Using Inquiry Circles to Teach Content Area

Back in December I wrote about how I have been experimenting with inquiry circles.  You can read that post here.  I have continued implementing ideas I learned while reading the book, Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles for Curiosity, Engagement and Understanding by Stephanie Harvey and Smokey Daniels.  During the winter I began an inquiry unit on slavery and the Underground Railroad.

First, I would like to say that this topic is not part of our official third grade social studies units.  So, why did I choose this topic? Over the years that I've taught elementary school I have noticed a lot of confusion surrounding African American history.  I've had numerous students after reading about Martin Luther King Jr, ask if he "freed the slaves". While reading various picture books that either focus on an African American or a topic in African American history I have many students ask questions during the reading that often surprise me.  One such question is, "What is a slave?" And while I always answer these questions I have been surprised at how many of my students are either confused about or don't know just a little bit about our African American history.  Their knowledge at best is very superficial.  And when I do answer questions I often feel like I am just skimming the surface and there is so much more I would like them to know! Every time I share books or talk about Martin Luther King, Jr and the civil rights movement I have felt like there was a big piece missing.  So that question that so many of my students had: "What is a slave?" or "What is slavery?" turned into an inquiry circle.  It wasn't long until that question morphed into "Why was there slavery?".

I began by reading several picture books to introduce the topic of slavery in America. One of my favorites was Now Let Me Fly: The Story of a Slave Family by Dolores Johnson.  It is a fictional story about a young girl kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery. It is not a pleasant story and doesn't have a happy ending, but my students were riveted, shocked and had so many questions afterward. This is exactly what I wanted - they had bought in and wanted and needed to know more.

I decided to use the Underground Railroad Scholastic website for our internet research.  It it well put together, in chronological order and used a lot of primary documents as well.  In addition, it gives students the ability to listen to the text as well.  This was important since there was so much new vocabulary and the text could be challenging at times.  Students would work in partnerships to read, discuss and take notes on each section of the website.  Each partnership used one computer.  This kept them focused on collaborating. This portion of the research took a LONG time due to limited access to computers and the fact that they are 8 and 9 years old!  There were many lessons on collaboration - how to listen and have a conversation. There were lessons on how to read and understand the text - how to reread, how to notice when you are confused, noticing important vocabulary, asking further questions.  There were note-taking lessons - using 3 column charts to note our new learning, questions and important vocabulary, learning to reread our notes often.  Periodically, we had whole class discussions about our learning and questions.  An important idea that we explored was noting our misconceptions.  As students began to read about the Underground Railroad I knew it would be difficult for them to understand that it was not a real railroad.  There were several days of discussion before most of the class began to realize it was a symbol or metaphor for escape. (They did not use those terms!)

When we weren't in the computer lab or using the chromebooks with our school librarian, we were reading the book, If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America by Anne Kamma.  This is a great non-fiction books for third graders because each chapter or section has a question as the title.  Students were divided into cooperative groups.  I gave each group a different set of chapters from the book to read together and take notes on.  Later each group taught the rest of our class their sections of the book.

As our research started to come to a close I began thinking of ways my students could share what they learned.  I decided to have them write slave narratives.  Each student would tell their story as an escaped slave, writing in first person.  In addition, I decided to have them do this in a Google document.  This would be the first time they would type a long piece of writing in Documents. Prior to this they had only used Google Presentation and Draw, but this had provided the practice they needed to get familiar with the keyboard.  They clicked away with one or two fingers fairly quickly! A link to their slave narratives is available on our class blog.  Just scroll to the bottom of the page.

During the time I was planning this inquiry unit a discussion began on twitter and other social media regarding the depiction of slaves in the book, A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins and Sophie Blackall.  I read all the tweets, blogs and comments surrounding the book and hope I have learned a lot and am a better teacher because of these discussions.  But I will admit that I was even more nervous about teaching this unit!  What if I did it wrong?  I am white.  Do I have enough understanding of the topic to teach it to my students?  Yikes! But then I thought back to the 8 year old Debbie, back in third grade, in 1968, living and going to school in a suburb where everyone looked like me.  That little girl went to the library and checked out a book on Harriet Tubman.  That little girl cried and cried over that book.  That little girl wondered why she hadn't learned about Harriet in school. That little girl went back to the library to learn more.  It's with that little girl, that little Debbie (pardon the pun) in mind, that I tried to create an inquiry circle that would encourage my students to learn more.  

I will close with one last story.  As students were peer editing their documents I heard this comment. "Your narrative is so good, it makes me want to cry." 

Technology and Digital Learning: Reflection, Update and Status of my Teaching #CyberPD

Around this time of year I always start reflecting on my current year of teaching.  Last summer I participated in #Cyber PD Google Community, which caused me to stop and reflect on my use of technology.  You can read my posts here, here, here and here.

I wanted to write an update on my current use of technology and my current mood/philosophy regarding technology in the classroom.  A couple of things have changed since last summer.  Our school got a cart of Chromebooks for the library and the district hired a full-time library media specialist for our building.  We still don't have wireless in my hallway, but I hear the district is working on that.  I also hear they are purchasing another cart of Chromebooks to be checked out for the classroom.  This, in addition to a computer lab is good news!

I still believe that technology should be used to help students create, collaborate and share their learning.  In general, I'm not interested in the next best app or gadget just because it's available and all shiny and new.  Whether it's an old fashion pencil, book, or electronic device I always ask myself one question.  How will this improve my teaching and students' learning?  If a notebook and pencil works best, than I'm still going to use it! Last summer, I have to admit, I felt envious of all the 1-to-1 i-pad and Chromebook classes.  It was frustrating to see the inequity across schools in regard to technology.  This fall and winter, as I dreamed of my own 1-to-1 classroom, I realized that I needed to decide what that exactly meant to me.  What would I do if I had access to devices all day long?  Would I use them for everything?  Since I don't have 1-to-1 devices yet, I can't tell you what exactly I would do, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use them for everything.  Here's why;  First, I just don't think it's healthy for children to sit in front of a screen for long.  Elementary students need to touch and manipulate paper, pen and math manipulatives.  They need to use oral language.  They need to lay on a beanbag and read.  And, yes they need to do the physical act of writing.  And they need to do it a lot.  I also think it's important for students to have choices and know when to use technology.  So right now, for me, a 1-to-1 class means that my students would have access to the technology whenever they need it.  They don't have to sign up to go to the computer lab.

One thing that has come up quite often this past year, at least in my school district, is whether or not teaching third graders to use Google Drive is appropriate.  Many teachers argue that without keyboarding skills, students cannot successfully use Drive. It is my opinion that Google Drive is definitely appropriate for third graders!  Yes, they are very, very slow with the keyboarding skills, and it takes most students 1-2 sessions just to learn how to log onto their account.  But we must remember that learning is a process, it is not about a product.  I start with Google Draw and Slides which allows students to get familiar with the keyboard without having to type an entire document.  I also think it's important for teachers to understand that Drive is so much more than a word processing program!  Right now my students are creating their first Google Document.  They are pecking away much quicker and finding the right keys.  Using Draw and Slide, along with working collaboratively, allowed them time to learn the keyboard and how to format text so they were ready for independence.  My access to computers is very limited, so I didn't want to use that time with a formal typing program.

Other Changes
I started a class twitter account and still have a class blog.  One goal I had was to blog more regularly.  This didn't happen, so I need to re-evaluate my class blog and whether I will continue blogging.  I did revamp my class website and I think it is very useful.  I am particularly proud of my Symbaloo page.  It allows my students to easily access different Internet sites that we use. I continue to use Wonderopolis for shared reading, but also added DogoNews.  I tried out Bookopolis with my class, but students really don't use it due to our limited access to computers.  My class has visited the library often to use the Chromebooks for several inquiry projects.  You can read a post about it here. It has been wonderful to work alongside our new library media specialist.

NEXT YEAR
Next year some things will be changing.  I've decided to move to 5th grade.  I've been in grades 1-3 for the last ten years, so I am excited and nervous for the challenge of a new grade.  I have loved every grade I have taught.  There isn't a big reason for the change, it's just something I have been considering for awhile.  I started my career teaching 4th, which made me a better 1st grade teacher, which made me a better 2nd grade teacher, which made me a better 3rd grade teacher, and that will make me a better 5th grade teacher! I look forward to using Google Drive with my fifth graders and exploring other digital tools as well.

Exploring and Experimenting with Inquiry Circles

Over the years I have been interested in taking my student research in a more authentic direction.  I wanted to move away from a teacher-chosen, whole group topic to more of a student chosen topics.  While teaching second grade I did this with research clubs during reading workshop.  After finding out what my students were interested in learning about I collected books and magazines on that topic.  Students selected the group they wanted to be in and spent time reading and taking notes on that topic.  I usually had at least 5-6 themed clubs prepared.  The usual topics were outer space and various animal groups. Groups usually presented their learning on a poster.  Kathy Collins' book, Reading for Real gave me the inspiration for these clubs.

Since moving up to third grade last year I started reading about inquiry units and recently read the book, Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles for Curiosity, Engagement, and Understanding by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey "Smokey" Daniels.  What a terrific book! The book explains why small group inquiry should be used and describes 4 different models for inquiry.  The best part is the lessons that are included, which are divided into 3 sections: comprehension, collaboration and inquiry.  The books is filled with examples from real classrooms with real teacher talk.  This book gave me the push I needed to dive into inquiry circles in my classroom.

MY FIRST INQUIRY UNIT

First, I want to say I am so excited that my school district hired full time librarians once again for our elementary schools.  After many years of budget cuts I am delighted that our school board worked to restore these wonderful library media specialist.  This unit was completed with the help of our most wonderful library media specialist, Ms. Yilidrim.

I decided to make my first inquiry unit a curricular inquiry.  I began with a broad theme, "Oceans".  As part of our science curriculum we are suppose to study plants, photosynthesis, etc.  I decided I could teach the skills and concepts using the Ocean theme.  By using a collection of read alouds, short articles and videos I taught my class important reading comprehension and note-taking skills.  Along the way I gave my students an "Inquiry or Wonder" Notebook and gave them time daily to enter questions they had about our topic of study.  I used the information in these notebooks to pull questions that I thought might work for our first "mini-inquiry".  It was my intention to get them into the research part quickly so they could begin answering their own questions.  Here's some of the questions we started with: How deep is the ocean?  Where are the underwater mountains located?  What is the temperature of the ocean?  How do fish breathe underwater?

Students chose the question they were interested in researching.  I placed students in pairs to begin the research.  They have limited experience working collaboratively and I thought partners would be a good beginning.  While students researched together everyone was responsible for their own note-taking.  When I do this again I will have larger groups to compensate for absences and learning/reading abilities.  Besides more researchers get through more research!

CAN'T WE JUST GOOGLE IT?

While we taught our students how to use trade books and reference materials to search for answers to their questions, I also decided to BEGIN teaching them how to use the internet to get answers to their questions.  I was hoping to teach them how some questions are quick to answer, while we might have to delve further to answer other more complicated questions. But that didn't happen. For my third graders these questions were hard to answer!  Here's some problems using the internet with third graders.  First, reading level.  There are some good sites to help them out, but often they are so full of technical language that they needed help to figure it all out. I think for the future I will create a list of helpful websites for students when doing research.  Second, trying to teach them that everything on the internet is not always trustworthy is an ONGOING lesson.  Hopefully by the end of the year my students will have acquired some basic knowledge on using the Internet for research.

PRESENTING WHAT WE LEARNED

I decided to put my students in larger groups after the research was complete.  Most groups had 4-5 students.  I taught them how to use Google Slide Presentation.  Students divided up the slides making sure they had an introduction slide and a slide with all the resources included.  Each group presented to the whole class.

You can see some example slide presentations here and here.

WHAT DID I LEARN?

I reminded myself the entire time that the PROCESS was more important than the product.  I learned that my students could work collaboratively but it was messy and filled with problems along the way - but very worth it.  I know that with practice, they will be better at it next time.  This was authentic because they researched questions that were important to them.  I want to make sure I give students skills and strategies that they will use for a lifetime, not just for the moment.  Finding reading materials on a third grade level is the most challenging thing for me, especially if I want students to be able to work on different questions.  Going to the library to work with on the Chromebooks was great because I had access to another teacher.  It was a joy working with our new library media specialist.  Completing this type of research would be very difficult without having another expert involved!

Here's a list of some of the skills and concepts they learned and practiced:

• working collaboratively, listening, helping and not always getting your way, being a member of a team
• listening and taking notes
• reading and taking notes
• non-fiction reading strategies
• locating information in table of contents or index, deciding if the text will help you, deciding what key words to use
• rereading over and over to understand something
• using graphics to understand what you read
• summarizing key points from text or video
• asking questions when you don't understand and helping someone when they don't understand
• why it's not nice to plagiarize
• what does .gov, .com, .org mean?
• how to locate the author of the website
• how to use key words to look something up on the internet
• getting your questions answered is hard work, you have to concentrate and persevere
• how to use Google Drive and create slides
• how to use a Chromebook

I know my list could go on and on, but I will stop there.  I wanted to make sure I documented my thinking after I was finished with this first try at inquiry circles.  I look forward to our next set of inquiry circles.

Have you used inquiry circles?  Have you taught young students how to use the Internet for research? Do you have favorite search engines or websites?

Google Drive in the Elementary Classroom - inspired by #cyberPD2015

This summer I participated in #cyberPD Google Community.  We read and discussed Digital Reading: What's Essential by Bill Bass and Franki Sibberson. The conversations have continued at the CyberPD blog. You can also find this post there!

Last year I began exploring Google Drive with my third graders after my district had recently began using Google Apps for Education.  I wrote about my first experiences here. For this post I thought I would share the different ways I have tried to use Google Drive in my Reading Workshop. I certainly am not an expert, but I hope by sharing my experiences it will inspire others to share how they use Google Drive in their classrooms.

I think many teachers probably have some experience using Google Drive, probably Docs, which is similar to Word, a word processing program. However Drive is much more powerful and versatile!   What makes it so powerful is the ability it gives teachers and students to collaborate and share what they create in an authentic manner.

Google Draw
The first tool that my students got familiar with was Google Draw.  I love this tool because it is so versatile.  Students can make posters, graphic organizers, thinking maps, diagrams and can even add clip art or images.  And since my third graders had basically no typing experience this was a great tool to start with to help them get familiar with the keyboard, and not get bogged down by typing. Just like you might partner or group your students to work on a project traditionally you can do the same thing in Google Drive.  Students and teachers can share documents digitally and work on them together.  For example, after participating in book clubs my students worked in partnerships to create Circle Thinking Maps about main characters.  One student creates the document in their drive and shares it with the second student.  Then they can work together to create the map and share it with me when they are done.  I have my third graders sit down next to each other in the computer lab so they can communicate with one another easily and I can help or chat with them together while they work.  However, students can work in separate places and even at home in a collaborative fashion using the Chat function to communicate with one another.  To get an idea of what is looks like on the screen when students are working on the same document you can view this quick video of Brian St. Pierre's 5th grade class working on on document together. Of course it is wonderful to see students creating digitally, but the exciting part is all the ways we can now share our creations.  With Google Drive you can embed documents in websites or blogs, or share them by using URL's.  And yes, you can still print them out traditionally.  All student work is saved electronically becoming sort of a digital portfolio.

We didn't create a lot since I was learning last year, but I wanted to show you a few student samples so that you could see all the possibilities this tool provides.




My colleague, Brian St. Pierre, has several tutorials on Youtube for using Google Drive that you might find helpful.  The first one is on sharing a document with another person.

Google Presentation
Google Presentation is like a slide show.  Once students were familiar with Draw it was very easy for them to learn how to make slides. At the end of the year each student created a slide and then I was able to put all the slides together to create a Google Presentation that I embedded on our Class Blog.

Google Forms
Another tool we tried was Google Forms.  Forms is a great way to collect information, whether you are surveying your students about their reading life or creating a quiz or test, you can do it with forms. After we had read an article in our Scholastic News about whether video games should be considered a sport we decided to create a survey using Google Forms and then embed it in our blog as a post called Is Video Gaming a Sport?.  When you are in Drive viewing your Form you can also click 'view responses' and you will see a spreadsheet of all you data.  You can also create a chart or graph of your data once in Google Sheets. I am still learning how to do this!

Organizing Google Drive
It doesn't take long to collect lots of student documents once they start sharing with you! I will admit I have not organized my student shared documents.  One of my colleagues creates a file for each student in her class and shares the file with that particular student.  She asks that all their finished work go into that file.  This is something I will probably do this year.  It will be a mini-digital portfolio.

Students also need a list of student usernames so that they can easily share documents.  I created a document that listed everyone's name, including mine, along with their usernames, and shared this document with my class.  That way they could copy and paste usernames when they needed to share documents.  Students have usernames that look similar to an email, but are not an email account.

Google Classroom
If you want to have a central place where you can digitally hand out assignments, provide links and collect student work then Google Classroom might be right for you.  Google Classroom is linked to your Google Drive.  Once you sign up and create a Classroom you can invite your students to join. It's definitely very middle school and high school friendly.  You can upload worksheets and hand them out electronically to your students.  Students complete the work and hand it back in electronically.  All student work is than located in your Classroom folder. Google Classroom keeps track of this and you can even grade assignments digitally.  Late in the spring I decided to experiment with Google Classroom to see if it might work for my third grade class.  I made a short video so that you can tour my Google Classroom to decide if it is right for you and your classroom.

As you can see Google Drive has much potential for helping students create and share in a meaningful and authentic manner.  I have just touched the surface of how we can use it in our classrooms.  I look forward to teaching my new batch of third graders and exploring more ways to use Google Drive in my digital reading classroom! I would love to hear how you use Google Drive in your elementary classroom.

Google Drive in Third Grade

My school district has recently introduced Google Apps for Education. I've used google docs myself for awhile now, mostly to share with teachers I meet through my twitter account.  I've never used it with students.  This year I moved from second grade to third grade.  This required a move to an intermediate grade 3-5 school, which has a computer lab.  I was excited to be able to explore ways we could create, share and communicate using technology!

In our district each student has been assigned a username and password for Google Drive.  The username is very long and includes our school district name - Comsewogue - which I imagined would be a challenge.  I created an index card for each student that included their username and password.  These cards are held in a small basket which we bring to the computer lab.  Their first assignment was to just sign in to their account.  For most of the class this took nearly the entire 40 minute period.  It took several students a couple lab periods to sign on to their account.  After a month or so some students have their information memorized and most can sign-in fairly quickly.

A ROCKY START
For our first experience I thought would share a document with them and teach them how to chat using the commenting feature.  We were going to begin a new read aloud chapter book soon, so I thought instead of doing the introduction and predictions in the typical fashion we would do it through a google document.  Students were so excited!  The first problem happened when I failed to mark comment only on the document.  So even after modeling how to comment correctly, students began to type on the document, delete items and even make bizarre comments.  It was actually hilarious to watch on my screen in real time.  It was a great teachable moment for both myself and students.  The following day I showed them how we could look at the history and see what got changed and who was responsible.  The nice thing was that only their user number appears, not their actual name - so no one was embarrassed.

GOOGLE DRAW & PRESENTATION
Next, I introduced Google Draw.  I showed students the different functions and just let them do a free draw before assigning any particular projects.  I think of Google Draw like I would a poster, or a page in their learning log.  It has both drawing and text features, so I could see endless possibilities.

In math we had been working on multiplication so I decided to introduce Google Presentation and have each student write a multiplication story problem using 2 slides.  The first slide was for the story problem and the second slide was for the answer to the problem.  Presentation has many similar functions as Draw so students were able to transfer their understanding easily.   I taught them how to use the research tool to find clip art to go with their story.  I thought learning how to share documents would be a challenge, but most students had no difficulty.  To make it easy for sharing I shared a document with a list of everyone's account numbers, including mine.  You can view our completed slide show with our Multiplication Stories here on our class blog.

COLLABORATING
For the next project students worked in pairs to create a Circle Thinking Map for the main character, Albie, in our read aloud, Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff.  They used Google Draw and learned how to draw objects and move them to the back to create layers.  When they were finished we printed them out to hang up in the classroom.

Most of my students don't have a lot of experience with technology beyond using their parents' smart phone and playing video games.  Some have access to ipads and computers at home, but many families do not have computers or Internet access beyond their smart phone.  These students come from a primary building that is restricted to 2-3 desk top computers, so I knew there would be a wide range of computing abilities depending on experiences at home. Other than the difficulties with signing on my students caught on very quickly.  In fact, computer "experts" emerged quickly and instead of waving their hands in the air and waiting for me, they started helping each other out.  Most naturally figured out things like how to use the tabs in Chrome to toggle between documents.  Using the computer was very motivating and those students that often need lots of redirection in class were very engaged in the assignments.  Of course the biggest challenge is that I was only able to sign our class up for 3 periods a week in the computer lab. (We have over 17 classrooms, so I am lucky that I got 3 periods.)  Just like any other classwork there are those students who lag behind and need extra time to complete work.  This is an easy fix in my classroom, but challenging nearly impossible in a computer lab setting.  I tried creating a "catch up" day, but that means that these slower working students often don't get to do all the assignments.  While they catch up, the rest of the class is trying something else. I want every minute of our computer lab time to be productive for all my students, so I am still working this out.  Of course I know what you might be thinking!  Students can use Google Drive at home and finish their work.  In a perfect world this might be ideal.  However, most of those students that need extra time also need extra help.  And like I mentioned earlier, my students don't all have access to the Internet at home.

There are so many wonderful tools for students to share, create and communicate using technology.  Google Drive is just one option for my students.  I would love to hear how you have used Google Drive with your class, especially if you are an elementary student.