Chalk-Talk ~ Going Low Tech

I reserved the computer lab today to guide my students through the process of enrolling in my online Blackboard course, and to give them a little time to try out a U.S. geography game. I distributed new user IDs and passwords to every student. I created a step-by-step hardcopy guide for students to follow. I made a tear-off section so families could post the course log-on directions on their fridges, with a return section to verify that they had successfully logged on at home.

Even though my classes were scheduled for the lab, it was crowded, so I took a mobile lab into my classroom and distributed laptops. Some kids couldn’t log on. Some logged on to a ‘phantom’ website that was like my site, but incomplete. We figured out that everyone had to start from the district webpage link, rather than the school library webpage link. We also found that if they clicked on my class link before they clicked the ‘enroll’ button, bad things happened. Finally, some computers just didn’t boot up.

Enough! I had the kids put the laptops away, and rolled the mobile lab into a corner, where it can stay for all I care. I went to the chalkboard. (yes, a chalkboard, one of the few still left) and drew an outline of North America. With a piece of chalk, I took my students on a visual tour of the major geographic features of the North American continent. We ‘flew’ from west to east, over the Sierra Nevada’s, up to the Cascades, the over the Great Salt Desert, the Grand Canyon and the Rockies. We buzzed the grasses of the Great Plains, ran up the Mississippi, over the Ohio Valley, and around the five Great Lakes. We came over the Appalachian Mountains to the Tidewater region and the eastern seaboard. All the while, I sketched and swirled and ball-parked these features on the chalkboard. It was a whirlwind tour, but it kept their attention when all the expensive electronic technology had failed.

Something to be said for good old chalk - it’s there when you need it. The map on the board was a mess. It was ball-park estimation, sketches and outlines of general areas. I’m wondering whether many of them will be able to ‘retell’ the chalk-talk story of their cross-country flight, with more geographic information, than if they’d gotten online and followed an interactive map game.

I Am Not A Control Freak

Today, my students sit at their desks, read 12 pages of a textbook and take notes. It is very quiet.

This appears to be strange and unusual. People walk by the open door and peek in, eyebrows raised. They think I’m angry at my class - everyone sitting with their noses in a book. They stifle a chuckle at the notion that this is punishment for some misbehavior. Or, maybe they think I just didn’t have a plan for today and regressed to the textbook.

Some teachers assign reading (and writing) for homework, and believe that class time should be used for other things. They do many, many wonderful things with their students during class time. There is an overwhelming amount to get done. It can be justified, then, to defer reading and writing to homework. It is, after all, what a student should be able to do independently.

I do a lot in my classroom as well. I also have students read and write in class. When I do, kids sit in their seats and read or write for a sustained period of time, quietly.

Excuse me while I ask my students what they think of the book they are reading for 20 minutes straight…..

I’m back. Here are the comments.
“It’s interesting.” “I like it.” “It puts you into the story.” “It’s fun.”

OK, not the most eloquent descriptions, but you get the point.

Here’s how my ‘No I’m Not a Control Freak’ class session is set up:

The textbook is A History of US – The First Americans, volume one of a 16 book series written by Joy Hakim about the history of the United States. I’ve modeled reading the first chapter aloud, and have had a discussion with students about why reading aloud and following along is vitally important to their personal growth as readers. In a nutshell – Listening and following along with a good reader helps them to:
1. hear good pace, cadence and inflection
2. hear and see words being pronounced correctly
3. hear and see mistakes that can be glossed over without losing meaning/understanding
4. simply receive input from more than one modality

I read the first chapter out loud, and I thought out loud as well. I stopped when I wondered about something, and I shared that with my students. I wrote down a few phrases that captured my attention. I messed up on a couple of words, and quickly told the class, 'Eh, it doesn't matter. I used another word just like it."

Now it's their turn, reading silently.

There isn’t a corresponding worksheet to go with this reading. They aren’t writing ‘words I don’t know’ for a vocab list. The notes I modeled for them to take consist of listening to their own silent reading, and copying a few sentences from each chapter (2-3 pages) that catch them; make them stop and think, ‘hmmm’; cause them to pause and imagine for a second before moving on. They are leaving space under each set of ‘hmmm’ sentences, and tomorrow we will circulate the ‘captured sentences’ and allow other students to respond to these ‘findings’. Something of a simplified ‘Gallery Walk’ of text statements, that will hopefully generate personalized responses and thoughtful input from others.

What’s the point? Will we make anything of this? I’m not there yet, but if I don’t do anything else (hey, I could test them!), the process I’ve involved my students in is a skill they can repeat anywhere, any time for their own benefit. The content is no longer isolated in some barren text. It is food for thought, individually selected and shared with others. It allows students to have their individual takes on content-related reading be shared, read, and listened to. It will enable students to ‘think big’ in terms of the course content, and to know that simply wondering and being alert to their own thoughts is worthy of sharing. I’m sure I can turn this into a major writing assignment, and if I do, students will be more willing to buy in to it because they generated the thoughtful fodder to make it interesting for themselves. But I don’t have to make something more of this. Some reading and writing should be left just to the pleasure of seeking, discovering, and sharing.