Exemplary Lessons for 1:1 English Classrooms

[Demetri Orlando]

Do you have ideas to add to this list? Please "reply"

Collected from ISED-L List-serv 12/15/07:

In Cincinnati we were told about requiring students, before turning it in, to read their draft of a paper aloud, recording it on the laptop. They email the file to the teacher. Although the teacher rarely listens to the recordings, she is aware that the drafts are much improved in the process because the student finds things wrong and self-corrects.
Jenni Swanson Voorhees
Sidwell Friends School

Someone (my apologies to the person for not remembering who you are!) earlier this year described a great way to start the class using IM or Chat - the students were in small groups and had to "Chat" via the computer for about 5 - 10 minutes about the reading and then had to email the teacher a summary of the discussion. It sounded like a great way to get everyone (even shy students) instantly involved and connected in the reading. Maybe someone else remembers the exact details.
Kristen Dennison

1. Book Cover project - this is covered in greater detail in Pamela's book. Students discuss visual imagery and symbolism in literature. They then design a cover for "their novel." They don't write a novel but decide what "truth" they intend to deliver through the story. They then have to design the cover for their novel. They get a little instruction in Photoshop from the teacher and go to it. When they are done a jury of peers or parents are asked to discern the "truth" from their book cover, without reading the book. The activity reinforces visual literacy, symbolism and imagery.

2. Ad Campaign - toward the end of the year, the class does an extended unit on persuasion (however, the power of language is a theme in the course). Students are put into groups and choose a real or imaginary product for which they have to create an ad campaign. Students create billboard designs, magazine ads and newspaper ads with Photoshop or GIMP, radio spots with Garage Band or Audacity, and TV commercials with iMovie or Kino. They present their campaigns to members of the local PR community who vote on a campaign.

With the 1:1 program, kids spend more time on task and produce higher quality work.

Alex Inman


I'd like to add a story from Alex's previous school in Wisconsin where the Head of School (I believe that's who it was), who had been skeptical about having laptops in the classroom, had to last-minute sub for a teacher. Afraid that the students would be doing many other things than taking notes on their laptops he asked every student to email their notes at the end of class. When he started receiving their emails he realized immediately where the students needed more instruction and knew exactly what they did and did not understand from the lesson. I thought that was pretty powerful. I may not have the details right - sorry Alex - but you get the impression the experience had on that administrator.
-Ann

One of the best advantages of 1-to-1 is that every child has all the resources necessary at his/her fingertips for writing, revising, researching, organizing, studying, etc. Also when I was at The Peck School we found students really "owned" their computers, they enjoyed organizing their work, they became better typists, and they were better students/writers/researchers. The decentralization of resources and the ability to do your work at any place, at home or school or your grandmother's, and the home to school connection and communication were also prime benefits. Plus there is a level playing field for all students - everyone has the same computer, everyone has the same resources (including teachers), no compatibility issues, homework can be assigned without a worry of "who has a computer? who has the software?" Here is a link to some language arts blogs from Anne Davis. While not specifically about 1-to-1, these examples are about using technology, and when you add 1-to-1 to the mix it just deepens the
possibilities.

Pamela


This is an approach I used when working as an English teacher, and on sites I have set up for other people, and it can work either as group chat or as a blogging
exercise (5 mins to write a post, 5 mins to comment on classmate's posts) -- Or, you can have students blog as part of the HW assignment, and open the class with
a comment session. This works on a variety of levels, as the process of reading their classmates blogs, and commenting on them, exposed them to ideas about the
subject matter that they might not have seen, which subsequently prepared them for a higher-level conversation (as the first few minutes of class time would have been spent conveying similar info). Teachers can also skim the blogs before class to get a better sense of where students are with their work. It's also worth noting that this strategy can work in any discipline, not just language arts. However, as Alex points out, this simply improves/streamlines something many teachers are
already doing. This becomes a more powerful tool when the effects are felt over time: better discussions nearly every day, more student-led learning (as students quickly realize that they learn from their peers as well as their teachers), and, most
importantly, a track record of what they have learned/thought throughout the year. I always loved having students read their September blogs in May. While 1:1 isn't necessary to do this, it certainly simplifies the process. I should also point out that my approach assumes each student has access to a blog and a chat application,
something I set up and ran in Drupal.
Bill

[Demetri Orlando]

Tom Daccord submitted the following on ISED-L 1/09/08 [creative commons 3.0 license]

I wrote the following for an upcoming book and I hope it helps illustrate some possibilities:

"Presenting The Grapes of Wrath with Multimedia Here is an outline for an interdisciplinary introductory presentation on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

1. Begin with an historical introduction to the Great Depression using public domain images available via the Library of Congress American Memory
exhibition: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html. Select a few images to include in a PowerPoint slide show and add a question or two to each slide that will encourage students to analyze and discuss the emotional toll of the Great Depression.
2. Direct students to read personal histories of Americans living during the Great Depression, such as those found at The New Deal Network:
http://newdeal.feri.org/index.htm and PBS’s Surviving the Dust Bowl at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/. If your students are teenagers, consider having them read the stories of teenage hobos who were “riding the rails” in the 30s: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/.
3. Listen to actual audio interviews of Americans who lived during the Great Depression. Visit the Library of Congress’s “Voices from the Dust Bowl” collection at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html for
mp3 files.
4. Listen to a “Fireside Chat” by President Roosevelt and discuss what impact these chats had on the American public. You can find select Fireside Chat audio recording at the American Rhetoric Web site:
http://americanrhetoric.com/.
5. Use Google Earth to follow the Joad family as it travels to California.
A Grapes of Wrath “Google Lit Trip” is available from:
http://web.mac.com/jburg/iWeb/GoogleLit/9 12/9-12.html (Learn more about Google Earth in Chapter 4, Guided Inquiry).
6. Watch the trailer for the 1940 movie The Grapes of Wrath starring Henry Fonda available at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/trailers. Obtain the DVD and watch select scenes from the movie."

Students could also research literary criticism of the Grapes of Wrath in the Thompson Gale Infotrac "Contemporary Literary Criticism" e-database.
They could create their own story about "a day in the life of a hobo" and publish it on a blog. They could peer-edit the stories in class using MS Word's Reviewing, Document Comparison, and Readability Statistics features. They might use Word to format a literary magazine of their stories and print them. They could even record their stories with Audacity or Garage Band and create a radio show about The Grapes of Wrath, and the Great Depression.

You can listen to an excerpt of a radio show on the Depression that my students and I created a few years ago:
http://nobles.typepad.com/caitlin_cassidy/files/hobo_excerpt.mp3.

Tom Daccord
Academic Technology Advocate/History Teacher Noble & Greenough School