After watching this video and being the only person in the primary grades in my district to use Canvas, I didn't have a lot of guidance.  

What was I going to do? How was I going to make this effective for my students? Can I make navigation easy for everyone?

Twitter is a great resource for sharing resources and getting new ideas for instruction.  In one of the chats, a teacher recommended the book "Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions." As I reflected on last year, I knew that I wanted students to ask more questions and push each other's thinking.  I decided to go on Amazon and order the book.  Once it arrived, I started to read it and knew that it was something that I had to try out in my classroom. I'll admit that sometimes I jump the gun and try things out right away just to see how they work and with this book, I'm so glad that I did.  

This book lays out the process for the Question Formulation Technique, or also known as QFT.  It starts out with divergent thinking and the follows up with convergent thinking, and ends with reflection.  As a school that does PBL, it was something that was similar, as students created a list of Essential Questions with PBL, but different because instead of a driving question, students are given a statement and they develop questions and then decide what will guide their thinking.  

While the book stated that it can be used K-12, almost all of the examples were middle and high school.  I wanted to share my experience with each of the different phases in a first-grade classroom.  I'm a firm believer that primary-aged students can do things intended for older grades if you just make a few modifications and extra support.  

Developing a QFocus
The first part of the book discusses how to develop a Question Focus, referred to commonly as the QFocus. The QFocus is the statement that starts off the process. A good QFocus will allow for their to be a lot of discussion.  A QFocus has:

• A clear focus
• Is not a question
• Provokes and stimulates new lines of thinking
• Does not reveal teacher preferences or biases

The QFocus that I first used my students was "Leaders Create Change." It was to prepare for a unit that talks about rules and responsibilities, as well as introduce the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Kids.  

Produce Your Own Questions
When you begin this phase, you need to introduce the four rules to students.  They are:

1. Write as many questions as you can.
   
2. Do not discuss, judge or answer any questions.
   
3. Write down every question exactly as stated.
4. Once all questions are written, change any statements to questions.

Typically you have students created questions in small groups, but since it was first grade and their first experience with QFT, I wanted to do it whole group. This process allows for divergent thinking since there are so many different types of questions being brought up to the group.

Students were slow to state questions, but as to not guide them in any direction, I had simply kept on repeating the rules and the QFocus.  Once they got going, it just had a nice flow.  

Following all the rules was the one of the hardest things for me.  Rule 2 of no discussing or responding to questions was difficult.  A few students were trying to be funny by asking "What is a marker?" and "What is an apple?" and similar questions.  As frustrating as it was to try and stop this, I had to catch myself a few times and repeat Rule 2 aloud a few times.  

Improve Questions
In this session, I talked with students about the differences between open and closed questions.  I started off with the introductions mentioned in the book, as well as the difference in question starters. 

To see if students understood the difference, I did a few questions before they went off into groups.  I asked a question and if they thought it was a closed question, they kept their hands close together, but if they thought it was an open question, they separated their hands. Once most of the students seemed to understand and gave me the thumbs up, I knew it was time to put them into groups and have them categorize the questions they produced the previous day as C or O for closed or open. 

When they finished categorizing them, we then moved the Post-Its from yesterday to show off how all of our questions were written.  As you can see, all of them were open questions.  

Following categorizing the questions, we had a group discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of open and closed questions.  You can see their responses and I'll admit, I was blown away.  Those answers come from the mouths of  my first graders and no prompting from me.  

Once you talk about the advantages of open and closed questions, you try and write some open questions as closed, and then some closed questions as open.  This was a challenge for my class and will be something we will explore more later.  

Prioritizing Questions
This was one of most interesting parts of the process. Now students are started to change their mindset of questions and instead of divergent thinking, it was not convergent since we were prioritizing the questions. Students in small groups were to pick out the top three questions that would help drive our exploration of the topic.  They not only had to figure out the top three questions, but then also justify why they selected those questions.  

To do this, I had them use the same papers that had from the day before and had a marker.  They either circled questions as a potential top 3 or put a big "X" through the question.  

Once each group had their top 3 questions, we came back together as a group.  We displayed every groups' top three questions and then had a class discussion which would be our three that we use as a class. Students began to defend their questions and we even had some debates.  It was great to see students defend their responses and share how it and how it would guide their learning.

Students finally decided upon three questions: 

• What do leaders create?
• What do they change?
• What do leaders create to make change?

Next Steps
To wrap up our QFT process, I had students reflect on the process and let me know what they thought about it and if it was something we should continue to do in class. The response was overly positive.  It was a different mindset for each of us because it was a different way of launching a unit.

We then started our unit on Leadership.  Whenever we completed an activity, we tied it back to those three questions that the students decided were the best.  

So far the results have been great in my first grade class and I look forward to trying it more in the future.

Why Are Notes Important
Taking notes on students is one of the most important things that a teacher needs to do to guide instruction.  Students do not learn the same way, which is why teachers need to take notes on them as an individual.  While sometimes teachers can act off of visual memories, having concrete notes can be beneficial when meeting with parents or administrators.  I have been using BrightLoop during the spring semester and it is hands down my favorite app for taking notes on students. 

My Prior Conference Experiences
I'll just give you a brief history of what I had previously used for notes on students.  Notability was the first app that I used to take notes on students.  Every conference I had with a student, they got a new document that went into their folder.  I moved to Google Forms, but didn't like the data and was not in a clean format.  I moved back to Notability, but wanted something else because I wasn't happy. 

How I Found BrightLoop
From multiple searches online, tweets, etc, an ad popped up on my Facebook advertising a product called BrightLoop.  They were launching a Kickstarter campaign.  After watching the video describing the products, I knew that this was something I had to use.  While I did not find it until the very end of the campaign, I was telling my administration about it and knew that I had to do whatever I could to try this product.  Months went by and then saw a beta sign-up on their website.  Knowing the power of Twitter, I sent out some tweets and caught the attention of Marco, who is one of the developers.  He connected me with Molly, the founder of BrightLoop, and the rest is history.

First Impressions
When I logged into BrightLoop, I was right away blown away. The user interface was so clean and bright, which in my opinion can really make or break an app.  Once I had put in all my students' names and uploaded pictures, I got to work.  From the collect screen, it was so easy to pick the subject for my notes. The breakdown of the subjects, which they call Learnable Standards, are all connected to Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  The Learnable Standards already programmed into the app were things that I would have typically wrote out myself. It saves teachers time by not having to enter in themselves. 

Signing Up for Account
BrightLoop is free for K-5 teachers.  You can sign up at http://app.brightlooplearning.com Whenever you sign up for an account and choose a grade level, all the CCSS are programmed into your account.  BrightLoop also allows for you to have multiple classes, which can be great for Special Education teachers and Title I teachers.  

3 Screens on BrightLoop

Collect Screen
Notes, Image Uploads, Goals, Lessons, and Quick Statuses are all features on the Collect Screen. This is one of the easiest ways to collect any type of information you would need to support your students.  

• Subjects for Documentation-Teachers can take notes on Reading, Writing, Math, Speaking and Listening, as well as Behavior
• Two Views-Classroom view or Group View
• Notes and Goals-You can choose a subject, category, and objective to take notes on for students.  When you choose an objective, the CCCSS will appear that aligns.  When you click on either one or multiple students, whenever you click save, it will go into their portfolio in the Review Section.  It is nice to have the identical note for multiple students without having to type in the same thing over and over.
• Image Capture-Take pictures of student writing or anything else that would be beneficial to show progress or guide their learning.  
• Lesson-When teachers see a need for an additional lesson, such as individual or small group lesson, they can easily add a note and then plan it at a later time.  This feature has come in handy for me to address certain needs during RTI time.  
• Quick Status-When you are walking around the classroom checking for understanding, you might want to do a quick and easy way to document your noticings.  Quick status allows you to categorize a student as Needs Attention, On Track, of Ahead.  This helps you to know how to differentiate instruction when teaching various lessons.  When you click on a Subject, Category, and Objective, it will always show you the previous Quick Statuses.  When you update a status, it will be documented in the student's profile.  This is best utilized in group view. 

Review
This is where all of your notes, goals, and image uploads.  The majority of the screen is the notes portion with the goals being on the left.  You have the option of viewing all notes or you can break it down by subject areas.  This is helpful when meeting with parents, instructional coaches, and teaching teams.  

• Keep track of goals-When you click on a goal, all notes corresponding with that subject and goal will be highlighted.  This helps teachers see if they are following up with the goals they had set for their students.  This is great for students that have iEPs or part of intervention groups.

Plan
The last portion of BrightLoop is the Plan section.  Whenever you had planned a lesson from the Collect Screen, it will be in the bottom dock.  You simply click on the lesson and that subject will be highlighted for the week. You then click on a date and your lesson will be scheduled.  You can easily reschedule lessons if there are schedule changes by just clicking "Unschedule Lesson."


Why I Recommend It
BrightLoop is my favorite app when it comes to taking notes on students.  It is so easy to use with the Learnable Standards already programed in, clean interface, and the company is receptive to feedback from teachers.  Make sure you check them out at http://brightlooplearning.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brightloop