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#DBC50Summer 40/50: The EduProtocol Field Guide

/ Alicia Ray / 2 Comments

When I taught in the classroom, we typically had three days before we jumped into the content. During those three days, we covered handbook, policies, had a whole-school assembly to discuss school expectations through Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS), labeled our folders, notebooks, wrote our names in textbooks, and we learned all of the daily procedures for the classroom. The only thing I did during those first few days that was student-led was allowing them to create their own rules for the classroom. Even then, the rules usually landed in one of four areas, so class rules ended up being the same every year. Be respectful, be responsible, be punctual, and be prepared. After 5 years, I can still rattle them off.

It wasn’t until several years had gone by like this in the classroom that we did any culture building at the beginning of the year. This is when we were introduced to Kagan Cooperative Learning and I instantly loved the Class Builders. From then on, I would do activities where students were stranded on a desert island and had to order their supplies from most important to least important, or students would have to decide which of five patients on a donor list would get the next available heart based on the information given. They would have to advocate for their patient to their peers.

In the elementary media center, I would go over care of books, expectations, and allow students to check out books for the first time and we would discuss how I wanted that done. In the middle school media center, I still do the expectations discussion and allow them to check out books, but we don’t really discuss care of books at length. Last year, I revamped the lesson to include rules & expectations shown through memes. I was super pumped about the lesson, but according to my students’ survey results at the end of the year, 25% of the students didn’t even remember the lesson while another 41% said it was just alright. I listened to the students. I knew I needed to do something new with the opening lesson in the media center so I was super excited to see that book 40 was The EduProtocol Field Guide by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo!

This book had exactly what I was looking for!!! I had read it back in April after purchasing it from Dave Burgess at an event in a nearby county. (I blogged about how inspired I was after that event here.) So I knew that this book held the answer, but I couldn’t remember specific directions to the protocols. I just remembered being excited to implement the protocols this year, as my media time with students was already coming to a close when I discovered the book last year.

One of my very favorite things about this book, (other than the actual protocols, which are on fire) is the banter between Marlena and Jon in the margins! Their personalities totally shine through the pages! I also love that there is plenty of space to write notes in the margins of the page! This is truly a manual to keep fingertips away when creating experiences for students!

In the 100th episode of Kids Deserve It with Adam Welcome and Todd Nesloney, Adam asks Dave who is “inspiring him right now”. His answer? See the video below.

It is that very idea of immediately implementing that has me still awake after 2:30 in the morning completing book 40 and writing this post. I’m so excited about the overhaul in my media lesson for this week that I had to blog it instantly. I can’t wait to get feedback from the students to learn their reaction to the changes!

Reviewing media expectations won’t be done with a lecture this year, not even a slide deck with memes! Instead I am creating a review game in Quizizz where students will guess my response to various scenarios. (This game will be linked in the implementation blogs to follow in the coming weeks.) Students will play the game independently, then we will review missed questions and they will immediately play the game again with the same questions (although likely in a different order). This Smart Start is called “Fast and Curious”.

A Smart Start provides a warm-up of sorts for the EduProtocols to follow. It shows students the up-tempo pace (I love this concept of shortening the amount of time given to complete assignments/activities/protocols in order to create a sense of urgency rather than procrastination!) It’s also just fun, and something outside the expected “first day” routines! Jon & Marlena have their acronym game on point in this book! Several examples of well-used acronyms are available in The EduProtocol Field Guide, with one of them being the Smart START guiding principles.

The guiding principles of Smart START are Smile (keep it fun), Teach (finish on time), Activities (developing the culture and practicing tech skills that will be needed), Routines (structured, but fluid), and Target Barriers (students are already learning one another’s names and finding similarities between themselves and their classmates)!

After completing “Fast & Curious”, I will have students put the Book Fair dates in their phone calendars (or planners) as the next media class is Book Fair! Then we will have a discussion about my reading goals this summer. I am so excited to tell the students about #DBC50Summer and highlight some of the posts from authors of books and share the hashtag with them so they can see the insane amount of learning I completed this summer in order to make school better for them! From that conversation, we will transition into their own reading goals. They will complete a Google Form sharing their goal with me and their teachers along with rationale for their goal. Then they will move through three fast-paced stations! Stations will be as follows:

  1. Flipgrid & Five Words Form: Students will share their reading goal (only visible to the student, me, and their ELA teacher) and give themselves a little pep talk (think Kid President style). This video will be revisited in October when I see them to motivate them to continue pushing toward their goal. In November, they will create a video response sharing whether they met their first quarter goal or not. They will then identify a new goal for 2nd quarter and record it. This will happen throughout the year. Also in this station, students will complete a Google Form survey about what five words describes their core classes (math, ELA, social studies, science) and their encore classes (art, band/chorus, pe, computer science discoveries, project lead the way 1 and 2). These results will be compared to the responses from teachers about what they hoped students would say about their experience in their classes.
  2. Book Checkout: Students will be encouraged to check three books out of the media center and reminded that they will return to the media center in two weeks to exchange books. Soap box moment: Students can select ANY book they’d like from our shelves. I don’t care if it’s graphic novels, Diary of A Wimpy Kid, Dork Diaries, or Shakespeare. I just want them to get something they are interested in and READ!
  3. Club Information & Sign-Ups: I sponsor multiple clubs at my school, both in the afternoons and in the mornings. I always look forward to having students engage in these clubs and getting to know them in a much more informal manner. I will unveil the 8th grade puzzle and allow 8th graders to sign up to work on it, as well as share information in our Google Classroom about Makerspace Managers, Innovation Engineers, Between the Lines Book Club, Battle of the Books, and Virtual Reality. Students will signify interest in any of the clubs they’d like by signing up on one of the whiteboard around the media center (also giving them time to move and check out any new furniture, books, etc they haven’t yet seen in their space). Those students will have permission forms sent home the following day.

After stations, we would have moved into the “Things That Rock” Smart Start, but the power of Twitter is tremendous! Check this out!

I posted the lesson outline on Twitter.

To which Marlena replied:

I pointed out that I only see them once a month, to which she replied:

Yes… yes I did just collaborate with the author of the book while planning my lessons for the week (my implementation plan). <insert squeal here> I’ve just got to reiterate how incredible the authors of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc are! They are tremendous educators, amazing authors, and most importantly, exceptional humans. So following Marlena’s advice, I am going to move Things That Rock to the end as an additional activity if needed. I will move the What People Think meme creation up as a school-wide collaborative document. Each student will be given a slide and they will reflect on the changes in the library and what they feel they can expect from their time in our media center.

Upon completion, we will complete the Smart Start of “Worst Preso Ever” in which we watch a short video about poorly designed presentations and they intentionally create a slide in a poorly designed presentation of their opinion of their first impressions of the school year.

I am so excited to implement this plan (created with input from Marlena – WOO HOO) for The EduProtocol Field Guide! Truly, I am hoping to eventually use all of the Smart Starts and EduProtocols this year, but for the purpose of #DBC50Summer, my implementation will be these first lessons with every student in the school this week! Follow the incredible conversations surrounding this book on Twitter using the hashtag #EDUProtocols! Marlena and Jon are both very active on Twitter and I highly suggest following them at @mhebern and @jcorippo, respectively. There are many podcasts featuring the authors and/or the book, so I would suggest just using “the power of the Google” to listen to them (or watch them on YouTube). You will definitely want to check out the EduProtocols website! As always, check out the flipgrid and share your favorite of the #EDUProtocols or Smart Starts! Big thank you to Andrea Paulakovich for allowing me to co-pilot this awesome global collaborative space for all DBC, Inc books!

This post wraps up another set of ten DBC, Inc books! Wow! Summer Recap 4 is coming soon, as well as book 41! I wonder if it will Be The One you’re expecting next…

#DBC50Summer 38/50: Google Apps for Littles

/ Alicia Ray / 4 Comments

Where in the world was this book when I was still in an elementary setting? Oh my word! The sheer amount of times I have heard in my career that our littlest learners can’t do something… it’s innumerable! Sad truth is, we aren’t giving them an opportunity to show us that they can do so many of the things our older students are doing. As a teacher, I will be recommending book 38 to every PreK-2nd grade teacher I come in contact with; as a parent, I will be using so many of these ideas for my own 5 year old! I actually just bought an additional copy to gift to her kindergarten teacher (shhhh)!

I’ve been trying to do #DBC50Summer in order of release date, and we are entering a period of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc where books are released back-to-back-to-back! It’s interesting to note that Teach Like A Pirate was released in 2012 and the second book, Pure Genius wasn’t released until 2014. Beginning in 2015 and continuing through Summer of 2016, DBC was releasing a book a month on average. Then in 2017, DBC, Inc really started to take off, releasing twelve books in just over 8 months and 2 more to round out the calendar year. This year Dave and Shelley have published 22 books between January and the end of July! We were treated to three and four books a month this summer! It seemed like each week another one was coming out!

Because of that, the remaining books in #DBC50Summer were typically released within days of one another and I’ve done all I can to be sure the book numbers are correct. I reached out to DBC when I first began this process. Using the information from DBC, I did some research using author blogs, tweets, and sending direct messages to the authors asking if they remembered the official release date of their book(s). (I’m a fan of triangulating data… I blame my MLS classes, ha!) Definitively, book 39 (more on that in a minute) was released on February 19, 2018. Checking blogs and tweets, Google Apps for Littles by Christine Pinto and Alice Keeler was already out and doing amazing things on the Amazon best new release list, which would make it book 38!

Like all other books from DBC, Inc that have Alice Keeler’s name on the cover, this book is extraordinary! Each of the books about the Google line are in full color and are absolutely stunning! Check out this page from one of the #BookSnaps I tweeted today. Isn’t it gorgeous?

I love that Christine Pinto put pictures of her students and shared their work in this book! Seeing the excitement on their faces and photos of her organization really brought the book to life! The handprints with Google logos on the front of the book are a perfect addition and definitely make the cover memorable!

From the very beginning, I was captivated by this book! Even the foreword (written by Michelle Baldwin) was incredible! I have been guilty of logging into computers for my littlest students and then having them just leave the lab while I would run around and log every student off after they left. I love the authors’ idea of making a challenge for students to log on and off the Chromebook or Google Chrome account, putting a sticker on an incentive chart for each time it is done correctly. I’m telling you what’s the truth… there’s not a whole lot that the Littles (probably just go ahead and read that as middle schoolers, too) wouldn’t do for a sticker. Bonus cred if you get the smelly stickers. I’m just going to go ahead and say that smelly stickers saved my classroom management plan on multiple occasions. I especially love the “Meaningful Tech Integration” section of the Introduction in which Christine and Alice point out, “Replacing those activities [manipulatives, blocks, toys, etc] with computer tasks does not make learning better.” They go on to point out that allowing students, even the Littles, to use technology gives them an opportunity to learn, practice, collaborate, share, and connect.

The authors do an amazing job sharing the logistics of using Chromebooks, iPads (or other tablet), and/or Google Chrome on desktops in the PreK-2nd grade classroom. I love the log-in cards and color coding the keyboard and log-in cards to assist students in finding the letters and numbers to match.

One of the key themes in this book is having our students learn by exploration. Alice and Christine encourage us to allow students to click and explore as they learn about icons.

“Sometimes people struggle with technology because they are afraid to click on things. We do not want our kids to have to ask for permission to click on something or be afraid. Encourage them to explore and ask the kids what the icons do instead of telling them what they do…Let them explore, click, and learn!” ~Pinto & Keeler

As is true with many DBC books, there are links to template after template that allows you to take this back to your classroom tomorrow! I love the pixel art and appreciate the link in the book! My students love to create pixel art in Minecraft, but we only have 8 computers in our Minecraft Lab, so using Google Sheets with conditional formatting is an excellent way to incorporate this art form in class! I can totally see using this as a BreakoutEDU clue in the near future!

Searching for images with word families is definitely an activity I will do multiple times with Sophie, my daughter who just started kindergarten. She would love finding her own images on the internet. And the “explore” feature creating the best layout on the slide is just plain genius! I will definitely be using the color coded slides to assign slides to groups from this point forward! What a simple way to visually assign slides! There are so many things I can implement, even though I don’t teach the Littles anymore! Just as Teaching Math with Google Apps had a math focus, but could be used by any teacher because the information contained was just that good, Google Apps for Littles is focused on our youngest students, but certainly has relatable information for teachers of all grade levels! Don’t be fooled by those cute little handprints on the cover! Even if you’re a high school teacher, you will want get something out of this one!

I am the faculty sponsor for multiple clubs at my school. Makerspace Managers (which will also function as Innovation Engineers, thanks to Pure Genius by Don Wettrick), Game Club, Between the Lines Book Club, and now I will have students coming to the media center for an open invitation genius hour opportunity. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to manage that time without grading and formalizing the process. I want the students to want to be there and not feel as if it’s another assignment being dumped on them.  The Template Tab information from this book is exactly what i was looking for! Using this template, each student will have their own tab in one Google spreadsheet and they can reflect on their progress, communicate with me about wants and needs, and have a running journal of their genius hour journey to use if they choose to blog their story on the school’s new student-led blog (which is the implementation plan for Shift This by Joy Kirr and Ditch that Homework by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler.) I love when multiple implementation plans come together because it is making #DBC50Summer more cohesive and intentional. It’s also helping me think through the actual implementation and what will and may not work.

I also loved Kasey Bell‘s Magnetic Poetry Template! You can find more about magnetic poetry on Kasey’s blog at shakeuplearning.com/magneticpoetry (you’ll hear more about her very soon)! I look forward to sharing that with my middle school students next week, just as a fun activity. Then they can screenshot it using Alice’s extension and add it to a school-wide collaborative Google Slides. Now that revision history has been improved, I’m not as worried about a student deleting slides or adding anything inappropriate.

There are so many additional ideas for encouraging our Littles and providing them the same opportunities as our older students that can be found on Twitter! You can find these using the hashtag #GAfE4Littles! Christine has a beautiful website that can be found here. I would definitely recommend checking out the #InnovatingPlay and #SlowFlipChat sections of her site! (May also want to create a column in your Tweetdeck for those as well!) Remember the rabbit hole that is Alice’s website? It can be found here. The Google Teacher Tribe podcast (Kasey Bell and Matt Miller) interviewed Christine! You can listen to that here! Vicki (@coolcatteacher) Davis also hosted Christine on her 10-Minute Teacher podcast here. I would also highly recommend subscribing to both Christine’s and Alice’s YouTube channels!

If you’ve been following this journey for any length of time, you likely know what comes next. The flipgrid is available, thanks to the brilliant idea of my friend, Andrea Paulakovich! She kindly asked me if I’d like to co-pilot this global collaborative space available for all DBC books; of course I said yes! Please feel free to share your thoughts there and bring some friends along!

I am so excited to get to read book 39! It’s by two principals from my home state of North Carolina! In fact, they are located about an hour from my school! (Quick story) When I met Dave Burgess in April, we had a discussion about this book. In fact, it was through this conversation that I knew he (and his company) was legit. I mean, I had my doubts… I wondered if it was all a show. (I can be fairly cynical – we’ve covered this in another blog. I’m working on it.) You see, he brings a selection of books to his speaking engagements that he sells at a discounted price and will sign and personalize Teach Like A Pirate and/or P is for Pirate for you. What got me was that he could tell anyone who approached his table about each of the books he had published (not only the ones that he brought with him). He knew all 65 authors by name, and knew where they were from. The company is growing exponentially, but somehow he and Shelley have still managed to make it feel like a family. Book 39 caught my eye because of its beautiful cover; he let me know that the authors were from North Carolina and shared a story about the book with me. I knew then that I had to get it! So one of the five books I bought that day was The Limitless School by Abe Hege and Adam Dovico. I am pumped to finally be able to read book 39 after owning it for nearly 5 months! Hoping to blog about it tomorrow! Only twelve books left and 15 days until Fall begins! I can totally do this!

#DBC50Summer 25/50: Teaching Math with Google Apps

/ Alicia Ray / 5 Comments

I love the fact that book 24 and book 25 in the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line up came out back-to-back! These two books flow well together as they both discuss that the most important thing in math isn’t the answer itself, but is found in the process of finding the answer. When students ask, “when am I ever going to use this” the answer is now clear, no matter what concept being covered…the critical thinking skills developed in math will be used every. single. day.

Book 25 is the third book published by DBC for Alice Keeler. (The first two released were 50 Things and 50 Things Further, both co-authored with Dr. Libbi Miller.) Alice co-authored book 25 with the late Diana Herrington. Sadly, Diana passed away unexpectedly on May 17, 2017, just a few weeks after the release of their book. Diana’s love of teaching math and her passion for making math fun for students lives on in her words in the book. Teaching Math with Google Apps is book 25, and marks the halfway point in #DBC50Summer!

googlemath

Choosing from any of the Alice Keeler Google Apps books will result in a beautiful read. These pages are printed completely in color and organized in such a way that the content is easy to navigate and understand. Teaching Math with Google Apps can be used as a cover to cover professional development read, or as a quick reference guide (I’ll be using it as both)! In this book in particular, the sections of reading are color-coded in the top corners. I personally enjoy a good color-coding system, so this immediately spoke to my heart. I also love that Alice & Diana brought in some familiar faces to contribute! We get to hear from Shelley Burgess (co-author of P is for Pirate and co-author of Lead Like A Pirate), John Stevens (Table Talk Math and co-author of The Classroom Chef), and Denis Sheeran (Instant Relevance).

There are so many amazing tips, tools, activities, examples, and templates included in this book! The complete list of links is available when you purchase the book. That list of links alone is worth every penny! There are examples and templates for elementary through high school math classes, so there’s something for everyone here!

Some of my favorite activities within the book are Pixel Art using Google Sheets (I know, right? Genius stuff! It’s like a digital color by number), utilizing all that Google Forms has to offer through the implementation of self-graded quizzes that offer students immediate feedback, and using the Explore feature in Google Apps to make math relevant to students through maps, shopping, and can even be used to complete a scavenger hunt to find math “in the wild”.

Alice and Diana suggest using Discovery activities to learn collaboratively. Another idea they have is to put the beginning of the lesson in the middle. So think about this… typically students come into math class (or any class) and we quickly review (those who got it yesterday are now tuned out while those who didn’t get it yesterday are already frustrated), probably go over homework (waste of time – both the giving it and the going over it), and then start your lesson for the day 10-15 minutes later having wasted valuable class time. Diana challenges us to switch that up? What if we put our beginning in the middle? What if we didn’t go over homework (or give it for that matter) and we start with an extension from the day before? And… wait for it… they do this collaboratively so those that excelled yesterday have the opportunity to refine their knowledge by peer tutoring those who struggled yesterday. Their peers, those that struggled, get to hear the information from a different perspective and will likely have more understanding. Meanwhile, the teacher is monitoring and asking questions. After completing the extension activity and discussing it as a class, you transition into the day’s mini-lesson and allow students to discover the math using activities in Google Apps rather than telling them (Alice & Diana give the example that we typically TELL students the Pythagorean Theorem… why not ask the students what it is? They have Google! Google will tell them!) This shift in teaching and learning even sounds as though it would flow better. Makes much more sense to me anyhow. Great thinking, Diana!

Some of my favorite quotes from this one are listed below. (Y’all, Alice Keeler has a way with quotes, by the way. After meeting her in June, I can hear her saying some of these in my head now. I can hear the conviction behind some of these quotes and even if you aren’t really sure if you agree, you’ll find yourself nodding along, because the passion in her voice makes it so that it’s the gospel truth.)

“No matter the medium, design for student engagement.”

“Teach like YouTube and Google exist.” (one of my favorite favorites) Going hand-in-hand with that one, Alice says, “I have a rule: Do not tell students things they can look up.” [see Pythagorean Theorem statement above]

“Glitter, scissors, and glue should not be abandoned. Sometimes technology is not the best tool. While work can be created on paper…the work can still be submitted digitally…insert an image”

“The conversation becomes a risk-free learning zone – and that’s where the magic happens!”

“It is important for students to approach a problem with strategies rather than procedural steps. Strategies help them make connections when confronted with new situations.”

My implementation for this book is two-fold.  There is an activity (and template, woo hoo, get the book and you have access to the template, too) in the book where students take a selfie and upload into a collaborative Google Slides presentation and share a couple of things about themselves. I want to do this during my first media class with my 6th grade students. It introduces students to Google Classroom, Google Slides, and allows me to get to know the students’ names and faces as well. Secondly, at some point in time this year (and knowing how much Alice loves her spreadsheets, she would recommend sooner rather than later), I want to complete the Google Sheets activity included in the book where students will discover how to input data and manipulate Google Sheets. Using Google Sheets more will only help my students in the long run, so giving them a strong foundation with this template on the basics is a great place to start. I’m excited to see where this takes my students, and the staff! This book is specifically geared toward math teachers, but there’s so many activities here that can be adapted across the curriculum that I would truly recommend this book to anyone! The back of the book even has some Google tutorials for those moments when you’re reading and think, I have no idea what they mean by revision history. Detailed information with a beautiful screenshot is included here as well!

As usual with books co-authored by Alice Keeler, there is a vast world of information on her website. Go to alicekeeler.com and knock yourself out! Check out the hashtag #GoogleMath on Twitter for more. You can also subscribe to the Google Math Newsletter here! Don’t forget that if you want that link with ALL the resources, templates, examples, and other amazingness included in the book, you need to purchase a copy for yourself! You can do that here! Finally, you can always contribute to the flipgrid using the password DBCSummer (if it asks for one). Andrea Paulakovich had the brilliant idea to create a space for global collaboration around each DBC book, and I love it! Please share your thoughts there! We always include a prompt, but that prompt isn’t required. If you have something better in mind, share that! We just want to learn together in that digital space!

***One of Diana’s visions was to create a scholarship fund to encourage students to go into STEM fields. There is a gofundme page here or you can donate directly Fresno State in memory of Diana Herrington. These donations go toward an endowment at California State University Fresno for students who want to teach math! Diana’s passion for math lives on! Any donation is appreciated!***

Well, we’ve reached the halfway point! Next up is a book by one of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever “met” (well, met virtually…on Twitter, but I will meet her face-to-face one day, I hope)! If you want to know how to make small changes for a HUGE impact, check out book 26 in #DBC50Summer: Shift This by Joy Kirr!