Day 2 with Matt Gomez

Here are my notes from Day 2 of our elementary school technology integration workshop with Matt Gomez… [often in Matt’s voice, not mine] You also can see my notes from Day 1.

Our agenda and resources (including Matt’s slides)
Our backchannel
Crowdsourced ideas
Lesson / activity redesign

We spent 15 minutes thinking about redesigning what we do – individual reflection then conversation with others in room
In Matt’s district, there aren’t separate math blocks, or health blocks, or science blocks – the entire curriculum is integrated
If you want to see what students are excited about, give them choice and see what they gravitate toward and finish first – most often it’s the activities that give them greater agency and creativity
When I started sharing what’s happening in my room, I realized that we had better be doing good stuff! – that meant giving up some control and focusing on deeper thinking work – our one rule is ‘be brave!’ and we take it from there – it takes about 3 weeks to get my kids up and running at the beginning of the year – then we roll without dozens of rules about everything
Rather than seeing a bunch of kids at one center as a problem, see it as an indication of success – how can we do more of that tomorrow?
Every year my class is first or second of our five kindergarten classes on standardized tests
Get kids excited about learning – little things like rhyming or site words come along as part of the process

App reviews

All of Matt’s app reviews and lesson plan ideas are in one location

Wonderopolis

Every day we start with a daily wonder
My kids run into school and class each morning to see what the day’s wonder is – others tell them not to run – I say, ‘they’re excited about school… let ‘em run in here!’
Geared toward 2nd to 4th grade – may need to translate / paraphrase for younger students
This helps me find out what my kids are interested in – sometimes we spend 3 minutes on this, sometimes it launches new learning inquiries/activities and an hour later we’re still going
Each morning they have a wonder journal – they start a page, draw a picture, and write down what they wonder
Kids are good at telling you what they know – not so good at sharing what they don’t know – in the journals, they can’t write about what they know, they can only write about what they don’t know or would like to know – ‘I’m glad you know about [x], but I want to hear from you what you don’t know’
If the topic is polar bears, when they come to the carpet, they ask questions like ‘I wonder why they’re white’ or ‘I wonder why they don’t get cold’
Second semester their wonder journal becomes a KWL (Know, Wonder, Learn) journal – this 10 to 30 minutes depending on their interest
Each day my kids write 3 journal entries – Wonder/KWL journal, reading response journal, and a regular writing journal
My team collectively writes lesson plans each week – I’m not afraid to deviate from those
If you’re going to make your classroom student-centered, you have to follow the students’ lead
The app stinks, use the web site
Matt’s Top 50 Wonderopolis activities

Headphones

Never buy headphones without volume control – kids need to adjust their sound
Suggested headphones
The kids never care about background noise – only adults do – we like products, we want it to be perfect – they’re just having fun learning

Toontastic

An app designed for telling stories
The first time my students use the app, their job is to make one scene/page – later they’ll do two, then three…
Example – students make a scene in Toontastic to make sense of their learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. – the best way to understand if my kids learned is for them to tell me stories – I can see what they understand, what they’re still struggling with or where they have misconceptions – helps me know what to review
The background can be whatever you want – great for explanatory videos
When kids watch each others’ videos, they’re reviewing our learning over and over again – kids learning from kids is incredibly powerful
Upper elementary students in our school use Toontastic for vocabulary – have to use several of the words in the story
How can we connect this to Iowa standards?

Audri’s Monster Trap video

Kids will get this excited about learning if we set up the environment right

Chatterpix (not Chatterkid)

Chatterpix allows you to email the final product
Take/import a picture, add a mouth, record audio…
Kids will self-differentiate a lot – e.g., taking a picture of any set of blocks/shapes, but then explain in Chatterpix how many there are of each – explaining about an animal or a book character or a historical figure – reading sight words (you can type in the app)
How can we connect this to Iowa standards?
Examples – screenshot a book page and tell what the characters are thinking (inferencing, motivation, feelings) – screenshot anything and describe its attribute – snapping a picture of a stage of work and explaining that step for a how-to video (then string multiple ones together) – write a poem of an inanimate object (then take a photo, read the poem) – pretend that no one likes your animal baby and convince someone that your animal baby is the best (persuasive speaking/writing)
Great for prewriting

Story Buddy 2

The app that we use in my class to make books – kids can draw, add text, add pictures, and change the background – also can add audio to each page – can add multiple pictures to the same page
Wonderful for digital storytelling, sharing with other students or classrooms – great for nonfiction
The paid version allows you to add audio and work on multiple books at the same time
Example – field trip to the arboretum – took two cameras and took photos of everything – imported into Story Buddy 2 and told the story of our trip – groups of four wrote books
Example – watching the Olympics – writing about / describing the Olympics
Example – animal research book
Example – list of weather terms – these are the words I want to see in your book – write a story
Example – color words – take a picture of something that’s red – make a sentence that uses the word ‘red’
Once the book is printed, the kids own that book! – they read each other’s books over and over again – these are all on the class bookshelves for each other – if they can’t read something, they’ll go ask the author
I expect the kids to write and spell at their level
In our district we don’t have thematic (topical?) units – our curriculum is broken down into concepts (e.g., water systems, how are things connected) – science, social studies, health all tie together – in my class, we investigate kids’ interests
I’d rather have 1 iPad than 20 every other week – it’s much easier to use them when you know what you’re going to have and what you’ll have access to – everywhere I go, people are having trouble with carts – sharing iPads across classrooms is tough

Explain Everything

The mother lode of all creative apps!
Similar to Educreations but this one costs money and is more powerful
Instead of me regurgitating what I know about the butterfly life cycle, my class and I co-create a video on the butterfly life cycle – they learn the concepts and vocabulary as we go
I fill the iPad with butterfly life cycle pictures the night before but I don’t choose which ones – they pick from many options – we talk about why we’re selecting each picture (e.g., ‘I like how we can see the eggs in that picture’) – I try to get 8 to 12 options for each stage of the life cycle
We should use real pictures, not cartoon clipart – helps them connect to the real world – for career day, pick diverse images (e.g., male nurse, female doctor, Latino lawyer, etc.) – we need to be thoughtful about this – my Latina girls shouldn’t have to think that all doctors are white males
Using pictures that shouldn’t go in the book is a great way to see if they know what they’re doing – e.g., did the kid put a reptile in her mammal book? did the kid put a spider in his insect book?
They know each others’ books (just like they know every other kid’s backpack but their own!)
Sight word books – finger dots under each word – these ebooks have helped lots with our sight words
Use this app a lot in my reading groups – take a screenshot of a book page or import a book PDF – circle some words to emphasize – have the kid read aloud and record it – this is a great running record, able to be shared with parents – easy to show how much kids have gained in their reading skills – I can show parents what kids are reading and what they need to work on
I take a video every month (or more often) of every kid’s language acquisition, reading, etc. – great documentation for the teacher and parents
Ask kids at the beginning of the year what they like – make a word wall with 5-6 photos from what they tell you – put on their lockers – kids use these as sight word helpers all year (e.g., I need to know how to spell the word ‘bike’ – Brianna likes bikes so I will go look at her locker)

Kayden + rain video

Learning is about experiences – the only way you can understand rain is to feel it
My goal as a teacher is to give my kids as many experiences as I can
The thing I’m most proud of in my room is our 3 terrariums, not technology
If you can find kids’ interests – if you can tap into their interests – learning can’t help but occur – where interest lies, learning occurs
When I went to school, when I went to college, I had lived my whole life in a bubble – I don’t want my kids’ lives to be like that
We don’t teach empathy, we give kids opportunities to be empathetic

Global connections and collaboration

Why Twitter? – student voice, digital citizenship, global connection, spark interest, post anytime
What on Twitter? – daily review, answer questions, geography, document learning, shared writing
My kids learn to tweet when they’re 5 – we always ask ‘is it safe? is it smart? is it nice?’ before we post – when we’re talking online, it’s like we’re talking to a stranger – we wouldn’t give a stranger the same information we would give a friend
I don’t teach digital citizenship, we live digital citizenship every day through what we do
Kevin Honeycutt: kids are playing on the social media playground but no one’s on recess duty
Things to consider – protected or unprotected, profile name/picture, description, who to follow, favorite tweets
I have two Twitter accounts: 1) professional account @mattbgomez and 2) my class account @mrgomezclass (which is protected)
My class account is only connected to other kindergarten classes around the world, no individuals
Start small and local and then grow it – when we started on Twitter, we tweeted with the class across the hall
A physical Twitter map on our wall – throughout the year, we add location-specific cards with Twitter IDs – you don’t need 30 cards, you only need 2 or 3 – pick a couple to really get to know well
Every day we did shared writing, but now we do shared writing on Twitter and then press ‘send’ to share with the world
We read others’ projected tweets, we circle sight words – the content comes from other kindergarten classes
Integrate digital citizenship into everyday activities – it shouldn’t be a standalone lesson or unit
We learn a lot about other classes’ locations – we trade pictures of the outdoors, our lunch rooms, our classrooms – we share videos that we made
Two years ago a tornado came through Dallas ten minutes before dismissal time – parents are in line in their cars, beating on the door to get in – very dramatic! – another class tweeted us the next morning to ask if we were okay – we replied – other classes saw the exchange and chimed in – my kids saw that these things happen everywhere, they have safe rooms too, their class had a safety bear, etc. – it all helped my kids make sense of it
A class in Japan said they didn’t know anything about Texas – we talked about it and decided to make a book – it turned out my kids didn’t know much about Texas either! – we walked down to the library, got some books, did some research, made our book, and shared it with them – every year the 2nd week of March is Texas History Week because that’s when it is in the curriculum but this year we learned all about Texas because my students needed to know about where they lived – they had a reason for why they wanted to know – we received a book back in return
Sometimes we follow experts – e.g., @cmdr_hadfield – when Chris Hadfield shared pictures from space, we would match them up with Google Earth – Pete Delkus, @wfaaweather – we sent 3 questions and he replied – every day we tweeted how close he was – in our class we worked with the number line and showed that he was close (predictions)
Channel 5 News (@nbcdfwweather) heard that we tweeted with Channel 8 News – they set up a live tweet exchange with my class where we asked questions and got answers
We have a research center in my class – as we tweet with other classes and experts, we write down terms and concepts that we run across (migration, bears, lightning) – we use that list on Friday to pick our books from the library for next week’s research center – a sheet of paper with a big box at the top for a picture, then lines below for writing – they draw and share what they’re reading in the research center
Reading books on Skype to others – armadillos, dinosaurs, cars – I hear a lot from parents that they had to go to the library to get more books on what we’re researching
Sharing about their flag with the other state/country (and vice versa) – peer-to-peer conversations that foster learning
One adult reads to Matt’s class every Friday – Eve’s grandparents lived in China and Skyped in
If they’re experts in their field, they’re passionate about their work and are eager to share it – I’ve never had anyone tell me no – authors, zoo scientists, meteorologists
We play Connect 4, Tic Tac Toe, 20 Questions, and other games with classes around the world – we play on a shared Google Doc

Sharing our learning

Doing things in real time is much better (and easier) than sharing 5 days later in the weekly newsletter
My class has a Facebook page for our parents – you’ll want to set up a closed group, not a private group – every family can have 4 members – they email names to Matt so he knows to approve them – keeps track on a spreadsheet
Every day one of my kids takes home our plastic turtle, Tiny Tim – they have adventures, share pictures on Facebook, and write about it
Video of red balloon hanging from ceiling – can you move it without touching it? – parents can see our learning about the concept of force
Kids are promoting our learning to their parents – make it a space for students to share their learning, not for you to share updates and reminders!
We share things as they’re happening in the moment, not days later – it takes 20 seconds – can do from my phone
Matt deletes group members at the end of each summer (after warning parents), then starts a new group for the new year
The Remind app is a great way to share messages/pictures to parents – you can set up scheduled texts
Weebly is an easy way to set up a web site [I recommend WordPress instead!]
The main thing is to find some way to share with parents
Symbaloo page with pictures of each kid (no names) – links to a Google Doc for each student – they write in their journal, parents read and leave comments
What’s the best way for us to share with parents?