Buffy Hamilton's Blog, page 8

Mindmapping Our Presearch Notes: Seeing Patterns and Gaps

For the last month or so, I’ve been working with a section of Honors 9th Language Arts (hopefully, another more comprehensive post coming on this endeavor later in the spring). After completing a class study of To Kill a Mockingbird, the students selected a motif of choice and began presearching a topic of choice related to the motif. After completing a presearch search term map and arriving at a narrowed topic (which I’ve blogged about earlier this semester), we moved forward with another...

Designing Successful Learning Structures for Literature Circles with Sarah Rust

While literature circles are not a new concept, teachers are always looking for strategies to help students successfully interact and develop sustained conversations about texts. If you are thinking about literature circles for any grade level or subject area, you will want to listen to my interview with Language Arts teacher Sarah Rust as she takes us through her planning and design process with students:

Sample Conversations:

Scenes from a Literature Circle Meeting in the NHS Learnin...

Scaffolding Student Presearch and Topic Ideas with Reading Frenzies

Photo by Sean O’Connor

Like many of you, we’re always looking for ways to support students in their presearch processes. Finding starting points for topic selection is often difficult for students, especially if they have little or no experience in choosing a topic. In late March, we collaborated with Language Arts teacher Sean O’Connor and his freshmen classes to incorporate a blend of brainstorming/writing around topic ideas and a learning structure, Reading Frenzy, he learned earlier this...

Battledecks: It’s Not Just for Librarians!

The Challenge

A few weeks, IB History of the Americas teacher and one of our regular collaborative partners Dan Byrne came to us with a challenge: he needed his students to research different nationalist movements and revolutions as well as present their findings to their peers. The dilemma? His students were suffering a severe case of early onset SENIORITIS. He needed a way to challenge the students with their presentation format and skills yet avoid crafting lengthy PowerPoints that were p...

Bridge to Presearch and Growing Student Understandings: Connect, Extend, Challenge

One of our ongoing goals this academic year��as instructional designers has been framing the importance of process in research projects and emphasizing the frontloading of presearch experiences as a critical point of helping students select and narrow a topic of authentic interest. ��As we tried to collaborate with our 11th Language Arts teachers earlier this semester, Jennifer and I wanted to experiment with the learning structure Connect, Extend, Challenge to see if we could nudge student t...

Circuits, Curiosity, and Inquiry: Physics and Team NHS Learning Studio

Last Friday was an especially exciting day for all of us here in the NHS Learning Studio as we partnered with Physics teacher Joe Pepitone to create learning opportunities for inquiry and student exploration of circuits. �� ��Below, Joe explains the seeds of this collaboration, reflections on the lab activities, and the impact of a team effort to create “centers” and “extension” circuit activities to extend and challenge the principles behind the primary circuit lab. ��I encourage you to take...

Musical Book Tasting+Padlet: A Recipe for Participation

Last week, Jennifer Lund and I tried a new variation on our musical book tasting activity we piloted in January. ��Our LSTCs, Hope Black and Logan Malm, wrote a grant for a set of Chromebooks for teachers and students to use with a focus on cloud based applications and resources. ��After consultation with ESOL teacher Dr. Melinda Byrne, we decided to have students post��to a class Padlet wall for their book tasting activity using the Chromebooks rather than the traditional paper ticket we had...

Writing Around Literature Motfis + See, Think, Wonder for Deeper Understanding

Yesterday we had the privilege of observing and listening to the students of Language Arts teacher��Aba DeGraft-Hanson think together and share their ideas around different motifs of To Kill a Mockingbird. �� ��They first began with a write-around the motifs last week; they then met in the library learning studio yesterday to discuss the ideas from the write-around and collaboratively draw conclusions by using the See, Think, Wonder structure from Making Thinking Visible.���� Aba’s variation...

Tools of the Trade: My Essentials for Teaching, Learning, Collaborating, and Sharing

I rarely write posts about tech tools in recent years, but I thought I would briefly share some of my “go to” resources that have become an integral part of my��work since coming to Norcross High in August of 2013. ��These apps and devices are essential to the work I’m doing related to teaching and learning, especially for��capturing student work whether it is for archival purposes, assessment, collaborative work between classes, or to merely document learning activities and experiences in ou...

Students Talk About the Value of PreSearch Term Strategy Mapping and Think-Puzzle-Explore

This past Friday I was lucky to sit down and get insightful feedback from Linda Katz’s 6th period AP Literature students who have been one of our pilot groups using pre-search term mapping strategies and Think Puzzle Explore as part of our deeper approach to pre-search and our efforts to help our students and faculty take a more inquiry-oriented stance on research. ��I think you will be awed by the insights and honesty of these four students; many thanks for their valuable and feedback as we...