Making Learning Visible

About two and a half years ago I was fortunate to be in a meeting with a start up company called Fresh Grade.  Their goal was to create a tool that would better help teachers, parents, and students communicate learning on an ongoing basis.  Their vision focussed around helping students and teachers create digital portfolios by providing tools to easily capture student learning through voice, video, or images. These "snapshots" could then be easily shared with parents who could then comment on the learning too and help their child at home.

I will admit, at first the product had many glitches and was far more work then any other way I was collecting and sharing student learning.  In addition my systems were working well for me and my students shared their work on their blogs.   If you have ever visited my students blogs you'll know that they are very visible with their learning  But, is it enough?

Fresh Grade is a tool that helps my students and I do more by collecting artifacts, adding assessment information, and sharing all that information with their families on an on going basis.   Let me explain.

I use Fresh Grade to collect assessment information on class big ideas.  I create activities and collect artifacts that support the learning intentions of the activities.  My activities are broad in nature though and focus on big ideas.  For example a big idea  might be "reading", "writing",  "playing with patterns", "playing with force and motion", "playing with states of matter" etc.  They are part of my government issued curriculum.   I stay broad on purpose  because my students learn, show, and share their knowledge in individual ways.  We don't have assignments with due dates, we have on going learning.  I stay focussed on big ideas so I have a place to capture, store, and organize their various learning snapshots.

These are some of the "big ideas" I am collecting information on. They are based on my prescribed learning outcomes.

For example when I have a writing conference with a student I can take a photo of their writing, and I can make the conference notes right into Fresh Grade.  If we talk about what they are proud of, or what they want to work on I can record that information. If we set a goal I can record that too. I can record the student reading their writing, or talking about their writing.  Fresh Grade makes it easy for me to add this assessment information to their private portfolio.

If I want to include something they have put on their individual blog I can do that too by adding the link. But I can take it a step further and add my (and or their) assessment information with the blog link too. My students still have full control of what they upload to their individual blogs, but I can take what they are uploading and add it to their assessment portfolio for reporting student learning.

Now I will admit each time I add an image or video I am not typing (or voice recording) additional assessment information.   Sometimes  I just take snapshots of work so I have samples over time to help track growth.  Other times I have images of them working on something.  There is no limit to what I can add to these portfolios. I have all types of learning snapshots.

Collecting snapshots of learning, and adding assessment information to these snapshots is only one part of why I like Fresh Grade.  As soon as I add a photo (or video, or voice recording or assessment note) to a child's portfolio I have the choice to share it with the student's parents immediately via email.  By the time one of my students gets home  from school their parents may already know what we talked about in our writing conference and how they can help at home.

This is a snapshot of learning. You will note that a parent has read and responded to this information.

My students' parents can also add comments to their children's work. They can ask for clarification or they can share how they are helping their child at home.  No longer do they have to wait for the once a term report card to go home.  They are getting snapshots of learning on a regular basis. Plus I'm not having to compose and send home individual emails. The app/site does it for me if I want it to.

Now I don't email home everything I add to the portfolio but I have invited my students' parents in to see their child's portfolio when ever they want.  If at any time they want to know how their child is doing, they just have to peek in and see.  There are work samples with assessment data together.

One thing to remember though is that how I use Fresh Grade is very different than how others use Fresh Grade.  Older students are able to have more involvement with their portfolios and can add their own reflection and assessment information.  Assignments can be more specific, marks can be collected, data can be organized. You can curate resources in Fresh Grade. That's one of the things I like about Fresh Grade. There is no one right way to use it.  Different teachers have different needs and Fresh Grade allows you to personalize how you use the product.

But is it perfect? Of course not and what's great about Fresh Grade is that they are listening to feedback. I have watched them grow over the past two and a half years and I can assure you, they are listening.

If you're looking for a way to make your students' learning visible I highly recommend you check out Fresh Grade.  If we're lucky the portfolios being created in Fresh Grade will one day replace the archaic report cards that have changed so little over the past fifty years.

How are you making learning visible for your students and their families?

A Positive Use of Social Media Strikes Again!

Over the past couple of weeks I have shared two of Elise Gravel's wonderful non fiction children's books on disgusting critters.  We have read The Slug and The Rat.  After reading The Rat, and knowing that Elise is on twitter I asked my students if they wanted to tweet her and tell her what they thought about her book.  To no surprise the answer was YES!

Since I teach a combined grade one and two class I started by modelling how to tweet with the entire class.  I ask my grade one students what they wanted to say to her and I typed their tweets as they spoke them.  In the process I modelled how a tweet is written and what we needed to include in a tweet.  

With a few tweets sent, my grade two students were encouraged to tweet to her too while I worked with some of my grade one students.  Of course, the rules never change, and I saw each tweet before it went live.  Actually one tweet did sneak out without my eyes but it was quickly brought to my attention.  This tweeting provided my students an  authentic opportunity for writing.  

 As soon as I got a chance to look back at our class "notifications" on twitter I noticed that she was already tweeting us back.  How exciting was that! Here an author/illustrator of books we really enjoyed was reading and responding to our tweets.

A bit of frenzy occurred in my room as we read the various responses to each of my students tweets. A couple of students continued their conversations with her. The rest of us moved on with our morning.

What we missed in the process was that a few tweets later Elise Gravel was curious as to what my class was called since our class twitter handle is @MsLsClass.  Thankfully she figured it out because what she had in store for us next was something we would have never have expected to happen. 

She tweeted us this...

Can you imagine how powerful that one image was for my students? Needless to say we have a lot more Elise Gravel books to enjoy over the next few weeks and are looking forward to her new books too.

Also, in case you have forgotten Elise is not the only author that has interacted to this magnitude with my students.  Ame Dyckman is another incredible author too.  Here's a blog post about our initial encounter with Ame, and how our relationship with her continued. Elizabeth Schoonmaker has also worked with my students.  We've also had author's like Todd Parr and Peter Reynolds interact with us a bit too.  I am certain there are MANY others who would interact with their readers through social media.

These are just a few examples of how using social media can bring real learning into your classroom. It makes me question why there are so many districts that are still banning it.  I can't imagine not giving my students this opportunity.

If you're looking for other blog posts I've written on using social media in an elementary classroom check out "Social Media in Grade One? You Betcha!" and "Using Twitter in a Primary Classroom". 

If you're curious to see our twitter interaction I have made a storify with the tweets which you can find below.  Please read all the tweets to see how awesome she was with my students.

Do you use Google products in your early years classroom?

Are you using Google products in your early years classroom to enhance your teaching and your students learning? I'd love to hear how.  Please take a moment or two and fill in this form.  My goal is to collect all the information shared with me, and compile some blog posts to share your (and my) ideas with the world.

I've Been Thinking.... What is really needed for student SELF regulation?

For the past year or so this blog of mine has been a lot quieter than it has been since I started writing it.  As with anything there are reasons for my silence. One reason is over the past year  I was dealing with a very challenging classroom situation in a school system that continues to fund less of the very support my students need.  It's made me question a lot of things and to be honest it's taken a lot out of me.  It's pretty tough seeing broken arms being treated with bandaids (well, that hasn't happened but it's a good idea of how many issues are dealt with).  I've been on crisis management vs crisis prevention and I feel like more often than not I am fighting a loosing battle.  It's been discouraging to say the least.  I've also been thinking and reflecting a lot.  Here is one  thing that I've been thinking about lately, self regulation.

If we really want self regulating students are we able to let go of our teacher control to get our students there?

Through out my challenging year I continued to help my students learn the skills involved with self regulation. I taught them how to recognize their need for a break and how to use their words to ask for them when they were needed.  I taught them how to grab noise reduction ear phones as required, to select where to work, and to choose the way to work that was best for them.  I set up a "check in" system to help them verbalize how they were feelings, express what they needed, and how I could help them.  All this meant I gave my students a lot of control.  There were times when students couldn't handle that freedom and it would kill me to step in and make the decisions for them but I also realize as the adult and teacher in the room it was my job as their teacher to step in from time to time.

But I wonder, how many other teachers would be willing to give their students as much freedom as I have. How many are equally as willing to have a bit of chaos to help students see what was and what is possible?  When we provide our students with seating plans (all year long), or assigned carpet spots (all year long) what skills aren't we teaching our students?  Please don't get me wrong, I do understand that there is a time and place to teach children what proper behaviour looks like during work/discussion time but do we really need to control these environments all year long?

This year, like in the past, I started with no assigned seating at our carpet and our tables. But a week in it was clear that these are skills my students still need to be taught - how to choose a work space that will allow you to do your best work, and how to sit at the carpet in a spot that will help you do your best learning.  My students have now been assigned tables to sit at, and places on the carpet to sit. But for me I hope this will be a very temporary situation as my students better understand what classroom behaviour should look like in these two situations.  Yes, I may have a student or two that will required a specific spot for a little longer than his or her classmates, but the goal for all my students is to help teach them the skills so that they are capable of making their own decisions.  Which brings me back to the idea of teacher control.  If we are controlling where students sit, or how they must work are we missing the boat on teaching them how to self regulate? To me self regulation is a life long skills and one I hope my students are a lot better at when they leave my room.  This means, however, that I need to be willing to give up more and more teacher control . That things may get messier before they get calmer.  I need to trust my gut because like my heart, it knows my students best.

What is your solution for supporting the development of  self regulating students? How do you feel you are hindering your students development in this process and how are you supporting it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Making Thinking Visible: The Power of Voice

This past summer I had the privilege of sharing a three minute showcase with my Global ADE colleagues on Making Thinking Visible: The Power of Voice.  Here is a copy of that presentation.

Making Thinking Visible: The Power of Voice from Karen Lirenman on Vimeo.

Addition Task Cards

I have been busy creating more task cards, this time for addition. Please feel free to download any or all that are of interest to you.  You can find them here. 

The Hand Math Symbolic Level Blackline Master

Number and Number Set Task Cards

For the upcoming school year I have created some number task cards.  Most are open ended and can be modified to meet my students' individual needs.  My students have choice as to which job to do as long as they are working on our overall class learning intention at the time.  Of course some jobs are limited by equipment and so we find ways to make that work too.  I am also open to their ideas, and I utilize opportunities for real world math as often as I can.  If you would like to download some or all of these task cards you can find them here.

I included this page as well. I find different students like to choose different apps to add their voice to their work.  In my classroom this is really important as it helps make their thinking visible.