Reflection as a Goal–Our (First) Weekly Video Update Project

Dreaming Lush Green Grass and Spring Sunsets
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: DCSL via Compfight

Today I posted a short-ish video to my classroom blog site, an update of our week together that I talked about in this post that turned into a reflection about some of the struggles I have when I teach reading.

Now I’m going to show you our first video and to reflect on our learning goals for this project. The video is embedded at the end of this post.

The Rationale

I had learned about Tony Sinanis’ video updates from Jericho, NY through George Couros’ blog. I thought this idea might offer me a way to address some fundamental beliefs, beliefs that have been in the back of my mind for some time but that I have not been able to imagine how to bring to light.

First, I believe that we learn better when we are mindful of what we are doing, which applies to me as well as the kids I teach. One way we could become more mindful, I felt, was for us to assume the responsibility for gathering evidence of our learning over a relatively short period of time, and to think about how to present a piece of that evidence to ourselves and to others. It made sense to get students involved in this kind of thinking. Perhaps it might develop in them the habit of thinking (and documenting) their own growth, and it might help me focus our learning as I see how they respond to what we’ve done.

Also, I believe that schools (including me and the classroom that is my responsibility) don’t open our doors quite far enough to parents and the community. I thought that a video might humanize our classroom, it might capture some of the ways that kids think, talk, and act. By doing that, our classroom might feel just a little more comfortable, open, and inviting, even if parents and interested others wouldn’t necessarily be able to come into the classroom to see what we are doing.

The Process

At the beginning of the week I showed the kids some videos that Mr. Sinanis created with the kids in his school. We talked about what the videos did, what they felt like, and what we could tell about the people and the school from the videos. We cited evidence from the videos for our ideas. You might say that we read Mr. Sinanis’ videos closely. How uncommonly Core-y. 🙂

Next, I told the kids that I had identified four academic areas where significant learning would happen during our week together. I made those choices, but, later, perhaps the kids could do some of that brainstorming, too. For the first video, though, I thought it would be easier for me to set those areas for the kids.

After that, we got volunteers to take on one of those areas, to chart what had happened during the week, and to write a short bit about what he or she had done or seen others do. (That writing part didn’t happen as much as I would have liked, but we’ll work on it. I think it might be crucial to my goal of mindfulness.) Each child got to pick a helper for the project, too, someone he or she could talk to about what had happened. This talk and charting, which happened a lot more than the writing, occured during the freer portions of our literacy block time.

Later in the week I gave the kids a sheet with questions designed to generate a story or two  about the week. I’m going to revise that sheet into question stems for next week. The sheet wasn’t as universally useful as I had hoped, but showed some promise.

Finally, on Friday I conducted short thinking conferences with the partnerships so we could discuss what they had noticed and thought. We planned their presentations and practiced talking to each other. Then, at the end of the day, while the other kids were working on creating cards for a Veteran’s Day project, we recorded the video in the hallway.

While the video isn’t a work of art, I think it will be well received by the parents in the classroom.

Have you done anything like this? What has been your experience?

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