelling across the room) I found it!!! It’s right here on the board!! Type in z1dd4l!!

A bunch of them: I’m in!!! There’s an assignment!!

(They open the assignment)

One quiet student whispers to her team: I figured out the directional lock.

It took a while to trickle around the classroom, but they eventually all got it. Now the energy is spiking and there are kids all over the room with Chromebooks. They are working with different people, asking for help, sharing ideas, and watching for the next person to pick up a trail. I can’t stop smiling.

The next clue involved a note I left on their desks to welcome them into the room in the morning. After they read it in the morning, I told them to put it in a safe place because they would be needing it later.

The clues here led them to a page on my website with an infographic where they discovered that I had 6 job titles, 2 college degrees, 3 hobbies, and 3 professional pillars. This was the number lock.

(Thanks @creativeedtech for the template and idea)

I had shared this infographic with them earlier in the morning, and one student figured out that the note referred to the infographic. He asked where he could find the infographic, and I told him it was on my website. That clue trickled around the classroom, and they eventually discovered a bit.ly link on the board that took them there. Number lock solved!

The first pair that broke out had the best facial expression. I wish I had captured that to share!! They all helped each other figure the pieces out, and we gathered at the carpet for a reflection session.

Here are some of their comments:

“It felt good when I was the one who discovered what the clue meant.”

“I liked the challenge.”

“I liked the teamwork.”

“It was exciting.”

“I was glad when someone helped me.”

It was a winner of an activity that achieved the main purpose of a BreakoutEDU: Collaboration. I will definitely be doing more, although now that I get the ins and outs of the whole piece, I will gladly use one that someone else has already built!!

Thank you, Mark Hammons and James Sanders for sharing this goodness with the educational community. You can join the movement here: http://www.breakoutedu.com/ There’s a very active Facebook group and Twitter feed as well where people are sharing ideas all the time. Not only is this getting students to collaborate, but educators too! @breakoutEDU

Epic Genre Sort

One of my goals this year is to create a culture where reading is prolific. In order to kick that mood off, I wanted the students to explore the classroom library. I thought about passing books around in a circle, or doing some book talks, but I decided to go big and make it memorable.

BAM!!

I had the students go up one at a time and grab 5 books off the shelf to spread out on the floor. We pushed the desks back to make more room and made sure to keep a path around the perimeter so we didn’t step on any.

After they were all out on the floor, we discussed genres. They told me what genres they could see on the floor, defined them, and held up an example from the pile. Here’s our rough draft, all in their language. Next, I’m going to show them some definitions from other sources and have them rewrite our definitions so that they are more precise.

When I asked them to raise their hand if they had their eye on a book that they wanted to read from the mess on the floor, they enthusiastically raised their hands. #missionaccomplished

We started by pulling out some of the more specialized  genres like graphic novels and biographies. We pulled out non-fiction titles as well.

Some of the kids were starting to stress out about the mess, so it was time to put them back. I put a sticky note on each table with a letter of the alphabet and asked each kid to pick up 3 books from the floor and put them on the correct table (Alphabetical by author’s last name).

Finally, they put them back on the shelf with the sticky note label (for now).

It’s a work in progress, but the students led it, worked together, and have a great sense of ownership over our library.

We all breathed a sigh of relief when we had a clear space on the carpet again. I’m doing this every year from now on. It was quite a leap to let go of my own system of labeling and organizing, but it felt so right!

The First Week of School

First Week of School

Welcome to my brain.

Source: http://www.speech-therapy.com.au/assets/uploads/brain.jpg?415a70

I found out I was going back to the classroom on April 14th, 2016. I had been away from my own class for the past 4 years working at a district and county office, supporting teachers from TK-12th grade. I knew immediately that coming to Westlake Charter School was going to be a good move for me. I immediately started smiling more thinking about getting back to the ground level with kids.

At first, I didn’t know if I would be teaching 4th or 5th grade, so I just started collecting. My collection looked like this:

It was a spew of ideas with no focus or structure. I knew a few things for sure.

• I wanted to have students help define the culture of the classroom.
• I wanted to integrate student choice.
• I wanted to be clear about my academic expectations, and I wanted to gather feedback from students.
• I wanted to create an atmosphere where reading was exciting and prolific.
• I wanted to scaffold my teaching of academic conversations.
• I wanted to fully integrate technology in ways that weren’t even possible when I was last in the classroom.

I started fleshing some of the ideas out and made a First Week folder. I fully wrote out some of my lesson plans, and the ideas began to take shape a little bit more.

I found out for sure I was going to be teaching 5th grade, and started working with my team. We spent 2 days defining what it meant to each of us to teach, lead, guide and facilitate 5th graders. It was exhausting and exhilarating. Our day ended looking like this:

I was also able to go to a Google Summit with the Tech Team at Westlake and we all discovered BreakoutEDU. We discussed throwing in a breakout the first week of school as a teambuilding activity. I started designing, and came up with this:

Now things were starting to take shape. I had a student and parent survey crafted, a website put together, and my list of things I wanted to teach the first few weeks.

Then came four days of Responsive Classroom training. My whole team was involved in the training, so we were able to have a few concrete conversations about how to implement the ideas.

Responsive Classroom is based on creating a culture where students feel involved, included, safe, and able to learn.

I had a chance to meet and work with some amazing educators from all over the state for these four days. We brainstormed, tested out ideas, tried out different components of the program, and helped each other see how implementation would be possible. As we processed each component of the workshop, my first week started becoming more crystallized.

I now have a plan for how to facilitate student hopes and dreams, which will lead into class rules. The products created from that series of activities will go on the board to the right where I was going to have students define what they would contribute to the class culture. What was a vague idea has now become clear.

In the center board, students will be collecting lines from their reading that make an impact. They will write them directly on the blue paper so that we have a collection of quotes from a variety of great books (Thanks for the idea Carly!). We will be doing some Growth Mindset work as well (Don’t worry, I have the missing T to add to the title!). All of the boards are blank so that the students can contribute the content. I am excited to see the transformation of my ideas become their reality!

I knew that I wanted to teach students to have high-quality Academic Conversations that were focused and built upon each other’s words. I now have a plan for how to introduce the concept using Instructional Modeling.

I knew that I wanted to teach my students about how to gather evidence from sources and talk about them in a meaningful way in order to get to deeper production of work. I had started collecting sources to build this skill from, and I knew I wanted to work on this a little bit each day as part of a routine.

Now I have a plan for building this skill within the structure of a Morning Meeting.

It’s all starting to come together, and it’s feeling fantastic. I can’t wait to see how I have grown as a teacher in the past four years. Thank you to everyone I have learned from and all those that will continue on the journey with me. Westlake Explorers- Let’s go!

Professional Summer Reads- 2016

Professional Summer Reading

Here’s how I’ve started my summer off…With some great reads!!

(Don’t worry, I do alternate between fun and professional reading.)

Here are some of my professional recommendations.

Kids Deserve it!

By Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome

My Review:

A quick read that made me laugh, cry and cheer. Great read for administrators, instructional leaders, and classroom teachers. I appreciated the specific and honest examples that Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome included in this book. It is inspiring and it spreads a positive message for education. @KidsDeserveIt @awelcome & @techninjatodd

The Classroom Chef

By: John Stevens and Matt Vaudrey

My review:

These guys keep it real! They made me laugh often as they talked about their journey from first year teachers and on throughout their classroom years. I related to how they changed, evaluated, and took risks with their lessons. They did a great job explaining how they questioned the tasks, assignments, and assessments they put before their students. They use food analogies to take you from Velveeta, to a five course meal by tweaking, adding, and omitting pieces of their curriculum. Thanks for sharing your journey, and for helping me to consider mine! http://www.classroomchef.com/

@classroomchef @jstevens009 | @mrvaudrey

Quiet Power

By: Susan Cain

My Review:

I am reading this book out loud with my 11 year old son, and it is so powerful for both of us. Susan Cain does a great job of honoring the quiet power that introverts have. She identifies situations where they might feel awkward and gives them strategies for how to navigate successfully. She targets group work, public speaking and social interactions at school. This is a great read both for me as a teacher and a parent of an introverted child. Quiet Revolution

@susancain

The Reason I Jump

By: Naoki Higashida

My Review:

What a great read! Such important insights into the mind of a 13 year old boy who has Autism. It is written in Q & A format so you can jump around to any part of the book that applies in that moment in time. He addresses why he flaps, repeats, makes sounds, is attracted to being outside, and so much more. It is amazing to me that he has found a way to be so articulate through his keyboard when it is so hard for him to verbally express himself. It makes me wonder about what is going on in the minds of so many of our kids. Also, check out the podcast on Cult of Pedagogy titled: What the Mother of an Autistic Child Wants You to Know. It's where I learned about this book.

Genius Hour in Special Education

Genius Hour in Special Education

The idea behind Genius Hour, or 20% time, is to allow students to choose their own area of interest to learn about. I’ve been wanting to try Genius Hour since I heard Kevin Brookhouser speak about it at a Dry Creek Staff Development day, several years ago. However, I haven’t had a class of my own for the past four years to try it out with! Luckily, I’ve been able to develop a relationship with two Special Education teachers who agreed to give it a try with me.

I have been talking to teachers all over the county who have tried Genius Hour projects. All of them see the benefits, and all of them have struggled through the process of how best to implement the idea. It’s the perfect project for modeling our own Growth Mindset, that’s for sure!

When I pitched the idea to these two teachers, their initial reaction was, “That sounds exciting!”

Then, our conversation turned to the realities of what it would mean for Emotionally Disturbed students. I was most worried that doing an open ended project like this would not be routine enough for the students. I really struggled with how much structure to use. All three of us agreed that we would need to be fully flexible, differentiate for each student, and not put too much pressure on them to produce.

The students ranged from 4th-12th grade and were split into two rooms, a 4th-7th, and an 8th-12th grade group. I started out in each class with a whole class discussion on the background of Genius Hour, and a brainstorming session for their own ideas. We used  A.J. Juliani’s resources as a template, and the results looked like this:

This part of the process worked really well. They were intrigued that I would ask them what they liked to do when no one was telling them what to do, or what they do when they were supposed to be doing something else. After those brainstorming discussions, putting their ideas into the bracket system helped them choose a focus. That was the end of session 1. The majority of students were able to pick a topic at the end of that session.

When I came back the next time, we used that topic and expanded upon it. This is where it started to get tricky with the 4th - 8th graders. Some of them wanted to partner up, others didn’t like their idea, and some really wanted to switch to an idea that their friend was doing. The 9-12th graders were mostly content with their choices and stuck to them.

The expansion of the idea was tough whole class. I would have liked to have taken more time on this. One teacher I talked with suggested spending a lot of time teaching the students to come up with a really good question. It would have been great to have them replace a verb like learn with something higher up the Bloom’s Scale.

The variety of topics they picked really spoke to the individuality that Genius Hour is supposed to embody. A group of them became really excited about making a volcano. That energy turned into a whole class lesson on volcanoes, and a baking soda/vinegar explosion.

One high school student already knew how to play the bass, but he wanted to investigate the history. He ended up learning many new things about his craft and said he loved the project.

One of the middle school students wanted to learn how to become a police officer. They had worked through a couple of lessons on police officers in class, and he wanted to take it a bit further. He ended up doing some online research, and then coming up with questions that he wanted to ask an officer. We were able to email two officers, and he got personal responses from both of them. That made his day.

Another middle schooler wanted to learn how to fold Origami. He really wanted to fold Pokemon and spent a lot of time looking at YouTube videos to try to figure it out. He got a lot of the other students hooked on it as well. He didn’t end up making any Pokemon, but his end result was very satisfying to him!

The end result:

He said he learned to be patient, not to give up, and to just keep trying if you don’t get it the first time. #lifelessons

A different middle schooler wanted to figure out how to make a Viking Ship. He already knew a lot about Vikings, so now he wanted to build. He found a YouTube video to watch where a teacher gave instructions for making a cardboard ship.

His goal was to make one that would float. He wrote down all the dimensions and supplies he would need from the video and ended up with two partners who were scooped up by his excitement about the idea.

They got to work, measuring, cutting, and negotiating. I saw them figure out how to communicate with each other, give compliments, and create! They had to problem solve when the scissors weren’t sharp enough, and when the cardboard wouldn’t stand up.

Their end result was in their words, “EPIC!” It was taped, stapled, painted, and tied together with string. They were so proud of their work. They said they learned how to not give up and keep trying when something didn’t work the first time. #morelifelessons

The teachers did not grade the assignment, and it felt good to let the students get as far as they could with no formal expectation of a product, only progress. Most of the students felt energized learning about their own topic, and the teachers said they would try it again next year.

A few of the students became frustrated along the way when they didn’t know where to find their information, or when the information looked too overwhelming to them. If they couldn’t refocus at that time, we would have them put it away for the day and try again the next day. At this point, an individual graphic organizer would have been helpful.

When our 6 weeks was up, I sat down with the students one last time for a bit of reflection and closure. I asked them to map out their path of progress because that was where a lot of the learning took place. I love how they expressed themselves.

So, it wasn’t a neat and organized process, but all students made forward progress. I would definitely try this again, and the fact that they had Special Needs just made us as teachers think even more flexibly. I learned some great lessons that I can take into my General Ed classroom next year! #studentchoice = #studentvoice