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DigiLitSunday: Mentors

Posted in Digital Learning, Teaching, Writing, tagged mentors, PowToon, students as mentors on October 9, 2016| 4 Comments »

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Mentors are teachers who have a specialized experience in a certain area and can pass on that knowledge to someone else. An effective mentor builds a level of trust by being authentic and understanding.

In my classroom, I invite all kinds of mentors from the students themselves to professional authors. One day we may watch a video of Naomi Shihab Nye, while the next I am projecting a student mentor text. It doesn’t matter where the mentor comes from as long as the writing is real, accessible, and pushes the level of my students foreword.

This week my students were working on end-of-the-nine-weeks (yes, it’s here already) book presentations. I allow the students to choose which technology platform to use. They will use Animoto, Emaze, Prezi, Powtoon, etc. My sixth graders love Powtoon. It’s my least favorite because I just can’t figure it out.

Emily was working on her project, and she was having a blast. She was taking screenshots of the Google doodle and making the computer automatically type the text in. The presentation looks like it is happening right before your eyes. At one point, she called out, “Kaiden, I need help.” Kaiden rushed over to show her how to do what it was she wanted to do. On the spot mentorship.

I do not have to be the expert in the room. I can call on expert authors, speakers, or colleagues. Most of all, I can call on my students. They are the experts for each other. And that is just the way I like it.

Please add your link below.

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DigiLitSunday: Agency

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, tagged agency, Dabrowsky's Overexcitablilites, Wonderopolis on September 25, 2016| 11 Comments »

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Eva (not her real name) walked into my room quietly. Her usual smile and enthusiasm wasn’t there, so I called her over to me. “What’s going on? You look sad.”

“No one in our class is brave enough to ask if we to get the poster for our teacher.”

Eva’s math teacher had been sick all week, and she had worked with some other girls to make a poster for her. They were hiding it in another classroom.

“Why don’t you try asking her ‘When would be a good time?'” She liked this suggestion, but then tears welled up in her eyes.

“And my dog was stolen. I know they took her to fight.”

“What? How do you know this?”

After our discussion, I found out Eva’s dog is a pit bull. She went on about how pit bulls are not bred to fight. They are trained. And it’s cruel.

It was Wonder Day, so I suggested she use dog fighting as her topic. She spent a little time reading about pit bulls and dog fighting.

Then she checked Wonderopolis. There she found another topic of interest, “Why do parents get divorced?” Eva’s parents have been struggling for a while. I’ve taught her since she was in first grade. She’s now in fifth. As she wrote on a recent card to me, “We’ve been through thick and thin.”

I teach my students year after year, from the time they are identified as gifted to their end of elementary school. This can be up to 6 years. You really get to know a child after this amount of time. With this knowledge, I am able to give my students agency. I know them well. I can direct them to channel their concerns about themselves and the world into their research and writing.

Dabrowsky identified overexcitabilities in gifted students. I see these qualities every day. Eva is a prime example of a student with emotional overexcitabilities. She has a heightened sensitivity to right and wrong. She is timid, but has a deep understanding of her emotions and why she feels what she feels.

In the end, after much bouncing around from topic to topic, Eva asked, “Can I design a web site of my own?”

She had discovered the Wonderopolis topic, “How do You Create a Website?”

I thought she would want to create a website about dog fighting or helping kids get through divorce, but she had moved on. Eva wanted to build a website called “Share your Story” where kids can submit their own stories and teachers can use it to showcase student writing. Where did this come from? I embraced Eva’s idea and got her started on Edublogs. We’ll see. I hope she will stick with this idea, but I really never know with my students. Especially, the emotional ones like Eva.

I follow my students’ lead because I know that it will take me down a new and exciting path. I honor their choices and work to give them a space where their voices are heard.

Link up your posts about Agency (or anything DigiLit) below. Next weekend, my daughter is getting married. Julieanne Harmatz will host the link up at her blog, To Read To Write To Be.

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DigiLitSunday: Learning from Each Other

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Slice of Life, student blogging on September 18, 2016| 5 Comments »

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Lani watches a video about solar storms on Wonderopolis.

Yesterday I made the biggest mistake of my life. I went outside in a big, fat LIGHTNING STORM! I almost got struck by lightning too! (Kids, just don’t make my life choices.) It all started in Breaux Bridge…

I went to Dixie RV ”Super Store” to shop for a vacation RV. Out of the crystal blue sky fell a raindrop. It started drizzling. (I don’t know How it was possible, when all the clouds were pearly white.)

In a matter of SECONDS it started raining in like the flood was back. The ditches were filling up in 0.2 seconds. Then, the lightning started acting like stupid Angry Birds and I was the little Piggie with a phone as an egg. To make matters worse, Dixie RV has to be rich and have golf carts to ride around in the windy rain. While the rain was blowing in my face I noticed a tragedy. My phone was getting wet! I screamed in my mind so loud that I am sure everyone heard me.

I got out of the golf cart and a lighting strike was about 2 inches from meeting my face! I screamed to the gods and cried of scaredness. Hey! You would cry too! Guarantee!!! That experience has taught me a very important lesson: NEVER GO OUT IN A LIGHTNING STORM! BAD IDEA!!!!

Slice of Life by Lani (5th grade)

Every week my students write a Slice of Life on our class kidblog site, Mrs. Simon’s Sea. With digital tools such as grammarly, edit, copy, paste, etc., they can successfully post a small piece of their lives. Some of my students, like Lani, write these with ease. Lani sees the drama in everyday life.

I used the above slice as a mentor text this week. I wanted my students to notice how a small moment can be big. I wanted them to identify craft moves to emulate. So I asked them, “What do you notice?” We made a list.

All caps used to show emphasis.
exaggeration (hyperbole) that creates interest.
paragraph structure
ellipses…
parenthetical statement (adds voice)
imagery “crystal blue sky” and “pearly white clouds”
simile (metaphor)

Madison tried it out.

Two NIGHTS ago there was a LITERAL LIGHTNING STORM!!!! It all started on my way to Olive Garden…..

We were just on the highway out of my cousins trailer park and when I was looking out of the window and then there was huge flash of lightning and another and they scared me, but, atleast they stayed in the clouds!

After a few minutes, when I was looking out of the front window, there was a HUGE flash of lightning and I practically jumped out of my seat, and since the sky was so black that you couldn’t see the clouds, I was really scared!(It was scary since you couldn’t see where the lightning was going to come from.)

Slice of Life by Madison (3rd grade)

Drafting and revising a weekly slice gives my students practice in writing long about a small moment, a chance to try out craft moves, and a platform for their own voice. For me, when my students compose digitally, I am able to easily grab mentor texts for lessons. I can hold up my students as examples. I can shine a light on good writing.

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#DigiLitSunday: Reflections

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Teaching, tagged Dr. Mary Howard, reflective practice, Voxer on September 11, 2016| 13 Comments »

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I consider myself a reflective person. I have participated in many professional development opportunities that are built upon self-reflection, the National Writing Project, National Boards for Professional Teaching Standards, and NCTE Donald Graves Award for teaching writing. Each of these organizations or awards requires self-reflection around the teaching of literacy.

Voxer is another way that I am a reflective teacher. I am involved in three chats at the moment, and each one encourages me to reflect on myself as a writer, a teacher, and a person.

This week Donna Donner asked a question on the Good to Great Voxer chat about self-assessment, and I began to question my ability to pass on this reflective mindset to my students.

Dr. Mary Howard (@DrMaryHoward) in her response to Donna had some great points about self-reflection of students.

Ask students “What did you learn about yourself as a reader, writer, listener, researcher…?”
Students should reflect outwardly: with a teacher in conferring or with another student in turn and talk.
Focus must remain on the learner.
Not a task, but a mindset.
The teacher must be self-reflective to help students be self-reflective.

I want to pay more attention to this thing I do naturally. How did I become a reflective teacher? What steps can I offer my students toward more active self-reflection? I believe, like Mary, that it needs to be more than a task (a checklist). It must become part of the fabric of being a life-long learner. Self-reflection done well has the potential to change the way students think about themselves and about their responsibility to their own learning.

Please join the conversation and leave your link below.

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DigiLitSunday and Celebrating all in one

Posted in Blogging, Celebration Saturday, Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged #clmooc, Animoto, research, snail mail, Wonderopolis on September 4, 2016| 10 Comments »

Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

I missed the Saturday Celebration post, so I am double-dipping today.

I want to celebrate good old-fashioned snail mail. This week I received the invitation to my daughter’s wedding (coming up very soon on Oct. 1st), a #clmooc postcard from Karen Fasimpaur (she tells me she lived and taught in Tanzania?!), and a poetry exchange card from Joy Acey (make that 2 cards from Joy: the heart and the zebras.)

I celebrate the connections I have made through this blogging adventure that encourages me daily.

Today is #DigiLitSunday. I tweeted out the topic of #motivation. This year is my tenth year teaching young gifted students. I have redefined my role of teacher from someone who imparts knowledge to someone who motivates learning. My students are way smarter than I am when it comes to a measurement of intelligence. I am ineffective if I stand before them and tell them what to do. It just doesn’t work.

I have learned the art of motivation. And technology has been right beside me. I love Animoto for its immediate access to cool designs and background music for video production. I turned to Animoto this week to motivate my students to explore Wonders on Wonderopolis and to practice creating a thesis statement.

My students were motivated by choice as well. Many of them find interest areas through their reading. I Survived has become a favorite series. Andrew wanted to know more about tsunamis after reading I Survived the Japanese Tsunami. He watched videos, read a Wonderopolis post, and then branched out to search further questions.

https://animoto.com/play/n3d0IBO9cYPBika3Qvpsbw

Kaiden was inspired to learn about club foot from the book The War that Saved my Life.

https://animoto.com/play/Zg4LoPd9OK0ic8DUZw003w

Some students were motivated by watching each other’s videos. Jacob decided to research earthquakes after seeing Andrew’s video about tsunamis. (Andrew and Jacob attend different schools, but they keep in touch on our Kidblog site.)

https://animoto.com/play/1HeO0cLG9UzW2zyqIqT0Ow

Motivation can come from me, the teacher, from other students, or from books, and even from conversations. I went to Tanzania, Africa this summer and was chatting with Lynzee about the giraffes I saw. She wanted to know why giraffes have such long necks. Wonderopolis answered her question. Here is her video.

https://animoto.com/play/tDObOEEkWmOjbf1162Gzew

Obviously, I had a hard time choosing which video to share with you. Another cool aspect of teaching with choice and technology is the variety of projects that are produced. My students can now learn from each other as we post each video on our Kidblog site.

Please share your motivating #DigiLitSunday posts here.

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DigiLitSunday: Twitter Chat

Posted in Digital Learning, tagged #DigiLitSunday, Katherine Bomer, Twitter on August 28, 2016| 7 Comments »

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Months ago, some friends in my virtual professional learning network (PLN) decided to read Katherine Bomer’s new book from Heinemann, The Journey is Everything: Teaching Essays that Students Want to Write for People Who Want to Read Them. We read and wrote responses to our reading in Google Docs to share our ideas, a virtual book club.

I decided to contact Katherine Bomer about doing a Twitter chat later in the summer. She agreed with the disclaimer that she had never done a Twitter chat. I explained that I had never curated one.

So the journey of discovery began. Reading the book was the easy part. Katherine’s voice in her writing is like she is sitting next to you having a conversation. Yet at the same time, she is full of wisdom about essays, about writing, and about teaching. There is so much goodness in this book, it was difficult to choose quotes to use in the Twitter chat.

I’m getting ahead of myself. The first thing I did was to create an ad for the chat. I wanted something eye-catching that others could tweet and retweet. I used Canva. Canva was recommended by Dr. Mary Howard, another wise voice in education today. She leads a weekly Twitter chat for Good to Great (#G2Great on Thursdays at 7:30 PM Central). You should follow her. @DrMaryHoward

A few weeks ago I invited some friends to participate in brainstorming questions. A Twitter chat is usually an hour and includes 7 questions evenly spaced out by about 8 minutes. (Mary Howard sent me a schedule she uses for G2Great.) Tara Smith, Fran McVeigh, and Julieanne Harmatz contributed ideas and questions to the Google Doc. It got rather messy which is the way this kind of work is: messy, thoughtful, and inspiring.

Then I listened to this podcast from Heinemann. I took notes and thought of more questions. Jan Burkins offered me the advice to try out the questions to see if I could answer them in 140 characters. That’s today’s task. I am also going to test out pre-tweeting using Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is necessary for following a chat. (For tonight, enter #DigiLitSunday.)

I spent a few hours putting the questions into a Canva Twitter background. This way your questions can be longer than a tweet, but it also makes them attractive so they stand out from other tweets. Here’s a sample question.

What is left to do is to make an image with all the questions to tweet out today before the chat. This gives participants a heads up, time to think about their responses, and a way to participate more fully in the conversation.

Wish me luck. I’m excited and nervous. I have some great people backing me up. I’m glad I’m doing this, but I don’t think we’ll chat every week. Maybe once a month?

Please join us. Tweet and retweet. Share.

Add your DigiLitSunday post to the links here.

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DigiLitSunday: Digital Voice

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Teaching, Writing, tagged authentic voice, classroom blogging, Great Flood of 2016 on August 21, 2016| 10 Comments »

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What is voice in digital writing? We know it when we see it, but it’s difficult to define. In one sense, everyone has a voice, right? So shouldn’t every piece of writing have a voice?

However, we’ve all read things that touch us in a certain way. We feel like the writer is speaking right into our ears. The writer is with us all along the way.

Yesterday I had the privilege to see many wonderful authors at the Mississippi Book Festival in my home town of Jackson, MS. I’ll write more about this great day later this week. Kate DiCamillo told me (yes, me because I got up the courage to ask her a question.) that the voice of the narrator in The Tale of Despereaux carried her through the writing of the novel, and this voice carries the reader through as well.

Voice is elusive and difficult to teach. Actually, I don’t think voice can be taught. Voice needs to be discovered. My students discover voice by writing a Slice of Life every week. By writing about something personal, their personalities appear on the page. They post their Slices on our class blog at Kidblog. (Click here if you would like to follow our blog.)

This week we only had a few days together because of the extensive rain and flooding in our area. When we met on Wednesday, my kiddos were full of stories about the flooding. Jacob’s house was flooded, and he was excited that he could write about it. He wrote three and a half pages in his notebook. Others went directly to the blog to write.

Lynzee’s voice comes through in her poem.

Fearsome Flood

Half the yard gone,
Bayou is swollen,
Stranded in the house,
Some in shelters,
People afraid
Of the
Fearsome flood

And Tobie is, well, always Tobie on the page.

When my sister and I were getting dressed, we turned on the news as always, but this time, there were no commercials, no GMA, only local news. We watched a bit, getting dressed, when all of a sudden, it smacked us right in the face. We dropped dead, got buried, and stayed there until we rose as zombies. Okay, maybe I exaggerated, but we were pretty shocked. By the fact that… “Iberia Parish schools are closed,” said Dave Baker. I asked my mom what that meant, but on the inside, I knew. NO SCHOOL!! But that is bad because, well, it must be pretty bad to cancel school. For like, 4 days.

Digital writing makes an unique voice more possible. Daily blogging allows students to discover their own voices and to share that voice with others. My students are having conversations with each other. I am not the only one they are writing for. An authentic audience offers my writers a reason to write and a pathway for discovery.

Please join the conversation by posting a link to your unique voice, your own blog. Tweet at #DigiLitSunday. Google+ community here.

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DigiLitSunday: Crafting Digital Media

Posted in Digital Learning, Photography, Teaching, Writing, tagged #DigiLitSunday, creative process, digital media, Digital photography on August 14, 2016| 8 Comments »

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The crafting of digital media has never been so accessible to everyone. With only an iPhone and wifi, I’ve been taking videos of the flooding around my house, keeping family and friends informed with the touch of a button. (We are safe and dry at this time.)

And some have used this accessibility to create humor around this crazy disaster.

Found on Facebook

I have enjoyed playing with my own digital photos in apps like Word Swag. This is a photo of tree bark, and I added a quote.

Some images just lend themselves to contemplation and creative thinking. I took this picture from my balcony looking through the tall windows in my house. You can see the light reflection on the window and the flood waters beyond.

Using Canva, I made this digital poem.

To lead my students to digital creativity and crafting, I try it myself.

I am interested in exploring the thinking process during the creation of digital media. What questions do students ask? What appeals to them and why? What is the deeper meaning within the image?

When my students design digital media, I ask them to share their inner thinking. By asking about the process,I motivate my students to make intentional choices. Reflection on a creative process is important. Reflection can lead to self-discovery along with inspiring the wonder of others.

How will you lead your students through intentional digital creation? Please join the conversation by linking your blog posts below.

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DigiLitSunday: Believing the Impossible

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Writing, tagged back-to-school, digital literacy, gifted classroom on August 7, 2016| 9 Comments »

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“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’

I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

― Lewis Carroll

Welcome back to DigiLitSunday. Believe it or not school has started for me. Summer break flew by, and my focus has quickly changed to being prepared for my students. I have not prepared as much as I would have wanted to. I have read some professional books. I’ve had conversations with my colleagues. I’ve been reading blog posts from #cyberPD.

When kids come into my classroom, however, who they are is the most important thing.

I am lucky that I teach my students year after year. Once they’ve been identified as gifted, they become mine for one academic subject every year while they are in elementary school. My relationship with them is most important to me. It matters. It endures.

Last week teachers sat together to review policies and learn about new curriculum initiatives. We decorated bulletin boards. We arranged desks, prepared supplies. I enjoy this part of the process. Like cleaning your house for guests, the tasks have a purpose.

When the guests arrive, the preparation stops and you spend time together telling stories and making connections.

When my students start coming to me this week, I’ll be ready. I’ll talk to them about their summers, the books they’ve read, the places they’ve been.

I’ll also leave space for believing the impossible.
A new year.
A new notebook.
Clear pages ready to be written.
We are still becoming our best selves.
Leave room for who you want to be.

For the first day of school, there was a rainbow in the sky. Not kidding!

I invite you to jump into this journey with me and join our DigiLitSunday community. You can join the Google+ community here. Put your information into the shared Google doc. Link to this post weekly and Tweet using #DigiLitSunday. We are a community of educators who support each other. Please visit at least 3 blogs and leave a comment.

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Slice of Life: Lagniappe

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Gratitude, Slice of Life, tagged DigiLit Sunday, Digital photography, Katherine Bomer, lagniappe on August 2, 2016| 20 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

In Louisiana, the term Lagniappe (pronounced lahn-yahp) means a little something extra. Imagine my surprise when my colleague told me that we start school on Wednesday, not Tuesday. I have a whole extra day of summer! Lagniappe!

Lagniappe is taking a break in the shade when the temperatures rise.

Lagniappe is a roseate spoonbill fishing by the roadside.

Lagniappe is goldfish glittering on top.

Lagniappe is finding old treasures.

This name plate was a gift from my supervising teacher when I was student teaching. I wasn’t Mrs. Simon yet, but I would be by the time I had my own classroom. This gift meant so much to me. I’d forgotten how much until I found it. I’ve always preferred to be called Mrs. Simon rather than Miss Margaret, as some teachers in the south do. I think this preference stems from my pride in being Mr. Simon’s wife. Our 34th anniversary is this weekend, and we will be dancing the night away.