Celebrating: ECT (Enrichment Creavity Time)

It's time for celebrating, and I am proud to share this week's celebration.  Thanks Ruth for encouraging us to choose a special moment and write about it.  I am excited to celebrate with everyone.  Spring break has passed, hopefully winter is over soon, and round 2 of state testing starts next week.  Two weeks of testing which changes everyone's schedule in our building and in Room 234 our schedule will have a celebration everyday after testing.

KA and HD chose to research cancer. Both girls lives have been impacted by cancer in their families.
They chose different kinds and their creativity is making the different ribbons to display each
type. I learned that every form of cancer has a color attached to it.  These displays will be placed in the library
so their learning will go beyond our classroom.

RK built the White House with popsicle sticks.
The roof lifts up and she included facts about three rooms that she was interested in learning more about. 

ECT (enrichment creativity time) has been a highlight of third trimester. Our district has encouraged the entire K-12 staff to include creativity throughout the school day.  We have had district PD on what it looks like and sounds like. I decided learners in Room 234 would be apart of the decision making process.  I posed a question: What do you want to learn more about and how could you use your creativity to share your project?  When you ask a group of fifth graders and allow the gates to be wide open, their responses are amazing.  The best part about the process for me (and them) was it was an opportunity for exploration as well as a chance for each learner to share their project with their peers. The criteria included:

1. Learning goals
2. Plan including a timeline
3. Materials (most supplied from home)
4. Completion and sharing with peers

AM built a rubber band car. He chose this topic because we were
studying force and motion.  He loves science! The best part of his ECT project was that
his car did not run smoothly, and he is still revising his plan. I am confident that he will
revise and share his car with us.

Celebrating: Authors Think Horizontal

I've been enjoying Ruth's emails encouraging different aspects of writing workshop.  I have watched several videos and shared snippets with my writers. This week the writers in Room 234 completed their research. Each writer had a choice on how they wanted to present their new learning. Most students chose to write their book.  The writing process and thinking through their research is a huge celebration!!  I worked side by side our literacy coach, Heather, who helped me think about the structures of nonfiction. The students started with 4 questions then I read their questions, and I wrote one question for each student to extend their thinking.  After they completed their research, the students were thinking "vertically" and ready to lift the facts and "just" write their book.  They were finished (or at least thought they were).  Enter horizontal thinking.

We focused on strong mini lessons, "How did the author share research in this book?"  We completed several circle book passes, and students found graphs, maps, sidebars, vocabulary charts, diagrams, sequence, timelines.  After creating a list, students completed chalk talks. I asked my writers to think "horizontal"  WOW! What a challenge for them.   Asking them to look across their 4 questions.  Prompts included

• What do you notice about your research?  What do all 4 questions have in common?
• Do you see any data in your research?
• Could you create a sidebar with interesting facts?
• Is there another way to share vocabulary besides a glossary?
• Could you build a graph that would support your research?

Writing is messy!  I love that quote from Ruth.  I remembered that almost everyday. I am celebrating a writing process that encouraged my writers to think horizontally.  Research is not finished after you, "Google it."  Thanks to Ruth for mentoring me in my writing workshop. Here's the link up for this week's celebrations. 

Power of Choice in Writing - OLW Reflection

W.5.7. Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.

Enter Magic School Bus.  Who doesn't love Miss. Frizzle and their far out adventures? After several mini lessons on non fiction text features, I told my class it's time for their first research of the year.  You could have heard a collected sigh from my students. Even, "On no not yet Mrs. Caplin."  I played along for a few moments telling them they would have to research about their favorite president or season.  "Ugh..." to say it politely.  

I then passed out the Magic School Bus books again and asked them if they would like to write their own little book modeled after Magic School Bus. Sighs turned into cheers and then it got even louder when I told them they could choose their own topic and would become a published author, "Who me? Really? How?"  

Some of the topics included:  hockey, Eiffel Tower, monkeys, headphones, pocket watches, music, Empire State Building, remote control cars, and fiber optics. The icing on the cake was reading this page in her book.

Knock me Over Please

It's Saturday afternoon, cold and gloomy, typical Ohio weather first week of November. Winter is knocking on our door and letting me know it's right around the corner. Grocery shopping is done. Laundry is started. Dinner is almost ready for the oven, and I'm anxiously awaiting The Ohio State game tonight.  It's time to delve head first into grading the first round of persuassive essays.  There are 23 of them in a pile stapled together with their rubric, rough draft, peer editing, revisions and parent signature as the final editor.

First I read through them all quickly to get a feeling about the final paper. I have conferenced with every student at least once and most of them twice on this piece of writing.  It is considered a short piece with a strong lead and a strong paragraph with research to support their claim. We have already focused on research earlier in the year and created a persuasive poster with several different types of research. The lead was the focus for this piece and for most students their leads were excellent. Their research not so much.

Knock me over please (with a feather) I have preached and sermoned and explained and restated and what ever else I could say that research is NEW learning.  The focus word NEW. Not something you already knew. Research involves NEW facts that support your claim or can support what you thought you knew about your topic.  Stating the source is important.  As I finished grading, I realize where I need to begin next...with their own essays as their own mentor text. Giving them back their own writing and start with the same focus question: What is your NEW research? What didn't you know prior to writing this topic?  Hopefully they will knock me over with new insight about what research really means?  Any suggestions - I would love to know how you help your students with this issue.

Short Research and Lessons Learned

Working on her rough draft big book page. Final presentation choice.

Short research projects have been our focus the last month of school. My students have completed 3 different projects in a month (Thinglinks, Wonders, Big Book pages) I sure have learned several important lessons about “short” research projects. 

A)  Not only do I like short projects, but my students also commented they were enjoying them too. “It has been fun choosing different topics to learn more about.” For conferences, I felt like I was able to keep better track of their progress, and the students saw continuous progress. 

B)   I am exploring what "read closely" means.  One of my biggest goals was to continue to ask the question: What did you learn new?  Which resources helped you the most in gathering evidence?  There were tons (literally) of conversations about how to research on line. The importance of skimming an article for new facts and not just “Googling it.”  I know that this did not sink in yet, but I have set some strong groundwork as they move into middle school.

C)   Students continue to love choice! They chose their topics, their resources, the end presentation and final due date. Our mini lessons focused on these areas, and I really felt several students used the mentor text as examples. When I give them these choices, they all “buy into” the writing.  Often I heard conversations include: “Mrs. Caplin gave us a choice.” 

For next school year, I am already thinking bigger. I plan on integrating non-fiction short research projects throughout the entire year.  We have read non-fiction all year and the students definitely know that fiction, non-fiction and poetry are all integrated in our class, but I need to send a clearer message about connecting it to writing workshop and have time for all types of continuous writing projects.  Lessons learned about short research.

Nonfiction Digital Research Projects: Part 3

This is the last of a three part series.  Part 1 was about my shift in thinking about nonfiction and part 2 was about the instructional practices.  

I heard about Thinglink several times in twitter chats especially #5thchat. I was intrigued by the opportunity to combine facts, photos and videos. I sat up a teacher account for free, and I received individual emails and passwords. It is very teacher friendly. I wanted to continue our writer's workshop but integrate technology. The power of connecting their writer's notebook and their final digital presentation was important because my goal continues to focus on the best tool for the project. I have never assigned research topics, but I am totally guilty for spending way too much time on one research project.  From start to finish, we completed our first round of research in two weeks.  The students really enjoyed this project, and I want to share some of their reflections. There was a huge shift in their thinking about technology and how they have redefined research. 

Here are a few example enjoy!

Titanic Comes to an End

Surfing