This presentation at NECC 2008 is by Global Writes. The program brings a writing workshop to the classroom. The teaching artist spend several weeks in the classroom and serves as a professional poet role model in their classroom. The technology is used to bring students together to perform their poems. It’s 4-12th grade students.

Authentic assessment. They have rules for critiquing, praise and respectful criticism. Students feel safer to share because there is a careful structure for feedback.

All of the classes participate in a competition over 2 weeks; 4 sessions a day and then finals. There isn’t a fee (so far) to be in the tournament.

Students give feedback on the writing as well as their presentation of their ideas – body language, pace, gestures, spoken word.

Blogs and podcasts are used to support the writing and reading too. The SlamFam blog is used both by current students and those who have moved on and still post and comment on the work on the blogs.
In some of the cases, the younger siblings came into the class and contributed to the same blog their older siblings were posting to.

Student outcomes include improved attendance, increased motivation, increased self-esteem & self-awareness, enhanced communication and social skills. (A story of a kid who stuttered all the time except when he was performing his poems.)

Teacher outcomes include extended literacy instruction options, collaborative teaching skills, arts integration skills.

They got funding from AEMDD to do some actual research on their program. Three classes at each school studied over 3 years with 4 treatment schools and 4 control.  75% of the kids are still writing poetry. During the research grant the students jumped from 40% planning to go to college to 85% planning to go to college.

The teachers felt more skilled in teaching writing – so the program also mentors the teachers. The data is all just from the Bronx. Now they are collecting data and expanding the program to Chicago to see if the program is replicable.

They are working on creating a replicable and sustainable model.

Shivers up and down my spine while the kids recited their poetry. Incredible!!!!

Wednesday morning at NECC. I’m at Linda McDonald‘s model lesson session. Before the session started, Linda gave the students a lecture on how to behave on a videoconference. It was great to hear her tell them to behave as if their mom or grandma were watching.

A quality videoconference partnership includes three things:

• higher order thinking
• all students included and engaged
• design based on curriculum need

Higher order thinking – focus on application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Open ended questions stems. If you push kids to the higher level thinking, they will master the knowledge and comprehension level. Teacher as facilitator – don’t answer for the kids.

All students engaged – students in small groups, think time for small group discussion (just mute & talk in groups!!), “learnin’ ain’t quiet”. Keeping a fast pace. Addressing multiple modalities.

Curriculum need – math marvels came from weaknesses on the standardized tests. Timely – has to fit the time that they are doing the book or content. Aligned to how the teachers teach the skills, but still pushing them to the higher level thinking skills.

After the intro, we did several little examples of projects.

I Have, Who Has game. The group is in charge of the clues. The cards have an answer at the top and a question on the bottom. The answer and questions don’t match. The first student reads what they have, and then reads the question. I.e. I have Ulysses S. Grant. Who has the turning point in the Civil War? If you google “I have who has,” you can find examples of how this works. The cards are mixed up amongst the two sites. The answers bounced back and forth between the sites so it’s really easy and really interactive. This is great for a test review.

For Math Marvels
A challenging problem is given to both sites. Both sites mute and small groups try to solve the problems. Then a hint is shared. Then the groups share their problem solving strategies.

Collaborative Writing
The ABCs of writing. Have words that start with a letter, and then write it into a sentence. Here’s an example.

• America
• Against taxation without representation
• Armed
• Anti-monarchy

Americans armed themselves against taxation without representation and afterwards set up an anti-monarchy government.

Then both classes supply B words, and together write a sentence – one site writes the first phrase, and the other site writes the second phrase. Then, does it match what you know about the topic? Did it stretch your time?

Novel Projects
Kickoff session is before we start reading. The book for this model lesson is Number the Stars. While you’re watching the video clip, make a list of words that come to mind. They activate students schema, make lists of vocab words, etc. to prep for reading the book. After the video, the two sites create a group word wall and share all the words they came up with. Since this class is 8th grade, Linda pushed them to come up with more 8th grade words vs. just sad. So they came up with disheartening, overwhelming, depression.

In the example of the after session, students then work on a story map together. A shared file is created with the two classes.

More Info
See the NECC page to see the resources that go with this presentation.

Components of Linda’s challenge videoconferences: strong lead teacher, pushing the content and instruction to a higher level. Hardly any “talking” or “presenting”. Instead everyone is interacting on the content, with each other at their site, with the teacher, and the students at the other site. Each one is really focused on the content.