My 7th graders have been exploring perceptions and reality using thinking routines. We started out with a 3-2-1.

Have you heard of thinking routines before?

Thinking routines take all sorts of forms – and while they’re not all necessarily digital, I love using Ed-tech tools to help students make their thinking visible.

This 3-2-1 thinking routine template was originally made by the masterfully creative Heather Marshall. I’ve adapted it several times over the years to match the learning outcomes my students are working on.

You can get a copy of my Perception and Reality 3-2-1 Thinking routine here.

How thinking routines work

In my class, I’m a fan of building engagement through curiosity and exploration of a topic BEFORE I do any sort of instruction.

When students ‘buy in’ to the topic/concept with exploration (have you seen my posts on HyperDocs?) energy just starts to flow all over the classroom.

We started our latest unit of study with a MMTS ( I shared a post about that here). Next, we followed up with a more directed 3-2-1 thinking routine which focused on our next mini-unit on meeting our pen pals from Spain, letter writing, commas, adjectives, and communication skills.

Using this thinking routine feels a little bit like lifting the cover off of a new sculpture or work of art. The students understand bit by bit and by the time they have written their ‘bridge’ statement, they are DYING to get started!

We began with a topic:  kids from Spain/kids who don’t speak English. Next, my students wrote three ideas they immediately bring to mind on that topic, two questions, and one analogy. The analogies are the hardest part for sure. The cool thing is that they just keep getting better with the repetition!

Next, we explored the topic by reading personal letters from our pen pals in Spain. My 7th graders were absolutely GIDDY with excitement! Many immediately wanted to know if they could continue to write to them AFTER the assignment was over. When does that ever happen?

On a side note – I connected with a teacher in Madrid through my work with TGC and the Fulbright program that took me to Indonesia in 2012, but there are other ways to find global pen pals.

The next step

Then, it was back to the 3-2-1 for one more repetition of thoughts, questions, and analogies. This time my students were more directed towards the pen pal they ‘met’ through their letters. They were 100% more invested in their questions, as they knew the next task was to respond to the letters and add their own inquiries!

Then, my 7th graders eagerly began their letter writing. Many of my students are bilingual, and asked if they could write in Spanish – how cool is that? The class discussions were on fire – kids sharing what their pen pal wrote, laughter at the commonalities between Davis and Spain. They were in awe over discovering the Spanish school had a pool (of course, we searched their website, too). They had an overall joyful spirit of excitement and connection. And on top of it all, they were writing with an authentic, genuine purpose.

After their letters were completed, it was back to the 3-2-1 for one more repetition of thoughts, questions, and analogies. But this time, we utilized tech tools to make their thinking visible. Answergarden helped share their thoughts. We documented our questions on Google classroom, allowing kids to earn a different perspective on ALL the pen pals.

The final step to the 3-2-1 thinking routine is the bridge. Students complete this statement: “I used to think ________________, but now I think __________. By using Padlet, all my students could share their perspectives and comment to each other. Their understanding of the topic took off!

Why thinking routines are so amazing

To me, using these tech tools makes ALL the difference. Instead of continuing to hold only their own perspective, by making their thinking visible my 7th graders are able to deepen their critical thinking about the topic. It’s a beautiful way to learn to value others’ opinions.

As of today, we have sent our letters to Madrid. The next rotation will involve actually ‘seeing’ our friends via video communication! I hope you follow along to see the next steps in our exciting global classroom experience!

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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With the increasing digital presence in our world today, it’s normal for kids to be bought up around technology, and it’s most definitely a struggle and challenge for most modern parents. Kids want access earlier and earlier, and with the need to monitor their activity on the Internet while avoiding becoming overly protective and intrusive, it’s more important than ever to research ways to help keep them safe online. I’m super aware of this as a teacher, and want to offer some tips to keep children safe in a digital world.

Parents are expected to take an active and reasonable approach to help keep kids safe. There are plenty of ways that your kids can be safe online while still connecting to and socializing with their peers. Below are some of the top tips for keeping your children safe in a digital world:

Take A Proactive Approach

As a parent, when it comes to the safety of your children online there are bound to be some things that you want to shelter your children from and you should think about ways that you can do this with a digital environment. Not only do you need to be proactive with monitoring your children’s activities by using tools such as Family Orbit, but you’ll also want to think about using some preventative measures.

Some areas to consider include:

Block Sites-

This is one the most proactive ways of ensuring your children are screened from certain topics online, don’t fall into the trap of allowing your children to ‘accidentily’ fall upon content that they shouldn’t be viewing. You should be able to prevent them from seeing things you deem inappropriate by merely blocking certain sites, you can either do it manually or use a plugin.

Use a VPN –

If you’re not using one already, a VPN is a brilliant way of protecting not only your children but your family’s location by hiding where you are browsing from.

Use A Firewall-

You should make sure you have an updated firewall running at all times in order to stop any unwanted connections to your computer.

Know Who They Are-

It’s a good idea to make sure that you know who your children are planning to talk to and regularly ask about who they are connecting with. Make sure you’re aware of who they hang around with offline and online. If you have concerns the best way of dealing with it is to speak to your children and explain why you need to know.

Set Boundaries-

Although your children may not like all the boundaries thinking about things such as how long they’re online for, the times they are allowed access to the internet, the sites they can use, what are they allowed to do online, etc. it is important for successfully keeping them safe. One of the main keys when it comes to safety online is to prevent, prevent, prevent. If you take action before it happens you will come across fewer problems. It’s much better to prevent than to have to deal with a problem later. You’ll find that your children have a better understanding of what is right and wrong when it comes to online if you have preventative measures in place too.

These are just a few tips for keeping your children safe online. I’d love to hear how you’ve navigated the digital world with your children – do you have any ideas that you can share in the comments section below?

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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NCTE 2018: Raising Student Voice Through Blogging, Student Websites, Social Media and Tech Tools

I’m super excited to be spending the weekend in Houston at NCTE 2018! It’s like Disneyland, Christmas morning and my birthday all rolled up into one awesome experience! For teachers, professors, writers, publishers…basically any and all book nerds, introverts or people who love sharing their love of reading and writing, NCTE is magical.

Got FOMO? If you missed NCTE 2018 this year, I’m sorry – but you can ease your anxiety by checking out my presentation with Katie Sluiter on Raising Student Voices Through Blogging, Student Websites, Social Media and Tech Tools – just click HERE to make a copy to keep!

Katie and I will be sharing what we know about building relevancy and engagement through real-world examples – our own published writing, blogs, websites, social media, and tech tools. Our goal is to help educators give students choice and voice by using technology in authentic ways to publish their work – and share our excitement for our work!

Honestly, the most important part of conferences like NCTE 2018 for me is meeting up with my ‘virtual friends’ like Katie – we met as bloggers years ago, both became writers for The Educator’s Room, and are now presenting together for the second year in a row. Katie blogs at her website, Sluiternation.com. You really should check it out. Katie shares honest, reflective stories about her life as a mom, teacher, and breast cancer survivor. She’s the real deal!

If you were able to attend our session, THANK YOU! We hope you have a few takeaways to raise student voices in your classroom – and please, keep in touch! We’d love to see how you use our ideas from NCTE 2018 with your students!

P.S. – if you’d like to see the presentation Katie and I did at NCTE in 2017, click here.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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This year I’m going back to school with a twist – I’m going digital-style with my syllabus and lesson plans!

A few years back I experimented with different ways to engage students on the first day – and first weeks – of school. Building relationships, engaging my classroom and creating a sense of excitement helps me to keep a high energy level – absolutely necessary for teaching middle school – and also sets a tone of exploring new ideas, trying new strategies and risking failure.

Because seriously – we teachers are constantly asking our students to “push themselves”, to step out of their “comfort zone” and present their very best work, right? And yet how many teachers actually walk their talk? I’ve discovered that I build better relationships with my students when I do what I ask them to do, and as a result, we have a more productive, more creative and more growth-oriented classroom.

Last year was the year of hyperdocs for me – I wrote about how to teach narrative writing with hyperdocs, and have begun transforming nearly all my units into a digital-style package of pedagogy. I like that. I’m energized and invigorated and when I see what the students produce…mind blown!

This year I decided to go digital-style as much as I could for the first day, the first week, and beyond.

Going back to school, digital-style:

First, Creating a Digital Lesson Plan Book

To begin, I signed up for planbookedu.com. This is a HUGE step for me – I love tech, but still prefer to read a hardcopy and write in a spiral planner. I decided to switch to planbookedu, however, because in the process of hyperdoc-ing and transferring file cabinets to Google Drive, I found it challenging to access all the lessons that I had written down but had no direct digital link to. Having a digital-style plan book allows me to manage my multiple preps (4), to link my digital files onto each day/period, to copy the lesson for the one class that repeats and to search and save the plans for next year. I can also print it if needed. After researching the cost of purchasing a new paper planner, the fee for planbookedu seems well worth it.

Then, Digitizing My Syllabus

Next, I decided to digitize my syllabus. I’ve seen this trending online this year, and I found a shared Google Slide template I thought I could adapt. You can get a copy of it on my ‘free teaching and parenting resources’ tab of my website, jenniferwolfe.net. I’m not going to lie – it took me a good 4 hours to fiddle with the template, to fit in what I needed, to edit, revise, and edit some more…but then once it was done for one class, I just modify for my three other preps!

The amazing part of going digital-style with my syllabus was that it forced me to really THINK about how I wanted to present myself to parents and students; my hope is that the syllabus sticks around with them and becomes a reference point during the school year. On that end, I created a new technology and plagiarism policies and linked them to the syllabus for parents to review and return. I add links to my teacher Google site, to my class photo slide deck, my grading policies and my REMIND codes, and because it’s so visual I inserted more information than my paper syllabus ever did!

Finally, Using Google Slides For A Digital Daily Agenda

Finally, I’m using Google Slides for creating a digital-style daily agenda that can be embedded on my website, shared with students and parents, and easily updated from home or school. This is probably my favorite change of them all. Last year I used a plain slide deck that I switched up fonts and colors every month to keep students engaged – this year I’m going to get a bit more stylized! I’ve almost entirely given up directly assigned ‘homework’, so my daily agenda will follow the ‘must do’, ‘should do’ and ‘could do’ format. I use “due dates” instead of “homework”, allowing students more choice and control over their work. I love using funny gifs or images or quotes to start the day off, and by using a digital template I save tons of time by not having to rewrite everything every day! You can also see and grab a copy of my digital daily agenda template on my ‘free teaching and parenting resources’ tab of my website, jenniferwolfe.net.

I’d love to hear some of your ideas about going digital-style with your teaching and moving your classroom into the 21st century – please leave ideas in the comments below!

*This post first appeared on theeducatorsroom.com – please visit this awesome website written BY teachers, FOR teachers!

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Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Have the teacher dreams started? Does your heart pound when you see the school supply section at Target? While you’re relaxing on the beach, have you defaulted to lesson planning over reading novels? To help calm your nerves, I’ve compiled notes about five things teachers should do before the first day of school – and I guarantee you’ll have a great start!

Things teachers should do before the first day of school:

1. Organize your classroom

Kids (and administrators) love to walk into a classroom and feel the structure you’ve created.

• Think about how you (and the kids) will move around your room. Create clear traffic patterns to get in and out, as well as to the trash can, pencil sharpener, and your desk/computer!. Make sure the ‘big’ furniture is in place before school starts.
• Make supplies visible – labels and signs help everyone know where to find – and put back – their stuff.
• Figure out your seating chart and how kids will find their seats. I use numbered groups, and each seat has the group number (ex, 5) and a letter (ex, A). I project the seating chart on the screen, and kids find their way.
• Make bulletin board space for students to put up their work/projects. I have an “A” wall for my kids to hang up work they’re proud of.
• 

 2.  Sketch Out Your Year

I’m a HUGE believer in balancing planning with flexibility. At the start of the year, I like to have a road map for what strategies I want to teach, and what content I’ll use to teach them. I’ve found using sticky notes really helps – as I set up my plan book for the year, I create sticky notes for novels/units/strategies, and place them on the monthly page where I think I’ll teach them. Moving the ideas around is much easier when I don’t have to erase – and I like the physical part of placing the notes. Then, talk to your colleagues – can you collaborate on projects, share materials, or build curriculum together? Collaboration is much easier when you do it with a friend! Finally, think ahead about what facilities or tech you’ll need, and sign up! Try not to be last minute and you’ll find that your teaching goes much smoother, and you’re able to conquer so much more than you ever thought you could!

Paper planner or digital?

3. Plan Activities Get To Know Your Students – And To Share About You

One of the most important things teachers should do before the first day of school is to think about how you can infuse a ‘get to know you’ activity for part of every day during the first week. And make sure you create a lesson to help kids get to know you, too! I’ve got some neat ideas on my Pinterest board, Beginning Of The School Year Ideas. Take something and adapt it for your grade level/subject and have fun!

I surprise my students with Play Doh the first day – they make something that represents them!

4. Get Kids Moving On The First Day

There’s nothing more boring than kids listening to their teachers drone on about the syllabus on the first day of school. For middle schoolers (who I teach) that can really set the tone that your class is going to be B-O-R-I-N-G! Be that teacher who switches things up – I love to use stations for the first days of school. It lets kids get up and moving with hands-on activities, and I can observe and interact with kids as they work. Use this time to learn their names, to teach your classroom signals “1-2-3 eyes on me”, and to establish a student-centered classroom. You can read about my back to school stations here.

Back to school stations can adapt to any curriculum or grade level!

5. Plan On Incorporating Technology

Teaching in the 21st century means meeting kids where they are, and technology is front and center in their lives. If you’re a veteran teacher, plan on how you can make some simple adjustments to use technology in your lessons. Have you tried Google Apps? Can you stream YouTube or Shmoop videos instead of direct instruction? What about trying lessons with kids using their personal devices? Whatever you do, think about your comfort level with technology, and find someone on your site who can mentor you. Join a twitter chat (#2ndaryELA is one of my favorites) and meet educators online who can give you ideas – and confidence.

For more tips about things teachers should do before the first day of school, check out two of my favorite websites – Education World and Scholastic – they’re full of great ideas! And if you have any teacher friends, please share this post and add your ideas in the comments!

What other ideas do you have for a great start to the school year?

Best of luck for an inspiring school year!

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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