Tag: assessment

Press Start, Pause or Stop? 3 Ways We Can Approach Launching a Unit of Inquiry

Press Start, Pause or Stop? 3 Ways We Can Approach Launching a Unit of Inquiry

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Bewildered by my outburst, my sleeping dog popped up her head and twitched her ears when I giggled out a “hmmm”.  But I couldn’t help it. I was so immersed in a recording of the Town Hall discussion with fellow Google Trainers. They asked a question about concept testing that made me make a connection with a recent topic that we had been discussing during our grade level meetings, the cycle of learning and teaching.

What was the question they use during their iterative process of concept design?

“What would you expect to happen ...?”

Their research shows that this puts algorithmic thinking into motion, generating potential scenarios that could be incredibly powerful in articulating the effect of our decisions.

What if we applied this same question as we approach a launching a unit of inquiry? I think this could be and effective way to start a familiar unit of inquiry, creating the impetus we may need in order to contemplate and debate alternative approaches with greatest impact for our learning and teaching.

Entry points in The Cycle of Learning and Teaching.

Where do you begin with learning? Do you launch a unit with TEACHING, picking up your PYP planner from last year and “copy and paste” what you did last time? Do your reflect on your past PYP planner and adjust the learning expectations or reinvent the unit with PLANNING provocations and activities to launch new concepts? Or do you pick up your PYP planner and think about how you might ASSESS the learners to figure out what direction you might need to go to support strong concept development and bringing out the best in the Learner Profile and Atls?

I would argue that there is no “right answer” to this because every unit of inquiry is unique and we have to look holistically at the grade level Programme of Inquiry (POI) and the whole school Programme of Inquiry (POI). It might also depend on if the UOI is a single subject or if it is transdisciplinary. That said, I do think that teachers need to sit down and re-read the planner from last year to reflect on what is relevant and meaningful to their current learners. They need to unpack the central idea and lines of inquiry before determining where they are going to jump into this cycle of learning and teaching.

Decisions, Decisions!

Press Start: Teach 

There are some very valid reasons why we might just start teaching. Time may play a significant factor, especially when we know this unit will introduce never explored content in the school-wider programme of inquiry. Also, if there is a project that the students will work on during the unit and the goals of the unit are more about the process of learning so we have to focus on teaching into the Atls such as the self-management or social skills that will be developed throughout the unit. For example, collaboration or time-management may need to be developed right from the word Go so that groups can effectively do research together. A great example of that is during the PYP Exhibition. Teachers might need to start teaching into stress management or technology skills in order to ensure that students can work independently and effectively.

Teachers who are also single-subject specialists may also jump into the cycle of learning and teaching here, particularly if they have younger students who they feel can safely assume that they have no prior knowledge of the concepts. For example, a music teacher who wants to teach the concept of melody to their kindergarten students or a language acquisition teacher who works with newcomers to a language.

However, we really want to think critically about this approach because research suggests that we need to value our learners more than teaching our content, so we need to carefully consider our students when planning and assessing.

Press Pause: Plan

It is good practice to review previous planners for a familiar unit. As you re-read the planner, it’s important to read the reflections first before digging into the resources, learning activities and assessments that you created in the past. I know that this part of the planner often gets neglected, but it really can be critical to understanding how and why you might make changes to a unit, especially if there are new members of a team who may not be as familiar with a unit. It is especially for this reason why you would want to start with planning. Not everyone interprets units the same way, especially when a central idea is broad. So team members need to “unpack” the unit’s concepts and think about how it could be approached differently, particularly when considering the students you have in your class. I’ve written about the importance of this before in this blog post.I think this is the most common way that teams approach the learning and teaching cycle–Teachers getting together and discussing what might be possible during this unit.

However, you can share the central idea with students and unpack it with them in order to co-construct the unit. The questions and ideas that emerged during those discussions with students then become the fodder to re-write aspects of unit in order to develop more student interest and agency. Sometimes that means we go back are re-write lines of inquiry, change learner profiles or switch our Atls. And sometimes it means that the content shifts. It really depends on what happens during the “unpacking” with students.

For example, consider this unit:

Central Idea: 

Circumstances impact opportunity and the ability to achieve.

Lines of Inquiry:

  1. The attributes of empathy(form)
  2. How opportunity is enabled (causation)
  3. The measurement of achievement (perspective)

A team of 4th grade teachers were going to approach this as a “copy and paste” type of unit, in which the focus has typically been on the role of social class in creating barriers or opportunities to success in life. However, when they unpacked it with students, it became clear that they were fascinated with disabilities and inclusion. It required the team to get back to the drawing board and re-design the unit with student interests in mind. Although the key concepts might stay the same, the related concepts shift from Poverty, Social Class, and Opportunity to Diversity, Innovation and Inclusion because students were keen to learn about how disabilities and neurodivergence lead to developing new technology to help people feel capable and involved in their lives.

When teachers respond to students like this, learning is more dynamic and student action can organically evolve from their enthusiasm. I’m sure you can see how responding like this can change the trajectory of a unit.

Press Stop: Assess

Before putting the car into drive, some teachers choose to stop and assess before beginning a unit. Pre-assessment is always a good idea, but since the pandemic, this approach seems like the most sensible for many units. We just aren’t sure where the conceptual and skill gaps may be, so we may need to do some formal assessments to see where students knowledge base lies. Once we have an idea of what students know, understand and can do, teachers can sit down with the data and then examine what concepts and skills make sense before launching a unit. Again, they may need to adjust content, change Atls and/or learning expectations.

“What would you expect to happen ...?”

I think predicting and reflection are 2 key superpowers that a PYP teacher needs when we consider how we can build strong units. As I continue to mull over this question, I think this question can be an important tool to help shake up unit planning and instigate critical thinking in our approaches. Whether it is asked 2 weeks before a unit of inquiry begins or as a strategy to provoke reflective thinking, this question can help us explore new ways that we could approach the unit.

What do you think? Are there other questions that we need to consider when determining the why and how we jump into the cycle of learning and teaching?

Why is the Whole World Upside Down? Education After COVID-19 and #RemoteLearning

Why is the Whole World Upside Down? Education After COVID-19 and #RemoteLearning

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Lately, I’ve been reading and reflecting a lot about Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Somehow when I feel stressed, I turn to science as my security blanket. I feel comfort in the tested theories and proofs as if all of life’s unsolved mysteries can be explained with science. Surely, during these uncertain times, trying to figure out how we got here and where we go next is on everyone’s mind. Mine too.

Darwin’s theory is one that is easily misunderstood. Most people don’t know the backstory of how his theory came about and whether he actually agreed with his conjectures but we accept his ideas as a fact, by and large, and teach it in our textbooks. But his ideas are why the whole world is upside down.

The problem, whether we are aware of it or not, is that his ideas of “selection of the fittest” have paved the way for our economic principles and so much of the discrimination and atrocities in our human world–from civil wars and genocides, to acceptance of violence as a norm–justifying it as our primal urge to compete for scare resources and force “natural selection”. We’ve accepted his ideas because it was the first attempt of describing the complex behaviors that we observe in nature, but collaborationdarwinI think this COVID crisis is helping us to examine these ideas and ask ourselves if this is how we want to continue living as a species. Because the truth is, if we really make a study of nature, there’s a helluva lot more evidence for cooperation rather than competitition in the endurance of living things. Darwin actually wrote about this but it often goes unnoted.

But whether you are taking about plants (The Hidden Life of Trees  )  or microscopic , single-celled organisms (I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life), there is a complicated web of life that is the operating system that runs in the background of all things, from the most mundane elements of Earth (How to Read Water) to the deepest understanding of intelligence (Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness). And the fact that our economies are coming to a grinding halt during this pandemic exposes this fault in our thinking of our origins and purpose in life. Economists may have taken Darwin’s principles too far.

However, to not seize this moment in Education would be a terrible blunder. Especially since we now have the world’s attention of how dang important educators are in our societies. We really can’t go back to “business as usual” when our doors reopen. We need to be looking deeply into ourselves and asking if this world paradigmn that we live in is the world we want to continue into our future.

We’ve been granted a second chance.

Will we take it?

Needless to say, this is bigger than technology. It’s not about the level of preparedness that educators had when walking into remote learning. We could focus on that but I think we should be looking at the glaring equity issues we have–survival of the fittest–if you had access to technology and wifi, you got to continue your education online. If you didn’t, schools either were temporarily canceled or teachers made packets of uninspiring worksheets that put your brain to sleep–and ultimately got burned in a trash heap since districts were too afraid to have teachers actually grade them for the fear of spreading the virus. All that “school work” went up in flames. Ironic and metaphorical at the same time.

There’s this part of Darwin’s theory of Evolution that we should focus on. Adaptation: a change in a behavior or physical feature that improves a living thing’s ability to survive.  If we superimpose this concept onto culture, we call it innovation.

Innovation is often considered to be a value. But I don’t think so. It’s a necessity in my mind, a conscious decision. Natural selection is only one form of evolution but change can be also be a choice. That is where innovation comes in.

In the course, New Learning: Principles and Patterns of Pedagogy , Dr. William Cope reminds us that “

I share these thoughts of Dr. Cope to demonstrate how important this time is to reflect and consider WHAT’S NEXT in our human paradigm and our role to consciously decide as educators how we can support this transition to new ways of thinking and living in our world. I believe that as we move through this pandemic, we will also have a crisis of the heart and mind as we grapple with how we might use this opportunity to innovate in Education and embrace new ways of doing “school”. We can use the power of formal education to steer humanity in a new direction.

An Einstein Approach

Just as we are awakening to the ridiculousness of “standardizing” our students with testing, let’s not make the shallow mistake to make this about apps and tech. It’s much more primal and significant than that.

Albert Einstein once said:

einstein problems.jpeg

So, if our thinking has gotten us into our mess, then we have to revise it.  Education plays a crucial role in this.

The truth is that living things are exposed to disease all the time. That’s not new.

But we deem this a crisis because it has changed our way of living. And that may not be a bad thing in the long game if we get to eradicate the wrongful premise that the only way to survive is at the expense of others.

Because what the scientific evidence is now demonstrating is that it’s our relationships that helps us to solve-problems (code word: adaptation). And doing this TOGETHER will be the only way through this situation. We can not simply survive but we can thrive if we stop doing the same things and thinking in the same ways that got us here.

And, if we don’t want to be “same-same, but different” (same content but with a splash more of technology in there for good measure), then we need to look critically at our curricular content and school structures, while asking if it is truly serving a higher purpose for living beings, big and small. We have the power to choose this.

So, it is in the spirit of Nature’s truth that begs us to rethink schools and rebuild our world.

So what if we got Darwin all wrong?

Here is some of my first thinking what should be the basis of new standards in Education.

  1. Empathy should become a part of our content because it helps us to understand the relationship we have to our world.  We don’t read and write to pass a test, we do it to connect with the world.
  2. As a skill, explicit teaching of cooperation and collaboration should become the new “norm” in our school.
  3. Grades are an artifact of “selection of the fittest” thinking in which we rank and value our students based upon their academic knowledge. It’s an artificial and inhumane way to evaluate students. We need to stop this practice.
  4. No more, dog eat dog: content should include a new paradigmn in which we highlight peace and inter-relationships. How to solve conflict is an essential skill.
  5. Moreover, social emotional learning isn’t fluff. It’s a vital for developing human competence.
  6. Sharing is not just caring, it is an essential component to life. All life. So, the circular economy and sharing economy shouldn’t be a fringe idea, it should be a guiding principle.
  7. Awareness and appreciation of intelligence is not just a human thing. It’s in ALL things and when we recognize it, we can transform our life experience.

So, I want to restate what I said earlier:

We really can’t go back to “business as usual” when our doors reopen. We need to be looking deeply into ourselves and asking if this world paradigmn that we live in is the world we want to continue into our future.

We’ve been granted a second chance.

Will we take it?

Let’s set the world rightside up. We have the power to do that in Education.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

“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.

 
#ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP

#ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP

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I hate report cards. Hate is a strong word, but I think they are an outdated form of educational technology and we need to set a match to it. 31479586_199389720679114_1677575111550435328_nI can’t believe they haven’t gone by the waste side yet, like horse-drawn carriages or 8-tracks. It doesn’t serve where we are in education and what we know about learning and teaching. And, as a parent, the letter A (approaching), M( meets) and E (exceeds) next to a subject area with a couple of sentences that explains the justification of those letters really doesn’t help me figure out how I can support my child. And, as a writer of those comments, knowing that parents are intended audience for these report cards, you end up summarizing the skills gained vs. the conceptual understandings–because at the end of the day, parents just want to know if their kids can read and do math up to the “standard” of their peers. So really, the report cards provide late feedback that schools may feel “report” the learning but ultimately doesn’t serve any of the stakeholders involved, students included.

Let me elaborate a bit more. I am risking embarrassment here for the sake of all of us to reflect and consider how messy and difficult it is to create “reports”.

Here is an example from our school of how we are to create continuums of learning of our conceptual understandings.

vis template continuum

This is a template, an exemplar, if you wish, so how does THIS match our report cards? Well, I have to comment on the subject areas and the learning outcomes of the unit and this model really haven’t helped me decide how to grade them in Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, let alone Transdisciplinary Maths, Social Studies or Science. So in our current How We Express Ourselves, we changed the headings a bit and tried to offer more specifics into assessing their conceptual understandings.  I still feel like this is an epic fail.

express oursleves

So now that I shared with you the pseudo-continuum for students,  would you like to see what a typical report card is on this unit?

Here are the outcomes that I have to grade:

manageBac
Parents don’t actually see the learning outcomes that we are grading against. They just see those letters next to the strands.

Now here is a comment, written for the parent’s interest, as it related to the Strands that they will see. (Math comments were made in the Math Stand Alone section of the report)

Strengths

Student X is a wonderful communicator so this has been great unit for him to expand and improve his skills. In particular, he has learned how he can interact and provide constructive feedback on other’s work, as well as reflecting on the comments other’s have made on his.

Learning Target

Although Student X has grown a lot with recognizing and writing words, he has a challenge with staying focused on longer texts. This impacts his ability to read fluently at higher levels.  As a writer, he is developing his ability to expand upon and give details in his writing so that a reader can “see” the setting and conflict within a story.

Now I warned you that this is an epic fail!–Can you see my point??? What would you do if you were in my situation, short of writing pages of commentary?

My school encourages us to come up with conceptual continuums but then want us to write concise and helpful comments that provide suggestions for next steps that parents could use for supporting learning at home. Total mismatch. And this isn’t a bad reflection on my school–this discrepancy is in nearly EVERY school! I believe this isn’t a one-off derelict example–this is a normal challenge that I reckon PYP schools have. We use a concept-based curriculum and yet we have these report cards focused on skills and knowledge. What are we to do?

I’d really like to challenge our schools to think a bit more deeply about how this communication tool, the report card, could look as we think about how our PYP schools share this philosophy around life-long learning.

What would it mean if we were to think about this through the lens of constructing meaning over time?

Do we need to have “reporting” due dates? What if our communication with parents was more detailed and frequent? Would this thing called the “report card” even be relevant?

And another question that pops into my head, as I think more about this is:

How might we co-construct meaning when we include The Learning Community?

So instead of report cards talking about the student, what if they included student voice, choice, and ownership? And what if families could chime in with evidence of learning? Again, would report cards even be relevant?

I just keep thinking about how assessment is going to look with our transition in thinking of data to inform learning and teaching with a collection of evidence vs summative tasks that help us mark those boxes in our report cards. Jan Mills refers to this as creating a “tapestry” of the children’s learning.

I have strong feelings about this–if you couldn’t tell. And I’d like to set a challenge for myself to really push my thinking about what could and SHOULD replace the report card. Yes, digital portfolios like SeeSaw help to bridge our next steps, but this institutional tool needs to evolve. Badly! I really want to do some deep thinking around this. Anyone else with me on this quest?

 

Taking Action: The Challenge of the Central Idea in the Primary Years Program (PYP)

Taking Action: The Challenge of the Central Idea in the Primary Years Program (PYP)

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The Sharing the Planet theme is usually one of the most difficult to teach because the topics are so heavy and there’s quite a lot of knowledge base that needs to be developed as we inquire into the rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and living things. Think of all the science concepts, vocabulary, and skills that need to get unpacked during our inquiry. In this next unit, whose central idea is: Our actions can make a difference to the environment we share, one of the key assessment pieces will be student action. This is definitely a unit in which students must take what they know and run with it. And, I must find the ways and means to make even the smallest contribution incredibly meaningful and encourage student agency. So there are 3 main challenges, as I see it, that I must overcome as I embark upon this unit. 

#1: Assessing Student Action

You cannot recognize that action has taken place unless you document it in some way. I am coming up with a pre and post assessment that captures 10 key behaviors that are the basis of student action, incorporating the different aspects of “action” that are found in this image.

actionposter (1)
Image from https://pypatspicewood.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/promoting-and-celebrating-student-action/

 

This list of behaviors represents my “first thinking” when it comes to possible expected behaviors that might emerge as a result of their learning. If you had other ideas or suggestions, I am keen to hear them–Please comment below!

#2: Personal and Authentic Inquiry

Of course, as in every inquiry, I have to balance what we have designed as “learning outcomes” with what the students want to learn about and the ways in which they want to express their learning. What I Want Them to Learn vs. What They Want to Learn always shows up in every unit. Since I do a lot of team teaching, I feel a bit compelled to stay on track with the structure of our timetable instead of allowing students the opportunity to go deeper into what they care about. I rarely stray for the weekly planner. We have a block of “personal inquiry” time but that often gets minimalized as we use it to catch up on classroom work. As I think about this upcoming unit, I want to work on honoring this personal inquiry time more and structuring our timetable to ensure that students can explore and experiment with the ideas that are meaningful to them. I am curious about how they might schedule their learning just as I had done with my daughter in my post Homework vs. Deep Work.  I believe that when we honor students and permit them the time to make their own discoveries, the learning gained is magnified. I am going to really challenge myself and our team to add more student voice and choice into our structuring our day.

 

 

#3: True Learning=A Change (in all of US)

I have often complained about how units like this often create a temporary shift in our behaviors but then we forget and revert to the “status quo”. How can we cultivate sustainable habits and make a lasting change? This is something that I really want to explore during this unit.

There’s this great quote from Stephen Convey based on Zen wisdom:

“to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.”

Sometimes, because I am a teacher, there is an understanding and expectation that I really “know” what I am teaching. When I reflect on my personal action, am I really modeling how my actions can make a difference to the environment we share. What have I done for the planet lately, you know what I mean? During this unit, I plan to be side by side with my students and finding ways that I can make a bigger dent and a lighter footprint on our planet. I’ve already lined up some learning materials that may challenge my thinking about living things. For example, I want to challenge my thinking and am beginning to read, The Hidden Life of Trees   and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I trying to think about how I might challenge my lifestyle of convenience and comfort by making different choices like a meatless Monday or turning on the air conditioner less. Or how about getting off my screen more and sitting outside in nature?  As my students compile their lists of actions and survey what they can do to make a difference, I will need to evaluate myself right along with them. This is what makes being an IB educator so special because I learn right along with my students, as my understanding and appreciation of the content are deepened throughout the unit. Perhaps my own personal exploration and modeling will help create everlasting change and cultivate student action.

 

What do you think? How might students shift into higher gears of action and be the change we hope to see in our future world?  What strategies and ideas have worked well for you?

Do You Ask These 3 Questions to Improve Students’ Self-Reflection?

Do You Ask These 3 Questions to Improve Students’ Self-Reflection?

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Many educators recognize the value of increasing students’ motivation in order to improve student engagement and decrease behavioral issues in the classroom. Earlier in the year, I introduced staff to the ideas in Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by watching his Ted Talk. His seminal work on motivation explains that the “carrot and stick” method of extrinsic motivation creates compliance, but not creativity nor engagement. He shares his “secret sauce” from his research which includes 3 main areas that develop intrinsic motivation and the individual’s internal desire to put in their best effort: purpose, mastery, and autonomy.

Drive_Motivation3.0

If we want students to shift into higher gears of learning, then we have to create a classroom culture that develops agency, competence and a love of learning.  Lev Vygotsky reminds us that “children grow into the intellectual life around us. ” It’s the day to day mundane stuff that shapes our learning environment like our routines and strategies, but most importantly it’s the language we use in our interactions.  Developing a culture of self-reflection is a quintessential aspect of today’s classroom. In a world of immediate gratification and distraction, we have to provide tools to students to help them cultivate their focus and develop their independence. Reflection is a habit that every classroom should have because it enhances the meaning of the learning.  It teases out key ideas and insights, and complexities of the process of learning.  We foster students’ growth when we give them tools to control their own learning, and a reflective question does just that.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. – Mark Van Doren

So today I want to share with you 3 questions that Daniel Pink suggests in order to get a resistant person to start the process of introspection and develop the motivation to start regulating their own behavior. When I heard these 3 questions, I knew it could extend beyond the boardroom (he spoke about management teams) and could easily fit into our classrooms. The order of asking the questions are really important because it frames how one might move beyond mediocre.

Opening question: On a scale from 1-10, 1 being the least and 10 the best, how would you rate fill in the blank? 

Second Question: Why didn’t you rate it lower?

Follow-Up Question (or go to question if they rate themselves as a 1) What would make it a next rating number up on the scale? 

Example:

Teacher: On a scale from 1-10, 1 being the least and 10 the best, how would you rate your collaboration in the group. 

Student: I think I am a 3.

Teacher: Why didn’t you rate it a 2?

Student: Because I did draw a picture on the poster.

Teacher: What could you do next time to make it a 4?

Student: I could also share what I know about polar bears for the project.

(What if my student rates themselves as a 1?  Then you skip question 3: What could you do to make it a 2?)

Do not underestimate the power of this questioning strategy. It has can be impactful, especially over time–practice makes perfect, right?!  And, for younger students, you could easily do a smaller scale of numbers, like 1-5. I know my little 4-year-olds might like to exaggerate their efforts so I would need to start with something very concrete and tangible to redirect them towards, something with specific steps or actions that they would know very well. As I write this, I am thinking that I would use a well-known routine, like our morning routine, to demonstrate how to use a rating scale.

No matter what the age range, listening to their answers with empathy, flexibility, and curiosity will help elucidate deeper responses. We can’t judge their ratings–how they rate themselves is data for us, but it’s not necessarily a time to correct them or give advice. If the objective of this strategy is to develop metacognition and motivation then we have to trust the process and not micro-manage it with what we feel the student should have rated themselves. We have to listen openly to their answers because we know that change comes from within–we cannot impose our opinions on them.

In Learning and Leading with Habits of the Mind by Arthur DeCosta talks about the “voices” we hear in our classroom: internal and external voices of reflection. The internal voice of reflection is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is a mixture of both what and how we are thinking. Self-knowledge includes ways of thinking that may not be visible to us consciously. Using a simple tool like this rating scale by Daniel Pink gives students a window into their own mind and the motivations behind the choices they have made and the choice they can make in the future.  If we give them the space to create this self-knowledge, then the tool becomes the catalyst for change and self-improvement.

How do you develop self-awareness in your students?  What stimulus do you give them to cultivate the impulsion to make greater efforts on their own?

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Using "5 Stars" for Emergent Writing

Using "5 Stars" for Emergent Writing

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5starpicsAs many of us know, writing begins with pictures for little ones. Furthermore,research has shown that more elaborate drawings translate into better writing for the long-term.  The theory goes that more details in drawings will produce more details in their actual writing later on, when the students have the skills to be proficient.

So I found this rubric years ago and really loved it.  I believe that when children know of what is expected, they rise to the occasion. That is especially true of little children who are eager to show how “big” they are. Rubrics and checklists are vital for providing feedback and I strive to use them in everything, from behavior to literacy. Since children love stickers, I find that using “5 Stars” to indicate high quality work is an effective way to get them to consider their effort. However, this sheet just really wasn’t enough to stimulate quality pictures.

So I made a display with pictures that would be indicative of each level of effort. As a result of having these examples, students are often going up to the display and comparing their work, as well as providing feedback to each other at the tables. It’s great to hear their conversations, and of course to see them develop as “writers”.

IMG_1034

Of course, one of the dangers of using rubrics like this is that once they meet expectations, how to more them beyond and into real writing. The transition between getting them to start writing “words” or captions into sentences seems like such a big jump sometimes for 4-5 year olds. But it’s the next step in my quest for encouraging the development of writing.

Using “5 Stars” for Emergent Writing

Using “5 Stars” for Emergent Writing

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5starpicsAs many of us know, writing begins with pictures for little ones. Furthermore,research has shown that more elaborate drawings translate into better writing for the long-term.  The theory goes that more details in drawings will produce more details in their actual writing later on, when the students have the skills to be proficient.

So I found this rubric years ago and really loved it.  I believe that when children know of what is expected, they rise to the occasion. That is especially true of little children who are eager to show how “big” they are. Rubrics and checklists are vital for providing feedback and I strive to use them in everything, from behavior to literacy. Since children love stickers, I find that using “5 Stars” to indicate high quality work is an effective way to get them to consider their effort. However, this sheet just really wasn’t enough to stimulate quality pictures.

So I made a display with pictures that would be indicative of each level of effort. As a result of having these examples, students are often going up to the display and comparing their work, as well as providing feedback to each other at the tables. It’s great to hear their conversations, and of course to see them develop as “writers”.

IMG_1034

Of course, one of the dangers of using rubrics like this is that once they meet expectations, how to more them beyond and into real writing. The transition between getting them to start writing “words” or captions into sentences seems like such a big jump sometimes for 4-5 year olds. But it’s the next step in my quest for encouraging the development of writing.

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