My continuing Fosnot Adventure

For the past few weeks the blog has fallen silent. The Picture you see here is one I found when I did a search for "lost" at flickrcc. I seem to be struggling with the idea of slow learning. Doing the Fosnot Math is taking lots of time. A book that is supposed to be done in 10 days took over 4 weeks. The second unit is taking just as long. But the students are starting to take responsibility for their work and learning. They have completed their first growing post at their class blogs;

• Room 816
• Room 817
• Room 841
• Room 873

The students were highly successful using clocks to add fractions. Here is a voicethread I made in the summer for using clocks to teach the adding of fractions.

Now we are using Money to add fractions and playing with ratio tables. Fractions are such a large part of next years math that I am willing to spend a third of the school year teaching them. I hope they stick with me.

I have had issues marking and assessing the learning for these units and have come to the realization that the Growing Post is one easy way to see how what they have learned. Now we will journal old school in our notebooks and put the highlights of what we have learned in a new growing post. I had the students learn to upload a picture from their harddrive and to bring one in from flickr. They had to reflect on their learning from the first unit and most students participated. I hope they do as well the second time around.

Now that the students have a firm grasp on moving around the blog I will start Scribe posts. When I first attemped this the students did not know what they were supposed to do and just used the slides from the class smartboard as the scribe. I will still post the slides to slideshare but make the students recreate their math using paint or sketchcast.

Another thing for the students to start. Oh yeah we will start eportfolios in the next 2 weeks. Hmm more work for these poor students. They love it.

And to my friends and network in my google reader. I will now start to go attack the backlog of posts that I have not read for too many weeks. Thanks for your patience.

OK. I have 15 minutes to blog...

I feel rather guilty that I have not been blogging as much as I would like. So much to do and so little time. Now that the K12online is live and ticking I would like to see as much of it as possible.

A nasty thing gets in the way.... that "job" thing. Hmm how to do both.

How about some Fosnot!

Speaking about the job my students finally finished the first unit of thier Fosnot adventure. They have created some amazing work and will be doing a growing post soon on what they have created.

I still am having trouble not being the center of attention in the classroom. I love the spotlight and a chance to captivate an audience. Now my role is taffy puller.... getting that important information out of the students head to give them ownership of their knowledge.

My mentor at school keeps telling me as he draws a turtle on the board "slow learning". Sometimes it is so frustrating with the silence. I will have to continue to find the right "questions"or conversation bridges to continue the math chatter in the class.

The timeline in the book said 10 lessons. My students needed many more lessons than in the book's outline. Most one day activities were 2 day activities to allow for completion of assignments. By the end of the unit the students were getting more efficient at their learning. They were talking more at the onset of lessons and expressing the math that had been learned the previous day. Finally some progress. Hmm it can be hard to reprogram students to be the one mashing up the knowledge instead of mirroring it. (thank you Mr. Warlick)
I have used the blog to get the kids to comment on what has happened in school that day. I am up to 50 to 60% of them commenting regularly. This shows promise for assignments to come.

About thier blogs
These are raw "blogging" students. They need to be taught the inner workings of the blog. How to post, how to embed how to ..... you get the picture. I never had thought about using "Growing Posts" to teach all of these blogging necessities to students. But the Growing Post seems to be the tool that fits the bill.


I look forward to showing them voicethread, and bubbleshare to be tools that they can use to illustrate ideas in their growing post.

Next Fosnot Unit next week. The scribes will begin. Houray. Onward 21st century learners...

Ding time is up. Time to create a Growing Post.

These Kids are amazing

I have set a new milestone. Over 75% completion for the growing posts. I have one room that is over 85%. These are amazing kids. Wait until you see the next set of assignments. Where will they take me!

873 math
841 math
817 math
816 math

Please check them out and leave some comments behind. You won't be disappointed.

Wow what great comments

I am astonished at the quality of work being created by my students. They are incredible. Not only is their work excellent they are helping each other out,

This is from Beau

Hey Alyssa I think you did an awesome job, but I think you could still do better! Question five could use a little work. It doesn't say how large the classes are. Miss Stanzi's class may be larger than Miss Lowery's. That could change the answer. Also, question six is asking what the total is. All you have to do is find one square's value then multiply by 100. If you need help with Gliffy or Bubbleshare doesn't hesitate to ask!

This is From Tony on the same post

good job april but, on question 2 you didn't show how 3:2 is an equivalent to 3/5, 60% and 0.6 one more thing is that you shaded in 40 instead of 16 on question 6 a) and you should use gliffy or bubbleshare because you get more marks for doing it on that question.

There are countless more. I knew I had an excellent classes of students. But I now know that these students have class.

I love going to work.

I love looking in at my bloglines and seeing all the new work they are creating for themselves and their class blogs.

WOW They are awesome.

Growing Post Marking Rubric

I have finished the Grading Rubric for my students first Growing Post. Some things that I am trying this year. The students first have to mark themselves. They then have to mark 2 other students in the class. I find that students are much harder on themselves and each other then I am.

I have forced the students to use the computer this year to complete all growing posts. In the past I have allowed for students to do them on paper. Since my lab has been upgraded The machines I have are good enough for students to come in on their time and complete these assignments. I hope to have a 70% completion by the end of the week and have the stragglers done in January.


I hope this experiment works. We'll soon find out.

I would appreciate any comments you have on the posts themselves or on the rubric. Thanks

Growing Post Update

11_05
Originally uploaded by childish_david.

Well we are into week 2 of the Growing Post and the wheels are still not moving too fast. Student have until Monday but I will give them until Wednesday December 20th to get this work done. The Growing Post was to be a review capsule of what they are learning during the percent unit I am teaching. Questions ranged from Open Ended to closed response. I am pleasantly surprised to see that the students are using a variety of tools to enhance these posts. Bubbleshare and Gliffy are mainstays not in Scribe Posts and Growing Posts. I will continue to show my students new and different ways to use these tools aid their mathematical learning. I hope to add even more tools and examples at the student blog andwiki tools.

My First Growing Posts With a new class

Wow time flys. I have whipped through the first few math units and am ready to introduce the kids to Growing Posts. I started this activity last year and it had limited success. This year I want to use Google Documents and have the students network with each other before they complete their posts.

A growing post is one post at their classroom blog. Each day they add to their post. At the end of the week they will have a comprehensive post detailing a certain subject. As a teacher I make sure that the questions that are to be answered are rich in math knowledge and has a 2.0 edge to it. I want to introduce the students to tools such as flickr, bubbleshare, google docs etc. Here is an opportunity to do this.

Here is Growing Post Number 1

It is almost time for Winter Break and this is an important computer assignment. It is called a growing post. It is called a growing post because you create one post and add to it everyday. This assignment can be done at the last minute or it can be done a few questions at a time over the two weeks.

Remember you only create one post. You then edit it as you add more information.

Due Date Monday December 17

You must copy the questions into your Growing Post. They should be in a different colour than your responses.

Tools You can make this growing post simple or advanced. For full marks you will have to use Web 2.0 tools to make it more interactive. You can find many web tools at studentblogwikitools.wikispaces.com.

Label Please label your growing post using growingpost, percentage.


Title (Place Name Here) Percentage Growing Post

Question 1
What is a good definition of percent? You should use words symbols, pictures and numerical examples in your definition. (suggestion gliffy is an excellent tool for adding detail to your definition.)

Question 2
How are three fifths (3/5), 3:2, 60% and 0.6 all the same? Use pictures and words to show your answer.

Question 3
Show 3 different ways to find 35% of 80. (bubbleshare is an excellent tool to animate the many different ways of finding these answer).

Question 4
Find a link to blogs that deal with percentages. Leave a comment behind and add the link with a review (What the post was talking about....yes you have to read the post and why others should read the post) Hint In the side bar there are links to other schools. Three of them have done work on percentages!

Question 5

A Proposal for the K-12 Online Conference Growing Posts

Growing Posts

I created growing posts when one of Darren's students commented that my classroom blogs were getting cluttered with many similar posts about the same topic. I would have the students answer questions and include graphics and illustrations to back up their thoughts. Since pictures cannot be placed in comments they each had to make a new post. 30 posts a night and 5 questions meant there would be 150 possible posts a week to one blogsite.

There had to be a better way. Then it hit me. I would have the students create one post, have them edit it each day adding new content. The final product would be a post that was a cumulative review of the unit of study underway. I desinged a small set of questions, that showed conceptual understandin, that were to be completed by a set date (2 weeks etc)

As the posts progressed I saw them valuable in many new ways. Students would learn new aspects of blogging technology with each new edit to their growing posts (how to insert pictures, how to hyperlink etc)

When my does scribe posts they only preform a blogging task once every 30 teaching days. Growing Posts were forcing them to complete blogging assignments on a regular basis. The quality of scribe posts improved as they learned from each other how to create illustrations and add other features to their Growing Posts.

I did three sets of Growing Posts in 2005. by the time that the last set of posts were completed new goals for these posts had emerged. Clarence Fisher and Darren talk about a network of learners. A part of the last growing posts was to create links with other students from different classrooms and leave comments behind on their posts. They would also link to Growing Posts that explained a certain question in a different way than their solution.

Growing Posts are a way to enrich your students. Some of my best students pushed the boundries of this assignment adding animated gifs and other new more accurate illustrations.

I started out with 45% of the students participating online(some decided to answer the questions on paper instead) and saw paticipation grow to 60% online by the last Growing Post.

My presentation will show teachers how to set up Growing Posts, The varied uses of Growing Posts, How to get students to network with each other, my pitfalls and successes that lead to the unlimited potential that this form of blogging will bring to their classroom.

Thank you

C. Harbeck

My first post and It is meet The Teacher Night

I have put togerter a post on my class hub. It describes to parents how I will use blogging in my classroom this year. Here is what I Posted.

Meet the Teacher Night

Every year there is an opportunity to meet the parents of my students. I get to explain how my course is run and what expectations I have of the students and of parents.

Assessment in the course this year for the first term is based on test and quiz scores, journalling, completion of TLE-8 computer units, mental math activities and interaction with the classroom blog.

I like to give the parents a heads up on the positive aspects of blogging and the importance of the students being responsible for their actions.

Blogging is a very public form of communication. Bud Hunt, a teacher in the U.S. has these guidelines for his students. I will use them too.

1. Students using blogs are expected to treat blogspaces as classroom spaces. Speech that is inappropriate for class is not appropriate for our blog. While we encourage you to engage in debate and conversation with other bloggers, we also expect that you will conduct yourself in a manner reflective of a representative of this school.



2. Never EVER EVER give out or record personal information on our blog. Our blog exists as a public space on the Internet. Don’t share anything that you don’t want the world to know. For your safety, be careful what you say, too. Don’t give out your phone number or home address. This is particularly important to remember if you have a personal online journal or blog elsewhere.



3. Again, your blog is a public space. And if you put it on the Internet, odds are really good that it will stay on the Internet. Always. That means ten years from now when you are looking for a job, it might be possible for an employer to discover some really hateful and immature things you said when you were younger and more prone to foolish things. Be sure that anything you write you are proud of. It can come back to haunt you if you don’t.
>


4. Never link to something you haven’t read. While it isn’t your job to police the Internet, when you link to something, you should make sure it is something that you really want to be associated with. If a link contains material that might be creepy or make some people uncomfortable, you should probably try a different source.

One form of blogging work is Scribe Posts.

Scribe Posts

Write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was away sick, or missed class for any other reason, can catch up on what they missed. Over the course of the semester, the scribe posts will grow into the textbook for the course; written by students for students. Remember that as each of you write your scribe posts. Ask yourself: "Is this good enough for our textbook? Would a graphic or other example(s) help illustrate what we learned?" And remember, you have a global audience, impress them.

Students will be expected to contribute one scribe post every 30 classes or about 4 times a year.

Examples of Scribe Posts from last year.

LaraMae did a scribe post during our algebra unit. Her scribe included a picture that accuratly depicted a piece of paper that had been folded into 5 columns filled with notes. It was awesome.

Norielle through the use of one image described and explained how to find the surface area of a cylinder.

Josh showed how to find the volume of geometric solids in tremendous detail.

The Scribe Post Hall of Fame showcases the best Scribe Posts from around the globe. Our student figure prominantly on this site.


Another way we use our classroom blog is to create Growing Posts.

Growing Posts

Growing posts are like unit reviews. Each growing post starts off as one post by the student answering one question about a concept. Each day the students have to answer a new question and add it to their post. At the end of the unit they will have a comprehensive resource of material needed to study for tests or complete assignments.

Here are some excellent Growing Posts

Michael's Growing Post Ingrid's Growing Post

Sometimes students strive for enrichment. Here is an example of intrinsic creativity

Aldrin's Fraction Growing Post

Dion's Growing Post

The Growing Post Hall Of Fame was founded to allow student work to be displayed for the world to see. I am proud of the work that students did last year and am looking forward to this years inductee's.

This years classes will participate in many activities that will prepare them for their future. As parents enjoy their ride through the Sargent Park Math Zone of Room 17. If you dare come along for the ride with them!!

I showed the students this video today. Watch it and see where the world might... is going. It was made by a teacher K. Fisch from Colorado.

Did You Know

Mr. Harbeck

Ah the first post is over. Next comes the appropriate links and other sidebar goodies.