ISTE Standards for Students -- A Brief Overview

 One of the things I put on a "21st century learning wish list" is, "Implementation of the ISTE Standards for Students." Now, before you go running for the hills ("Please, Renee, we already have enough learning standards!!!"), please don't panic! Adding some new standards to our students' learning experiences, especially these standards, will only serve to enhance what we already do in the classrooms with our kids. Having these standards will also help our kids be ready to tackle the future of learning!

This series of posts will help you become familiar with these standards and hopefully inspire you to augment your curriculum to address some of these standards. There are 7 total standards, and I am hoping to implement all 7 over the course of the next 3 school years, so we can take this slow and make sure we have our brains wrapped around what we are doing!

Today, all I want to do is share the standards briefly with you so you have a basic understanding of them. So without further ado:

1. Empowered Learner: Students take an active role in choosing the technology they want to use in order to demonstrate competency or proficiency.
2. Digital Citizen: Students recognize their rights and responsibilities living in a digital world; they act in ways that are safe, legal, and ethical.
3. Knowledge Constructor: Students curate a variety of digital resources they can use to learn from and create meaningful artifacts.
4. Innovative Designer: Students use a variety of technology to work within the design process to create new, imaginative, and useful solutions to problems.
5. Computational Thinker: Students use technology to solve problems and develop and test solutions to problems.
6. Creative Communicator: Students use technology to communicate clearly and creatively in different formats and for different purposes.
7. Global Collaborator: Students broaden their learning experiences by communicating and collaborating with others locally and globally.

Which one of these standards are you most excited to work on? Which one seems the most daunting to you? Share in the comments, and I'll send you a fun emoji sticker!

IAR Already??? Part 4

 This is part 4 of a 4 part series of posts I am hoping will help you help kids be able to better manage the experience of April's IAR test!

This post focuses on the language arts part of the IAR assessment. 

As a former ELA teacher, I know how much time and effort we put into creating meaningful writing assignments, working with kids on honing the craft of writing, and how meticulous we are about the rubrics we create to assess students' writing. We want to inspire students to be good writers, and we want the feedback they receive about their writing to be helpful so they can improve. That's why we work so hard on those rubrics. But did you know that IAR has its own rubrics it uses to score students' written responses?

I am not saying the ELA teachers should completely ditch the rubrics they have worked so hard on. But it would be very helpful to take some time to review what the test scorers are looking for when they evaluate students' writing to see what the alignment with our expectations are. It's also worth communicating this to students. Some people think this is "teaching to the test," but I beg to differ! Instead, I see this as providing students with the necessary information to complete a task that involves a particular kind of writing. Just like we teach students the difference between writing a business letter and a friendly letter, different kinds of writing tasks have different expectations. Being able to write for a variety of purposes and audiences is part of what the ELA teachers work on with kids, so sharing the rubrics is going to help with that.

Want to review the rubrics? Click here to see them! 

Are you going to use or share the IAR rubrics with your students? Share your thoughts in the comments, and I'll send you a fun emoji sticker!

IAR Already??? Part 3

This is part 3 of a 4 part series of posts I am hoping will help you help kids be able to better manage the experience of April's IAR test!

Time limits. Teachers hate 'em. We all know that imposing time limits on kids can cause stress for some students. We all know that kids are different and learn at different paces. Teachers are happy if their students can show what they learned in 30 seconds or 30 minutes or sometimes even 30 days -- all that matters is that the kids learned!

But the hard truth is that the IAR test is a timed test, and that is going to cause anxiety for some of our students -- the ones who like to do everything "perfectly" or the ones who know they might need more time to get things done. So one thing we can do is practice setting time limits on things we do in class sometimes. That doesn't mean we can't give kids more time later to complete what they need to do; it just means we need to find ways to get kids accustomed to having to work within time frames. Perhaps you're having kids do a hands-on project in class. Let kids know that their time to work will be done in 20 minutes. When that time is up, stop the kids. For the kids who might find time constraints a challenge, this will be an opportunity to help them work within those constraints in a safe environment, assuring them they can come back to their work later. It's also helpful to explain that sometimes we do things that we just have to finish in a certain amount of time, and you can try imposing hard time limits on some activities, if you think it's okay and won't be too much of a stressor. Ultimately, what is difficult is when a student only faces a time limit once a year when taking this test, so hopefully by practicing during the school year, we can make it a little easier on the kids!

While I'm writing about time, let's talk about "seat time". We all know it's not good practice to have kids parked n their chairs for long periods of time. But the IAR test can require students to be seated (in front of a computer) for as long as 90 minutes! To help kids with this, try giving them tasks where they can practice being seated and working for longer periods of time. Also find ways to make them comfy -- cushion to sit on, opportunity to swap out one chair for a different one, stretch breaks. We all know how challenging it can be to concentrate on the work we need to do if we are uncomfortable in our seat and have been sitting for too long. Let's try to find ways to help kids feel comfy when they have to do a task that is going to take an extended period of time to complete so they can truly give their best effort!

What do you do to help your students deal with time limits? Share in the comments -- one of you will get a cool prize for sharing your strategy!