Turning Learning Into Teaching
Over the summer I was privileged to attend the Discovery Educator Network’s Leadership Council Symposium at Bentley University in Waltham, MA. Some of you may remember the short video a few of us produced to highlight the exercise routine of the week….walking 287 stair steps from our dorm to our meeting hall.
One of the highlights of the week was working with Dr. Lodge McCammon of the Friday Institute. Lodge (as he is affectionately called by all his groupies) is a genius when it comes to using media in the classroom. He has a wonderful self-effacing sense of humor that turns his apparent geekiness into the King of Cool.
During the half-day we spent with Lodge, he introduced us to the ease with which teachers and students alike can create “paper slide” videos for instruction. In fact, rather than demonstrate the technique or lecture about it, Lodge made a paper slide video to show us how easy paper slide videos are to make.
As a result, I have decided that the starters for our 6th grade classes in our computer labs will be done this way. The first six weeks I am creating all of the starter videos, but my goal is to students create them for the last part of the semester. We will follow the paper slide format Monday through Thursday and then let them type their favorite or best starter into Word as part of Friday’s assignment.
I was surprised at how easy it was to do. Although we are teaching math skills to 6th graders, our starters are all language arts driven. As a result, we are asking students to write at least one paragraph at the beginning of class each day. The first week of videos don’t fully follow our instructions from Lodge, but I’m working up to that.
Typically, his paper slide videos introduce a concept, demonstrate the concept in some form, and then ask a guiding question for the students to work on in order to demonstrate understanding. My first few videos end more with guiding “instructions” rather than questions. As the kids get used to doing this form of starter, we will change the construct slightly in order to be more open ended for them.
Here is the video we are using today as we get this process started.
Great job Tim! I might have to steal this idea!
How very exciting, Tim!! I, too, hope to do some of the paper slide videos with my 4th graders and possibly 3rd graders later into the year. Isn’t Lodge inspiring?
I have a question or two for you.
How many video cameras do you have? Why did you start with language arts? Are you doing this with each 6th grade class in a lab setting?
Rachel, steal away! I’m posting all of my videos to both YouTube and School Tube so they can be accessed over the Internet as well as the copy we use in our Promethean Flipcharts.
Carolyn, we have 4 cameras available. I hope to write a mini-grant to get more so the kids can start making their own. I started with Language Arts because we teach primarily math in the lab setting, and I want to expose them to some writing skills as well. I may move back over to math after the first six weeks. Kind of playing it by ear.
We have all our 6th graders in a lab the fall semester, so yes, every class is using the same videos for starters.
Nice job Tim! I too, attended Lodge’s workshop at DENSI and love the high tech/low tech “collision” of the paperslide! Thanks for posting.
Tim, this is awesome. I so wished we worked together.
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