Summary of Friday, July 24th

Summary of Friday, July 24, 2009
Oh dear! Our last Friday together! All of us now sense the end of our time together down in the “guts” of Poe Hall. Do we really just have two days of CAWP after today?
The morning began more calmly than usual with everyone working rather quietly on individual tasks. Our first order of business was the writing of letters to the members of Congress (our individual state representatives and our two senators) to encourage the continued funding of the National Writing Project. Dr. Honeycutt provided to the group verbal direction and a thorough handout entitled “Writing a Letter to Congress” that outlined the steps to follow in preparing our letters. He also showed us how to find these individuals via the website https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome/shtml, a website that allows users to look up their representatives and senators by zip code. Amy Kay also suggested using http://www.congress.org which also provides contact information and allows users to post their letter digitally. Once the letters were written, Dr. Pritchard asked us to send her digital copies for her records.
As we continued to consider 21st century literacies, Julie Abdulla challenged us all by showing two versions of the very popular “Shift Happens.” Most of us had seen the original version of “Did You Know?” (http://www.shifthappens.wikispaces.com), but most of us had not seen the updated version of “Did You Know? 3.0” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8&feature=fvw). Even though the two versions are very similar in information, viewers may want to compare the two and especially note the more current information in the second one. No matter how many times I see “Shift Happens,” the information in it startles me. It seems to me that the words that “the only constant is change” could not be truer as we consider our role as educators in preparing students for their futures.
By mid-morning, CAWPers were working on their research projects for the final big task of our institute—the position paper. Some groups worked in other areas of the building; some folks worked on their own; others worked in small groups in our room. Heather’s wonderful cream cheese coffee cake kept us energized. It was quite tasty!
As lunch approached, many of us escaped the building (for me the first time in three weeks) and walked over to Hillsborough Street for an off-campus lunch. By 1:00 (or a few minutes after since some of us were a little late—oops!), we were back in our room to get our instructions for “Final Word” where we examined Chapter One entitled “The Read/Write Web” from the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson (Corwin Press, 2006). Donna set us in groups of four for discussion and showed us how to use audio recorders to record our group conversations. She explained that this method provides another way to set-up student discussion groups that allows the teacher to monitor the groups by listening to the recorded conversations without being present for all of the discussions. “Final Word” is a discussion format that gives everyone a chance to share specific ideas about a piece of reading before everyone else reacts to that statement. The strategy involves a great deal of listening as group members react to each others’ comments.
As the groups assembled in different areas of Poe Hall, Donna instructed us to first identify individually 3-4 sentences in the reading that aroused interest in us. Dr. Honeycutt provided sticky tags for us to mark our choices. Then, while recording, one person in the group shared their choice aloud as group members listened. Then in a sequence, individual group members reacted to the statement one by one until we worked our way back to the person who had first shared. That person then had the “final word” on that statement. The process then repeated itself with the next person sharing their choice, members reacting, and the original person again having the “final word.” My group really enjoyed the format and ended up sharing about four rounds of discussion before time was up. The recording was easy as well.
If you’re interested in more strategies for discussion and reading, you might want to review the following material. It’s from the Chambersburg Area School District in Chambersburg, PA. It does include “Final Word” as well as a myriad of other reading for before, during, and after reading. I wouldn’t say it’s the best site I’ve ever accessed, but I thought it was fairly comprehensive and user friendly. The URL is as follows: http://www.chambersburg.k12.pa.us/education/components/ scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=13834&&PHPSESSID=92a4a8f2c5231e1cdb8933c26088ce77.
Our day and week ended with the final lesson demonstration by Darius Horton. Apparently Darius has “issues,” as his demonstration was entitled “I Have Issues: How to Evaluate Online Sources and Investigate Current Events.” Darius had invited us all to his blog on Thursday so that we could participate in his lesson activities today. Citing research from Jim Burke and Kathy Schrock, Darius convinced us that digital skills were integral to our students’ literacy, especially in the finding, evaluating, and manipulating of information. In a lesson he designed for his middle school students on how to determine reliable and accurate sources of information on the web, Darius sent us to his blog to learn specific strategies to evaluate on-line sources. (http://investigatingissues2009.blogspot.com/ ?zx=1bd54cae70f50138) Using materials from sources like the on-line writing lab (OWL) at Purdue University, Darius had us first look at each website and post comments on his blog as to whether we believed the source was reliable or not using the criteria he provided. Then he assigned us the task of choosing a current events issue that we wanted to research on the web (as though we were sixth graders in his class) but were not allowed to access the web at school because of restrictions. We were to write our school’s principal asking for permission to conduct web-based research; the letter had to demonstrate that we had learned to choose reliable web sources. (Darius allowed us if we wanted to write about our work in CAWP rather than as sixth graders.)
Darius outlined the steps of the letter in a handout packet.
· The first paragraph was to explain the current events topic we wanted to research and why.
· The second paragraph was to explain the advantages of using on-line sources and how they will augment our work.
· The third paragraph was to explain how we will conduct the research using the specific strategies we had learned from the quality sites.
· Finally, we were to post our letters to the blog and then read at least one letter from a classmate and respond by discussing one thing they did well and one are for improvement. Our work is on the blog (referenced above).
Darius ended his lesson by applying this activity to other subjects and grades. Nice work Darius! The last one—at the end of the day—on the last Friday! You were a brave soul indeed!
As everyone packed up to leave for the week, research groups made their final connections, grabbed resources, took a quick look at the agenda for Monday, and bee-lined for home! See everyone on Monday for our final two days!