Dec
17
I Did Leave It Up To Them
December 17, 2011 | 6 Comments
See The Row Of Sticky Notes On The Table Too
Last week, I blogged about possibly giving the students the Livescribe Pen, and letting them decide how to use it. That’s exactly what I did this week. On Tuesday, I had some special science/literacy centres, and at one of them, the students had to share what they learned about the seasons (Grade 1) and liquids and solids (Grade 2) after doing some research. I gave the students a choice of tools (i.e., iPod Touch, Nintendo DS, iPad, and Livescribe Pen), and they were able to use any of the tools in any way that they wanted, as long as they shared their learning with me. I was particularly interested in how the students used the Livescribe Pen, and if they chose to use the Livescribe Pen too.
I was thrilled with what I saw. Not only did many students choose to use the Livescribe Pen, but many chose to write as well as record with it. This was opposite to what was happening earlier on in the year when students weren’t picking this tool to use, and they were only recording on the tool and not writing with it. So what changed?
I think that there’s two big changes:
1) After Linda Clinton’s (@linda704) comment on my earlier post, I modeled how to use this pen more for writing. I wrote with the pen in front of my students. I talked and wrote at the same time. I showed my students new ways to use this pen, and they applied what they saw in class when completing their own work too.
2) I put out the Livescribe sticky notes. My students love writing on sticky notes. They use the yellow sticky notes in the classroom all the time. While I had the big notebooks out as well for them to use, all of the students that chose the Livescribe Pen as their tool, chose to use the sticky notes. Maybe writing on a smaller paper didn’t make the writing task seem so daunting. Maybe since students automatically write on the yellow sticky notes, they thought to write on these ones as well.
What do you think? How do you get your students to see the potential of the Livescribe Pen as a tool for learning? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Aviva
6 Comments so far
Hi again Aviva,
Once again this has given me an idea. I have a student who finds writing very challenging. Whenever we start a science investigation I get students to write what they know about the topic. By offering this student the Livescribe pen, he can record his information on a Livescribe sticky note and either draw/write while he records his information. Later, it can simply be a tool that all can use to do the same…as a center? Thanks again for sharing.
Thanks for your comment! This would work perfectly! Giving multiple opportunities to use the pen in a similar way is sure to help too. Hope this all works out well. Please let me know how it goes.
Aviva
Yay! Such convincing evidence of the power of “think aloud” as an instructional strategy! I think with the little ones, their manual wpm is so slow, that they can talk what they are writing. Older students, whose writing (or keyboarding) is much more fluent, might have more difficulty. But this is merely a hypothesis on my part. Again, *thank you* for sharing your learning and teaching!
Thanks Linda! I would agree with your thoughts too. Maybe the older students could write down their thoughts and then add auditory comments to expand on them. Maybe the more that they speak, the more ideas that they’ll have to add to their initial writing too.
Thanks again for the comment and for the inspiration!
Aviva
Actually, maybe older students (especially in a group discussion)could record their ideas and then capture them in writing. I don’t know how many times I’ve said something that was *exactly* the words I wanted, but was unable to capture in written form.
Oh, that’s a great idea, Linda! It’s almost like they get to orally rehearse their ideas before writing them down.
Thanks for continuing to add to the conversation here!
Aviva