Community Circle In a Senior Class

Today was day two of restorative justice which saw us in the circles as a participant as well as getting a chance to facilitate.  I found this experience helped me gain the confidence needed to run circles more frequently in my classes.  

I didn’t post this last time but the idea of restorative practice is to ask the right questions that will lead students to understand their actions had implications because they had to think deeper.  The following questions will help get away from the “I don’t know” response students give when we used to ask “why did you do that”.

 
I have used these before without knowledge of the program and have found they do get students to think and they lead to more meaningful steps to solving problems. 

Last year I did complete tribes training which I feel helped me understand the basics of the circle and the need for consistent use so that students saw it as multidimensional.  Those are the two keys to being successful with this practice.  If you don’t build the foundation with the students and have them experience how powerful the circle can be for getting your voice heard, shy students will not gain the confidence needed to share their input into the classroom.  The other part is using it for other purposes so that students start to gain the idea of community and that the circle is for sharing, good and bad.

The major trouble I have seen in the past and even today is the idea that in order to use these circles you need to gain a level of trust with your class.  In a secondary classroom this proves to be more difficult as we only have them for 76 minutes a day, try to implement our rules, and cram curriculum into their head.  This year I have found that I sense a stronger community with my students, and that is why last Thursday I attempted an impromptu circle.

My grade 11 class was upset with their results on the last test.  In order to diffuse the situation and have the students still trust that I had their best interest at heart, I formed a circle.  I explained the rules about no put downs, which is already established day to day, and that you had a right to pass if you weren’t comfortable sharing this time.  I was nervous as I had never facilitated a circle before but knew that this was needed more than new content to keep the class cohesive.  The prompt was the key as I focused on what the class could do better to help them prepare (what I could do) and what they could do/would like to do better in the future.  By making them think about the second part it took away from the blame on me or someone else and made it into a we need to do all these things to make it better.

At the end a couple of students turned and said, this was amazing and appreciated it because it let them voice what they didn’t like and what we could do to make the future tests and assessments better.  Since Thursday I have found that they are doing the things they said they would to better prepare and are appreciating the smaller things I have been doing to meet the needs they set for their success. 

I am happy to have been part of both sessions (tribes and restorative practice) and would recommend one, or both, to any teacher as a way of changing the mentality of the class and as a way to make a group closer, even for 76 minutes.

My next steps are to bring it to my other class and have check ins on Monday and Friday to see how they are feeling in order to help them socially, emotionally, and academically.

Video Games and Teaching

I recently spent the weekend finishing off the game the Last of Us for the Playstation 3.  I had been meaning to play it for a while but the fact is I never had the time.  After getting started I instantly got into the story and couldn’t stop thinking of ways to beat a certain level or even strategies to best use my player’s skills in the game play (I even asked my students for some hints as I was getting stuck).  The one thing that stuck out to me as I finished was “How can we compete at school with the stimulation that these games are providing our students?”

As a computer programming teacher I instantly saw the connections that could be made and how we could spin a lesson out of video game design and storytelling, and then go on to create our own games.  Unfortunately as a math teacher I was (and still am) stuck on the idea of how to get students into a subject that is often deemed one of the worst classes.  I often try to being humour into the course and try to connect what we are doing to real-life and even popular media (singing all about the bass when working on power laws), but I want to further inquire about gamifying my classroom.

I feel that with the amount of students that play games (girls as well as boys), we could all benefit from the power of gamifying classrooms.  Games provide that connection to our imagination and provide us with opportunities to try new things without being punished when failure occurs.  Although I strive to make the learning zone in my classroom a fail-safe zone where students feel comfortable in answering questions even without full certainty, it is not the same feeling as with a game.  Due to the fact the lives can come back and that you will not be judged on intelligence, failing in a game is much safer than failing in real life.  I have tried to make “games” that have helped the students get interested in tackling problems and being successful in their own learning, but it is not the same stimulation that a game provides.

I have often thought about making the MAP4C class into a game of life or the SIMS, because they learn about buying a house, saving money, and planning for their future.  I think the trouble lies in the delivery of content such as statistics (two-variable data sets, weighted averages, percentile ranks, etc.), exponent laws and exponential functions, and algebraic models (linear vs. quadratic vs. exponential graphs).  There are the trickier topics that can demotivate students and I want to further explore how to incorporate these into the ideas that we have for personal finance, trigonometry and geometry.  These are the questions that I have for myself and have for my colleagues who are further interested in making the courses more interactive like a game as that can help our students stay focused in this over-stimulated world.

It goes without saying that we will have to face the challenges of motivating students for a long period of time when they are developing shorter attentions spans.  With games, smartphones, and Netflix we are becoming the most boring and least controlled element in the students lives.  It is a difficult (but interesting) challenge although I am unsure of how we are able to compete or even teach the students content that they do not feel is applicable to their lives.  Reaching the students and getting them to see the application of content in their lives is one of the greatest accomplishments but is also the biggest obstacle.  We need to use the lesson of great video games: get them hooked to the story and the tasks at hand and they will want to continue attempting the work for hours (even days).

Teaching Resiliency

This year I have taken over a class after a month and a half of being taught by another teacher with a different mentality and different teaching style.  It has been a tough three weeks for both the students and myself, but for the most part we are all getting used to each others tendencies.  Included in the Growth Mindset approach to my teaching, I am trying to help my students (both that I teach and coach) about resiliency.

In the mixed level math class the students had a test from the last teacher that needed to be done when I walked in.  I immediately worked on diffusing the anger and outbursts that the students had towards doing a test after not being properly prepared.  We spent a few lessons ironing out any misconceptions, and my main goal was to instill confidence in their abilities.  I knew that most of the students would be successful but needed to have the right mindset to do so.

As I anticipated, there were students who were not thrilled with the outcome of their test.  I tried to talk to those students individually by letting them know that there is always a chance to improve and a chance to learn from our mistakes.  From that day on, I saw a big change in some of the students and saw them fight through the troubles they had before.  Just today I saw them face the challenges of the lesson with a positive attitude and with more courage to take risks.

I had a moment of learning resilience myself.  I had a few bad lessons where students were not focused and they had a bit of attitude towards what we were doing in class.  After having a bit of a hard time after school with what my next steps were I remembered what I told my students when they were struggling with things.  I feel like it is something that new teachers often forget, to live by the words we teach our students.  I know that after taking a step back and thinking about it, I was able to bounce back and realize that I need to show the same resiliency that my students showed.

Teaching A Split Class (in Secondary)

This summer I had the unique task of teaching summer school but my class was a split class.  I had a Grade 12 Advanced Functions group and  a Grade 10 Academic group in a single room.  At the start I was really nervous and feeling slightly overwhelmed at the task at hand.  Worrying that the students would not be working if I wasn’t watching them all the time and trying to think about how I would give each group of students the time that they deserved were the initial thoughts I had.  

The first day felt like a rollercoaster ride, simply because everything seemed to have just happened and I didn’t know how it had all worked out.  That night I made sure that I went on to plan the day out better and to make sure I had structured my day to avoid that feeling again.  Once the structure was set out by myself, the students felt more at ease and higher learning took place for most of the students.  The next week and a half went much better although I know that if I am fortunate enough to do this again next year I will have a better idea of what to do.

 

Some of the big takeaways I found in this experience were:

– both sets of students developed their own routine in the classroom.  Students knew when particular tasks were to be completed and they scheduled their time around it.

– students developed a level of respect for one another within the first day.  When I was teaching one group the other would work quietly and not interrupt.

– Grade 12 students were given the opportunity to re-learn topics they may have not been as comfortable with (like factoring) without having to ask in front of their peers

– Grade 10 students could see the applications of the topics they were learning in the new context (I would also vocalize how the skills from Grade 10 were now considered to be skills they knew by Grade 12).

 

One of the big things I would like to do next time is try to create opportunities for the two groups to work together (have the grade 12’s teach the 10’s a skill, or even have the 10’s talk about what they are doing and work through problem solving).   I was wondering if anyone out there has had this experience and has any ideas on how to make it less of two separate groups and more of one whole group.

The Power of New Technology

Today I had the opportunity of supply teaching a history class that was completely self-directed.  The students were creating blog posts on a particular topic in World History.  The teacher left the link in the supply notes so that I could look at the posts if I was interested.  I found that because the class was working hard I found myself captured by the posts and topics that the students wrote about.  I even found myself reading these throughout the day because I was interested in the other posts that were available.  Some of the students shared their view on the EU, Terrorism, Torture, and Global Warming, based on the research they have completed to show their new understanding.  The class made me think about how much we have changed in terms of teaching and learning.

Teaching math I have found that I did not think of ways or redefining my class and then integrating technology into it.  I have mainly used it for substitution and modification (through the use of new apps so students can continue to learn outside of the classroom).  But from this class and the computer science class at my current school it has made me start to think about how to foster the power of blogging in my math class. I feel that this would be a fantastic way to have my students truly think about what they have been learning.

In my future classes I feel like I am going to use blogging or even forms more often so that we are using the power of technology to positively enhance student learning. I know that this year I have learned a lot about integrating technology and have tried to use it more often but I am still learning and growing like my students are when they learn something new.

Teaching Perseverance

One thing I never thought about in my own schooling and on my teaching placements was teaching students the value of perseverance. It is something I became more aware of when I worked at the college level as a teaching assistant and then again this semester when I started teaching the grade 12 college math course.

I think this post links well with my earlier post on growth mindset because I have been trying to implement the idea of “I can” in my students minds. Today was one of those days where I later realized that the teaching I did was more than just teaching math content. I felt like I was able to teach a bit of perseverance to my students today which positively affected those who put in the effort. I had a couple have those “ahh” moments that we hope to see a lot of our students have.

At the end of the class I made sure to let my students know that we did struggle at the start but when they kept pushing through we made it to solving the problem effectively. Before the start of class today I had a student come to get additional work because they were going home sick. This made me realize that I needed to congratulate my students on their efforts because they needed to know that I appreciated their hard work in a difficult task.

I feel like the two lessons yesterday and today gave them the confidence they required in a task that they usually had difficulty with. I have always strived to create a connection with my class so that they felt comfortable with taking chances, but I am still learning how to motivate them to consistently persevere in math.

Replacing TI 83 with Chrome Apps

In the past unit I taught on graphical models, the course focused on regression modelling using the TI-83 Graphing Calculators.  Having used them myself during my high school education I was initially excited for the chance to use them in my own classroom.  Unfortunately it was short lived when I went to the GAFE Summit and I decided to use the Chromebooks and the app Geogebra.

The first day I brought the Chromebooks into the classroom my students were slightly confused on how a math class could use the same technology they used in English and the Humanities.  I introduced the program, created a help guide with Google Docs that they could access, and walked them through the new piece of technology (while assuring them that I was still a beginning user so we were learning together).  After the class ended a lot of discussions arose about the unfamiliarity of the program and how some wanted to use the graphing calculators even though they did not fully enjoy those either.

After the third time we used the tech students who “mastered” the steps were able to help their classmates who did not fully understand how to produce the various regression models.  To my delight students were more appreciative of the new tool they were provided and even found that their resilience was paying off.  Great discussions in the class began about which model to use based on the situation and the R Squared value.  I will admit I was delighted that this was working well and I began to share my new knowledge to my coworkers.

Students wrote their test and instead of the smiling faces or confident submissions I was expecting I found that students were confused and were very upset about their potential mark.  I spoke to some students after the class to understand why they were not very happy with the way the assessment went and their responses initially shocked me.  “We felt like we could produce the graphs and describe them, but we could not describe a graph that was provided for us”.  I thought through the unit and looked at my plans only to realize that I focused a lot of the lesson on being able to use the tech and not as much time as needed on understanding the outcome.

As a first year teacher I realized that I fell into the bad trap of getting lost in the new tech and unfortunately created students who could follow steps instead of thinkers.  One thing that I think will help me in my next attempt at using this is writing out a pros and cons list and a next steps list.  I also started tracking what points students had difficulty with so I can prepare for these in future classes.

My question to those of you reading it is how do you prepare your students to be clearer thinkers rather than students who follow steps? (and this example above was a college level class that I am looking at helping develop deeper understanding)

Growth Mindset

Yesterday I attended Edcamp London and went into a session about growth mindset.  Not knowing what this would entail, I was wondering if the topic was going to focus on the growth mindset of educators or students.  When I went in I was hoping to get the perspective on how we as educators can help students in their mindset.  I currently feel that my Grade 12 class would benefit from me educating them on persevering in their education as most are off to college in September.  It was my goal to get a better idea of how I could educate my students to have a better mindset in their future education.

Great conversations started from Andrew Kwiecien, Ryan Chisholm, and Jeremie Roselle about the book on mindset from Carol Dweck.  The book covers how we can use our growth mindset when we want.  It looked at the mindset of professionals in education, corporate businesses, and parents and discussed how their own mindsets affect their life.  It is a book I plan to read shortly because it sounds like it will be very effective for helping me inspire my students to take on the challenge of having a growth mindset.

In our conversations we talked about the stigmas and the preconceptions students have about their ability to succeed in a particular subject.  For example, if a student has not been successful in math throughout elementary school, they will come into secondary school with the mindset “I’m not good at math, so I can’t do it”.  I know that I have seen this in England where I taught and this was one of the challenges we regularly talked about but never thought of the solutions on how to overcome this.  In our conversation we also looked at how students take the praise they have been given by parents and teachers and use it to create a “mask” that puts them into a comfort zone in the classroom.  We also talked about how students use this mask to shy away from taking chances and asking questions to help their learning.

One of the solutions we started to develop in the session was the idea of  modelling the growing mindset to our group of students.  This directly linked to a new approach to problem solving I am currently taking.  When we are solving a problem in class I talk about the thought process I am going through so that I model to my students how I want them to approach the problem.  I also want the students to understand that even the teacher has to think about the problem before coming up with the solution, nothing “just happens” for us to answer a question.

The issue we foresaw with that is that these new “masks” may be created from this new praise, which would defeat the purpose we have for praise in the first place.  Although from this point it seemed like a daunting task and one that was a catch-22, we as a group had an interesting thought.  If all of us (or a vast majority of us) in a school came to the agreement to start working on this growth mindset, we may start seeing more success and “I can” attitude in our learners in subjects they didn’t feel they could do before.  The question that sparks from this: How could we get more fixed mindset people in our schools to adopt to the growth mindset mentality?

We, as teachers, will face these challenges when it comes to having students think about their ability before they enter the class.  It is our job to help students “break” the mask they have created and provide them with the opportunities and experiences to gain new comfort levels in situations they usually feel uncomfortable in.  My question to you is: how do you work with students to change their mindset and make them feel confident in all areas of their education?

When do teachers stop teaching a class?

Yesterday morning I was listening to TSN 1050 sports talk radio and they were talking about how hockey coach Ken Hitchcock was talking about how by the playoff time he was not coaching his team anymore. He was merely there as motivation for his team and was simply saying the same things he did all season to the team.

This instantly made me think about how we as teachers are slowly walking away from continually teaching our students and how we are there to guide them in their learning. The only main difference I see is that we are always teaching our students, we just aren’t doing it in the way that revolves around us preaching to them.

This has been one of my major struggles this teaching block because my students are used to and most comfortable with having a note and then practicing similar questions. Today I even tried to have them lead the lesson with a warm up activity on correlations and linear models. This didn’t work as well as I had hoped but the one aspect that is starting to improve is that my class is willing to work through a question without any guidance to see how they fare with it.

My next challenge with this group is to get their excitement up about the upcoming units. The past unit was a major confidence boost because it was something they have been doing for a few years and they have no mastered it. I want to use that excitement and confidence to motivate them through this unit on graphical models and future units to the end of the semester.

How do you motivate your classes when you have students reluctant about a particular topic due to past experiences?

GAFE Summit 2014 Day 1 – Mind Blown!

So today was the first day of the Ontario GAFE (Google Apps for Education) Summit in Kitchener.  It was my first time at a summit like this so I was unsure as to what I would expect from it.  I was overwhelmed from all the different sessions that were taking place in the day and couldn’t choose, but I was lucky enough to have some great colleagues and friends who joined shared document to get all the information from as many sessions as possible.  By the end of the day, my mind was blown from all that went on and ideas were flying around with all the things I could do.  Here are some of the major ones that stood out.

The first big thing I learned from today were that we need to look at the SAMR Model when we are looking at using tech in the classroom.

As discussed in the amazing keynote from Jennie Magiera (@msmagiera), when we start using tech we are either at, or slightly below, the Substitution level of the model.  Which as teachers we think is great until we realize that it is not really doing anything but replacing worksheets with iPads or Chromebooks.  To move into the Modification and Redefinition stage we need to think of using tech in the way that Barney and Dora the explorer help young children learn.   I find that since I am early into using tech in my classroom, I am finding myself stuck at the substitution level, which can be frustrating when I want to be able to make tech part of the learning.  I am hoping that with the use of tech in my classroom in the semester I will be able to move away from substitution.

The next big thing that I took away from the my sessions was MIT App Inventor.  This was formerly a Google Labs product, but was later given to MIT to further develop.  The session was amazing because we were able to create a basic app and then test it on an android device instantly.  Any changes that we made would then transfer to the device and we could see the results immediately.  The session brought me to think of the way in which I could use the app inventor with a math class.  My initial thought was to have students make apps to solve the problems we were doing in class, for example solving trigonometric equations.  But later on I realized that this was simply substitution on the SAMR Model, so it’s back to the drawing board on that one (any thoughts on that would be appreciated).

The other two sessions that were incredible were the ones by James Peterson on Google Draw and by Kyle Pace on creating a Google Sites.  This was truly effective because we were taken step by step on how to create something based on the two products.  The two can go hand in hand as well since we can link what we create to the site and all we have to do is change the image if required (no need to re-link).  If you are using GAFE in your school, consider doing what Kyle and his colleagues did by creating easy to use templates for the not-so-savvy teachers who could use a starting point.  Its a simple click in the site settings that saves your current layout as a template for all in your school/board to use in the future.  Learned about some add-ons and sites, like pixlr and clippingmagic.com, that are perfect for getting jpeg images to have transparent backgrounds.

The demo slam at the end of the day highlighted all the amazing presenters and the great things they are doing with GAFE in their classes.  Some of the ones I want to further check out are Google Read and Write, Synergyse, Google Maps Engine, Pear Deck, Google Black Menu and the whole idea of having apps scripts.  I am trying hard to figure out which sessions I will go to tomorrow but it’s going to be another tough choice.

If you have a chance tomorrow to follow the conference because you couldn’t attend, just follow the #gafesummit on Twitter for all the amazing tweets from the incredible sessions going on.