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Rookie mistakes

I sat down to grade my students' chemical reaction primer artifacts this weekend. It didn't take me long to realize that as a class we weren't done with these projects yet. Clearly I hadn't built in the necessary support for the project's format. I seemed to do pretty well supporting the information (as described previously), but I made a few fatal errors:

  1. These freshmen have next to no experience citing sources. I required in-text citations and a bibliography. We went over this on day 1, but not too much more than simple reminders since then. Many students did either a bibliography or did in-text citations, but not both.
  2. Many students gave Google, Yahoo, or Ask.com URLs as their sources for information or images. Again, we went over this on day 1, but with little prior knowledge of citing internet sources it's an easy mistake to make.
  3. I emphasized strongly that their artifacts should include lots of images related to chemical reactions. I didn't make it clear enough that those pictures needed to match up with the content being described. I can't tell you how many times I had pictures of chemical reactions with no explanation of what reaction it was or why it belonged in that spot.
  4. I didn't include a review and rewrite of their projects on the schedule. Especially the first time around, they really needed it.

Rookie mistakes, all of them. All easy enough to anticipate. Heck, I've even included reviews and rewrites in similar projects I've done. What was I thinking? Today, I created time for a review and rewrite. I graded the hell out of their artifacts knowing that I would give them time to fix them up.

I was pretty worried about class today. I was handing back rubrics with some very low grades on a project that was worth as much as a full-on test. I was very careful in how I opened the discussion on doing rewrites so as not to cause frustration, despair, or anxiety over the grades on the rubrics I was passing back. Here's what I did:

  • Created a positive (perhaps inspirational?) environment. I've been sharing short (~1 minute-ish) and fun videos with my classes all year. I usually don't start class with them, but I wanted to set a positive tone right up front. What better way than with 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes?
  • Explained myself honestly. Because this was the first time they've done anything like this, their perception of what their finished artifact should look like is different than my perception- and that's okay. I told them it's my fault that I didn't do a better job explaining my high, even ridonculous expectations (went back to an old slide to illustrate), and that I should've scheduled a review and rewrite from the very start.
  • Ensured them the grade on the rubric wasn't binding. Once I decided to allow students to revise their artifacts, I toyed with the idea of not going through their artifacts and just explain to the class as a whole the issues I was seeing. I avoided another rookie mistake by diligently going through each student's artifact and grading it like I would if the grade would really count. I wanted each of them to see what specific things were lacking and needed to be fixed. It took 10 hours of grading this weekend. Morally, it was the right decision.
  • Maintained a totally positive outlook on their artifacts. I didn't want students to get the idea that I was disappointed or frustrated with their work and was simply having pity on them by giving them a do-over. I want them to know that revisions are a natural and necessary part of the work flow.

Dan Meyer noted that as your teaching expertise grows the technical challenges (i.e. designing and implementing projects, among other things) disappear and the real challenge becomes moral (will you put in the effort to ensure all are successful?). My technical challenges have decreased dramatically since year one. However, I'm not confident there will ever be a time when I don't mess up the technical stuff. What differentiates my mistakes in year seven from mistakes in year one is that now I can fix the mistakes.

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Teaser:
Even though I messed up, it's amazing to me that some students still hit it out of the park. Here are two artifacts that needed little fixing:

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Nearly text free (and loving it)

I used the following presentation to go over how and why to balance chemical equations with my 9th graders:

Balancing Chemical Rx

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: chemistry chemical)

The concept itself isn't complex, but instruction often gets bogged down in providing students with a list of specific steps to follow (First, count the number of atoms, second...).  Suddenly it goes from being a simple concept to a complex procedure which almost requires students to actually memorize the specific steps.

I started with a quick review of the Law of Conservation of Mass (matter cannot be created or destroyed, though it can be rearranged), and then jump into the teeter-totter analogy to explain why unbalanced equations violate this law. We then worked through some examples together.

With each repetition I increasingly withdrew my support. By the third example students could go through and balance equations without me around. They didn't need to follow a prescribed set of steps. They knew that you can''t have more oxygen atoms on one side of the reaction than the other and worked through to figure out the balanced equation.

As for technological savvy to create the edited images of the sign: I did all image editing in PowerPoint itself; which is to say it's pretty basic and pretty crude.

Resources

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Artifacts #2- Chemical reaction primer

Part 2 of the Chemical Reaction Artifact series. Part 1 describes what an artifact of learning is and why I use them.

I'm not someone who really enjoys being the center of attention. I don't enjoy talking for longer than 5-10 minutes a time during class and yet I found myself being the center of attention talking much more than I would've liked during my classes. I had had enough. The dissonance between how I operate best and how I was actually operating led to the following project.

The idea

Students go through the unit on chemical reactions creating a different artifact for each of the three sections in the unit. The artifact must clearly communicate their understanding of the required content. They were free to choose whichever format they felt most comfortable using- most students gravitated towards a wiki-page, PowerPoint presentations, or some form of a newspaper/textbook document.

Documents given to students on day 1 of the project:

Support

I decided early in the planning phases that I would avoid the perhaps more typical model of teaching the material traditionally (notes, lecture, review, etc.) up front, then having students work on a project as the assessment. I wanted the learning process to be wrapped up in the process of creation. However, I needed to support the students' learning. I couldn't just give them the rubric and tell them to get busy- they needed (and desired) some support. I decided to implement two support structures in order to help students while still keeping much of the onus of content learning on them.

Quick & Dirty Overviews. I did a brief (10 minutes max.) explanation of the required content broken down into three sections based upon how I broke down the content in the rubric. In addition to this, on the wiki-page for the project, I embedded an old presentation that I had used several years ago as notes for this section. I explicitly told students that these overviews covered only the bare-bones basics. It was their job to flesh these ideas out, provide examples, images, diagrams, and really show that they've mastered these ideas. These overviews served as a safety blanket for many students. The artifact was big and scary, and the overviews were just a touch of that style of teaching they'd grown used to over their schooling career.

Collaborative Groups. I placed students randomly into groups of three. At the conclusion of each day they worked on their artifacts, they met in their collaborative groups. Their requirements in the groups were to: (1) show each other what they have done of their artifacts so far, (2) help each other find resources for information/images/video, (3) check that everyone is citing their sources appropriately, (4) check that each others' information is correct.

Students were somewhat resistant to meeting in their collaborative groups. They wanted to keep working on their own artifacts, not waste time seeing what other people are doing. Students didn't do a great job of sharing useful links with each other and the thought of (in the future) getting students to use common tags in delicious or diigo crossed my mind. However, I'm unsure whether the time required to get students up to speed on social bookmarking would be worth the possible benefits. What was a major success was simply getting students to see what each other are doing. Getting to see how other people used images, organized their information, cited their sources, and so on seemed to be very helpful to many students.

Labs

It'd just be wrong to not have a couple labs when learning about chemical reactions. This section included two labs.

Exothermic and Endothermic Reactions. Students create two chemical reactions; one exothermic (adding yeast to hydrogen peroxide) and one endothermic (dissolving ammonium nitrate into water- it's not really a chemical reaction but it does get very cold).

Types of Chemical Reactions. Five reactions that demonstrate the five basic types of chemical reactions. Clicking the following links takes to you photos taken of the reactions as students performed them:

In the end

Students will upload their completed artifacts to the class wiki for all to see. At the time of this writing, students have completed their artifacts, but the upload process will happen this Monday (12/8). When they're all up I'll be sure to share.

My goal is to begin using the class wiki somewhat like a portfolio for student work. Each student will have a page on which they post their artifacts and other assignments completed throughout the year. I'm starting a little late on this for the current semester, but I hope to improve the practice in the future.

Resources

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Part of the Chemical Reaction Artifact series of posts:

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Image Sources:

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Artifacts of learning

Part 1 of the Chemical Reaction Artifact series of posts.

I'm teaching at a new school this year. I've been unhappy with how little I've been able to integrate projects that involve students creating an "artifact of their learning." I've been doing too much sage-on-the-staging, which I greatly dislike for a great many reasons.

I'm teaching a freshman level class (Integrated Science) that by some coincidence happens to be very similar to some classes I taught a couple years ago at my previous school. This is a happy coincidence because I already have quite a few resources put together for a good chunk of the material. It's not so happy because much of the material I have made up is a few years old and doesn't reflect the best that I can do.

What is an artifact?

Essentially, it's something the student creates in which they demonstrate their understanding of the required content. Most often I give students some choice in the format they use for their artifact. Example formats students often choose are a textbook, magazine, comic book, video, newspaper, PowerPoint presentation, poem/rap/song, etc.  The artifacts can vary in scope from covering a specific topic and take only a day or two to create to being a final exam and requiring a week or more to put together.

Background

The last two years I began implementing projects in which students create artifacts to display and assess their level of understanding of the content. I began having students create artifacts hesitantly. I was worried they might be fun but not be great as an assessment of student knowledge.  I quickly lost those worries when the student work came pouring in.

Why I love this

Student Choice. Students can choose the format of their artifact. Students who are excellent artists can throw together some amazing comic books. Those who are good with computers could create a webpage. I strongly encourage students to play to their strengths when introducing new artifacts.

Depth of Understanding. This is great for students who usually whip through typical assignments and then sit around waiting for others to finish. Since there's always more information, images, examples, videos, and so forth that could be added to improve their artifact, it gives them a chance to make artifacts that just blow me out of the water. Students who struggle with the content just need to make sure they cover the required material. As an added bonus, I usually have more time to work with students who are struggling since those whiz kid students don't need my help very often.

Synthesis. I can't emphasize enough how heavily I emphasize that artifacts must be totally written in students' own words, that they explain images and diagrams, and that they don't ever put any information into their artifacts that they couldn't explain to their grandmother. If they want to put it into their artifact but don't understand it, they'd better look up information on it, ask for help, and know what they're talking about before adding it.

Ownership. Artifacts require students to own the information. Students put a lot of time and effort into making them and I've found 95% of the students are proud of what they've made. It's theirs. It's different from everyone else's.

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Part of the Chemical Reaction Artifact series of posts:

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Have a great Thanksgiving!

Although busy and slightly stressed, let me share a brief list of educationally-related things I'm thankful for:

  1. The readers of this blog. It's weird for me to think about how many people read my ideas here. Not that I have a huge readership, but I'm happy for every person who engages with my ideas in this forum.
  2. My previous experience. I spent six years at a small school in Whitmore Lake, MI busting my rear developing new classes, projects, and school-wide programs. I can't think of a better environment in which to start my teaching career. This experience has provided me with a skill-set that will follow me the rest of my teaching career. I was very sad to leave Whitmore Lake despite the new opportunities in Connecticut.
  3. Colleages old and new. One of the things that bothers me most about the teaching proffesion is how little time we have to work with our peers. I'm greatful for the moments (structured and unstructured) I get to spend with professionals working in similar environments.
  4. My blogroll. I've learned so much in the last year or so that I've been seriously reading education related blogs. You people are great.

Have a great Thanksgiving. I hope you find yourself in a relaxed state spending quality time with friends and family.

Turkey

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Image Credit: ~Sage~

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Making my case for unfiltration: Images

I'm trying to convince my district to lax their filtration policies. Currently all blogs, social media sites, image hosting or searching sites, and many other online tools are blocked. I've met with and sent out emails to our tech directors and principals explaining my concerns. So far I haven't received any response to my emails and my face to face meetings haven't yielded any progress. I've decided to send out one email a week to the tech directors and principals explaining why various online tools should be unblocked. I'm also trying to work other angles (Curriculum directors, School Improvement Team) as well.  Here's this week's episode.

Image Hosting and Searching

Reasons for images being blocked (as I understand it)

Many image hosting (Flickr, Picasa, etc.) and searching applications (Google Images, Yahoo Images), even with a “Safe Search” setting turned on, will still occasionally turn up  inappropriate images. As a district, we want to prevent these images from being accessible to our students.

Reasons for unblocking image hosting sites and searching

Humans, by nature, are visually oriented. As a species we’ve been honed to analyze visual information for as long as there have been humanoids on the planet. Written language and text is a much more recent invention than sight. While it is an effective method of communication, visual stimuli trumps text-based stimuli in our brains. Therefore, students pay more attention (and generally learn better) when they are visually engaged or are able to exhibit their knowledge through visual modalities.

The ability to search for Creative Commons licensed or other fair use images allows students and staff to publish their work online. One major hurdle that has to be overcome to legally publish content online are copyright laws. However Flickr allows people to publish their image under Creative Commons (CC) licenses (here’s my photostream). These CC licenses can allow third parties to legally use and republish their images in any format. There are several web sites that allow you to easily search the content on Flickr for CC-licensed images (Flickr’s own, Blue Mountain, Comp-Fight). As a result, I can publish presentations online for students and other teachers to access from anywhere without having to worry about copyright infringement. Students can publish projects and other works online; accessing a global audience for feedback on their work. Research is heavy with studies showing how authentic publication of student work increases student performance.

Students can create high quality projects. Previously, I have had students create artifacts of their learning to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts being covered in class. Invariably, high quality projects include images. What good is a text-based description of a stratovolcano when you can have images of real stratovolcanoes? Why simply have a description of what the element lead looks like when you can also have a picture of lead.

Filters generally won’t be an obstacle in any other environment. I am not suggesting we unblock everything and let students do whatever they’d like online. However, most students are accessing the unfiltered internet at home. When students graduate from Fitch they will go on to educational and professional settings that will more likely that not either not have filters or have very lax filtration. In many of those places, student computer use is unsupervised. In school, all student computer use is supervised. This provides us with a wonderful opportunity to teach students how to work with sites where they may run into objectionable content. As a school, we should be jumping at the chance to teach students skills they’ll be using the rest of their lives. Instead, we’re running away from one of the best lessons we can teach our students.

Again, I thank you for your time. I feel that we need to have an open discussion concerning filtering policies concerning what is best for our students.

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Focus vs. filtering

I've been using the laptops a good bit in my classes recently.¹ Students often stray off the assigned task to check their MySpace, Facebook, check their email, or one of many other options.

I realize that it may be a rare and wonderful activity that captivates my 14 year old students' mind more than reading comments on their MySpace page, yet I feel students need to learn to focus on an activity when there are other options available.

How much censoring should I do of their wanderings? Currently I keep a close watch: If they quick check an email, the boxscore to last night's game, or their profile page and flip back to the assignment, I don't say anything. After all I function much like that when I'm working. If they're lingering a little too long or falling behind, then I ask them to stay off all other sites.

I don't want to block everything, but I also don't want to put my students in a situation where they can choose to fail via social networked distraction. Sometimes I catch myself wishing the school would block these sites; thus saving me the hassle.

But who am I to require students to focus on only one thing?

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¹ I'll share some of what I've done this week on this blog soon.

Image: Screenshot from my work computer

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My best review game

Though I'm generally pretty averse to review games, I was inspired by a recent post about the effectiveness of Math Basketball. I do have one review that has been remarkably successful. I don't remember where I picked this one up, and I don't have a name for it. I'm open to witty suggestions.

Review cards

The setup

  • Go through the material you want students to review. Come up with several questions that get at that knowledge. Make sure you have at least as many questions as students. It's okay to have more.
  • Throw in a few questions that students will really need to think through the knowledge to get the answer.
  • Throw in a few simple definitions.
  • Throw in a few totally unrelated questions about yourself or anything else.
    • What is Mr. W's favorite slapstick comedy movie?
    • Who is Mr. W's favorite super-hero?
    • What is the greatest baseball team in the history of the  world?
  • Put the first question on the bottom half of a note card. On a second note card, put the answer to the first question on the top of the card. Put a second question on the bottom of that note card. Continue filling out note cards like this until you've used up all your questions.
    • I always write "START" and "END" in big red letters on the first and last cards, just for clarity.

In class

  • Pass out at least one card to each student.
  • As soon as the person with the first card starts reading the question, start a timer. Be sure you're using one that measures down to hundredths of a second. Your students will want that type of accuracy. Trust me.
  • As soon as the person with the last card is finished reading the last answer stop the time.

Regulations & tips

  • The entire question and answer must be read out loud.
  • No reading an answer until the entire question has been read.
  • I only allow students to run through the activity twice with the same cards. After the second time, I collect the cards, shuffle them up, and pass them back out.
  • You'll probably want a list of the questions, in order, sitting in front of you. The first time through there's can be lots of wrong answers read. I just say, "Nope!" when a wrong answer is read.
    • Really devious intelligent classes have been known to purposely try skipping a few cards to improve their times, hoping to catch me off guard. Be on guard.

Modes of play

  • Class vs. class. Classes compete for the lowest overall time. I don't tell my classes the time they have to beat. Instead, at the end of the activity I do a reality show style reveal of the best time so far.
  • Class vs. clock. Set an arbitrary time to beat. Pick low. I've had classes go through sets of cards faster than I would've ever imagined possible. In my wily experience, I generally don't set a time to beat until they've gone through two reshuffles. That way I have a better idea of what will be a good goal for the class.

Compensation

In the past I've given extra credit to classes for having the lowest overall time or besting their goal (depending on the mode of play). However, my first time through it at my new school I tried it out with no other reward than bragging rights, just to see how it would go (I knew once I offered extra-credit, they'd never play for anything less). Results? It went great. Bragging rights proved a big enough motivator this time around.

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights

A beautiful typographic video of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights put out by the Human Rights Action Center:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from Seth Brau on Vimeo.
It amazed me how large a percentage of the world doesn't enjoy the basic rights set forth in this declaration. In fact, even the United States may not allow for its citizens to enjoy all the rights laid out by the declaration.

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Video from vimeo :: via NOTCOT.org

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Calming periodic fears

It's really not that scary, especially at the level high school freshmen need to know it. The periodic table, however, is something almost inherently deemed as incomprehensible by incoming students. To them it's something to be feared not something to be understood. After some ineffective periodic table teaching for a few years I realized I needed a better approach.

Sometimes you just get lucky

Students really didn't understand what an element's atomic number and atomic mass meant, nor how they could find the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons simply by looking at the periodic table. Our school had just gotten a couple laptop carts, and I figured I would try to create a little assignment utilizing websites that took students through the concepts of atomic number, atomic mass, reading a periodic table, ions, and more. What I created was this sheet. It is one of the very few online assignments I've ever created which hasn't needed major overhauls in order to be as effective as I'd like. I've never had a computer-based assignment be as instantly successful as this.This year was the fourth year I've used this. I look forward to it every year- it's a great "aha!" day. 😉

How I do it

I'm constantly walking around while they're filling this out. Whenever I see mistakes I ask students how they came to that number. It's a battle to fend off misconceptions from forming. I never give answers, I simply ask them to explain how they got their answer and ask them to verify their process against what they've looked up previously. This generally heads off 98% of errors students make.

The Sheet

  • Atomic Information Assignment (WORD) (PDF)
  • BONUS! A worksheet I drop a day or two (or more) after doing the initial sheet. It gives me a good idea how well they're picking it up.

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Scream by marysia
Periodic Table image from Wikipedia