Finished my first complete readthrough of the middle school NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS today.
Generally, I have a favorable feeling about them. I do disagree with specifying computer modeling in any standard. Not because it's bad, but because if one just doesn't have the available hardware or adequate software, then the standard becomes moot.
But overall no big surprises and very little that isn't already being done in major curricula (FOSS or STC).
Some rote knowledge is reintroduced, and I appreciate how rote knowledge is usually specified as something that should first have been derived or constructed. I'm sure that many will likely stick to memorization activities (the derivation and/or learning process would be difficult to assess).
Monday, May 14, 2012
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Assessment Training Institute Day 1. Part 1/4.
I'm attending the Assessment Training Institute with my principal and a coleague in PDX here on Thurs. and Fri.
Today was the first day. I'm going to try and get my thoughts down and organized around what I've learned today. But not all in one part because, frankly, it was too much. All good stuff, but so much!
So the opening was from Ken O'Conner and he was relating his fixes to grading problems to the "Keys" to student learning. It was condensed from a larger presentation and I didn't get much new out of it. But his 15 fixes to grading problems are very good to think about and give cause to reconsider what we're doing in the classroom regarding grading and assessment.
From there we had three breakout sessions... here all on Day #1! DOH!
Today was the first day. I'm going to try and get my thoughts down and organized around what I've learned today. But not all in one part because, frankly, it was too much. All good stuff, but so much!
So the opening was from Ken O'Conner and he was relating his fixes to grading problems to the "Keys" to student learning. It was condensed from a larger presentation and I didn't get much new out of it. But his 15 fixes to grading problems are very good to think about and give cause to reconsider what we're doing in the classroom regarding grading and assessment.
From there we had three breakout sessions... here all on Day #1! DOH!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Is google docs more dangerous than recess? #edchat #edtech
So my school is experimenting with Google Apps for education for our 3rd-5th graders. We have to disable gmail, of course. But we can access docs, sites, and calendars. Google Talk was disabled since chatting is considered a bad thing in our district. Why? Well, it's a bullying blindspot, for starters. It could open students up to talking with people off campus (oh, the horror). And really, it's just plain distracting to good-old-fashioned research and writing.
Good-old-fashioned somethingorother? Oh boy was I having a paradigm problem!
We showed students how to share their documents so that they could keep research notes collaboratively and it too them all of 5 minutes to discover something we didn't know about!
Psssst! Can you keep a secret?
Well, it turns out that Google has implemented chatting in their docs programs! I'm not talking about their "dicussion" tool! I'm talking about their "up pops a window and you're chatting real time" tool!
*sound of stuff hitting the fan*
My colleague's first question was, "can we disable this?" A quick google search revealed that, no, we cannot disable it. I next turned to the #EdChat and #EdTech PLN's on Twitter to see if someone had some suggestions to help us contain this hull breech. And there I got some very good feedback:
Sure, chats can be distracting. But so are kids wandering around the classroom being off-task. Do you let them keep doing it? Do you micromanage them?
Sure, chats could potentially open things up to people outside our district. But the way Google Apps is configured, kids can't communicate with people out of our domain.
And sure, chats open up a bullying blindspot. But let's be honest about this one: the playground is a far more dangerous bullying blindspot! At least online, the kids have a chance to snap a screenshot and send it to a teacher! The stuff on the playground is completely undocumentable except as hearsay.
So the shorter version of this already too long moral tale: use it as a learning experience. Talk with the kids about how to manage chats and chat requests; or how to manage their sharing altogether! Let the kids become digital citizens! They have to be given room to exercise their own judgement and responsibility if they are going to be safe online.
Good-old-fashioned somethingorother? Oh boy was I having a paradigm problem!
We showed students how to share their documents so that they could keep research notes collaboratively and it too them all of 5 minutes to discover something we didn't know about!
Psssst! Can you keep a secret?
Well, it turns out that Google has implemented chatting in their docs programs! I'm not talking about their "dicussion" tool! I'm talking about their "up pops a window and you're chatting real time" tool!
*sound of stuff hitting the fan*
My colleague's first question was, "can we disable this?" A quick google search revealed that, no, we cannot disable it. I next turned to the #EdChat and #EdTech PLN's on Twitter to see if someone had some suggestions to help us contain this hull breech. And there I got some very good feedback:
Learn from it!
Sure, chats can be distracting. But so are kids wandering around the classroom being off-task. Do you let them keep doing it? Do you micromanage them?
Sure, chats could potentially open things up to people outside our district. But the way Google Apps is configured, kids can't communicate with people out of our domain.
And sure, chats open up a bullying blindspot. But let's be honest about this one: the playground is a far more dangerous bullying blindspot! At least online, the kids have a chance to snap a screenshot and send it to a teacher! The stuff on the playground is completely undocumentable except as hearsay.
So the shorter version of this already too long moral tale: use it as a learning experience. Talk with the kids about how to manage chats and chat requests; or how to manage their sharing altogether! Let the kids become digital citizens! They have to be given room to exercise their own judgement and responsibility if they are going to be safe online.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
I am failing at my goal of obsolescence. #edchat #mathchat
I am teaching grades 3-5 math only in a specialist model, but at heart I am still a middle school science teacher. I volunteered to move down to elementary two years ago to help out a school that I knew was a wonderful learning community by teaching math and science.
But somewhere along the transition, I seem to have lost track of my primary professional goal: to become obsolete.
Don't get me wrong, I love working with kids and I love getting paid. But early on in my teaching career, I had a first goal of making the class self sufficient so that it could function with or without me. This was a goal born of necessity rather than anything else: there is too much to do in a classroom and if you try to control and do it all as the teacher, you are doomed to fail. The students had to take up the mantle of driving the classroom and all of its routines and procedures.
Around my second year of teaching, realized that students needed to be in charge of more than the classroom administrivia: they needed to be in charge of the learning going on there! I decided that I would know I have been a good teacher when my students no longer needed me in order to learn. When they had internalized the reason why they were doing what they were doing and they had the tools at their disposal to answer their own questions and they didn't need me poking and prodding to learn things; then I would feel that I was doing a decent job as a teacher.
And in my role as a science teacher, I got very close to my goal. In the science education world, this is responsibility for learning is more easily transferred to the students' shoulders through inquiry. Investigative questions (assigned or self-developed) and student preconceptions are enough for most kids to have a reason to find something out.
But when I moved to teaching elementary math, all of that stopped. There are several reasons. First of all, the kids were now eight instead of fourteen. And secondly to my mind are the sheer number of math standards that students are supposed to master within a given year. I stared at the sheer numbers of standards and the testing schedule, and not once have I felt that I could turn over the reins of learning to the students. My classroom has become my worst vision of teaching: it has become almost exclusively teacher directed.
By district policy, I assign my students daily "math review" problems. I tell them the answers. I even tell them what they might have done wrong. I give them a whirlwind "conceptual" lesson (read that as a mini lecture). I tell them what to practice. Then I assign homework. So if that's everything that I am doing, then what are the students doing?
They're doing calculation practice and rote memorization of math facts.
Oh, I have definitely tried to weave my constructivist soul into this race to testing, but the sense-making activities that my students are taking part in are so severely stripped back from the number of experiences that I know they need in order to connect the dots themselves. In order to give them a modicum of constructivist sense making, I then guide them in trying to connect the pieces that they've done together into a coherent concept or skill.
My students can feel successful. Their parents will be pleased that they have covered so many of the standards and that their student is "doing" math. Ahh, but I know better.
At heart I am a constructivist. But I feel more like a construction forman and my students are the drone-like workers whom I am coercing into building from blueprints that they can't even read and that someone besides me has drawn up. Forget the idea that my students should become the architect and the planners: I am too busy assessing their ability to pound a hammer, use a saw, and weld metal to ever pay attention to whether or not they know why they are doing it... or even what the end product will be.
And what would be the "end product" of mathematics education? Certainly, it cannot be merely that my students are fast human calculators when faced with "story problems" that look nothing like real life?
This makes me sad. But given the testing schedule for mathematics, I don't know how I can extricate myself from the front of the room and give my students the time -- oh that precious time -- that they need if they are to become mathematicians in their own right.
I am central to everything my students do in their daily 70 minute math class.
I am failing to become obsolete to my students' learning.
I am failing to create self-motivated and empowered learners, but I see no way out save returning to middle school science.
But somewhere along the transition, I seem to have lost track of my primary professional goal: to become obsolete.
Don't get me wrong, I love working with kids and I love getting paid. But early on in my teaching career, I had a first goal of making the class self sufficient so that it could function with or without me. This was a goal born of necessity rather than anything else: there is too much to do in a classroom and if you try to control and do it all as the teacher, you are doomed to fail. The students had to take up the mantle of driving the classroom and all of its routines and procedures.
Around my second year of teaching, realized that students needed to be in charge of more than the classroom administrivia: they needed to be in charge of the learning going on there! I decided that I would know I have been a good teacher when my students no longer needed me in order to learn. When they had internalized the reason why they were doing what they were doing and they had the tools at their disposal to answer their own questions and they didn't need me poking and prodding to learn things; then I would feel that I was doing a decent job as a teacher.
And in my role as a science teacher, I got very close to my goal. In the science education world, this is responsibility for learning is more easily transferred to the students' shoulders through inquiry. Investigative questions (assigned or self-developed) and student preconceptions are enough for most kids to have a reason to find something out.
But when I moved to teaching elementary math, all of that stopped. There are several reasons. First of all, the kids were now eight instead of fourteen. And secondly to my mind are the sheer number of math standards that students are supposed to master within a given year. I stared at the sheer numbers of standards and the testing schedule, and not once have I felt that I could turn over the reins of learning to the students. My classroom has become my worst vision of teaching: it has become almost exclusively teacher directed.
By district policy, I assign my students daily "math review" problems. I tell them the answers. I even tell them what they might have done wrong. I give them a whirlwind "conceptual" lesson (read that as a mini lecture). I tell them what to practice. Then I assign homework. So if that's everything that I am doing, then what are the students doing?
They're doing calculation practice and rote memorization of math facts.
Oh, I have definitely tried to weave my constructivist soul into this race to testing, but the sense-making activities that my students are taking part in are so severely stripped back from the number of experiences that I know they need in order to connect the dots themselves. In order to give them a modicum of constructivist sense making, I then guide them in trying to connect the pieces that they've done together into a coherent concept or skill.
My students can feel successful. Their parents will be pleased that they have covered so many of the standards and that their student is "doing" math. Ahh, but I know better.
At heart I am a constructivist. But I feel more like a construction forman and my students are the drone-like workers whom I am coercing into building from blueprints that they can't even read and that someone besides me has drawn up. Forget the idea that my students should become the architect and the planners: I am too busy assessing their ability to pound a hammer, use a saw, and weld metal to ever pay attention to whether or not they know why they are doing it... or even what the end product will be.
And what would be the "end product" of mathematics education? Certainly, it cannot be merely that my students are fast human calculators when faced with "story problems" that look nothing like real life?
This makes me sad. But given the testing schedule for mathematics, I don't know how I can extricate myself from the front of the room and give my students the time -- oh that precious time -- that they need if they are to become mathematicians in their own right.
I am central to everything my students do in their daily 70 minute math class.
I am failing to become obsolete to my students' learning.
I am failing to create self-motivated and empowered learners, but I see no way out save returning to middle school science.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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