Using Teacher Dashboard

Here is a screenshot of one of my classes on Teacher Dashboard:

We've been using Hapara Dashboard for a few years now and I have come to depend on it a lot as I share documents with students and give them feedback online with their assignments.  For instance, this screenshot shows that I have shared various documents already with my classes:

-Goal Setting Document: We will use this throughout the year to stop and assess our reading and writing. We will make goals and re-visit those during the year.

-40 Book Challenge: Students are challenged to read 40 Books this year at their level. This document is their "tracker". I can check in on students and see what they are reading and remind them to add their books to the list.

-Digital Notebook: This is their online notebook where they apply reading strategies from our mini-lessons with the books they are reading. I can check with them and see what they have done, offer feedback, and evaluate their skills. My co-teacher also has access to all of these documents so she can check on the English Language Learners.

-Book Reviews Notebook: Similar to the above. Students use this notebook to craft their book reviews which they then add to our class book blog. Last year, I had students write directly onto the blog. However, that meant I had to check their work on the blog and sometimes we had book reviews with spelling and grammar mistakes or missing requirements. This year, using the notebook and dashboard means that my co-teacher and I can check students' work and give feedback before they post to the shared blog.

I also love that I can click on the Blogger Posts button in dashboard and see all their recent posts on their own blogs. When we do a reflection in class, I can quickly click this button and monitor that students are actually on task and writing their reflections. We can also help them with their editing and ensure that they have completed the blog post before moving onto a new task/activity.

Of course, the other benefits of dashboard are that you can share out a copy of whatever document you want students to have. This creates a copy that is theirs, that they own. I can also set up "groups" in dashboard so that we can share a scaffolded version of documents with our level 1s and 2s that they can use to complete tasks and assignments. They do not need to wade through multiple documents to find theirs. I have also done the same with short stories; sending different stories to our three-four groups based on reading level.

Literary Essay Rubric

In a recent Language Arts unit we worked on writing a literary essay about a main character. Our first example was to discuss the Third Little Pig from the popular fairy tale of the "Three Little Pigs. We worked on this example to understand the format of the essay and how to write a convincing claim. Next, we read a longer story, "Raymond's Run" and together we looked for evidence to describe the main character, Squeaky. Students annotated the text with possible character traits and relevant evidence. Within partnerships they then worked together to craft a claim about the character. We gave them the following visual to help them find a trait and then three reasons to prove this in their essay.

Students worked with their partner to write the Character essay for "Raymond's Run" and then they chose another story from a levelled set we gave them. They then once more worked with a partner to annotate, write a claim, find evidence, and explain their reasoning. Using the Rubric, they assessed themselves and then used the feedback to revise their essays together.

The final step in this unit was for the students to repeat the whole process independently using the character from the most recent fiction novel they have read. Students had confidence with this as they had worked with peers to understand the process and had practiced it multiple times.

Here is the rubric we used.

Teaching Students to Find Evidence for Character Traits

Here are some images of a recent activity we completed in class.
According to the Common Core, students in grade 6 need to do the following:
"RL.6.1   Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as  inferences drawn from the text."
We spend a lot of time teaching and modelling how to look at evidence in the text to infer meaning. One way we do this is by focusing on character traits which is in our Reading Unit- Characters and Their Key Details.  After a lesson on the differences between traits and feelings, we brainstorm a list of traits, positive and negative. Then, we use Harry Potter as a model and show how we can describe him with three traits and find evidence to support our inference. We show students how to enclose the direct quote from the book in quotation marks and to give the page number where the evidence was found. Students struggled slightly with this since they are so used to us saying they should not copy. Many wanted to "explain" why they thought Harry Potter was brave for instance. However, we wanted them to only give evidence as the "evidence should speak for itself" and clearly show that Harry is brave.

We also likened this activity to a historian or archaeologist uncovering clues to the past. One of the benefits of also teaching social studies to the same students is that we are able to make those types of connections for our students. In fact, while working on this project we were also using the word "Trait" in our study of the Traits of Civilization!

Back to this activity- students were required to find three traits to describe their character and then locate three pieces of evidence and quote these directly. They also needed to find some evidence that described their character's appearance and to quote that on the paper (lower left corner). Below are some other examples taken from the class.