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Hearing Voices

7/6/2013

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While I was on a walk with my companion this morning I had two conversations. One was brilliant; I hope the other was meaningful. Ok, I’ll admit the brilliant conversation may not have actually been brilliant, but I can assure you Cooper thought it was. You see, Cooper has four legs and weighs about 15 pounds. Cooper is a YorkiePoo and he thinks anything I say is brilliant if it begins with, “Do you want to go for a walk?” 

No one else, not even Cooper, heard the meaningful conversation I had this morning. As you may have guessed it was a conversation held inside my head as I thought about this post. I have been thinking quite a bit lately about student voice, reflective writing, misconceptions, assessments, and student’s fears of looking dumb and “feeling stupid.” I think they are all closely related and the conversation I had with myself this morning helped me sort it out a bit. 
 
I think we have to start by thinking about assessment. No - not the dreaded standardized tests. I'm also not referring to "grades." I mean formative assessments; the ones that tell us what students know. We "teach" every day, but that's not the point of school. The point of school is for students to learn. How will we know what they are learning if we don't assess? Assessment should be part of every day and every lesson. The question is, what are we going to assess? Are we going to assess what they know, what they understand, or what they can do? If you think about it for a moment these are all very different things. 

We can assess knowledge in number of ways. We can use student response systems (clickers). Edmodo and Socrative are great for little quizzes and polls. Wallwisher and Linoit are great for exit slips (as are Post It notes). Many of the traditional literacy strategies are great ways to make formative assessments. I have several
here. 
 
Assessing what students can do - skills - is again not terribly difficult. All we have to do is design tasks or provide opportunities for students to demonstrate what they are able to do.

The difficult thing to assess is what students understand. Understanding is difficult to assess because we have to get students to reveal their inner voice. You see, I have come to believe every student we teach is almost two students. There is the student we see sitting before us, and the student hiding underneath the skin that may not be the same as the one we see and hear.

We all have two voices. There is the voice that we hear when we speak to someone, the public voice. Then we have the voice inside our head, our inner voice that is often not articulated openly. We all know that the silent inner voice and the voice we hear are not always in agreement. Haven't we all said one thing and thought something else? That's a problem when we are trying to find out what students truly understand about a concept.

Formative assessments help us activate our public "outer" voice. If we want to find out if students can state and give a definition of Newton's laws all we have to do is give any of the formative assessments listed and we'll find out.

If we want to know if students really understand and can apply Newton's laws it's more difficult. I have seen students "lock up" and not participate. They will give "word barf" on a written assessment. They will act out. They will copy and paste. They copy other's work. They tell us what they think we want to hear. I'm sure you can add to the list. The question is why do they do this? Are they lazy? Dumb? Unmotivated?

I believe they are afraid. They are simply afraid of looking dumb in front of their peers and feeling stupid. Forgive my use of that word but it is how kids describe the feeling. We have to think about how the brain works for just a moment. We all find a mental construct, or schema, that organizes and provides a framework for understanding the world around us. The problem is this framework may be based on misconceptions.

In science particularly, misconceptions are a killer. For example, I can teach my physics students about waves and optics with little difficulty - they don't have any preconceived ideas about the subject. They take what they learn and just run with it. Newton's laws are a different story. They learn about them in 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 11th grade. Most students can recite them without much prompting. They can give examples they learned from class. What many can't do is apply them in any meaningful way to a new situation. Mostly because they  come to class convinced (incorrectly) that they know what they are doing.

The reason is that they never really change their schema - their inner voice. On the outside they state the right answer; on the inside they cling to their misconceptions. As a teacher we often realize that students still have misconceptions. When we notice this we design lessons that challenge their existing mental model - we create conflict. I think we drop the ball by not giving them a safe way to resolve that mental conflict.

I believe students want to learn. They want to know how things work. The problem is that in order to change the way they see the world, they have to risk being wrong - stumbling as they find their new mental model. They often don't take the risk because they don't want to look dumb in front of the class. This fear of losing face is often greater than the desire to learn. The consequence is that nothing changes. The learning is superficial and shallow. No deep understanding is achieved. 

So how do we fix the problem?

My goal for the coming year is to explore the reflective writing process as a way to help students process information. I hope to teach them to think critically and wrestle with content through writing. If I can give them a "safe place" maybe they will take a few mental risks and overcome their misconceptions in order to gain true understanding of the content.

My idea is to begin by having students complete reflections in Google docs. This is a first step in opening up to me. As we progress through the year I hope to have students begin blogging and sharing their thinking with their classmates. Ultimately I want them to share their blogs with other students in other classes. (You listening Daniel, Katie?)

I expect this to be a bit ugly in implementation. I am a science teacher - I'm not really sure how to teach writing. All I know is that I'm convinced it is the right thing to do for my kids so I'm going to dive in and figure it out as I go. I have found a couple of documents online that I feel might provide a good place to begin. They can be found at the bottom of this post. 

If any of you have any experience or ideas that you think might be helpful please share them. I am hoping the power of a professional learning community will help here a little. At the very least I will keep you posted in the months ahead and let you know how things work out. I hope Cooper ends up being correct and it is a brilliant idea.
 
reflective_writing_introduction.pdf
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reflective_journal_guide.pdf
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A Simple Question

4/8/2013

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Professional development is something all teachers participate in. We have in-service and training provided by our districts. We attend workshops at our service centers. We attend conferences. We engage other educators on twitter. The common goal of all of these activities is to be more effective educators and increase the knowledge and skills of our students. It’s also nice if they score well on standardized tests. I think we can make the claim that PD is learning how to “fix things.”

I was thinking over the weekend – how do we identify areas that need improvement? We listen to educational gurus hoping to learn how to become the greatest teacher ever. With all due respect to these educational gurus – many of whom are no longer in the classroom – how do they know what’s best for my class? I think perhaps we sometimes listen to the wrong voices.

I decided over the weekend to talk to my students; I decided to ask them for some advice. My question was quite simple: If attendance in my physics class was completely optional, what would make them want to come every day anyway?

I made a Google form and ask that question. The students were not required to use their names. I have included the results here. I put this out there just for your information. Clearly I do some things well. Equally there is room for improvement. My class is not perfect; no one is planning a made-for-TV movie based on my life. That said I think the responses the students left were thoughtful and sincere.

Let me know what you think about what they had to say. I encourage you to ask your students the same question. Let us know what happens.

coming_to_class_questionaire_ii.pdf
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Hybrid Standards Based Grading

3/1/2013

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I have been interested in standards based grading since I first heard about it seven months or so ago. You can recognize the merit of some ideas the moment you hear about them – this is one of those ideas. Grading students on the degree to which they have mastered a well defined objective makes sense. It’s just that simple.

Recognizing the merits of such a system, you would think I implemented SBG as soon as possible, right? Well – no. The problem is that our school is firmly entrenched in the traditional model of grading. What I want to share is the system I have found that feels like SBG, but looks like traditional grading. The best endorsement I have is that my students have enthusiastically adopted my system.

So here’s my approach to grading as influenced by the SBG philosophy:


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A Flipped View of Curriculum

10/7/2012

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Curriculum is often defined a specific course of studies, but what does that really mean? Curriculum may be interpreted as a sum of what is taught; or the material that is covered in a certain course. When a school adopts a “curriculum” it is often chosen according to the lessons that are delivered and the way they are presented. Do you notice how teacher centered that sounds?

I have come to believe that curriculum should be defined as what a student needs to understand about a certain topic in order to be an informed and productive adult in the 21st century. Curriculum is not what we should teach, but what students should understand and be able to do. This is a significant point – It defines a goal rather than a prescription. In fairness, some curriculum does outline what students should understand. It is my observation however that many teachers view curriculum as what to teach; I was guilty of that for a period of time.

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Flipclass – What’s Working After Five Weeks

9/28/2012

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Next week is the end of the six-weeks grading period. There has been enough time for the initial beginning of school enthusiasm to wear off and reality to set in. It’s time to evaluate what’s working after five weeks of school. I’m happy to report that several things are going well; I’m not sure they are all a result of a flipped classroom.

There are four modifications that I believe have made a significant impact on my classroom in the past five weeks:

-         Focusing on what students need to be doing in order to create understanding.

-         Designing formative assessments that inform me about what students truly know and what they are thinking.

-         Guiding students along the Ladder of Abstraction to help them confront misconceptions and build good mental models.

-         Using Edmodo for class communication.


The flipped classroom model has made the above changes possible. Just making a decision to try a new approach to instruction has caused me to place my entire focus on the student.

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Stop Planning What to Teach

8/1/2012

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Did that get your attention? I think it is far more important to consider what students need to learn and what they need to do. I may be splitting hairs, but I think the distinction between “What will I do?” and “What will the students do?” is a significant shift in thinking that can alter a classroom in a profound way.

Of course teachers plan ahead concerning the knowledge and skills students need in order to understand concepts. What I am advocating is a mindset of assessment that will help us determine what students actually know and can do.
Watch the video "A Private Universe" produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (It is WELL worth the time to watch)

The point is not to ridicule the lack of understanding by the students or the efforts of the teacher. Rather, the point is to demonstrate the need to alter the way we teach.
 
Video - A Private Universe

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A Collision of Hunches

7/21/2012

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I have become a fan of the TED Talks videos on YouTube. There are a lot of people there sharing some interesting ideas. I recently came across a talk by Steven Johnson titled "Where Good Ideas Come From". That sounded intriguing; I need some good ideas. I saw that his comments were available from RSA Animate, so I picked that format as I find it entertaining. My comments relate to his, so watch the video and then I will follow with how his talk relates to my journey toward a flipped classroom (It's only four minutes long). 

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It Takes Two to Play Catch

7/21/2012

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This is a re-posting of some thoughts about literacy from this past school year.

It Takes Two to Play Catch

Have you ever thought about playing catch? I was thinking about classroom instruction recently and the idea occurred to me that teaching was analogous to playing catch. More specifically, it is like showing someone how to play catch. Playing catch is deceptively easy; one person throws a ball – the other person catches it and throws it back. What could be more simple that that? Or is it as simple as it first appears?

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Disruptive Technologies, Ivory Towers, and Technology in Education

7/21/2012

1 Comment

 
This first blog posting is not really my first post --- say what? I wrote a commentary with the above title in January of 2012. This was posted elsewhere but I wanted to include it here as it will give some insights into my thoughts about education.

Disruptive Technologies, Ivory Towers, and Literacy in Education

I recently asked one of my eighth grade classes, “Why do we have school? What’s the point?” The most common (serious) answer was, “To prepare me for a better, more successful life.” That seems to be a reasonable answer, but when we dig a little deeper it becomes more complicated. What is a better life? What does it look like? What skills will the children need and how will they use them? These answers are no longer simple in today’s world and they hold some insight into our future roles as educators of tomorrow’s adults. As is often the case, perhaps some clues about our future can be gathered by examining the purpose and role of education in the past.

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    Author

    My name is Gary Strickland. I teach physics and IPC to high school students in rural Texas. I taught science for nine years in our middle school. Coleman is a one to one environment where all students in grades 4-12 have a laptop. I have been teaching in a tech-rich environment for over eight years. I teach using the flipped model of instruction. This blog is intended to chronicle that process.

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