Circuluar Writing With Google Docs

A teacher came into see me the period before a lesson, asking if I had a tool for circular writing. She wanted everyone to write an opening chapter, then another student to write the second chapter, another the third and so on. Although I could not think of a tool dedicated to do this, we realized that Google Docs was an easy solution!

We started by making a Google Drive Folder, which was accessible by anyone at our school, who has the link. We then created 18 documents, as we had 18 students, and labelled them by number.

We also decided that tasking a student to write the opening chapter would be the most difficult part, so decided to use some writing prompts. If we had more time to plan, we may have written these ourselves, but, as we are short for time, we used some pre-written prompts. I use Pinterest a lot, and already had several folders full of resources to help this, (general writing prompts, sci-fi writing prompts, hero story prompts and dystopian prompts). I chose a mixture of prompts, which all included some text. I'd like to experiment and have some with just images soon too.

Some examples of the prompts used:

We started by having students pull a number out of a bowl, this was the first document they worked on. It also meant that they didn't write the following chapter to the person sitting next to them. We used ClassTools.net for a timer and gave students 5 minutes to write their opening chapter. They then closed their document and opened the next number document. They were then given two minutes to read the chapter, then five minutes to write the next.

Students seemed to really enjoy this activity and they wrote a huge amount! One student was pulled out of the lesson to speak with our principal, so I took over his laptop and got to have the student experience myself and it was great. They came up with very creative plot twists, used fantastic language and responded well to their peers previous chapters.

This is a super easy thing to do in the classroom and I recommend everyone giving it a go!  I am definitely going to collaborate with that English teacher again, as this was such a cool idea and I will share it with our other teachers, including the French, German, Spanish and ESOL teams.

BoomWriter

BoomWriter is an incredible tool for story writing.

At a teacher you can pick form one of the main StoryStarts, which are fantastic opening chapters of books,t hat are designed to hook you in. You can even search through the available chapters by level and genre (so it can fit perfectly when you are doing a certain unit, like a sci-fi unit). You can also write your own opening chapters, which is something we did for the ESOL class. Although the only opening chapters available are English, you can obviously upload your own in any language.

After students read the first chapter, usually as a group and with a class discussion, each student writes their own second chapter. Teachers can add guiding notes, for example 'use the vocabulary list from class' and they can review each student's second chapter, either approving it, or giving it feedback for improving it. Once everyone has written their chapter, you host a voting session! Here students get the chance to read four of their peers chapters, (though they don't know who authored what they are reading) and they also get a chance to vote. It is very clever and makes sure all chapters are read an equal number and that no one reads there own. Once you close voting, the chapter which receives the most votes becomes the chapter two for the book!

With BoomWriter you are able to select how many chapters you want total, how many days you want them to write and vote and you can add in guiding notes to support the students. You can do it so that all chapters get approved, and you just give feedback to the winning chapters, or you can go through each draft and give them feedback. It just depends how much time you want to spend on it. You can easily use it for a summative assessment, grading each chapter, or you can have a hands off approach and just use it to foster the love of writing.

When the book is complete you get given a link and can order physical copies, (your first book is free), you can also pass this on to parents to buy! Also throughout the writing process students get given 'Boomer Bucks' when they write and vote, which they can use to customize their 'Boomer'.

The students we have used this with love it, and put a huge amount of time and effort into their chapters, because they know their peers will read them and because they want to have a chapter in the final, published book. You could even buy a copy of each book for the classroom and for the school library. I have been popping into the English classes that I set this up in, to support the teachers, and when the students see me they get really excited because they know it is BoomWriter Day!

BoomWriter set up is easy for both students and staff, and I am excited to see more and more classes using it at my school. I can not recommend BoomWriter enough, and seeing how much joy it gives the students is wonderful. I am very excited to start using this with older students, to see if they respond in the same way.

Over the last few weeks I have introduced BoomWriter to our Grade 6 English classes and on Grade 7/8 ESOL class.

Biography Lesson with Lego - Part Three

Another update on the Biography unit we are doing with Grade 6!
[Parts One and Two]

Students homework was to watch a BrainPop video and to take notes. They were also encouraged to do some extra reading and to include this information in their notes. They also broke down their notes into individual events. 

We handed out baseplates and green, orange and red bricks. Students looked at their notes, in the order they wrote them, and decided if each note related to the start (green), middle (orange) or end (red) of his life and placed the bricks on the baseplate in that order.

Students were then asked to make some observations on the Lego patterns. We had some great responses including "I have far too much information about the middle of his life and not enough about the start" and "Although the middle of his life was more important, I probably need more green bricks, because a biography should cover the whole of a person's life."

Students then re-ordered their notes and were told to select one event which corresponded with a green brick, another with an orange brick and finally one for a red brick.

Students were then given the task of making a Lego scene to correspond to each of the three events and were asked to take detailed photographs of each creation.

Green-Gandhi confessing to his father after stealing gold from his brother.

Orange-Gandhi moves to South Africa.

 

Orange - Gandhi moves to London and goes to university at UCL

Red-Assassination of Gandhi

We wanted our students to put their images on Explain Everything to create a mini biography of Gandhi. Michelle had spent some time working on a fantastic example to model to our students.

On the front cover Michelle pointed out all the things their biographies would need, including Gandhi's name, a witty title, the author and an image. Of course we had the students use Mini Mi to create a Lego Gandhi!

Students were tasked with creating their three chapters. This would include an information box, photograph, exciting chapter name and page number. Students were allowed to change backgrounds, fonts and the layout to make it as visually engaging as possible.

They then found a quiet place and placed an audio recording on top of each chapter. This was not there for them to record what was happening in the scene or Gandhi's life, but a space for them to talk about symbolism and the different Lego choice they made.
Students made comments like "I chose to make the prison cell very small as it is not a nice place to be" and "I gave the dad a hat, as he was an authority figure and worked for the Government" and "I gave Gandhi a beard in the last scene to show that he was older and it was toward the end of his life."

Lastly students had to write a page for CAPTAIN REFLECTOR! Michelle designed this minifigure and page idea to get students to reflect on the whole process and I chose some questions to help them with their responses!

 CAPTAIN REFLECTOR!

My Reflection so far:  This has been a fantastic project and students have completed a huge amount of work in a very short time! It is definitely giving me even more ideas for ways I can use Lego in my lessons and I am already writing two units based around Lego, (Lego and Gender and Lego, Social Media and Advertising).

We also had a lovely visitor from Lego Education, who helped us to get even more excited about our Lego project! Thanks Neil!

Biography Lesson with Lego - Part Two

A Thing of BEAUTY!

We have two Grade 6 classes so were able to incorporate Lego into our notability ranking exercise for this Grade 6 lesson.

This time Mrs. Jones have assigned each person a colour. This meant we could stack our Lego Bricks to show who we thought was most and least notable. Yesterday were students silently reflected and then discussed as a group, which means they might have changed their mind during the discussion or not really made any solid decisions at the start. Using Lego meant that we could see that all students were on task and it also aided easy comparison. I think students were much more likely to stick to the original opinion, instead of just going with the opinions of the rest of the class, though many changed their order after discussion. This method actually promoted some really good discussion and students started to think about why people would have chosen different answers and they also noticed patterns.

This afternoon both grade 6 classes will be presenting a coding app or website in Design class. At the end of the class we will vote on our favourite apps and websites using the brick technique!

Here's a quick video with more explanation and some other ideas for using THE POWERFUL LEGO STACK! You could try it with getting students to vote, show their personal preference, create timelines from scrambled events or even help them put things into a logic order, for everything from numbers to development stages of a frog!

[Note: I have 'dog hair' today]

Oh and just for balance...here are some of their incredible Gandhi biography scenes!

Biography Lesson with Lego

The students were so excited when they came to the class and realised they will be working with Lego! They were almost trying to break the door down to get in!

I just spent a fantastic English lesson with Mrs. Jones and our grade 6s. They are working on a biography unit and are about to start a big research project with Humanities, English and the Library. Today's lesson focussed on listening skills, note taking and telling stories. I love going to Mrs. Jones' classes and not only pick up some good teaching techniques, but I always learn a ton too!

Mrs. Jones started off the lesson by introducing the students to the word Notable. We then looked at some notable people and the students silently decided who they thought was the least and most notable!

We then had a class discussion and students put them into order as a group. It was really interesting to see the students view points, especially as we have an international set of students. All of them but Nelson Mandela as number one. Next time we do a similar activity we will assign each notable person a colour, so students can stack their Lego bricks to show the order of notability visually too. You can also do this with favourite things, putting events in the right order, class votes, etc.

Mrs. Jones then focussed on listening skills. Students were told she would read a short piece of information out about Gandhi and then would give them 30-60seconds to take notes. She would do this several times, relaying information about some of the most important parts of Gandhi's life. She spoke about different note taking methods and also about different ways to listen.

She used the HEAR technique each time!

Halt - iPad screens down, stop fiddling with your lanyards, put anything distracting away.
Engage - Show the speaker that you are listening by looking at them.
Anticipate - Get ready for the speaker to begin and anticipate what they might say.
Replay - Note taking!

Students were very engaged, though some found it hard to Halt, as they wanted to continue writing notes. This is a skill I wish I had learnt early on in life, as I am still a constant fidget! I also know for me the act of taking notes helps me remember them, but I rarely look back through notes, (I am getting better at this and find digital note taking helps me here).

After students had taken down notes about several key events of Gandhi's life, it was time to play with Lego! We only got through a few early events, as we had only one period, but students had to select one, using their notes, to recreate with Lego Bricks.  Students were told they would be given a base plate, two mini-figures and a selection of bricks. They nearly all chose to recreate Gandhi's first lesson in non-violence, where he stole gold from his brother, but then admit it, realising the potential of truth telling and being principled.

Here are some of the fantastic creations students made:

I was so impressed with the scenes they recreated and it shows how incredible their imaginations are!

Mrs. Jones spent some time interviewing the students about their scenes and also how they felt working with Lego. My favourite response was "Lego made the lesson and learning more fun...not that it isn't fun already."

This was a really fast paced lesson and the students got through way more than normal! They were all engaged and every student participated in the activity and class discussion. They were also all able to succeed!

In their next lesson students will pick three key scenes from Gandhi's life and will create models of them.They will photograph them and put them onto a presentation in Google Slides or Keynote and will present them to the class. We will also get them to record themselves talking about the scenes!