Digital learning problems - B is for building rapport

Good morning, colleagues! A year ago I posted a popular column titled "The A-Z problems of digital learning." One thing that I thought would be effective this year is to break down solutions for each of these issues. This week, I'm going to talk about "B": Building rapport.

Our students, when using digital devices, will put their head down and put their face close to the screen. It is imperative that we get them to look up every once in a while, and maybe even have them talk to each other, and to you as a teacher. How can we accomplish this?

#1: Interact more, lecture less. Yes, we have a curriculum guide to follow. Yes, we have content that we need to get through by the end of the year. However, you can take time out of the day, week, or year to get to know your students. Sometimes the students are trying to get out of doing work, but other times, they want to see how you will react and how well you will listen. An example: I have a student who doesn't like the same kind of music that I do. He knows, however, that I listen to music a lot. He asked me if I knew of a specific artist, but I didn't. He told me I HAD to look up this person. I went home and found them on Spotify. I didn't particularly care for the music, but the next day I told him that I tried. His face lit up! Every now and then, he'll let me know about a new artist, and I'll give it a try. It's something that doesn't take up a lot of time but still shows that I care and am willing to try.

#2: Use Capturing Kids Hearts strategies to building a community in your classroom. Greet your students at the door every day. Shake their hand, give them a high five, or fist bump each student as you say their name (this helps you learn their names quickly). Then start your class by asking students if they have any good news to share. Running short on time for the day? Have students write their brief stories on the whiteboard (or an erasable poster on the wall). Make a quick Google Slides presentation and have students answer a question or share their good news. Get kids to get to know each other (and you - make sure you participate as well!)

#3: Team Building. Team building can sometimes be ridiculous and annoying. Kids usually hate it especially the first day of the year or semester. Try changing it up so that your team building isn't the same thing as what everyone else is doing. Play Taboo as a content game (or just as a fun game). Play wink murder in small groups. Play all my friends and neighbors for the last five minutes of class. Give the students a breather from traditional class and have them spend time doing something that doesn't require a cell phone.

#4: Be present. When you are in the classroom with your students, be present. Walk around your class. Interact with your students. Ask them questions. Don't be on your cell phone. If you are meeting with a student one-on-one, close your laptop. If you see students in the hallway, say hello. Attend after-school activities. Sponsor a club or coach a sport. Find a way for students to see you and see that you are present in whatever you do. Modeling goes a long way!

I know that this list isn't long, but I hope it gave you some ideas for building rapport with your students (especially in this digital age). Technology isn't going away, but neither is having a relationship, talking face to face, and being able to hold a conversation. We have to bring together the old and "new" ways of life!

Thanks for reading! I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website

Digital learning problems - A is for applications

Hello, colleagues! A year ago I posted a popular column titled "The A-Z problems of digital learning." One thing that I thought would be effective this year is to break down solutions for each of these issues. So to begin, I'm going to talk about "A": Applications.

As teachers, we have to wade through 2 million applications available in the Apple App Store and/or Google Play Store. That is A LOT of apps. I would encourage anyone who is overwhelmed with the number of applications to first figure out what you want your students to do. What do you want from the assignment? What is the purpose? Once you have that decision made, then you can start to wade through the various teacher lists of popular applications that are posted online.

But that can also be overwhelming. Where might a teacher start to look?

Here are some applications that I think are fantastic to start out with in your classrooms:

The 6 Best beginner Classroom Applications by Rachel Jeffrey

• Google Docs: This application is perfect for word processing (i.e., writing). What makes Google Docs better than Microsoft Word is that a) students can collaborate on the same document and b) you have access to the student files so you can see what your classroom learners are doing. If you happen to pair Google Docs with Google Classroom, you will see the effectiveness even further. In Google Classroom, you can share a Google Doc with your students, and it will make a copy for each student. Now all of their files are in one handy place. You don't have to worry about students sharing their document with you! 
• Spark Video: This is my favorite beginner video application. Students don't have to do filming through the app but instead can do a voiceover over images and icons that are built into the application. Spark Video also has built-in themes and music to make the videos more inviting and engaging. This application is perfect for kindergartners through high schoolers. 
• Quizizz: I just recently found this quizzing application. I like it better than Kahoot for three reasons: 1) You can choose to play a points quiz or not. Students don't have to answer quickly to get full points. 2) You can assign a homework game so students can play the game on their own time. It's perfect for a weekly review that kids can take whenever. 3) It has meme sets, so students get a funny meme if they get the answer right or wrong. It's silly, but it's another way to engage students. Also, after a quiz has been completed, you get a report, and you can see what students missed what questions and can also see which items were wrong the most. 
• Newsela: This current events application is great to get students reading non-fiction text. The app is partnered with reputable newspapers to get the latest news. You can level the reading to meet your students' needs. At the end of each article is a multiple-choice quiz. You can search by content or by type of news. You can also find pre-made text sets, or you can build your own. 
• Actively Learn: Actively Learn is very similar to Newsela yet quite different. There is less current, right now news, but there are more stories and novels posted through their site. Similar to Newsela, there are pre-made articles with questions built in or you can upload your own materials and design questions. One significant difference is as a student reads a story in Actively Learn, the reading will stop, and students will have to answer a question. Students cannot move on until the question has been answered. By doing this, students cannot get distracted by the rest of the reading, and they know the answer is in what they previously read. You can also ask students multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions. You can assign a grade or use a rubric to grade each answer. Students can also see answers after and can provide hints or comments to each other. It's pretty slick.
• Edpuzzle: If you are a legitimate 21st-century teacher, you know that kids learn a lot from YouTube. It's great if you utilize YouTube videos in your classroom, but Edpuzzle harnesses that power further. You can link a YouTube video to Edpuzzle. Once the application recognizes the video, you can build in questions (multiple choice, open-ended, or a comment) for students to answer/review. The video will pause and will not resume until the student answers the question. You can also crop a video so only one part shows, you can do a voiceover over the entire project (with your own script), or you can provide audio notes. 

This is a good six applications to start with. They apply to every content and every grade level. I hope you find this a useful place to start!

Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website

#oneword2019

Good morning colleagues! Welcome back to 2019!

For the last two years, I've picked one word to be my focus. I am planning on doing the same this year. The word that I am choosing is habitual. I am picking this word, not for my professional life, but for my personal life. This is an individual goal to me because I've found me telling myself, over and over, that teaching is what I do... it is not who I am. It is part of me, but it can't be all of me.

WHY do I need to be habitual? Most of my friends here in the Springs are teachers. When we get together, we talk about school. After a while, that gets old. There is more to us than being a teacher. We all have lives outside of the building, and we most certainly have more to us than teaching (or at least I hope so). Two years ago, I chose self-care as my word, and I've been preaching self-care ever since. I've done a great job of breaking apart my two worlds, but I need to be better about my personal, non-professional life.

Over the last year, as my job slowed down tremendously, I realized I still had an imbalance. I was still tired all of the time and spent all of my free time watch tv and/or lounging on the couch. I was in a funk and was practicing some bad habits. I didn't like that I was a couch potato, especially since I'm more than just my lousy TV habits.

HOW will I be habitual? Last year, I tried to pick up bullet journaling, but I went about it all the wrong way. I didn't have the right tools to make it enjoyable, and I didn't have the right frame of mind to be successful. What I knew of bullet journals is that they were pretty. I don't have time to MAKE MY BULLET JOURNAL PRETTY! So I went into this with a different frame of mind... it had to be what I needed it to be.

My sister was SO excited when I asked for bullet journaling supplies for Christmas. She bought me the stuff that she thought I needed (she did a good job!) but then kept asking me if I was going to use my bullet journal as a planner. The answer was definitely "NO!" I don't need a planner. I'm tied to my phone, and I live and die by Google Calendar. I'm really good at putting in reminders and dates, and I have notifications pop up consistently throughout the day (both on my personal phone and my school computer). So I knew that bullet journaling would become a pain as a planner.

I decided that I wanted my bullet journal to become a habit tracker. I didn't want a digital habit tracker because I didn't think it would keep me accountable. I need to write out my ideas and look at the trackers every day.

1. The first page of each month is a calendar. I highlight important days (no school, birthdays, hockey games, etc.) which match to their respective color on my phone calendar. It's just a visual reminder that I have something going on. I also have a goal list for the month and a to-do list for the month (make a car appointment, buy a birthday card, etc.)
2. The second page is my habit tracker. I have seven habits that I want to keep up with consistently: take pictures, practice handwriting, read for 30 minutes, post on Instagram, practice the ukelele, color for fun, and exercise. I've listed out the days of the month and then color in the box for the day if I practice the habit. 
3. The third page is a cleaning tracker. I love to cook, but hate all other household chores. It's also embarrassing when my husband tells people how he keeps the house clean... not me. So similar to my habit tracker, I've listed out the days of the month and color in the box for the day if I clean. I've listed out the following "chores": dishes, sweep and wash floors, pick up clutter, do laundry, put clothes away, vacuum downstairs, clean my bathroom. 
4. The fourth page is a mood tracker. Sometimes my mood swings wildly from morning to afternoon, so I want to track how I'm feeling (to better understand why I might be feeling a specific mood). I have a key with a color equaling a particular feeling, and I track AM and PM how I'm feeling each day. 
5. My last page of the month is a gratitude log. This is what I started doing last year but tried to get all fancy with it. Instead, it's a short and quick reminder of good things that happened that day. Even on a bad day, there's always a positive. 

So how is bullet journaling going? Not bad. I still have bad habits that I'm trying to break, but as James Clear mentions, I will again go back to bad habits for some time. It doesn't happen overnight. Bad habits occur because of stress and boredom. Now that I'm back in school, I'm stressed, but then I find myself bored. What do I do in those instances? Play a stupid game on my phone that I'm ridiculously addicted to for no good reason!

I do have my phone notifying me twice a day to check my bullet journal, so that is holding me accountable for looking at it every day (making it a habit). I also put app timers on my phone so that I don't spend all of my free time on Ramsay Dash, Reddit, and Twitter. My husband told me to leave my ukelele and coloring books on the couch, so they are in my face when I'm a couch potato. 

I'm hoping, by picking habitual as my word of the year, that I will have more to talk about when I'm with other people. I can talk about the new photos I took last weekend and can show them the final versions on Instagram. I can use coloring as a destresser after an unusually long day. I can tell people that I can play the ukelele which makes me seem "cool and interesting." And, of course, my final hope is my house will be clean because of me!

I know this post was incredibly personal (and not really related to education at all), but I appreciate you making it to the end. Thanks for reading! I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website