Saturday, August 5, 2017

Improving Feedback

I want my students to learn.


I want to empower my students as well.  


I want them to realize success as independent learners.


To realize these ends, I have encouraged student voice and choice more and more through the years. Last year, I handed the students the reins for a PBL experience around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.


To further students on their path of self sufficiency and to stimulate their growth as learners, I want to improve feedback in my classroom.  I want it to be more frequent, more efficient, and, most of all, used by students. (Too often, it seems, feedback given on their work is not thoughtfully considered by students, while feedback through conversation will only  be implemented in the moment.)


I look to the following three resources to help.


Creating a Culture of Feedback
To support feedback as a norm in my classroom and to enhance self sufficiency, students will need to self assess. This will require guided practice.


In Creating a Culture of Feedback by William M. Ferriter and Paul J. Cancellieri, I was reintroduced to the video Austin’s Butterfly: Building Excellence in Student Work.  The clip shows how students, with direction, can successfully provide specific, constructive feedback for peers and themselves. They need to build this skill to become better learners and to enhance their ability to produce high quality work independently.


By sharing the video with students, giving them guidance, and having them practice, students will gain confidence in their ability to both self assess and peer assess. As they become more comfortable with self assessment they will gain the ability to independently create higher quality work.


Live Exit Tickets with Google Forms
I was introduced to Kevin Zahner through Twitter and was excited to find his blog post on on exit tickets.

He describes how students complete their exit tickets with a Google Form and results go into a Google Sheet. Zahner links a sheet to the form that was created using Alice Keeler’s RosterTab Template.  This allows a separate tab in the sheet to be generated for each student.


He also creates a query so that the students are then able to see their own responses from the form in their own Google Sheet. The most compelling part is that the feedback the teacher provides within the individual student tabs can be seen immediately by the student.


ANCHOR conversations.jpgThis could be used for either exit tickets or tickets to board. Giving immediate and ongoing feedback during class would give students the chance to act on that feedback. This should be highly effective and powerful.

ANCHOR Conversations
Lead Like a Pirate by Shelley Burgess and Beth Houf focuses on developing school culture. One thing they share is ANCHOR conversations.


Even though the ANCHOR Conversation practices are geared toward feedback between adults, I can see how students would benefit from similar guidelines. Embedded in ANCHOR conversations are developing trust, valuing the other person, remaining positive, and highlighting improvement.


I want to more routinely conference with students to provide them feedback. Using the ANCHOR Conversations guidelines will remind me how to maximize my interaction with students, making the feedback more productive.


I look forward to incorporating these three ideas so my students can receive better and more efficient feedback while developing their confidence as independent learners.




If you have had success having students use effective feedback, or if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.


Sunday, July 30, 2017

Using Mystery Skype to Bring the World into Your Classroom


Student centered and inquiry based, Mystery Skype energizes students to learn about other places.

This tool has been useful in teaching world geography to 7th graders as it helps bring the world closer to the classroom, enlivens the content, encourages analyzing information, and develops questioning and critical thinking skills.


IMG_6374.JPG
Mystery Skype in action. The bottom shows students from Belgium on the
computer monitor while in the background (the top) my students collaborate
and view the Belgian student on the SMART Board.
A Mystery Skype is basically like 20 questions during which the two classes are trying to figure out the other’s location.  The teacher sets up the game with another teacher either through the Skype in Education website or social media such as Twitter.  Once a date and time is set - very difficult since no schools have the same schedules and class periods rotate through our school’s - you’re ready to go.

Well...almost.


Having never done one before, I was tentative to just let the students fumble their way through the challenge with me.  I looked online for help and found teachers that structured their classrooms during Mystery Skype.  Paul Solarz and Pernille Ripp gave great suggestions regarding roles and etiquette.


My colleague Sam Mandeville and I collaborated on roles our students would take on, and since we were both tentative of letting our respective students loose on the world, we set up a Mystery Skype between our classes.  Even though we were right down the hall (classes took on the role of city, country so they could actually play) and the students knew one another, it provided a terrific opportunity to put us at ease and work out kinks.  The students were also exposed to the flow of the game.


My students connected with places all over the world including Malaysia, Belgium, Canada, and Singapore.


As we gained more experience, we used less structure by having  a few students record questions and answers and all students generating and asking questions. Even a number of the quieter students stepped right up to the microphone.


The students were engaged, learned more about where they live relative to other places, were exposed to other cultures, and made connections to people otherwise impossible.


Next year, in addition to Mystery Skype, I hope to use the power of Skype to connect my classes with others around the world to collaborate on different topics or projects.  This will further enrich their lives and develop them as global citizens.



If you have had success with Mystery Skype, if you have had other positive Skype experiences in your classroom, or if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.





Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Project Based Learning: Engaging Students in Learning with Purpose


“Would you rather hear about changing the world, or do you want the opportunity to do so? A story about a world-changer might engage us, but becoming world-changers will change us.”
~ George Couros ~
The Innovator’s Mindset


Student-driven learning.


Project based learning.


Service learning.

I wanted to tackle each of these and make them a priority in my classroom this year. As I was planning prior to the beginning of the school year, I contemplated the role of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. What unfolded before me was the opportunity to blend all three together.


The following video was used to kick off a unit of study on the UN's Global Goals: https://youtu.be/ry_9SU0eq9M.


It not only piqued student interest due to their sensitivity to threats on our planet, but it also challenged them to do something about it.


So I put it to them: What can you guys do to help spread the word about the Global Goals?


File_006.jpegThe students came up with a long list of actions they could take, from talking to their families and friends about the Global Goals to holding a community forum. They determined what would be feasible to accomplish in class and decided to create public displays, develop a web page, create promotional videos, and have a public presentation.


The most challenging aspect for me was coordinating multiple classes to work together. In the past I had different classes work on different aspects of a big project, but never before had I had students across classes working on the same endeavor. My solution was two-fold. I had a group of representatives from each class meet and organize the project. They decided how to tackle the obstacles of students from the various classes working on one project.  The second solution was to create areas of communication. Students used whiteboards, sticky notes, Google Docs, and Google Slides to interact and coordinate as they researched and created.  


Not only did students drive the learning and the products, but they had the ability to choose what role they would take in investigating the goals and spreading the word.  In class, after having students individually brainstorm their strengths and weaknesses, I had them all circle up in the center of the room.  I put it to them again: Listen to everyone and determine, together, based on strengths and weaknesses, who should do what.


File_003.jpeg
Student display at the YMCA.
File_001.jpeg
Student display at the Franklin Municipal Building.
They stumbled at first and had trouble wrapping their heads around how they should proceed. (I don’t think they were used to so much autonomy.)  But in the end, they figured it out, without my help, and students seemed satisfied.


Many played to their strengths in video creation or technology, and some pushed to work with their friends.  But others pushed themselves to take more of a risk and opted to speak during the public presentation.


As they worked, students of varying understanding and abilities challenged themselves by staying focused on the objective of the Global Goals: how to make our world better.  Students were diligent and productive. They engagement level seemed heightened.


Students asked for clarification of difficult concepts as they strove to understand.  Many were astounded by some of the information they dug up on topics such as hunger, poverty, education, gender equality, and sanitation. They were moved and motivated.


File_005.jpeg
Student speaking during the presentation to family and peers.
After becoming grounded in the Global Goals, students created, developed, and designed. Once completed, they were eager to know that their work was being shared. In addition to tweeting out their web page (linked here) through our class Twitter account (@Mr_dEsClass), I arranged - based on student feedback - for the displays to be put at the local town offices and the local YMCA and for the students to make a presentation to peers and families.


Naturally, the students speaking in front of an audience were the most anxious about their work going public. The others hid behind the veil of their work being seen from afar. The speakers, however, were exposed on stage.  And they came through brilliantly, rising to the occasion and impressing the audience.


At the beginning of this piece, I shared an excerpt which I had reflected on in a previous blog post:
Tapping into students’ strengths and interests seems to be vital in engaging students.   It may also help lead the students to seeking the opportunity to become a “world-changer.” By grabbing students by their strengths and interests and combining that with touching their hearts, a classroom can elevate a student’s interest and engagement into wanting to make a mark on the world.
My students care; they have a strong sense of right and wrong; they want to help. Tugging on their heart strings through our common human story while allowing students to direct their learning will allow them to accomplish the great things of which they are capable.
The opportunity we took with the UN Sustainable Development Goals touched my students’ hearts, motivated them, encouraged them to rise to the occasion, and allowed them to make their mark on the world.

An email from a parent reinforcing the positive nature of the student driven and project based learning.


One of the student created videos.


If you have had success with project based learning, student driven learning, or service learning, or if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.

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