Communication During Online Learning

Anyone finding it tricky to communicate effectively with students and families during this 100% online learning experience?

A friend of mine uses Seesaw to share information with parents and students. This teacher is able to send blasts to her class with realtime, to-the-second info about things like Google meeting times and links, as well as clarification on Google classroom assignments. These same kiddos and parents have direct access to their teacher to ask questions and request explanations at any time of the day. This could be overwhelming at both ends of the communique, which leads me to wonder…

What is the ideal style of communication between Teacher and Class during Online Learning?

Seesaw isn’t the only app that fosters direct communication between parents and teachers. The Bloomz app is another powerful tool for connecting educators with homes. These social-media-style apps require logins, so they are safe for sharing personal information. This allows teachers to feel safe posting pictures of students, including names, and providing school information that would otherwise be too revealing on an open social media platform like Facebook or Twitter. Can the app be too social, though?

When group messages are posted, and parents “Thanks” and “Thumbs up” the message, each response goes to everyone. If you have “notifications turned on” on your phone or device, it dings over and over… Then families end up turning off the notifications and end up missing valuable information.

Classdojo is an app that I have used in the classroom. This one allows teachers to not only share information with homes, but educators can provide instant feedback concerning classroom behavior. With the proper settings and notifications, parents can be notified as to how their kid is doing throughout the day in a realtime way. Pictures, videos, and messages can also be communicated. Personally, I found that I was tied to the app, constantly looking for student icons to add information to, rather than actually addressing my students.

Additionally, when I used Classdojo, but this could be applied to any of these and other apps, families became accustomed to and dependent on the reporting. Teachers can become captives to communication!

Screen Shot 2020-04-16 at 8.16.25 AM — I’ve embedded a “Learning Plan” full of activities for the week into my classroom website. I try to “Link” as many items as possible to lessen the amount of “Searching.”

And, what about those families who are seemingly unreachable? Teachers collect all kinds of information at the beginning of the year; email addresses, phone numbers, best way(s) to communicate, etc. I’ve emailed, made phone calls, and texted. I want to respect people’s privacy, and not force my teaching onto their family life, but also make the educational experience reachable. I view my attempts at contact as throwing a pedagogical rope. If a family wants or needs some time to itself, they need not grab the string. It is there for them, though.

Screen Shot 2020-04-16 at 8.16.51 AM — I supplied videos and Google slideshows through the classroom website, as well.

Screen Shot 2020-04-14 at 8.37.04 AM — I love that this family got this assignment the way they knew how!

I have chosen to use a Google classroom to provide my online teaching. Because my school district uses Google and all of my students have Google accounts and are versed in Google apps, it was a no brainer. There are other platforms, but I imagine they behave similarly: Educators can post assignments, leave feedback, make announcements, and share links through an app that looks and behaves much like a social media platform. There is a “stream” of activity that teacher and students can scroll through to find things. Items are listed chronologically. Like the other apps, Google classroom provides the opportunity for families to be “notified” when there is app activity; when teachers post things to the classroom.

We return to my original question: What is the best communication between educators and families?

Too much could turn off families, causing them to literally “turn off” notifications. Not enough, and families will not be trained to depend on or look to the platform for updated information/assignments.

Composing this blog from an educator’s perspective, I am finding it difficult to locate my students’ work. In the physical classroom, I’d model and explain instructions to my whole-group of Polite Pirates (students) before posting a Google slideshow to the online classroom for them to engage with. Everyone heard the same message, and I was even available in person to aid students who needed guidance. Now that we are completely online, I am finding myself making movies to reiterate expectations. Luckily, I was able to train my class in the usage of the Google classroom before we were locked out of the school building!

Screen Shot 2020-04-16 at 6.52.24 AM — The flag next to the slide indicates there is a comment attached to it. The yellow box shows what the comment is attached to.

Here is a frustrating situation: I post an “Optional” assignment in the Google classroom. It is a Google slideshow that students can interact with; A copy was produced for each student. Because it is optional, students don’t have to do it. Do I have to check them all? I ought to honor the work of anyone willing to put in this extra effort! I have devised a system that could help me, and empower student work to be found for feedback. Simply tell me that you did the optional work in a comment with in the Google classroom. Additionally, in a slideshow made up of many slides, leave a comment on the slide that you worked on. In this way, students will be “flagging” their work. These comments are hands in the air saying, “Look over here; I did some work I want you to look at.”

I like the idea of “Less is More,” shared by iTeach:iMother on March 24th, 2020.

I am going to share this idea with my parents and pirates today. We’ll see how it works. What are some tips and tricks that you have used to streamline communication during this online learning experience? How can the connection between educator and pupil homes be made tight, clear, unhindered, unobtrusive, and most helpful? I’d love to hear from parents, teachers, administrators, app developers, and more! Comment below, and let’s make this out-of-school schooling as productive and beneficial as possible!

Not All Online Learning Is Created Equal

Scarlet is a pro when it comes to imaginative play.

Along with every other kid in the world, my 8 year old daughter Scarlet is experiencing at home, online learning during the “Stay at Home” novel Coronavirus Pandemic. She is receiving daily assignments of online activities. As I’ve been witnessing hers and preparing my own, I am evaluating what makes the most effective distance learning tools.

Recently, Scarlet was asked to log into a math website and complete a task geared toward teaching coin-counting. This cartoon animation had her making 25 cents with nickels and dimes.

I try to let Scarlet do her online learning with as little distraction as possible, but this got to be too much for me! She was dragging coins to a spot on the screen until she accumulated 25 cents, and then it would celebrate her accomplishment with a silly jingle. I felt like my daughter was turning into a chimpanzee.

I closed the device she was using and drew a grid. “I’m going to teach you a homonym; a multiple-meaning word,” I told her. “This is a table; not the kind you eat on. You use this to make sense of numbers.”

We made a few tables with varying totals and different coins available. She made many different combinations of coins to show the same amount.

While filling in a row of varying coins totaling a dollar, Scarlet made a slight mistake. The table already had one half dollar and one quarter. She wrote “5” in the nickels column which made me happy, but then she wrote “2” in the dimes space. I knew what had happened. She equated the value of one nickel with the number to be written in the field. No biggie. As it turned out, we happened to have toy coins that I had dug out of the closet. I presented the actual coinage on the carpet. Scarlet almost didn’t let me get out all five nickels, having realized her mistake.

If/Then problem solving; Cause & Effect relationships

Eventually, I made some puzzles where I would fill in certain coin fields and have Scarlet solve the missing number. “If you are making one dollar out of pennies, nickels, and dimes, and you have 8 dimes & 3 nickels, how many pennies will you have?” Not only did Scarlet solve the problem easily, but when I asked her to describe what she had done in her head, she walked me through her thinking.

Thinking.

This is what was missing from the chimpanzee-producing online practice. The software allowed Scarlet to drop coins onto a spot on the screen and either rewarded her with a jingle or delivered a negative noise. It was up to Scarlet to figure out what worked best for getting the jingle to happen: Pull the lever to get the banana.

Follow Up Blog: “How Coding Can Be Taught Through Solving An Empty Field In A Math Table”

I’ve witnessed software programs that stop a kid after a few wrong answers and reteach a concept before allowing the student to continue an activity. Another way to check for thinking is having students type or video-record their reasoning for an answer. Then the educator can interact with the thinking, praising accurate steps, guiding ideas, and correcting missteps.

The closer to simulating the tailored responses of a human teacher an online program can produce, the more thinking it will stimulate in the student. How can you make a program applicable to the most practitioners, while simultaneously being tailored to the most personalized outcomes/answers?

A Holy Kind of Classiness: Helping Others

Screen Shot 2020-04-06 at 8.13.04 PM.png — I felt like yelling this into comments to my students.

Today I assigned a writing assignment for the Polite Pirates (my 3rd grade students) to complete during their sequestered online-learning experience during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The prompt was simple: “Tell of a time you helped someone.” In the instructions I told that this ought to take them a few days. I gave them a planning paper, loads of directions for using the writing process, and clear expectations.

As is always inevitably the case, several students submitted their work on the first day. On first glance, it looks like more time and renewed encouragement would be in order. It dawned on me that rather than say, “You must have at least five sentences,” an example text could be more useful. I sat down to put together something to share with them, and the following story, seemed to seep from my skin.

This is probably the classiest thing I have ever done, and it is so simple. What is the classiest thing that you have ever done?

When I was a kid, my dad and I raked leaves a lot. We would clean up the leaves in the fall, of course, but we would also rake the yard in the spring. Because my yard had many large, mature trees, there seemed to be endless leaves to collect. Needless to say, I had a lot of practice raking.

There were two houses whose backyards butted up against mine. One had a fence around it. The other belonged to an elderly gentleman, whom I’d only seen a couple of times. He lived alone in a small, one story ranch. The yard was small, too, and it sloped downward, toward mine.

One day I was just messing around in my backyard, when I noticed my elderly neighbor attempting to rake leaves in his backyard. He had a hunched back, which is to say, he could not stand up straight. Even though there were only a few, it looked like he was really struggling to pick up the leaves to put them into a yard barrel. He moved so slow! I knew I could clean up his yard in a fraction of the time it would take him. I went and got my rake out of my garage. Without ever saying a word, I began to help the gentleman rake and pick up his leaves. It was a breeze for me, being a spry 9 or 10!

I never said one word. I just joined my neighbor in his task. He never thanked me. I wasn’t given anything for this sacrifice of playtime. It felt pretty good to use the skills and experience I’d acquired over the years to help someone who really needed it.

This story would be over, but for a unique experience I had when I went inside my house to get a drink. I’d just finished helping the old man with his leaves, and put my rake away. As I entered my house, I found my mom in the kitchen, looking out a back window with tears in her eyes. Although I hadn’t known she was looking at the time, I now realized that my mom had seen what I’d done when I helped our neighbor. When she looked at me, I could tell that her tears were trophies of pride. She didn’t say anything to me. She didn’t hug me or get me a drink. Now that I am a parent, I understand that she was so swollen with happiness that she would have popped if she had moved.

I never shared this with anyone… ever. My mom and I never talked about it.

The moral of this story is that it is classy to share the skills that you have learned and develop to help others, regardless of whether you get anything in return. Don’t do it, thinking that someone could be watching. Do it in order to grow into the best person you can be.

I didn’t share what I witnessed in my mom’s demeanor in order to boast. In fact, now that I think about it, I imagine that deep down inside I knew that this was something too special to speak of flippantly. It was the kind of goodness that is too holy to talk about. It is the good that radiates from the marrow of a classy person’s bones.

I stumbled upon it that day. Make no mistake: This was an accidental good deed. The lesson cut deep, though. I’ll never forget it.

Inspired Writing With Kidblog

What’s the best writing activity you’ve ever done with your class? Have you ever tricked your students into wanting to write a ton? How’d you do it? What do you use to inspire creative writing?

Screen Shot 2020-04-04 at 6.57.23 AM.png — I’ve never witnessed more passionate writing before or since.

The most entertaining writing I ever witnessed my students perform came as a spur of the moment activity. Completely unplanned, an explosion of blogging happened in my class, thanks to Kidblog and creativity.

There are so many reasons that I love teaching third grade! One is that this is oftentimes the last year that personification is more than just a literary element. Leprechauns actually hide gold. There is a Tooth-fairy; “How else do you explain the money under my pillow–and, my tooth was gone!” I can get away with using puppets. Santa totally has a list, and he sends elves to check on things immediately after Thanksgiving.

Holly is my classroom’s Elf on the Shelf. She appears every year on the first day of school after Thanksgiving. Most students know the rules already. Many have their own elf at home. Each year’s students behaves differently. One year the Polite Pirates (my students) absolutely fell in love with Holly!

Throughout the day, while I was trying to teach, students were writing notes to Holly. They knew they couldn’t touch her, so they snuck the notes as close as they dared. There was an impressive pile at the end of the day.

What did I do with all of these notes? The tiny papers were full of love, teeming with curiosity, and fueled by Christmas magic. I brought them home, and Holly began a Kidblog profile within our classroom account.

At 5AM Tuesday morning she began to type. She shared good tidings from Santa, whom she had visited during the night, as she does every evening between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then she jumped right into thanking the Polite Pirates for all of their enthusiastic writing to her and began answering their questions.

By making blogs “Public” parents and others without accounts can access Kidblog writing.

I don’t know how she did it, because you have to have a teacher profile to make your blogs in Kidblog “public”. Holly must have used some Christmas magic in order to foster faster reading of her blog. The students didn’t even have to log into their accounts before reading Holly’s message.

The class had already been using Kidblog, so they were actively checking to see if friends had left comments when they found Holly’s new blog. Before morning announcements began the room was already a buzz with imaginative play.

All in all, Holly wrote only nine blogs, but she replied to hundreds of comments! The variety of student writing was interesting. Some students wrote lengthy diary-style entries from home. Others had to jump right into their kidblog accounts right then and there to ask Holly, “How’d you do it? Are you real?” among other pertinent questions. Holly tended to reward students’ writing by mirroring their compositions with a similar amount of text, thought, and imagination. She was classy, creative, communicative, and caring.

Holly modeled friendship, as she became the students’ friend.

Holly taught the students how to be friends.

At times impromptu grammar lessons were shared.

Holly took on the role of listening ear for some journaling writers.

In addition to her writing, Holly enjoyed taking pictures of her hiding spots. She’d leave clues in the header of her blogs as to where she was camped out for the day.

Screen Shot 2020-04-04 at 7.38.49 PM.png — Viewing the classroom from an alternative perspective, Holly taught the Polite Pirates empathy.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) sub-standard 3.A reads, “Create experiences for learners to make positive, socially responsible contributions and exhibit empathetic behavior online that build relationships and community.” This falls under the category of Citizen. Not only did the Polite Pirates welcome Holly into the classroom as a legit member of the crew, but Holly helped eight and nine-year-olds see life from a different angle… It was new every day, in fact, whether she blogged or not! Also, Holly’s positive relationships with the shelf-elves of the students, modeled through her commenting on Polite Pirate inquiries, were lessons in themselves.

Boys beg Holly to blog.png — A passion for writing comes from passionate writing.

When Christmas vacation took Holly from us, the joy of winter break was bitter sweet. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed more passionate writing before or since. What have you used to inspire imaginative writing?

This was a really fun and exciting teaching experience.

Problematic Writing

Jodi_Picoult_as_the_2013_Harry_Middleton_Lecturer_DIG13478-016.jpg — Jodi Picoult

Have you ever heard of the Problem Novel? According to Amy Pattee’s (n.d.) blog about Problem Novels, this genre presents a hot button social issue, explores it from various angles and leaves the reader to make his/her own judgements in the end. Jodi Picoult is a master writer in this field.

I have read many Jodi Picoult books that would fit this definition. “The Tenth Circle” deals with sex. It’s hard to imagine a more touchy teenage topic! Picoult has you squirm in your seat as she wields her words, weaving a web of deceit and mistrust. What causes what in this seemingly cause/effect story? The problems paramount as infidelity matures into murder. Where does it stop?

Another Picoult book, and one that made her mainstream, is “My Sister’s Keeper”. Made into a movie, this story is about a girl, Anna, entering her teen years having lived, it seems, only as a surrogate for her older sister, Kate. Kate has had Leukemia for years. She requires Anna’s help to stay alive. In fact, it feels like Anna was conceived in order to keep Kate alive! This life or death problem goes deeper as Anna tries to wrestle with her own identity.

Problem writing can be dark. Picoult brings the reader to death’s door, and sometimes even allows you a peek inside. Amy Pattee mentions the book “The Girl in the Box” (1988, Joy St. Books) as an example. In this story a girl is kidnapped and placed in a cement cell. She never sees her captor or anyone else, is given water and only barely enough food for sustenance, has to use the bathroom in a plastic bag, but [apparently] has a typewriter and plenty of paper to document the whole experience. As I read Pattee’s description of this problem novel, I thought it was the perfect metaphor for authors exploring the deepest corners of thought. Ouida Sebestyen, author of “The Girl in the Box”, created this cement cell in his mind. Then he lived the horrors of this girl by imagining her feelings, fears, hopes, and actions.

What makes problem novels riveting is their realistic nature. The events and situations within these tales are only as captivating as they are imaginable. In Picoult’s “The Tenth Circle” the daughter of an adulterer is date-raped. As it turns out, the perpetrator is the young girl’s ex boyfriend. The teacher of story-telling knows that every tale must present a problem. The line between “Realistic Fiction” and a text being a “Problem Novel” lies in the intent of the text. While a Problem Novel would fall into the category of Realistic Fiction, in that it is believable, the all-consuming problem of the story has the reader completely wrapped up in constant conflict. You are reading ONLY to find out the answer to the problem. And, be forewarned, the better the Problem Novel, the less likely you will be provided a solution!

This reminds me of my “Controversy Can Be Classy” project. The concepts that Picoult presents would be considered controversial, because of their reasonableness. Yacek speaks of a controversy as being “alive” when it is believable in his paper, Thinking Controversially: The Psychological Condition for Teaching Controversial Issues (2018). He explains that both sides of a problem must be a realistic solution. This is where the masterful writing of a good Problem Novel comes into play. The more realistic the problem, setting, and characters, the more empathetic the reader will be.

Have you read any good Problem Novels? What might attract someone to read this genre? Why would an author choose to write this type of book? How does reading a Problem Novel help you?

Sources:

Pattee, A. (n.d.). YA or STFU: Got a Problem with Problem Novels? Retrieved March 22, 2020, from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/ya-or-stfu-got-problem-problem-novels/#continue_reading_post

Yacek, D. (2018). Thinking Controversially: The Psychological Condition for Teaching Controversial Issues. Journal of Philosophy of Education,52(1), 71-86. Retrieved August 5, 2019.

Where does Inspiration Come From?

Imagine: All of Frankenstein came from the vision of a yellow eye!

Do you ever wonder where the ideas for a great novel come from? What inspires the thoughts that grow in an author’s mind, that eventually bare fruit in terrific and terrifying texts? You might think that Frankenstein was born of lightning, but the idea, the seed planted in the mind of the 20 year old Mary Shelley in 1817, was nothing more than a yellow eye. Shelley woke up from a terrible dream, and all she could remember was a hauntingly yellow human eye. This feeling grew and stretched into the novel that has dawned countless Halloween costumes.

For Kate DiCamillo, it was hands; The capacious hands of a stranger who picked up her 86 year old mother after having fallen in the doorway of a cafe one cold January day. This giant of a gentleman helped Kate’s mom to a chair, while Kate stood stuck in the uncertainty of her mother’s admonition that she “Couldn’t do it.” Kate was not used to hearing her “Piece-of-Work” mother confess defeat. She was a fighter, if nothing else. Like dominos, her mother’s health toppled, and within a week she died.

DiCamillo explains the presence of this word, already traveling through the veins of her consciousness, in her acceptance speech at the 2014 Newbery-Caldecott Banquet for “Flora and Ulysses”. The word was birthed in the reading of Maxwell William’s “The Thistles in Sweden” (Maxwell, 1976). The last line reads, “And, I think that if it is true, that we are all in the hand of God; What a capacious hand it must be.”

Flora And Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

Written by Kate DiCamillo

The father of Flora is said to have a “capacious heart”. In the beginning of the story this character is a dysfunctional shell of a man, recently divorced from Flora’s mom, and stuck like a malfunctioning computer program. His only lines are his introducing himself to people, “Hello, I’m George Buckman. Pleased to meet you.” He wears a suit, complete with fedora, everywhere, no matter the temperature, situation, or time. The reader is made to believe that this man could very well wear this suit to bed.

When Flora’s pet squirrel reveals its super powers to the dad, he snaps out of his stupor and revives. He begins to think for himself again. He laughs. He stands up to malfeasance, a word repeated throughout this hybrid of novel and comic book. It was Ulysses’s superpowers that defibrillated George Buckman’s heart, but it was the capaciousness of his heart that loved Flora, a struggling tween, back to life.

This exciting book has hilarious and head-scratching mysteries throughout. A boy who seems to have self-induced, temporary blindness due to a traumatic event that he won’t talk about is Flora’s unexpected sidekick. The reader isn’t sure if the apartment-guarding cat or the mom trying to kill the squirrel is the true nemesis of the superhero. And, the question most prevalent throughout remains unanswered at the end: “Can you be a superhero, if you don’t save anyone or anything?”

One thing is for certain: boredom will be vanquished through reading this novel. DiCamillo has a capacious talent for storytelling, and this one keeps you on the edge of your horsehair sofa. (You’ll have to read the book to understand;)

BIBLIO: 2016, Candlewick, reprint, Ages 8-12, $7.99

REVIEWER: Matt Weimann

FORMAT: Paperback

ISBN-10: 0763687642

ISBN-13: 978-0763687649

Bio

Kate DiCamillo has lived in very different parts of America. Born in Philadelphia, she grew up in Florida, the setting for one of her Newbery Award-winning books, “Because of Winn Dixie” (2001). Her “About Me” page says that she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, currently.

Interestingly, Kate never had kids. Perhaps that is why she maintains the youthful voice of her main characters. She was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature from 2014 to 2015.

Other Books by DiCamillo include

Because of Winn-Dixie (2000)

The Tiger Rising (2001)

The Tale of Despereaux (2003), illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006), illus. Bagram Ibatoulline

The Magician’s Elephant (2009), illus. Yoko Tanaka

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (2013), illus. K. G. Campbell

Raymie Nightingale (Candlewick Press, 2016)

Louisiana’s Way Home (2018), jacket illus. Amy June Bates[16][17]

Beverly, Right Here (2019)

Bink & Gollie series, text by DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, illus. Tony Fucile

Bink & Gollie (2010)
Bink & Gollie: Two for One (2012)
Bink & Gollie: Best Friends Forever (2013)

Mercy Watson series (Candlewick Press), text by DiCamillo, illus. Chris Van Dusen

Mercy Watson to the Rescue (2005)
Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride (2006)
Mercy Watson Fights Crime (2006)
Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise (2007)
Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig (2008)
Mercy Watson: Something Wonky This Way Comes (2009)

Tales from Deckawoo Drive series, text by DiCamillo, illus. Chris Van Dusen

Leroy Ninker Saddles Up: Tales from Deckawoo Drive, Volume One (2014)
Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon: Tales from Deckawoo Drive, Volume Two (2015)
Where Are You Going, Baby Lincoln?: Tales from Deckawoo Drive, Volume Three (2016)
Eugenia Lincoln and the Unexpected Package: Tales from Deckawoo Drive, Volume Four (2017)

Great Joy (2007), illus. Bagram Ibatoulline

Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken (2008), illus. Harry Bliss

A Piglet Named Mercy (2019), illus. Chris Van Dusen

“Circus Mirandus” and Light-Bending

Can blind-belief be bad? This is a question that haunts me after rereading “Circus Mirandus” a third time. In this book, published in 2015, a boy visits a circus that can only be found by people (kids) who believe in magic. The author, Cassie Beasley, uses her own literary magic to weave a fantasy world where people live for thousands of years with a reality of an aged man dying of a respiratory disease.

The boy’s name is Micah, and it is his caretaker-grandfather, Ephraim, who is dying. Throughout the entire book Micah believes that the magic of Circus Mirandus, a place that both Ephraim and Micah visit, can save his grandfather from the inevitable; End of life.

It is hardships that bring the circus into both boys’ lives. Grandpa Ephraim found the circus when he was a youth and his father had been sent to war. He was battling depression and loneliness. Micah was drawn to the circus by the stories his grandfather had shared with him and the fact that this might be a place where he could find a cure for his grandfather’s worsening sickness.

Another main character of the text is a man called Lightbender or “The Man Who Bends Light”. This ages-old mystic is a confessed illusionist. Toward the end of the book he reveals that he only causes people to think they see things. For example, part of his show is to get kids to visit Antarctica. They feel like they are actually there. Penguins are squawking all around them. In reality, the kids are sitting safely inside a tent at Circus Mirandus. This mind-bending power is used several times, in several ways, and for several reasons. In the end, Micah realizes that the power to believe something has its limitations.

I read this book to myself, then to my daughter, and I just finished reading it aloud to my third grade class. A powerful vibe I get when I’m wrapped up in the storyline is the idea of faith or blind-belief. The thing is Micah and his friend Jenny, who he brings along with him to the circus the first time he visits, don’t blindly believe. Jenny is portrayed as a rational, scientifically-minded girl, who can’t view the circus until Micah coaxes her to just give it a try. He teaches her to be open-minded to magic. At one point in the text Jenny is even more open-minded than Micah. Beasley does an excellent job developing her characters and maintaining their deep personalities, even through this seeming role-reversal. Jenny continues to be calculating, constantly planning, while Micah’s faith is wrapped up in his emotions and unfounded hopes.

Micah matures throughout the text, and in the end, Micah induces a purposeful, man-made, blind faith by actually closing his eyes to reality. You will have to read the book to understand what I mean. I’ll share Chintzy, the messenger’s hint: “Don’t look down”.

As I reflect upon whether I think that it is okay to allow children to “believe” in Santa Claus, leprechauns, cupids, tooth fairies, and the like, I am realizing that this novel is The Book that Bends Light. While reading it, you get sucked into a slightly altered reality where magic really does exist. A movie that this reminds me of is “The Matrix”. The main character of that flick is Neo, a young man delivered from the make-believe world of computer-generated bliss. While not everything was hunky-dory for Neo before leaving the Matrix, reality is even more grim.

In “The Matrix” characters get “plugged into” a virtual reality world that is made up solely of zeros and ones. It isn’t real. This being said, if a person dies while being plugged in, their mind, so wrapped up in the believable fantasy world, will break, and the actual, physical body will die. Neo ends up being his own “Light-Bender”, escaping the trappings of the mind to live beyond the Matrix.

Science > Opinion — Science is the Light

I am writing this blog during a seemingly dystopian time of pandemic closures and lockdowns. COVID-19 is sweeping the nation and world, infiltrating all socio-economic statuses, ages, and races. This virus is undetectable for up to 5 days, lasts about two weeks when in effect, and kills between 3 and 4 percent of its victims. There is a lot of talk about different actors multiplying the calamity of this virus through spreading dis- and misinformation. Some say the media has made a big stink about next to nothing. Many more people die from lots of other viruses and diseases. We don’t freak out about them! Others say that authorities should have taken the virus more seriously at the beginning. Government officials attempted to bend the light that science was trying to shine on this very serious problem. By acting like the virus was no big deal, were authorities communicating that 3-4% of the population was expendable? Their actions, if not some of the blatant messaging seemed to communicate, “The stock market crashing isn’t worth worrying about three to four out of one hundred people.”

How much of the rise and fall of stock prices depends on belief? It seems like a circus sometimes. When the dust settles, I wonder how many Neos will be unplugged from the make-believe-world constantly telling us everything is hunky dory. You can pull the cord, or it will be ripped from your head as the earth falls away. If you pull the cord yourself, you can self-educate and learn to adapt and survive.

I recommend you weave plenty of entertaining activities into your self-educating-agenda. Reading is a great escape from both the Matrix and reality. I like books that make you think, and Circus Mirandus does just that! It explores the dangers of the pull of power. If you had the power to cause others to believe things, what would you do with it? Luckily, there are people in the world who work to help children and others believe in a better tomorrow. That is my aim.

Although slightly dark, I hope that this blog is inspirational, also. What do you do to help others see the light?

Breaking Out the Controversy

Use controversial opinion-writing to promote acceptance of feedback.

I am halfway through scoring and writing feedback for my third grade students, and it hits me: Writing opinions can be “controversial”. When you state what you believe, as opposed to a proven fact, you are providing a point of view that others may refute.

Having finished typing feedback for all 27 kiddos, I am impressed with the arguments that my students used. The assignment was to share whether or not you thought the men who escaped Alcatraz in 1962 survived their daring prison-break. The December (2016)/January (2017) issue of StoryworksJr magazine had an article about the amazing true story of the one successful escape from the infamous “Rock” (Hopkinson, 2016). This article ends by telling students that no one knows if the prisoners survived the treacherous swim across the San Francisco Bay. It asks, “Do you think (they) made it out alive?”

Controversy

How is this controversial? David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson of the University of Minnesota published a landmark paper in 1979 titled “Conflict in the Classroom: Controversy and Learning.” In it they define controversy as an incompatible conceptual conflict that craves reconciliation. What question is more in need of answering than survival? Did the men make it? And, the two answers couldn’t be in more contrast with one another.

The beauty of this particular assignment is that, although my students were asked a “Yes or No” question, they were required to back up their opinions with facts from the text. In this way, the kids invest in their answers. It causes them to interpret the text, seeing the trials of escape from the perspective of the prisoners. Students assumed a more active role in reading the text. Rather than looking back at the text to find answers to boring multiple-choice questions, students are hunting for ammunition to do battle against their idea-opponents.

This was a great assignment because it could go either way. There is plenty of evidence for both sides of the argument, which makes the cognitive fight even. And, because this assignment is so rich with ideas, it is extra easy to turn feedback into a communicative conversation, instead of straight “You did this well/You need to work on this.” I find myself writing things like “Have you thought of this angle?”

By conversing with students about what they wrote, an educator can ensure the acknowledgement of ideas for writing improvement. Instead of “You did this wrong” the educator can suggest, “If you want to persuade me to believe this, you should word it this way; You should include information from the text; You might want to explain yourself more.”

Best “Respond to Text” ever: So, did they survive or not?

With each new paragraph to grade, I look forward to seeing where my student stands on the issue. Sometimes, when I use controversy to teach, I will assign sides. I want the opposition to be even. A question will be posted in the Google Classroom. I make it so that students may be able to edit their answers, and they can read/reply to others. If you do this, you want the sides to be fairly even, so that no one feels overwhelmed with opposition. This particular project seemed to have opinions split down the middle, lending nicely to a balanced battle of wits.

I made sure to show my third graders a balance of points from the StoryworksJr text, too. As a class, we discussed some reasons it seemed unlikely the men survived the escape; They had to swim 1 ½ miles across shark-infested, freezing cold water, and that was after climbing a tall, sharp fence! When you are doing something daring and exciting, though, your body fills with adrenaline that can cause seemingly superhuman strength and endurance. With more back and forth ideas, we constructed a balance of ideas.

Yacek explains the importance of having opposition on both sides of an argument in Thinking Controversially: The Psychological Condition for Teaching Controversial Issues (2018). He tells of a lesson he thought would spark controversy but fell flat because even the students who argued against the action didn’t truly believe it was a possibility. In order to foster the intellectual disequilibrium that Johnson & Johnson (1979) propose works best to arouse learning, students have to buy into their position.

Time to “break out” the classy controversy.

For the prisoners, I suggested that these were tough men. The text had mentioned that they had successfully broken out of other prisons. That is why they had been sent to Alcatraz; “The Rock”! Just when you feel like everything is tipping toward a successful escape, however, there is the fact that it doesn’t matter how tough you are against hungry sharks and 1 ½ miles of open water! Also, don’t you think we would have heard of their survival? Everyone craves fame. “But, there was a letter written in 2015!” students exclaim through their essays. Yes, but this was a person who was looking for help paying for medical expenses. There is no proof that he was an escapee. And, the scale goes back and forth.

We may never know if Frank Morris or the Anglin brothers made it to safety. One thing is for sure, my students’ reasoning and writing skills grew as a result of wrestling with the controversial idea.

Sources

Hopkinson, D. (2016, December). Escape From Alcatraz. StoryworksJr, 4–9.

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1979). Conflict in the Classroom: Controversy And Learning. Review of Educational Research,49(1), 51-70. Retrieved August 13, 2019.

Yacek, D. (2018). Thinking Controversially: The Psychological Condition for Teaching Controversial Issues. Journal of Philosophy of Education,52(1), 71-86. Retrieved August 5, 2019.

Off-The-Page Artwork by Caldecott Winner, David Wiesner

Screen Shot 2020-02-17 at 6.17.43 AM.png — The thought that he was implying violence to a naturalist by drawing glasses lying on the ground near open cages and free crickets made illustrator David Wiesner smile.

“That makes me smile.” David Wiesner explained the effect of critics in a blog, “The Beginning“(Wiesner, 2020).

This account is left right there. That is all Wiesner has to say about it. “That makes me smile”; a four-word phrase that implies quite the opposite of violence…

Unless, the implication was to stimulate a “violence of thought”; Not “violent thoughts”; But, thinking so transformative, so life-altering, so paradigm-shifting as to be jarring–to clash with the cognitive systems already set up, that are comfortable and familiar.

The beauty, the magic of Wiesner’s work is that it raises more questions than answers. Why does the criticism of his very first professional art assignment cause him to smile? Did David Wiesner smile the moment he learned of people’s misgivings about his illustration? This statement is written in the first person present. Is he still smiling? Is this a constant source of laughter? What kind of smile is it? Condescending? Amusement? Bemusement? I can picture Wiesner’s emotions evolving through many smiles.

Why do we smile? We are told to smile. I tell my students to smile. My thinking has been that a reason for smiling will surface once you have begun. If we wait for a reason, it may never arrive. Jumpstart the happiness by raising the corners of your mouth. Smiling can be an act of violence, especially, when you don’t feel like it. You are waging war on your soul.

David Wiesner’s smile is a metaphor for this picture, drawn in 1979 for the table of contents of the September Cricket Magazine of that year. It was his first commissioned artwork. He had all summer to produce it. I bet at the end, after Trina Schart Hyman praised his work, he removed his spectacles, free to smile at his accomplishment. Having just graduated art school the spring before, David didn’t plan to enter the world of children’s literature. Like a cricket, chirping in the corner of the room, it beckoned him.

I first stumbled across David Wiesner when my daughter Scarlet became enamored with frogs. We found the book “Tuesday” (1991) in a used book store. We were drawn to the text by the beautiful cover. This tale of frogs flying through town, managing mayhem and inspiring mystery, was an instant favorite. We “read” it over and over. The word read is in quotes because this is a wordless book.

At first Scarlet and I were attracted to the artwork and frogs, but as we reread it, many more meaningful lessons were uncovered. How do you “read” a wordless book? I spoke to my emergent reader about what was happening in the images. We took turns asking each other questions and pointing out phenomena. We celebrated one another’s surprises: “Did you see this?!” How many “Oh my goodness-es” were uttered?

The “goodness” is that each reading was a goldmine of conversation between a daddy and his daughter. The lack of text makes the illustrations more open to reader-interpretation. The artwork lies somewhere between realistic and animation, just like the story line. Scarlet and I discussed how plausible it was for frogs to fly. The frog faces show expressions. How much do frogs feel or think? They seem to operate a remote control for a television in one picture. Do you think frogs could do that? Would they want to?

I use “Tuesday” in my third grade classroom to introduce the reading strategy, Questioning. It is the second day, and I have students write down questions while I page through the illustrations. We discuss the students’ questions along with how important “questioning” is, as a reading strategy. I am still finding details in the artwork that I hadn’t noticed before.

BIBLIO: Reprint, 2011, Clarion Books, $6.54
REVIEWER: Matt Weimann
FORMAT: Picture Book
ISBN-10: 0395870828
ISBN-13: 978-0395870822

Three_little_pigs_-_the_wolf_lands_in_the_cooking_pot_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15661.jpg — A 1905 illustration of the pigs doing away with the wolf makes it look like one of the pig’s feet is stepping out of the story.

A book that I use later in the year that David Wiesner also wrote/illustrated is “The Three Pigs” (2001). This one may have text, but the storyline is much more dependent on the artwork, thus awarding it the Caldecott Medal of Honor. The three pigs discover a way to escape the mean wolf through completely exiting their story altogether! They then explore a parallel universe of nursery rhymes where they find a few other lost souls. The three pigs help extricate the characters in peril from their tales.

How do you explain “Out-of-the-box thinking” to youths? Share with them this “Out-of-the-book story” by David Wiesner. Practice the art of thinking this way by “rescuing” a character from a different book. Students could draw comics to illustrate what could happen if a character stepped out of their story to explore the outer world.

Another use of this thinking is to teach the uses of literary parameters. An author sets up “givens” that help readers interpret actions in a story. Readers won’t be happy if halfway through a story, the historical fiction narrative completely changes to science fiction, with aliens visiting from outer space. Even with our three little fugitive pigs, the illustrations and ideas are consistent throughout the book. They can visit other stories, but they don’t become microscopic and fall through the atoms of matter. In order for there to be “Out-of-the-box thinking” there must actually be a box.

Information about other texts by award-winning author/illustrator, David Wiesner can be found on the “Bookshelf” page of his website.

“I Got It!” (2018)
“Fish Girl” (2017)
“Spot” (2015)
“Mr. Wuffles!” (2013)
“Art & Max” (2010)
“Flotsam” (2006)
“Sector 7” (1999)
“June 29, 1999” (1992)
“Hurricane” (1990)
“Night of the Gargoyles” written by Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Wiesner (1994)
“Free Fall” (1988)
“The Loathsome Dragon” retold by David Wiesner and Kim Kahng (1987)

Screen Shot 2020-02-17 at 6.20.34 AM.png — Take off the artificial lenses and see the world through cricket eyes.

I leave you with this thought: The more mature a writer becomes, the less drawing fills his/her pages. A five-year-old only draws. Teachers instruct youths to add text. We get children to provide words to describe the settings they see in their minds. Develop character traits through actions. What word choice will perfectly convey the mood and theme of your story? Are we capturing and boxing up these young minds by teaching away the artwork? Perhaps the cages from David Wiesner’s illustrations at the start of this blog were setting the crickets free. Artwork is the music for text penned and sung. Let’s help our crickets sing their song.

Sources

Wiesner, D. (2020). Bookshelf. Retrieved February 17, 2020, from https://www.hmhbooks.com/wiesner/bookshelf.html

Wiesner, D. (2020). The Beginning. Retrieved February 17, 2020, from http://www.davidwiesner.com/work/the-beginning/

Pedagogical Easter Eggs

Screen Shot 2020-01-24 at 6.25.20 AM.png — Search “Easter Egg” on Youtube.

If you search “Easter Eggs” in youtube, you might get some videos of kids running around a field, but more likely your server will be flooded with videos of people sharing stuff that is seemingly hidden in movies. When I was a kid, I remember people going crazy about seeing ghosts mysteriously appear in a few frames of a movie. Supposedly, you weren’t intended to see this, which made it all the more creepy!

Easter eggs are different, in that they are apparently purposefully hidden by directors, illustrators, etc so that cult-like movie-watchers will find them. Could this just be an excuse for watching a well-liked film an otherwise abnormal number of times? Perhaps. And, maybe the producers of these films are aiming to foster this kind of multi-watching phenomena.

Interestingly, the term may have come from one of the most cult-producing movies of all time: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. According to Urban Dictionary, the guests/prisoners of an alien home participate in a completely random Easter Egg hunt. When the characters fail to find many of the hidden eggs, they appear later on throughout the movie. Viewers enjoy looking for the literal Easter Eggs, which spurred the use of the term for hidden items in films.

It was a “BowtieTuesday” when I taught this lesson.

Easter Eggs in Teaching

The reason all of this came to mind is that I was teaching a lesson that had Easter Eggs in it, and I thought this was a neat pedagogy to explore. What if teachers purposefully hid learning experiences inside lessons, so that students would have to go back and find them?

My school district is working hard to introduce computer science in elementary school. We used a grant to buy some SpheroEdu kits. A team of teachers was formed. Instructors were brought in to train us in the world of coding. We brainstormed and planned how we might share this information with our district’s students. Each of the teachers on this “tech team” tried out the lessons in our own classrooms, and now we are sharing them with all of the 4th and 5th grade students of the district.

Yesterday, I spent the day with a #DreamTeam of EDU #coders of @EastPennSD
As we dev lessons to T #coding to 4th & 5th grd Ss I kept thinking about how similar it is to #chess.
I remembered @PhillyASAPtraining #FewestNumberOfMoves #code #ComputerScience @MissKling43 @pfehlinger https://t.co/Bcim1FPJWO pic.twitter.com/sZBUmMGZnd

— Matt Weimann (@MrWeimann) October 30, 2019

I just taught lesson 1; This is the one that had the Easter Egg. The tech team built a slideshow in the Pages app that could function as an independent or whole-group teaching tool. The “pages” (slides) walk students through some instructions on how to use Pages, what is expected, and how to complete the lesson. We chose to use the Pages app, because it forces students to learn a tool on their iPad that they may not be familiar with. Also, it has an easy to use drawing tool.

Students practice using Sequencing Commands

The lesson requires students to move some images, arranging them on a grid. Paired kids, sitting back to back, take turns using “Sequencing Commands” (the object of the lesson) to get their partners to draw a path on an empty grid. Once done, the two partners compare their screens. Would the path land on the squares that images are resting on? They are to take screenshots of their work and a picture of their partner’s grid. This way, they can put the two images side by side to evaluate accuracy. Part of their reflection is to analyze what could have helped them use fewer commands. Also, is there a better route for collecting the images?

Easter Egg Time

As it turned out, moving the images was not exactly easy. It works well to first tap the image, and then touching the very middle of it, you drag it onto the grid. If you don’t get the middle, you’ll enlarge it. “Undo” is our best friend!

If kids click on the text that is near the images, it becomes “active” and covers the images. When this occurs, there is no way to get to the images to move them! Oh no!!!

Here is your Easter Egg for the lesson: Students must “Unlock” the text box. Then they can “Arrange” the order of objects, placing the text box behind the images. Now, the image may be accessed again.

Questions for student reflection:

Why would you want to “Lock” an object or text box?
Why is it important to know how to “Arrange” the order of items on a page?

Impressive Learning

This Easter Egg was only found because a student let go of an image too soon. He was getting ready to drag an image up to the grid, but stopped right over the text box. Oops! When he couldn’t figure out how to get to the image, he brought his iPad to me, and we worked on gaining access, again. I then showed the classroom STEM teacher whom I was partnering with on the lesson. I wanted him to know how to remedy this kind of problem if it came up again.

Something that struck me in that moment was the idea of teachers thinking that they have to have all of the wrinkles ironed out before doing a lesson. Guess what. More often than not, you will create a new wrinkle when you carefully iron out a potential problem. Perhaps locking that text box was thought to help students grab the images and not the text box. But, it ended up covering the image and preventing us from getting to it!

I thought of a way to remedy this for future lessons: make the text part of an image, along with the grid, that is the background for the slide. Then images cannot go behind it. But, then again…

Nooooooooo! Don’t fix it at all! Leave it as is, and even show earlier finishers of the lesson this problem. Here is an Easter Egg in the lesson. See if you can figure out how to solve the problem. Then these kiddos could help anyone who comes across this problem in the future.

I leave you with this: How can you build Easter Eggs into your lessons? How could you purposefully plan problems that students may not find, but that could give them something to chew on, enriching the learning experience?

Happy Easter… All year round!