My Personal Reading List 2017

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg7 Comments

This week I have given a whole bunch of book suggestions on Twitter. This got me thinking about what books I have read this year and I decided to keep track. I have not keep a list of what I have read before and I think it might be fun, so here it goes. This may end up being great or terrible, I don’t know. I should note that I am a self-professed book addict. My personal library has more than 1,700 books in it. My classroom library clocks in at 807 books right now (most are mine). Beware, I have a soft spot for young adult fiction. I read it A LOT. Also it helps me make recommendations to my 6th graders.

As a side note, I believe strongly that in order to be a well-rounded person you have to read stories written about and by people who don’t look like you as well as those who do. I am a straight, white male it is easy to find books written by people who look like me with characters who also look like me. I do my best to select books for myself (and my students) that feature women and characters of color and that are written by women and authors of color (this of course includes women authors of color). I do this to give myself a wider perspective and to give my students the opportunity to have characters that look like them in their reading. I am a big supporter of the We Need Diverse Books (@diversebooks) campaign and really like their recommendations and resources. Seriously though, check out this list of books.

Tag after author’s name:
AOC – Author of Color

Tag after book title:
FP – Female Protagonist
POC – Protagonist of Color

Final Count: 45 books completed

List last updated: 1/25/2018

In Progress:

 

On Deck:

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Hyperdocs: Managing Multiple Classes with Different Collaborative Documents

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg2 Comments

The Background:

Today I finally got caught up on over a month’s worth of Voxes in the #ConnectedTL Voxer group. One conversation during that time was about how to manage Hyperdoc game boards that have collaborative elements when using it with multiple classes or periods.

The Problem:

The issue that was put forward was how to manage having multiple classes get the same game board with each student getting their own copy while still having linked collaborative documents that are unique for each group of students.

The Solution:

The solution that I came up with is to have an intermediary document that serves as a launch pad for those different collaborative documents. The solution I found also restricts access to those documents to the group of students that I want to have it.

Visually:    Each individual student’s game board -> Launch document -> All different collaborative documents with access restrictions enabled.

Because describing this is words is difficult to make clear, please watch my screencast of how to make this work.

I would love any feedback about the process and how to make it clearer!

Happy Hyperdocing!

Encouraging Growth Mindset in Teachers: Steele Lane License and Curiosity Cards

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg2 Comments

This year I transferred to a new school site, Steele Lane Elementary. My new principal, Mr. Noble, introduced a couple of new ideas this year to encourage a growth mindset among the staff, the Steele Lane License and Curiosity Cards.

Steele Lane License

At our first staff meeting of the year Mr. Noble introduced something that I think is a wonderful idea to inspire teachers to maintain their own growth mindset. He gave each of us a “Steele Lane License”.img_4538-2

The license gives us permission to try new things, explore, take risks, and fail knowing that we will be supported by our principal regardless of the outcome. Now, six months later you can still find the license posted behind most teachers’ desks. We were also encouraged to give our students the same license in our classrooms.

On days when lessons just aren’t working and I decide to try something else mid-lesson or I try something new and it totally fails. I find that having that outspoken support helps me to be willing to try it again, do it differently, and keep growing as an educator.

Curiosity Cards

One thing that many elementary schools lack is easy opportunities to observe other teachers teach. In middle and high school teachers have their prep period and while that isn’t necessarily the ideal time to observe it is at least available every day. As an elementary teacher you are lucky if you get prep time twice a week, not every school has that. It makes it really hard to go and observe other teachers teaching. This year my principal decided to help change that.img_4537-2-copy

Two months into the year he introduced Curiosity Cards. At one of the staff meetings everyone got handed a “Curiosity Card”. The idea behind the card is that you fill out the card with what or who you want to observe be it a specific person “my grade level partner” or topic “4th grade writers workshop”. Then Mr. Noble will arrange with the other teacher to schedule your visit then he will cover your class so that you can go observe.  When he comes to cover your class he will either have your students continue what you normally have them do at that time or will bring an activity to do with the students. Either way no lesson plans are required in order to leave your students to go observe.

So far a bunch of teachers have taken him up on the opportunity and all of the feedback that I have heard has been positive. I have to say that I really like that we are being supported as professionals and as life long learners. As a newer teacher, knowing that multi-decade veteran teachers are taking this opportunity to go observe others and grow really encourages me to do the same.

Archive of the Breakout EDU Open Source Materials List

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg1 Comment

The Breakout EDU Open Source List page was recently removed from their website. I just used the list so I had all of the resources saved. I am archiving it here.

Physical Materials

 

Digital Materials

 

Introducing Thursday Electives for Upper Grades Students at Steele Lane Elementary

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg4 Comments

A Little Background…

This year my district is rebooting the elementary music program that withered in the massive funding cuts ten years ago. Some of the other elementary schools are doing their band as an afterschool elective. Here at Steele Lane Elementary most of our students ride the bus and leave immediately after school so that wasn’t an option for us. Around thirty students from the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades are particpating in band this year. Having them miss class for an hour every week, while feasible, was turning into a scheduling headache due to grade levels scheduling core subjects at different times of the day.

Our Solution…

We had a lunchtime meeting one day to try and schedule a time that worked for everyone. It was quickly apparent that the only possibility was one day a week in the afternoon, which is where most of us were scheduling time for our new writing program. Someone, I think it was Principal Noble, floated the idea that we make that time an elective time to include all of the students in a fun enrichment activity. With less than two minutes of discussion everyone was on board with the idea. A few more minutes of discussion and we came to a consensus on the schedule and topics for the first cycle of electives.

I built a Google Form that collected the students’ name, homeroom teacher, if they were in band, and their ranked preferences 1-6 for the other topics. All of the students completed the form on Monday and Tuesday and I built rosters in the resulting spreadsheet using pivot tables to do the heavy lifting. All of the students were able to get assigned to one of their top three choices, ready to go for the first session.

Time from the first discussion to the first session with 175 4-6th grade students participating in electives – 9 days.

Thursday Electives…

Each teacher chose a topic in which they had an interest. Our topics for the first cycle are cooking, poetry, art, drama, makerspace, and coding & robotics. We decided to have the sessions last six weeks with all groups making presentations after the sixth session before shuffling the students. We hit the ground running with minimal planning due to the short decision cycle but everyone’s first session came out great!

In cooking they made smiles with apples, peanut butter, and marshmallows. Drama they did some improv and getting to know you activities. Haiku was the style of the day in poetry. African masks were designed in art. Students in makerspace completed the marshmallow challenge. My coding and robotics group got their first introduction to the Blockly coding language through Blockly Games (More on my elective course to follow in a separate post).

Photos From The First Sessions…

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Student and Staff Feedback…

Initial reports from students in all of the classes is that they enjoyed their first session and are really looking forward to next week. On Friday we got a lot of interest from the primary grades teachers about what we were doing in the elective program and several already requested to view the presentations at the end of the cycle. All in all our feedback has been almost entirely positive. I for one am really excited to see what all of the students will produce over the course of the six weeks.