Category Archives: 21st Century Learning

Every Time I Say I’m Never Going to Use This…

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Deeper Learning: Beyond 21st Century Skills (Leading Edge ...

…of course I end up needing it.  In this case, I’m talking about the stuff that I had to learn in my Preparing 21st Century Learners class for my credential. 

 The Jetsons Get Schooled: Robot Teachers in the 21st Century ...
21st (?) Century learners

    When I first opened up the book for this class, I was deeply skeptical. There was a lot of talk about school cultures, and that seemed way out of reach for someone who was just starting out as a brand new teacher.  There was a lot of talk of community buy-in, and revamping entire departments and schools, and that felt way out of my league.  Once I got deeper into the book, however, there were some great concepts that jumped out.  The first was the idea of group polishing of project-based learning plans, especially for new teachers. In the model that was presented, new teachers come on board for a week’s worth of PD that starts with veteran teachers modeling the group polishing method and ends with the new teachers presenting their projects for group polishing. I also was alternately intrigued and horrified by the idea of project-based learning as a whole.  Choice in what information they learned, and to what depth?? I struggle with the concept of not pushing all my students into learning all the things, so this isn’t natural for me at all.  But I love the idea of students pursuing knowledge out of interest instead of need to stay in lockstep with the class.
    With all of this in mind, I put together a crazy project-based learning thing that would end up launching RIGHT when shelter-in-place hit- through EdPuzzle, because we couldn’t be together in person.  The students had to choose a recipe and deconstruct the chemistry in a way that non-scientists could understand AND use to improve their cooking skills. Ultimately, releasing this during SIP was a blessing in disguise. The back-and-forth editing and discussion process I had with my students as they honed their recipes and explanations kept us in continuous contact in a constructive way.  Instead of a one-and-done grade for their explanation, they were allowed to keep revising until they got it GOOD – and then it went to an outside-the-school panel for a review. To me, that was one of the biggest scary logistical things about PBL: the outside dissemination of what the students have put together. I know the kids take criticism to heart, so exposing them to outside adult critiques was scary, but ultimately most of the students took the gentle critiques in the manner in which they were intended, making a great final cookbook product. Another great thing about having the cookbook project during SIP is that it gave the kids a reason to experiment around with cooking – they tried tweaking their own recipes, they tried each other’s recipes, and it helped keep up our sense of community.  On the last day of class, I had everyone cook someone ELSE’s food and bring it to the Zoom meeting while we debriefed the year.
  I highly recommend the group-polishing model to anyone who is about to do their first venture into the PBL world. When I was trying to put this together, I talked to not only my department chair and the other chemistry teachers (sorry guys), but I also reached out to the English team to see how we could incorporate some of the ELA concepts and/or teachers into the project. It was thanks to everyone’s questions that the final project took the shape that it did, and the deliverables and due dates got a lot more clear. 
DIY - Hand Polishing Rocks & Crystals (Sodalite) - YouTube
 I also found that releasing some control to the students actually worked well, and it allowed differentiation to a certain extent.  Some students stuck with very simple concepts, and needed extensive scaffolding and guidance to evaluate their recipes.  Other students needed guidance because they went to super advanced topics that wouldn’t be covered in the class at all, simply because they were interested in them! For each of the students, I tried to help them find resources to answer their questions. Some students really didn’t seem to be engaged in finding the answers, or even the questions (recipes) to engage themselves, which was frustrating. I’m not sure if they needed tighter guidelines/pre-selected recipes to help narrow things down, or if it was simply a mismatch between the question and their interests.
  For a first attempt, particularly in the weirdest year ever? I was pretty happy! Now comes the fine tuning for this school year…

Instagram and French (Part 1)

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This semester, I started out the first unit in all of my French classes with a totally new way of doing homework. It mainly stemmed from the fact that I’ve been struggling with homework in my teaching here because a.) I still really haven’t figured out how to grade hundreds of weekly assignments and give meaningful feedback in a way that still allows me to experience some semblance of a life outside of work, and b.) many students were not able to keep up with their assignments in French for whatever reason and were sabotaging their grades during the first semester.
So this winter, I devised a weekly project that allows students to submit homework via a medium that they’re already using on a daily basis: Instagram. I crafted a series of rules and criteria to follow in order for us to create our own network within the social media site, offering weekly assignments students were to post about, as well as an accompanying Google Form to give me suggestions for future assignments, report what they learned each week (in terms of content and what new nuggets of information they learned from their fellow classmates), and practice new French vocabulary or grammar covered each week. Further, I created my own French account to provide students with comprehensible input in the target language and models for what they could publish each week. I also wanted to give myself the experience of being a student alongside them each week. Feel free to check out my page (as well the students’ comments) here!
My ground rules for this project were to be kind and supportive of one another, to only use French, and not to use a translator (I strongly encouraged my students to make mistakes on their sites). They were to post three times a week outside of class, and periodically in class when activities called for it.
I’ll be honest: I was expecting every one of my students to be totally onboard right from the get-go. It can sometimes be a struggle to get kids off of social media, so I expected this to be a hit… but that wasn’t necessarily the case. That said, it did take some students a week or two to warm up to the idea, and some flat out didn’t enjoy it at all, but I quickly noticed higher homework completion rates over the past month and a half than I’d seen the entire first semester and that was encouraging to observe.
The project also completely surprised me in a different way: some of the students really have taken to this activity. They posted more than the minimum requirements week in and week out. They were being really kind and encouraging to one another. They were learning more about me as a person and I was learning more about them in such a short period of time. They were posting pictures of their classmates in other classes (sorry if they interrupted a chem lab or math problem to share it on their French Instagram pages…). They were sharing their pages with other students who aren’t in my French classes and only interacting with those students in French, or jokingly asking then “en français s’il vous plaît” when those students posted on their pages in English. Students in different periods and different classes followed one another. I also provided students with links to French-speaking celebrities (politicians, athletes, actors, singers, bloggers, etc.) and students interacted with native speakers and learned real-world vocabulary from scrolling through their feeds!
I did run into a few hiccups when three sets of parents notified me that they didn’t want their child on social media, when a student lost his device, and when a student broke his phone and couldn’t use it to record video. For those rare instances, I had the students submit their videos, pictures, and sentences through Google Docs in Schoology. I worry they didn’t get the full experience of the other students, but they were still able to contribute and check in on my page from the web browser version of Instagram to get the same input as their classmates.
In terms of my time management and grading, I felt like this was an extremely simple way to neatly organize a portfolio of student work for the entire unit. I created one giant Google Spreadsheet with links to each of the students’ pages internally. When students did research or poster projects, I had them record videos and submit them to their IG pages. I used student videos as comprehension exercises in class (instead of the same boring two actors my book uses). I asked students to make commercials. Students had to tag one another and ask each other questions (and then respond to anyone who’d asked them questions – just as I did when three students tagged me and asked me questions). And because I pretty much always have my phone on me, I could check in on their feeds throughout the day and comment back on student posts, giving them nearly real-time feedback on their work. I graded their posts once a week in PowerSchool based off a completion rubric I made.
The most amazing and meaningful thing I’ve taken away from this project is how quickly I got to learn about my students. My daily classroom interactions seem more meaningful and connected than they felt in the past. Last semester, a student might make a comment about their interests in class, but I would soon forget because my brain is like a Chrome browser with a million tabs open. However, after seeing a post of a student brushing her horse, and when she mentioned she liked horses in class, I remembered the post and immediately asked her more specific questions about her horse in French. In that moment, she knew that I had read her post, that I remembered it, and that I genuinely wanted to know more about her life.
On the other hand, the students also got to learn a lot more about me as a person. They now know all my pets (and husband) by name and they ask me how they’re doing periodically, they know my favorite French singers, the movies I like, and what kind of food I enjoy eating. Since they were all so brave and open in trying out this new project and in sharing personal details with me and their classmates during the month (they sang, played instruments, juggled, spoke for an entire minute in uninterrupted French, vlogged, introduced me to their friends and family, posted jokes to French-speaking celebrities, and so much more) I also put myself in a vulnerable position in solidarity and posted a video of me singing for them in French!
Since finishing this first unit on Tuesday, I’ve begun collecting student surveys and their overall thoughts on the project that I will share in a future post. I already know that this project has its ups and downs, so along with student feedback, I am beginning to make modifications for our next unit of study. Oh, and in two weeks I am attending a conference workshop with another French teacher who’s successfully integrated Instagram into his classroom experience. More to come soon!

KQED Learn

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This past semester I have had the privilege of being a pilot
teacher for a new online platform for teachers and students by KQED. KQED Learn
is a safe, online learning site for student-driven inquiry and collaboration
across classrooms, communities and regions. KQED Learn was created to connect
students in an online forum to use community sourcing to investigate questions,
evaluate sources, and share one’s findings. 
It is a project and student publishing platform.  I was one of 45 teachers from across the Bay
Area that had a role in developing and refining the platform and its curriculum
and resources.  The platform will launch
publicly later this year. (I apologize for not having screen shots to be able
to share at this time.  The website is
offline until it is launched publicly). I also have found the KQED online community a wonderful resource for teachers.  I had no idea the quality of content that they provide.  Check it out! 
What I am so excited about is the ability for students to collaborate
across schools in a safe online forum. As a teacher you can post an
investigation (question) and students have the ability to post sources that
they find and other students can comment and rank each source.  My students found this incredibly
helpful.  They were challenged to post
sources that they felt were credible and that other students would be impressed
by and that they would want to use.  I
found my students used much more legitimate sources because of the peer
observation piece. 
I have to share another creation of KQED that I find
amazing.  There is a team of young film
makers and journalists that are creating a series of web videos called Above the Noise.   They
range in topics from global warming, gerrymandering, genetic engineering, 3D
printing of guns, internet trolls and much more.  I highly suggest you checkout their library
of videos on their youtube channel. 

How Do We Use Our Long Blocks?

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After a great long block yesterday in my Algebra 2 class followed by an inspiring meeting with my Math Department colleagues, I’m thinking a lot about how we do (and should) use our long blocks.  Yesterday, during our long block we spent 80 minutes on one problem, which is linked here.   I organized the class as follows:

  • 0-20 minutes:  Students worked in groups and were not allowed to ask me (or any other group) questions.  It’s during this time that the students need to show grit, perseverance and confidence in their ability to handle new and challenging tasks, on their own and without me showing them the way.  Here are two videos showing what this looked like yesterday:

  • 20-30 mins:  I opened the class to public questions to me, meaning I would take questions and provide feedback with everyone listening.  The rules were that the questions had to be specific, (i.e. not “I don’t know how to start this”) but not so specific that they gave away the answer (i.e. not “This is what we did.  Is it right?”).  My feedback was strategically reflective during this time.  If they asked, “Do we need to make equations?” I answered, “What do you think?”  “What might the variables be?”  “How many equations might we need?”  “What might they represent?”  
  • 30-40 mins:  Another period of time to work in groups without any help from me.  It’s during this time that they should reflect and think critically about the feedback I’ve given them.
  • 40-80 mins:  I circulate and offer help and feedback to the groups individually until they finish the problem.
In all reality, I could use 1.5-2 hours to complete a problem like this really well.  Toward the end, it becomes a mad dash to complete the problem.  The groups are active, spirited and the adrenaline is running.  To make sure they really understand the problem, I wish I could give them more space to come to an understanding on their own but as the period comes to a close I end up giving more help than I’d like because I want them to have the satisfaction of completing the problem and finishing the task.  
I share this experience because, after our Math discussion yesterday, I’m thinking a lot about how we use these long blocks.  I know that many of my colleagues like to use the long blocks to give tests, and I understand the appeal:  there’s more time for students to work and more time to give a longer test (i.e. more questions/variability in what we ask).  But, I wonder how this reflects our recent discussions about making our math teaching less focused on discrete, right/wrong answer tasks and more focused on larger, open-ended tasks that require critical thinking, innovation, grit and perseverance.  What does this say about our priorities if we devote our longest class period to an assessment?  Could we (should we) commit as a department to devote our long blocks to more open-ended tasks?  
I know the first reason to say “No” to this question is time, and that is a real concern.  The problem that I describe above could have been taught by me in about 15 minutes, if I had used a traditional format of me demonstrating the answer on the board.  Instead I chose to spend more than five times that amount of class time because I believe that teaching skills is a worthwhile investment and if I have to sacrifice some content later, I can live with that.  In other words, at the end of my course, I want my students to have grown in their critical thinking skills, their problem-solving skills, their ability to collaborate and their understanding that math is all about modeling the world around them.  If focusing on this means I don’t get to Conic Sections or Coordinate Geometry, that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make because I believe they are better served by learning and practicing skills than by learning content.  I am aware that not everyone shares this view.  And, I am aware that this becomes really difficult when we start to talk about AP courses, or even sequential courses, where skipping content could have real consequences.  
I wonder how other departments make use of their long blocks.  How many of us only assess in a long block?  How many of us give double lessons in a long block as a way to keep our sections together (or simply as a way to cover all of the content of our courses)?  In what ways can we leverage these extended periods of time to do the 21st century teaching and learning that we keep talking about?