Slice of Life March 10th, 2013 #slice2013

This was a weekend of beginnings and endings.  I started work on a new project that I am very excited about.  Spring is in the air and the days are longer.  The dogs and I got back into the groove, hiking 5 miles yesterday and another 2 today.  But it was also the end of our participation in a therapy dog study through Rutgers University.  For the past 6 weeks we have been spending one hour each Sunday with a nine-year-old girl.

The first week, she was a timid.  We spent the first two sessions working on getting her comfortable with Dublin.  She pet him, played with his toys, and fed him treats.  She even “walked” him around the block and around her house.  Then she settled in a bit, playing games with him and laughing at his tricks.  But this week, our final week, was the best visit of all.

Dublin and his friend played ball, taking turns rolling it back and forth.  She introduced Dublin to her father and then gave him a few toys, showing her dad how Dublin liked to play.  Finally, we went into her room.  She invited Dublin up on her bed and they curled up together, her petting him and putting her blankie over him, while Dublin fell asleep.  It was the sweetest thing!

We ended the visit with a little photo shoot, and both Dublin and his friend were all smiles.  I’m sad that the study is over but I am hopeful that the results will show that therapy dogs do make a difference for kids with autism.  I know that Dublin and I saw a huge difference in our six weeks of visiting.

Dublin on his last visit (face blurred for privacy)

Slice of Life March 9th, 2013 #slice2013

Today the dogs and I walked 5 miles at a local park.  But after dropping them off at home, I headed back out to the bookstore.

Despite the fact that my house is home to mountains (yes, plural) of books that I still want to read, I came home with more books.  I think this is one of the signs of being a member of the Nerdy Book Club. I went to the store to pick up a copy of Eleanor & Park after reading John Green’s review in the NYTimes this weekend.  I already had a copy from NetGalley, but I like having a physical copy.  Plus, I know it sounds like a book that will be popular with my students.

I browsed the bookstore for a while, as I can never just buy one thing there.  I spent some time looking at the Moleskine notebooks (I have an addiction) because I need a new notebook for a new project.  (See me justifying it there?)  Unfortunately, they did not have the limited edition Le Petit Prince notebook I was looking for.

Then I wandered over to the bestsellers and considered buying a few adult books.  But then I saw Admission and added it to the pile in my arms.  I am a Princeton glutton and I am fascinated by the college admissions process, so it was a no-brainer.

Next, I spent some time in the YA section.  Luckily, I own most of the books already.  I ended up grabbing a copy of Grave Mercy: His Fair Assassin, Book I (His Fair Assassin Trilogy) because I remembered a lot of my Nerdy friends recommending it.  And I did jot down a few titles to add to my classroom library later.  Some of those included Cory Doctorow’s Homeland and Lauren Oliver’s Requiem (Delirium series).  While there, I also managed to convince myself that I did not need a John Green TFIOS tshirt.

Ok, fine.  Maybe they just didn’t have my size.

All in all, I escaped from Barnes and Noble relatively cheaply.  I had a $20 gift card so it was a cheap trip.  Not too bad for this Nerdy Book Club member!

Oh, and Eleanor & Park is fabulous so far.

Slice of Life March 8th, 2013 #slice2013

Today I woke up to a winter wonderland.  Everything was coated in a layer of heavy snow, and powdered sugar flakes were falling at a steady pace, as if they were being shaken onto the world.

This afternoon, it was still snowing as I left school.  The dogs and I hopped in the car right away and headed to a local park.  Once there, we veered off the paved path and climbed down the ravine path.  At first, the path was clear.  It was beautiful and silent, with snow covering all the trees and the occasional sound of a pile of snow falling from a branch to the ground.

We hit our first obstacle about a half mile down the trail.  Suddenly, a large tree covered the path.  It was obviously a victim of Hurricane Sandy and I should have realized that where there was one, there would be many.  But I didn’t.  So we climbed over the trunk and went on our way.  Then we hit another tree.  And another.  And another.  For about a half mile, we were climbing over and under huge trees.  Entire trees were strewn across the trail and it took us double our normal walking time.  But at least the dogs got a lot of exercise jumping and climbing over the trunks and branches!

We ended up having to turn around and repeat the same jumps when the path became too difficult to traverse.  But it was a great walk regardless.  Lots of physical and mental exercise for everyone!

Dublin and Bailey relaxing at the end of our walk.

One of the easier downed trees

*Check out the shout-out that the Slice of Life Challenge got on The NYTimes Learning Network blog today!

Slice of Life March 7th, 2013 #slice2013

Every day after school, I come home and get changed quickly so I can take the dogs for a walk.  Sometimes it’s a pain (especially when it’s cold and raining, like today!) and sometimes I dread it, but we rarely skip that afternoon walk.  And I’m always glad when we get started.

Some days we get into the car first and head to a local park.  I think we’ve hiked at every park within a 45 minute drive!  But today the weather was gross, so we stuck to the neighborhood route and completed a 2-mile loop.  We have to walk at least 2 miles after school or the Aussies will drive me crazy later that night!

Today’s walk was quiet.  The snow started coming down again and Bailey kept trying to catch snowflakes.  Dublin’s coat was quickly covered in large, wet flakes that melted before he could lick them off.  We didn’t see anyone else, except for the visiting wood ducks and a heron in the pond behind out development.  The sky was grey and cloudy, and the snowflakes melted as soon as they reached the ground.  But it was a beautiful walk, and just what I needed.  These walks clear my mind, relax me, and the dogs always make sure I laugh.

Slice of Life March 6th, 2013 #slice2013

I never thought I would see the day when I prayed to not have a snow day tomorrow.  Especially when we haven’t had a day off since New Years Day!  But if we have a snow day, then  we will lose the first day of spring break.  Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, we lost all of the holidays between winter break and spring break and our last day of school is June 28th.

Yes.  I said the 28th. After starting school on September 4th.

Usually, I love snow days!  The dogs get to play, I can read all day, and I would even get to catch up on some grading.  But not this time.  I need my spring break and I need it intact!

So tonight I brought home all of the work I need to grade.  I figured that it’s Murphy’s Law — if I am over-prepared then we will have school. Hopefully that will counteract the kids who are wearing their pajamas inside-out and backwards tonight!

No More Notes! Or Why I Love Visual Notetaking

I am a terrible note-taker.  I blame it my poor handwriting, but really I just don’t enjoy taking notes.  I never go back and look at them and it drives me crazy that I spent what feels like years of my schooling being forced to outline, use Cornell notes, and otherwise take notes in class. I have nightmares of sitting in a crowded classroom, being forced to copy pages of notes from physical science, written on the chalkboard in my teacher’s tiny handwriting.  We would sometimes spend the better part of a week just copying the notes she came up with.  Then I would go home and study for the test from those notes.  I never interacted with the text, I never made meaning out of it.  And that’s probably why I can’t remember much from middle school science! It’s also why I avoid taking notes today.

Don’t get me wrong.  I do take notes, whenever I attend a conference or workshop.  But I create notes.  I don’t take them.

Create vs. take.

What’s the difference?

Purpose.

When I create notes I sketch, use words, doodle, and make connections.  I don’t worry about copying down every slide or asking the presenter to repeat the

jQuery Summit Notes (Photo credit: Robert Banh)

statistics they said a minute ago, which I missed because I was trying to copy down every word they said verbatim. It’s not that notes don’t work. Note taking is an effective strategy to increase’ recall, comprehension, and retention of material (Kneale, 1998). It also produces a deeper analysis of the material than reading without note taking(Czarnecki et al., 1998).  But my anecdotal evidence and my own experience shows that visual note taking produces even deeper analysis of the material and more interaction with it.

I started sketchnoting a few years ago, without realizing that what I was doing had a name.  I didn’t realize other people did it until I started following TED conferences through Twitter and blogs.  Then TED started sharing the notes from various conferences on Pinterest and I was hooked.

I love sketch noting or visual note-taking because I feel like I am curating information rather than doing rote copying.  I think about the information and I make connections.  I started wondering why this format of notes works for me when traditional notes don’t (and research shows that I am not the only who doesn’t learn by copying notes).  My wondering led me to a TED talk from Tom Wujec, a Fellow at AutoDesk, who asked, “ What is it about animation, graphics, illustrations, that create meaning?”  He concluded that the brain makes meaning three ways and that there are important lessons in these visual curations.

First, use images to clarify what we’re trying to communicate. Secondly make those images interactive so that we engage much more fully.And the third is to augment memoryby creating a visual persistence

And that’s when I had my “Eureka!” moment.  Why don’t we teach kids how to do this?  Shouldn’t they be making meaning out of their lessons rather than just copying what someone else says?  Don’t we want students to engage with information and interact with it? And why do so many teachers scold students for doodling when it could be their saving grace?  This led me to do more research on doodling and the brain, and I discovered a fabulous article written by pre-eminent doodler Sunni Brown.  In “The Miseducation of the Doodle” she discusses the metacognitive benefits of doodling and encourages us to try it.  I took it one step further and began designing a unit around visual note-taking.

Sunni Brown begins her article it the story of Virginia Scofield, a celebrated immunologist credited with some of the biggest advances in the study of HIV, who almost didn’t make it out of organic chemistry.  Now let me tell you, I had a lot of friends who took organic chem in college and I did not envy them at all.  It was the type of class where they studied for days on end and would be thrilled to get a 45 on the test.  Then that 45 would be curved to a B after looking at the class average.  So when I read that Dr. Scofield struggled with the class, I understood why.  And I explained this to my STEM students.  Most of them will take orgo, or an equivalent class, and sometimes reading your notes and the highlighted portion of the textbook just doesn’t work.  Dr. Scofield began drawing the concepts in the class and she soon aced the tests.  Doodling works.  And we need to teach students how to doodle constructively.

So for the past few weeks we have been watching TED talks in class and at home, experimenting with sketch notes.  My students started with the visual alphabet and sketches, and we have no advanced to adding frames, connectors, and color.  They watch TED talks, choosing any one that interests them, and they create a sheet of notes to share with the class.  It can be a struggle at first, because they are so used to traditional note-taking.  But  doodling unifies the three major learning modes: visual, auditory and kinesthetic.  Students stay engaged and focused while playing and innovating.

And that’s the point, right?  I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the importance of play lately, and how it leads to creativity and innovation.  Too many students come to me afraid of failing, afraid of trying anything new.  They want to know how to “get an A+” and not “how do I learn more about this?”.  As Bruce Nussbaum says in ‘How Serious Play Leads To Breakthrough Innovation‘, “When we play, we try things on and try things out.”  Visual note-taking allows students to play with ideas, to play with knowledge, and to play with connections.  The material becomes more meaningful and they connect with it on a deeper level.

One of my favorite activities in my unit is a collaborative sketch noting activity.  The students watch a TED talk together and take their own visual notes.  Then, the room is divided in half and each group gets their own whiteboard.  They get ten minutes to combine their individual notes into one collaborative sketch note on the whiteboard.  It’s so cool!  They talk deeply about the topic at hand and the results are always great.  Below are some shots from this year.

(last year’s post)

We are about halfway through our unit this year and I am loving the results so far.  The students are engaged and enthusiastic and they are taking more and more risks with each assignment.  Eventually we will work up to making infographics (making meaning with visuals in another way!), but I’m content with sketch noting right now.  I can’t imagine not doing this unit and I wish I had done it with my 6th graders when I taught middle school.

Do you sketch note?  Would you be willing to try visual note-taking in our classroom?  I’d love to know!

Resources I Use:

Speak Now: Note-taking at TED

The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde

The Miseducation of the Doodle by Sunni Brown

Slice of Life- March 3, 2013 #slice2013

Serendipity is the word of the day.

On Wednesday, I spent some time at a local park, with a friend who volunteers there. At the end of our walk, she mentioned that another volunteer at the park had lost her beloved border collie a couple of months ago and she was hoping I could keep an eye out for any that came up for adoption. Another friend of mine runs a rescue and I’ve been looking at all the dogs recently, as my parents may be interested in adopting in the future. So I promised to keep an eye out.

Yesterday, I met that same friend when I was working at the park with my middle schoolers, and I knew she was the perfect dog mom. We exchanged numbers and I told her she would be the first to know if a border collie came in. She had been talking to a bunch of breed rescues for a few weeks but had been hitting dead ends.

Last night, I got a call that a group of dogs had just arrived from a kill shelter in West Virginia. I ended up heading over to help transport them to the rescue, in the hopes that my family would spot a puppy they liked in the mix. We were told there were 3 very young mixed breed puppies (only about 3 months old), a few puggles, some dachsunds, and a husky mix with blue eyes.

Well, I only needed to glance at the gorgeous blue-eyed mama to know she was a border collie mix. (After some research, I now think there’s a good chance she is a pure smooth coat border, actually!). She was found as a stray, with a 3 month old puppy that they believe is hers. This poor mama is not even a year old herself! Well, I sent a text to the friend-of-a-friend last night and she set up a meet-and-greet with the rescue this afternoon. I said I would stop by to take some pictures while they were there.

I arrived about 5 minutes late and I knew the pictures would not be necessary. The love between this family and the border collie was palpable. Everyone was in love. It was a match made in heaven!

Tonight, mama border collie has a loving family to adopt her, her very own backyard, and an appointment to be spayed (to go with her clean bill of health). Serendipity, I tell you. We didn’t expect a border collie to be in this group, and the family connected with me in the hope that I could introduce them to the rescue so that eventually they would find a new border collie for their family. But because I was looking for my family, I was able to make this amazing connection. And the gratitude from both humans and canine has made my week.

Enjoy your new life, mama border collie! You have a family that understands you and already loves you! I see a lot of running and fetching in your future, and a lot of cuddling.

Mama border collie, who did not stay still for my picture

Slice of Life- March 2, 2013 #slice2013

 

 

Today was the culminating activity for the science enrichment class I am teaching with my biology colleague (and my biology teacher!).  We spent 3 hours traipsing about the woods with the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and it was a great time.  We built eco-art, played games, and did some hiking.  It was cold, and even flurried for a good amount of time, but what a great day!

 

But my favorite part of the (freezing) day was on our walk back up to the parking lot.  I had been keeping an eye out for bluebirds, as I have been seeing them for the past few weeks but rarely have my camera with me.  I was thrilled to spot a group of bluebirds a few minutes later and whipped out my camera.  As I started snapping pictures, I got the attention of a few of our students.  They all froze and watched the birds as they hopped from branch to branch.

 

A pair of Eastern Bluebirds in Michigan, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Whoa!  I’ve never seen a real blue bird before!”, one student exclaimed with quiet glee.

 

“Me either,” a few others responded.

 

At that moment, I realized I was in my twenties the first time I saw a bluebird in New Jersey.  They were forced out of most areas by development and many conservation groups have been working hard to restore the population over the past fifty years.  Now, we are finally getting more of them in Monmouth County.

 

We watched the flock quietly for a few more moments, noting the contrast between the male and female bluebirds, and the sharp contrast between the red cardinal and the bluebirds.  It was a magical few minutes.  The bluebirds are just so bright and look like tropical birds flitting between the winter branches and few stalks of long grass.  They put a smile on anyone’s face!

 

I was so happy to be able to introduce these middle school students to the Eastern bluebird, and hopefully awaken a love of nature in them (even more than our 3 hour winter hike, maybe!).  Nature really is amazing!

 

A very blurry picture of one of the male Eastern bluebirds. It’s hard to keep the camera steady when your hands are frozen!

Slice of Life- March 1, 2013 #slice2013

During the month of March, I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge.  My goal is to post a new slice everyday, and my 9th graders are challenging themselves to do the same.

Walking into Trader Joe’s is a bit like walking into heaven.  I live smack dab in between two stores, both of which are about 40 minutes away.  Thus, I don’t get to shop at Trader Joe’s as often as I would like.  But tonight we had to drop the car off at the dealer, which just happens to be five minutes away from heaven.  We made a quick detour!

Most people go to Trader Joe’s for the healthy, organic food that they offer.  And believe me, I love some of the items they sell.  But that’s not what draws me in, like a moth who sees a flame from afar.  No, it’s not the healthy eating.

I am a dessert girl.

And Trader Joe’s carries my Kryptonite- speculoos products.

Cookie Butter. Crunchy Cookie Butter. Speculoos cookies. Cookie Butter filled candy bars.

My mouth is watering as I type this!

What is cookie butter?  Imagine nut butter with crushed up gingerbread cookies in it.

Drooling yet?

Tonight I managed to leave the store with only a few cookie butter candy bars, seeing as I already have a jar of crunchy cookie butter and a jar of smooth cookie butter at home.  Ok, I also bought some speculoos cookies (the ones crushed up in the cookie butter).  That would be a good dinner, right?

 

 

 

 

 

*I think this is the 5th year I am doing the Slice of Life Challenge.  Thanks to Stacey and Ruth for a fabulous challenge that inspires me to write every year.

Slice of Life #31

Today Dublin and I hiked 3 miles through a local county park known as the jewel of the park system.  It’s hidden away and I had never heard of it until I started googling canine-friendly hiking in the area.  The park supposedly had some of the best trails in the state.  Well, I can now attest to that!  We hiked for almost two hours and over 3 miles.

This is a gorgeous park with a lot of trails.  We hiked through the glen forest, wetlands, meadows, and Dublin even got to swim in the small pond!  He spent 20 minutes leaping through the water and trying to figure out how to get to geese who were very mean and just paddled around the middle of the pond, honking loudly!

By the end our hike, Dublin was finally exhausted.  He was dragging and even spent some time laying in the farm field, pulling at the grass.  After being cooped up for days on end due to the rain, it was great to be able to get outside and spend some time in the fresh air.  It was even better to tire Dublin out!

What was not as fun was the bath I had to give him when we got home.  As you can see in the picture, he was covered in mud, from head to toe.  He doesn’t exactly love baths, so it is always an adventure when we come home from our hikes!