Am I the only one out there who has the hardest time planning effective lessons in a reasonable amount of time? There are so many aspects of teaching that feel like they come very naturally for me: making connections with students, planning out units, writing learning targets, explaining assignments to the whole class, staying organized... so what is it with actually planning the day-to-day activities that baffles me so much? One of my professional goals this year is to have my lessons planned out one week in advance. I would like set aside my Thursday afternoons to stay an hour or two after school and map out five days worth of content for the upcoming week. This goal, which seemed reasonable at first, has proved to be extremely challenging for me to meet, which seemed odd to me at first. After all, I am an organized person. I have a great memory for schedules. I am excellent at categorizing information into simpler, smaller chunks. This skill makes me very good at planning out entire units and breaking content down into learning targets. But when I sit down to write a lesson plan, when it comes to the actual "what will students DO" section, it's like my brain turns off. It sometimes takes me hours to plan a single day's worth of activities. Due to the time crunch of life as a teacher and grad student and girlfriend and athlete and dog mom, I often I fall back on an inquiry style lesson format that I've taught numerous times and feel comfortable with -- essentially, kids explore some information on their own and then process it through writing. However, I am aware that these lessons have not been serving my students that need accommodations and modifications because they are often so writing-heavy. Writing is my go-to form of assessment/information processing, probably because it's something I am good at, but I know that this is not the case for every student. Why is it that I have such a hard time coming up with alternative activities for my science class? I think that part of the problem is that I've never taken the kind of science class that I am trying to teach. In the past, science classes have always been heavily lecture-based with the occasional lab day or writing assignment or test. I hated science class until I got to college and my attention span improved such that I was able to actually pay attention to an entire 50 minute lecture and realize how fascinating the information actually is. Part of my drive to teach is rooted in the desire to show kids how cool science is, and do justice to my past self by creating an engaging, hands-on learning environment for kids to fall in love with science. But since I've never had this kind of science class modeled for me, it can be a real challenge thinking of ideas. In the past, when I do have a good idea or stumble upon a cool activity, the materials required to do these activities require extra trips to the store (which in our small town usually means an obligatory Wal-Mart trip: something I dread) and extra trips to our administrator's office to get reimbursed for the money spent. It all requires a great deal of planning ahead of time, something I am currently struggling with. Due to this lesson planning struggle, I have come up with a new plan for improving my teaching. I have decided I need to learn more PBL and EL classroom protocols that I can implement into my lessons. These protocols would help me by giving me fresh classroom activity ideas, without requiring numerous trips to the dreaded Wal-Mart. I also think that incorporating these strategies into my teaching will decrease behavioral issues, because it will help differentiate the learning. Now, to find time to start researching new strategies...
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When I was told that we would be using what is essentially a scripted math curriculum this year, I felt a huge sense of relief. Knowing that this curriculum was pre-planned took away some of my planning for the future anxiety that I was experiencing this summer. I thought that teaching math would be the easier part of my job, because all I would need to do to prep would be to familiarize myself with the lesson and then deliver it. I realized that this wasn't quite the case at the end of the first unit. I taught the first unit of the curriculum with absolute fidelity -- I didn't omit any content or supplement any content. I thought that things were going really well, as students appeared to be grasping the material from my observations in class. However, when we got to the End of Unit Assessment and I discovered that I was quite wrong. In fact, the average on the test was only a 63%. Data-driven instruction is a process by which teachers modify their teaching based off of feedback they receive from their students' formative assessments. The low test scores I experienced during my first unit test in math made me realize that I needed to implement more data-driven instruction into my classroom, even though at the time I didn't know what that meant. I ended up doing substantial re-teaching and offered a re-test, and many students got their grade up. However, I knew that whole-class re-testing couldn't be an option for every test this year. I decided I needed to do something differently in my unit 2 for math. For Unit 2, I really analyzed what the End of Unit Assessment was testing kids on. Unlike the first test, which I just assumed they would be prepared for, I looked at specific questions that I knew students would find challenging and made sure to address them in class. I designed and gave numerous exit tickets outside of the prescribed exit tickets in this curriculum and used these exit tickets to help me figure out what to re-teach. I made my own differentiated practice problems, based off of the test questions, that were separated by challenge level -- so that kids could decide what they needed to practice during our math review time. We spent about an entire week doing this process of exit tickets followed by re-teaching of all of the concepts students identified as challenging for them in this unit, and today was our re-test. First glance at the students test indicates that following this data-driven instruction process has resulted in increased understanding for my students and improved test scores. Interestingly, students were more apprehensive for this test than the first one, but they actually performed better on this test. I think part of this might be due to the fact that they didn't know precisely what to expect on that first test, but on this test, thanks to the data-driven instruction, they actually knew what they were being tested on and what their strengths and struggles were with this particular content. There are many things I really like about this math curriculum, but this process has taught me that I can't take it for granted at face value. I need to dive into this curriculum and make it my own just as much as if I were making all of my lessons from scratch, in order to best serve my students.
The role of the teacher in the classroom can seem pretty straight forward -- make sure the kids know what they need to know, right? However, when viewing that role through the ISTE Standard 6, "Facilitator," we notice a few distinct differences from the more old school teacher expectation. Rather than simply delivering necessary information, today's teachers actually have a greater and more meaningful responsibility. According to this standard, the deeper responsibility of a teacher is actually to encourage students to take ownership over their own learning and create challenging learning opportunities that require and encourage creativity. According to the Office of Educational Technology, teachers "should be expected to model how to leverage available tools to engage content with curiosity," not just tell students what they need to know.
Veritasium echoes and expands upon this thought in the video "This Will Revolutionize Education." Teacher as facilitator means so much more than teacher as distributer of knowledge. Facilitators set the foundation for true learning to flourish, by encouraging students to be the drivers of their own learning. As stated in the video, "We are not limited by the experiences we can give to students. What limits learning is what can happen inside the student's head." So, how can technology help teachers become better facilitators? It's important to remember that technology is only as powerful as the curriculum it is being used in. In their article "Technology alone won’t transform teacher to facilitator," Monica Martinez and Dennis McGrath explain that teachers must first reflect on the effectiveness of their curriculum before considering how to incorporate more technology into it. Teachers must ensure that they are providing their students with engaging learning experiences and asking them to complete challenging assessments that require higher-order skills and problem-solving. Incorporating more technology into the classroom won't be able to fill the gaps left by poorly designed classroom activities. What it can do, however, is augment the content that a teacher can provide. "No longer the single source of information," explain Martinez and McGrath, "teachers are freed to guide students’ learning, leveraging technology to help students access knowledge, manage their work, collaborate, communicate, and create and produce various products." One such creative product teachers could challenge their students to make is a Spark Video. Spark Videos are an Adobe product that allow students to create high quality educational videos or slide shows with original narration. Students can use their own videos and photos or browse stock photos. They can also add text and icons. The technology is available for free online, and requires only an internet browser to use. I found Spark Video in the Edutopia article, "Putting Learning First With New Tech Tools," by Monica Burns. Spark Video was listed as a great tool to bring more creativity into a teacher's classroom. Something I love about this tech tool is that the interface is actually extremely intuitive and easy to use, so it wouldn't take a lot of front-loading to teach students to use it. Since it's so easy to use, you can focus on more on the content being delivered in the video and less on the process of making it. After just ten minutes of experimenting, I was able to create this video. (Please click the link for full screen if your browser is not displaying video correctly).
I'm super impressed with how professional the product is, and I'm sure it could be even better with more time. I think this tool would be a great piece of technology to bring into my classroom, because when you view it through the lens of TPACK, the content knowledge students will apply in this product is not overshadowed by the technological knowledge students will need in order to operate the tool. I'm really excited to bring this tool into my classroom as I see so many different potential uses for it as a piece of technology that will support my role as facilitator in the classroom, and I think the students will have a lot of fun with it as well.
References Burns, M. (2018). "Putting learning first with new tech tools." Edutopia. Martinez, M. & McGrath, D. (2014). "Technology alone won’t transform teacher to facilitator." The Phi Delta Kappan, (1), 41. Office of Educational Technology. National Education Technology Plan. Section 2: Teaching with technology. US Department of Education. Veritasium. (2014, December 1). This will revolutionize education. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=GEmuEWjHr5c Not every lesson goes as planned. In fact, as we near the mid-way mark of the school year, I am starting to encounter more lessons that don't go as planned than do. Most of the time I consider that a great thing, and I like to leave a little wiggle room in my lesson plans to make space for answering the bizarre questions and free styling student's creative ideas to modify the lesson. Usually, the heart of the lesson is centered around an effective instructional strategy that gets the point across, even if it's not in the way I had originally hoped for. However, there have been a few instructional strategies I've used so far this year that have totally backfired in ways I could never have anticipated. One example is from a few weeks ago, when I had the students build weather instruments for measuring temperature, pressure, wind speed and wind direction, based off of a lesson plan left behind to me from last year's teacher. The concept was brilliant -- using just a few basic materials students would create their own instruments to measure and record the day's weather. They would learn about what instruments scientists use to record weather and the atmospheric processes that affect our weather. I thought we could keep using the student-build instruments throughout the unit to record weather conditions in a classroom weather log, and the students would love them because they built them themselves. Sounds great, right? Well, it would have been, if I had done things just little bit differently... Mistake #1: Skimming through the instructions for how to build each instrument instead of reading them in detail. I assumed these instructions would be easy to follow and intuitive enough that I didn't need to read them in detail when I was prepping for the lesson. I was dead wrong. Students were so confused about what to do and what materials they needed and I wasn't much help since I hadn't really read the instructions. Mistake #2: Giving students the instructions in the first place. The science classroom is all about creativity, testing hypotheses and learning from mistakes! I missed out on an awesome opportunity to let the students be creative by giving them instructions. Thinking back on it, I should have given each table an instrument to build and a pile of materials, and let them figure it out on their own. This would have made the lesson way more collaborative and perhaps led to more study buy-in and maybe even better instrument designs. Mistake #3: Not setting a clear purpose for the activity. I thought the activity could speak for itself, but in retrospect I'm not so sure my kids really understand why we were doing it. They were happy to go outside, and left the classroom that day in good spirits, but I think if I interviewed the students afterward about what they learned that day it would probably be something along the lines of, "Building weather instruments is confusing," or "There wasn't any wind outside today." Both are reasonable conclusions -- but neither was the real goal of my lesson! Next year, I probably will do a lesson similar to this, but I will be sure to change a few things. Instead of giving students instructions, I will give them a task and some materials have them problem-solve it. I will make sure that that task is rooted in a strong learning target, and that students can articulate what that learning target is and how they will meet it. And of course I will be sure to include that wiggle room for when things inevitably turn out a little differently than I planned. Teaching seems to be a career characterized by high highs and low lows. Some days leave me grinning ear to ear and other days I feel like a pile of jell-o melting in a hot kitchen. It's so important on days like that to fall back on pre-established stress management routines to keep the passion for teaching alive and maintain a positive attitude. In her article "10 Stress Busting Secrets of Great Teachers," Vicki Davis lays out the framework for a stress management plan that allows teachers to focus on the positive and reflect on better approaches for the future. We are about a quarter through the school year now, so the purpose of this blog post is to reflect on which of these techniques I have been using well and where I need to implement them better by focusing on a specific day that was challenging for me. One of the hardest days I've had so far this year was one of the first days of school. I had a bunch of vocabulary I needed to teach my students before they did a lab the next day. I had told the students that I was really passionate about hands-on learning and promised we would keep lecturing and note-taking to a minimum, but sometimes taking notes is necessary in science class. I had planned this activity that I thought would take about 20 min where the kids were to make note cards on wave anatomy vocabulary. It would require me to be talking for most of those 20 minutes, but I figured that would be okay because once they finished making their note cards we would move on to a student-centered activity. Little did I realize how long it takes a middle schooler to make a set of flash cards... 60 minutes of note card making later, I realized we had spent the entire period taking notes and wouldn't have time to do the fun activity I had planned. I had no idea what to do other than apologize that it took so long and promise they would use the notes from today to do the lab tomorrow. It broke my heart to hear kids grumbling on the way out of the door about how "not fun" that class was and how disappointed they were after expecting more from me as a new, exciting-seeming teacher. I felt pretty crushed after school that day, and knew I needed to do something about it. The first thing I did aligns with Step 6 and Step 8 in Davis's article: I exercised with a friend. I went climbing with a friend of mine and while climbing we discussed my day and how it made me feel. She gave me great advice that helped me let go of my frustration and then move into the rest of my day feeling better. This helped me forgive myself for that bad lesson, and set the framework for the next step -- doing better next time! After school the next day I planned out the next two weeks of my unit, making sure to find a bunch of fun, hands-on activities to do that my students and I could look forward to. Instead of dwelling on the negative, I proactively addressed the situation and used my unpleasant experience as inspiration and learning for the future. Obviously, I have other days like the dreaded notecard day where I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be or found myself acting less positively than I would like to with my students. It's great to recharge my arsenal of stress management tools by reading articles like Davis's -- it helps me remind myself that I am not alone with these struggles and accept that they are a normal part of teacher life. The most important thing, I believe, is to push through the struggle and keep on showing up every day caring about my students and trying to do my best, without putting undue pressure on myself. I am continuously celebrating small victories and reminding myself to enjoy the process of learning how to do this whole teaching thing a little bit better every day. I am lucky enough to work in a school with advanced technology access and training. In the modern education system, having access to tools like 1:1 Chromebooks is often considered something that gives students a leg up and improves their education overall. This week's module focus of "equity designer," however, led me to read several articles that re-imagined my idea of what good technology access looks like. It's not just having the technology, it's having the infrastructure in place to use it properly and improve equity across the board. 1:1 computers are great, but without properly trained staff and clearly planned uses that align with standards and performance outcomes, they do nothing to improve student experience and bolster education. In order for technology to improve equity in the classroom, it needs to be thought of as a tool for differentiation, rather than a catch-all technique to teach a concept. As a math teacher, differentiation is something I think about all the time, since this subject can often come with a lot of emotional struggle and intellectual blockades. In the Technology Integration Edutopia article "Effective Technology Use in the Math Classroom," Gina Pincha discusses appropriate use of technology in the math classroom and provides examples of a few tech tools educators could implement to differentiate learning. Before describing the tools, however, she emphasizes the importance of analyzing each tool's relevance in one's own classroom through the Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. This means teachers need to consider what content knowledge students need, what technology knowledge they will need, and how to best teach these two concepts. In regards to using TPACK, Pincha states that "this process is extremely important because without it, the technology may be integrated in a way that is pedagogically inappropriate for mathematics instruction." One tech tool I explored from this article is the online application "Geoboard" from the Math Learning Center. This app is an interactive "peg board" where users can build shapes using digital "string" and then rotate, reflect and translate them to explore similarity and congruence. We are currently doing a geometry unit in math, so this tool stood out to me because of its content relevance. First impressions of this app are that it looks fun, colorful and interactive. After clicking around for a few minutes, however, I felt very confused as to what the educational purpose of this tool was. I found myself clicking around frustratedly trying to figure out what button did what, because none of the buttons have labels. After about ten minutes I was finally able to rotate, reflect and translate shapes in order to analyze them for congruence (essentially making shapes line up perfectly), but I still haven't discovered any other uses for this tool. The visual support offered by this tool was helpful, and I think it would be a great differentiation tool for students that struggle with fine motors skills, since making shapes line up with tracing paper in real life requires the ability to trace a shape exactly and manipulate the paper accurately. I wonder, however, whether the time it would take for me to fully learn how to use the tool's interface and then teach it to my middle schoolers would be worth the potential benefits of this tool. It's a great idea, but before implementing it in my classroom or recommending it to others I would suggest to the manufacturers to improve the usability of the tool by adding some labels and descriptions to the buttons. In all, math apps certainly have the potential to add differentiation to the classroom, but this particular app needs refinement before I would use it or recommend it to others. References Pincha, G. (2018). "Effective technology use in the math classroom." Edutopia. Pollock, M. (2016). "Smart tech use for equity." Teaching Tolerance. Smith, T. (2018). "Digital equity: It's more than just student access." Tech & Learning. In well-executed project-based learning (PBL), an expertly designed summative assessment is the key to inspiring kids to produce engaging projects. Too many restrictions or guidelines will lead to boring and cookie cutter products. Too few expectations, on the other hand, and the product is no longer rooted in any specific learning goal. Designing a good summative assessment is critical to a successful PBL curriculum. I just finished designing my fourth project ever, and will launch it in class this week. I already know it is going to be a major logistical challenge, and planning it was not easy. We are starting our second unit in science this week and will be focusing on weather and climate. For the summative assessment at the end of this unit, students will be creating short educational videos on climate that will broadcast on Durango TV, along with a brief weather forecast for the next day. This brief weather forecast is the logistical challenge in this project, because each student will need to wait until the day that their video is airing to add the weather forecast to their video. At first, I could not figure out how this would be logistically possible. However, after collaborating with several colleagues, I came to the conclusion that students would finish the educational snippet part of their video in advance, and then leave a relevant still frame at the end of the video to add their audio voice over to for the weather forecast the day before. Since we are using standards-based learning at my school, students need to demonstrate mastery of the project performance outcomes or longterm learning targets in their final product. One of the biggest challenges I had with my last project was that it was hard for kids to demonstrate all four of the performance outcomes in one project. PBL often requires students to dig deep into a specific topic, rather than get a general shallow overview of multiple topics. Because of this, my last project resulted in kids exceeding grade level expectations for one or two performance outcomes, and then totally missing the mark on others. I wanted to find a way to avoid that in this project. I decided that instead of asking them to demonstrate all four performance outcomes in their video project, I would ask them to only address two of them. Then, I will give them a list of alternative creative ways to demonstrate the remaining two in a passion project extension. The passion project extension product will be their choice from a list of options (webpage, presentation, short story, or infographic poster). They will start to work on this passion project once they finish the educational part of their video and are waiting for the day to come to do their weather forecast and send the video to Durango TV. I am curious to see how this plan works out. Will the kids be inspired by the opportunity to present their learning in more than one product? Or, will they feel like they are just completing busy work once the video project is over with? Hopefully, by breaking this project up into two separate products, kids will be able to give a clearer overall picture of their learning during this unit, rather than feel like they are just doing a somewhat related second project. I just spent a significant chunk of my Saturday afternoon refining the rough draft of my research proposal for my Master's capstone project. I am designing a study to investigate the impact of Illustrative Mathematics' Open Up Resources curriculum on middle school girls' math self-efficacy and math performance. This is meaningful work to me because when I was in middle school, I had a series of disempowering experiences that pushed me away from science and math, and I only found my own confidence to pursue these subjects again when I started college. That is why it is important to me to contribute to the growing body of research on middle school girls' experiences in mathematics. As meaningful as the work is, writing my research proposal rough draft has caused several questions to arise from me. Because I have a Biology degree, I am familiar with experimental design and writing scientific research papers. However, action research in education is different from scientific research, and it is hard for me to separate the two sometimes. I want to control all of these variables in my study that it is impossible to control, and for that reason it is hard for me precisely to narrow down my research method--in particular my participants section. I am not sure whether I should only measure girls' self-efficacy and performance, or boys' as well. My fear with making this study co-ed is that it will become a comparison study between girls and boys, instead of an inquiry into girls' experiences. I don't want to look at my students as research subjects from that lens of comparing male and female achievement. However, from a scientist's perspective, can I actually make any meaningful conclusions without comparing both genders in this study? Right now, I am planning on only including girls in my study, but I am still on the fence and having trouble deciding what to do. The most enjoyable sections for me to write in my research proposal were the abstract and the literature review. I actually really enjoy technical writing, and since this is a subject I am authentically passionate about it was easy to do the research required to write the literature review. The abstract was really fun to write because it made this whole process feel very official. It is exciting to know in a few months I will have completed my own research study on middle school girls' experiences in the math classroom. Seeing the abstract typed out really validated for me that this is great work I am doing, and I know that middle school me would be so proud! This week we are exploring classroom tech tools through the lens of global collaboration. Modern classrooms are more than just a place where students learn skills and concepts that they might use years down the line. Today's students have amazingly broad access to all sorts of global resources and communities, thanks to our digital interconnectedness. Collaborating as a digital citizen means making connections outside of students' local communities that allow the content to come alive with real world applications. While researching potential tech tools to incorporate into my classroom to enhance global collaboration, I read about Twitter chats on Edutopia. Twitter chats absolutely fit the bill for a tech tool that helps students collaborate with each other as well as make global, real world connections with other communities. Teachers can start small by first using Twitter chats only with their students. It is important to teach students explicitly about internet safety and communicate with families to ensure parents/guardians are okay with the chat. The chat can then be used to encourage discussion around a new topic or review previous content. It can be especially helpful in getting shy students who don't like to speak up engaged in the discussion. Teachers moderate the chat to help guide student discussion towards deeper analysis and ensure appropriate conduct. Once teachers feel comfortable expanding their Twitter chats globally, they can do a simple search through the Twitter database to find other teachers teaching the same grade level and/or content in countries all over the world. Teachers are not just limited to chats with other classrooms--they can also invite experts from different countries into their Twitter chat to share their unique perspectives on the discussion. Collaborating with students and experts in other countries helps students develop global empathy as well as learn and practice digital social media skills. For teachers that aren't already Twitter users, there is some extra research that needs to be done before engaging their classroom in a Twitter chat so that teachers can understand exactly how to teach their kids to use the chat effectively. Jennifer Bowman's article on Edutopia does a good job of outlining some possible challenges teachers might encounter when facilitating a Twitter chat in their classroom, but it doesn't go into detail about how to set up an account and get your students accounts set up. From my experience teaching middle school, getting kids signed up and logged in can be a bit of a nightmare if the process is appropriately troubleshooted by the teacher beforehand. Another challenge teachers might encounter with this feature is ensuring students practice appropriate online courtesy, because of the somewhat impersonal nature of the chat. However, overall, I am excited to learn that so many classrooms all over the world are already using this tool and curious to expand my understanding of it to see possible applications for the middle school math and science classroom. References Bowman, J. (2017). Facilitating a class Twitter chat. Edutopia. Gonzalez, J. (2014). Teaching digital natives. Cult of Pedagogy. November, A. (2017). Inviting global perspectives into the classroom. November Learning. Spencer, J. (2016). 10 tips for global collaboration projects. John Spencer. Since the first day of school, my number one intention every day has been to keep my classroom a positive place to be. There have definitely been some hard days, but here we are seven weeks in and I do feel as though I have also had some extremely successful days. I have been committing to reflecting on positive moments frequently and trying to find ways to encourage more and more of them to happen. Here are some moments that felt really rich with community:
Having stated the positive, which is so important for having a great classroom culture, I will also describe a scenario about which I have room to grow. I love laughter in my classroom and as long as it doesn't delve into chaos, I'm okay with students making a few jokes here and there. However, occasionally the jokes can be made about other students, in a way that isn't positive. The kids don't mean it, but still, they'll say things like, "Gosh [so and so] you're so stupid, don't you know the answer is [xyz]?" I try to discourage these comments, but I don't catch every one of them. While reading this article, I was particularly struck by the section about redirecting negative language in the classroom no matter the intent of the student. It made me realize I need to be more on it when I hear students make comments like this, because I never know how the receiving party is actually taking the comment. I need to commit to putting out these little fires immediately before they become big problems. From now on I am going to be more to the point about nipping these behaviors in the bud and explaining explicitly that I know the kid wasn't trying to be mean, but those types of jokes aren't acceptable in my classroom, regardless of the intention. |
Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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