Using Paper Slide Music Videos to Reconceptualize Content

Today's post is a super-easy way to integrate video creation into your class. All you need is one tool to record video (smartphone, tablet, digital camera, flipcam).

Resources:

Dr. Lodge McCammon's Math Songs

Lodge's resources (mp3 and lyrics) on Discovery Streaming

My Students' Videos

My first attempt at paper slide music videos I attempted to have each of my 3 classes collaborate to make one video, which turned out to be a mistake. Only 1 of the classes were able to pull it all together and finish.

This week, for my second attempt, I split the students into groups of (up to) 4. It was good for forcing more accountability for the work, and because it required fewer students to all be there/have their materials/do their work, we had more measures of success.

                                          

Lessons I've Learned about Paper Slide Music Videos (in case you didn't read them on the post-its) :)

1. Make your videos in groups of 3 or 4, and let the kids self-select. 

2. Don't be stingy with materials. I counted out enough slides for each group to have enough, but there will inevitably be crumbled slides on the floor that need to be redone, so keep a stack of extras on hand for the kids to access.

3. Reteach and reconceptualize the content throughout the process. The thought required to package the idea of proportions visually is more than simply solving problems out of your textbook, so you may be shocked about misconceptions students have along the way. Use it as a teachable moment.

4. Celebrate! Producing these videos in one take required my students higher levels of organization, perseverance, and attention to detail than I'm used to seeing from several of them, so it was a delight to be able to breathe a sigh of relief and congratulate them when they were successful.

The Daily 5 in Grades 6-12: Teaching Reading Strategies in Content Areas

This post is the 3rd in a series devoted to adapting the literacy tenets of "The Daily 5" to a secondary classroom with 50 minute periods. You can catch the whole series here.

I started to write about an activity that I did in AP Stats almost a year ago, but the IEP of "Tre'," one of my new students for the semester, has me stuck here. He is going to need a lot of support reading.

"Goals: Reading comprehension- Answer questions across the content areas and answering critical thinking questions independently with 65% accuracy."

This young man is a senior with a tested reading grade equivalency of 5th grade. What's even more shocking to me than the stated goal of 65% is that from my experience, those goals are usually optimistic at best. So, without interventions, I have a feeling this student can hit that goal with perhaps 50% accuracy.

Maybe you've even been there - (I hope you have challenged yourself this way) - you're reading a text from a subject you know little about and get very confused very quickly. Getting over that hump in my own self-selected readings was my main strategy from moving to a Social Studies certification from college into math. I did some confused reading for a few weeks, but reading real texts (books aimed mostly at the general public, but about mathematics instead of practicing hundreds of drills) is what soothed my mind as I left my first love to (what I thought would be) a much drier, boring, and objective subject.

There were probably several things that I read those months of which I could have answered critical thinking questions with only 65% accuracy, but I was able to improve my understanding of the texts because I had reading tools in my back pocket. I knew it was okay to look up definitions of words I wasn't quite confident with (and then definitions of words in the first definition!). I reread some paragraphs (and pages). Sometimes I paused to make connections of the content I was reading to a mathematician or concept I had read about in another book. I knew that having a text beyond my current understanding didn't mean I was dumb, but only that I had more reading to do.

So for "Tre'," its important that if we are going to commit to literacy in content areas, then we must also commit to teaching literacy strategies in the context of our content areas. Especially for students like "Tre'," its apparent that "he'll get it in his English or Reading class" is not going to be enough.

"I HAVE NO TRAINING IN THAT," you may be saying. That may be so, but that doesn't change your students' circumstances. Here are some resources to get your started:

Blog posts
25 Reading Strategies That Work in Every Content Area
9 Lesson Plans with Strategies from ReadWriteThink
How to Read a Nonfiction Text
99 Ways to Improve Your Students' Reading Comprehension
Reading in the Content Area - Pre, During, and Post Reading Activities (from +Kelly Fisher-Bishop)

Books
Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If Not Me, Then Who? 3rd edition 
The Teacher's Essential Guide Series: Content Area Reading

Stuck in the Middle: Helping Adolescents Read and Write in the Content Areas

BONUS: A Pinterest search of "Reading in Content Areas"

The Daily 5 in Grades 6-12: Boxplots Partner Reading

This post is the 2nd in a series devoted to adapting the literacy tenets of "The Daily 5" to a secondary classroom with 50 minute periods. You can catch the whole series here.

Daily 5 Tenet #3 - READ TO SOMEONE

Sit some seniors down in a classroom and tell them they're going to read to each other. They'll look at you almost as skeptically as I did this summer when a colleague had us do it at a reading training over the summer.

"Really," they think. "Do we have to," they ask. "Yep," You will answer.

I modeled it with a different random book I pulled out of the reading corner in my room, and I think that took some of the hesitancy out of it. Granted, my AP Stats students are usually up for anything, but I had full participation in this partner read today with no groaning and pleading.

Here was the text from our textbook, The Practice of Statistics, 2nd Ed.

Not the most engaging passage ever, but certainly not bad by textbook standards, and definitely high on ease of implementation.

How Do I Do This?

A partner read is as simple as it sounds. Two students take turns reading paragraphs to each other. Depending on the individual students' reading levels, partner read could be an opportunity to practice:

• vocabulary building
• reading fluently
• listening to fluent reading
• auditory comprehension
• monitoring for understanding

You may be wondering, "Why not just have students read to themselves silently? I'd rather have that than a dozen kids all reading aloud at once."

I don't think I'm alone on this, and I know I've seen students do it - how often do you skip over information that ended up being important when you are reading to yourself? Yes, skimming is a great technique for speed reading, and is wonderful for getting the gist of an entire article, but I've seen my students routinely discover a few key words they missed reading to themselves after I make them read back to me aloud.

To The Next Level

Reading is always better with writing! Since your students will already be in partners, to wrap up the activity, I had them agree upon 2 summary statements for the passage. Here are a few samples.

I felt like these turned out more as facts-from-the-text than they were summary statements, but once they were shared in class, we got a clearer picture from their parts together.

The Daily 5 in Grades 6-12: Making It Work

This post is the 1st in a series devoted to adapting the literacy tenets of "The Daily 5" to a secondary classroom with 50 minute periods. You can catch the whole series here.

"A lot of these apps would be great for getting your Daily 5 work in..."

I was at an Education Technology Conference last February watching +Kathy Knutson and +Holly Camacaro present on their use of iOS apps in their Kindergarten and 3rd graders respectively, and Kathy paused for a moment to see if she needed to briefly summarize Daily 5 for anyone.

In the room full of elementary teachers, I was apparently the only one that raised my hand. No problem, I've got Google. A very easy search on Google for "daily 5" gets you to the "The Daily Cafe," where you find out that Daily 5 is a literacy framework with 5 tenets:

1. Read to Self 
2. Work on Writing 
3. Read to Someone 
4. Listen to Reading 
5. Word Work 

Exploring even just the Daily 5 website, it quickly becomes clear it is written to elementary teachers with time in their day to go through extended centers - something not feasible for me in a 50 minute class period. Because I work with elementary teachers on the district EdTech Team, I filed it away as useful for perspective, but otherwise ignored it.

When we returned to school in August, we were told that one of the goals for the year was a strategic literacy initiative, and that our main tool would be called "Daily 5" - every student reading 5 minutes a day in every class. While that could look like one of the 5 tenets listed above, it felt like an irrelevant add-on to me, so using what I know from my elementary friends, I decided to take one of the 5 "centers" and choose to do ONE for that class period.

Focusing on ONE of the "Daily 5" for my 50 minute period instead of tacking a sustained reading time to the end or beginning of the period provides several instructional advantages:

• I can integrate the literacy work into what I would be doing that day anyway 
• I can do "Daily 5" during any point of the period. Some days it is my lesson starter, other times it is the meat of instruction, and still others, it serves as a summary/assessment reflection piece at the end of the period. 
• Students see an integration of literacy in their math curriculum instead of just reading in their math class(room). 
• I do not make a point to hit every "5" every week, but I usually get at least three, so students are exposed to diverse literacy activities beyond passive reading. 
• Because literacy is not planned for as an add-on, its effects are more likely to endure and I am more likely to be persistent and consistent in its integration. 

I plan to go into more depth on my literacy and technology efforts as my own Daily 5 presentation with +Abby Erwin at this year's METC conference nears, but just to get you started, here are a few activities I use pretty regularly.

I keep a cheat-sheet taped to the chalkboard next to my desk for easy reference while I'm planning - feel free to print this one!