As an English Language Arts teacher, perhaps my opinion of social media in the classroom resembles something darker and more sinister than that of other subject area teachers. For me, based on my students' posts, social media is the place where proper punctuation, capitalization, and spelling go to die! Two years ago I attempted to use EDMODO as a site for students to post and respond to others' comments, but what I found is that because it so closely resembled Facebook, my students forgot their knowledge of conventions and resorted instead to typing with abbreviations that were unknown and inconsistent. I have since moved away from incorporating social media into my lessons. This is not to say that I'm not using digital tools and trying to innovate. I am! I guess I just see my role more as one of introducing new tools to them, and ones that were designed with more of an academic purpose in mind. Even when I do use some of the digital tools, I find myself asking, "What did that tool allow them to do that paper and a pen would not?" Sometimes I don't have an answer. For example, I dove right in to have my kids create digital mind maps as a pre-writing strategy after I learned of sites like bubbl.us and mindomo, but when all was said and done, could they not have simply created them on paper? Yes, but maybe for some kids the technology WAS the engagement piece. I"ll try to keep an open mind about giving social media another go, but deep down, I sort of feel like I'm selling out, like I'm so desperate to get the kids to like me, to like English, to like school, that I"m willing to allow them to use Instagram, Snapchat, etc. because it's what they do.
IAfter our class last night, wherein we presented our digital mind maps on the SITE model via sites like Coggle and Bubbl.us, I was very impressed with what I saw my colleagues create. Although I acknowledged the fact that I was a tad intimidated by the tools, and therefore didn't master the assignment, I felt inspired to not just "lean into" incorporating technology in my classroom, but rather to dive right in, and soon. So I did! As a pre-writing strategy for my students' So What? posters for the novel The House on Mango Street, I decided at 6:30 a.m. that today they would work collaboratively on their own digital mind maps. After introducing the overall poster assignment requirements, I asked students what they knew about mind maps. To my surprise, not one of my 98 students knew how to define it. However, when I asked them to define brainstorm, most knew, so I began using the terms interchangeably to get them to associate the two. Next, I told them that I, too, was a student who had recently been tasked with creating this product and then displayed my sample. There were whispers among the students about how "cool" it looked, so then I decided to show them a few more models that my classmates had done (I hope I didn't violate any law or code in so doing!), and students noted the similarities and differences they saw.They realized that all of the samples contained the same SITE components, yet the style, form, and even amount of information varied from sample to sample. From there, student pairs selected from the following sites: Inspiration, Coggle, Bubbl.us, and Mindomo. They created text boxes for the following concepts in the novel in preparation for completing their collaborative posters: conflict, theme, character traits,and figurative language. In all honesty, I feel incredibly proud of myself for recognizing an opportunity to insert technology and jumping right in. I thought outside the box! I felt invigorated by doing something differently. Even one of my 1st period students, whom I have in 7th period READ 180 commented, "Mrs. De La Cruz, you were happy this morning!" And I was!
In reading about the SITE model, which examines the importance and interconnectedness of our students' sociocultural, informational, technical, and educational makeups, it reinforces the idea that educators certainly have our work cut out for us. We need to treat our students as a whole, taking into account where they are and where they come from, in order to best design lessons that address their needs. Doing that for each student, in each class, each period, each day seems impossible. However, rather than focus on that, I'll focus on the sociocultural aspect. One of my biggest frustrations around teaching stems from trying to fight against my students' upbringing. Many, if not most, come from families who have little to no involvement in their children's academic progress, be it due to language issues, time constraints, or simply not placing a value on education. Although I continue to put forth my best effort to motivate and encourage my students, if they don't sense that it is a team effort, wherein parents are involved and communicating with their kids about school, students who aren't engaged seem to perform worse than those whose families at least encourage that dialogue. It's disheartening to attend SST and other parent meetings to discuss F grades quarter after quarter, only to have parents nod along as if there is nothing they can do. Few take the time to look at their child's homework planner, let alone ask to see the completed assignments that match what was assigned. Instead, they allow their children to say "We don't have homework" and leave it at that, no questions asked. When I ask why my students seem to lack that natural, innate curiosity and ability to ask questions, it seems that the answer could be tied to the fact that no one at home does either.
For my English 9-10 classes I've begun to use the site NEWSELA. It is an online source of non-fiction articles that are current and relevant. They can be selected and assigned individually or as text sets, and there are text sets to accompany many classic novels, including The House on Mango Street, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Things Fall Apart, all of which I teach. Articles can be chosen based on the following general topics: art, money, sports, politics, kids, health. In the past I had difficulty finding non-fiction texts for my kids to read, as I would typically fall down the proverbial rabbit hole while searching for them. This site allows for me to select texts by standard, grade level, and article length. It offers a writing task and a 4-question quiz, the results of which are digitally stored and assessed, keeping track of standards mastered. Students can select from one of four Lexile levels, so it is differentiated, which can be both a benefit and a detriment. It's great for students who are not at grade level, but I've also found students who are proficient selecting Lexile levels that are lower, simply for the purpose of acing the quizzes. To combat this, I've had to give dozens of 0's on the quizzes for students who choose to ignore my instructions to read at or above their Lexile. If we read an article as a class, I have students all select MAX LEVEL, and we use close reading strategies after reading the article once as a group. I have not yet mastered this tool, as I still can't quite figure out how to only find the assignments for students who did them later due to absences. As with any digital tool, the only difference between myself and other teachers who may have "mastered" using them is time! Exploration, trial, and error are the only things that separate veterans from newbies. Additional drawbacks with this site are that anytime students switch periods or enter my class as new students, I have to take the time to add them or move them into the class group. I also don't like the fact that there are only 4 quiz questions and that the writing prompts are always the same unless I take the time to customize them. In all honesty, I've only assigned writing tasks twice because I don't want to have to go back and read/grade them all. The quiz scores are graded automatically though, and that's invaluable to me! My primary goal in using this site was to get more non-fiction into my class, and it's perfect for that! I also love that I don't have to feel guilty about printing more.
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Kirstin
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