Interactive Grammar Through Peardeck

Grammar! (Insert eye roll here…🙄) Students and teachers alike groan at the thought of it. However, it’s a necessary evil.

When I was in elementary and middle school, I LOVED grammar! Loved it. I was good at it, and I understood it. Unlike math. Grammar was actually part of the reason why I decided to become an ELA teacher. However, once I became an ELA teacher and had a class of my own, my love for grammar began to dwindle. The students that I was teaching did not share my love for the topic, and, to be honest, teaching grammar is hard.

Over the years, I have tried many different techniques to teach grammar. I started with the traditional basic grammar exercises from a handbook. (Cringe! I know. But it’s what I knew, so it’s what I used.) Next, I tried interactive notebooks. I was SO EXCITED for these! I had to vision of beautiful, colorful, organized notebooks that the students would treasure forever. Ha! What I ended up with was a messy classroom. Of paper clippings, half-colored pages, and dried glue all over the desks. Not to mention the amount of time that was wasted due to my underestimation of 7th grade cutting and gluing abilities.

Eventually, through one of my desperate searches on Teachers Pay Teachers for the solution to all of my grammar instruction woes, I found 10 Minute Grammar by Arik Durfee. This teacher-created program was exactly what I had been looking for. It’s a systematic way of teaching grammar through high-interest text excerpts. Yes, it has the students complete some exercises but not overwhelmingly so, and it isn’t monotonous. What I found when I started using this program was and increase in student engagement during grammar instruction. This is most definitely because it was only a focus for 10 minutes a day, so they didn’t get bored or sick of it. It was also a great way to set the tone for the class each day.

I also think that the increase in engagement was due to only having a few practice sentences rather than an over abundance to do. In addition, students were more prepared to take an assessment in the end of a unit than with other methods I had tried. Since the program used excerpts directly from high-interest books for middle school readers, many students found new books to read just based on the samples used in the program.

After several years of using parts of this 10 Minute Grammar program, I decided it was time to try something new. I knew I liked the program but wanted to move away from copying packets and try to make it more digital. Our district had just purchased the “pro” version of Peardeck, and so I decided to try to use that as the platform for grammar instruction.

With implementing Peardeck, I knew that I had to pick and choose which lessons of the 10 Minute Grammar that I wanted to use, so I wouldn’t have too many slides, and the ones I did have wouldn’t be overly busy. Using Peardeck has made grammar instruction much more interactive. Instead of writing in a packet, students interact with the slides on their Chromebooks.

 

Peardeck is a free interactive add-on for Google Slides. There are several options to add to slides in which students need to complete a task. The best part is, as the teacher, I can control the slides. They cannot move on without me, and I can see what each student puts in their slide. This is especially nice because if I see someone struggling, I can go and give them immediate feedback. If I see several students make the same mistake, I can either pull them for a small group instruction or clarify something for the entire class.

So far, we have completed 2 grammar units using Peardeck and are about to start a 3rd. I am very happy with the way this has invigorated my grammar instruction. The daily practice is still limited to no more than 10 minutes per day. In addition, Peardeck also serves as a study guide for the unit because I can send each student personalized “takeaways” from their Peardeck.

I know that students don’t always love learning about grammar the way that I did. However, I am hopeful that through shortened instruction and the interactivity of Peardeck, I can make it a little more bearable for them while also making them better writers with a command of the English language.

Giving 4-point Grading a Shot

“We are doing things that hurt kids, and it needs to stop.” This is the line that stuck with me after attending session 1 of a 3 session conference on Standards Based Learning at Kutztown University through the Berks County IU with Lee Ann Jung (@leeannjung) and Thomas Guskey (@tguskey). The conference is about the reasons behind, and the practices of, Standards Based Learning.  I didn’t know what to expect upon being asked to attend, but Standards Based Grading had been something I was curious about, and so I was excited for the opportunity to learn more.

Before attending the conference, I had little intention of jumping with both feet into the pool of SBL.  I knew I wanted to make my grading more purposeful, but I wasn’t about to change everything I have always done.  After all, it had worked thus far, so why change what works?

The first question asked of us at the conference was to discuss why we grade the way that we do.  The overwhelming answer being that teachers develop their grading practices based on how they were graded: based on what they know.  For most, that is the traditional grading on the 100 point scale of percentages.  But why? What logic goes into giving students a percentage on a 100 point scale when we aren’t really grading 100 degrees of learning?  101 actually. Grades on the 100 point scale are really arbitrary.  Teachers assign points to assignments and assessments based on their personally developed philosophies of how much a correct answer or a properly written essay should be worth.  The truth is, on the traditional scale, it is really hard to grade students similarly from teacher to teacher since all teachers grade so differently which is really unfair to students.

On the traditional scale, there are 65 (in our district) possible points of failure!! 65! That means that, in theory, there is a lot better shot for a student to fail any given assessment than to get a passing grade.  Most students are only happy when they get As or Bs, and so they only have about a 17% chance of getting one of those two grades.  How is that fair?  Here is a comparison of the traditional grading scale with the 4 point grading scale that I borrowed from a colleague who is also doing 4 point grading.  It really shows the unfairness of the 100 point scale in black and white.

gradingscaleexplanation-docx

Anyway, once I really thought about it, I realized that what I was doing in my grading practices was hurting kids, and I needed to change my ways.  Upon returning from the conference, I decided to take a look at my grading and try my best to change it.  When I first started looking at what I had been grading, and the way I had been grading it, it was upsetting.  I felt like I had been wasting a lot of time: both mine and my students’. It was hard to reflect on my practices and realize that everything I knew about grading was not what I should be doing, but I knew I wanted to change and so honest reflection was the only way.

I started out small with a quiz I had recently given but had not yet graded.  It was time consuming to say the least.  I had to first search for the standards that aligned to the quiz, figure out which questions went with each standard, and scale the grades for each standard within the 4 points.  But once I did it, and started grading, I realized that I was reflecting on the content that had been taught a lot easier.  I was able to see where students were struggling and where they were excelling.  I immediately felt better about grading this way than I ever had on the traditional scale.

Before handing the quizzes back to the kids, I explained that I was trying something new. I told them all about why I was doing it, and for the most part, the students were receptive.  Once they saw their grades, I had 100% buy in since on the 4 point scale, students don’t have to be perfect to get an A or B.  I was going to send home a letter explaining the change, but after a discussion with my Principal, I realized that I never sent a letter home explaining my original grading practices, so why discredit myself by sending one home about my new way?

It’s been about a month since I changed my practices and my mindset about the way I teach and grade.  So far, so good.  I continue to enjoy the way I am grading as it has allowed me to be more reflective on both my teaching and my students’ learning.  It has helped me to scrutinize the assignments and assessments I give, as well as recognize the true importance of formative periods within my teaching. I am excited to see how the rest of the year goes with this new mindset, and am looking forward to the next two sessions of the SBL conference to learn even more about this new practice.

 

 

Setting Up For Success

The first few weeks of school are a blur! They were packed with “get to know you” activities, learning students names, disseminating mounds of beginning-of-the-year paperwork, and establishing clear expectations in the classroom so that things run smoothly for the rest of the year.  All of these things are so important for getting the year rolling, but, above all, establishing a rapport with the kids and setting up the routines for success are absolutely paramount for having an awesome school year!

So, I thought I would go through I few things that I did this year to set my students up for success. Some of these are new this year, and some I have done before.

1. The first thing I wanted to share is that I added drawer towers to each of my student desk groups.  I saw this somewhere while perusing Pinterest (like I do) this summer for classroom ideas.  I seriously don’t know how I survived without Pinterest before it was a thing!  So many of my best ideas come from an inspiration started on Pinterest.  Anyway, each table has a set of drawers that contain pretty much anything students need to do any work in my class.  The top drawer has a white board to use for review games, and I also plan for students to put their devices in this drawer if we are doing BYOD (bring your own device) one day, but they don’t need it the entire period. The middle drawer has: markers, highlighters, colored pencils, scissors, and glue sticks for any interactive notebooking or close reading we may do, and the bottom drawer has notecards, notebook paper, and a thesaurus for doing writer’s workshop.  I numbered each tower to coordinate with Homeworkopoly teams (for more info on Homeworkopoly click here), and also placed a box of tissues on the top of each tower so students don’t even have to leave their seat to blow their noses!

Here are pics of what the towers look like in my room.

 

2. Another thing that I did this year to set my students up for success was having them start the year out by exploring the importance of Language Arts and creating personal goals and expectations for themselves and for me as well. I’ve done this activity in the past (another Pinterest inspiration!), but this year, I took note of students’ input and created an anchor chart that will stay in our classroom as a constant reminder of the goals and expectations set in the beginning of the year.

This activity starts with 4 prompts written on the whiteboards.  I have also written them on paper in the past; either one will work.  The prompts are :

• Language Arts is important because…
• Our classroom should be ____________ everyday.
• My goal in Language Arts this year is …
• Mrs. Knecht can help me to be successful by…

Each class writes their answers to the prompts on a different colored post-it note and place them on the appropriate whiteboard.  I like to use different colors for each class so that I can visually see the individual goals and characteristics of each class period. Afterwards, I went back over all of the statements for each prompt and pulled the ones that occurred the most to create the anchor chart, which I hung at the entrance to the classroom.

Here are pictures of the whiteboards after the activity and the anchor chart.

 

3. Book selection! Last year, I implemented the requirement of monthly independent book selection.  I thought for sure the kids would dislike it and fight me every step of the way.  Although I did have students who still claimed at the end of the year that they disliked reading, the majority of the students loved it! I had students who turned into avid readers who started the year off telling me how much they hated reading.  Parents also told me that they were thankful for the opportunity their children had for reading in my classroom.

I started book selection last year thinking that the students had to do something to hold them accountable for their reading.  I had them doing monthly “one-pagers” adapted from Kelly Gallagher and one-minute book reviews in class.  As the year went on, I realized that these were the things the kids were dreading, not the actual reading.  So…I stopped holding them accountable.  And THEY STILL READ! It was awesome to see kids talking about books and wanting to read more than they ever had before.

This year, I decided to try something a little different.  We are still doing monthly book selection, and I believe the kids value each other’s opinions about books. Because of that, I am having them write quick reviews on Google Classroom each month.  Check out the requirements for monthly book selection here —-> bookselectionhandout.  I am also giving them the option to do a one-minute oral review at the beginning of each book selection period.  That’s it.  No overkill. Short and simple. Hopefully, it’s successful!

4. The final thing that I set-up during the first few weeks which will lead students to success is setting clear journaling expectations.  The number one goal that most of the students set for themselves is to become better writers.  This was awesome because it led to a perfect segue to interactive journals. I tell them that in order to become better writers, they have to write, and so the reasoning behind keeping journals is directly related to the goals they set for themselves.  I spend time in class helping students set up their journals and going over expectations so that they realize how important keeping a journal this year is.  Each week, I have students do a journal entry.  It can be about anything, but I do provide them with prompts in case they are at a loss for words.  I set a few guideline for their journaling (they can be found here —-> journalinghandout), but overall, I encourage them to be creative and have fun with it!  This was another implementation last year that I was pleasantly surprised with because the majority of students enjoyed writing every week.  Some students wrote about the prompts I provided, but there were also students who started a story in the beginning of the year and added to it each week.  They had fun and writing DEFINITELY improved over the course of the year.

Was setting all of this up time consuming? Absolutely! But, I am excited about this school year! The first few weeks have flown by, and there is much to cover, but knowing that I have set students up for success will be advantageous throughout the school year!

 

Homework Motivation Success!

Homework can be a daunting task for both student and teacher.  Most students see homework as a bother, which is annoying to us as teachers since we know we only assign valuable tasks for students to work on outside of the classroom.  However, teachers can also see homework as a tiresome nudge because we are faced with having to grade assignments in order to validate to students that we felt the work was worthy of a grade. Right?

Well, no more.

Homework does not have to be graded! Yes, I said it.  HOMEWORK DOES NOT HAVE TO BE GRADED! Once that statement is accepted, it really is such a liberating thing.  Students can be motivated by factors other than grades when it comes to completing their homework assignments.  And, I have actually found that using other motivators have increased homework completion in my classroom by a ton.

So, what’s my secret? Homeworkopoly! I originally found the idea while scouring the web for alternatives for grading homework.  I stumbled upon a post on teachnet.com (You can read more about that here!), and wondered if that was something I could ever incorporate into my classroom.  I teach middle school, after all.  That’s 5 periods consisting of only 42 minutes a day each.  I didn’t see how I could possibly implement this game into my room and make it work well with my time constraints.

I ultimately decided that it was worth a shot.  I’m so glad that I gave it a try because it worked great! The kids were super receptive and were fine with not receiving a lot of points for their homework assignments. (I do still give one point for completion.) That first year, I used the template provided for free at the link above.  It worked fine, but I wanted something more durable.  Last year, I ended up using a real Monopoly game board and made labels for different spaces (Principal’s Office instead of Jail for example). I also used colored sticker dots to delegate spaces as “Chance” or “Brain Binder.” For the game pieces, I use clothespins, which I have labeled with numbers for each team.  My classes are each assigned a color, so they simply look for their number clothespin in the color for their class period. (I’m so excited about this year’s game pieces coming later in this post!)

Here is a pic of what the game board looked like last year:

Logistics.  That’s the part I had to think out in order to manage the class time efficiently while still having time to play the game.  I set my classroom up into teams. Each team member has to have their homework completed for the entire week in order to be able to play the game.  We play Homeworkopoly every Friday.  The teams whose members had all of their homework for the week, roll two dice.  (I use jumbo dice from the dollar store, and the kids love them!) They move the total number of space according to their roll.  They may not land on a space where two other teams already occupy.  If they do, they simply move ahead to the next available space.

Blue spaces are Chance spaces, and yellow spaces are Brain Binder spaces. Some spaces are blank.  The Chance spaces allow kids any number of opportunities: choosing from a prize box, getting a PAWS sticker (our school-wide motivational reward program), a Brain Binder, sitting in alternative seating for the day, etc.  The brain binders are Langauge Arts related brain teasers in which the students can solve to earn a prize.

All I do is introduce the game during the beginning of the school year, and the rest pretty much runs itself.  The kids are great about keeping tabs on each other should I mistakingly mark someone as missing homework who didn’t or vice versa.  They also are great at keeping one another motivated to play each week.  It can get pretty competitive.

So, there you have it! Homework motivation success! This is one strategy that I took a chance on and am so happy I did! It’s definitely something that will be around in my classroom for a while. What will you try differently this year in order to motivate your students?

P.S. Check out these super cute mini clothespins that I found in the dollar section at Target!! These are going to make great game pieces!