The First Five: Warming up to Learn

My childhood soccer coach began practice with highly aerobic games of competition. After 10-15 minutes we were flushed and focused, the distractions from the day a distant memory. Similarly, students also benefit from a stimulating warm-up. Such an exercise helps students to understand the direction of the class, jump-starts a discussion, and revs students’ brains for critical thinking.

I recently noticed an article on Edutopia offering a number of warm-up and cool-down exercises. Here are a few more game-starters.

                                                          Warm-Ups
Forced Decision: You may want to introduce a topic by having students consider their own feelings and attitudes towards an issue first. In this activity, students stand up and then move around the room. You designates three parts of the room as the following positions: agree disagree, and undecided. You read 4-5 statements tied to the lesson (one at a time) and then students stand in these locations.

Here are some examples of questions:

• The needs of larger society are more important than the needs of the individual.
• Climate change is entirely a man made condition
• Overall, boys tend to be stronger math students than girls.
• You are either good at learning a foreign language or not.

After students move to their positions, you ask everyone to explain why they are standing in the part of the room they are standing. Students may show agreement with others’ statements w/ a signal ie.. jazz hands. Students may move based on students’ comments to other parts of the room.

Provocative Question or Image: You could ask students a charged question and ask them to respond or show them an image and ask students “What do you See?” The answers given should lead directly to the topic of the day. For example, when teaching Roman mythology I showed students a picture of Breughel’s Icarus. Students discuss the painting and share their thoughts about the artists’ message. I tell them the name of the painting and then they read the story. They then compare the message of the story with the reinvention of the picture. They then create their own artistic interpretation.

Political Cartoon: You could show students a political cartoon and ask them for an interpretation. This may directly raise questions about a topic such as free speech, a literary figure such as symbolism, or a form of satire itself.

Do-Now: You might have students respond to a question on the board that refers to the day’s previous lesson to see what students remember. They could share their responses with a partner before sharing with the group. By walking around during the sharing, you would be able to measure student understanding.

Sharing: You could read a poem, play a song, or show a short You-tube clip tied to the lesson. Then have students at the end of the lesson comment on why the piece is appropriate. Students might suggest other appropriate pieces.For example, when teaching A Streetcar Called Desire, I play the song Paper Moon, showing students the lyrics. After a class discussing the scene, I then ask students to pick another song that might convey a message about the same scene. They share why they chose the song and how the meaning of the same scene would change our impressions of the protagonist, Blanche.

Whiparound- Have students just read one powerful sentence from the chapter you are reading without comment, one after the other without pause. It is fine if students pick the same sentence as another student. At the end, have students make general comments about the choices as a whole. What was striking about those lines? This will help you as the teacher to see what students are interested in talking about. Also, it helps students to get back into a text by getting a feel of the writing again. Even students that have not done the reading (if it was a homework assignment) can participate in the following discussion.

Stay tuned for next week’s posting on the importance of a cool-down and some engaging ways to wrap-up a class.

The Gift of Testing

 

‘Tis the season of the dreaded final exam. Are you ready?

According to Peter C. Brown, author of “Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning”, students should usher out all of those traditional study habits and bring in new strategies this holiday season. Put those teacher created outlines and highlighters away as Brown argues that the practice of underlining, highlighting, rereading, cramming, and singular repetition builds an illusion of mastery. These strategies lead students to misjudge the depth of their understanding. Because the formulas, concepts, or facts seem familiar enough and easy to remember in the moment students then just skim over the content and fail to restudy and practice the concept again.

A test can shatter the illusion and reveal fragile knowledge; students can see what it is they do not know. So what can teachers do to help prepare students better to take a test? Here are 4 great ways to light up learning for students from Studying For the Test by Taking it.

Interleave Skills
Teachers might assign homework beyond blocks of skill repetition. Instead, teachers could assign homework interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. This kind of practice is more similar to a test situation and certainly more relevant to any real application as skills are rarely needed in isolation.

Build in Wait Time:
Rather than cramming learning into one evening or even one week, teachers should build in wait time to allow students time to re-study material until a little forgetting has set in.

Teach students to Self-Examine
Teachers can explicitly teach study techniques that do lead to complex and enduring learning. Students could make an outline of a chapter from memory, argue about the material with a friend, or reteach the material to others.

Take Tests
Literature on testing suggests that tests are not just measurement tools but can be study tools, too. Henry L. Roediger III, co-author of “Make it Stick”, contends that varying tests in terms of scale and intensity can deepen learning. This may include pretests, fake tests, quizzes and final exams.

Pre-tests can help prime the mind for specific learning predisposing it to absorb new information. Pre-tests stimulate mental networks to thread unfamiliar content into questions. Even when the question is confusing and its solution unfamiliar, the very process of guessing initiates a connection to possible answers and more importantly prepare learners for receiving the information when the concepts come around again. For more on the benefits of pretests and learning, check out the following article: Why Flunking Exams is Actually a Good Thing.

Teacher can give fake tests, too. By calling tests fake, students do not internalize high stakes pressure. And while the test looks like a summative assessment in content, these “fests” or “fizzes” becomes formative experiences as students can learn from their mistakes prior to the test that actually counts.

There is a certain backlash to testing in general but testing is not just about the experience of sitting for that test. There is a three-fold benefit.

1) Test Preparation: The process for effectively studying for a test helps to solidify knowledge. A learner must access the correct information, bring it consciously to mind, and then restore it for future access in the test environment.

2) Test Taking: The actual process of taking the test, allow students the opportunity to demonstrate proof of understanding. A good test itself can be a learning experience, asking students to apply their knowledge in new ways. The test can crystallize what was important to know.

3) Test Review: After the test is over students can review their work and make corrections. Ins this way, students can deliberately practice filling in those gaps to their understanding. Students can ask themselves what studying strategies worked and what did not.

Though students may never view December exams as a gift, I can think of no greater present this holiday season than complex mastery and better retention of what was learned. Happy Testing!

Teachers Leading Teachers to Use Technology in the Classroom

This week, teachers at our school led each other in a day of professional development on the use of technology in the classroom. The day had 8 blocks. Those teaching taught two blocks and then attended five tutorials throughout the day. Others attended 8 classes.
The following were the list of the tutorials available to teachers and taught by our faculty.

• WordPress Blogging, aka: #Widgets4Rookies

• Creating & Using Wikis (Websites Edited By Multiple Users) to Deepen Understanding & Student Collaborations

• Journey: Why @Twitter Is the Ultimate Red Crayon #Connection #Collaboration

• Isn’t that Pinteresting? Virtual Prof. Develop. with Pinterest & Facebook Prof. Groups

• They Speak!: In-Class Feedback Systems (Polls & Live Blogging) that Increase Classroom Participation

• Google Classroom: An All-in-One Platform for Organizing Assignments, Providing Feedback, & Communicating with Students

• Mashing iPads, Google Apps, and Explain Everything to Support More Rigorous Student Learning

• Finding the Best iPad Apps for Your Class – Tips, Tricks, and Reviews

• Showbie iPad App: A Great Tool for Managing the Digital Work Flow

• Get Inside Your Students’ Brains: iPad Apps For Making Thinking Visible

• Augmented Reality iPad Apps: Bring Your Content to Life!

• Cool Apps for Our Youngest Techies (LS Classroom Apps Across All Subject Areas)

• Combining Text, Images, and Structure for Notetaking: Exploring Sketchnotes on the iPad

• You Want Me to EXPLAIN EVERYTHING? LLearn all I know about this “#1 App for Teachers!”

• Osmo: Learn How to Integrate iPads with Hands-On Manipulatives (most applicable to LS teachers)

• 3D Printing 101: Become a TinkerCAD Software Pro in 30 Mins & 3D Printing 201: OK, Now How Do I 3D Print This Thing?

• How to Flip Out!: Using Camtasia to Make the Flipped Classroom Productive & Meaningful for Kids

• Flipping Out! Theory: How to Incorporate Videos into Your Teaching – a Theoretical Discussion of the Flipped Classroom Model

• Differentiate Your MS & US Math Curriculum with Khan Academy – a Free, Interactive, Online Video Resource

• Using iMovie & Other Technology: Students Engage as Actors, Directors, & Videographers

• Classroom Makerspaces: Tinkering With Toys & Technology

• An Intro to Prezi (Better than Powerpoint?!) – Step Up Your Presentations & Be Able to Access & Edit from Anywhere

• Arduino – Writing Code & Using a Microcontroller to Make Interactive Projects

• Dive into TECH (Tinkering, Engineering, Coding, and Hacking) and Watch Students Problem-Solve!

This type of professional development day is relatively easy for schools to replicate. The facilitators recruited teachers to lead tutorials on preselected technology topics, though they did not need to be experts. The facilitators created a Google Form and sent the registration to faculty to sign-up. Teachers leading tutorials reported any technology needs to the facilitators prior to the workshop. Facilitators received an email with the numbers to expect. Teachers could refer to their Google Form to see their schedule for the day. The general format for each presentation consisted of 5-10 minutes of “teacher talk” with 20-25 minutes of the time available for teachers to tinker with the technology.

The facilitators framed the day’s activities in terms of Dr. Ruben Puentedura’s Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model for technology integration in the classroom.

They showed the following clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBce25r8vto

The focus of the day was not only on learning new technologies for the sake of technology but also to consider the role of a particular technology with regard to student learning. There is a progression within this model in which the technology not only makes the task more efficient or more interesting to students but rather also transforms learning. At its highest form, the technology becomes central to the purpose of the student-centered learning activity.

Finally, this format for DIY professional development has a number of benefits for teachers and the institution.

• Teachers demonstrated knowledge, behaving as students might in demonstrating proof of understanding. Teachers had an opportunity to feel like students.

• In sharing expertise with one another expertise, teachers now know who has expertise to ask in the future.

• Our school saved money by not having to outsource professional development. And given that the faculty are experts on our community, the professional development was tailored to our experience as educators.

• The day’s activities provided professional development both for those taking the tutorials and those teaching them. Teachers can put on their resume that they led a professional development workshop. And with a little bit of exposure to a new technology, teachers may now have an idea for a topic of a lengthier conference they want to attend.
  Has your school found other ways to utilize teacher knowledge and share such expertise with the community?

Making Mistakes and Risk-Taking in the Classroom

The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends oneself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
-Excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, “Citizenship in A Republic” given at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910.

When the stakes are high, will students be able to respond with daring? Not if they have had not had the opportunity to deal with failure early and often.

What is a normal reaction to a mistake? It is an emotional one. We are embarrassed. We think we are not smart enough. We may try to hide the mistake. Instead, we should look at a mistake rationally, as an important step in the process towards real achievement.
Likewise, as educators we need to help students see that making a mistake is a typical quality of learning and without errors we can never pinpoint areas of weakness.

What can we do to support risk-taking and mistake making in the classroom?

Create Points of Discomfort
As teachers, we can intentionally put students in places of discomfort in order for them to learn how to fail quickly. This might entail having students work with others on a collaborative project, such as building consensus around a deep issue. This might include putting constraints on time or materials for a building project. You might have students use a technology they have never tried before to present their work to the class. This could be resisting the urge to swoop in and offer hints to a solution or that first sentence to a paper. As a student struggles to answer a question, allow students to squirm and to have to think rather than feed them the answer. The idea is for students to see the struggle as just a normal part of learning.

Practice Failure or Test ‘em Until it Breaks
Second, students need opportunities to actually fail. In a science classroom, this could be creating a design that will be tested to the point of failure. All of the projects will at some point break during testing and when that happens the point is to identify the weakest part of the design and to build a revision that improves on that weakness. In an English class, this could entail a revision process in which every paper is rewritten; students turn a short story into a poem or a non-fiction piece into a short story. In this way, students are playing with form and language. They are revising to practice the revision process, to take a piece of their writing and push its excellence into a new form. This is consistent with Malcolm Gladwell’s notion of deliberate practice in Outliers. A virtuoso violinist does not just practice a piece and skim through the tricky spots, to get to the end. Rather, that violinist will skim through the easy parts and focus on the most difficult sections, practicing them again and again until those parts become fluidly mastered.

Support a Growth Mindset: Work is Fluid
According to Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, there are two mindsets one in which individuals consider intelligence as fixed and one in which learners view intelligence as tied to effort. Students with a fixed mindset see their performance as evidence of their intelligence. Therefore, they are likely to select easy tasks and avoid harder ones and with them any opportunities for failure. In contrast, those who embrace a growth mindset view intelligence as fluid. They see effort as critical to success. They are more likely to embrace challenges because they see the process of acquiring skills as raising their intelligence.

Therefore, to promote a growth mindset, teachers should provide opportunities for students to do retakes on quizzes or turn in multiple drafts of an assignment. You might say to students, “Use a pencil because you are going to change your ideas.” Or “Here is an extra design page because as you build you are going to make revisions.” Dweck’s research shows that even praising student effort rather than intelligence affects their outlook toward learning. Students might read an article like Sowing Failure and Reaping Success: What Failure Can Teach about famous failures turned success and then discuss, reflect, and write about the questions within the article.

Provide Perspective
Students need to consider not just their mistake but also their reaction to that mistake. By being obsessed with a number a test score, or grades that affect school admissions students will become afraid to fail; they will become averse to take difficult steps to master new material. Instead, we need to help students see the larger picture and their ability to shape it. As teachers we need to encourage a mindset of making an adjustment. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning will reverse a destructive cycle in which stumbling creates feelings of ineptitude that in turn halts learning.
Here is a helpful diagram from Teaching Students to Embrace Mistakes:

And finally on a personal note– When I was in high school, my father taught me how to play squash and on that afternoon gave me a 6-point handicap for an 11-point game. As he beat me for a second game, he barked at me, “Make a friggin’ adjustment!” Though I was tired and frustrated, I thought about what he said as we started the 3^rd game; rather than make the safe shot I started going for the angle, tried to dominate the center of the court, and got a little more physical. The momentum changed and I beat him. “There you are” he said to me as I paraded jubilantly around the windowed court. He was right. If you continue to play the same way, the outcome will be the same. It was only in taking a risk, making a change that I experienced success. Though we will all make mistakes, the important part is learning from those mistakes.

And to end, I quote Danish physicist Niels Bohr who once said, “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.”

Building Community and Confidence in the Foreign Language Classroom

World Language Classroom

Teachers need to assist students in taking an active and involved role in their language learning.  A great first step is to create a classroom culture and climate that promotes communication, collaboration, respect and responsibility.  Once this is established students will be more comfortable taking risks in speaking the language and not be afraid of making mistakes.

My students agree to try their best to keep to a “classroom contract” that is posted in the room and referred to as needed.  The major themes are:
-I communicate
-I think
-I respect
-I collaborate
-I take risks
-I take responsibility

Here is the English translation of the French contract in the photo:

I communicate..
-in French.
-with my teacher when I have questions and/or when I need help.

I think…
-about vocabulary that I know and I don’t use a translator.
-about tools that I have.

I respect..
-the cultures, ideas…

View original post 83 more words

Students’ Educational Journies: E-Portfolios and the Benefits for Students

“We don’t learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.”
John Dewey

Last year at Brookwood School, teachers embarked on a journey to implement digital portfolios. Teachers set out with the primary purpose of providing students with a lasting place to reflect on their learnings across disciplines and divisions in their time at Brookwood.

In preparation, teachers carried out a pilot study in grades 5-7 to investigate different online platforms. The 5^th grade tested Wiki Spaces. The 6^th grade studied 3 Ring and the 7^th grade explored Publish Keg. After testing the digital tools, teachers shared the strengths and weaknesses they noted.

Simultaneously, department coordinators met throughout the year to distill the whole point of being at Brookwood School into six student-friendly tendencies, each with a respective anchoring subordinate clause. Below are the six tendencies that teachers created in a document they named The Directrix.

Based on those conversations, this year’s students in grades 5-7 will use 3 Ring and build their own portfolio to provide the evidence of meeting the school’s overarching tendencies. Students can upload audio, video, photos, written work, and other creative forms of evidence. Next year, Brookwood will expand portfolios to include the capstone year of 8^th grade. The school would like to leave the future direction flexible regarding how teachers, students, and parents may want to use this portfolio.

As the primary purpose relates to students, I can anticipate a number of opportunities that e-portfolios present. Students…

Can Showcase New Skills and Achievement
Students have the opportunity to demonstrate proof of understanding in an authentic way. In order to add entries, students will have to think about what each tendency personally means to them and then make connections to what they believe they have learned. Students will have to select the best evidence to demonstrate their application of the tendencies. Additionally, students will document their growth over time. For example, by saving writing samples across several years, a student may appreciate the development of their writing skills while advancing through grades.

Can Self-Reflect
Students can post evidence of their learning along with a self-reflection form of why they selected a particular piece and what it shows. The work might be an example of best performances, demonstrations of achieving a particular objective, or a piece of evidence showing growth. Through the very process of posting specific work, students prioritize what stands out to them about their learning and what that learning means to them in a broader context. Students can develop an understanding of the extent to which they developed skills teachers tried to impart. Students have the opportunity to identify for themselves learning in these tendencies over time and across disciplines.

Can Practice Digital Citizenship
Digital citizenship is about understanding how to navigate a personal online presence, interact with others, and communicate online. Through providing students with a web-based space to curate their work, teachers guide students to practice digital citizenship and help them learn important technology skills. Students need to have experiences illustrating how their online presence is both public and far reaching in positive and negative ways.

Can Create a Personal Learning Narrative
Students compose their own unique narrative that reveals both who they are and who they have become. They have the opportunity to be creative in presenting how they know what they know. They might share a Skype conversation, upload a photo with an explanation, include a writing sample, or take a screen shot of a piece of art. Much like a museum exhibit, the presentation of the work makes a statement in combination with its content.

Have you seen any other benefits to e-portfolios? How has your school’s use of portfolio assessment changed over time?

The Power of Student Choice

I had a 5^th grade literature teacher who used to say to our class in her southern drawl, “Darlin’, all you have to do is die and pay taxes.”

The reason that she would say this to us was almost always in response to a student asking, “Do we have to do X?” This illusion of choice was not particularly motivating to me as a student. The real implication, not lost to any of us, was that if we did not do the work she assigned, then there would be consequences such as more work at home, a lower grade etc… but this was again our choice not a mandate.

Marcia Powell’s article, 5 Ways to Make Your Classroom Student-Centered, uses questions to help teachers develop and refine the teacher strengths needed for creating a student-centered classroom.

In a similar vein, here are just three questions that can help us develop and refine ways to design learning experiences that honor students’ choice and tap into what students value.

1) How do your classroom learning environment provide opportunities for students to express their unique voice and feed their passions?

I recently had a conversation with 5^th grade history teacher, Sven Holch, and he shared how a new orientation of providing choice has changed his students’ perceptions of their work. Sven used to have students read a chapter in their history book and answer questions that he generated for students to demonstrate proof of understanding. He now asks students to read those chapters and to write their own thought-provoking questions of the reading.Here are some of the questions that students generated on a reading regarding European migration to the New World:

• Why did people pretend to be a religion that they are not?
• Why do neighbors and relatives kill each other about difference in religion, when they all claim to be Christian?
• Why do Christians think it will make God happy to turn Indians into Christians?

These questions both demonstrate a deep understanding of the material and a deep personal connection to the content based on what students still want to know. I am sure that these questions initiated a rich discussion among students about an aspect of the reading that was personally interesting to them. This in turn fosters greater buy-in for class readings for the future.

2) How does the work that you assign honor student choice?

When I walked into a 6^th grade technology club in the IDEA Lab, students had the choice to experiment with Makey Makey, Little Bits, TinkerCad, or circuits. A group of boys chose to build a circuit with a switch to power an LED light. Three girls were using Makey Makey to design a game control for a Super Mario and  Pak Man. Students had previous exposure to all four activities. They were given a brief mini-lesson on some of the possible gadgets one could build and how to manipulate the materials. Instructor, Joe Lepain, emphasized that instruction was minimal and that the students own interest in seeing what was possible to create motivated them to try to figure things out on their own. In the ten minutes that I observed the class, students’ time on task was extraordinary as they were focused on completing tasks of their choosing.

3) Would you want to be a student in your classroom?

In the Pre-K classroom at Brookwood School, students begin every day with choice time. Pre-K teacher, Ashley Lantych, explains that because students arrive at different times, choice time is a nice way for students to settle in, bond with new friends, and engage in an activity that gives students practice with independent play. They have 10-12 choices (blocks, play-doh, manipulatives, puzzles, literacy puzzles, magnet tiles, water colors, books, dramatic play). Lantych notes that “The choice right at the beginning of the day is exciting and fun to these learners because they are not given one thing to do.”

Interested in how to offer choice? Here are some possibilities.

Provide choice of grouping

Students might have the opportunity to select who they work with and even if they want to work independently. They also could have the choice of their role in the group.

Provide a menu of topics for students to pick

In this way, choices are narrowed but they are still real choices for students.

Give students options in terms of their approach, including how students present that outcome.

Students might choose a platform from a Blog to an iMovie, an ExplainEverything presentation or a Prezi, to a skit.

Allow students to determine how they measure success.

Giving an element of choice for students when defining success criteria for an assignment can elicit understanding about a task and inspire a greater level of commitment on the part of the student.

There are a number of benefits to offering students choice. Choice ensures variety, empowers learners, and enhances their sense of independence. Choice fosters a greater emotional investment from students and their intrinsic motivation to learn.

Are there are other ways to offer real choice in your classroom?

Design Thinking in Middle School

“The best design is the simplest one.” –Albert Einstein

This week I spoke with two middle school science teachers about the engineering design process.

Two key themes of the engineering design process emerged from these two conversations:

The design process is more than a set of proscribed steps; rather it is a path toward a mindset.

According to 7^th grade science teacher Annie Johnson, when students hear about a design project they just want to start building; students lack patience to follow a standardized process. At the end, hopefully they see value in the process as a whole. Students have had the experience of working together toward a common goal. With the great deal of student autonomy and choice, comes the reality that there is no teacher telling them what to do next. Students face challenges as their designs fail. In the end, students may become more comfortable with discomfort. And ultimately, they rethink the notion of failure. The hope is that students embrace failure because they realize, that in every instance, success is not immediate and to get the best product requires multiple iterations.

The application of the design process meets multiple learning objectives and does not conform to a particular format.

There is no single way of teaching students to develop this design mindset within the discipline of science, across middle school grades, and even within the same class. In two short conversations, I heard how the design process allows students to do the following: 1) Appreciate the Natural World and its Design, 2) Illustrate the Scientific Method, 3) Solve a Real- World Problem, and 4) Develop a Personal Design Aesthetic

Appreciate the Natural World and its Design: C.J. Bell is a 7^th science teacher at Brookwood School. She related how the design process illustrates big concepts in her environmental science curriculum. When we spoke, students had just finished a project illustrating adaptation. In the Shelly Home Design challenge, students have to build a home for an intertidal creature that would help the organism avoid desiccation. Regarding constraints, students’ designs must include three different materials and have a functioning door. To simulate the organisms, students test their designs with small wet sponges. They weigh the sponge before it entered its home and after a period of time to see how well the sponge retains moisture. This lesson provided students with the opportunity to appreciate the natural world and its design by challenging them to build a comparable effective structure.

Understand the Scientific Method: In C.J.’s 2^nd project that she shared, students design an experiment that measures the behavior of an intertidal creature. Before they can undertake the experiment, students have to consider what constitutes a reliable science experiment. They must select a creature to investigate and a behavior to measure.

C.J. relates that the project is effective for a number of reasons. Students have to conduct research in order to choose their experiment. The variation suits a lot of kinds of students in different ways. All students are learning because they are interested. For those who dig science, they may want to know how salinity affects the crawling speed of a crab. For those with other interests, they might look into variables like the genre of music that would make periwinkles come of their shell. For all, the investigations are incredibly genuine and as individual as the students who design them.

Address a Problem: 7^th grade science teacher, Annie Johnson, uses the design process to help students behave as real engineers would and solve real-world problems. She shared two such projects. In the Earthquake Challenge, students design and then build a house out of sugar tablets to withstand the duress of a shake table (earthquake). There are number of constraints such as the structure must be 3 in. tall with 2 windows and 1 door. Students choose how they are going to test their structure, which means they have to determine the criteria for success. The shake tables allow students to adjust either the speed of movement, duration of time, or amplitude of the shake. Students are forced to fail and see why it is a helpful part of design. When they simulate conditions that cause the structures to collapse, students look at why that happened and use that information to inform the redesign of their buildings.

In the space science unit, students have to build a thrust structure to sustain the takeoff of a rocket. Using craft sticks, students build a lightweight structure to withstand the launch of a bottle of water. In both projects, students are presented with a real world problem to solve. They brainstorm possible design, build prototypes, and then choose one to build. They test their designs and push them to fail in order to evaluate the performance. They redesign based on the performance, rebuild, and retest. They communicate their final recommendations to others. Students thus simulate the experience of being engineers.

Develop a Personal Aesthetic: In the spring, Annie’s students will study forest ecology. As a final project, students will use the design process to demonstrate proof of understanding along with developing their own sense of aesthetic design. Students will create something to inform visitors traveling along Brookwood’s nature paths about what they are seeing. Students will choose what sort of lasting structure to build and what content to share. The will print the sign and mounting structure using the school’s 3D printer. They will have to work together to make sure that all of the signs appear a part of a unified trail walk.

Stay tuned as I talk to other teachers in the science department about their perspectives on using the engineering design process and how the word is spreading to other disciplines.

Evidence-Based Practice at Brookwood School

A characteristic of good data is its potential to help
teachers make good decisions about children’s learning.
Data tell a story…The two questions uppermost in
teachers’ minds should be: What does it all mean and;
how can we use it to improve children’s achievements?
Tozer, L. & Holmes, M. (2005).

In 2nd grade at Brookwood School, students take a weekly writing fluency assessment. Students have one minute to think and three minutes to write on 1 of 3 ever-changing writing prompts. The test is normed by number of words, correct sequences, and correctly spelled words.

Total Words Written (TWW): This measure is a count of the total words written during the assessment. Teachers might select this measure to monitor progress if the student needed to focus on getting more words on the page.

Correctly Spelled Words (CSW): This measure is a count of correctly spelled words written. If poor spelling seems to inhibit student writing, the teacher may select this area as a monitoring target.

Correct Writing Sequences (CWS): This measure is a tabulation of punctuation, capitalization, syntactical usage, and semantic usage. Correct Writing Sequences are a useful method to track this group of interrelated skills.

According to lower school reading specialist, Moira Smith, teachers are now using their classroom data in a number of critical ways.

This writing fluency assessment…

Serves as a Learning Tool Itself
Given that students have written from these prompts a number of times, the data has shown that the more these students write, the more their writing fluency overall improves. Taking the assessment itself has been helpful to students. Teachers are now looking to see whether the improved higher production of words on the page carries over into their writing workshop and not only on this particular assessment.

Tracks Student Progress Over Time
Teachers are using the data on this writing fluency assessment to predict in a short time whether any intervention is working or needs to be altered. By monitoring students on a regular basis the teachers can quickly shift away from educational programming that is not found to be sufficiently effective.

Helps to Inform Conversations
The assessment provides specific evidence about student’s progress. Having data to refer to makes it more transparent for teachers to discuss students’ learning strengths and weaknesses and their progress or lack thereof over time.

Identifies Students who Need Additional Support
This assessment pinpoints a sub-group of students with scores who have not improved over time and helps teachers to target interventions for those students. The assessment highlights specific weakness on an individual level.

Informs Practice
This assessment helped teachers to identify that the skill of writing fluency was low for the class as a whole. Though the curricular plans for the writing workshop implemented by the school (Lucy Calkins) suggest that students produce a certain number of pages per session, teachers were summarily discounting that amount as unreasonable rather than questioning the performance of the class as a whole during writing workshop. However, in using the assessment, teachers began to realize that our students as a grade had difficulty getting their thoughts on paper. Prior to giving the assessment, teachers did not realize that writing fluency was an issue. The assessment showed teachers that students were performing below average in a specific skill. Teachers then responded by looking at the assessment and choosing common errors to teach as mini-lessons in writing workshop with the whole class. They will then measure if assistance in those areas positively effect writing fluency.

Teachers formally and informally gather data from students daily. We use formative assessments such as asking questions, making observations, and calling for students to respond with thumbs up/ thumbs downs. We gather summative assessments such as exit tickets, student work, quizzes and standardized tests. This writing fluency assessment is one example of a rich data source that teachers use to inform their practice.

Data provides feedback to teachers about the performance
of individuals and groups of students, and teachers can draw
on this data… [for feedback]. Feedback improves learning by
identifying achievable gaps between desired and actual performance.
Teaching successes and improvements in learning thus develop from
evidence-based teaching and learning. Meiers, M. (2008)

The Benefits of the Flipped Classroom

8th grade math teacher, Anna Maria D’lppolito, initially made a video on Vimeo as a part of her substitute plans because she was not confident that her replacement was up to speed on Algebra; she wanted to be sure that class time was not lost. Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams recorded their first lessons to provide busy students, who missed class due to sports and activities, with an online tool so they would be able to keep apace with learning taking place in the classroom. All three teachers describe an, ‘aha moment’ when they realized that this strategy could be a part of a larger approach to deepen teaching and learning. Six years later Bergann and Sams wrote, Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. And last week, I caught up with Anna Maria regarding her practice at Brookwood School.

In our conversation, she made sure to differentiate this teaching strategy from a “chalk and talk with different talk.” Instead, she described these videos as “a more discovery-oriented, interactive experience tailored to her students’ needs.” Her Vimeos, in general, are interactive mini-lessons lasting on average a little less then 20 min. All are posted on her class webpage, accessible to all students. Throughout each video, Anna Maria poses questions such as “What are solutions to this inequality?” She ends the video with a few extended examples and practice problems for students. And she makes clear that, like other online tools, teachers must take time to discuss how to appropriately use the technology. She explains, “You have to teach students how to use the videos, how to slow the learning down by using the pause and replay button, how to take notes that students will use, how to write questions, and how to summarize learnings concisely.”

Like Bergaman and Sams, the benefits to Anna Maria’s students are clear. Her practice has implications for teachers beyond the world of 8th grade math.

Supports Differentiating Instruction
Flipping the classroom provides an increased ability to tailor instruction for students based on their needs. Students can speed up a lesson if it is review. They can slow it down by pausing the video or repeating it. They can return to the video later if they need to see it again. Students can use the videos to brush up on a specific topic they need additional support or to prepare for a test/exam.

Reshapes Class Times and creates a more enriching and efficient use of class time
Rather than spending class time introducing a new concept, now student can use the entire class period to work through the concepts students don’t understand or apply their learnings in a real-world context. The chart below from Flip Your Classroom compares class-time.

Table 2.1 Comparison of Class Time in Traditional versus Flipped Classrooms

Reduces Cheating
Anna Maria notes that recently heard a parent explain how her daughter was Skyping with another classmate while watching the video. The students were helping each other understand the concept on the video. Anna Maria noted that in the past, if there was discussion about the work at home, particularly a problem set, then that probably meant students would be giving or receiving “help” on solutions that might be preventing them from getting to place where they fully understood and could do other similar problems on their own. However, she valued the collaboration over this type of homework because students were helping each other to understand the concept rather than to find an answer. Anna Maria notes that the key is for students to identify learning as their goal, instead of focusing on the completion of assignments.

Promotes greater in classroom participation and authentic collaboration around math
When students come to class they debrief the Vimeo in groups of 4. They look over questions they have generated the night before and things that they have learned. Students come to class with knowledge and can help others. Other students have already identified what they do not know and come to class to fill in those learning gaps.

Anna Maria notes that while Bergmann and Sams’ work informs her practice, the implementation is not identical to theirs. She incorporates some elements while tailoring others and she would encourage other teachers to do the same.

Are you flipping the classroom in a class beyond math? What tweaks have you made to this educational approach? Are there other benefits I have not noted?