Warm Demander

 This is going to be a very short post. I'll explain why next week.

I finally finished reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond. I had planned to finish this book at the end of 2021, alongside Jennifer Cadavez and Connie Chan, but the end of the calendar year was too full for us to maintain our scheduled deadlines for reading three chapters at a time.

As I read Chapter 7, I was struck by the term "warm demander". Hammond says this is what educators should be. The sentence was, "As warm demanders, our job is to get students to recognize that putting forth the effort is worth the work". I've been struggling a bit with this, as some of my students have not been meeting expectations. Are my demands still warm? If they fail or get a poor mark, how much of that is on me and how much of that is on them? Did I explain enough? Did I scaffold enough? Did I give enough opportunities to retry? Did I understand the root cause of the issue? How will they think and feel after their learning time with me is done?

As if I needed more things to preoccupy my thoughts! (Happy last week of school!)

Grad Prep

This upcoming week will be the senior kindergarten and Grade 8 graduation. As part of the festivities, both organizational groups are creating multimedia presentations to play at the various ceremonies. Certain teachers involved with those classes have been asked to prepare short video messages directed to the students moving on to the newest stage of their educational careers. 

The above image is licensed under Creative Commons attribution and was created by Pinterastudio at https://freesvg.org/1545429821 

It's not easy crafting these inspirational, heartfelt snippets. How do you capture two years or ten years of moments in a minute? What do you say that is meaningful and not full of generic platitudes? Filming these clips yourself also leads to a host of different issues - shaky camera work, awkward faces, multiple takes when inevitable bloopers happen, incorrect angles, and more. 

I was going to use the green screen to project some images behind me to supplement my message, but as I realized from my recent Grade 2-3 green screen lesson, I'm rusty on using DoInk and it took me several tries to recall that you have to put the background image in the bottom track so that it appears behind the speaker.

Both of these school events will be held in-person this year. Our school population still masks indoors and we hope that we'll continue to be cautious yet inclusive. It will be the first time ever that the kindergarteners will have assembled in a group larger than their own class together. For some of the virtual kindergarteners, it will be one of the first times they've been in the building for an extended period of time. (Some came for Photo Day and to pick up packages from their educator team.) It will be interesting to see how everyone acts and reacts. There will be many rehearsals and practice runs, at least for the Grade 8s. I've been impressed so far with how well everyone who chooses to use formal footwear can walk in heels. 

Congratulations to all graduates, everywhere!

 

Kindergarten Comics and Doing Dominoes

 There are only three weeks left of the 2021-22 school year left; counting today, Monday June 13, that's 14 teaching days. As the intensity of finalizing report card marks subside, the question of "what do we do in the meantime" surfaces. Many of these late June activities won't be able to appear on the report cards because of time constraints, but learning shouldn't be dictated by what can and cannot be included on those final evaluations.

Two sets of tasks that were able to make it onto that official document we are also able to continue for our final classes in kindergarten and they have to do with comics and dominoes.

Comics

For our library periods, the kindergarten students and I have been looking at comics. During free time, there are some students that choose to read graphic novels instead of play with toys, which delights my teacher-librarian heart. We went over some of the basic codes and conventions of comics and then got into teams to create our own comics. The teams told me how many panels and what shapes the panels had to be on their large chart papers. The results demonstrated to me why the kindergarten program is two years long.

Some students understood the concepts right away. They merged ideas. They experimented with making their own speech bubbles and filling them with words their characters said. Some even had a narrative structure, with a beginning, middle, and end. (Naturally, I took photos of the ones that impressed me the most.)

Then there were students that have made significant gains over the year but aren't quite there yet. They drew people in their panels but didn't understand directionality, so they were sideways and upside-down. Others drew people but when I came to assist them with their speech bubbles, they had no idea who the people they drew were, or what they could be saying. The idea of continuity between panels hasn't developed yet for them.

Then there were students who just scribbled or coloured in the boxes and shapes. 

I'm glad we have a few weeks more so we can continue to have time to explore comic creation, read some comics, and teach.

Dominoes

In media, we focused on agency and decision-making. We looked at some games to determine how much player agency they allowed. The students, with some prompting, began to realize that certain games, such as tic-tac-toe, give players the power to make decisions. Other games, such as Chute and Ladders or Candyland, can proceed without the players making any choices of their own because the probability tool (cards or dice) make all the decisions for them. It's interesting to note that many board games targeted at young children rely on probability rather than player skill. I am teaching the students how to play dominoes, both with online and face-to-face resources. I bought a huge wooden set of dominoes (with my own money) to use in the library. I noticed that most children only know about lining up the dominoes to knock them down in a pattern, rather than using the pips to actually play the game. It's going to take us several times of playing for the students to grasp the game rules and strategies. It's also great for math (number sense and even geometry as they turn the tiles to match the numbers) and for cooperative skills (turn taking, consulting with team members about the best tile to place). Here are a a few photos of the students in action.

As part of their media evaluation, I asked them which method they preferred to use - the online dominoes or the in-person one. The students also had to articulate what techniques drew the players in to get them to keep playing. It was fascinating to see that many of the learning-in-person students commented on the computer version's attraction, whereas the learning-online students (who only could see me and their ECE playing the physical version together via their screens) tended to suggest that the face-to-face model was more appealing. I also find that their patience for the length of a game is quite short. 

I'm glad I can introduce the game of dominoes to the students. My parents used to play dominoes with a set that they brought up with them from Guyana and there are some fond memories associated with the game.

What makes a good assessment or slide deck?

 This week has been peppered with preparation and evaluation. I've been making several presentations (for my June 9 talk for AML's Media AQ course, for the June 14 ONLibChat event promoting TMC, and for a June 27 session for IMLRS [International Media Literacy Research Symposium]). Educators in my school board did not teach on Friday, June 3 because we had a report card writing day; even though I am no longer a classroom teacher, I still had plenty of things to mark to get ready for calculating those final grades. It got me thinking about what makes a good assignment for assessment and what makes a good online presentation. 

Good Presentation Slides - Tips

When I took my Presenter's Palette workshop with ETFO in 2016, I learned a lot about structuring professional learning. One of my favourite take-aways was the difference between offering content and allowing processing of ideas. The facilitators called it "giving the gum" and "time to chew". Learners of all ages (and especially now, with Zoom fatigue and increased distractibility) cannot be lectured at for long periods without something for them to "do". I believe that Mary and I have designed an engaging, fast-paced talk for this coming Thursday. Our topic is "Comics, Cosplay and Consoles: Worthy Media Texts". There's lots of "gum" and lots of "chewing". I hope the AQ participants agree.

Neil Andersen taught me not to be stingy with my slides. He has shown me big images and words, without a lot of clutter on the screen, can lead to big impact. Duplicate a slide and use shapes to highlight something you want your audience to notice. Our presentation, on Practical Media Literacy Teaching Strategies, has a lot of information to impart. We pared down the amount of examples but used lots of slides as evidence.

For more suggestions on making good slide decks, check out the TED Talk blog with 10 tips for better slide decks, or the 6-6-6 rule explained by Helen Jane Hearn on the American Express business website.

Good Assessment Tasks - Tips

There are some assignments that I dread marking. The ones that I don't dread marking (and that even can be fun to mark) have some shared characteristics:

• the marking criteria is very clear (and developed beforehand) - for instance, the Grade 1-2 students and I determined how both our clay cakes and real cakes would be marked. We had it on a big piece of chart paper so there was no mystery about how the grades were generated.

• processes that can be automated are - the final tasks for my social studies classes were some Google Form quizzes. Since they were all multiple choice answers, the students received their results immediately after completing the evaluation.
• creative individual results make it entertaining for creator and evaluator  - I loved watching the fake news in Francophone communities video assignments that the Grade 6-7s and 7-8s made. I'm excited to see the Grade 3 animated figures from communities in 1780-1850 and the green-screen paired inquiry videos. 
• the students are set up for success - the tasks are not so hard to complete that excelling is a rare event. The social studies inquiry projects were structured with ample time to finish and easy entry points (drawing for the Grade 1s, almost Mad-Lib level fill-in-the-blanks for the Grade 2s). Some of the Grade 2s did very poorly because they did not follow the simple directions (or complete all the requirements properly). The Grade 1 health task did not make it necessary for students to read words, only to use numbers to label body part locations on a blank form. The Grade 2 health task just involved them placing sticky notes with descriptions on the drawings that indicated various life stages; they only had to write their name on the sticky note and place it on a picture.

When I searched online for suggestions related to this, one site (that automatically downloads a Word file with the information, so I don't recommend clicking it) says:

• has clearly stated goals/objectives
• lack of a pre-determined outcome: you learn something new
• personally relevant and memorable
• uses real-time, current data
• logistically do-able (for both students and instructor)
• synthesizes prior information and concepts
• no clear right or wrong answer - open-ended

Hope this helps!