Category: Assessment

My Summer Reading 2020

My Summer Reading 2020

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First of all, this title is a misnomer. I had to put on a sweatshirt and socks just to be warm enough to start this post. However, my orientation to the Northern Hemisphere means I am experiencing cognitive dissonance, as our upcoming break is really in the midst of winter here in Brazil. Nevertheless, my attention is starting to consider what I want to read during my downtime. I have a few more titles that I am working through right now, but with only a few weeks left of school (Thank you God!) and a likely Stay-cation in our home, I have begun to curate my professional reading list for the "summer". Here's what I have so far:

Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek H. Murthy

I'm interested in this title mostly because it is a timely book that speaks about how we can cultivate social connections despite social isolation with the COVID-19 pandemic. As I think ahead of our re-opening plans (or not), I wonder what the mental toll has been on our community, from teachers to students to our families. If there is something that I can bring forward that is positive from this experience, then I am eager to research and try it. I hope this book will offer ideas and give me hope for what could be possibly the "good" to come out of this crisis.

Self-Regulation Interventions and Strategies: Keeping the Body, Mind & Emotions on Task in Children with Autism, ADHD or Sensory Disorders by Teresa Garland

Learning more about self-regulation and creating self-motivation in students is something that I am keenly interested in. There were a lot of books that I sampled and this one seemed to be the most practical one. This topic is not only deeply personal to me, but I also feel that remote learning was really a challenge for these types of students. Again, thinking forward to our next phase of learning, I am hopeful that I can bring in some fresh ideas and offer support for the teachers (and their families) who may struggle, offline or online, with learning.

Evolving Learner: Shifting From Professional Development to Professional Learning From Kids, Peers, and the World  by  Lainie Jae Rowell, Kristy J. Andre, Lauren Steinmann, and Thomas C. Murray

Due to remote learning, we prioritized schedules for student learning over staff learning. Moving our PLCs (professional learning communities)  online was a bit of a challenge since it required teachers to be more self-directed and collaborative. Professional learning wasn't happening TO THEM but THROUGH THEM. and, honestly, it was a struggle as the weeks online continued. With the possibility of still having a significant chunk of our learning happening online when we return in August, I need some inspiration and fresh thinking about how I can best support teachers in engaging--not only with kids but with each other. If there was ONE thing that I thought was critical to moving from survival to thrival (not sure if that is a word) with our teams, it was the sharing of our knowledge and skills. I think PLCs is the heart of cultivating that spirit of collaborative learning, and I want to make sure we upgrade our ability to support and share with one another.

Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Connecting Print Literacy with Digital, Media, and Global Competence, K-12 by Heidi Hayes Jacobs

I have to be honest. I really admire the work of Heidi Hayes Jacobs when it has come to curriculum mapping but I have never read any of her books about Digital literacy . So I actually have a few of her titles on my Kindle now, but this is the 1st one I am digging into. Mostly because it challenges what we think about literacies, and how teachers can invite students to be more engaged in developing their reading and writing skills. One of the things I really struggled with has been the more didactic approaches that seem to have prevailed through this time of remote learning. I am not suggesting EVERYONE did that, nor did it happen all the time, but I definitely shared my thoughts that students became Muted during Remote Learning.  Moreover, just because students were forced to work at home didn't make them more autonomous or self-directed simply with the use of tech. So, I am hoping that this book provides a way forward.

Pedagogical Documentation in Early Childhood: Sharing Children's Learning and Teachers' Thinking by Susan Stacey

Next school year, many teachers at our school will be engaged in a book study of this title as a part of our PLCs. So I want to read ahead to help generate questions and see how these ideas can be combined with the work of Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano and her book, A Guide to Documenting Learning: Making Thinking Visible, Meaningful, Shareable, and Amplified. In the Enhanced PYP, there is a shift in our assessment practices in which we are "evidencing learning". This book I think will be invaluable in how we observe and document the growth of our youngest learners.

What's going to be in your stack of books? What are your must-reads for your holiday break? I would love to hear your suggestions!

Addendum: Since the George Floyd protests, I think it's time to get more educated on how to be an ally. Joining the lovely ladies at Erin Kent Consulting in a book club reading of Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You . If anyone is interested in joining, you can go to the Reading and Writing Workshop in the International Schools Facebook page to sign up.

Muted? Student Voice during Remote Learning

Muted? Student Voice during Remote Learning

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“Go ahead and remain unmuted during our Zoom meetings.”, Tonya Gilchrist informed our cohort. “I find it’s easier for people to share ideas and ask questions that way. But if you have background noise, then please mute yourself”.

At that moment I was confronted with a reality that I hadn’t considered before: what it means to mute someone online: psychology and emotionally. 

For most of us who teach or have a meeting online, muting “participants” is usually the first thing we do when they come online in order to conduct your meeting uninterrupted and distraction-free. We often don’t provide the choice to do so and if noise does creep into your meeting, then you immediately scramble to find its source and mute it, lest your wise words fall on deaf ears.

And so, when Tonya shared this essential housekeeping rule, it got me wondering if remote learning has made us more teacher-centered or student-centered in our pedagogical approaches.

I’m thinking teacher-centered. 

And here’s why.

I have a folder full of schools’ Online Learning Plans/Academic Continuity Plans. Whatever you want to call it, those were designed for learning in a crisis. From Argentina to China, to New York to Vietnam, none of them considered the importance of student conversations when we went online. Globally we worried about teachers disseminating information to their students, providing them with the systems and tools to do that; all the while ensuring that students had access to that information—not to each other. The tools we insisted upon, were ones that made it easier for teachers to assign work and talk with students. Whether we went with Google Meets or Zoom, SeeSaw or Schoology, Google Suite or Microsoft–the focus was on an urgent need to explain the content and cover our standards.

Sure students probably found ways to connect with each other–that’s not the point I’m trying to make. It’s that, we, in education, didn’t think enough about the peer-to-peer interaction when we went online. We have thrown out social constructivism and used more didactic approaches to validate the “quality” of our education. 

And now that we are facing the possibility that the next school year might have a continued online component, we need to re-examine those “emergency learning plans”  and not only think about “the standards” but to think about pedagogy. We cannot just plop our classrooms online without providing students with access to each other’s minds as a core component of learning.

And so it gets me wondering if what makes remote learning so exhausting is the lack of interaction. There’s little exchange of our energy and enthusiasm for learning among our community of learners. How might we re-design the learning experience if we go into Phase 2 of our Academic Continuity Plans? I think we need to be debating the merits of apps and platforms that encourage student voice and collaboration like FlipGrid and Explain Everything instead of using our teachers’ creative energy on BitEmoji Classrooms. We need to stop pining for the past, teaching like we are in crisis, and start developing learning for our future.

I’m wondering what else have you noticed that should be reconsidered in your school’s version of online learning 2.0?   This isn’t a time to bury our heads in the sand but to engage and debate in critical conversations. Please share your ideas!
Small Big Things: The Shifting Culture via #Remote Learning

Small Big Things: The Shifting Culture via #Remote Learning

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A few years ago, I was introduced to the “Ameoba of Cultural Change” model. I found it to be an interesting way to describe how innovation happens in organizations. As simple, single-cell organisms, amoebas blindly step into the unknown, reaching for “food”; so too do organizations, as innovators and change agents push people towards new ideas and inventions. Although I agree with the personalities within this organizational change model, I don’t think that change has to happen this slowly.

amoeba map

Clearly, we are in unprecedently times and CoVid-19 has certainly been the catalyst for rapid changes in “how we do school” across the globe. And you see nations whose educational systems are paralyzed in the midst of this epidemic. It reminds me of the book, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler that describes the emotional anguish that people undergo as they try to adjust to rapid and disruptive technological changes.  I feel that we are definitely in the midst of this feeling as educators who would have been labeled as “laggards”, “curmudgeons”, and “reactionaries” are now unwillingly forced into change. But even those of us who are the “change agents” and “innovators” in our schools can experience equally and acutely how terrifying and painful this experience of remote learning is. The only difference is that our “AHHHHHHHHHH” converts into “AHH-ha” in a shorter period of time. Toffler reminds us all that:

The responsibility for change…lies within us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical.

~ Alvin Toffler

Wise advice for all of us, don’t you think?

Personally, I am excited by the forced change–not because I think we all need an Edtech facelift in our schools, but because of the transformation that is happening pedagogically. In a short amount of time, more and more educators are shuffling off traditional and inefficient models of practice to create more intentional and dynamic learning experiences. Image-1

At our school, we have transformed the way that we have been using SeeSaw in order to provide for asynchronistic learning activities and now we are using Zoom for real-time instruction and social engagement. In less than a month, the teachers have been moving fast and furious in developing a positive challenge mindset, figuring out they can be more collaborative, and fine-tuning intentional approaches to learning and assessment. Although it is very hard for some to see how amazing this metamorphosis is, as a PYP Coordinator, I am in awe of my teachers and have a deep respect for them plunging into the unknown of online learning together. 

Whether we are doing distance learning for another 2 weeks or 2 months, I know that no one will be the same after this experience. At the very least, we will be more critical of curriculum-in-a-box approaches to teaching students and develop the skill of distilling the concepts and the strategies that students need to be successful.  Alvin Toffler explains the importance of this skill well….

You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” ~ Alvin Toffler

To get good at reflecting on our practice is so crucial during this time. But I feel that after we retreat into our long holidays,  all of us will have the opportunity to feel proud of our growth and willingness to tackle fears. Yes, there will be some of us who may feel traumatized and stressed by this technological kick-in-the-butt, however, I feel that a larger majority will be transformed and energized by their professional growth. 

But, you know what they say: Shift Happens.

The Role of the Coordinator: Deep Listening

The Role of the Coordinator: Deep Listening

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I think to ask and not assume is probably the most important part of my job description. One skill that I believe needs constant effort for improvement. So, during this past year,  as I moved to a new country and a new school, I was very aware of the need to understand the complexities of my new environment and my role in shaping a more agentic culture. As a new leader to an already established learning community, I created a 90-day inquiry into my school in which I explored and examined our current practices and asked questions in the following areas:

Who We Are…

  • What are the values and beliefs of our community?
  • What level of influence do parents have on our school’s decision-making process?
  • What do we believe collectively and as individuals about education in the 21st century?
  • Who are the influential and important people on staff?
  • What are the beliefs that teachers have around technology? What are the beliefs around technology use in the home?

Where we are in place and time…

  • Where are we with respect to accreditation recommendations?
  • Where are we with transitioning to the enhancements?
  • Where are staff in their depth of understanding of the PYP?
  • How is the technology used? (SAMR/TPACK)

How we express ourselves…

  • What are the ways and means that we communicate?
  • How frequently do we communicate? What gets communicated?
  • How is information shared on Social Media

How we organize ourselves…

  • How do we order resources?
  • Where are important docs “housed” and how are they shared?
  • What do timetables look like?–What are the teaching/non-contact periods ratios with co-teachers? How much does each subject “get” on the time table?

Sharing the Planet…

  • What are the expectations and responsibilities of teachers and staff? Beyond teaching, what else are teachers expected to do?
  • What sustainability initiatives are underway? 
  • What opportunities exist for student action and community service?

How the World Works…

  • How is professional learning encouraged and fostered?
  • What are the budget restrictions? 
  • How do we plan excursions or get involved in community action? 
  • What are any political considerations when we consider initiatives?

Now that the 1st semester is over and I have a sense of “How We Do School Here”, it’s time to turn my attention and focus to the students themselves. I am currently engaged in what I am calling a Listening Campaign–a term generally used for a communication strategy that helps to identify and prioritize the concerns of stakeholders. Hearted Quotes - Page 3 | QuoteHDIn this case, I want to dig into the hearts and minds of our students. I have created a simple survey using Google forms which provides the opportunity to deeply listen to students and I am interviewing each student one by one to get a sense of what they care about and how apt they feel at engaging in our learning community. So, as I record their ideas, there is an interaction that I hope communicates how keen I am to hear from them. When I think of my practice of mindfulness, deep listening is a vital component of our relationships–whether it is with our closest and most beloved people in our lives or people who we have more obscure relationships with. I hope that as I sit with them, I communicate that I care about them–they are a valued school member– and I wish to support them on their learning journey. I love how this practice is described in the quote below:

There is only one purpose of deep listening: to help him or her to empty their heart.

“Darling, I’m here for you. And, Darling I know that you are there.”

The gift of your presence is powerful and transformative.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

And, so, I find the answers to my questions revealing if the students feel they have agency and how they might use their agency to make an impact. Here are some of the questions I am asking:

  1. Do you feel that if you have an idea, adults at school will let you try it out? 
  2. The reason why I think this way is because…..
  3. In your homeroom classroom, do you feel that you are interested and active in your learning?
  4. The reason why I said that is because…..
  5. How often do you give feedback or offer suggestions to your classmates?
  6. What kind of feedback do you receive from others?
  7. If I got to be the boss of school, the first thing I would change about how I learn is…
  8. If I got to be the boss of the school, the first thing that I would change about snack/lunch and recess is…
  9. One more idea that I have about how to improve the experience at school is…
  10. Is there anything else you want to tell me...

Now I know what you are thinking, they probably answer that we should eat candy at school and be able to play whenever they want. But I have to say that when you lean in, and they know that you want to authentically listen to them, the issues and ideas that come up really expose a deeper level of concern that they have.

I consider this time spent a great privilege and rare opportunity afforded to me. Since this is the first year of implementing the PYP enhancements, I really wanted to get a snapshot of how students see themselves as learners and what issues do they feel need addressing in our learning community. I call this an Agency Audit, and I hope to repeat it after we implement more of the strategies that create the culture of agency at our school.

What questions do you think we need to ask students? How would you approach talking to students? What other questions do you think are important to developing a larger understanding of the learning community?

 

 

Goodbye Report Card? The Experiment to Document and Assess Learning with #SeeSaw

Goodbye Report Card? The Experiment to Document and Assess Learning with #SeeSaw

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Report cards! Dreaded and hated by most teachers due to the time and effort it takes to create it. Over the years, the trend from personal comments to letters or numbers has meant that children’s identities are rooted in generalized achievement scores. The tidal wave of standards-based curriculum and standardized testing that we have seen in America has just amplified this notion that students can be distilled into neat categories and ranges of “achievement”, with schools even getting graded based upon these scores and public funding of these schools determined by these ratings. However, this type of ranking of schools doesn’t differentiate the demographics and resources that are utilized in the pursuit of learning so it seems unfair to be graded against a standard that really doesn’t exist. Likewise, report cards rarely reflect the nature and ability of the individual student, which should be as unique as their fingerprint. We all know that the best report cards are the ones in which the teacher speaks to the individual because a grade just doesn’t say enough. However, it’s a time-consuming process to craft it.

It was in the spirit of customizing the documenting of progress in REAL time that it was decided that the digital portfolio app SeeSaw could be used as a replacement of the ole’ report card. Also, due to the ability to instantly post the learning, there was hope that this transparency would improve the dialogue between the school and the parents.   We had high hopes as we embarked upon this experiment.

The Experiment: Hybridizing Edu-Media and Traditional Reports

During this past year, with the convention of writing report cards every 6 weeks, Technology can make report cards more personal, not less.an effort to simplify the teacher workload and create a more “user-friendly” reporting system for parents was launched. Now, in theory, the expectation of teacher comments on the report card was done away with and the learning was documented on SeeSaw, thus parents could rate and respond to the progress in real time. However, instead of ripping report cards away, we tried to transition parents by rebranding it an “Evaluation of Learning” using the ManageBac platform, still posting numerical grades minus the personal teacher comments.

Prior to the “Evaluation of Learning” being posted on ManageBac, teachers designed at least 1 conceptual rubric, primarily for the unit of inquiry, which needed to be shared with parents prior to their notification that this report was ready to view. In this way, parents could use these conceptual rubrics as a way to understand what the numbers meant on the “Evaluation of Learning” in terms of their student’s progress. If you look at the examples of these conceptual rubrics, you will see that some common language is in there, such as “meets expectations”, so that parents might know where their child stands as a learner.

During this SeeSaw trial, as a school we looked at 4 things: the quality of our grade level posts, the frequency of posting, having a variety of posts to showcase growth, developing student agency with the posts and creating systems that foster positive habits around the use of digital media. Some questions we asked were:

  1. Quality: Do our posts really communicate the learning that is taking place. How is the sound or visual quality of our postings? How do our captions or labels communicate the learning?
  2. Responsibility: Who is posting? Is it only the teachers or do we have students involved?
  3. Frequency: How often are we posting? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?
  4. Diversity: Are we only uploading videos or photos? Do we only make posts about the unit of inquiry or are we representing the growth of our literacy skills and mathematical thinking?
  5. Systems: What were the habits and routines when using this platform? (example: reading out loud a piece of writing in Grade 1 but read aloud a piece of prose in Grade 3–are these helpful exercises that develop our presentation and viewing skills?) Or should we give time in class to students to read/listen to comments that others have posted and encourage thoughtful responses to them?

What worked well

There is no doubt that the platform of SeeSaw is powerful. Students could engage with each other, as well as parents, so there was a lot of opportunity for feedback. In our class, we posted weekly to the student journals, so parents were well-informed and it made it easy to have a conversation about their child. As, with the activities feature of SeeSaw, we could save time and go paperless on assessments.

So was learning demonstrated more regularly?–Indeed!

What needed improvement

One of the reasons to move away from report cards was in order to give more timely feedback to students and families. This was a worthy goal.

But it took enormous amounts of time to listen to audio/video posts and “grade” it. I can’t speak for other teachers, but I often spent an hour a night (at home), listening to students explain their learning. This I loved–not the drain on my personal time of course, but the data.  However, giving timely feedback to students?- it wasn’t possible unless I had caught them while they were actually posting because most 1st graders couldn’t see the comments I made on a post and it wasn’t easy to give them class time to go on their journals to read a post (plus, not a lot of 1st graders can read what I wrote–at least not at the beginning of the year). So the comments were mostly just for the parents’ benefit.

Also, from a whole school perspective, we did not have consistency in our using this SeeSaw platform for the documentation of learning. Needless to say, a parent with a 1st grader and another a 4th grader, the amount and quality of posting looked very different in the different grade levels. Our school didn’t have norms or expectations so reporting progress was spotty, at best. When you think about why reports cards are so prevalent in education is because there is a standard– Pretty much no matter where you go in the world, in any given grade level, you will receive a consistent reporting of grade level expectations. We really needed criteria and clarity when it came to our posting on SeeSaw, and guidance on developing informative conceptual rubrics. 

So, as I reflect on this, I  think the benefit from this change was that the administrators didn’t need to spell check the ManageBac comments. And, from a parent’s point of view, neither the ManageBac’s Evaluation of Learning nor the SeeSaw posts answered the question, “Yeah, but how is MY child doing?” because it burdened parents to sift through posts and cross-reference the conceptual rubrics to understand how their child was evaluated. With the Seesaw journal news feed, it made it really hard to understand what a student needed to work on in order to improve, and where they stood with grade-level expectations because a teacher rarely made comments or captions using those terms.

When we surveyed families in the spring, we had a very low response rate (less than 50%), which implied that our good-natured parents were too polite to complain, or they couldn’t read the English-only survey. So we didn’t have a lot of feedback on this experiment. This was a shame since we really needed to hear their opinion.

What was discovered?

Not every idea is a bright one so you can learn a lot from failure. If we can all agree that report cards are designed for parents, then using multiple platforms created confusion.

I understand why we didn’t completely wean them off the ManageBac Reports but, at the end of the day, with our transient population, parents needed reports to show their next school. In the end, sending a perspective school a downloaded PDF of a child’s SeeSaw journal wasn’t a viable option. These school administrators, much like our parents, lacked the time and patience to sift through these activities to determine where the child was in their learning journey.

Now that isn’t to say that we need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Using SeeSaw to document learning was fantastic and it definitely provided fodder for important conversations with parents. However, SeeSaw, in its current format, is not designed to be employed in the way that we used it. It is a form of edu-media, a Facebook of learning, and doesn’t have the capacity at this time to use it in the way we intended. So, as a school, we needed to have guidelines on how we “graded” a post and what captions we needed to put on a post so that it informed parents of their child’s progress. That is an easy fix, in my mind, to have standard criteria across grade levels.

And the ManageBac report?–ManageBac is not a flexible reporting system, so to try to innovate our report cards around this platform is impossible. We either accept this status quo or find another platform.

Our strength then was really around those conceptual rubrics, and if we wanted to simplify report cards, using those statements in the phases would make it very easy to copy to paste into the reports. However, this doesn’t make our reports personal, and it certainly doesn’t speak to the character of a child, which I know can be subjective however is the heart of what makes a report card so important. These sentences demonstrate that a teacher really strives to KNOW a child more deeply. As a parent, this is what I scan for in the comment box of those reports; and, as a teacher who receives a new student’s report card, this is what helps me to build a relationship with them as they assimilate into their new environment.

Where to go from here?

Since I am relocating to another school, I cannot say how this hybrid reporting system will be improved, but, I would personally take this trial back through the Design Thinking process:

design slide

 

Who is this report card for?

What are their needs?

How might we solve them?

Why this prototype might work? Why might this prototype fail?

What feedback do we need in order to improve?

When can we get this feedback and from whom?

How will we use this feedback to improve our design?

I think after embarking upon the Design process, several launching off points of prototypes would be revealed. Furthermore, a lot of clarity would come from these collaborative discussions which would help re-design reporting.

 

Dear Reader, I do hope that you will appreciate the risk-taking that was involved in this attempt to re-imagine reporting. And I hope it makes you reflect on how your school might consider how learning is reported to families. If your school is also underway with an innovative way of approaching reporting or perhaps you have a great idea, please share in the comments below. We ALL can benefit from this. 

My Summer Professional Reading for 2019

My Summer Professional Reading for 2019

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With 2 weeks left of school, the reality of summer holiday feels palpable. My favorite part of summertime is sitting either by the lake or pool with a good book. I find long periods of reading to be restorative and energizing. However, there are so many good books out there that it’s not easy to create a short list. Here’s are my “must-reads” for the summer:

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger

Why I chose this book?

I found reading Berger’s last book, The Book of Beautiful Questions, problematic because I had to constantly put it down to take notes and apply it. It wasn’t a passive reading experience and it has helped me to be more creative when solving problems, both professionally and personally. Needless to say, I have high hopes for this sequel.

What I hope to gain from this book?

Although I expect to be inspired by the stories and case studies, I hope it will deepen my knowledge of design thinking and help me “sharpen my saw” when it comes to using curiosity as a tool for innovation.

Translanguaging for Emergent Bilinguals: Inclusive Teaching in the Linguistically Diverse Classroom by  Danling Fu and Xenia Hadjioannou

Why I chose this book?

Translanguaging has been a term that has been floating around for the last couple years and I really don’t know how it is different from bilingual or multilingual. I would like to learn more about what it is and how we might approach language development in a more thoughtful and holistic way.

What I hope to gain from this book?

My hope is to better understand what this term even means and how I might identify when translanguaging is happening, so I might promote it in our school. I’ve already started reading it and it has already opened my eyes to lots of issues that schools face with their policies and the challenges teachers have in their classrooms.

Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards by Yu-kai Chou

Why I chose this book?

After I read the book, Super Better by Jane McGonigal, I have been intrigued by the cultivation of a game mindset to solve problems and overcome personal/professional difficulties. This book goes deeper into the design elements of games and how to use a human-centered approach to challenges.

What I hope to gain from this book?

I find a “game mindset” is such an appealing way to live, full of fun and fascination, as you tackle the “bad guys” through your exciting adventure called LIFE. I’d love to apply it work-related situations, including but not limited to teachers’ professional development and encouraging critical research skills and a love of reading for students.

Leading with Intention: Eight Areas for Reflection and Planning in Your PLC at Work by Jeanne Spiller and Karen Power

Why I chose this book?

Having experience in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) done well I know they can be transformative. However, I’ve also been at quite a few schools that have either done it poorly or not at all. With that in mind, I feel that my spotty background needs some gaps filled, and I felt this book might do the trick.

What I hope to gain from this book?

I have high hopes for this book, including defining what collaboration could look like at our school, as well as creating a pedagogical focus and timeline in which to do the work. Also, I am a bit on the fence about whether teachers should do their own personal inquiries, something that I am really a big fan of, for their professional goals or if PLCs should be linked to a global teaching initiative. I’m hoping to gain some perspective and clarity around this conundrum by reading this book.

Five Pillars of the Mind: Redesigning Education to Suit the Brain  by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa

Why I chose this book?

As someone who is a PYP Curriculum Coordinator,  I am always interested in marrying efficiency with effectiveness to create a dynamic learning experience through our Programme of Inquiry. So the book blurb immediately hooked me:

A review of the research on brain networks reveals, surprisingly, that there are just five basic pillars through which all learning takes place: Symbols, Patterns, Order, Categories, and Relationships. Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa proposes that redesigning school curriculum around these five pillars—whether to augment or replace traditional subject categories—could enable students to develop the transdisciplinary problem-solving skills that are often touted as the ultimate goal of education.

What I hope to gain from this book?

My primary goal is to deepen my knowledge of transdisciplinary learning and how it can happen more organically. My secondary goal is how to create a more fluid and enhanced Programme of Inquiry like the one I describe in a previous blog post: What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP) I anticipate that this will be the most academic of all of my books on my list.

The Four O’Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide to Revolutionizing Professional Development   by Rich Czyz

Why I chose this book?

I have had this on my book wish list for a while and it’s due time that I read it! I follow Rich Czyz on Twitter and his posts always provoke and inspire me. Now that I am back in a position in which I have input into professional development, I feel that using and building upon his ideas and approaches will amplify the growth of teachers at school. I believe that this book will be highly practical and insightful.

What I hope to gain from this book?

Plain and simple: ideas, ideas, ideas for planning professional development and creating a culture that loves growing and learning!

Say What You Mean by Oren Jay Sofer

Why I chose this book?

Early in my elementary school career, I read the book, The Compassionate Classroom  and it made me reflect deeply on how I can use my words to help or harm others. Fast forward to a couple of years ago, when I decided to dedicate myself to the 5 Mindfulness Trainings , I came into the awareness that I had still not mastered my communication skills. My most challenging mindfulness practice is “loving speech and deep listening” and I felt that this book had a lot of strategies and practices that would help me refine my skills as a mindful communicator.

What I hope to gain from this book?

As someone moving to a new school community and is in leadership, I am very conscious of how my words can impact my relationships. New to staff and parents, my words can make an immediate impression, so I want it to be a positive one from the get-go. I hope that this book will help me to be more present and convey the best version of myself. So, in general, I develop into a more clear and compassionate communicator.

Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Assessment Strategies That Motivate Kids and Help Them Learn by Myron Dueck

Why I chose this book?

To be honest, the work of this author and educator is new to me. However, he is coming to our school for professional development, so I want to be sure to be familiar with his work.

What I hope to gain from this book?

He has some interesting ideas about assessment practices, so I am keen to examine how we can apply his ideas into our culture of learning.  I also find his ideas promising in how we might rethink and re-imagine report cards.

Other titles that I hope to get around to….

The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning by  Ofelia García et al.

Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond

HEART!: Fully Forming Your Professional Life as a Teacher and Leader by Timothy D. Kanold

PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design by Nancy Frey et al.

Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World by Deborah Reber

Unlocked: Assessment as the Key to Everyday Creativity in the Classroom (Teaching and Measuring Creativity and Creative Skills) by Katie White

What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers across America by Ted Dintersmith

Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning in Each Hour of the Day by Thich Nhat Hahn

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts by  Brené Brown

Writers Read Better: Nonfiction: 50+ Paired Lessons That Turn Writing Craft Work Into Powerful Genre Reading  by M. Colleen Cruz

Rituals for Work: 50 Ways to Create Engagement, Shared Purpose, and a Culture that Can Adapt to Change by  Kursat Ozenc  and Margaret Hagan

Fact Vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News by Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins 

I know that this is an ambitious reading list, but between my Audible app for road trips and my Kindle for the poolside, I think I can make a serious dent in professional reading for the summer

What about you? What are your must-reads for the summer?

Productive, Meaningful and Fun–Time Spent Well in Schools

Productive, Meaningful and Fun–Time Spent Well in Schools

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Time, a precious commodity in our world.

The more I think about what needs to change about education, I think the concept of time and its usage in learning needs to be evaluated. The school year often feels like a rush, and I think there’s great value in “putting on the brakes” on the frenetic energy as we charged through our outcomes to ensure we’ve “covered” everything.

Clearly, this is not the spirit that we want for learning, but often schools are bathed in this sort of state of mind, as we hurry to complete all the things on our school calendars and tick all the boxes for our curriculum to be “delivered”. So how might we begin to address the concept of “time” in our schools? I think it boils down to 3 things:

  • Understanding how much time we have
  • Evaluating our use of time
  • Appreciating the time we have

Understanding Time with Time Management: Student View

I remember my first day in Language Arts in 8th grade at Largo Middle School in Clearwater, Florida. I was given a personal planner, with our ferocious tiger mascot emblazoned on its cover. I had never seen nor used one of these before. As I thumbed through its thick pages, I noticed all the months with its special dates already logged inside. It felt like such a gift until…..the teacher told us that it was designed to log our homework each night. Buzzkill! Yes, I learned how to use a planner for homework, but how I wish now that it was “sold” to me with more benefits than using a log of all my homework. What about my friends’ birthday? What about fun events at school? What about tracking other important events like when I got my “monthly visitor”?

So with this said, students need to first and foremost come to understand and appreciate time. It’s really hard to learn how to manage time when they have no concept of it–that planner was really helpful but it needed to be presented in such a way that helped me to personalize it beyond our teachers’ homework assignment. It felt like it was THEIR planner, not MY planner.

Of course, since I’m Google-y, I think we should also teach our students to use Google Calendar or other online calendar apps and tools for helping them develop productive digital lives. Time management is a critical skill, and we often forget that it needs to be taught explicitly. But time is also deeply personal, and we need to recognize and honor that.

With that in mind, how often do we ask students what’s worth their time? There are so many things that fill up our school events calendar–what if we asked students what they wish they got to do as a school community?  How would they choose to celebrate or commemorate…

  • 100 days of school
  • International day
  • Earth Day
  • Hour of Code
  • National Day
  • Holiday celebrations (Halloween, Guy Fawkes, Christmas, Eid, Hanukkah, Martin Luther King, Chinese New Year, etc…)
  • Day of Design
  • Teacher appreciation day
  • Birthdays
  • Spirit week

What about concerts/performances, assemblies, and learning fairs? All of these events are in service to the learning of our students, but we never ask them how they would like to design THEIR school calendar? We often ask parents and teachers when we design our school calendars but have you ever asked students? Now I’m not suggesting that we ask students to trim things off the calendar–for all we know they might want to add new events like “High Five Day”–but it starts to create more ownership of the time we spend as a school community and invites them into the planning of these events. Not only is it empowering, but then it opens the doorway to have more support of the parent community, which could lighten the load of our teachers, who often get the lion’s share of organizing school events. This is truly a school community event when its organization is shared by all members.

Evaluating our use of Time and Developing Priorities: Reflection and Planning for Teachers

Let’s face it, there are a lot of paperwork demands that often dampen the brilliance of teachers. Personally, I spent 1 hour on “highlighting” one unit of inquiry electronically on our scope and sequence documents to ensure we tick all the boxes for accreditation visits. That was precious, precious time on a redundant task. We have to ask ourselves as leaders what do we need to STOP doing and START doing so that our teachers work smarter not harder when it comes to ensuring that we have learning documented? And then gain their feedback to ensure that our attempts to do so are actually effective.

reflectingSince reflection and creativity have its own clock, it requires a pace that allows for connecting ideas that seem unrelated to its other. Space in our minds and our schedules are necessary in order to respond to the needs of students and develop new approaches and ideas in the learning. When we are stressed out, feeling rushed, our brains are in high beta, an anxious state in which we go into “survival mode”. We are living in a state of impatience, anxiety, and frustration.  I can’t remember a moment in which my teaching was improved by stress. Can you?

So how do we use time to foster a culture of reflection in our schools?

Thoughtful and reflective teaching practice only comes from having room in our schedules to do this. Responsive teaching, in which teachers have time to look at student data and consider what are the misconceptions that are coming out of the learning from well-designed formative assessment, take time to unpack thoughtfully. We have to make sure teachers have the time in their planning schedules to do this.

unpacking
From the work of Dylan William, posted on Twitter (@DylanWilliam).

responsive
The connection between “responsive teaching” and formative assessment.

 

We want them to reflect and develop a better understanding of learners. This is critical, to not only developing a relationship with students but to appreciate the trends that might be emerging as students grow in their skills and knowledge of the conceptual understandings. Where in the non-contact periods is there room for reflection? How often do we have teachers bring student work to meetings and have thoughtful discussions about the learning? As leaders, we need to take inventory of these habits and practices which create a foundation of reflective practice in our schools. As teachers, we need to advocate for ourselves and make known that we need some room in our meetings for deep thinking around why we do what we do with students.

Appreciating the Time We Have: Whole School Approach

I think we need to dig into the research to determine how schools may reconfigure the calendar and class schedules. Here is a summary of some key findings:

  1. Year-round schools that distributed their allotted 175-180 days over 12 months have better academic achievement.  Loss of learning gets diminished, and when time is spread thoughtfully over the school year, there is the potential for less teacher burn out.
  2. 4-week school week not only decreases school costs but has other benefits such as reducing disciplinary problems, greater collaboration among teachers, and higher morale.
  3. Older students benefit from a later start of the day due to the research on brain development on optimal learning time.
  4. Block schedules for language and math are helpful for struggling students.
  5. Block schedules that are longer than 90 minutes do not seem to improve academics.
  6. Block schedules benefit teacher collaboration by having at least two- to seven hours of staff planning and professional development.
  7.  PE cannot replace recess due to the important social-emotional learning that happens on the playground.
  8. Flexible library schedules have the capacity to grow more avid readers.

So this is only what we know so far about what is impactful but it’s hardly a template for re-designing our days. However, I find schools like these really inspiring in how they’ve approached making the minutes matter in their schools. Whether these schools brought in outside providers to come and “teach for a day” so that teachers have time off for professional development and planning or changing the roles of teachers for more student self-directed learning, they thought outside the “clock” to inspire new ways to make the most out of instructional time.

When I consider these groups of professionals, I believe that the dream of teachers and students come skipping to school alike, eager to engage in the heavy cognitive lifting of the day, is really within reach. When we thoughtfully consider what we know about “best practice” as it relates to time in our schools and have a willingness to reconfigure our school-days, the impossible seems possible.

It’s Time to Drop your Oars and Give Up Your “Bad Faith”

It’s Time to Drop your Oars and Give Up Your “Bad Faith”

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The Nobel-laureate philosopher Jean-Paul Satre reminded us that things don’t have to be the way things are. We live in possibilities, and we have the opportunity to ordain anything with purpose and meaning. We don’t have to live in “bad faith”, constraining ourselves to norms, living a certain way, closing ourselves off to opportunities, shackled to our capitalistic societies, pursuing money instead of passion. If we could liberate ourselves from these ideals, we could be truly free, meeting our full potential. He urged institutions to create new concepts and habits, rather than continuing to be ensnared by dogma and tradition. satre.jpegAlthough his battle cry of existential was influential and thought-provoking-it has yet to truly realize its potential for disrupting the status quo, but it seems that technology indeed has the capacity to transform many long-held beliefs and practices. Like it or not, we MUST change. The pick-ax has been replaced by the smartphone, in which our hands are no longer as useful as our minds. Nowadays our “Knowledge Economy” is transforming access to information, and so be it, we live in the “age of ideas”, in which creative thought and expression is our currency.

I think the time has come in education when we start to apply some of these notions to our schools, carefully examining our beliefs and practices and asking if what we are doing is even relevant and pertinent to the future world that our students will inhabit in 20 years.

As I ponder what Satre would say about our current school systems, I think he would lament that we have yet to “enhance” our schools in order to nurture truly alive individuals, who feel free to create and invent.

I think there are 3 things that need to shift radically if we really want to transform our schools into more agentic centers of learning.

Time

Recently I sat next to some design teachers at the United Nations International School who were sharing their ideas for re-designing their MYP design program so that it was less about paperwork and more about agency. Their team had some really brilliant ideas about personalizing the learning and making it less about grade levels and more about mastery and FUN. One of their inspirations was the teacher, Mark Barnett, who teaches design to K-12 in Hong Kong. When he added up how much time he got to see classes, it was the equivalent of 2 weeks for the WHOLE school year. So, instead of doing a two 40 minutes blocks a week, he took a grade level for 1 whole week a semester and engaged them in project-based learning experiences. For one whole week, they were absolutely engaged in their unit of inquiry. There wasn’t “Math from 8:30 to 9:10” and then from “9:15-9:55 Languages”.  It was one solid week of students engaged in learning and the single subjects were in service of the project.

When I heard that, it made me think of the book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. After I read that, I was profoundly affected, thinking about my use of time and productivity. In his book, he makes a case for extended periods of time for developing our “craft”, in which we apply continuous blocks of time to focus and concentrate our efforts in researching and creating. We’ve dabbled with that in doing “block periods”, but I think it would be worthwhile to have schools start experimenting with how we can have different time table structures that are flexible so that we can engage in meaningful projects.

Content

I think most of us can agree that the “what” we teach hasn’t changed much since technology has taken hold of our schools. We plan backward from our standards, developing a scope and sequence so that everything gets “covered”. Most of us have teacher-directed lessons, in which everyone sits down and we dispense the standards in whole-group fashion–what I have come to realize that this is still a One Size Fits All approach to learning. Flipped learning has been in our vernacular for a while now, yet only certain grade levels even dabble in it, and rarely have I seen it done in the primary grades.

Personally, I have been wondering if I have to give my Reader’s workshop “mini-lesson” to the whole class, at the same time. To get all of my 1st graders transitioned and on the carpet is a waste of time. I could just easily record my lesson and have them work at their own pace, with a partner, to get through the learning objective in less time that it would take me to go through the whole-group lesson. Meanwhile, it would free me up to conference more and pull groups. Although I have yet to try it, I think it would be a much more productive use of time, but I’ve been thinking about what types of learning management systems (LMS) I could use that would work with little ones. Plus, if I put the content into a LMS like Schology, then I could find better ways to differentiate and meet the individual needs of a student. Hmm….

SAmr.jpegOf course, if we were looking at this through the lens of S.A.M.R., I haven’t really gone deep into the “pool”, which isn’t bad, but I have to ask myself if I could do better than just “flipping” the content onto a screen. I think I have to ask myself, what can my students actually DO with this knowledge? How might they apply this through a project or idea, which doesn’t necessarily mean a summative task, but a context that is authentic to them–what do people do in the REAL world with this knowledge? I need more time to sit with this question, AND, I need to survey my students to ask them what they think so that we can co-create ways to demonstrate understanding. But I’ve come to a place where the “what” of the content isn’t as important as the “why ” and the “how” of what we do with that knowledge. I think we need to place more emphasis on this in our classrooms, and then find the tech to support this.

Assessment

I was recently listening to a webinar by Modern Learners about re-imagining assessment. One of the things that they brought up is how demotivating our assessment practices can be when we assign numbers to a student’s identity. I don’t think any of us want to be objectified like that and yet that is what our school systems do every day.  In this presentation, we are reminded that the root word of assessment (assidere) actually means “to sit beside”, so our focus needs to shift, in which we see assessment AS learning, recognizing that they are where they are. It’s not bad, it’s not good. It is a moment in time that we have put our attention on and can glean insight into how we can move them forward in their understanding. Consider this notion put forth by Modern Learner:

We need to develop partnerships between students and teachers, built around relationship, as co-learners, seeking to understand, guide and nuture new ideas, capabilities, and deeper understandings.

Does it remind you that your role as a teacher in the classroom needs to shift? We have to be the “researcher” and not the “knower”, being deeply curious about our learners and coaching them into deeper learning and appreciation for their unique perspective and gifts that they can offer the world. So assessment needs to stop being “evaluative” and quantifiable but instead reflect a more holistic approach, in which we are fostering life-long learning through authentic interactions and experiences that develop self-confidence and autonomy.

I think re-defining assessment in our schools would create a shift in power structures, which may be really challenging for some educators, and I think would definitely be difficult for our parents who grew up in these traditional paradigms. I’m not suggesting it is easy, but I do believe it is necessary.

It’s Time to Rock the Boat

Isatre boat.jpeg think these are the foundational pieces (Time, Content and Assessment) that create “bad faith” in our schools. Although I have ruminated a bit on these topics in this post, I have hardly dug deep into how we can transform them. I believe that is the business of EVERYONE to do in their unique educational settings. Maybe, as teachers, we start with Content, thinking about how we might “rock the boat”. And as leaders, we need to examine the other elements of Time and Assessment and start to challenge our dogmatic approaches.

One thing is certain, we cannot go into the future with one foot in the past. We must question and collaborate, working together in order to free our students to become the very best of who they can be. This is the only mission worthwhile, as I see it, as an educator.

 

“The Standards” Aren’t a Race: The Importance of Assessment in Getting to a Finish Line

“The Standards” Aren’t a Race: The Importance of Assessment in Getting to a Finish Line

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I didn’t enjoy Math until I was in high school. Trigonometry was the first time that I remember gazing up in amazement and wonder. Sin and Cosine. Identities, theorems, and proofs. Parabolas and Ellipses.  It suddenly became interesting even if it was hard. I loved using the nifty functions on the calculator as well. But why did it take me so long to appreciate the beauty of math? I wonder where and who I might be if I had learned less about standard algorithms and more about number concepts and reasoning at an earlier age.

I don’t see how it’s doing society any good to have its members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them. It might do some good, though, to show them something beautiful and give them an opportunity to enjoy being creative, flexible, open-minded thinkers— the kind of thing a real mathematical education might provide. ……. to create a profound simple beauty out of nothing, and change myself in the process. Isn’t that what art is all about?

From A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockart-

For me, if I can invoke wonder and surprise, then the beauty of communicating in numbers becomes self-evident and a student’s heart awakens to the joy of an interesting problem or question. Creating this experience is a passion of mine. After spending a week with Lana Fleiszig, it’s hard NOT to be more inspired to create a love of math in our classroom. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and her advice about inquiry is clear–know your destination, but don’t worry about how you get there. Don’t be afraid to throw students into the “pit of learning” and allow them the experience of confusion. As I have come to appreciate her point of view, I recognize that when students climb out of their “pit”, that’s where beauty lies.

So here we are, in another stand-alone unit, which might be considered the “place value” unit, which is not typically the most exciting math concept. It’s a ho-hum inquiry into base-10 blocks in how we express large numbers and use it to develop strategies for addition and subtraction. But what if we threw them into the learning pit and took our time to really develop number sense. How might we approach our planning and execution of the unit if this wasn’t a race to tick off a curriculum math standard?

The Standalone

Let me break down the basics of the unit for you:

Central Idea: Numbers tell us How Many and How Much

  • The amount of a number determines its position in a numeral.
  • How we know when to regroup.
  • How grouping numbers into parts can help us find solutions

(All lines of inquiry and Central Idea from conceptual understanding in the PYP Math scope and sequence and subsequent learning outcomes in  Phase 2)

Knowledge and Understandings, aka, “The Standards”

I’m going to cross-reference 2 commonly used national curriculum, Australian and American Common Core, because our team needed clarity into exactly WHERE our destination needs to be in this unit of inquiry:

Australian:

Count collections to 100 by partitioning numbers using place value (ACMNA014 – Scootle )
  • understanding partitioning of numbers and the importance of grouping in tens
  • understanding two-digit numbers as comprised of tens and ones/units
Represent and solve simple addition and subtraction problems using a range of strategies including counting on, partitioning and rearranging parts (ACMNA015 – Scootle )
  • developing a range of mental strategies for addition and subtraction problems

The Common Core:

Understand place value.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2
Understand that the two digits of a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. Understand the following as special cases:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2.A
10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.”
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2.B
The numbers from 11 to 19 are composed of a ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2.C
The numbers 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 refer to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine tens (and 0 ones).
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.3
Compare two two-digit numbers based on meanings of the tens and ones digits, recording the results of comparisons with the symbols >, =, and <.

Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.C.4
Add within 100, including adding a two-digit number and a one-digit number, and adding a two-digit number and a multiple of 10, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used. Understand that in adding two-digit numbers, one adds tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose a ten.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.C.5
Given a two-digit number, mentally find 10 more or 10 less than the number, without having to count; explain the reasoning used.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.C.6
Subtract multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 from multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 (positive or zero differences), using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used.

 

Planning the Unit

If you “peel” back these standards, what (math) concepts and skills seem evident to you? What are the “big ideas” that students need to walk away with?

  • Collection or Group
  • Place Value
  • Position
  • Partitioning: composition and decomposition
  • Reasoning

Since I teach 1st grade, we would be exploring the key concept of Form and Function, mainly, throughout this unit. But we would also look at the Connection between using groups of 10s and developing mental strategies for problem-solving in which we can Change addends/subtrahends around to make friendly numbers. Students would also need to consider the Perspective of other mathematicians in our class when it came to solving a problem in different ways.

With this in mind, we looked at these standards and identified 5 main guiding questions  that will be the basis of our inquiry and the purpose of every provocation that we create:

  1. How does the place value system work?
  2. How does the position of a digit in a number affect its value?
  3. In what way can numbers be composed and decomposed?
  4. In what ways can items be grouped to make exchanges?
  5. How can we use place value patterns for computation?

Provocations to Explore and Reveal Math Thinking

Once we had clarity around the big ideas in our unit and created our guiding questions, it became easy to start planning provocations.  Using a guide like this one, Task Identification Tool_Identifying High-Quality Tasks (1),  from the work of John J. SanGiovanni in his book series on how to Mine the Gap for Mathematical Understanding really helps teams like ours to create a high ceiling, low-threshold activity for inquiry-based maths.

We knew from a previous provocation, (14 or 41–the position of a numeral doesn’t matter. Agree or Disagree. Prove it.), that students still were developing an understanding of what a written number means. We needed to further explore it. So we began with place value.

Guiding Question #1: How does the place value system work?

We decided to launch the unit with an emphasis on language since we noticed that a lot of students were mixing up their teen numbers when explaining their ideas. So we started with Teen vs. Ty, is there a pattern or a rule about these numbers?

  1. Sixteen and Sixty, What do you notice about these numbers?
  2. Seventeen and Seventy? How are they different, how are they the same?
  3. What do you think “teen” means? What do you think “ty” means?

We then began exploring expanded notation with showing the tens in a number. Students were introduced to how expanded notation is related to the place value mat, which can be represented as:

43=40 + 3 or 4 tens and 3 ones. 

The students played a partner game called “guess my number” in which they had to express a number in tens and ones and have the student create it with base-10 blocks and numerals.  They did really well. We thought we were smashing it and ready to move on to using it for addition and subtraction.

But how could we be sure they “got it”? ……….

Assessment

We decided to assess if they got the idea of base-ten and how we use the place value mat as a structure to show the parts of numbers. We used this SeeSaw prompt to assess if they truly understood:

How we know when to regroup – Using a collection of objects – how do you find out how many items you have?

We decided to use unifix cubes because the “tens” weren’t prepackaged, sort of speaking, as they are with base-10 blocks. In this assessment, we had them grab a handful of unifix cubes and organize them on the place value mat, explaining to us what number they thought they had. What we observed stopped us dead in our tracks and ask what misconceptions do we see? Here is an example of a common surprising result:

As you can see, this student didn’t connect the quantity he had in their collection at all. These students would need some additional support with connecting the amount of a number to how it is written and presented.  We felt we needed to go deeper into how we “bundle” tens to count things efficiently. In fact, we felt we needed to do an inquiry into 10, so they could appreciate how this is the basis of base-10.

Back to the Starting Line?

We are in Week 4 of this unit, and we are going back to the starting line. Based on our observations, it seems that the students don’t quite have the idea of ten yet, and, we have a group of students who just need to work on skip counting by tens. It would be easy to move ahead and push through so we can tick off our standards, but we’d rather spend more time immersed in context and play that develops their number sense than to push them along. We understand our future impact. Moving ahead hoping that they “get it” later on would seem like a disservice, as they’d lose the interest and motivation to do more complicated mathematics and have half-baked conceptual understandings.

Since have a free flow of student groups, in which children choose what Must Dos and May Dos they want to participate in. However, ideally, we have 3 primary activities that we want the students to work through in small teacher groups throughout our math learning time:

The Big Idea of our teacher-directed groups: 10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.”

  • The Base-10 Bank

Students will pick a numeral and build numbers using “ones” which they can exchange for tens. As partners, one person will be the “bank”, which the other partner can trade in their ones for 10. No place value mats, only the base-10 blocks.

  • Race to 100

Using dice, a hundred’s chart and a place value mat, students have to roll and add their way to 100. As they roll their way up to 100, they have to build the new number, using the place value mat to show how the quantity that is ever-increasing, as well as giving a context for exchanging units.

Making Bundles: In this activity, students are given a collection of objects and they have to bundle them up into tens, so that they have an appreciation of the value of a number.

Additional Games and activities that they can do independently, when not working with a teacher. The May-Dos:

Traffic light (Partner Game): One partner comes up with a “mystery” number and, using a place value mat, has to try to guess what digit is in what position.

Big 4 (Independent or Small Group): In this game, we use a hundred chart to try to get to the biggest number in just 4 moves. A child rolls a die and moves that many spaces, moving in any direction, forwards, backward, diagonally, upwards or downwards. This game gives them practice at thinking about number patterns as they move around the hundreds chart.

Ready or Not?

After all that exploration, we hope that these games will prepare them for the following formative assessment:

4+4 = 44. Agree or Disagree? Show how you know. (This actually is inspired by a misconception that we observed) Students can use 10-frames, the Hundreds Chart, Math Racks or Base-10 blocks to provide evidence of their reasoning. (We determined that these sorts of materials would help them to “see” patterns and make connections, rather than loose parts alone)

If they can articulate and demonstrate a firm understanding of place value in this provocation, then we feel that we can move into applying our understanding of using the base-10 for addition and subtraction, examining the guiding question:

How can we use place value patterns for computation?

This is the ultimate reason why place value is such a critical understanding after all. However, it is the journey into number sense that makes this a beautiful experience. We are not quick to move them onto pencil and paper. We want them to experience numbers and segue them into contextual situations.

The Summative

We are still in process with determining the actual prompt, but we feel that we need to give them choices with the task. Choosing a task that shows how they apply grouping strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems will ultimately be our goal.

For our low-level readers, we will give them an oral word problem and then hand them a collection of objects that need to be counted. We want them to observe if they create groups of tens to determine the number. No place value mats offered, but they can request one. For our stronger readers, we will give them a word problem, and, again, offer them concrete materials, but other tools to solve the problem are upon request.

At the end of this task, we can identify the skills and understandings they have acquired. Although we have “mapped out” where we think this unit will go, we can be flexible and stop to address misconceptions along the way. Will they arrive and “meet the standard”? That is entirely up to us, and how effectively we observe, challenge and question our students’ thinking as they playfully and joyfully experience numbers. At the end of the day, that goal–to appreciate and be fascinated with numbers--that is the true destination of math inquiry.

 

Into the “Pit” or upon the “Clouds”: Kensho and Satori Moments in the Development of Number Concept

Into the “Pit” or upon the “Clouds”: Kensho and Satori Moments in the Development of Number Concept

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It’s Sunday morning and as I soap up greasy dishes, I hear Susan Engel say on the Heinemann Podcast: 

One of the things that I think that our schools have unwittingly done is ignored all the processes that kids use at home and try to replace those with a set of formal procedures that aren’t always as effective…. But it’s a shame because while we are busy trying to sort of force these somewhat formal kinds of learning beacause we think they are more “efficent” or “high powered”, we waste a lot of the natural learning skills that students have. And often a lot of the natural teaching skills that grown-ups have.

Huh, I think I know what she is talking about. Whether we are teaching a genre or the scientific process, teachers are constantly “telling” kids what to pay attention to and to think about. When I start examining my current practice and reflecting on Who I am as a teacher, I have come to see my role as a provocateur and coach. I am always considering who is REALLY doing the learning in our classrooms?–is it me, or is it the students?

egg
I think of this quote often, reminding myself that if I  tell students, then I’m “breaking their egg” and killed the opportunity for their learning.

So I am constantly asking myself that question because I know that “the person who does the work, does the learning“. But when I say “work”, I mean thinking, and there are so many of these micro-moments in our classroom in which I have a chance to tell kids what to do or to ask them what they think they should do to approach a situation or problem.  Sometimes these moments of learning are Kensho, growth through pain, and other times it is Satori, growth through inspiration. I first encountered this term when I read this blog and Kensho immediately reminded me of our teacher-term, the learning pit. You need determination and resilience to get out of that pit and your reward is Kensho. However, we rarely talk about it’s opposite, Satori. Up until this morning, I didn’t think we had a name for Satori in education. It Kensho is the “learning pit” than Satori must be up in the “clouds”, having a clear view and understanding. But Susan Engel articulated best in the podcast:

There are certain kinds of development that children undergo that are internal and very complex and they don’t happen bit by bit. They happen in what seem to be moments of great transformation of the whole system. ……

At that point, I stopped and turned toward my device. I recognized exactly what she was talking about it. I observed it the other day. My ears perked up some more as I moved closer to listen:

When children are little, their idea of number is very tied up with the appearance of things. So, this is a famous example from Jean-Pierre, a line of 10 pebbles to them is a different quantity than a circle of 10 pebbles, because lines and circles look so different.

The idea that it’s 10, whether it’s a circle or it’s straight, is not accessible to them. At a certain point, virtually every typically developing child, no matter where they’re growing up, acquires this sense that the absolute number of something stays the same no matter what it looks like. Whether it’s a heap or a straight line or a circle, that may sound like a tiny discovery, but it’s the beginning of a whole new way of experiencing the abstract characteristics of the number world.

You can’t teach that through a series of lessons. That’s an internal, qualitative transformation that children go through. Once they’ve gone through that, there are all kinds of specific things that you can teach them about the nature of counting and number and quantity.

Yes! I totally know what she is explaining. I was a witness to it. And perhaps, when you reflect on these Zen philosophical terms as development milestones, you may make a connection to your own classroom learning.

Here’s a snapshot from a recent example in our Grade 1.

Some context

There’s a math coach that I love, Christina Tondevold. She always says that “number sense isn’t taught, it’s caught”.  I’m always thinking to myself, how can I get them to “catch” it. This past week, we did just that using the Visible Thinking Routine, Claim, Support, Question making the claim:

The order of the numbers don’t matter–12 or 21, it’s the same number.

The students took a stand, literally, in the corners next to the words and image for Agree or Disagree, with  I Don’t Know, in the middle. This was great formative data! Then we provided the students with a variety of “math tools” to Support or prove their thinking is correct. They had to “build” the numbers and show us that they were actually different. It was neat how the students who stood in the I Don’t Know and Disagree areas were developing an understanding of what a written number truly “looks like”. We didn’t jump in and save them at any point, but some of them were experiencing Kensho. It was painful because they didn’t know how to organize their tiles or counters or shapes or beads in such a way that they could “see” the difference between the 2 numbers. Meanwhile, the students who chose the unifix cubes were experiencing Satori- and it became very obvious to them that these were different numbers. 

In our next lesson, we introduced the ten frames as a tool to help them organize their thinking and develop a sense of pattern when it comes to number concept. We did the same two numbers: 12 and 21, and they could work this time with a partner. Oh man, was there a lot of great discussions that came out as they talked about how the numbers looked visually different. The concept of Base 10 started to emerge. As observers, documenting their thinking, it was exciting to see the connections they were making. But the best part was yet to come.

We then brought in the Question part of the thinking routine. We asked them “if the order of 1 and 2 matters to 12 and 21, then what other numbers matter?” They told us:

“13 and 31, 14 and 41, 24 and 42, 46 and 64, 19 and 91, 103 and 310.”

A Hot Mess of Learning

Once unleashed, the kids grouped up and flocked to resources. There was a buzz. Giving students choices allowed the opportunity to choose whether they wanted to stay with smaller numbers or shoot for the BIG numbers even if they had no idea how they might construct a number past 100. They could use any math tool they wanted: cubes, blocks, 10 frames, Base 10 blocks, number lines, counters, peg boards–anything they wanted. Those choices, of itself, really provided some great data.

Here is an example of one of the groups who went with lower numbers:

But the ones who went for the BIG numbers, were the most interesting to watch because they were Kensho. Most of them grabbed unifix cubes, thinking that the same strategy they used before with 12 and 21 would work with 103 and 310. big numbersOh man, they persisted, they tried, but it took a lot of questioning and patience on our part to help guide them out of the pain that their learning was experiencing. Only one group naturally gravitated toward the Base-10 blocks, and when they realized how the units worked, it was a moment of Satori. They moved on from 103 and 310 quickly; they tried other numbers and invented new combinations. And interestingly enough, those groups, at no point, looked over to the ones engaged in the struggle to suggest that they might try another math tool. It was as if they knew that when one is in Kensho, best to leave them alone to make meaning on their own.

And there we were, in the midst of this math inquiry, and we felt like exhausted sherpas but satisfied that we were able to let them choose their own path of learning and made it to their “summit”.

As I consider how the role of the teacher is evolving in education, I think it is recognizing these moments of pain and insight in learning, and guiding them towards the next understanding in their learning progression. I absolutely agree with Susan Engel that when we see children fumbling around, we should be asking if they are within reach, developmentally, to even acquire the knowledge of skill that we are working on. For me, inquiry-based learning is the BEST way in which we can observe, engage assess our learners to truly discover their perceptions and capabilities. It is through capturing the student conversations and ideas that emerge as they give birth to a new understanding that is the most exciting to watch and inspires me in our planning of provocations that lead to their next steps.

How about you?

 

 

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