Will It Float?

In Science Methods this week we have been learning more about what inquiry-infused science learning looks like. I really like the "5 E's" learning cycle for managing an inquiry-infused science class, and I've been recommending this to my students. (This model was developed by Rodger Bybee and colleagues in the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study; you can read their executive summary if you want more details...)

The 5 E's are a way of organizing learning activities for a student-centered, constructivist approach to science learning. The 5 E's are five "movements" in an inquiry learning cycle that describe what the teacher and students are doing. In a nutshell:

Engage - The teacher provides some sort of hook (a discrepant event, a connection to students' world, etc.) to foster curiosity and set the stage. This provides motivation and a need-to-know to set up the inquiry.

Explore - The students conduct a first-hand investigation to develop their thinking about the science concept to be learned. This movement often exposes students misconceptions about science concepts, and also gives them concrete experiences that can provide the basis of new learning.

Explain - In this movement, both the students and the teacher have the opportunity to do some explaining. The students explain their current thinking, based on their experiences in the Explore movement. The teacher has the opportunity to probe their thinking, ask questions, help them voice their ideas...and provide direct instruction to help students think more scientifically about the concepts being considered. This is the movement where teachers help mediate students' understanding of the content.

Elaborate - The students then have the opportunity to continue working with these new ideas, extending their thinking through another learning activity. This might be another hands-on investigation, further research, or some sort of creative response that incorporates the science concepts. They key is that students continue to develop their thinking about the science content, elaborating on what they have previously learned in the Explore and Explain movements.

Evaluate - Finally, students and teacher work together to find out what the students are now thinking about the concepts. Assessment of learning happens here, with the students (hopefully) able to say, "I used to think...but now I think..."

We had previously learned about the 5 E's learning cycle, but I wanted my students to experience a learning cycle firsthand. So, we took a couple class meetings to learn about floating and sinking, a common elementary science topic. Here's what we did:

Grading? Correcting? Marking?

It's the end of the semester. Papers, projects, tests...they're all rolling in.

My colleagues and I were having an impromptu meeting in the hall the other day (we do that) and after some shared laughs, I reluctantly said, "Well, I better get back to marking..."

And one of my colleagues said something like, "Dave's always 'marking.' You sound so Canadian." [I am not Canadian, by the way...but I had a Canadian roommate once...]

"What do you call it?" I asked.

"I say 'correcting,'" my colleague responded.

And another colleague said, "I say 'grading.' I have grading to do..."

And we laughed again.

But now I'm thinking about this. I know I used to call it "grading" too. And I think--back at the beginning of my teaching career, when I taught math and had a lot of papers coming across my desk every day--I used to call it "correcting" too.

Does the name we use for assessing and evaluating students' work matter?

Image by psychobabble [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Computers Programming Kids?

For a reading for one of the classes I'm taking this semester, we read part of Seymour Papert's classic book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. If you are Lego fan and have every worked with their robotics kits--also named "Mindstorms"--you are working with materials developed in collaboration with Papert. And, if you are of a certain age, you perhaps remember Apple LOGO (the "turtle" you could command around the screen?) which was developed by Papert as a way of teaching young children how to program computers.

I don't think I understood it this way when I was playing with LOGO as a kid. I was just messing around...though Papert would probably say that is the point. His philosophy is an off-shoot of constructivism called "constructionism" that involves creating (constructing) physical objects to represent complex ideas. This comes through pretty clearly when you think about the Lego robotics kits, doesn't it?

A functioning model of the Curiosity Rover, created using Lego Mindstorms NXT
Image by Erre [CC BY-SA 2.0]

7 Attributes of Great Teachers

What characteristics does it take to become a teacher? Or, even better, what attributes describe great teachers? When you think of great teachers you know or have had, what stands out to you about them?

Thanks to my Twitterfriend, @johnccarver for sharing this gem.

I have been a professional educator for 17 years now, and while I have come to the point where I can say that I'm a good teacher, I'm still learning, still striving to get better. But here are the seven things I know for sure all great teachers have in common.

Is Your School a Wal-Mart?

I think a lot about school culture. I'm fascinated by the way different schools have vastly different structures and practices that impact their unique climate. What determines the climate of a school? Well...we could start making a list:

• What do you see when you are walking down the halls of the school? Bare walls? Covered with students' work? Artwork? Natural lighting? Flickering fluorescent bulbs? 
• What does it sound like when you are in the building? Is it pin-drop silent? Is there a hum of busy activity? Is there a barely-contained roar of chaos?
• How do teachers interact with students? Are the students treated like soldiers? Prisoners? Princes and princesses? Fellow learners?
• How are decisions made, and who is involved in decision-making? Is it all top-down? Is it all bottom-up? A balance? Are teachers involved? Parents? Students?
• How are parents involved? Held at arms-length? Expected to participate? Allowed access? Welcomed as partners?
• What kind of work do students do? Open-ended? Teacher-directed? Experiential? Learning by rote? One-size-fits-all? A balance, based upon their needs and interests?

This is just a beginning! There are lots more questions we could raise, right? And I'm not even sure if there are "right" answers to these kinds of questions--it will depend on the needs and expectations of the school community.

Fundamentally, I think the key question in determining a school's climate is, "What is valued here?" or perhaps I could better phrase it, "What is it obvious that we care about?"

My Twitterfriend, Erik Ellefsen, shared an interesting take on this question of school climate that I'd like to pose to you now as well:

Is your school a Sears, WalMart, Target, Nordstroms, or Amazon?
— Erik Ellefsen (@epellefsen) May 22, 2014

Maybe you've never thought about it in those terms before...but how would you describe your school's climate? Is your school a Sears? A Wal-Mart? A Target? A Nordstroms? An Amazon? What makes it that way? What descriptors would you offer for the culture of your school?

Image by alphageek [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

The More Things Change...

We had a family gathering yesterday, and I wound up talking with my wife's 90+ year-old grandfather for at least an hour or so. I think my wife felt a little sorry that I was "stuck" with Grandpa for so long, but it was actually really, really great: he was sharing memories from his childhood and adolescence growing up in the ranchlands of the Great Plains.

He told great stories: a train ride from Chicago he remembers well. Breaking horses when he was a hired hand on a ranch. The amazing amount of dust that would seep in through through the cracks of the house during the years of the Dust Bowl. Grasshoppers and locust that would strip the wheat fields of anything green. Hitch-hiking 400 miles when he left home to move to Minnesota at age 16. His first paying job, where he worked for three dollars a day, and felt good about the money he made.

And--very interesting to me--he told about the country school he attended from grades 1-8.

There were about 30 students in the school at a time. Teachers rarely lasted for more than one year. He was humble about his academic work--didn't want to brag--but he completed the first and second grade in one year's time, and skipped the fifth grade entirely, because he would have been the only student...and the teacher asked his parents if they would be all right with him moving on to sixth grade early, so he would have classmates studying the same material.

Image by bdinphoenix [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Bad Advice from Yoda and the Power of "Yet"

I love Star Wars. (Waving my geek flag proudly here...) One of my favorite scenes from The Empire Strikes Back is a moment between the aged Jedi master, Yoda, and his young apprentice, Luke Skywalker. Luke is training, doing his best, struggling to get it figured out. He is faced with a tremendously difficult task--lifting his huge spacecraft out of the swamp where it is crashed--and expresses his willingness to give it a try, his diminutive-but-powerful teacher makes this audacious statement:

Image by Blacren CC BY 2.0

Do, or do not. 

There is no try.

I love that line. It sounds so truthy, and it's so quotable. It speaks of resolve, and determination, and not settling for less than your best. I think it's likely that teachers might be tempted to follow Master Yoda's lead and challenge their own students this way.

But I'm afraid that might be a mistake.

What's Wrong with "Managing" a Classroom?

I've participated in a couple of Twitterchats in the last week or so about the first days of school, and I've had a lot of ideas percolating with no time to blog about them. Lots of ideas about classroom management were floated in those chats (I may have another post or two coming, as time permits) and I'm thinking a lot about classroom management as my own new school year is impending.

But then I came across this gem from my Twitterfriend, Dan Krutka:

Can we all quit using the term "classroom management?" We're not running a factory of unskilled laborers; we're nurturing learning. #edchat
— Dan Krutka, PhD (@dankrutka) August 14, 2013

Experience: The Best Learning

I'm a big believer in experiential learning--experiencing things firsthand to really learn them. I'm not saying you can't learn things by reading, or by viewing. You certainly can. But often times, the actual sights, sounds, smells, and atmosphere of the experience are part of the context of the learning and you miss something by not actually being there.

My family took many road trips in my youth. We drove through every state west of the Mississippi river, and a few to the east as well. I've visited so many tourist traps and National Parks and roadside attractions in the Western U.S., I sometimes joke--like the old Johnny Cash song--"I've been everywhere." This was a blessing for me that I didn't necessarily understand or appreciate at the time. Actually stopping and visiting all these places is different than reading about them or even seeing pictures or video of them. When you experience them, you remember them differently.

And now I have the chance to take my own kids on these kinds of trips. We recently visited lots of great places around the southwestern U.S. for fantastic firsthand experiences! Here is a sampling in photos:

School as a Game

Encountered this video earlier this morning--it's from way back in 2011. I think there are some very, very interesting ideas here...

I have to confess, this has me thinking a lot about the "game" of school. And I think Dr. Haskell is right on--the current game stinks, and we can make it a much better game.

The Problem with Averaging Grades

It is common practice for teachers to calculate grades for their students by "averaging." That is, teachers add up the points students have been assigned for their work, and divide by the number of points possible. Mathematically, that's what "averaging" is--computing the mean for a data set.

For example, imagine that a student received the following marks on assignments throughout the term:

92, 84, 87, 60, 88, 89

Calculating the mean (average) would entail adding up these numbers:

92 + 84 + 87 + 60 + 88 + 89 = 500

Christian Education: Simple Truth

I.

18 years ago I was a freshman in college and my roommate introduced me to a little-known Canadian band called Hokus Pick Manouver. These guys are Christians, and they don't really pull any punches, but they also don't take themselves too seriously. The have a silly song called "Simple Song" on their album Pick It Up. Here, give it a listen...

For those of us in Christian education, I think this is something we need to think about, and talk about.

How shall we profess the Truth to our students?

Are You Creative?

I've been supervising student teachers this semester, which is one of the best parts of my job as a teacher educator. There are various aspects to this role, including coaching, encouraging, providing ideas and resources, and...of course...evaluation. One part of the multifaceted evaluation I do for each student teacher is to complete a form reflecting on their "dispositions for teaching"--how well do they exhibit the qualities and attitudes our department has identified as crucial for excellent teaching: professionalism, flexibility, resilience, cultural sensitivity, reflectiveness, and the like.

Among the dispositions we look for is creativity.

Via Patrick Johanneson
CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

It seems to me that this is one of the dispositions student teachers most struggle with--for a variety of reasons. Some struggle with the pacing guides imposed upon them, feeling that these squash any creative ideas they might have for teaching. (They have to keep on pace with the other sections of 3rd grade, etc.) Others struggle with the content they have to teach, feeling like it's challenging enough for them--let along their students!--that it's better to just "tell 'em" than try to do anything creative in conveying the content. Others struggle with their philosophies of education, feeling that there may be a mismatch between their ideas of teaching and those of their cooperating teacher. And some simply struggle, feeling that they are "just not creative."

I try to be empathetic with them in any of these cases, but the last one I mentioned above is the most challenging for me to work with. Because I believe that everyone is creative!

I believe that we are created to create! And I have a feeling we often misconstrue being "creative" with being "artistic." But maybe I'm wrong about this. Just what is creativity anyway? Can we develop creativity? Or is it some inborn quality? I'm hoping to gain further clarity on this, so I post this question to you:

Are you creative? 

 The HaikuDeck below gets at some of my thinking about this. I'd love to hear your response.

The Things I Learned Became Part of Me

I came across an interesting piece in Huffington Post a few weeks ago about boredom in schools. It actually sounds a lot like an article I had published in Christian Educators Journal back in 2009. Simply put, students should not be bored in school. Period.

I'm not saying that every activity will be self-selected by the students or that they will be enraptured by every topic the teacher brings up. Sometimes school is just hard work. But let's not minimize the fact that hard work can be satisfying in it's own right! How do we get kids to start thinking that way too?

I once read that learning is the opposite of boredom. (Maybe we could also argue that learning is the antidote to boredom?) But I wonder sometimes if teachers are doing their part too? Are we really trying to be sure that students won't be bored in the classroom?

This might sound like a slippery slope towards "edutainment" or something like it. I don't really mean that, of course. But if learning is the antidote to boredom, maybe we need to get better at finding ways to make learning matter to our students, and maybe we need to think about how we foster learning in our classrooms.

What does this look like in practice? I have a few ideas...

Philosophy of Education

It was near the end of the semester. Students were busy--and ready for Christmas break. And in Intro to Education, we broke out the heavy stuff: Philosophy of Education. I think it's fair to say that they were not very excited about this topic when they saw it on the syllabus. But also I'm happy to say that their interest increased pretty quickly as we got started.

To begin, I asked them list as many "-ism"s as they could think of. There were a lot:

- Pragmatism
- Constructivism
- Feminism
- Environmentalism
- Modernism
- Postmodernism

- Calvinism

- Catholicism

- Secularism

- Futurism

- Relativism

- Capitalism

- Communism

- Socialism

- Marxism

- Darwinism

- Existentialism

- Realism

- Transcendentalism

- Rationalism

- Polytheism

- Monotheism

- Theism

- Atheism

- Deism

- Dualism

- Stoicism

- Buddhism

- Hinduism

- Humanism

- Terrorism

- Cannibalism (Wait...what?)

- Elitism

- Feudalism

- Paganism

- Intellectualism

- Anti-intellectualism

- Essentialism

- Perennialism

- Reconstructionism

- Progressivism

Playing with Philosophy

The past few Saturday mornings I've been following an education Twitterchat as I have a cup of coffee.  If you're an educator and on Twitter, I'd really recommend you follow along. The hashtag is #rechat, and we're talking about "rethinking educational practices." (Kudos to John T. Spencer for starting this one.)

Anyway, this week the topic was the importance of "play" in education. The conversation was fairly wide-ranging. I had several things to share...and I sort of surprised my self with how philosophical I was about things. (To be fair, I had been working on a post about philosophy of education the day before. But still...) We got talking about how important it is for students to play--and not just elementary school recess, but all the way on up, and in class as well as out of class. Really thoughtful stuff people were sharing.

Photo gratuitously pilfered from
http://www.moogk-soulis.com/2012/09/its-all-about-play/

I have this picture hanging on my office door. I love this quote. Mr. Rogers is--as always--right. Play is serious learning. Play is the work of childhood. 

I think the opposite should also be true: serious learning should always have an element of playfulness present as well. Playfulness is not the opposite of serious work. Play can be a useful element in the midst of hard work. My "create an album" assignment might be a good example--full of playfulness, but also a valid way for students to clarify their own understanding, as well as allow me to assess their thinking at the moment.

(Here's the really philosophical bit:) 

As we chatted, I shared some of my own thinking about how different philosophies of education will probably think about the value of play. Essentialism sees the primary reason for education to ground students in "the essentials," so essentialist teachers will likely have a less playful teaching practice. Constructivism sees education more about students developing their own understandings, so constructivist teachers would likely embrace a lot more play in their teaching: students playing with ideas, playing with materials, etc. 

As I'm reflecting on my own teaching experience--and recognizing the role constructivist thinking has in my own classroom practice--maybe it's not surprising that I'm apt to tell stories, assign my students to build weird contraptions, encourage them to share their thinking, experiment with alternative strategies, and...well...play around myself. I believe each teacher's personal philosophy of education shapes his or her classroom practice.

The chat was stimulating. I'm still thinking about it more than 24-hours later. I was challenged to think about (and rethink--ha!) the role of play in my own teaching practice. Fellow teachers, what do you think? How do you incorporate "play" into your classroom? What sorts of playful assignments do you give? And if you can't think of playful ways to engage your students, why is that?