I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you're not reading Bjorn Paige's blog (bjornpaige.wordpress.com), you are missing some fantastic writing and reflection on education in general and middle school in particular. In January, he announced the second installment of the Diegueño book club for parents and staff, focused on Daniel Wolff's How Lincoln Learned to Read: Twelve Great Americans and the Educations that Made Them. (Amazon link)
Since the book club meeting is scheduled for a Tuesday evening, Bjorn and I decided to also use this book as the topic for our weekly district Twitter chat, On March 10, #SDUHSDchat will be at a special time and will focus on several issues raised in different chapters of the book.
Wolff's book is a collection of 12 more-or-less independent chapters, each describing the education of a famous American and how that education both reflects the ideas of the times and shapes the lives of the people who experience it. Bjorn is planning his own questions for the in-person book club; for our Twitter chat, aimed at people who may or may not have already read the book, each of our discussion questions will be based on a short excerpt from a chapter. If you have the time to read the book beforehand, that would be great; if you don't, you'll still be perfectly able to participate in the chat.
I will be moderating the chat from the book club in-person meeting, at the Diegueño Media Center, from 5:00 to 6:00 on Tuesday the 10th. We will be displaying the chat on a screen in the Media Center, for in-person participants who might be interested. I'm also hoping to be able to bring some of the book club discussion to the Twitter chat as well.
This is an experiment on our part. I've never live-tweeted a book club discussion before, nor have we done a hybrid Twitter/in-person conversation like this. I'm hoping that the combination of the two discussions will produce something greater than the sum of the parts.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Donald Collins, Independent Study On Line teacher and PALS advisor at Torrey Pines High School:
Teaching, while perhaps not the oldest profession, has to be one of the oldest, as well as one of them most interesting and challenging in the history of mankind. Some form of our work has existed on every continent, in every culture, in every language throughout the ages.
Think about it. As soon as a group of people understood something they wanted the other people in their group to understand, they shared the information to increase the group’s understanding. That might have been the best methods for hunting, the skills for carving marble or how to read. If you’ve ever spent time on a farm or with puppies, you know it’s not just people who teach and learn, but also animals teach and learn together. Researchers suggest even moths and insects are not driven entirely by instinct and may be trained to smell for chemical weapons!!
The politics of learning: the what, when, where, how and why we learning, have existed nearly as long as learning itself. Once we know how to teach something at some point we also have to answer the question, “Is it ethical to train moths to smell for chemical weapons?” While there is plenty of room for debate about topics in education like standardized testing, or whole language vs. phonics, what can’t be debated is that kids who learn to communicate effectively, solve problems creatively and think critically will be more successful in their endeavors than those who don’t learn these skills.
Yet teaching these skills without a sense of connection to others developed through social interaction and collaboration can create more havoc than having a society of ignorant morons because that same creative, critically-thinking, smooth-talking problem solving student could end up another Bernie Madoff rather than an Irene Sendler. While both were creative, critical and perhaps even deceptively sneaky problem solvers and risk takers, one had a sense of concern for others and is considered a hero, while the other has been called a sociopath and diagnosed, probably without substantial counter argument, as suffering from anti-social personality disorder.
This is some of the thought process that goes on in my mind when I consider what we do every day as teachers. We must remember the importance and power of the decisions we make, the activities we assign and the way we interact with our students every day. On our good days we help student make sense of the world, of themselves, and of each other. On our best days, we inspire them to help others do the same. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words” - the difference speaks for itself.
We know as teachers if we want our kids to think well and communicate well, we have got to create opportunities that are interesting enough to engage them in new ways in order to challenge them to develop these desired skills. Helping them to tap into themselves to apply their inborn, natural creativity and curiosity to a situation or problem that challenge has to be interesting or rewarding, and preferably both or else we all know there are far more rewarding, easier ways for kids to distract themselves.
The rewards our system uses and the ones the kids are used to are grades. Grades are a reflection of assessment and are a great reward when the student does well, but there are others that can be very motivating like winning a competition or simple prizes (praise, stickers, money, pizza day, free homework coupon, special seating in the class, etc.), the enjoyment of interesting, meaningful work and the joy of being of service to others. There are other ways, but these are some intrinsic motivators for most people. The better assignments have more of these motivational rewards, which is why filling out a ditto isn’t too rewarding, but a grape smelly sticker for a 100% makes a not-so-interesting assignment better.
One part of teaching I love is where I get to create new one of these real-world activities that matter. The inspirations can come from the strangest places. In the late 90’s during my first years of teaching, my family was experiencing the changes and challenges of my uncle’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis. I started to learn much more about the difficult realities of this disease on my visits with my mother and aunt to my uncle in the Alzheimer’s facility. Talking with workers there I found out about the spectrum of the illness and found out that while some patients recall nothing, some can still clearly recall the past very clearly. My uncle was WW II Pacific Theater Veteran and shared stories about old cars, and his work in the space industry on the first space craft to go to Mars. He was sharing not just his, but America’s history.
It was from this experience of listening to stories that I developed an assignment for students to create oral history PowerPoints from interviewing patients and families that would be supported by scanning family documents and photos. Of course, an older person wouldn’t need to have Alzheimer’s in order to enjoy the interaction and experience of having their story compiled for the family to enjoy and share. It was only years later that I found out that my big, original idea was actually old hat and could be found in a number of different variations on the Internet.
When I was thinking about my Four C’s of February Blog Assignment, this Oral History Assignment was the first one I created myself that challenged students to engage in all four C’s in meaningful ways and I loved everything about it: meaningful connections between the students with the families and then with each other as they shared about their senior, meaningful use of technology to create a meaningful final product that used creativity and critical thinking to organize and plan the story in a format that could be enjoyed and shared by the family for a long time to come. I didn’t use that one because I am not doing that assignment currently, I am doing the one I want to share about!
The good news is there are lots of new ideas for creative assignments on the Internet, so I don’t have to work so hard. The even better great news is that many organizations, like newspapers and community interest groups, have created all sorts of classroom opportunities that even sometimes offer cash prizes and the groups are just looking for us to tackle them! In fact, there’s even a website that collects student competitions in every category from STEM to Arts in one place!!
I started a new job as teacher for the TPHS Peer Assistant Leadership (PALS) class here three years ago. That January I got an email from the Directing Change Program with an amazing contest that fit in directly with the our Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Week activities in March.
The contest is part of statewide efforts to prevent suicide, reduce stigma and discrimination related to mental illness, and to promote the mental health and wellness of students by having groups of up to four students create 60-second Public Service Announcement videos that address Suicide Prevention or Eliminating the Stigma of Mental Illness and meet the criteria and requirements specifically outlined on the website’s contest rule section.
We submitted our final videos last week and there are some amazing ones that are totally student created. Check out two here:
This initiative is funded by the Mental Health Services Act (Prop 63) and administered by the California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA). For High school students 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners are selected in each category from nine regions within the state of California by a regional judging panel with Regional Cash Prizes in each category of 1st place: $500, 2nd place: $250 and 3rd place: $250 plus schools associated with the winning film in each category, in each region receive $250! All regional first place winners will be provided with travel stipends to attend a legislative briefing at the Capitol and the award ceremony in Sacramento. Winning films will be featured on the Directing Change compilation DVD and the program website which are more props and motivation for the students.
I make it very clear from the start this is a big assignment worth 12% of their grade (One letter grade) and that if it is not accepted by the Directing Change Judges for failure to meet the requirements of the contest, they get a 0 on the assignment and lose a letter grade in the class. They also must meet the deadline, because a busted deadline is a 0 as well. The kids work together, communicate, delegate, use all sorts of technology and time management skills including the website’s checklist to meet all of the criteria of the competition.
The best news for me as a teacher, besides being amazed every year by the films some of the groups create, is that the ENTIRE assignment is already created! The rubrics, the requirements, the forms, everything! All I need to do is create time in class, set requirements and deadlines for the different parts of the process: I use previous examples of great storyboarding and a website with resources, I have students who have had Film Class do a lesson for the class on the different types of shots which the kids love to watch and hear and I show different examples to get the students thinking creatively and pumped up to take me back to Sacramento for the Awards Ceremony again!
We show these student created videos during our Yellow Ribbon Week Speaker Assemblies and the results are awesome. You can check out last year’s entries which include our group of regional winners pictured above and two groups of runner up winners for a total of $1000 in prize money to the students and $250 for our PALS program! We’re working hard, making cheddar and having fun doing it!
Last year I saw first had the advantage of having students with technical film skills involved in the process so I invited Derek Brunkhorst to have members of his Advanced Video Film class join our teams to represent Torrey Pines and create the best videos possible. We all know success breeds success and the students have brought their filming to a whole new level this year as a result of the stories and experience I can share from the previous two years of competition. (think go pro cameras attached to flying drones for aerial shots of football players!!!)
Most students don’t like group work and they like out-of-class group work even less, but students LOVE this assignment because it’s real-world with a real purpose plus there’s the potential to win recognition, a trophy, cash prizes and an all-expense paid trip to Sacramento while being creative, using technology, doing work to reduce suffering and learning.
And to talk for a minute about the learning. The students become exceptionally knowledgeable about mental illness or suicide prevention by the end of meeting all of the film requirements because they are applying what they learn to what they are doing. They also learn about meeting deadlines, communicating with others, attention to details, the value of planning out a great storyboard, in addition to learning how creative and powerful their actions can be to help other people. I encourage you to find a competition that meets your coursework and motivate your students to compete and maybe win!
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Doug Gilbert, social science teacher at Canyon Crest Academy. Doug has posted his entry, about Economics and Government assignments, on his own website, at sites.google.com/a/sduhsd.net/doug-gilbert/4c-s-blog-entry. Thanks, Doug!
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Bjorn Paige, principal at Diegueño Middle School:
T.S. Eliot “April is the cruelest month.” A poem of 4 C’s
T.S. Eliot said that “April is the cruelest month.” He wasn't a teacher or he would have known that’s untrue; we get spring break. What April really is, at least at Diegueño, is National Poetry Month. I’m using the celebration as an excuse to step in front of a few classes to teach a lesson on poetry.
As I prepare, I’m keeping in mind the “4 C’s” that my teachers bring to their classrooms every day: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. I've got about an hour scheduled for my dance with Emily Dickinson and friends, and I’m committed to doing my best to make it count.
The plan, still in its infancy, as it relates to the 4 C’s, looks a little like this…
Critical Thinking: After a bit of talk about verse as opposed to prose, I’ll give the kids one of two poems about hope: Emily Dickinson’s famous “thing with feathers” and Emily Brontë’s “timid friend.” Diametrically opposed, the poems will invite students to read closely, annotate, and come up with some ideas about the work.
Communication: After each student has had a chance to spend some time with her poem, I’ll pair the students so each group has both a Dickinson and a Brontë poem, and invite the students to share their poem and their thoughts on form, language, and message.
Collaboration: After each student has had a chance to speak, I’ll blend the groups into quartets, and ask students to work together to develop a unified perspective on these poets’ views. This part of my lesson still has some work to go, but I know I want to have some specific questions to ask the kids, and I know I want to invite them to come up with meaningful questions as well. Depending on time, we may get a bit of biography on Brontë and Dickinson, and I’m hoping that the students will be able to bring the level of rigorous conversation I've seen them show their own English teachers throughout this year.
Creativity: I thought a bit about this as I was doing my initial draft of the lesson, and knew that I wanted the kids to have an opportunity to put pen to paper and come up with a poem of their own. After our discussion of language, form, and poetic constraints, I think I want to end by having them write a haiku. “They’re simple,” I’ll explain. “As long as you know the rules, and bend your creativity to fit within the parameters. Heck, they can even sneak up on you, like the haiku that is the title of this post.”
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Jennifer McCluan, science teacher at San Dieguito Academy:
The “Microbe-scope” and PQP (Phenomenon, Question, Practice)
I must hear three things on NPR driving to and from school every day that get me thinking, “How can I incorporate this in my Health Care Essentials class?” So that’s how this “lesson” began last fall, with a comment during “All Things Considered” about an interesting graph that I knew I had to find and share with my students…and so I present to you, “The Microbe-scope”:
Happily, when I arrived home that day and checked my Facebook and Twitter feeds, several of my amazingly informed friends and colleagues had found it already. Knowing that I teach this class for students interested in health care careers, they shared “The Microbe-scope” with me (thanks Kevin Fairchild and several others for thinking of me and my students).
Strangely enough, I had several conversations with colleagues earlier that day about the struggles our students face when it comes to extracting meaning from graphs and data. I was motivated to develop this into a full-blown lesson, but wasn't sure what form it should (and would) take. So I thought, heck, I’ll throw it up on the screen for our Warm-Up tomorrow and see what happens.
In a nutshell, what happened is that the Warm-Up turned into a week long project completely driven by questions my students developed, researched, and shared with our class. To facilitate, I employed a strategy I find myself using quite a bit these days: PQP (Phenomenon, Question, Practice). While this strategy works well in science, I imagine it could be translated into other disciplines as well. What’s great is that it works for teachers and for students.
First, you think about a phenomenon you want to investigate (the deadliness and contagiousness of diseases, the Ebola outbreak, placebo effect, volcanic lightning, etc.), and then you develop questions that will help you understand an aspect of the phenomenon (Which disease is the most contagious?, Why is Ebola so deadly?, Is there any physiological evidence as to why patients “feel” better when given placebos?, Where has volcanic lightning been documented?, etc.). Finally, you identify which scientific practices you will need to apply to answer these questions (analyzing and interpreting data, engaging in argument from evidence, constructing explanations, planning and carrying out investigations, etc.).
For “The Microbe-scope” lesson, I introduced the graph as a phenomenon, and asked three questions of my students: (1) What does this graph mean? (2) What questions do you have about understanding how to read this graph? (3) What questions does this graph raise for you?. We practiced analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations, and engaging in argument from evidence to answer these questions. I should mention that my students were most surprised by the fact that Whooping Cough was more contagious than Ebola (that untreated rabies was so deadly was a close runner up). My students decided (politely demanded) that they wanted to work collaboratively in small groups to research a disease from the graph of interest to them (their phenomenon). It was delightful (and somewhat disturbing) to hear them cry out triumphantly, “We have Tuberculosis!” or “We got Ebola!”. Each group was asked to develop five questions to guide their research, and to then apply at lease three different practices as they went about finding answers and explanations to share in their presentation.
While we certainly engaged in the four C’s (Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking) I would argue that all of these worked toward building a 5th C: Community. I was incredibly pleased by their enthusiasm, ownership of their own learning, and the end results. I learned a heck of a lot, too. Most importantly, that I shouldn’t be afraid to try something new (and I don’t need a detailed and uber-organized lesson plan for it to be successful).
Here are a couple of slides from their resulting presentations:
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Lori Meyer, English teacher at Carmel Valley Middle School:
My students think more creatively when I let go of controlling the outcomes. This year when we read Call of the Wild, I decided to give the students more control over what they did as a culminating project at the end of the book. I did not give a test. I gave them freedom to decide what they wanted to do after reading the book. Some took traditional roads like writing an essay, writing a test, and making a Powerpoint presentations. Others created a playlist of songs to go along with scenes from the book. Several created timelines using technology they had not tried before. Four or five created pieces of art. They collaborated with me on writing a rubric that would be used to score the project, which required much “letting go” on my part.
The thing I liked best about this assignment was that the students enjoyed doing it, and their work far exceeded my expectations in many cases. I had to give a little “wiggle room” on the time constraints for some students. Letting go of our idea of “on time” versus “in time” also makes sense to me if we really want to encourage creativity in our students.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Samantha Greenstein, science teacher at Earl Warren Middle School:
In any science class, the 4 Cs are essential. An increasingly important part of any science classroom is that students develop engineering skills that will better enable them to take on the challenges that they will face in our world. In the Next Generation Science Standards, students are expected to define problems and design solutions.
In my 8th grade science class, I work to make sure that students are practicing the 4 Cs by having them work like engineers. One project we had students do this year was to build a Spaghetti Tower using the following supplies:
The constraints were:
10 minutes to plan
15 minutes to build
Marshmallow must be at the top of the structure
Tower must stand upright for at least 10 seconds
Students practiced the 4 Cs in the following ways:
Communication: Students had 10 minutes to plan their design (2 minutes silently, 2 minutes of sharing, and 6 minutes to create a group plan). It is essential that students understand how to communicate like scientists so that they can best share their ideas and learn from the ideas of others. We encouraged students to use the following sentence starters when sharing their ideas and when listening to others (we also practiced these sentence starters in a different activity before this):
Creativity: Students were limited on supplies, but they had an infinite number of building options. Students needed to come up with innovative solutions in order to make a structure that could actually hold the marshmallow. Innovation is the key to progress!
Collaboration: After the initial build, students were able to look at the other towers that were created around the room and then were allowed an opportunity to rebuild their tower. By talking to other groups about how they went about solving the problem, every student worked collaboratively to try different options and then to create the greatest possible solution.
Critical Thinking: Throughout this entire activity, students needed to overcome obstacles (broken spaghetti, leaning towers, disagreements in their group, etc.) by thinking critically about what the problem was and how they could find a solution.
Engineering challenges give students the opportunity to practice the essential 4 Cs.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Christine Corrao, English teacher at Torrey Pines High School:
21st-century skills: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking
I would love to share some of the ways that I help foster 21st Century literacy skills in my classroom. As an English teacher I am really thrilled about the inclusion of more non-fiction into the classroom with the move towards Common Core. I have always supplemented the teaching of novels by providing my students with articles that reflect the themes presented in our Core novels. Being able to supplement with short, relevant, and aligned text allows me to help students see our “classic” novels in a fresh or modern context. The STRUCTURE of my class period allows me to do this more easily- I don’t have to change how I teach in order to add in non-fiction I just need to arrange my class schedule to support the use of these texts.
The four main 21st Century literacy skills needed for all students (these can be used in any content area when tackling a reading selection) are:
The ability to “activate” prior knowledge.
Organize or make sense of new information.
Comprehend the text.
Summarize, so as to inform others about what you read/learned.
The best way to embed these skills and support them is by using the structure of the class to give the framework for inclusion. At Torrey Pines we teach in 2 hour block periods. I use this longer length of time to breakup my class period and roughly teach Fiction 50% of the time and Non-Fiction 50% of the time. Then within that 1 hour I allot for Non-fiction texts, I use specific reading strategies that support the four main skills I listed above. I search for a variety of articles/texts/video clips/music that make our novels interesting and relevant and roughly devote about 25 min of time to teaching those specific strategies. One example would be when I taught The Scarlet Letter this Fall and used both evidence from the text and support articles to envision the novel as a story about the effects of post-partum depression. We talked about the several times in the text when the characters referenced Elizabeth Proctor being “unwell” or “not wholly well” after the birth of her last child. I supplemented with a medical reference article on Post-partum depression along with a recent blog post by a women who struggled with depression after the birth of her child. Students were engaged and interested in a topic they did not seem to know much about- they now easily saw the connection to our Core text and were surprised they didn’t “see” it before the non-fiction supplements. Overall, it is just a simple adjustment to how I devote my class time that allows me to creatively and easily infuse non-fiction into my classroom.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Abby Brown, math teacher at Torrey Pines High School:
For nearly twenty years I have had my students give regular presentations in class – in math class. This has taken different forms with different classes over the years, but the objectives have been the same: students will become more confident public speakers and will learn to explain their work with clarity and accuracy.
In the more formal presentations that my students do, they are assigned a math problem from the book. However, rather than simply solving it as in homework, the presenters need to show their work, review key concepts, and do something more such as a visualization, animation, data analysis, or three-dimensional model. That is where they are often most creative. The structure for their work is centered on multiple representations. Students share their methods symbolically, graphically, numerically, and verbally. Tying together the different representations deepens their understanding of the concepts and having to present to their peers that takes it even further.
An added twist to these presentations is that the students get feedback beyond the grade from the teacher. We video record each presentation using an old cell phone. The students later watch themselves present and become their own audience. Also, while a group presents, several other students in the class complete critique forms for the talk. They evaluate the presenters on both content and style looking to see that the presentation is both clear and accurate. The presenters review these critique forms while watching their presentation and then answer reflection questions about strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. This helps prepare them for their next presentation and develops their public speaking skills.
Each year when former students visit or send emails to say hello, they ask whether I still have my students do presentations and video. They comment on how much they appreciated that practice. For most students, the ability to speak confidently, clearly, and accurately in front of a group will serve them more in their future work and careers than whether they can solve specific math problems.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Guen Butler, current ToSA and former French teacher at San Dieguito Academy and Torrey Pines High School:
“Les Quatre C”
The AP French Language and Culture course requires that students express themselves in French and make insightful cross-cultural comparisons on a wide variety of topics. The course is based around six themes: Beauty and Aesthetics, Global Challenges, Personal and Public Identities, Families and Communities, Science and Technology, and Contemporary Life. To keep up with the high-demand for up-to-date information in this class, the teacher of this course could easily find him or herself spending countless hours researching current events throughout the 44 countries of the French-speaking world, and crafting lessons around those.
Pneumonic Plague in Madagascar? Charlie Hebdo? The Arab Spring? Sure, I could research those and present them to my students. But who would really be doing the learning? Probably me. Why not have THE KIDS do the research and present a topic to the class? This is a language class after all. Shouldn't THEY be the ones collaborating, communicating and thinking creatively and critically?
And, so, inspired by Christophe Barquisseau’s MAC project, that’s what I did. Groups of 4 students in my AP French class chose one of the six course themes. Then, on that theme, they found a newspaper article (en français, bien sûr!) a related 2-minute video or audio clip, and a chart or a graph around which they’d base a multi-part presentation to the class. These groups, working entirely with documents written for a Francophone audience, would, in French:
Present the article, video, and graph, sharing the information and asking questions to the class
Teach key vocabulary as needed
Synthesize the 3 sources, and lead a class discussion around it.
And then, of course, create a wildly competitive Jeopardy-style game to review their presentation.
The projects my students presented included:
Fashion in France for plus-sized women
Graffiti vs Public art
Banning cigarette smoking on the beach
The Burqa in Switzerland
Drug use among teenagers
My work during these presentations shifted, from being the “finder and presenter” of information to helping students refine their projects, find appropriate sources of information, learn how to interpret complex graphs and charts made for a European audience, develop their public speaking skills, craft engaging questions for their peers, distill complex articles down to their essence, or connect a far-away topic like graffiti in Paris to a local concern, the Surfing Madonna in Encinitas. In short, when I pushed my students to engage deeply with the 4C’s, my class became more engaging, more relevant and, more fun. Not to mention, my students’ spoken and written French got quite a workout!
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Tracy Bryant, social science teacher at Canyon Crest Academy:
A 21st Century Lesson that I developed for AP World History is called Five Minute Professor. AP World students research a topic and become the professor for 5 minutes of the class. Students work with a partner to pick the topic, research what they will teach, and how they will present their topic. They are only limited by a few items: the topic must be about something we are currently studying, it must be creative, students can’t use my technology, and the presentation should only last 5 minutes.
Students have come up with some creative lessons:
teaching the class to Hula dance and about Hawaiian culture
creating and performing a song about Napoleon
teaching the class about the Cajun and Creole cultures that developed in Louisiana while serving Gumbo
Because students can’t use my technology, they don’t create a boring Powerpoint. Students have brought in family heirlooms and ancient artifacts. I have heard stories that have been passed down by older family members about regimes that have since died out. I have seen Mao’s Red Book and a piece of the Berlin Wall. If given the right opportunity, students will teach and amaze you!
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Paul Brice, math teacher at San Dieguito Academy:
I teach math. I lesson plan. I grade papers.
I need more than this in my life so I seek out ways to simplify. I value when my students work together in groups of four on a rich, complex, thought-provoking task. I have most of my classes complete six Problems of the Week (POWs) during the course. I enjoyed the challenge they provided but I dreaded grading a class set of written reports which include four parts: Problem Restatement, Process, Solution, and Reflection. I decided to divide up the work and assign each group member only one part of the write-up. I allot time during class for group collaboration. I rotate the assigned parts as we move on to the next POW so students get a chance to complete each part of a complete report. I assign a group grade to each POW to instill a sense of reliance on each other. I think I cover the 4 C's (or at least three of them...you decide).
I wrote each sentence starting with "I". Challenge # 237 attained.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from John Danssaert, science teacher at Canyon Crest Academy:
Using "Student-Based" white boards in the classroom
In physics-land (and many other science classrooms as well), we use small white boards to allow for collaboration of small groups of students. This recent activity was largely motivated to get them to collaborate and get their energy going as we had been doing quite a bit of detailed "bookwork" in AP Physics C.
I asked them to develop a new eating utensil which incorporated something we had been studying recently in physics (either optics or electricity). Students worked in small groups of 3-5. They were tasked to draw a sketch of their design and list its key attributes. After about 25 minutes each group presented their design to the class. It was quite remarkable both the variety (laser guided mini chainsaw turkey cutter) and creativity that came out of this simple activity.
The use of whiteboards definitely gets kids to collaborate (sometimes rather "off topic" as well). It's a great, simple way to get students to work together, be creative, and share ideas.
The white boards we use are 24" x 32"; they can be cut from a 4' x 8' sheet of showerboard purchased from Home Depot. HD will even cut these up for you.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Sherril Brice, math and ISOL teacher at La Costa Canyon High School:
I like rows; rows are neat, orderly, straight, and easy to maneuver through. On the other hand, they may be isolating, individualizing, and separating. What’s a teacher to do when tasked with embracing the idea of building 21st-century skills with students? For starters, try moving away from the comfort zone into (not to sound like Disney) a whole new world.
This year I have committed my classroom design to be set up in groups of four, not just for those evaluation/observation days or those activity days, instead it is for every day. (Well, maybe not on individual assessment days ) I would love to be able to stop writing here and tell you that simply arranging students in groups of four magically instills both collaboration and communication skills, it does not.
What has evolved since arranging the students into groups of four started with a simple sharing exercise on that first day of school. “Everyone in the group will share their favorite vegetable, you’ve got one minute, go.” Non-threatening and now you know something about the people you find yourself sitting next to in the group, right? I followed up by asking the whole class if there were any unusual vegetables mentioned. Yes, someone had selected bananas. Later, I needed to pass out some papers, so I had the groups do another share, “Share the number of cousins you have with the members in your group.” I then told the students that the person with the fewest number of cousins would come up and get the papers for the group and another brief discussion ensued as they sorted out the “winner.”
On the second day of school I needed to collect papers, “In your groups please share your favorite movie.” That got them talking. Following their sharing I had the person with the oldest favorite movie collect the papers. What I noticed is that they started to feel comfortable and they were communicating with each other.
Halfway through the year we still discuss, as my students say, random topics and they really enjoy sharing with each other. The benefit is that when I am in the middle of talking about an earth-shattering math idea, I may pause and say, “In your groups talk about what the end behaviors of this polynomial equation will look like and be ready to defend your decision” and my students all immediately start talking about the equation. Truly!
Building communication skills before expecting students to use them in “high stakes learning situations” seems to be benefiting my students this year. Extra bonus, with the communication skills fired up, I am noticing that students are collaborating on their in-class work as well.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Craig Fox, English teacher at Canyon Crest Academy:
Since students' essay writing abilities vary so widely, I'm always looking for ways to close the gap. One method I've tried was to have students collaborate to pull each other up. I've tried many different iterations of this - many of which were failures. However, one form has worked for me. I don't always do it, but if I do it once or twice a year, it spices things up and seems to help most of the kids.
I do this with an in-class writing prompt that should take the class period. Before class, I make two lists dividing students by their writing abilities. After going over the prompt, I call the names of the students, having the two groups stand at opposite ends of the classroom. In a barn dance style, students can find a partner at the other side of the room. This way, they have some level of choice while still being paired with someone of complementary abilities.
Then the two students write one essay; however, they make two identical copies of the essay - each writing their own as they go. When they are finished, they staple the two copies of the essay together with one rubric. A bonus is that I only have to grade one!
P.S. Don't have them work in three's - doesn't work...
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Tracy McCabe, science teacher at Carmel Valley Middle School:
This Spring myself, Chris Faist, Amy Olson, and Kajyo Yamamoto are embarking on “Genius Hour” with our 7th and 8th grade students at Carmel Valley Middle School. This endeavor is sure to embrace all four Cs not just for our students, but for us as instructors as well.
Also called 20% Time or Passion Projects, Genius Hour stems from a practice at Google. Employees were allowed to use 20% of their work week to explore projects of their choosing, as long as it benefited the company. Gmail, Adsense, Google News, Google Glass and other innovations were created as a result of this self-directed research time.
The goal of Genius Hour is to engage students through inquiry problem solving and critical thinking. Genius Hour allows students the flexibility to choose a topic, research the content that is necessary to learn about their topic, and then solve a problem or present about a topic they are passionate about without the constraints of the typical teacher driven instructional time. Students will be allotted 1 hour a week of class time to select and pursue a topic they feel passionate about. This project may be simply research-based or students may look into an answer to a problem, but each project will include a student-generated question.
It all sounds good in theory, right? We have spent the last several months brainstorming scaffolding, checkpoints, and some sort of format to help students follow an otherwise unstructured pursuit. Numerous websites have come in handy (this is the one we keep coming back to).
What we have come up with are 6 stages students will move through:
Brainstorming: Generating a question
The Dry Run: Testing your question
Predicting Pitfalls
Make your Pitch
Do Your Thing: Answer your Question
Present your Genius
Students will be encouraged to collaborate in their groups in “Sounding Board” meetings as well as allowed to go “Back to The Drawing Board” if a question needs to be tweaked. We intend to have students Blog their process as they pursue their answer and will ask them each Monday to submit this Google Form to document their progress.
Most of all, we hope to encourage skills not necessarily linked to our content. We have come up with six Genius Hour Commandments and accompanying videos we plan to show at the start of each weekly Genius Hour session to inspire students on their journey.
This is an experiment to be sure. It will not be concealed from our students that we are embarking on our own Genius Hour trying this out. If you’d like to follow our successes and “learning”, we have created a website where we will post student projects once they are presented.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Dawn Whalen, English teacher at Torrey Pines High School:
Here’s a good collaborative and frontloading activity that accomplishes two things: First, it keeps kids on task instead of veering off on tangents, chit-chatting about their social lives; second, it helps kids understand concepts in more challenging articles before they read which helps raise the quality of their analysis.
The newest name for it is I KNOW / YOU KNOW although variations of this strategy have been floating around since the Literature Project in the 90’s and the Writing Project in the 80’s. It obviously withstands the test of time.
Here’s my variation based upon an article by Helen Keller about the importance of her teacher which is part of a larger set of articles presenting various purposes of education:
1) Decide what the main concepts you want the kids to understand. You can write these as questions, phrases, or single words. For my article I chose “What’s the best way to learn?” and “Describe the best teacher.”
2) Give kids between one to two minutes ONLY to write the first thing that comes to mind when you say that concept out loud. They need to keep writing the whole time you are timing them. I usually give one minute.
3) Have them partner up, read their response, and then listen to their partner’s response. Lots of variations are here--keep the same partner, switch partners each time, toggle back and for the between a few partners. They all work. Again, time them so they keep on track. About two minutes will do.
4) Last they have to write down what their partner said.
Just continue this sequence for as many concepts as you have. I hope this works well for you.
This month, we focus on the 4 C's: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Today's entry comes from Jacquelyn Karney, English teacher at Diegueno Middle School:
Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking
I teach 7th grade at Diegueno, but this assignment could be used for any grade. Over the years, I have had my students participate in trial reenactments based on a scene in a novel we were reading in class. This year I decided to try something a little different, and I am glad I did! It was one of my most rewarding and successful assignments in over twenty years. Students read The Outsiders, and as part of the unit, we read several articles and watched a few video clips on the teenage brain. Students marked the text and wrote summaries of these articles, and I made sure to pre-teach difficult vocabulary.
I then shared two articles with them, both involving juveniles accused of committing horrific crimes. The first case was called "Affluenza: Is it Real?" and was about a 16 year-old who drove drunk. In fact, his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. . This led to the deaths of four innocent people, as well as life changing injuries for one of his passengers. Part of the defense was that he was wealthy and his parents did not discipline him, spend enough time with him, and gave him whatever he wanted. The students made a connection to one of the characters in the novel, which was pretty cool!
The other case/article was about four boys accused of throwing an eight pound rock over a freeway overpass. The rock crashed through the passenger side of a car, leaving a middle school English teacher, Sharon Budd, clinging to life. Her skull was shattered and she has endured countless surgeries. She also lost an eye and suffers from permanent brain damage.
I was also able to find a few news clips about each of these stories which increased their interest.
Finally, I broke them up into groups of six to eight and assigned them one of the cases. They were expected to find more articles and clips about their case. I explained to them that they would appoint a defense and prosecution and come up with witnesses for each side. They had to prepare their questions and answers ahead of time. I also taught them courtroom vocabulary, how to question and cross examine a witness, how to write an opening and closing statement. and proper courtroom decorum. I found numerous great examples on YouTube of both mock trials and real trials. They were allowed to make up some things for their defense and also use the information from the articles about the teen brain. Students were really fired up about these cases.
After each case, I divided the class into groups of 12 (or as close as possible) and explained the jury system to them. I appointed a foreman and told them to do their best to reach a verdict.
Students worked on this assignment for approximately two weeks, and they were engaged in the entire process. It definitely addressed creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
) I would love to be able to stop writing here and tell you that simply arranging students in groups of four magically instills both collaboration and communication skills, it does not.
