Week Reflections

Greetings colleagues! After a second week back from break, I am reflecting on how the last two weeks have gone. There are two things that I want to discuss this week: 1) a class exercise that I thought worked well in my classroom and 2) homework.

A QR Codes activity
This past week, I did a mini-lesson that I thought went well. My students are currently learning about the American Revolution. One thing I believe is important for students for context and engagement is connecting past and present. For the past couple of years, I have had the students compare and contrast the American Revolution with a modern revolution; one that took place during the Arab Spring in 2011. I picked four countries that the students could research. These four countries (Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen) still have strife within their nation today.

My mini-lesson activity involved the students going out into the hall for four stations, scanning a QR code that took them to a video, and had them write, at periodic times, on a sheet of paper about the conflict. I had the students write one-word summaries to a) make them get to their point quickly and b) save time. They were not researching these conflicts yet; they just needed to be exposed to what happened. It was a preview activity to get their minds running and their hearts connected.

I think the lesson went well. There were some tech stumbles during my first period, which is, sadly, why they are my guinea pigs! The other three classes were much smoother.

It was interesting to see which country they chose based on the preview activity. I will say that most students chose Yemen to research, and I truly believe it's because of the video that they watched. That video was much more visual than the other three. Now I know I need to find better videos for the other three countries to make sure they are engaged visually. 

Homework outside of school 

I have mentioned throughout my blog this year about my struggles with my current students. One issue that keeps popping up, whether in my class, on my small team, or in eighth grade, is a lack of completing homework. 

I will admit that I am from the camp that could totally do away with homework. I have read numerous articles about countries overseas that have no homework, about the benefit of play, especially at an early age, and how homework provides little benefit in the actual class. 

Part of me, still, cannot let homework go. I will say that I do NOT assign homework nightly as a punishment, nor do I assign regular homework for "practice." My only homework, Monday - Thursday, is flipped learning. Flipped learning, like my mini-lesson this past week, is meant to expose them to the content. Lecturing has little value in the classroom, in my opinion, so the "lectures" happen through videos or readings. I assess their focus and attention through quizzes where they have to pass with 70% proficiency. 

What has been a challenge with this group of students is that they do not want to do flipped learning. It is interesting to listen to them grumble about their classroom grade, yet not see the correlation between avoiding flipped learning and then having a failing grade in my class. Then it can be so enlightening when I hear a student in my class have that lightbulb moment where they say, "I learned that last night through flipped learning!" 

I am not ready to give up flipped learning; it has a purpose in my classroom and is meant more as a support than punishment. I believe that I do not implement flipped learning quite right, and it is still a work in progress. 

Anyway, back to my original rant: my students don't do homework. Period. But they also do not like completing work in my class. Period. If a student does not complete something in class that is due the next day, it becomes homework. So I am seeing this trend of students not working in class, but then not working at home. So they do not complete the assignment and have a low grade in my class. It is this strange catch-22 where I do not know how to help keep my students on track. I try to create engaging (not fun) lessons where they collaborate with each other and have creative opportunities. But even that does not feel like enough. Any advice? 

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

- Rachel
@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website

Welcome to my blog!

I've been fighting blogging for the past few years. I always made excuses about how I never had time, it would take too much out of me, and that no one wanted to hear what I had to say. Turns out, not one of those things are true - so here we are.

To introduce myself, my name is Rachel Jeffrey. I am about to start my eleventh year teaching. I am originally from Iowa where I graduated from Luther College. My now husband and I first moved to Kingman, Arizona where I taught high school world and US history for three years. The recession hit Arizona hard, so we packed up and moved again to Colorado Springs. The last seven years I've taught 8th grade US history at Skyview Middle School, and the last four years I've been lucky enough to teach on a 1:1 iPad team. My curriculum has essentially been developed by me with a lot of help from online sources and material. I believe in having students answering open-ended essential questions through projects and document-based questions. My curriculum is challenging, but the information and projects are engaging. I am a "pusher"; I push kids to what I think is their best potential.

Because I am new to blogging, I am not entirely sure what I will blog about per my classroom. I know that I have a goal of blogging once a week, hence "Sat. Chat". I do a lot of work and grading over the weekend, so it just makes sense that I blog at the same time! I want to talk about what I am doing in my classroom, what I've learned on Twitter, and other educational topics that I want to talk about. I sincerely hope that my voice can be heard, and I hope that people WANT to listen to what I have to say! It is scary to put oneself out there, especially when the internet can be scary and cruel.

Even though it is not Saturday, I do want to blog about my experience at ISTE 2016. Wow - what an overwhelming, informative conference. For me, the biggest takeaway from this conference is that there are a lot of like-minded teachers like me. Even though I have times where I feel very isolated at school, I am not alone. I have to remember to reach out to other teachers, whether in Colorado Springs, or around the state, the US, or the world. Even though I am a self-proclaimed "black sheep" at Skyview, I am just a normal, typical sheep all around.

I went to some amazing sessions

• The keynotes from Michio Kaku and Ruha Benjamin were absolutely inspirational! Mr. Kaku talked about what technology will look like in the future and how we have to prepare students to live in that world. Ms. Benjamin talked about designing schools as laboratories of democratic participation instead of reproducing inequality. Ms. Benjamin's keynote was eye-opening and challenging. It made me think about inequalities in my own classroom. Powerful, powerful stuff!

Transform education - how do you use this information instead of memorizing --> time to stress concepts and principles #ISTE2016

— Rachel Jeffrey (@historicalipad) June 27, 2016

We can’t force our Ss to turn off culture in order to learn #ISTE2016

— Rachel Jeffrey (@historicalipad) June 28, 2016

•  I also enjoyed the flipped learning session with Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann, web tools with Monica Martinez, the Google infused classroom with Holly Clark, and sketchnoting with Sylvia Duckworth and Kathy Schrock. Needless to say, I was FANGIRLING when I met all of these people. They were amazing and motivational! I aspire to be like these presenters someday!

I definitely have a lot to think about with my classroom for this year. Step one for me, this summer, was to finally create my Teachers Pay Teachers account. I don't know if my curriculum is worth anything, but it doesn't hurt to find out! Step two is to clean up my curriculum. As a Marzano district, I need to make sure my unit scales are in order. This will then tie in to some sort of standards-based grading (classroom only - the district has not moved this way... yet... hopefully). I also want to use the Knoster Model to outline my unit projects.

Sorry this was such a lengthy post! I hope that I said something of some interest to you so that you will keep reading! Have a happy Fourth of July on Monday, and be on the lookout for a new blog post on Saturday, July 9th.

 - Rachel

@historicalipad

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