Aspire to Inspire

Aspire to Inspire. That's the dream isn't? As educators, we sign a contract every spring and commit to a yearlong journey of inspiring others to be a better version of themselves on a daily basis. We aspire in inspire. 

We aspire to inspire the math student to grapple with a math problem until she can not just get the right answer, but explain how and why she took the steps that she did.

We aspire to inspire the student learning a new language to start a conversation with his peers.

We aspire to inspire the quiet child to try share her thoughts with the class. 

We aspire to inspire the student who is failing a class to make sure that school attendance is a priority. 

We aspire to inspire the student who tends to make poor behavioral choices to stop and think before reacting to a situation.

We aspire to inspire a colleague to try a new teaching strategy or a new technology device in order to keep his instructional delivery relevant for the class. 

As we wind down the first half of the school year, you may feel drained from all the inspiring you do on a daily, sometimes, hourly or moment-by-moment basis. 

Photo by: @BethanyLigon (Dec 2015)

Take time for yourself during your time away from school this Christmas season. Sleep in, read a book, go for a walk, hug a child or get your face licked by a puppy. Take time to savor your favorite holiday sweet and watch a cheesy movie that makes you laugh. 

Make sure that you are rejuvenated because your yearly journey is only halfway through and when you return to classes in January, you have a lot of inspiring to do.

Thanks for all you do! It doesn't go unnoticed.

Offering my BEST to you,
Bethany.

Say What?!? I'm a Finalist?!?

Edublogs has an annual recognition for bloggers in the educational fields. It's to highlight teachers and students who are adventurous enough to post their ideas and learning experiences to the world. Classroom blogging provides students with a worldwide audience that is authentic and tangible. This is the time of year that Edublogs opens its polls for participants to vote on their favorites.

So yesterday morning I went to the site to vote because our district's junior high, Cactus Canyon, has an award winning blog, the Cougar News Blog and I wanted to show my support.  

Out of curiosity, I clicked on the various categories to see if I could recognize any other blogs and to my surprise, I found that my blog had been nominated. 

Photo by @BethanyLigon (March 2015)
Modified by @BethanyLigon (December 2015)

Maybe I'm alone in this, maybe I'm not the only one, but when I started this blog, I had no idea if people would read what I had to say. But I knew that I wanted, maybe needed, a space to share out my ideas. And so every post I have written and will write in the future is composed simply because I want to connect with others. Whether or not we agree is besides the point. I want to challenge you in your thinking just as much as I want to be challenged by your thinking. 

If what you read on this blog resonates with you, you can voice your vote by CLICKING HERE. You can vote once a day from the same IP address until December 16, 2015. 

Thanks so much! 
Offering my BEST to you,
Bethany.

P.S. Thanks to @MeaghanDavis19 for her nomination of this blog. She's a dynamic individual who has amazing thoughts. You can check out her blog: We Make the Weather.

• How has blogging affected you professionally? Or personally?
• Has anything that you've read on this blog specifically made you think a little bit differently? How so?

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Using Google Slides for Scientific Argumentation

As part of my learning today, I read two blog posts that have inspired me to think of using Google Slides for Scientific Argumentation.

The first blog post is from www.erintegration.com - Making digital books with Google Slides. This seems like such a simple way to integrate tech into daily instruction. Students can easily combine text and images to tell a story. 

Students also tell stories in science. They make not necessarily think that they are storytellers, but when they report their findings, make claims with evidence, and defend their ideas through scientific argumentation, that is exactly what they are doing - it just happens to be using observations and data rather than imagination. So why not use Google Slides to tell their scientific investigation story?

Here is what a template that students might use to tell their story.



What makes scientific argumentation so powerful is the dialog between students because they have the opportunity to question and critique each other's work. Continuing to use Google Slides, I see this playing out in several ways. 

Way #1 - Student groups can give a presentation to the class. This is a more traditional instructional strategy, that certainly has its benefits, but has a high risk of only a small percentage of students being involved in the conversation. 

Way #2 - @alicekeeler has often shared the positive attributes of using Google Slides for class discussions. Using this technique, there would be ONE slide show for the entire class. Each student group would get a set of slides to share their work. I might differentiate the groups by using different colored backgrounds so viewers would know when one groups' work starts and ends. Once all work is compiled, students can make observations and ask questions on other groups' work using the commenting feature. 

Way #3 - Once students are comfortable with the scientific argumentation process of reviewing each others' work and providing constructive comments and questions, they may be ready to jigsaw the discussions. Students from each lab group will become a representative in another group. Each representative will be responsible for communicating claims, evidence, and reasoning; therefore, each representative will certainly need to be able to defend their groups' position. Here is a blog post of how this might be employed into your classroom. 

Whichever WAY you choose to use Google Slides for Scientific Argumentation, I'm convinced students will realize that their work is a story for an audience of their peers and not just some meaningless data sitting stagnant in their science notebooks - or worse, a packet to be completed, turned in & graded, and returned only to be buried in the bottom of their backpacks and never thought of again.

Offering by BEST to you!
-Bethany

• Have you used Google slides as a way for scientific argumentation? What suggestions can you offer?
• How have you used collaborative slides in your instruction in other ways? What worked, what didn't work?
• How else have you employed scientific argumentation in your science class? How would you recommend starting off to someone who wants to make that leap with their students?

Directions for posting a comment:

1) Choose "Comment As" first. If you don't have a Google/Blogger account, you can choose Name/URL and type in your name, then place the web site that best describes you in the URL (i.e. www.ajusd.org). Or, you can choose "Anonymous".

2) You may need to press "Post Comment" more than one time.

It is always wise to copy your comment before pressing "Post Comment" just in case something happens. 

3) Type in the word verification.

4) If you did everything correctly, it will state, "Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval." If you do not get that message, please try again. 

5) Many thanks to Tracy Watanabe for these directions to post. 

And thank you for commenting!