Disrupting Class

This January kicked off with one of the best birthdays - ever!  Lots of students gave me cards and birthday posters.  Several classes sang to me.  Had a blast!  January also brought the start of an Educational Specialist degree in Instructional Technology, completely online, through The University of West Georgia.  And now that it's UWG's spring break, I am finally making time to update my blog.  ('Cause updating my blog is much better than doing our taxes!) 

In Issues in Instructional Technology, one of the assigned texts is Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson.  It was first written in 2008, but my copy is an expanded edition from 2017.  I LOVE reading current texts, especially since technology has changed so much year to year.  We just got to chapter four, "Disruptively Deploying Computers" about how there are areas of non-consumption, where there is potential for technology to disrupt traditional teaching.  Chapter five, "The System for Student-Centric Learning", talks about different value networks, and reasons why many schools, even though they implement the use of technology, are still using technology only so far as a means to improve standardized test scores, instead of as a way to individualize learning pathways for students.  It talks about how such traditional value networks will eventually become disrupted because teachers and students will create entire courses designed for learners, regardless of administrative decisions.  And. It. Has. Happened! Not just because of modular software, but because of Covid-19, and being forced to quarantine in our homes.  Teachers across our county, and across the state, have put their lessons online.  Educators have learned new technology tools to meet with students virtually, but to continue teaching.  While I do miss seeing my students face-to-face, I love what this is proving to schools and to our education system:  that we are in a place to move more students into individualized learning pathways.  That our education system will not grind to a halt because we aren't standardized testing our students this year.  That students will still learn!

Whew!  I kind of nerded out there, but it's so much fun to learn about educational technology issues that apply to real-life!

Now, here's a visual catch-up of what's been going on in my school's library, January to early March,  before our quarantine started on March 16th...

Shared to teachers and staff,  a "What's My Reading Genre Personality?" quiz that District Media Specialist, Kristen Deuschle created to promote literacy among adults.  Posted the genres in our Leadership Meeting room, and if you lifted the genre pages, you could see names of teachers.  For teachers that participated, I put their names into a drawing, and 2 teachers won a set of books!

Fifth grade Castle Apprentices (helpers) created these bulletin boards by making a large majority of the pieces.  Mrs. Bouldin (left image) and Mrs. Wamsley (right image) made these boards come to life!  Yay for parent volunteers!

 

We enjoyed another successful World Read Aloud Day on February 5, 2020.  Tameka Osabutey-Aguedje, District Science Specialist, kicked our day off.  Kristen Deuschle, District Media Specialist, and Steve Straughan, District ELA K-5 Specialist also stopped by to read to us, as did our School Resource Officer, Francie Chambers.  Lots of our teachers read aloud to us too!  Since so many people were watching their weight, very few picked up a 'thank you snack treat', and I was forced to eat most of them at home.  (It's okay.  I bought them with my own money, and they were delicious!)

Kindergarten and first grade have been doing a lot more author studies than they did last year.  With the new reading textbook adoption and its author promotions, I replaced some kindergarten author lessons from last year and taught about Jorey Hurley, Anna McQuinn, Lucy Cousins, and David Weisner. (Kept Dev Petty, Tana Hoban, Bill Martin, Jr., and Alyssa Capucilli.) In first grade, brought back lots of favorites like Eve Bunting, David Adler, Peter Brown, Mike Thaler, Cynthia Rylant, and Peggy and Herman Parish.  All of first grade's authors have picture books and books in another section of our library.  Trying to help our readers move into other sections such as early chapter book, novels, or biographies.  I also added a lesson on Melanie Watt, for first grade, because her books are so cute, and because they require nonfiction-like reading skills, even though her books are fictional.

Second grade practiced taking notes and putting information into their own words by using PebbleGo to learn about a famous person. Then they used Toontastic app on Ipad to create a movie about that person's life.

Third and fourth graders have been practicing getting MLA citations and learning about the importance of copyright.  This year, I made an ItsLearning Learning Pathway for my 4th graders, so that they could learn about how to evaluate online sources at their own pace.  They created a Source Evaluation Checklist in their Google Drive and used it to evaluate different websites.  

Fifth grade has been learning how to read news online, so as to avoid sponsored content and opinion articles.  After taking a summative Nearpod quiz on K-5 content, we've also been going back to review areas of weakness, such as bibliography, biography, and periodicals.  

Our whole school participated in Character Dress-Up day for Read Across America Week.  Is it embarrassing that the kid in Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev is more fashionable than me?  Yes.  But, now I've got the same outfit and the cute red shoes!  Our students also finished hearing all 20 of this year's Georgia Picture Book Award Nominees and submitted their votes.  I had been greatly anticipating attending the Georgia Conference on Children's Literature at The University of Georgia, but with Covid-19, it was cancelled.  Hopefully they will still message or post which book won for the state. 

And, here was our Women's History bulletin board, that 5th grade Castle Apprentices made.  Again, Mrs. Wamsley helped us make it amazing!

And, now that we are online learning through ItsLearning, we are moving ahead with author studies for kindergarten and first grades, moving ahead with our research projects in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades, and starting a big project for 5th grade that will involve storyboarding a 5th grade science topic and turning it into a BrainPop movie. 

Hope you are staying well, safe, and grateful for every disrupted class day!