Week 8: Love, Teach, Do in Other Words Romance, Precision and Generalization

This week the elementary teachers had the opportunity to see how the other side lives....secondary education.  We read an chapter of a book targeted at middle and high school students.  As a teacher and a learner myself it is always fascinating to see how the other side lives.  The skills students come in with is something that always impresses me.

I really connected with Hobbs (2011) discussing the ideas of romance, precision and generalization.  I felt that this is connected to the learning cycle that we experience as a teacher.  In order to have students connect emotionally to the content we must engage them.  We must tell them why it is important.  Once they are engaged we must make sure we give them accurate information that continues their quest for new knowledge. Lastly, we hope that students generalize their learning and move into using their knowledge and making it their own.  As teachers we know how hard it can be to engage students with learning. We also know the struggle of getting students to connect learning and own it.

When reading Hicks (2013), I was left pondering the possibilities of video texts in a primary classroom.  I often start teaching 2nd grade with students that cannot write a sentence. I think a goal in my writing classroom is to show students a framework about different types of writing.  I feel most students need time to draft, edit, revise and publish.  I am struggling with the idea that my students would potentially write only one or two things and then be expected to turn that into video text.  A quote that really resonated with me in Hicks (2013) was , "As I've already stated, we, as writing teachers, need to focus on the writer, then the writing, and finally the technology." (p. 113).  This quote allowed me to focus on the essential skills in my classroom.  My students learn by doing, and if I only allow them a couple of attempts to try new skills in their writing they will never get to the generalization stage.

When I combined the ideas from Hobbs (2011) and Hicks (2013) I feel that I was able to find a more comfortable balance.  I like the idea of using more audio recordings in the classroom.  Unfortunately, our school has disabled the microphones on the computers. I will have to find a way around this.  I  think asking the students to record one piece a writing a unit would be a realistic possibly.  I also think having them look for or create one piece of visual support to pair with the audio is realistic.  I feel that this would engage students (romance), allow them multiple attempts to practice the skills of writing (precision) and create a final product that is unique to them and showcases their learned skills (generalization) in a primary way.

Taken from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/118289927689792625/

I am currently on the hunt for a program that could nicely allow my students to do this.  I found some ideas here, but hope to find a system that works for Chrome books and possibly iPads.  This app also seemed like a possibility in the classroom.

I often times feel like it is important to go back to the roots of teaching.  We need to engage children, educate them and hopefully when we do that they can take the learning into their own hands. Often it is easy to get overwhelmed by the idea of technology.  When that happens I find it most helpful to reflect on my goals for my classroom, the materials I have available, the needs of my room and make a realistic plan that best aligns with all of these.