Having Your Students Take Ownership of their Learning

I am always trying to find ways to have my students take ownership of their learning.  One of the things I love about blended learning is that it allows students to work at different paces and at different levels.  The challenge though is that it means that not everyone is always doing the same thing at the same time.  As a teacher, it means there is more to monitor.  It also means your students have to take more of the responsibility for their learning.

One of the things I have learned the most in the last six years is that there is not a perfect student planner.  I feel like I have tried every student planner known to man.  I have also created every type of form you can imagine: forms with lists, checkboxes, etc. You can even read old posts where I have shared some of the versions I have tried over the years.

Source: Pinterest

The truth is as adults we don't all keep up with our schedules the same way.  Why would we assume our students would, too?  I created a Goal tracker form we used the first couple weeks of school.  I broke our day down into the time increments and they had to write down what they needed to get done in that block of time and then answer if they met their goal and why.  Some students really liked the form and kept up with it.

Source: Pinterest

After that, I gave them the option of using Edmodo as their planner.  Many of our students used Edmodo as their planner last year and really like it. You can read about the Edmodo planner here. This week we discussed they could now choose how they wanted to organize their week.  Some want to use the goal tracker form, some want to use a paper planner, some are going to use Edmodo, and some are using other calendars from their devices.

The part I think is most important for my students to learn is not just finding a planner that they like, but taking time to self-reflect at the end of the week to check in and ask themselves if they met their goals and why.  Do they need to make adjustments the following week?  I am having them write a paragraph on Friday afternoons as part of this self-reflection process. I am having them do this because I want to encourage that ownership process. They were submitting it to me; however, some complained that they felt the process lacked any real meaning.  So now I am having them write the paragraph as an email to their parents and they have to copy me. By including their parents, it gave the process more meaning.

I know the organization process is something I am still struggling with.  I love my Erin Condren Life planner.  I can't imagine not having it.  It is the figuring out how best to allocate my time during the week to have time for work, lesson planning, grading, blogging, working out, cooking, cleaning, and studying for graduate school.  I am still trying to figure out if I prefer studying in the morning or afternoon right after work.  I have tried later in the evening, but I am always too tired.  Maybe my students can figure out the process before I do.

How do you encourage your students to take ownership?  Do you have a favorite student planner?  Do you find ways to encourage self-reflection in your students?

Online Student Planner through Edmodo

So the last two nights have been super busy, and I have been really tired by the time I finally stop moving.  Exercising and eating better is great, but boy is it time consuming.

I wanted to link up with Holly's Tried It Tuesday and Technology Tailgate's Techie Tuesday on Tuesday.  (Now, it is Thursday night.)

My students use laptops on and off all day long, and many of them are working at different paces.  Helping everyone get organized has been a constant struggle. I have tried so many ways to help them keep up with when things are due and what is missing.  We tried paper planners, which I could not get most of them to actually consistently fill out. I tried making different chart templates that they would fill out (but it was already partially filled out for them).  This worked better for some of them.

I have been researching online student planners.  I looked at quite a few, but most of them seemed more appropriate for high school or college students.  They seemed a little more involved than what I needed for my 4th and 5th graders.  I also wanted a tool that would allow me to send them assignments and due dates.  I remembered from some Facebook posts people mentioning that Edmodo had a planner type application.  I had signed up for Edmodo ages ago, but I had never done anything with it.  Edmodo has all sorts of applications and uses, but it does have a planner application.

I decided to try it just for the planner part.  We have been using it this week, and so far I love it.  I can input assignments and due dates.  They can upload assignments directly to Edmodo to turn them in.  They also can add their own tasks to the calendar to keep up with when they are due.

(See, if you look at the planner I meant to blog on Tuesday.) One of my other favorite features is that I can set up different classes and within the classes I can setup small groups.  I am doing three different book clubs (literature circles) right now, so I created small groups based on the Book Clubs. I can add different assignments for each book club, so not everyone in class necessarily sees the same assignments due on their calendar.  As they finish assignments, they turn them in.  For tasks they add themselves, they check the box when they finish them.

We are still new to using it, but so far it seems to be working better than the other paper type planners I have tried. I know Edmodo has all sorts of features and eventually it will be fun to test them out, but for now I am just excited about an online planner that was easy to setup and use.

So far my students all updated their profiles on their own and are sending class messages to each other with things like "If you were a super dog, what super powers would you have?"  Do you use Edmodo?  What are your favorite applications for it?

In my effort to get healthier before summer, I am having a Be a Better You Giveaway.  It ends tomorrow, so I hope you will enter.  You can earn a $30 gift card to a store of your choice to get healthier.

Online Lesson Planning and Grading Software

I have across some fabulous online resources for being organized. I have tried several of them out and am going to give you my opinion on the positives of each.

Online Lesson Planning Software

All of these software programs will make working on your lesson plans from home and school or on multiple computers easier.  They also all allow you to tie specific standards to your lessons easily. I will be using these to select the Common Core Standards when I put lessons in.

Planbook - Planbook is an inexpensive resource that allows you to create lesson plans online. It is $12 a year, and you can try it out for free. You can set up your classes and have different schedules for different days. You can add lessons for each subject for each day and even check off the standards that you used (I haven't gotten quite that detailed yet, but I'm getting there.)  I have traditionally done my lessons in Excel, but I like that I can access from both home and work without having to worry about printing it out unless I want to.  I like the way you can set your weekly schedule in Planbook. The schedule shows up each week and you just select the class and day you want to update your plans.  I like the Schedule part of Planbook the best of the three software programs.

PlanbookEdu - I checked out PlanbookEdu after seeing Randi's post today. Some features are free and the premium features are $25 a year.  It seems fairly user friendly. It seems pretty similar to Planbook.  You create a "planbook" and then set up lessons that can recur.  You just tag the lessons the name of each period.  Then you click on the specific lessons and days you want to edit them individually.  PlanbookEdu does seem to have some nice printing and exporting options for the lessons.  It does also seem you can attach files and links to the lessons.

Learnboost - I also checked out Learnboost after I saw it via Teacher Playground via Technology Tailgate. Learnboost is free, which automatically gives it a thumbs up to begin with. I like that Learnboost has built in lesson planning and gradebook capability.  This was my first choice, but Planbook ended up seeming more user friendly to me for what I needed.  Learnboost does have it built in to create more detailed lesson plans. 



If you are looking for something to replace a basic lesson planner where you write short descriptions and have a quick reference, I would go with Planbook or PlanbookEdu. (You also can just opt to type more detailed lessons in the boxes).  If you want to create more detailed lesson plans and attach links and videos, I would go with Learnboost. However, Learnboost does not make it easy to view your lessons at a glance for the day or the week. My first choice for me is probably Planbook, but I am going to try out PlanbookEdu for this week so I can decide between the two.

Grading Software

The Learnboost grading software seems easy to use, so if you went with Learnboost for planning, I would use the grading software, too.

Engrade - Engrade is a free grading software that, so far, I have found very easy to use.  You can create your different classes and select how you want to weight assignments.  It's very user friendly and more convenenient than dragging a physical gradebook back and forth from school. It also has additional features where you can create online flashcards, presentations, and quizzes for your students.  For grading, I have decided to use Engrade.

Here is a video about it:



Have you found any other great online resources for planning?  I want to start using LiveBinders as well. I need to organize my bookmarks a lot better.  I am debating what is the best method to share links with students...just via my class website or should I start using Edmodo or Kidblog?  I think my students are feeling a little overwhelmed with websites right now.  Or would it better to use a resource like Symbaloo where I might be able to use thumbnail images to organize the links? I want to make it easy for my students to go to one page to keep getting clickable links for thinks we use often.

Planning and Balancing Home and School

How do I plan?  (First of all,  I want to say I am excited about this giveaway because I really want an Erin Condren Life Planner.)

I am an extremely analytical, detail-oriented person.  I love lists and lists about making lists.  However, I also love change, new adventures, and inspired tangents.  I like to start with a big picture that inspires me and gives a jumping off point.  I enjoy using novels for read aloud because it gives me a tentative plan for about a month or so.  I will sit down and think about logical breaks in the chapters and possible reading skills.  If I am trying to follow a particular scope and sequece, I might use a genre or something as my guide for the month or six weeks.  This year I will be using more of a thematic approach, so I am excited to see how this will manifest itself.  I like to start with a great text.  I think a great text gives me great ideas for activities and discussion. (I am also aware I started way too many of these sentences with I, but I'm too tired to over-edit.)

Beginning by thinking about objective is a good way to approach planning.  Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how with high school students your goal should be to help them be prepared for college, for middle-schoolers it should be to help them be prepared for high-school, and with elementary we are trying to prepare them for middle school. I like to cover a lot of note-taking skills and explain to my students why certain skills are needed even if they are not the most exciting in the world.  Sometimes giving kids a why goes a long way.  I think it helps when planning to even think about how to activate kids prior background knowledge. 

I like to type out detailed lesson plans if I am leading a whole-group discussion/lesson.  I rarely follow them to a tee because the lesson itself and student questions always guide lessons to a better place than I planned.  I also often get last minute inspiration.  However, having detailed lessons helps me feel more prepared which allows me to just enjoy the moment and give into inspiration.

I like to also type out a sketched out breakdown of my week in Excel.  So for example, when I taught two classes of English and Social Studies I might have one typed out lesson, but two Excel sketches of the week.  In Excel, I like to show more of a schedule, like 15 minutes read aloud, 10 minutes journal writing, and 30 minutes independent reading, etc.  Here I would also list what groups I want to work with and who is in them.

Here are a couple posts I did awhile back on planning and organizing time:

http://ideabackpack.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-to-organize-time-in-reading-and.html (This was a post where I talked about how I organized time in Reader's and Writer's workshop).

http://ideabackpack.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-would-ideal-planner-for-home-and.html  (This was my post from when I first discovered Erin Condren's website where I debated if I wanted to buy one of her planners.  I have since decided I do).

http://ideabackpack.blogspot.com/2012/06/quick-reference-teacher-planner-freebie.html  (These were my teacher planner examples I made to share.  I made these because most teacher planner books just have a box for each subject or period.  I wanted to have three boxes for each subject or period - one for objective, one for lesson, and one for activity.  I find this to be more helpful as a quick reference.)

Now for my Balancing School and Home series. 

(Fonts from Kevin and Amanda and the Background Graphic from Graphics at the Pond.)

I think most teachers right now are excited about their newly setup and hopefully clean classrooms, but sad to see summer go. I thinking balancing home and school is always tough.  Balance is my new outlook on life.  (This is part of why I really want the Erin Condren Life Planner).  I am an overly serious individual.  I will never be truly free-spirited.  My mom got that trait. However, I can work toward balance and enjoying life.  My hope is to share a post on a weekly basis with balance tips.  I am hoping that some of you will link up with me, so spread the word.  Please!  Consider how you find time to eat better, spend time with family, get enough rest, keep your house clean, leave school at school, etc. Teaching is a tough job, and as much as teacher bloggers are helping each other become better teachers.  Let's help each other be better balanced teachers as well.

This week's balance tip - Food:
I have found I eat better if I cook a bunch of stuff on Sunday and we heat up leftovers throughout the week.  With trying to keep up with blogging now and exercise more, I don't have the time or energy to cook every day.  I am inspired by the people who plan out their food for the week and stick to it.  I am an emotional eater, and I have come to terms with that.  I can only plan for about 1/2 a week's worth of meals.  If I plan more, I will waste it because by mid-week what sounded good Sunday does not appeal to me come Thursday. I am inspired by people who eat pretty healthy with a low grocery budget.  I am not that person.  I'm just not.  I love Whole Foods.  I absolutely love their produce and already cooked foods.  I enjoy over-paying for containers of already precut fruits and vegetables.  If I buy it and have the best intentions of cutting it myself, it will go bad uncut and uneaten.  So I have embraced my vow to be healthy by overpaying for convenience.  It makes me happy.  So there, those are some of how I find ways to eat healthier without losing my mind.

Exercise:
I have been going to hot yoga for about three years now - not always consistently. However, I love it.  It is relaxing, envigorating, detoxifying, and exhausting all at the same time.  I also wanted to try and encourage my husband to exercise more, so I decided to try and suggest things I knew he enjoyed.  When it wasn't quite so hot, we started running.  I can only interval run/walk, but I am making progress and it is something we can do together.  We recently bought nice bikes and have been bike riding.  That has been more pleasant than running when it is like 108 out.  Overall, I have found I exercise more consistently when I have someone to hold me accountable.  So maybe try and pick something you can do with a spouse or friend. 

I hope you will consider linking up with me with some balance tips/suggestions/recipes for your fellow teachers.  I am thankful for all of you and the joy that blogging has brought back to my life and my passion for teaching. 

What would the ideal planner for home and school look like?

Okay, so I look at Erin Condren’s website for the first time.  I think I fell in love.  For anyone who loves organization and color and personalized things…it looks amazing.   I’m just not so sure I can afford her stuff.

My experience with planners: 

In college, I liked a small planner (small enough to fit in a large purse) with a space for each day and a monthly calendar. 

I tried the physical lesson planning book you write in.  It didn’t make it very far – like maybe September and then sat empty. I also hated having to rewrite my subjects each week. I liked my lessons typed out, but I also want a physical planner/notebook to write daily-to-do lists. 

Then, it gets confusing when you have personal to-do-lists and school to-do-lists and grocery lists and now there are blogging to-do-lists.   I need a planner that meshes all this together.  My lessons were usually typed in Excel.  Charts and boxes keep everything neat and uniform.  I always make my tables/charts in Excel and then copy them to PowerPoint or Word. 

Here is my question for you.  What would your ideal planner look like?  What would be in it?  Would you want a planner that would allow you to mesh life and school together?

I am soon going to upload all my binder covers and spine labels as editable files in Powerpoint (so you could type your name or a student’s name in them) but with the graphics still protected.  Would you be interested in a life/teacher planner that could work the same way?  You could print out the pages you needed for the week or month or year to write on. Or type on it in PowerPoint and then print it out.  Here are my thoughts at the moment of things to include:

The 2012-2013 calendar months
Daily and weekly planning pages to allow variety
Some different lesson planning formats
Weekly lists/forms to put blog topics and ideas
A form to put what bills you have and when they are due
Ideas for lessons/TpT to track how much of it you have completed (since I like to always start new things as inspiration strikes me and it takes me awhile to finish them)
To-do-lists
Grocery lists
A library book list to write down what books I want to get at the library for what theme/topic
A form to write notes from staff meetings and committee meetings with action items and deadlines
Form to use with weekly clubs/tutoring to write what you did and new action items
Rotation schedule charts for small groups/centers
Forms for planning for a six weeks what books/activities you want to use to meet the Common Core Standards (which means I would probably break the file down by grade level)

Anything else you would want in a planner? (I don’t have kids, but maybe something to keep track of after school activities by kid?)

What sorts of colors/themes would you want?  Clipart makes everything better.

Here is a little freebie quick reference teacher planner I made to give you some of my lesson planning format ideas.  I also just made a little weekly blogging form freebie to keep track of blog topics and all the giveaways.  Am I only the one that goes to enter a giveaway and then realizes I already entered it?  I think all the giveaways are fun.  I just find them hard to all keep track of, so I made a form to write down the giveaways for the week and I can check it off after I finish entering them.  (The owl clipart is from the 3am teacher). Speaking of giveaways, don't forget about mine.

I also am going to have to break the rule and do another post later for the Versatile blogger award.

Quick Reference Teacher Planner Freebie

I know I never could find the right planner as a teacher.  I tried some of the ones you purchase, but I never felt like it had enough space or was organized in a way that worked for me.  I usually ended up typing my detailed lessons in Word and a quick reference in Excel.  For today's "Monday Made It," I decided to make a cuter quick-reference planner I wanted to share.

I made one for if you teach all subjects:

And then I made a departmentalized version for if you teach Math/Science or ELA/SS:

I just updated it to include one for if you do small groups or pull out:

Click here to get a copy.  There is the blue polka dot background as well as one with just a white background.