Cached In: Leadership Needed for the NGSS

Let’s take a moment to think about leadership. Not only should we focus on leadership in general, let’s focus on the leadership that is currently needed at a time of mystery with regards to science education in the state of Kentucky and within the nation.

We are odd a very odd place in America when it comes to science education within our nation’s public schools. Whenever I taught high school Physics from 2011-2015, I must be honest in stating that I was allowed to teach whatever I wanted to teach except for my Advanced Placement Physics courses; the only standards required to be taught at the high school level for science, in the state of Kentucky, are the ACT Quality Core Standards for the Biology End of Course Assessment. Educators at the high school level who teach Integrated Science, Chemistry, Physics, Environmental Science, Marine Biology, Botany, Microbiology, Experimental Science, Applied Science, and other specialized science courses are given free reign to teach whatever they want to teach to their students. At the Elementary School level, since science is not assessed in any form, science is rarely taught in a form that is conducive to learning about the scientific process through the act of learning new scientific skills; elementary school teachers are left teaching science content through literacy lessons since English and Mathematics are the primary academic disciplines that students are assessed in grades K-5. Middle school science, sadly, is also placed in a box when it comes to science education due to the testing requirements established by the Kentucky Department of Education. While I know that science is being taught at the high school level, I have seen enough first hand evidence to know that it is not being taught in a manner that is in agreement with the expectations outlined by the Next Generation Science Standards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6eoRnrwL-A#action=share

The Next Generation Science Standards have been adopted by the state of Kentucky, and they have recently become part of Kentucky’s academic standards; since an official assessment has not been developed, the adopting of the standards does not mean that the standards will be taught. At this moment, many science teachers are unaware of the expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards (why worry about standards that are not yet even tested?), which will make the implementation process even harder when they officially are enforced to be taught. Based on my experiences teaching pre-service teachers who plan on becoming elementary school teachers, it is evident that there will be many struggles and many growing pains whenever it comes to implementing the Next Generation Science Standards in the classroom. As it stands, individuals who have never seen the Next Generation Science Standards are overwhelmed by the layout of the document, cannot extract what is to be taught to the students, and cannot think of how to incorporate the new skills and knowledge sets into their own classrooms to teach science in a way that is unfamiliar to them.

Essentially, the Next Generation Science Standards are not straight forward, and they are not entirely that easy to read, comprehend, and immediately implement in the classroom. See the example standard below:

Yeah…that is ONE standard…for middle school students. The above diagrams depicts a large amount of information needed just to teach that ONE standards in the classroom.

In order to provide a smooth transition from the current science education to that required by the Next Generation Science Standards, I recommend that each school create two leadership positions who will learn the intricacies of the Next Generation Science Standards, how to deconstruct the Next Generation Science Standards, and how to communicate this process with the school’s teachers in order for the transition to take place.

I recommend that two science educators (or a curriculum specialist) from each school, who are respected, have a vested interest in the school, and who to remain at the school for several years in the future (teachers who are tenured) to be chosen as the school leaders to educate the relevant science teachers about the Next Generation Science Standards.

·         The chosen individuals should be required to attend science leadership meetings (offered by the Kentucky Department of Education, third parties such as University led workshops, or informal meetings with other science educators). These meetings should serve the purpose of:

o   Learning how to read the Next Generation Science Standards

o   Learning the specifics of the different domains of the Next Generation Science Standards

o   See examples of how the standards are already being implemented in classrooms that have already completed adopted the standards

·         The team of educators will need to sit down together and create a learning progression sequence map of when each standard will be taught in the context of the school under consideration. For example, a team from an elementary school will specifically map out each standard and connect it to a specific grade level from Kindergarten to 5^th Grade. A high school team will need to map out the standards for what is to be taught in 9^th grade, 10^th grade, and 11^th grade (and some high schools may require a senior level science course) and in which classes the standards will be taught. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year at least two years before the standards have been implemented)

·         The team of educators, after mapping specific standards to grade levels, should then organize the standards (organized by grade) into a learning sequence that displays the order that the standards are to be taught. For example, the team will need to determine which content and skills standards will be taught in each month of the academic school year. This will give the team a logical sequence in which the standards could be taught. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year at least two years before the standards have been implemented)

·         For EACH standard, the team of individuals will need to deconstruct the standard by reviewing the Performance Expectation, Disciplinary Core Ideas, Science and Engineering Practices, and Cross Cutting Concepts, to specifically determine which specific content and skills will be taught in a given science unit in a given grade level. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year at least two years before the standards have been implemented)

o   This deconstruction process should be based on the criteria established by the Kentucky Department of Education

o   http://education.ky.gov/curriculum/leadnet/Pages/Deconstructing-Standards.aspx

·         The team will then develop student learning objectives for each deconstructed standard that have already been divided into instructional units by grade level. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year at least two years before the standards have been implemented)

·         The team will then be responsible to present the Next Generation Science Standards to all of the science teachers within the school. At this point, the team’s task will be to educate the teachers how to read the standards, what the different domains of the standards are, and provide background on the rationale of the intent of the standards in the context of the students to be taught. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year before the standards have been implemented and/or over the summer months prior to the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards)

·         The team will then be responsible to present their deconstructions of all standards per grade level to all of the science educators at the school. The deconstructed standards will specifically tell the science educators exactly what to teach and how the content and skills should be presented in order for students to effectively learn from the standards.  (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year before the standards have been implemented and/or over the summer months prior to the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards)

·         At this point, the team of educators will need to assist the grade level specific educators (or content specific educators in the case with high school teachers) in developing high quality assessments that align with the deconstructed standards under consideration. These assessments should also align with the student learning objectives that the team developed as a result of the deconstruction process. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year before the standards have been implemented and/or over the summer months prior to the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards)

·         The team will then need to provide assistance to the grade level specific (content specific) educators on crafting specific lessons, activities, laboratory investigations, and experiments that can be implemented in the classroom to ensure that the deconstructed standards are met with success. (This should take place over the course of an entire academic school year before the standards have been implemented and/or over the summer months prior to the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards)

·         The team, at this point, will serve as Next Generation Science Standards experts throughout the implementation process in order to provide assistance and answer questions from individuals within the school building as they arise.

After the standards have been deconstructed and the assessments have been developed, it is important that these deconstructions and assessments be shared with other teachers around the country who have also completed the same process as outlined in this blog post. By sharing the deconstructed standards and the developed assessments, comparisons can be made of the deconstructed standards to ensure that the standards have all been interpreted in the same manner, and that all educators around the nation are on the same page when it comes to understanding the intent that the standards have for the children who are exposed to their expectations. By sharing assessments, a nation-wide data based can be developed that contains a large repertoire of assessments that can be used by all teachers. Of course, I realize that we, as teachers, can be selfish, we do not like to share our home-made content, and that my sermon is more than likely a large pie in the sky.

It is important to state that these science standards gurus should still be classroom teachers, and should still fulfill their responsibilities as an educator in the state of Kentucky. By starting this process several years in advance, there would be no need to spend hours and hours each night preparing for the new standards; these teachers could fulfill these requirements during their already required professional develop hours that they must obtain each academic school year. Exceptions and exemptions must be made for these educators to skip “general education” meetings and skip “catch-all” district meetings that are meant as a “one size fits all” professional development opportunity for teachers regardless of content specialty. As the Next Generation Science Standards are implemented, it is very possible to provide these teachers with an extra planning period to deal with the demands and requests from other teachers within the building who struggle with implementing the new standards.

While the process outlined is a lot of work for teachers who remain in classroom, I emphasize the fact that these important roles be leadership positions that are not taken lightly. While a school can try to hire a full time employee who does nothing but work with the Next Generation Science Standards, these positions usually end up paying above the salary of a classroom teacher, but does not have the benefit of directly educating students. If a school can afford a Next Generation Science Standards Specialist position, then kudos to the school for being able to do so. However, if funds are short, the above strategy may be the best option available.

Regardless of how a school specifically tackles the issue of implementing the Next Generation Science Standards, it is critical that the implementation process begins now, and it is critical that teachers become prepared in advanced to the implementation of the standards rather than during the implementation process itself.

We just need school leaders willing to go above and beyond to ensure the success of their individual schools.

And with that, I am caching out!

Cache for Advice: MacGyver Labs (Assessment)

As the United States of America moves even closer to fully implementing the Next Generation Science Standards, it still amazes me that the majority of science teachers who are implementing scientific investigations and experiments in their classrooms are still heavily relying on labs that require students to follow a series of steps, answer questions, follow more steps, and then answer a series of even more questions. These laboratory investigations have notoriously been deemed by science academic experts as cookbook investigations; students are able to follow a series of steps, execute a series of actions, and construct a product, usually a laboratory report, without contemplating the importance of the steps conducted and the conclusions that can be drawn from the data in the same manner that someone who does not know how to cook (like myself) can physically bake an acceptable apple pie that can be later used for consumption.

Cookbook labs are typically easy to grade (answer keys and rubrics usually include points being awarded for right and wrong answers) for the teachers, and they are also easily completed by the students since these types of investigations are typically up-front about the answers that students should expect at the end of the investigation; students are essentially completing a laboratory investigation that is supposed to confirm and already stated scientific fact. Whenever students are expected to confirm an already existing idea, fact, or concept, it does not take much creativity to literally change the collected data from an experiment in an attempt to make it appear that the data collected in the laboratory investigation actually does prove the concept under consideration. These cookbook laboratory investigations are fantastic in that the grader knows exactly what to expect, and the educator is able to identify any issues that happened in the laboratory investigation in the event that the data and analysis did not confirm the aforementioned concept.

Whenever I was a student in middle school and high school, almost all of the laboratory investigations that I completed were of this type. Whenever I entered the classroom for my first year of teaching Physics, I was guilty of giving such laboratory investigations to my students. Unfortunately, since my students were expected to perform well on the Advanced Placement Physics Exam, it became apparent, based on the questions on the official exam and my students’ scores on the laboratory based questions, that the strategies that I used in the classroom were not conducive to the type of deeper learning that the students were supposed engage with. A change was needed.

After attending an Advanced Placement Physics week-long training on Oak Ridge Tennessee prior to the second year of teaching high school Physics, I came away with a new form of a laboratory investigation – The Inquiry Based Lab, or, as I like to refer to them, the “MacGyver Lab”. These laboratory investigations are not fully-fledged open-inquiry labs, but are just open enough to allow students to explore specific knowledge and skills that are required to be learned as a result of taking my class.

An inquiry based lab is actually quite simple to write and implement in your own classroom. It consists of the following parts.

·         Prompt: The prompt is a single paragraph that explains the context of the laboratory activity and what students need to do, in general, to complete the laboratory activity. In theory, this is the ONLY piece of information students need in order begin working on the lab. The remaining parts are essentially how the laboratory investigation will be scored.

o   Example: You and your partner will be given one meter stick, one roll of tape, one stop watch, one constant velocity battery powered car (that only travels in a straight line), ten tooth picks, five paper clips, 100.0 centimeters of string, and mobile device such as Smart-Phone or Tablet Device. You and your partner will use the materials given to: Determine the average linear speed of the constant velocity car, the average centripetal speed of the constant velocity car whenever the car travels in a straight line, the period in which the constant velocity car travels in a circle, the frequency in which the constant velocity car travels in a circle, and the centripetal acceleration of the constant velocity car as it travels in a circle.

·         Materials List: Students will have to create a list of all materials that they used in order to accomplish all of the tasks mentioned in the prompt. The students may only choose from the materials mentioned in the prompt paragraph, but they do not necessarily have to use all of the materials mentioned. This is why I like to refer to these labs as “MacGyver Labs”; students have to use the materials in their raw form to create the situations described in the prompt. And yes, I definitely list materials that students do not need in order to complete the experiment.

o   Graded on a scale of: Incomplete OR Complete (2 Points)

·         Procedures: Students then have to setup the experiments on their own using the materials that they have mentioned in their materials list. If an item is mentioned in the materials list, students have to explicitly state how the materials are used, and describe what the materials measure about the experiment under consideration if they can be used to collect data. Whenever students are writing their procedures, they must write the procedures out in a series of steps that can be followed by anyone not familiar with Physics; the students are generating their own steps to complete the problem. This forces the students to understand the steps used in the completion of the laboratory investigation. The procedure must be written in such a way that at least three trials of data are collected for each quantity that is measured.

o   Graded on a scale of: Poor, OK, Good, and Great (4 Points)

·         List of Measured Quantities: If a student collects ANY data from the experiment, the student group needs to create a list of all of the quantities that were measured in the investigation along with the measuring device that was used to measure the quantity. This helps students stay organized on what they are measuring, why they are measuring it, and how it can later be used in calculations.

o   Graded on a scale of: Poor, OK, Great (3 Points)

·         Organized Data Table(s) of Measured Quantities: As student groups conduct their experiments, the students must organize their collected data into a series of neat, organized data tables (or one data table) that contains information that will later be used for specific calculations. The data tables are to be completed with a computer program or with a straight-edge so that professionalism is maintained.

o   Graded on a scale of: Poor, OK, Great (3 Points)

·         Variable List: If students use specific equations in order to complete necessary calculations, the students are required to provide a key that tells the reader what each variable stands for in a given equation. If the same variable is used twice but the variable has two different subscripts, then the student has to tell me what BOTH variables represent.

o   Graded on a scale of: Incomplete OR Complete (2 Points)

·         Calculations: Using their data tables, students are to complete a series of calculations necessary to answer the information contained within the prompt. Each time “determine” is used in the prompt, students know that that is a specific calculation that is requested to be performed. Therefore, one laboratory investigation may contain a series of calculations. Students must write down the original equation (in variable form) used for a calculation, must show substitution of experimental numbers, and then must determine a final answer with acceptable units.

o   Graded on a scale of: Poor, OK, Great (3 Points) – Per Calculation Required

·         Written Summary of Calculations with Conclusions: The student groups then use their final calculations with units to create a written summary of all of the calculations that were conducted along with the physical significance of the calculations themselves. This is considered the traditional “drawing conclusions” portion of a cookbook investigation.

o   Graded on a scale of: Poor, OK, Great (3 Points)

·         Laboratory Improvements: Students will then construct two more paragraphs to explain how the laboratory experiment could have been realistically improved if the students had access to other materials or technology to help collect the data. The students are expected to critique the preciseness and accuracy of the measuring devices used in their experiment, and then compare these characteristics with the precision and accuracy of better measuring tools that would yield more consistent results. Students may also comment on how a change of their originally written procedures could have somehow improved the data collection process of the experiment. This component of the laboratory investigation allows for student self-assessment of their own experimental designs and solutions, which connects back to the Science and Engineering Practices of the Next Generation Science Standards.

o   Graded on a scale of: Poor OR Great (2 Points)

At the end of the investigation, students will have created a full laboratory report with materials lists, procedures, data tables, calculations, and explanations and justifications of their own calculations, and a full discussion of ways in which the experiment could have been improved if given a different set of materials and/or procedures. In this way, students create their own laboratory investigations, they assess their own investigations, and they complete them in a manner that is specifically unique (but structured) to their needs and desires.

After using these types of laboratory investigations in my own classroom, I found that students performed better on in class assessments, and students performed MUCH better on the official Advanced Placement Physics exams. While this assessment seems to be a bit too advanced for your own students, keep in mind that it can be adapted to meet the needs of your own students regarding the grade level. I used these same types of laboratory investigations for my general Physics classes and my Freshman Physics classes. By reducing the complexity of the investigations themselves, you can adapt this type of investigation to any grade level in which students can write complete sentences.

In terms of grading, the process is quick. With the grading scale specific to each component (with at most only four possible points per component), I can quickly and confidently award a score that is definitely an “OK” or a “Great”. If students worked in groups of two (one laboratory group per class), I could grade an entire class of laboratory reports in less than one and a half hours (assuming a class of 35 students) (writing feedback takes longer if you like to leave a considerable amount of feedback for the students).

As we move away from cookbook laboratory investigations, and as we move closer to deeper learning for our students, I encourage you to implement your own MacGyver labs. If you do not believe that you can write a lab on your own, consider reviewing a cookbook lab that you already give. Take the materials listed for the lab, add a few materials as red herrings, describe the experiment in the prompt, and then see if you students can use the materials to mimic the steps in the cook book lab. In most of the Inquiry based labs that I gave in my own classes, I drew inspiration from classic cookbook labs. Only slight modification was needed to convert the cookbook labs into the Inquiry based investigations.

The post was long, but I definitely wanted to provide a specific example of the type of assessment that we need to start giving our students in place of assessments in which students can reach a correct answer without knowing why.

And with that, I am caching out!

A Cache Withdrawal: The Growth Mindset - Pretend to Believe even if You Don't

"A Cache Withdrawal" posts will consist of vivid memories in my educational experiences that have helped shaped who I am as an educator. Consider post an introspective of my philosophical beliefs regarding education.

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As someone who is new to the realm of educational research, I do not have the experience nor knowledge to definitely state that all individuals can learn anything/everything as a result of implementing a growth-mindset in situations in which learning is to take place. It acknowledged that researchers are split with regards to the idea of a growth-mindset, which makes advocates on both sides passionate regarding their views and beliefs that are supported by their analyzed data. What I can say, however, is that I once had a teacher who believed in a growth mindset, and it literally turned my life around as a student.

Prior to 8^th grade, I was simply an average student. I was content with making C’s in Social Studies and English while making B’s in Science and even D’s in Mathematics. I never really care for homework, nor did I really care about what I was learning in school. In all honesty, nothing in school really interest me, nor did it seem to have any affect in my life. I was, however, a well behaved student who did complete work in class whenever given the opportunity to do so.

At the beginning of 8^th grade, I was placed with a cohort of students and specific team of teachers. The cohort that I traveled with from class to class was Hellacious at best; the behavior was out of control, the students were awful to each other, and the atmosphere was not conducive to learning. Within three days, my mother had requested that I be moved to a different cohort of students so that I could “enjoy” school at peace. The only option, however, was to be placed with a cohort of students known as the “8^th Grade Algebra” students; these students took Pre-Algebra in 7^th grade with the other students completed “7^th Grade Math”, and these students were always one grade level ahead in Mathematics starting from 5^th grade. As a student who was used to making C’s and D’s in Mathematics, it was a scary moment for me; I did not even take the Pre-Algebra course that was needed for success in Algebra. My mother and father, who are VERY successful to this date, never worked in industries in which mathematics was used beyond arithmetic. Essentially, if I was to take 8^th grade Algebra, I was to be on my own with only the help of the teacher.

The teacher for the course was an individual who sat me down, told me that I could easily do Algebra, and informed me that I was ready for the class regardless of my background in Mathematics. She acknowledged that my Mathematics scores were not as high as they should have been, but I could catch up with my classmates with a bit of extra work and preparation. Regardless of my past history with Mathematics, I was in the “big league”, which meant that I was to take the class seriously and studiously. This was my only option to escape the terrors of the “normal” cohort of students. For the first time in my life, a teacher had explicitly told me that she did not care of my background, she did not care of my previous grades, and she did not care of how prepared I was for the course. She only cared that I rise up to the challenge and prove myself that I was worthy to hold my own against the well-behaved students.

I buckled down. I completed homework at home for the first time in my life. My mother tried to learn the mathematics with me to teach the content for whenever I struggled. I studied for quizzes. I studied for tests. I answered questions in class. I did everything that I could do in order to show the teacher that I was prepared for her course. By the end of the year, it was me who won the “8^th Grade Algebra Award” for the highest grade point average in the course. However, it was also me who won the same award for Science, Social Studies, AND English. Something about that academic school year clicked for me, the light switch has been on ever since.

I went on to be the top student in each course that I took in high school, and I went on to be the top student in the school by the time of graduation. This same obsession with grades and studied carried me into my undergraduate studies in which I walked away with the “Scholar of College” award for two different colleges and degree programs at Western Kentucky University.

My life as a student forever changed simply because I had a teacher who thought that I could grow as a mathematics student and who thought that I could grow as a human being. Her simple belief was enough motivation in my life to finally prove what kind of academic that I could be. This belief, a growth mindset, changed me as a person…forever. Therefore, whenever I became an educator, I always kept this notion in mind.

Even if a growth mindset is later to be determined to be untrue, it still served as a HUGE motivator in my academic career. As a teacher with almost six years of teaching experience, I can state, with confidence, that explicitly stating that students are capable of learning difficult material is enough motivation to cause students to rise to the challenges that are established by the sometimes difficult expectations that are placed on the same students.

As an educator, even if you inherently do not believe in a growth mindset, I encourage you to at least be convincing enough to your students that they should believe in it. Even if this only affects a single student, a student like me, then you have positively impacted that student’s life forever. If this inspiring story happened to me, it can happen to anyone.

The growth mindset. Pretend to believe it…even if you don’t.

And with that, I am caching out!

A Band to Cache: OK GO

As a Physics teacher, it can become quite difficult to find entertaining videos for students that also contain a large amount of scientific information that can be discussed, analyzed, and replicated in my own classroom.

Sure, I can show a sexy video of Felix Baumgartner jumping out of a hot air balloon that is fixated at the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere in order to break the world record for the longest free fall flight in the history of man-kind, but the achievement is not replicable with my own students. I could show students an episode of Mythbusters that proves that a bullet fired horizontally from a gun will hit the ground at the exact moment that a second bullet is simultaneously vertically dropped from the same height of the gun that fired the first bullet, but, again, the experiment is not replicable in a classroom setting. Even with permission from an administrator to try such an absurd experiment with students, the technology needed for the “proof” is beyond the resources allocated to a typical Physics classroom. And also, while amazing, the two examples listed are still far removed from what a student will ever be able to do at her/his youthful age.

So, what can I show my students that can elicit rich discussion while providing students with ideas that can be replicated at home?

Enter: OK GO

Here is their first musical video that skyrocketed them to instant viral recognition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA

With several treadmills, the band members were able to create a massively impressive music video in which the music, lyrics, and motions of the band members were timed with the speeds of the treadmills. Imagine all of the discussions that students could have with position, distance traveled, speed, velocity, acceleration, and the kinematics of multiple particles in different frames of reference. Imagine using this video to inspire students to make their own replications of the video using mathematical formulas and equations to justify actions in the video.

Consider their next popular video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

A perfectly timed, one-take shot of an entire Rube Goldberg machine that is more complicated than anything most students have ever seen before. Think of the preciseness needed for everything to work without a single issue in the taping of the footage. Think of all of the machines necessary to display the awesome visuals that accompany the song. Think of the trajectory of the projectiles needed for one element of the machine to finish so that the next element could begin. Consider the trial and error associated with creating the perfect take. Now…consider the ideas that students develop whenever they are asked to create their own version of the video shown above. Wow.

Less replicable, but still providing a good discussion of Physics, take a look at this video in which a car creates music as a result of traveling around a pre-arranged track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MejbOFk7H6c

The sophistication continues with OK GO with their latest, culminating video in which they show the motion of objects in the absence of friction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWGJA9i18Co

Last, but not least, my students were always MESMERIZED whenever I used these videos in class. We sometimes had to watch the videos twice so that the first view was to allow the students to be amazed while the second viewing was actually used begin thinking about the Physics involved.

This is definitely a series of videos of a band that can definitely be used in your own science classroom; you can even use these videos if you still have several minutes of class time that you need to kill before the end of the bell.

I swear that these will be the most impressive videos that your students will have ever seen.

So, make sure to cache these links and cache this band. You may need use these videos whenever you least expect it.

Cached In: A Tale of Two Analogies

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario.

Consider a child. A child of approximately 1.5 years of age who happens to have the most beautiful smile in the world, the sweetest laugh, and the fullest head of hair that anyone can imagine. This same child brings great joy to the lives her parents, and the child is always at the center of attention whenever a crowd of individuals are present. As with any milestone in a child’s life, celebration occurs whenever she accomplishes a task that she has never accomplished before: her first giggle, her first “word”, her first time meeting another baby, and even her first diaper change.

It is time for another milestone in her life – it is time to learn how to walk! As with any child who tries to learn how to walk, the parents are aware of the fact that she will eventually master the art of roaming around the house on two legs rather than four appendages. While the parents hate to see their beautiful daughter growing up, they also understand that it is a necessity of life.

Typical story, typical rationale, and typical background for such a wonderful child.

The father takes his daughter by the hand, he smiles, and starts walking her up and down the hallway with assistance. His daughter sways back and forth as she walks with the assistance of her father, but she is making the necessary steps to move from one location to another. So far, so good. The father-daughter duo make several laps in this fashion to prepare the daughter for the inevitable unassisted trial! The father is proud of Daddy’s Little Girl, and he nods his approval to his significant other who happens to be filming this special moment.

At this point, the father starts walking his daughter forward for another trip down the hallway. This time, however, he lightly lets go of his daughter’s hand to watch her walk on her own. She sways quite a bit, loses her balance, and immediately falls to the floor. The father walks over to his daughter, frowns, picks her up by her leg, hangs her upside down, and proceeds to spank the child for not doing what he wanted her to do. After all of the help he had given her, with all of the assistance provided, with all of the scaffolding he could provide, he paddles his daughter’s buttocks while asking himself, “How can she not do this after I have shown her countless times!?” The father places his daughter on the floor and walks away as she continues to cry from the punishment that she just received…still…unable to walk.

As the reader, how effective is the father’s strategy in teaching his daughter how to walk? If you are a parent, is this how you taught your own daughter/son how to walk? Is this how your parents taught you how to walk?

Consider the same scenario but tweaked so that it is pertinent to what could happen in a school.  

Consider a child. A child of approximately 15 years of age who happens to have the most beautiful smile in the world, the sweetest laugh, and the fullest head of hair that anyone can imagine. This same child brings great joy to the lives her teachers, and the child is always at the center of attention whenever her peers are present. As with any educational milestone in a child’s life, celebration occurs whenever she accomplishes a task that she has never accomplished before: graduating from pre-school, receiving the honor roll for the first time, earning a perfect attendance award, and being voted the president of the Sophomore class!

It is time for another milestone in her life – it is time to learn how to complete Physics equations pertaining to Newton’s Laws of Motion! As with any child who tries to learn Physics, the science teachers are aware of the fact that she will eventually master the art of using mathematics to describe the physical world around her. While the teachers hate to see their beautiful student growing up, they also understand that it is a necessity of life.

Typical story, typical rationale, and typical background for such a wonderful child.

The Physics teacher takes his daughter by the “hand”, he smiles, and starts providing educational opportunities to complete Physics problems with assistance. His student struggles as she struggles with the completion of problems with the assistance of her teacher, but she is making the necessary steps to move from one mathematical variable in an equation from one location to another. So far, so good. The student-teacher duo complete several examples in this fashion to prepare the student for the inevitable unassisted trial! The teacher is proud of his favorite student, and he nods his approval to his administrator happens to be documenting and observing this special moment.

At this point, the teacher hands out another activity filled with Physics computational problems. This time, however, he no longer speaks and offers assistance in such a way that he lets go of his student’s “hand” to watch her complete problems on her own. She struggles a bit, loses her confidence, and immediately fails to complete any of the problems. The teacher walks over to his student, frowns, picks up the exam, and proceeds to grade it as an F since the student was not able to do what he wanted her to do. After all of the help he had given her, with all of the assistance provided, with all of the scaffolding he could provide, he sees the student’s course grade decrease while asking himself, “How can she not do this after I have shown her countless times!?” The teacher allows his student to leave the room at the end of the class period while he walks away as she continues to cry from the punishment that she just received…still…unable to complete Physics problems.

It would seem that based on your reaction and based on personal experience the method used to teach the child how to walk is one that would be entirely unacceptable in our nation’s culture associated with raising a child. If this strategy is not accepted by the parenting culture that is established throughout the United States of America, then why is does the educational culture of the United States accept it to be used to teach its own children? Both scenarios end with a child in pain (physical pain vs. emotional pain), and both students end with a child being punished for not completing an activity to the expectations established by the individual serving in the “teacher” role.

As we all know, whenever we teach children how to walk, we pick the child up by the hand and then continue practicing with the child until she/he is reader for another solo attempt. When the child falls again, the process repeats itself until the child is able to walk on her/his own. Throughout the process, the child is not punished for the failed attempt; the child is celebrated when the successful attempt has been made! More celebration follows whenever the child can continuously demonstrate that she/he can walk!

In the same vein, the modern educational system could establish a school culture in which students are allowed to revise their work, learn from their mistakes, and continue the revision process, with the aid of a teacher or facilitator of education, until the student can demonstrate that she/he can master the skill on a continuous basis. All-to-often, even today, students are graded using summative assessments that do not allow for students to learn from their mistakes. In essence, we are “paddling” our “children” for not “walking” on the first attempt. Keep these two situations in mind as you think about why we allow the current testing culture in our nation’s schools oftentimes do not allow for student revision.

In either case mentioned, it should be considered completely deplorable…

And with that, I am caching out!

A Website to Cache: Google Documents

Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen

As we continue through this technological blog, there will be instances in which I will recommend a website for educators to use to help improve their ability to teach. These websites that I recommend are websites that I encourage you to cache for future retrieval. With that said, let's take a look at our first website to cache!

One of the least enjoyable aspects of being a teacher pertains to the fact that we must sometimes invest our own income in order to support our classroom practices and teaching strategies. From my experience, there are two reasons why we are put into a position where it is required that we do so:

1. School District Contracts and Exclusivity Purchasing Rights from companies who “bid” for the right to offer their products to the district staff.

Purchasing pencils and erasers for a classroom is not as simple as visiting Wal-Mart, buying several boxes of both, keeping the receipt, and being reimbursed by the school district.  Throughout the nation, school districts are teaming up with specific companies that earn the right to exclusively sell their products to teachers if teachers do not want to spend their own money on buying school supplies. Since these businesses have entered into fiscal partnerships with school districts, these companies get to decide which versions of their products will be allowed to be purchased for school related purposes. These same companies decided what prices to charge as well.

2. A teacher may be required to fill out ordering paperwork several weeks before the supplies will be needed. It takes a considerable amount of time to visit a school technology specialist (sometimes this may be a secretary), obtain the necessary order forms, complete the order forms, submit the order forms, and then wait for the supplies to arrive.

In a perfect world, all teachers are aware of all of the materials in their classrooms so that actions can be taken to re-stock on items that are running low. Unfortunately, while many teachers actively plan lessons several days and weeks in advanced, the actual teaching strategies implemented in the classroom are based on the needs of the students, the teacher, and the on-the-spot decisions that are made in order to facilitate learning. A teacher may change her/his plan to teach a given lesson but may not have the resources immediately available in the classroom to make the desired changes.

In order to help reduce the amount of paper work to implement lesson activities while simultaneously cutting down on the costs of managing a classroom, I want to spotlight a fantastic resource that teachers can use to collect formative assessment. This resource is none other than Google Documents.

Check out an introduction video!

To use Google Documents, a teacher needs the following resources:

- School WiFi

- Computers (laptops or desktops), tablets, and/or Smart Phones for the teacher and for one student in each established group

Using Google Documents is a fantastic method to gather formative assessment from students that is quick, easy, and free. All a teacher must do is create a template for the desired activity, make the link sharable to all members of the class, and then let the students have access to the sharable link that allows members to edit the document that has been created.

When students use a Google document that has been created for the purpose of formative assessment, the teacher and students can see the document being updated in a real-time format. This allows each formative assessment activity to tell a story rather than an ending; students will begin typing their responses, make changes to their responses as a result of seeing other student responses (if the teacher decides to let students see all group responses), and then finalize their responses that can then be quickly discussed by the teacher and students during the activity debrief.

As an example of the power of Google Documents, consider the following activity that I implemented in my Science Methods course that I teach to future elementary school teachers.

At the end of the activity, I have a permanent record of my students’ responses that I can easily file away in a digital cloud storage device and/or print out to share will all students in all sections of the course under consideration. This allows me to forever refer to student misconceptions of content, determine if students answer questions in the same regardless of cohort under consideration, and reflect on my teaching whenever I need to make changes to improve student learning.

After an investigation in which six different student groups performed an investigation about which environment worms preferred to live (Wet Soil vs. Dry Soil, Soil with Food vs. Soil with No Food, Dark Environments vs. Light Environments, Soil vs. Sand, Warm Soil vs. Cool Soil, Soil with Smooth Textures vs. Soil with Rough Textures), I wanted the students to share their findings so that each student group could use classroom data to determine the ideal environment in which a worm preferred to live. Based on data collected from all groups, which was shared to the class using Google Documents, each student group could come up definitive conclusions that could be discussed out loud in class. This would eventually lead to the construction of an actual worm environment in which students would perform tests and collect data to support to their claim of the ideal worm environment. Some of the results are shown below:

Based on the information contained in the activity, I could quickly determine that all groups were drawing the same conclusions regarding the ideal worm environment(notice how some groups like to have fun with the activity by typing silly information that does not necessarily impeded the learning taking place).

Consider the alternative method in which a similar activity would be implemented in a traditional classroom. Students would be divided into groups of two or three, each group would be given one or two markers (that will eventually be depleted), and one or two easel sheets (a packet of easel paper is approximately $15.00 for one hundred sheets) to record their answers. While easel sheets are large and easy to read, a teacher could quickly go through a significant portion of allocated SEEK money (if the teacher is even given any) just for the purposes of collecting student data to help monitor student progress in the classroom. Depending on the amount of group activities that the teacher uses on a weekly basis, the teacher may be required to continuously fill out forms throughout the school year and wait for the products to arrive in time for a teacher’s lessons or the teacher will have to make personal purchases on an as-needed basis.

In all honesty, I am new to Google Documents (I have only started using it since the beginning of September), so I have not even had the chance to explore all of the ways in which it can be used to facilitate student learning. However, I am overly impressed with the student response, the ease of creating activities, and the data that I have already collected. While the documents and activities that I have implemented in my classes are intended for data sharing, group reflections, and the development of ideas, the uses of Google Documents are not only limited to activities that require writing. Google Documents allows students to make drawings, create tables, create spreadsheets, create graphs, presentations, and even allows the option to embed recorded and live media.

While I am a fan of easel paper, white-boards, and dry erase markers, I am definitely converting into the digital age when it comes to sharing content with my students, and allowing them to participate in group activities that allow me to quickly collect and organize a large amount of formative assessment data.

With all of that said, if you have any experiences using Google Documents and/or can provide examples of how it is used in your own classroom, please comment in the area below. I am wanting to learn of the different strategies in which I can use Google Documents to enhance the classroom experience in ways that are free and require a minimal amount of preparation time.

Goodbye order forms. Goodbye purchase orders. Goodbye waiting time. Hello to more of my paycheck that can be used for non-work related items. Maybe this time...I can...CASH out!