When my seven year old granddaughter was two, I used to keep a supply of Dum Dum suckers in my purse. When she was overly tired, hungry, or fussy and we were out of the house doing those inevitable things that didn't allow her needed nap or meal, a tiny sucker would keep her content until we could take her home and meet her needs. Well, in just five years, the need for a sucker in my purse has been eliminated. Today I found myself in a vehicle with my grandson, who was at the moment a very fussy two year old. He and I were waiting while his mother and sister ran a quick errand. Luckily, his sister had left behind her ipod touch. Guess what I found waiting for him there? A Dum Dum sucker app!!! His tears ended instantly when I handed him the ipod and he began tapping the tiny sucker on the screen while smiling from ear to ear. As he tapped, the sucker disappeared before our eyes, and when only the stick was left, he knowingly gave the ipod a shake causing a new sucker to appear so he could begin the process all over again. He was totally engaged in "devouring" suckers until his mother returned a few minutes later. The best part was, no sugar entered his mouth! There is truly an app for everything!!!
My three grandchildren, ages 11, 7, and 2, are true digital natives. While at their house last night, my oldest granddaughter, who was in her room, called urgently for her little sister, who was busy reading to me. (A book, by the way. Yes, they still love to read real books!) Reese, ran to see what Kenzie wanted. She was gone for quite awhile and I could hear voices coming from their room. When she returned, I asked her what they were doing. Very matter of factly, as she snuggled up beside me to return to the book she had been reading, she informed me that they had been skyping on Kenzie's netbook with their cousin... in Cambodia. This morning, Kain was sitting beside Reese at the kitchen table where his sister was busy playing Moshi Monsters on my laptop. Two year old Kain kept reaching over and tapping the screen. As I watched him, I realized he was trying to interact with the game! You see his two older sisters both have ipod touches, his dad has an ipad, and his mom an iphone! He didn't understand why my simple MacBook Pro didn't respond to his touch!
What a different world children are growing up in today! Technology is a routine part of their lives. I am old enough, of course, to remember when all of the miraculous gadgets did not exist and I don't think I will ever stop being amazed by what we can do with technology today. What is next? What will be in store for the children of my grandchildren? Stay tuned... it's bound to be incredible!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
How will they learn... not how will I teach...
One of the best parts of teaching is the learning. The learning by the students, of course, but also the learning by the teacher. There are always tales of teachers who have file cabinets full of lesson plans organized by week, that they pull out year after year, believing that what worked yesterday will work today as well. I don't think I actually know any of those teachers, at least I hope not! That would never work for me, and that is perhaps why I loop. Moving back and forth between first and second grade every other year keeps my mind fresh and forces me to think about my teaching. With two years between lessons, there are many changes to consider. Who are the children sitting in front of me now? What are their interests? Where are they in their learning? What do they need next to move on? What new strategies and teaching ideas have I acquired? The last question is so important. Teachers must never allow themselves to become stale. The world around us is changing constantly and those changes are obvious in our students. To ignore that and pull out a 20 year old lesson plan would serve to frustrate both the students and the teacher. Even more importantly, it would probably not result in the learning that the teacher had envisioned. Although I began my teaching career late in life (at 40), I have now been teaching long enough to have memories of "the way we used to teach". I am not unlike the students, however, in my need to keep learning fresh and relevant. I crave the creative challenge of exploring new things and seeing where they lead.
In the past two weeks, I reached a new understanding of a thought I read recently. We need to focus not so much on the teaching, as on the learning. The internet is full of lesson plan sites. Think of a topic and you can find an almost unlimited number of ways to teach it. How do you go about selecting the perfect lesson plan to add, perhaps, to your file cabinet of lessons for the first week of January? (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) What if instead of looking for a way to teach, you spent time thinking of ways a child would learn? It took me some time to sort out the difference and really understand that concept. It became pretty clear in the last two weeks as I approached something I have taught many times from a new direction.
Teaching students to become effective writers can be challenging. There are many programs available to guide teachers through the process and our district has a program as well. The program has excellent skills, goals, samples, and rubrics to assist a teacher in developing writing skills in students. it certainly is a way to teach writing. But something is missing for me in following a commercial program day after day. I shouldn't use what we call the "b" word in class, but simply teaching the same way day after day has a tendency to become "boring" for both the students and the teacher. I am constantly on the lookout for new ways to approach the topics to keep my teaching alive as well as the students awake. It was in that spirit that I realized the difference between thinking of "how they will learn" rather than "how I will teach". We had been working on descriptive writing and the kids had reached a plateau. I wanted them to move on and continue to develop more skillful writing. In the past I have used poetry to inspire more creative description, so I decided to do that again. Now there are many ways to approach poetry and I have tried a variety of things in the past. This time, however, I tried something new. I recently acquired a set of wireless mice and several hubs for connection to a PC. Using a free Microsoft download called Mouse Mischief and PowerPoint 2007, I created a lesson to teach my second graders about poetic devices. The writing devices were not new. I taught them about alliteration, simile, personification, and onomatopoeia as I have often done in the past. The difference was in the approach. I have never taught all of those at one time before. That is quite a lot for a seven or eight year old to grasp in one sitting. Especially when a teacher is lecturing and explaining while a child is expected to listen and learn. But... when I put them into a power point lesson that allowed the students to interact by moving and clicking their own personal mouse from their seat, they were suddenly playing a game, not hearing a lesson. They were engaged, noisy, and actively involved in learning. It took exactly one lesson for mastery of the poetic concepts. After we put the mice away, I covered a table with photographs I had taken in my backyard of winter animals and snow covered plants. The kids selected pictures and put their new learning to work in a magnificent way as they wrote poems filled with our new poetic devices. There was not a single child off task or unsuccessful. In fact, it was one of my struggling writers who became the star of our poetry writing. We uncovered her creative side as she easily saw similes and connections to apply personification.
The magic of the lesson was the "game" approach. In 2011 much of the play our students engage in involves technology. That is reality. Ask them what they like to play. Most will say video games. If we want them to learn, we need to engage them in ways that captivate their attention. The student that had the most striking success for me was the one who would have shut down if asked to watch and listen. She would never have gained the understanding of the lesson without the active involvement that putting the mouse in her hand created. It invited her to listen and participate and discover a success that she will not soon forget. You can lead a kid to a lesson but you can't make them listen... but just try to get them to keep their mouse still for a second!!! It wasn't the lesson I was teaching that made the difference, it was approaching it in a way that kids learn.
Here are some of the poems my students created after one lesson: http://secondgradejoy.posterous.com/39345000
In the past two weeks, I reached a new understanding of a thought I read recently. We need to focus not so much on the teaching, as on the learning. The internet is full of lesson plan sites. Think of a topic and you can find an almost unlimited number of ways to teach it. How do you go about selecting the perfect lesson plan to add, perhaps, to your file cabinet of lessons for the first week of January? (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) What if instead of looking for a way to teach, you spent time thinking of ways a child would learn? It took me some time to sort out the difference and really understand that concept. It became pretty clear in the last two weeks as I approached something I have taught many times from a new direction.
Teaching students to become effective writers can be challenging. There are many programs available to guide teachers through the process and our district has a program as well. The program has excellent skills, goals, samples, and rubrics to assist a teacher in developing writing skills in students. it certainly is a way to teach writing. But something is missing for me in following a commercial program day after day. I shouldn't use what we call the "b" word in class, but simply teaching the same way day after day has a tendency to become "boring" for both the students and the teacher. I am constantly on the lookout for new ways to approach the topics to keep my teaching alive as well as the students awake. It was in that spirit that I realized the difference between thinking of "how they will learn" rather than "how I will teach". We had been working on descriptive writing and the kids had reached a plateau. I wanted them to move on and continue to develop more skillful writing. In the past I have used poetry to inspire more creative description, so I decided to do that again. Now there are many ways to approach poetry and I have tried a variety of things in the past. This time, however, I tried something new. I recently acquired a set of wireless mice and several hubs for connection to a PC. Using a free Microsoft download called Mouse Mischief and PowerPoint 2007, I created a lesson to teach my second graders about poetic devices. The writing devices were not new. I taught them about alliteration, simile, personification, and onomatopoeia as I have often done in the past. The difference was in the approach. I have never taught all of those at one time before. That is quite a lot for a seven or eight year old to grasp in one sitting. Especially when a teacher is lecturing and explaining while a child is expected to listen and learn. But... when I put them into a power point lesson that allowed the students to interact by moving and clicking their own personal mouse from their seat, they were suddenly playing a game, not hearing a lesson. They were engaged, noisy, and actively involved in learning. It took exactly one lesson for mastery of the poetic concepts. After we put the mice away, I covered a table with photographs I had taken in my backyard of winter animals and snow covered plants. The kids selected pictures and put their new learning to work in a magnificent way as they wrote poems filled with our new poetic devices. There was not a single child off task or unsuccessful. In fact, it was one of my struggling writers who became the star of our poetry writing. We uncovered her creative side as she easily saw similes and connections to apply personification.
The magic of the lesson was the "game" approach. In 2011 much of the play our students engage in involves technology. That is reality. Ask them what they like to play. Most will say video games. If we want them to learn, we need to engage them in ways that captivate their attention. The student that had the most striking success for me was the one who would have shut down if asked to watch and listen. She would never have gained the understanding of the lesson without the active involvement that putting the mouse in her hand created. It invited her to listen and participate and discover a success that she will not soon forget. You can lead a kid to a lesson but you can't make them listen... but just try to get them to keep their mouse still for a second!!! It wasn't the lesson I was teaching that made the difference, it was approaching it in a way that kids learn.
Here are some of the poems my students created after one lesson: http://secondgradejoy.posterous.com/39345000
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