Your Literacy Toolbox

The huge difference here is grabbing and copying someone else's work without grounding it in a rich understanding of pedagogy based in research and experience does not make for best practice. Even the most experienced teachers would tell you that you can never have enough of that and that this is not something grabbed quickly from a Pinboard. Wonderful ideas and inspirations, yes. But really not much without the work to learn the pedagogy behind it. Hard work. It just is not as easy as a tour through Pintrest.

Stephanie,

I appreciate your input but I think many miss the point of getting inspiration. People are making judgements about the content of a post on Pinterest because it was taken from Pinterest alone, regardless if it is based in research or not. Even the most experienced teachers are getting ideas and inspiration from somewhere. Should we question every strategy, every teacher utilizes and ask for the research? My point is this - if students are engaged in a literacy based activity, and they are demonstrating growth, why are we questioning where it comes from? It's simply inspiration.

David, I like your thinking here and totally understand where you're coming from. I think my concern is the cutesy nature of Pinterest. If we're trying to create rich Language activities that align with student interests and inquiry areas of focus, can we find these ideas on Pinterest? If we do find some ideas to use (and I know that there are many), how do we ensure that we don't make them cookie cutter lessons, but target them to student areas of skills and needs? Thanks for giving me more to think about!

Aviva

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Aviva! You make a great point about ensuring the ideas garnered from Pinterest aren't turned into cookie cutter lessons. It's just a starting point where teachers can take the idea and transform it into something with depth that meet the needs of students interests and needs.

This year, I played around with Pinterest. Originally, a team started a page to support a TVDSB initiative, but when that did not succeed, it was adapted into a space where coaches could all add pins. I've done a terrible job of curating and taking care of this, as Pinterest is just not my cup of tea. Our hope was to create original Thames Valley pins that we saw in classrooms, sharing the brilliance of TVDSB. I still think it's a good idea, but it has not flown (yet). But the reality is that it takes a lot more effort to create an original pin that it does searching and pressing the "pin" button. There is a high likelihood that what you would have posted exists already.

Your post made me realize that I should check in with it.

I get overwhelmed by Pinterest - it's too much visual for me. Twitter is my preferred medium for finding ideas.

But just as our students should have choice when it comes to tech, the same can be said for social media. We all have our preferences and I think we need to makes sure we're connecting with people in those multiple ways. For example, some of the #fslchatter like Google Plus and started a community there. I'm a part of it and learning it too. Perhaps there should be a Pinterest page for #fslchat? We are curating resources on Google Drive in a shared folder.

No matter what your medium, good ideas should be shared. I think some teachers use it more like a "bump up" strategy, adding it to what they already do. It's about inspiration and sometimes a small idea by someone else connects with something you already know and it grows.

Those are just my two cents. I guess I'm a bit on the fence - I think Pinterest is great, it's just not for me!

Hi Jen,

Thanks for sharing your thinking. I agree that Pinterest is a highly visual social media site thaT might put people off. On the other hand it can also be attractive to some users for the very same reason. There are so many options to share ideas that it can be overwhelming. But the great thing is that there is so much out there, finding ideas for your classroom has never been easier.

I used this pin from Pinterest as an inspiration early in the year with my grade 1 students. When you click on the pin it feeds you to the following website: http://buggyandbuddy.com/fun-with-little-blue-and-little-yellow-by-leo-lionni-and-a-free-printable/

My students were struggling with "gelling" in the classroom and we were spending a lot of time focusing on friendship, building connections and problem solving. The post got my attention for the cool home connection piece for story retell and I was hopeful that if we took some time to explore a story in a new hands on way, that my students would be more engaged with each other.

We read the story as our shared reading for the week. We worked on story retell and sequencing throughout the week. We acted the story out, wrote the sequence using graphic organizers and discussed the problem and solution in a group writing task. At the end of the week the students took home the little bag of play dough (one ball of yellow and one of blue) so that they could re-tell the story to someone at home (I also provided information about the book in the event the parents wanted to check it out at a local library).

As a spin off of the exploration we used play dough to explore the colour mixing process. We used our experiences with yellow and blue makes green as a starting point. Student made predictions about what they thought would happen if we changed a variable (i.e. used more blue than yellow). Then we tried it out. They recorded their art/science exploration in their science journals. Observing and recording their predictions, what it looked like before and what happened after. We then discussed if our hypothesis was correct or not. We did this a few times changing the proportion of yellow and blue, then we moved on to exploring mixing the other colours (i.e. red and blue, yellow and red). This process took several days - They had so much fun with this activity and kept asking to try it in new ways! In the end we had created a whole spectrum of colours.

We used our colour exploration with the play dough to build a writing task. I modeled the writing process first, then we did a shared writing of the task as a class. We worked together to add details to the writing. Then each student picked their favourite colour and wrote about how they "made" it. The students were then able to add details to the work, for example how the colour made them feel (i.e. relaxed or happy) and what they would like to have in that colour (i.e. a new pair of teal shoes). Since the inspiration was their own exploration my students were much more involved and motivated to work on the writing piece.

Ultimately I used a Pinterest idea and made it fit where my grade 1s were at the time. Then because of the interest they showed in the colour mixing process of the story retell the experience and exploration took on a life of its own. My students loved the process so much they requested play dough be an option for "choice time" for the rest of the year.

Hi Sarah,

Thank you so much for sharing your classroom experience. I think it is so valuable for others to see how you have taken an idea from Pinterest and adapted it to suit the needs of your students. This is exactly what I hope teachers do when they find any idea that might be of interest. I also love that your students gave you feedback about their experience. Awesome work!