Connected Teaching: A Daily Workflow Model

Step One: Get a great idea of a tool from Paul Blogush.
I loved his post on using having his kids make RSA style videos.  In fact, I have thought about this post daily since I read it.  I love the idea of a video and then a voice over because it lends itself to writing at all stages.  The novelty will make the project engaging and the tech variable on my campus (BYOD with many mac laptops) makes this possible.  If I ask the kids to bring their tools, almost all show up equipped.  For those without, we have a lab and the project is in groups of 3-4 students.  (not all roles are tech-dependent)

Step Two: Have a good accessible source of content that you need the students to know and "own" as much as possible.
The Objectives this week include some direct grammar instruction.  There is an ongoing debate as to the efficacy of direct instruction of grammar, and the choices I have made for the freshmen reflect careful consideration.  Drop a comment if you want to hear more about that.  For this project we are using a book called Sentence Composing for High School by Don Killgallon.  I like this text because of the way it focuses on the function of the part of speech more than the name.  The exercises in the book move towards independent writing referencing models.  The explanations are clear and the examples are all from published works.

Step Three: Forget to Plan
Knowing that grammar was on the menu, I forgot to finish planning.  I walked into class, put the Journal prompt up and realized I had never figured out HOW I was going to get my students to know and own this grammar work.  I thought of the RSA video and I created an assignment.

I have given each group one of the grammar lessons.  The group will be working in class to develop an RSA style video for their grammar skill (appositive phrases, participial phrases, prepositional phrases).  The goal of the video is to make the selected grammar concept clear through illustrations and examples.  The sentences used should be a combination of your own sentences and the examples given in the book.

Step Four: Try it Yourself!
I made this video to help my students optimize success.

 I would have liked this video to be error free, but I don't want the kids to worry their product to perfection. We are working quick, in broadstrokes and loving acknowledgment of the process.

The plan is that over the next few days they will script, shoot, and narrate these videos.  I will post the gallery here when they are done.

. . . . . Days later. . . .

So The kids have finished their videos and I have a playlist on YouTube.  I even reached out to Don Killgallon and his wife to let them know what my kids were doing with their book.  Don's response was great and he asked if he could share the videos with a class of pre-service teachers he is working with.

The next step is designing the second half of the learning experience.  Each student is familiar with at least one of the lessons.  Now I will ask them to use the youtube playlist to learn another type of phrase and write a paragraph using that type of phrase to describe the video they learned it from.

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