Are You Growing as a student?

When I did my student teaching, my mentor described the school year as this process of building up a student from where they are when they come to you, into what you want them to be (or be able to do) and the end.  This sounded great, but I didn't really know what I was building when I started teaching. It's funny how you can teach year in and year out without having a specific end result in mind.  It took me a couple years (several actually) to fully know what I was building my students up to be.

My purpose is to teach students to be intrinsically motivated, independent learners, who are committed to growth and improvement.  

Now, most of what I do is centered on this goal.  It all started taking shape when I flipped my class, because I wanted students to be more independent and have more class time to emphasize processes based skills (such as inquiry).  This indeed forced students to become more independent learners since they were now learning new content on their own time. Since adopting this method, I've had a lot of conversations with my classes about studying and learning, and the personalization of learning as a whole.  20 Time has placed a value on intrinsic motivation and teaching students to pursue their passions and let that be a driver of their learning.

Growth as a student is something I've tried to instill for a while, but never really found the magic way to accomplish this, until last year.  Since implementing a reflection at the end of every unit, I've seen dramatic improvement in student growth.  Each unit I ask students to summarize what they learned in the unit.  This is a great opportunity for them to pull all of the unit's content together and hopefully see more of the bigger picture.  In that reflection I also ask them to discuss their strengths and weaknesses, achievements and setbacks, and then end with the ultimate question: are you a better student today than yesterday or the previous unit?

Are you a better student today than yesterday?

I bring this up a lot in class and it's part of that message I'm trying to get across to students that they should always strive to improve and grow.  This last unit though I realized so many kids were writing that they were a better student because they knew more about <insert some content>.  This really struck me. 

Kids think that being a good student meant knowing lots of stuff! Ugh, this was the exact opposite of what I was trying to teach.  

It's not about the product, it's about the process!

(see this post about process)

So I switched gears, and this time I asked students in class (and then again on the reflection assignment: What does it mean to be a good student?  In class I got a lot of good responses such as:

• Working well with others.
• Managing time
• Getting the most out of your opportunities
• Growing from mistakes

This made me feel much better.  And I really set them to task this time when they wrote their reflections to tell me about their growth as a learner and how they were as a student vs. what they want to be.   Grading the unit reflections, this time around has been amazing.  I'm seeing so much more maturity and responsibility in their writing. They're especially relating what they've learned from experiences in class to how that has made them essentially better version of themselves.   They're learning from their mistakes.

Check out this student blog: 

http://leibiologyblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/unit-5-reflection.html

This student goes into so much detail about his learning metacognition, that you can tell he is on a trajectory to become a really phenomenal student/learner.  It's quite exciting.

I strongly recommend reflection as a part of whatever goal you have for your students.  Giving them periodic opportunity to reflect and discuss forces them to stop, evaluate, adjust, and plan for next steps. This incremental procedure pushes them to grow and improve and achieve the teacher goals, and their own.

Here are some examples of unit reflection prompts I give students:

This will be a class assignment, but you may begin working on it if you would like.

Go to your blog and create a title called "Unit 4 Reflection"

 Start off recapping what we did in the Coin Sex lab.  Write a paragraph answering the following questions from the lab:

• What did you do in this lab? How did coins serve as a model for genetics concepts?
• Compare your expected results with actual results in your dihybrid cross simulation. To what can you attribute these results? (ie, make a claim and back it with reasoning).
• What is the limit of using probability to predict our offspring’s traits?
• How does understanding this relate to your life? Be specific

Build on the coin sex lab and discuss the bigger ideas of the unit and the specific concepts you learned.  For example:

• What was this unit about? What were the themes and essential understandings?
• Interpret how things went this unit by discussing either of the following, or both:
• Your strengths and weaknesses.
• Successes and setbacks.

These could be skill based or content based.  For example: What topics were difficult to understand and what topics do you still not fully understand? What did you learn about managing the demands of the class or how you work in collaborative settings?

• What did you learn from these experiences?  
• Consider content learned and skills learned.
• What did you learn from  doing the infographic?

In other words, are you a better student today than yesterday? Why?

• What do you want to learn more about? What unanswered questions do you have? What do you wonder about?

 To add to your post, include at least two photos, or even videos, to compliment your blog post.  You can even link to previous blog posts.  When finished, submit the link to your blog post to turn it in.

Learning how you learn

The first couple years of high school is about learning how you learn best and how to manage your time. Go here  (Links to an external site.)to take the VARK Questionnaire.  This will give you a score telling you what learning styles you learn best from.  Then, this website (Links to an external site.) gives a nice overview of the learning styles.  On your blog, discuss the following:

• What are your preferred learning styles (give your scores)?
• Did the results surprise you or were they what you would have expected?
• What do you do, and what can you do, to play to your learning style strengths as you prepare for your upcoming test?

Digitizing Microscope Labs

I have a love hate relationship with microscope labs.

I love the excitement and wonder kids have when their eyes are opened to enormous microscopic world they didn't know existed.  There are so many amazing organisms that are fascinating and beautiful to look at.

Typically when we do a microscope lab it involves the student drawing what they see, and labeling what I ask them to.  Two things usually happen.  The first is that the kid never finds the organism and ends up drawing an air bubble or dust (though they are truly fascinated by it).  The second is that the drawing looks nothing like the organism and is just a bunch of lines and/or dots.

I hate this.

It's so difficult to grade and makes me really question the learning value from the experience.  How do I really know they observed what they were supposed to and understand the science concept behind it?

This year, I tried something new:

We're digitizing our microscope labs this year #edtech #gofaconpower #biology pic.twitter.com/IBiwfMjLuf

— Mr. Orre's Class (@OrreBiology) October 13, 2016

I had them take pictures with their phones instead of drawing it.  Then instead of labeling it, I had them label it using Google Draw.  From here they could save it as an image on a shared Google Drive folder, and then upload it to their blogs.  I made a quick little how to video that I put on our learning management system, Canvas.  Here it is:

Check out the pictures they took: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-gw9N2jXYUsclpGNGNMV0swTzA?usp=sharing


Here's what happened:

The microscope work went really quick.  Kids loved it. They were excited by the organisms, and the photos they took.  When they got to the labeling part though, it took forever.  Literally the lab took a week to accomplish.  The kids did was really great on the labeling part, and I think they understood what they were looking at much better than before, but I had to cut out one of my labs we did the following week.  That part was a little frustrating.

As always, the choices we make always have trade offs.  This is a classic quality vs quantity issue, and I still kind of hate this lab.  Though maybe a little less.  Next year, I think I may need to be really strategic about what cells I have them draw knowing that I'm probably going to get fewer, but maybe better looking analyses.  Perhaps I can also share pictures of them to look at without actually labeling.  Or they can upload them to their blog and discuss, without using Google Draw to label.

Nevertheless, the blog posts do look really good.  It's definitely MUCH better to grade than before and I feel like I can assess learning better than before.  Plus there are a lot of digital skills gained from the experience.

Check out some of the student work!

http://rannazbioblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/microscopic-organism-lab.html

http://nataliebioblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/microscopic-organism-lab.html

https://jeffyx.blogspot.com/2016/10/microscopic-organism-analysis.html

Product vs TED Talk

20 Time has been a new endeavor in biology this year.  While my Anatomy and Physiology students had no problem understanding the idea of the project, I've realized that this is a bit more challenging for biology. From the beginning I have said again and again that they need to produce or accomplish something (A&P can be any topic, but bio needs to be science related).  The TED talk is then for them to showcase in a 5-10min presentation what they DID, and what they LEARNED from the process.

Walking around today in one period I realized 5 different individuals were working on a Google Slides Presentation that was essentially their TED talk.  This was frustrating for me because they were basically spending their entire 20 Time researching and making a presentation.

After reiterating my vision to them again (I think they got it this time), my advice to a couple groups was actually to make an infographic showing all of their research in a unique graphical way.  We did infographics last semester, so this would not be a major stretch for them to accomplish.  Then during their TED talk they can show that infographic, and talk about what they learned about the topic that's worth sharing, as well as what they've learned about the process.

So, my advice to you if you're starting 20 Time, make this VERY CLEAR, and if possible give them some really specific examples.  Again, my juniors and seniors have had no problem with this, but freshman need a bit more hand holding.

Just a quick realization I had today that I needed to document :)

About a month to go before TED talks!

Picture credit: TED

CUE Conference 2016

I just wrapped up my first CUE conference. It was a whirlwind experience bouncing from one session to the next.  The topics I attended varied from NGSS to chrome extensions to even blogging.  It's been an interesting mix of really simple practical tools, to broad pedagogical brush strokes.  Some sessions were so highly sought after that people would be sitting on the floor. I got kicked out by the fire marshal for sitting on the floor in a chrome extension session.  It was a bummer because I wanted to learn from that one.

Going to a conference can be really exciting and there are a million different things that you decide you want to do, and then you go home do little to none of it.  I've gone to enough conferences now that I've learned to try and boil it down to a couple key takeaways.  This time I have this blog as a platform to recap my learning and share my big takeaways.  

I didn't really have any major pedagogical epiphanies from this conference, but really more of an affirmation of what I already do, with some cool little tools I can take and apply in my class.  Below are 3 sessions I thought were useful to my practice. I've shared the links to their original presentations in the titles, and reflected it back to my practice.

 Fair Use- Can I use it?

Nearly all of the tools and practices people are discussing brings up issues of "Can I use it?"  Students, and teachers, often think that just because it's on the internet is free to use, but that's not the case.  Creators of content inherently own copyright to their work, and there are laws about how, why, and when you can use it.  What matters, is if the work you are using is "transformative."  They gave the following quote to help determine this:



Basically it all comes down to how much? How many? How long? If you are using someone's else's content it matters that you are using it in a novel way that will not compromise their actual or potential profit from said work. If you are using the work appropriately, it falls into fair use.

Transformativeness

“When a user of copyrighted materials adds value to, or repurposes materials for a use different from that for which it was originally intended, it will likely be considered transformative use; it will also likely be considered fair use. Fair use embraces the modifying of existing media content, placing it in new context.” 

-Joyce Valenza

“Fair use is an argument, not a right”
Again if you can justify that you are transforming the work, you can use it. Use the questions above to verify it. Check out their slides for some interesting stories that emphasized how this has played out in court such as the work of Grateful Dead posters, or Shepard Fairey's colorization of the AP photo of Obama.

Transformative use. Source: Wikipedia

My major take aways:

• I'm not going to get a cease and desist letter for using copyrighted material in my vodcasts so long as I keep them within our Learning Management System, and because I'm using them for educational purposes.

• My students creating their blogs MUST be sure to use copyright free material and learn to give proper attribution (at least a link) to their source. They also need to think of transformative use if they do want to use copyrighted material. As soon as a student publishes work online (which we want them to do, for many reasons), they fall into the spotlight of copyright. I've already been driving this home with my students and we spend a lot of time in the Rookie Module going over this, but I think all of this was really driven home with this presentation.

Next Generation Science Standards- From Know to Do

While the content is still being fine tuned for NGSS, what is known is that there are clear established process type skills. The presenter, Holly Steele, had some nice cards she made to illustrate this.

Credit: Holly Steele From Know to Do Presentation

One topic she discussed was graphing.  Look at those cards and you'll see that graphing is a big component of all of those.  The standards generally don't specify that students should be able to graph, but rather should be able to analyze, interpret, or otherwise construct meaning from a graph.  Any teacher who's ever done graphing knows that students will end up spending most of a class period doing the actual graph. This is not where we want to spend our time. I recently experienced this in my Hunger Games Lab.  I experience two of my classes struggle with how to construct the graphs in the first place, and then another class "got it" right away, but because they were so detail oriented and wanted their graphs to be perfect, they spent an inordinate amount of time on them.  Both are frustrating.

Ms. Steele discussed a tool called Tuva Labs where students can quickly create graphs using various data sets.  What I really like is that it allows them to drag data into x and y axis, choose different types of graphs, explore a variety of possible comparisons.  This really lends itself to questioning, analysis and interpretation, and even corroboration with other data.  While graphing clearly is an important skill, this tool can allow teachers to spend more time on analysis, and less on graphing. 

https://tuvalabs.com

Here's a screenshot of a simple data set.  The attributes on the left can be dragged over.

Once data attributes are added, titles can be added.

 This was a neat tool and I encourage you to check it out.  There are free data sets and then of course they have a paid service that will get you in touch with much more data and lessons that go with it.

Add Diagrams to Background Images

From: Beyond the Presentation: Creative and Innovative Uses for Slides

by Mellissa Oliver

This was a great workshop because it wasn't overly complicated.  It was just some cool specific tools you can do with Google Slides.  Her approach was that you can use just single slide in Google Slides for some simple powerful approaches.  She also talked about more complicated things like creating animations with Slides.  Check out her presentation in the link above for all of the different ideas. I'm going to talk about one of my favorite features.

Ever have kids label a diagram?  Why not have them do it digitally?  She gave the example of labeling the United States.  The basic idea is to insert an image as part of the background so any labeling or adding on the slide won't interfere with template image.    Below are some screenshots of the slide and what I did after playing with it.

Here's a screenshot of the example she gave.  Start by selecting the "background" tab highlighted above.

From here, you can google image search what you're looking for or upload a picture of your choice.

Here's one I created. Once completed, share this slide with students, have them make a copy, edit however you like, and then they turn it in or save it as an image.

Here's one she created with pre made text boxes that students only need to drag and drop.

My Takeaways:

This is great for diagram labeling, graphic organizers, or really any kind of worksheet you normally use.  Once the labeling is completed, students can save or export as an image.  These images could be collected using a Google Form, integrated into a larger project, or any other kind of collaborative effort.  For my class I would probably have them put it on their blogs to showcase their work.

Hopefully these are useful to you too. There's much more I can talk about from the conference, but it's helpful just to focus on three for now. If you try any of these or have ideas of your own, share in the comments!

20 Time Update

This blog originated as my documentation of implementing 20 Time in my Anatomy and Physiology class.  It's become pretty difficult for me to maintain this blog in any kind of regular interval with everything I have going on in my life, but I wanted to give a quick update about 20 time so far this year.

The highlights:
I am doing 20 Time in all of my classes: Biology (9th and 10th graders) and Anatomy and Physiology (11th and 12th graders).  I introduced it in December to all of my classes, let them contemplate their ideas over the break and a few weeks in January.  Then they gave their elevator pitches the beginning of February where they explained the idea and rough plan, and now they're off and running with their projects, blogging every other week on what they're doing.  Like last year, while A&P can do theirs on any topic, Biology must do their project on something science related.


"Elevator Pitch" instead of "Shark Tank"
Last year I had my students pitch their ideas to the class similar to that of the show Shark Tank, and then had the class ask questions and give feedback.  It was good, but it took a while.  This year they had to do an elevator pitch. I explained the idea as if they were suddenly in an elevator with a potential investor and only had a minute to get across their idea, general plan, and what they need from that person.

We have an online discussion feature in our learning management system, Canvas, that allows students to record and upload videos.  I had them record their elevator pitch this way and then post it in the discussion. Then the class was assigned for homework the task of watching the video, and commenting with constructive feedback to help the author refine their ideas.  Then when they came to class, I actually had the students give their elevator pitches again, in small group settings.  This gave additional support and refinement for each student.  The down side for me was that it was hard for me to listen to all of them, and it's taken me a long while to watch the pitches on my own to give them my feedback.   I've had to do this more through individual conversations and comments on their first blog posts.

Using Google Forms to get all blogs in one place
This is kind of a no brainer. I should have done this last year but didn't and it made a lot of work for me to get everyone's blogs in one place.  This year with over 100 different projects, I needed a concise way to get blog urls.  I created this form to quickly capture the information I needed.

Check out the list of topics and urls from the form.  Even better check out some of the student blogs and give them some comments.  They've all just done one blog post, and will be doing their second.  Some students are utilizing their class blogs, so you can even see some of their work too.

Extreme Ownership in the Classroom

I've decided to start doing some occasional posts on books I read or listen to on my commute to work.  Recently I finished listening to Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.  Willink and Babin are former Navy SEALS who have created a consulting firm (see Echelon Front) and accompanying book to apply the leadership skills they've learned and taught as leaders in their unit, Task Unit Bruiser, to leadership roles in the business world and beyond.  

The book follows a 3 part format of first telling a story from their tours in Iraq or training as SEALS, then teaching a principle learned from the experience, and third an application to the business world where through their consulting business they applied the principle to help their clients improve in their desired needs.

The books is great.  I highly recommend it.  First and foremost, I have an even greater appreciation and respect for our Navy SEALS.  It's common for us civilians to say thank you for the commitment and sacrifice our men and women in the armed forces give for our country, but the stories the authors tell and the passion you hear in their voices, make me feel we should be doing even more to thank them for their service.  I am in awe of not just the sacrifices, but the passion they have to be the absolute best they possibly can for their teams, their country, and their families.  I've always known SEALS were bad ass, but they're not just great at dominating the battlefield, they embody what it means to be the absolute best you can possibly be, and because of this they are superior on so many levels.  We have a lot to learn from them.

So why am I writing on this blog, about education?
 Their book is mostly about leadership principles, and the application is exclusively tailored to the business world, but I think there is a lot of overlap with leadership hierarchies at the school level as well as the application of teaching leadership practices.  After all, our students will undoubtedly grow up to be leaders.  We should help them become the best leaders they can me.   Below are some of the topics they teach in the book, and I'll discuss the connections I've made to education and some the ideas I have for my class.

Extreme Ownership.

The title of their book, and the foundation of it all,  extreme ownership is a practice that means as a leader you have to take ownership of everything in your world.  If you have a problem with your boss, it's not their fault.  It's because you haven't made it clear to them what you need.  If your team fails at something, it's because you didn't create the systems and plans to guarantee success.   Don't make excuses.  Take ownership of everything. And if you do this well, your subordinates will take on the attribute themselves. Good leaders who exhibit extreme ownership, breed a culture of extreme ownership.

Teacher vs. Administrator
I think this is a huge lesson for me as a teacher.  I have totally blamed administrators before for not supporting me, or other teachers, in one thing or another.  Did I ever go to them and explain the problem from my perspective? Was I assertive and made my case known? No.  And I think a lot of us do this.  It's very easy to play the blame game, but administrators are detached from the classroom and because of the nature of their job, are going to miss things.  It's up to us as the educators with firsthand knowledge of the situation to make our needs known up the chain of command.

Group Projects
I just finished a big group project in my bio class.  Students were working in groups of 4 and were tasked with making a 5 minute video about an ecosystem of their choice and corresponding threats to it.  I tend to make my group work very egalitarian and this year I really scaffolded the group work so that they would plan out daily tasks for each person and set benchmarks for their team. I tried to create a team contract that would force them to work equally.  For many this helped, and it was a big improvement from past years, but inevitably you get group work that ends up like this:

I had a student come talk to me on the day it was due who was basically the guy on the left.  She tried so hard to collaborate with her team.  They had agreed on an equal share, yet some didn't do their job completely.  As an instinctive leader she tried to help to take up the slack and do more, but in the end she just burned herself out, felt taken advantage of, and the group still didn't do all they were supposed to do.  

Her and I had a good conversation, and I had to explain to her the key thing about leadership and one that the SEALS know all to well, being a leader, and taking Extreme Ownership, does not mean doing all the work.  It means that a leader must be assertive.  They must communicate exceptionally well with their team and let their needs be known.  Letting group-mates walk all over you is your fault, not theirs.   As I said, she was an instinctive leader, but she has not yet learned this key understanding.

Take away: Create leadership opportunities in the classroom.
The book and the discussion (which I feel like I have repeatedly every year) has really made me wonder about creating more leadership opportunities in my class.  I do believe students need to learn to work in groups with equal stature as these are often the kinds of groups kids will collaborate in as adults in the workplace. Yet, I think they should also have opportunities to be a leader as well as work in a group with a leader.  They should be given opportunities to have autonomy and take ownership for a group.  But if we do give these opportunities, they should be done incrementally in environments were they feel challenged and pushed, but allowed to fail and learn from their mistakes.  The SEALS spend months training and creating scenarios that will help their leaders learn these lessons before they go on to the battlefield.  I feel like we should be doing the same.

Student Roles/Decentralized Power
The authors also talk about the importance of decentralized power.  A key point: Leaders can't really control more than 6 people effectively.  This underscores the importance of spreading leadership roles out so that a leader isn't spread so thin trying to manage too many people.  Man isn't this truth?  Think about how hard it is to control a big class and ensure everyone is learning.  It's not possible. Kids fall through the cracks.  What if kids had the opportunities to really help each other and complete the mission together (which I determine as the leader)?

In a way I have been headed in this direction for the last year.  At the start of this year I created several roles for the class in my effort to have a more collaborative, student-centered, classroom that was less dependent on me as their source of learning.  Despite my best efforts, some of the roles have just not worked.  I think it's because those roles were not really leadership roles, and kids didn't really have autonomy or the opportunity to take extreme ownership.   Next year I want to rework these roles.  Since I have groups of 4, perhaps each time I do a new seating chart a group will be assigned a group leader, and every student will have the opportunity over the course of the year to be a leader.  The trick will be to think about the tasks they'll be responsible for, and the scaffolding I will need to provide throughout the year to teach leadership attributes, so that person doesn't just become a dictator who delegates and becomes overbearing, but exhibits extreme ownership and communicates well with their peers.  

Imagine, if I could just teach the practice of extreme ownership in groups of four, what kind of a culture of extreme ownership I could cultivate in the class?  Talk about collaborative, student-centered, classroom.  Kind of exciting.



Immediate Next Steps:
We're on break next week, but when we return I plan to talk to students about different types of conflict styles (i.e. passive, passive aggressive, aggressive, and assertive) as this is a key piece of communication either as a leader or otherwise. I have a self assessment I found that I'll have them take to figure out what their dominant style is.  Then I'm going to have them watch the video below about how to be more assertive. From there, when they do their written reflection for the unit they'll be asked to comment on their collaboration during the group project and how they can be more assertive in future group work.

Man this turned into a long post. There's so much more I want to talk about, so maybe I'll revisit some of the others later. I know I've taken some really valuable lessons from the book to take into my practice as a leader in the classroom, and a leader among colleagues through my role on tech committees and social emotional learning.  It's also really made me think about ways I can build leadership opportunities in the classroom for students.  It's a skill like so many others we have to teach.

Teachers, what opportunities do you give in the classroom to help students develop as leaders?