Shake Up Learning: Ch. 16: Purposeful Planning

My district is blessed to have 1:1 iPads. I would prefer that my student have the opportunity to type on a keyboard, but we do have access to Chromebook carts and a lab, plus we have attachable keyboards for the students.

As I am in a new district, I’m not yet sure what the policy is about publishing online. I am definitely going to find out if this is possible, and I can have students use pseudonyms if necessary. I hope that it is alright for us to publish, as my students need to be the ones to tell their story and to begin building their online portfolios
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Plan A works out about half of the time, but that’s what happens when you take risks in the classroom! My students still learn what they need to learn and meet the goals that they have to meet, but I often find myself switching up a lesson or a small part of a lesson to inject some enthusiasm into the class, or to fix a small issue or glitch in our activity.

I have a website where I post everything. I am beginning a new one this year (again, new school district), but students know they can go there to find links to assignments. (My Website: http://tinyurl.com/Baurichter) In order to find more specific information, we use Google Classroom. This is the first place I want my students to visit; the one-stop-shop. If they need to get to my website to find something from a particular unit, the link to the website is in the “About” tab on Google Classroom.

I package not only assignments, but lesson plans for the day. Every day I post an agenda of what we are doing in class. It includes the following:

• Learning Targets
• Assignments that are Due Today (if anything)
• Steps in the Lesson
• Starter Question
• Mini-Lecture (5 min)
• Activity
• Assignment (due date, with a link to the assignment details)
• Assignments are posted separately, though I do link to the assignment details in the daily agenda. For assignments, I post the task, expectations/rubric, due date, and pertinent links that can help the student complete the assignment.

Read more about packaging assignments: How to Package Your Online Assignments

Examples:

When it comes to using digital tools, I like to try out what is new. If we do this, I have plan B ready to go, and I start with a disclaimer. I tell my students that we’re trying something new, so just have fun with it! I never grade anything that is connected to something we are trying for the first time. Overall though, I know that I need to focus more on the learning target than the tool. Often I think that a tool is pretty awesome and try to use it without considering what I want my students to learn first.

Once we tried out a new review game app and it didn’t work at all. The kids understood, and asked when they could try it again. They know that glitches happen, and it’s nothing to be upset about! I used to get visibly frustrated because I thought it made me look unprepared, but the students understand. It also eases their discomfort when it comes time for them to present something. They know that if it doesn’t work, they can try out their plan B and not get frustrated about it. Teachers need to model many things, but one that all students notice is when you model the proper way to respond when things don’t go as planned.

The most difficult of technology integration is when a student does not want to try a new tool. I had one student who despised technology and never wanted to participate if we were using the computers. It turned out that he just had no experience with computers and did not understand how to use it. When we would try out a new app or website, I would be there to help him launch it. Soon a friend of his picked up on this and was there to help him. Once he saw how it was done a few times, he was able to do it on his own. By the end of the school year he loved going on the Chromebook and was talking about wanting to get one so he could go online over the summer, though he said he would still spend almost all of his time fishing instead. It helps to discover why a student isn’t interested and solve that problem in order to make it easier or more entertaining for them in the future.

Shake Up Learning: Ch. 15: The Dynamic Learning Framework

Shake Up Learning - Dynamic Learning

My classes can be dynamic sometimes, but not as often as I'd like. I try to connect previous lessons with current lessons by using overarching themes. My history classes focus on the BAGPIPE themes (Beliefs, America in the World, Geography and Environment, Peopling, Identity, Politics and Power, Economics). We are always connecting back to the themes, and over time students see the connections between topics and events as well. This keeps our learning from being “we’re done with that” to “this is how it connects to the current day.” We also do the National History Day project, which we begin in September and present in February. Students research and revise throughout the year. Other than that, I need to incorporate more dynamic learning. I wrote about how I could do that in my blog: Opportunities for Dynamic Learning

I couldn’t say for sure what percentage of assignments in my classes are dynamic, but the number needs to be higher. I don’t know if I could make 100% of my assignment dynamic, but I will start by increasing dynamic assignments and decreasing my use of static assignments.

As a Social Studies teacher I often hear students say that the topics that we are covering don’t matter. It’s hard to convince a student that they do matter when all assignments are static. If the teacher is constantly giving students assignments that are over as soon as they are turned in, then there is no connection to the future. There is no connection to anything at all. The teacher, then, is assuring the student that the topic no longer matters after your assignment is graded. I don’t want that. I want my students to see the value in what they are learning, so they pay closer attention and become productive citizens who think about the consequences of their actions before they act. Utilizing dynamic assignments is one way that I can help my students to understand the importance of Social Studies.

Without even knowing what the 4 C’s were, I can say that I integrated them about half of the time. My students are given many opportunities to collaborate and communicate. I gave plenty of opportunities to think critically, though some of those opportunities were optional and students did not take advantage of them. I am aiming to incorporate the 4 C’s as much as I can from now on.

Push Boundaries with Dynamic Learning

Opportunities for Dynamic Learning

In her book, Shake Up Learning, Kasey Bell challenges her readers to, "Look at your curriculum and lesson plans, and make a list of five places where you see opportunities for dynamic learning."

I will be teaching in a new district and will be teaching 4 different classes that I haven't taught before, and I will be teaching US History in a different way. Instead of teaching all of US History in one year, I will be teaching Reconstruction to the current day in one school year. As a result of these changes, I don't have very specific answers here, but I will list some ideas.

Here are some places where I could move my students' learning from static to dynamic:

• All Classes: Each student will create a blog at the beginning of the year where they will reflect on the following throughout the course of the year:
• The effort they are putting into their projects, and the process by which they complete them
• Critical thinking or opinion questions that I pose during class
• How a particular lesson activity went - this will help give me feedback, which I need as much as my students
• How their learning connects to their personal lives
• Current events and how they are affected by the event
• Personal stories that answer questions such as, What inspires you? What is the most important thing that anyone has ever done for you? These questions could help build our classroom culture. Before doing this though, we'd have to make sure that students change the names of people they are talking about in order to retain confidentiality.
• Anything else we decide to write about!

• World History and US History: Instead of doing a handout about famous historical inventions, my students can do a Shark Tank project. We could connect the inventions to the modern day by asking local business owners who could actually be interested in buying the historical inventions to be our Sharks, which will make the experience more authentic. Students could present their inventions to them in order to persuade their audience of the importance of the invention.

• Sociology: I considered having my Sociology students create children's books that teach about digital citizenship. In addition to doing this, and to make the learning more dynamic, my students could mentor elementary students throughout the school year in order to teach them digital citizenship skills.

• Psychology: In Psychology class, students could conduct a case study throughout the year. As they learn new information, the way that they perceive their findings will change. We can reflect upon this process in their blogs.

• Economics: I think that my Economics class will provide many dynamic learning opportunities. It will be easy to find current events that we can connect to concepts in class, and students can reflect on the connections in their blogs. We could also have a classroom economy where students can earn "money" for completing classroom tasks. We can discuss supply, demand, scarcity, etc.and students will have personal experience to which they can attach their learning. Many students also have jobs, so we can discuss how the larger economy affects their job (minimum wage, unemployment, taxes, etc.).

Shake Up Learning: Ch. 14: The Dynamic Learning Model

Chapter 14 of Shake Up Learning covers the 4 C's and the ISTE Standards. Below are two infographics that I created showing the 4 C's.

These are the difficulties that my students and I have with the 4 C's, and some ways that I plan to address them:

1. Creativity - Sometimes students are afraid to be creative. Some students believe that their grade in the class might be negatively affected if they move too far outside of the box, but I have been working to change this. I give my students experience points (XP) in my gamified class for creativity. Students do not lose grade points if they choose not to be overly creative, but they are motivated to try to be creative in order to gain XP.
2. Communication - Some students do not enjoy communicating to the class as a whole. Though there are other options (small groups, using tech to speak anonymously, etc.), students must become accustomed to speaking in front of others. Sometimes communication can become a problem if students are not friendly with each other. The same can be true if students are working with their friends. Too much communication can be distracting if it is off task!
3. Collaboration - Students do pretty well with collaboration, but some students are strong leaders and others choose not to put much effort into group work. I’m aiming to solve this problem by assigning roles. In my gamified class, students are broken into teams. Each team has a warrior, a mage, and a healer. One day I could make the warrior the spokesperson, the mage the recorder, and the healer the task keeper. The next day I could switch up the roles, or create new ones.
4. Critical Thinking - Critical thinking is important, but it requires more than the minimum effort. Some students have days where the minimum effort is all that they are willing or able to put forth, or they might not understand the activity or the material, or they might have difficulty voicing their thoughts. In these cases it is difficult for students to think past the obvious and dig deeply into a concept.

As for the ISTE Standards, I am not yet familiar with them! I need to dig into the ISTE standards more, and make sure that I am really implementing them. I have helped my students meet some of them, but we have done so without being knowledgeable about them.

Some dynamic learning upgrades that I am thinking about include reaching out to our global community more through Twitter, creating a project in which my students take on an entrepreneurial role, and perhaps having my students author a children’s book about digital citizenship that they can share with the elementary students. These would be dynamic because they can change over time. As entrepreneurs, my students can alter their products. We can share on Twitter throughout the school year. The digital citizenship books could be shared with multiple classes over multiple years.


Visit Kasey Bell at Shake Up Learning to read more about dynamic learning.

Shake Up Learning: Ch. 13: Empower Your Students

I empower my students by giving them ownership. I do not refer to the classroom as “mine.” It is our classroom, and we build our classroom culture together. My students have ownership over the rules of the classroom, which we refer to as our “culture” instead of calling them “rules.” I encourage my students to speak up if they are uncomfortable with something, or if they don’t see the merit in an activity that we are learning. I am open with my students and I want them to know that they are free to question. If I can’t explain the importance of an activity or concept, why would we waste our time on it anyway?

When starting something new, I always offer just a bit less guidance than I am comfortable with. I make sure that my students know what we are trying to accomplish, but I let them work through how to get to that end goal. If they struggle individually, I am there to help them. If the whole class struggles, I can help redirect them. My goal is to help my students become fully independent learners, especially because I am teaching high schoolers who will either move onto the work force or to college. They won’t always have someone to help them with everything, so I help them find the strategies that they can use to be fully independent.

My students have a lot of choice in everyday activities and summative projects. They are given choices on topics to study whenever possible. I even offer different exam questions for students to choose from. For example, if I ask my students to prove to me that they understand how protest can lead to change, they can answer by explaining any topic that we have covered (or who knows, haven’t covered) in class. They can discuss the Boston Tea Party and how that catalyzed the Revolutionary War, or the Montgomery Bus Boycott and how that helped push toward bus integration. Both topics, when analyzed fully, answer the prompt, but they are so incredibly different. Social Studies is about understanding the repercussions of our actions, not about memorizing names and dates. My students have to include specific historical evidence such as names, places, and dates, but they do not have to memorize and answer rote multiple-choice questions to do well on a test.

It is not always easy to get a high school student to be curious about history, but framing the class by using larger themes (conflict, change, causation, movement, etc.) has helped a bit. Connecting past events to current events can pique curiosity as well. Luckily though, practicing Social Studies requires a lot of research. When a student is able to research a topic that really interests him or her, curiosity can be their propellor.

US History Final Project

At the end of the year in my US History class, I assign a final project. I give students free reign over the topic they would like (as long as it pertains to US History), as well as the medium in which they would like to create their project. I have a minimal rubric, linked below.

The first page introduces the project and gives example topics. The second page includes my rubric. I use a similar rubric for other projects as well.

I check with students as they work and give feedback, and students have multiple opportunities to revise, so that's why the first section on the second page says that they don't get a grade without the first five requirements. They can also get points back on any portion of the project, including presenting the project again (with improvements) for more points.

I also gamify my classes, so spelling and grammar error-free projects earn XP, and creativity does as well. Going above and beyond on each requirement earns the student more XP as well. Those items don't affect their grades at all.

Let me know what you think! Does it seem pedagogically sound? Does it require changes? Any feedback is helpful feedback.

US History Final Project Rubric

Shake Up Learning: Ch. 12: Go Global

To be honest, I need to help my students connect with the world more. I have encouraged students to seek out interviews for their National History Day project, but only a few have taken the initiative. I should provide more guidance to my students to connect with the people they would like to interview. My students have publicly published to the web, but we did not seek to share out on social media. This year I am planning to have a twitter hashtag for each of my classes where students can tweet out their work to a live audience. I can connect with other classes that are doing similar work for peer review.

I was thinking about the entrepreneurial learning tasks of students creating online businesses where they can sell real or imagined goods (which we would make obvious to our audience, of course). Perhaps this work could be published to an authentic audience, especially if the online businesses are selling real goods. Students could publish their research findings for my history, psychology, and sociology classes. Students could even poll people online for their research purposes.

It would be pretty cool to find a person that could be a primary source for a historical event that we might be studying.

Bonus Challenge: How can we go global?

This year my students will be sharing most of their work with a public audience. I haven't decided if I want to use Blogger or Google Sites yet. We will also have a class Twitter hashtag, where students can promote their work. More specifically, we could work with local businesses (Economics class), or create studies that we can work with professionals on (Psychology or Sociology class), or we can talk with authors and professional historians, or create museum exhibits--maybe a contest for the class?--for a local museum (US History, World History class).