We had an in-service day today: Monday, January 26. I thought I'd give a little bit of an in-sight into what we did (please forgive all the prefix word play; I am a bit of an English nerd). I recorded the video below about 30 feet from a sleeping baby, so you may have to crank the volume up a bit. Below you will also find a video of Grant's TEDx talk in Denver. My purpose here is to give you some information about what we do on these days, and why it's important to your child.
Grant Lichtman TEDx
You may need to log in on a PC to view the above video. I've had trouble viewing on my own iPad.
As promised, here is the update to the final piece of our Explorer Project PBL experience. A great truth about 10-11 year old students is that they are eager to perform when they have a "mask." It may be a metaphorical or actual barrier between themselves and an audience, but it amounts to the same thing. If given a persona to remove them (at least by a step) from their audience, students who otherwise may shy away from public speaking or dramatic interpretations are apt to flourish and break from their shell. I believe that this is the great promise afforded to us by the integration of Drama into the curriculum. Throughout the year, students are given tasks/projects that encourage them to interpret text in a creative and dramatic way. Coupled with many presentations in class, students learn confidence in front of crowds, gain knowledge on how to reach an audience, and are more prepared for the new type of assessments often utilized in the higher grades. Perhaps most importantly, they enjoy themselves. Many of my units are capped by this type of activity. Often, the product is not really the point of the majority of the work accomplished, but it provides a definite goal and a rewarding experience that helps propel the students during the difficult work leading up to it. This will be echoed in the coming units (capstone performances of the Witch Trials, Poetry Parade, Greek Wax Museum) whose broad base of effort and practice are not always evinced in the final performance but are the actual purpose of the unit itself.
Below are some videos of the initial run-throughs and practices along with some final product. The bulk of the videos are to be added to the wiki pages for viewing and as a final enrichment of the overall experience.
Rehearsals
Some Final Products
(See the rest on the wikipages)
Next post will be about the new unit: Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Well, 2015 is upon us, and I've committed myself to something here that may take off or may founder. The overall purpose is to connect you, as a parent, into the inner-workings of the classroom in a way that has not been previously accomplished at this grade level. I am not going to become entrapped in the details, this is not about specific homework or classroom assignments, but I have the intention of providing a meta-experience in the following months. The plan is that you know and understand some of what we do in the classroom and why we do it. I think so much is lost in the transition from home to school and back again, so much is lost in the rush to make the start time of the next game or lesson; there seems to be less time to simply sit and discuss the positives of the experiences that we have, perhaps time only to gripe and complain about those things that are not going to plan. I've seen this myself with friends and colleagues and family: when we have little time, it seems that serious discussions often turn to venting- emotional discharges that serve a purpose of relieving anxiety and reducing stress, but are no more illustrative of the overall experience of the day or week than a simple snapshot (the single frame of a video shown without reference or context) would be. In an attempt to mollify or at least ameliorate this, I am going to give you periodic glimpses of what was in the past sacrosanct and unplumbed; what we only knew of by our own experience several decades prior, or as those singular and random snapshots. However, I hope to frame these glimpses in such a way as to provide a story, a reference that includes the what and why from the teacher's point of view. So here we go! Let's try something new today!
The Explorer Project
As promised we are going to jump right in to this. In the past, I've tried to share this. It rarely is effective.
In fact, it usually looks something like this:
Hallway outside the classroom
Now, this type of display is common, intended for student and colleague as well as the parent. There are descriptions of steps of a project-based unit, examples of integration with Social Studies and Drama. Ooh Look! QR codes! Aren't I savvy?! But really, what does this accomplish? Does anyone actually follow those QR codes and watch the video? I would imagine that someone would have to be trying to fill a day or kill some time if he/she really could stop and scan and watch while walking down the hallway of an elementary school. The plan was that this would be utilized while parents waited for their conferences, but even then there is a five year old to wrangle, work to postpone, an email to answer. It really doesn't work. And students, though mindful of the purpose, often lose interest the more detailed the description or abstract the discussion of education.
An Overview of the Explorer Project:
Put simply, this is an example of PBL(Project Based Learning). That is a student-centered project that encourages students to investigate, establish problems to be solved, collaborate on solutions, exchange roles and responsibilities, and design a creative, open-ended product or products (open-ended meaning that students may expand their product into a direction and depth of their capability and choosing) with which they demonstrate their knowledge and learning. In some educational situations, this has been in existence for a long time. The science classroom, in particular, has been employing this type of collaborative investigation and problem solving since the formalization of the scientific method by Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century. Many teachers of History and Math have also employed this teaching method with Literature teachers not far behind. In some circles, the classroom is replete with PBLs to the point that very little direct instruction occurs at all. I have seen classrooms that are always in the motion of the PBL, that are never still for more than the five minutes demanded by an obligatory mini-lesson that introduces the next step or clarifies a misconception.
Personally, I have always been a believer in moderation. I mix a lot of different techniques, but I do not trust entirely to any one single teaching style, technique, etc. The PBL is designed to especially assist in extending those who are strong students and allowing a platform and a scaffold for those that may struggle, but it is not snake oil, it is not a cure-all. In my experience, I am always wary of any claim of an answer to all problems. From the miracle scratch removing compound for your car to the movement against Gluten as the bane of human health- anytime a person says that something is the answer to everything, I immediately doubt it. That is not to say that some products might remove a surface scratch or two, or that a healthy diet may have a little less wheat in it; and this certainly applies in the classroom as well. Teachers fresh out of school, eager and motivated, want to try every new idea, redesign the classroom, re-invent teaching, etc. This is wonderful; it sparks thought and reflection. But, in my 14 years or so in education, experience has taught me to be mindful, purposeful, and thus moderative. PBLs are useful; but, I will still lecture at times, have 50 minute discussions, allow students to work quietly and individually, and be a teacher and not simply a facilitator. I say this as it is paramount to my philosophy as an educator: What is old is not always bad, and what is new is not always better. It takes experimentation to see what works for you. A case study and research based approach to the classroom is a good starting point, but a teacher must find what strategies work with his personality, style, expertise, etc. One size fits all has never and will never be the case in education.
That understood, below are the different steps the students travel through as they complete the PBL of the Explorer Project. Before each and during each, students receive information through a mini-lesson or video or app that comments upon the work they are about to undertake. Each step has a starting point and a product, but each is designed so that every student may self pace and no student can simply "finish" a step. They are in a sense "open-ended" in that extension for the stronger student is built in whereas the student that struggles in a certain area will be equally challenged and supported. Upon the completion of the product at each step, the foundations are laid for the implementation of the next evolution- that is to say that the steps are cumulative and are aimed at the completion of a final product: The Explorer Wiki.
Step 1(a): Initial Exposure and Immersion
Brain research suggests that in the beginning stages of learning, a deluge of information coupled with a stated goal and subject to generalizations, classifications, and other organizational orderings allow the brain to make more connections than with a direct and teacher-guided approach to new topics. The idea is not that anything at this stage is taken to mastery, but instead students have open to them many avenues of study, varying topics, differing types of media, and a looser structure than might otherwise be typical. It is an investigative model as opposed to a typically instructive one. In the classroom this takes three distinct forms: a video introducing the "Age of Exploration" that runs quickly through many different explorers examining time, country of origin, and discoveries; an iPad app "Explorers" that includes more detailed information on fourteen important explorers presented by video, written, and other visual media; and a collection of about 80 biographies organized by explorer (around 20) and representing varying reading levels. For each, guided reading questions, notes, searches, KWL charts, etc. were utilized to add structure and aid/encourage student organization of information.
Use of Explorer App in the classroom: (See Video Below)
Step 1(b):Classroom Library and Biography Reading (See Video Below)
Step 2: Investigation and Research- The Who and Why
Students are assigned one of a choice of five explorers upon which to focus. Each student then begins to read two biographies on that explorer and fills out a research template as a helpful guide. This task allows the student to become "expert" on the chosen explorer while practicing critical reading comprehension and fluency skills on material that is at or above reading level. This step is carried out in school and at home.
As students are becoming expert in selected explorers in Literature, in Social Studies they are learning about the motivation of European nations to explore new routes to the East, exploit new lands discovered, and colonize these discoveries. They learn details about the more important figures of the "Age of Discovery" as well as the characteristics of the Natives in the lands that they discover. They navigate through the textbook and an app that allows them to act as an explorer and plan a journey to undiscovered countries. Their planning and actions determine if their trips are successful. Think Oregon Trail for the modern age and redesigned for European discovery.
The majority of time is spent in this step of the project. We utilize wikispaces as a free site with which to create our product. (Use username: crusaderguest and password: crusader to view the wiki entitled: ExplorerProject2014) The problem that students have been tasked with solving is the creation of wikipedia with the hypothetical situation that it has not yet been created. Students collaborate virtually with one or more partners in the creation of an informative, organized, and visually appealing wiki page about their explorers. Their research and investigations have been geared toward this product, and they determine what information is valid, how it should be organized, and the method of its communication to the audience. Students begin by determining topics, researching further into them, and then planning their writing using alpha-numeric outlines. These outlines are then expanded into full paragraphs with supporting details, examples, and quotations. Along the way, students peer review other outlines, check for main idea and supporting detail connectivity and consistency, and offer suggestions for improvement. Once rough draft status is reached for a minimum of three paragraphs completed per student, paper copies are made and mini-lessons given to provide exemplars of writing during the revision process. Paragraphs are revised using peer review based on three distinct stages involving rotating partners: Ideas and Organization, Sentence Structure/Fluency and Word Choice, and lastly Conventions. Each peer review stage begins with a mini-lesson involving an exemplar that I created and is class reviewed with suggestions for improvement. Students then perform a similar action with their peers who begin making changes in class and then finish at home. Each stage requires very specific actions.
To avoid too much detail, I will focus on one early segment. To ensure that each piece of writing contains a strong main idea supported by at least three details and each detail further supported by two to three examples or further details, students highlight their partners' paragraphs using a particular color code which they learned earlier in the year and already practiced on their outlines. Pink = Main Idea and Closing, Blue=Supporting idea/detail, Green = Further idea, Yellow = specific example. For each graded category from the rubric, students had a specific task to accomplish in their peer revision. Below is an example of what this looks like in the classroom. Notice, this is not a static room. There are conversations, movements, actions, and transitions between materials. The idea that a true writing workshop can be run in absolute quiet is a fallacy.
As an extension, students have the option of adding additional paragraphs, links to other sources, pictures, embedded multi-media, etc. At the closing of the workshop, students are shown how to add references or bibliographies using Easy Bibs.
Step 4: Demonstration of Knowledge
Students write speeches/skits as their chosen explorers and perform in front of a green screen either individually or in groups. They then use iMovie and the Green Screen app to add in music, backgrounds, etc. Movies are uploaded to YouTube and added to the wikipages previously created. This is in progress, the Blog will be updated as this step concludes.
In Social Studies, students are given an assessment that includes short answer and essay questions. These are prepared for in advance using a study guide template, and essays may be outlined in advance with notes brought into class for use during the assessment.
