LC21
Supporting 21st Century Classrooms in La Canada
Hello everyone,
In the last issue of LC21, we talked about ways to inject some excitement into student projects. This month, I want to share some resources that will allow us to easily reframe our existing lesson plans to make them even more effective.
In my middle school classroom, I often struggled to balance traditional skill-building activities--where I modeled the proper way to, say, write a paragraph, and received 34 carbon-copies of my model--with authentic projects that led to a greater variety of products which were often noisy, messy, and sometimes not as successful as I would have hoped.
I came to realize that the process--shaping mindsets and building strategies rather than teaching the one right way to complete an assignment--was much more valuable to my students than the product. Yes, the product is still vital--but I learned to be a bit more flexible with my expectations of perfection. As educators, we know we benefit from process of evaluating and improving our own lessons, and we can take into consideration just what makes an effective lesson.
To be honest, not every grand plan leads to stellar initial results. When we take risks, some lessons are winners and some are best swept under the rug. We shouldn't define that as failure. But these days, teachers are freely sharing their best ideas, and we all can benefit from their experience and insight. This issue of LC21 will highlight some great ideas from fellow teachers (and show some LCUSD projects in action) to hopefully inspire you as we approach mid-year.
As I collected resources for this issue, I was led by the following guiding questions:
How might we challenge students to think critically, engage in some divergent problem solving, and take ownership of their work?
How might we get students to create something novel that doesn’t look like everyone else’s?
How might we build a sense of audience into authentic products?
How might we, as teachers, work smarter, not harder, and find efficiencies that lead to greater student learning and streamlined grading on our part?
Project-Based Learning: How to Reframe Existing Projects
PBL sounds like a simple concept, but at its heart, PBL requires a redefinition of the traditional role of a teacher in pursuit of deep and authentic student learning. It requires us to do more planning and preparation in the beginning to clearly define learning goals, curate resources, and design assessments that are broad enough to be applied to a variety of student products… and then we step back and let students learn as we act as the Sage on the Side.
PBL works best when our goal is a student’s mastery of a concept or skill, not the completion of a task. If we have clear learning goals and benchmarks but flexible criteria for a product, we’ll find PBL more accessible, and students will be more empowered. While some students may struggle with the freedom built in to PBL, I suggest scaffolding the expected behaviors in bite-size, lower-stakes chunks before tackling a large PBL project. Once our students are ready to own their learning (and we need to know if they’re ready to take on this task!), PBL can lead to some amazing results.
Ready to get started? Take an existing lesson and give it the PBL spin. The Buck Institute is a major resource for PBL activities, and this article gives ideas on how to do it. Here are two good ones:
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Science Demonstration
These "projects" can also be more like an activity than a PBL unit--such as building a model volcano with vinegar and baking soda to demonstrate something about earth science, or adding baking soda to grape juice (made from the frozen form) to make it bubbly, to demonstrate the three states of matter. The demonstrations are done for other students, or maybe parents, or recorded on video for the class blog or school website. While better than a stack of worksheets, this project idea usually does not include much inquiry, and is not authentic.
How to improve it:
Find an authentic reason for students to learn and apply the content knowledge; where is it used in the world outside of school?
Since many experiments and demonstrations found online are meant to focus on only one content standard, bring in more standards into a larger, more in-depth unit.
If your project does involve demonstrations, makes sure it’s for an authentic purpose, not just for show—and have students think of their own, different demonstrations, not do the same one from a recipe.
Base the project on the NGSS standards for science modeling and other science and engineering practices.
Museum Exhibit
This project idea usually crops up in history/social studies, and sometimes in science. Students research a topic and create a trifold display, or maybe a digital exhibit, with docents/presenters and perhaps an interactive component. It pretty much meets the criteria for a good project—as long as it includes sustained inquiry and it's the main course of a unit, not the dessert—but if the point is simply to communicate information, consider beefing it up.
How to improve it:
Add a critical thinking component to the driving question. Instead of, “How can we showcase the main events of World War II?” make it, “Why did the Allies win World War II?”. Or instead of, “What were the major features of ancient civilizations?” make it, “Why did ancient civilizations rise and fall, and what can we learn from what happened?”
Find a public audience beyond the school and parents, such as the local community, an organization connected to the topic, or students in another (perhaps even distant) school if the exhibits can be shared digitally.
Great book! EduProtocols
Eighth grade history teacher Joanne Park-Smith shared a number of excellent books with the LCHS 7/8 staff recently, and she gave me a copy of the EduProtocol Field Guide by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo. Rather than specifics, this book offers lesson frameworks that will fit with any (ANY!) content. I’m happy to loan my copy of this book if anyone is interested!
The EduProtocol website has some downloadable templates to put their ideas into use. Here’s what the website has to say about the concept:
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The content changes. The lesson stays the same. Any subject. Any grade.
By their very nature, EduProtocols are adaptive so that the content changes as students move from one topic to another in their studies.
The workflow of each EduProtocol stays the same, allowing students to understand the process in order to stay focused on the learning of the content.
EduProtocols are designed so that teachers can insert any curriculum from across subjects to help guide students into a deeper understanding of the content.
EduProtocols are suitable for students across the grade span, from kindergarten through college and allow the learner to engage with the Four C’s (collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity).
Bring Math to Life with the Classroom Chef!
If you’re a math teacher and don’t yet know Matt Vaudrey, a teacher in San Dimas, then let me make a quick introduction. He’s dynamic, energetic, and freely shares many of his innovative strategies to bring math instruction to life. For example…
Check out Matt's website for some great inspiration!
From there, I fell down the rabbit hole of engaging math lessons. One great site I found was MrOrr-IsAGeek.com, with some awesome 3-Act Math strategies. Check them out here, and take a look at this resource he provides called How to Start a Math Fight.
Design Thinking in Action at LCE
Some of us attended Jamie’s Design Thinking workshop during our back-to-school buyback day. Vanessa Schwartz, 6th grade teacher at LCE, was inspired to put this strategy into action in her classroom. She challenged her students to solve a problem common to kids their age, and, as a group, found that schlepping books and materials to-and-from school was the most common complaint. Using the Stanford d.school process of Empathize>Define>Ideate>Prototype>Test, her students designed backpacks intended to improve the lives of their fellow students.
I had the chance to watch her students in action as they tackled step 4--prototype--and was wowed by the students’ creativity. By this point, the students had already completed the deeper thinking leading up to the prototype phase, so this was much deeper than a craft project: they would use this prototype to present their more abstract ideas to the class on the following day.
Vanessa shared some of her insights after the lesson. It was clear that this activity didn’t happen on a whim: like all of us, she’s spent the first part of the school year building procedures and behaviors, so students already knew her expectations. Clearly this was a perfect example of teaching a thought process rather than requiring a finished product: none of these prototypes will be manufactured. But the results will pay dividends as students consider their audience when writing an essay, or verbalize their goals, or collaborate with peers who may see a situation differently, or are more willing to edit and revise, or take risks with big ideas.
Our students are, generally, very good at achieving to a high degree, especially when provided with a clear goal or model, but often they’re most challenged when tasked with taking a risk and creating a product with more ambiguous expectations. But in a complex world, the ability to solve a problem with hazy edges is one of the best skills we can help them develop.
If you’d like to tackle a design thinking project, please contact David Pasz and I’ll help you come up with a suitable challenge, provide the framework and all materials, and bring our mobile prototyping kit to your classroom!
Embedding Digital Citizenship at PCY
PCY computer lab specialist Kristine Babish is always seeking new ways to engage students. She redesigned her lab as a Silicon Valley-style collaboration space, complete with bright colors, flexible seating, and innovative activities. She was looking to bring attention to the need for digital citizenship in all facets of home life and school life, so along with Principal Carrie Hetzel and PE teacher Andrew Leavins, she organized PCY’s first Digital Citizenship Day. Students gathered by grade levels during their PE classes in the MPR and played a collaborative Kahoot game focused on internet safety, civility, and responsibility. Between each question, the students did jumping jacks, sit-ups, high-knees, and burpees to work out their wiggles and keep the oxygen flowing. Winning teams were awarded prizes, and all students left with a timely reminder of the importance of digital citizenship.
LCE and PCR join PCY and 7/8 in Recognition
We’re happy to announce that La Cañada Elementary and Palm Crest are now joining Paradise Canyon and LCHS 7/8 as Common Sense Education Certified Schools. This is an honor that recognizes our efforts in teaching digital citizenship to young people and engaging the entire school community in this important discussion. The recognition acknowledges our schools commitment to helping students think critically and use technology responsibly to learn, create, and participate.
Check Out These Resources!
Online Tech Summit from Ditch That Textbook
If you've been wanting to tackle some professional growth opportunities but you can't give up a weekend or take a day out of your classroom, here's a great alternative: The Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit, where you can watch some or all of the sessions by big-name educators on your own time.
HOW IT WORKS: New presentations are released every day from Dec. 14-22. They remain available until Dec. 31 so you can re-watch or catch up on any you’ve missed. They’re pre-recorded, so you can watch them whenever you want until Dec. 31. After that, the summit ends and the videos are unavailable to watch anymore.
The schedule looks like this:
- December 14 (Fri) -- How Students Are Using Technology to Change the World (Ken Shelton, Disruptor, Keynote Speaker, Techquity Voice)
- December 15 (Sat) -- Building Relationships and Communicating with Students (Kim Bearden, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Ron Clark Academy)
- December 16 (Sun) -- Six Practical Ways to Amplify Learning with Technology (Matt Miller, Head Textbook Ditcher, Ditch That Textbook)
- December 17 (Mon) -- Appsmashing Your Way to Redefinition (Jornea Erwin, Head of Educator Innovation, Flipgrid)
- December 18 (Tue) -- Infusing Coding in Any Class (Bryan Miller, Co-Founder, TopTechEDU, Director of Education Strategy, Wonder Workshop)
- December 19 (Wed) -- Fantastic Learning Activities with Google Drawings (Tony Vincent, 5th grade teacher / LearningInHand.com)
- December 20 (Thur) -- Using Visual Thinking to Unlock Powerful Learning (Manuel Herrera, doodler and visual thinker)
- December 21 (Fri) -- Sparking Student Creativity and Creation with Video (Claudio Zavala, video/creativity/storytelling enthusiast)