What I Learned from a 4th Grader

This week I coached as a literacy practicum preservice teacher taught a creative vocabulary lesson. Students worked in groups of three using Trading Cards from ReadWriteThink.org to create vocabulary flash cards. The preservice teacher modeled how to locate the site, create the card, search for and save an image to insert, and email the Trading Card to their classroom teacher. It was amazing at how many of these new literacies skills these 4th graders were already proficient.

When selecting and saving an image one boy explained to me why he wanted to save the image as a PNG while his group members wanted to save as JPG. To explain why, he taught me a new word: "lossy" (los-ee). As this child explained, JPG's save pictures using "lossy" to compress the image making
it smaller to store but changing the look of the image. This process is permanent and can blurr the edges of a picture and make it appear pixilated. Although PNG's take up more space, they are an excellent file for Internet photos. They are "non-lossy" files that compress the image without changing the quality. I was impressed with this child's knowledge not only of how to save an image, but in what format the image should be saved and for what purpose. To make sure that I completely understood this new word "lossy" I did a little online research of my own.

Dictionary.com: "A term describing a data compression algorithm which actually reduces the amount of information in the data, rather than just the number of bits used to represent that information. MPEG and JPEG are examples of lossy compression techniques."

Wikipedia.org: "'Lossy' compression is the class of data encoding methods that uses inexact approximations (or partial data discarding) for representing the content that has been encoded. Such compression techniques are used to reduce the amount of data that would otherwise be needed to store, handle, and/or transmit the represented content."

In addition to the new vocabulary word I learned from this 4th grade technology expert, I was also impressed with the process and products created by the 4th graders in a relatively short class period. Not only did they learn new vocabulary, but they worked with words deeply as they located a picture to express the word, defined it, located a synonym, used it in a sentence, and accomplished all of this using online tools.

This preservice teacher was a risk-taker in the most positive sense of the word. She modeled the process of creating one vocabulary Trading Card. Then she empowered students to collaborate to create their own, while she and I walked around the room assisting as needed. We saw students helping each other and thinking critically as they collaboratively decided which websites, which images, which format to use. Now she would take their emailed Trading Cards and post them at Edmodo so students can access them to review vocabulary in class as well as at home. She expanded the classroom beyond the walls, and all this during a lesson where she was being formally observed by her cooperating teacher.

This preservice teacher understands the necessity of teaching new literacies and knows that students are capable of accomplishing much in a short time when provided with laptops/iPads/devices connected to the Internet. Everyone was a winner in this situation: preservice teacher taught a great lesson, cooperating teacher learned a new Trading Card website, coach learned a new vocabulary word, and students learned vocabulary words plus new literacies skills. Be a risk-taker for your students!