The Challenge and Reward of Working in a Group

The sixth graders did a wonderful K'Nex cars project for math.

It was a design and data gathering challenge. But what interested me the most was how the kids did or didn't get along as they worked in groups.

The boys in this photo worked extremely well together during all phases of the project. They were all engaged and they all contributed, despite there being some personalities and voices that were stronger than others.

Some of this success comes from the students doing many in-class activities in groups during the year and from having clear instructions and time limits. A few other groups struggled at times though, and one came to a complete halt.

The stalled group reached stalemate because one of the group members (Miss E) did not like the decisions the two other group members were making, although they were considering her input, and happened to be two of the most cooperation-minded students in the class. Miss E is an extremely intelligent, creative, strong-willed sixth grader, with an amazing work ethic. However she does sometimes get swamped by her overabundant creative impulses. Even on independent projects, she often has too many (good) ideas, and suffers from trying to cram them all into the project of the moment.

At one point, Miss E was sitting separately from the other two students, drawing a meticulously detailed, beautifully labeled diagram of their K'Nex car. She said that she wanted to work on her own project and not in a group because the other girls were not communicating with her well. My CT was matter-of-fact: you have to do it in a group; work it out. My CT did also give the other two some guidance about how to reunite: wait until Miss E finishes her drawing, then continue working together. This did actually work, though I hadn't been sure it would. Thinking about it afterward, I see that my CT's response (which did have a streak of frustration in it), in the end challenged the girls to work it out as quickly as possible, and they were up to the task.

I do think Miss E genuinely suffers because of others' behavior - she is clearly angry at other students when they are not conscientious or when they are just goofy. But the other two girls, who are also high academic achievers, get frustrated too. I asked them if the other students in the class being noisy and boisterous distracts them when they are trying to do their work, and they said yes, and not only that, but they are often seated right next to the noisiest  kids because the teacher wants to separate those kids from their friends. In fact, they said that this has been happening for years at the school, just because of the mix of the kids in their grade.

This motivates me to try some new things during the rest of the school year. As I take over teaching more and more, I want to introduce a few new ways of doing things, especially during transitions and group work times. My CT is encouraging about this, so I feel lucky there.

In subsequent blog posts I will report what I tried and how it worked, or didn't work. Either way I'm sure I will gain new information about teaching and about these particular kids. My Yardsticks book (by Chip Wood) says that kids this age "appreciate teachers who listen and respond to their suggestions for changes in routines, when realistic," so that will be my next step.

Kids Care Who their Audience Is

It was interesting to see how my CT handled a problem that came up with the sixth grade students. Some of the students had gotten carried away writing their fictional stories. Their stories included violent scenes where they had used the names of their friends in class - for example, "A sea monster came along and ripped Ralph's head off."



Their intention was to make each other laugh - it was silly, gratuitous violence; I would call it going for a "cheap laugh."


My CT handled it with authenticity and in a well-considered way when she talked with the students. In speaking to me about it, she said she understood that 
some of this is fitting with the kids' development stage. 
But the thing she said that got an audible groan from the kids was that some of them must have forgotten that the sixth graders would be reading their completed stories to their third grade buddies.

It was amazing to see how instantly the kids were able to understand how inappropriate some of their stories were after they got that piece of information. The sixth graders love their reading buddies, so they did care about the effect their writing could have on them. With some guidelines for revision, they were able to make the stories o.k. for the little kids (e.g., bullets become marshmallows). It was such a nice example of the power of knowing who you are writing for.

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Good Questions

I’m thinking about how much we assume about kids. I keep going back to Vivian Paley and her talent for connecting with kids in a meaningful, non-judgmental way. In You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, she asked students at her school for advice about the rule she was interested in implementing in her kindergarten class. How often do we ask kids for advice?

My third grade reading/writing buddy, Miss C, is very bright and creative.  After we met and chatted a while, I asked her what she thought about spelling as a subject, since I was about to have her do a spelling exercise. She said, “I’m really good at spelling but it’s boring because it doesn’t give me much to work with.” It turns out she is quite articulate about what is challenging, boring, or interesting to her at school, and she is able to describe her learning strategies, too. I hadn’t anticipated getting this much good information from such a simple question.

In the article “The Power of Questions,” the author, teacher Annie Huynh, would find one of her third grade students, Natalie, “frequently talking or staring around the room [instead of reading].” Ms. Huynh decided to sit down with Natalie and talk with her about reading rather than applying more classroom management techniques to get her to stay “on task.” Together they uncovered information more likely to help the student choose books that are suited to her interests.

Why would a student take the risk to allow us access to their thoughts and feelings unless we have earned it by forging respectful relationships with them? I would love to hear examples you have seen of questions that elicited meaningful answers from kids, or examples of questions that shut kids down instead. I will look for examples in the comments section.

Thanks, and cheers.

What are my expectations for myself?

I've been working a little too hard, trying to keep up with everything for school and with my other obligations, but I am realizing how much I need to look for efficiencies wherever I can. It's hard to lower my expectations for myself.

Some of the time when I've stayed up late to finish work, I feel like it's completely worth it, as I really want to learn all I can now while I'm a still a student. I think that my categories have been too sharply drawn though.
As teacher, I will always be a student.

One thing that was missing from my teaching metaphor, the elephant shrew, is that even though it may have never been observed by human eyes, it surely spends time sleeping.

So off I go.

"I can't imagine life without ham!"

A third grade girl said this to me: "I can't imagine life without ham!"

A first grader was very emphatic: "I'll tell you one thing: math is EVERYWHERE!"

 I say: Enthusiasm is such a tonic.

What is a book? What is a map?

This is work from an art lesson I did with my third grade dyad kids. The kids made altered books with personal maps. Since they have been learning how to use maps, I showed them some unusual maps from a book called You Are Here: Personal Maps and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon.

One is below; it's a Japanese illustration of human internal organs and shows lots of little workers doing their various body jobs. Surrounding the body is text on the subject of how to eat to stay healthy.

Here is a kid wearing his in-progress altered book over his face.

This project raises questions about what a book is and what a map is, and what's behind our values around using books in an unconventional way. It's a very big deal to the kids to fold the pages of a book, and I love hearing their ideas about that.

The assistant librarian at a different school saw me doing a similar project and said, "Oh, I don't know what Mr. K would say about this." Mr. K is the wonderful school librarian. Later that day I showed him the book project, and he said he was thinking about writing a grant for some kind of art installation in the hall, and that our project might be good for that. 

This project works as a kind of scrapbook for the kids. They can fill the book with personal maps about trips they have taken, subjects or activities that are meaningful to them, things they would like to do someday. The student above let us know about a trip she took at a very important transition time in her life.

I have taught a similar lesson before where the kids wrote poems based on the story in the book. They cut and folded and twisted the pages into a tree. Then they glued the poems onto the endpapers, and wrote words from the book or poem onto leaves on the end of the branches.

Altered books allow so many possibilities for how to represent information, and so much potential for rich conversations with kids.

How do they see themselves?

I'm really intrigued by these self-portraits the third graders in my dyad placement have made. They made them in their first month of school, so I have only seen the finished products. They don't have the kids' names on them either, which makes them fascinating to look at. Once when I was studying them, a student came up to me and said she didn't like the way hers turned out. She pointed out hers, and I looked at it for a moment. It can be tempting to say something to the contrary when a child says they don't like something they made, to try to talk them out of feeling that way.

Time vs. Soul?

I'm guessing we are all having some version of this experience with our students in the placements.

We see the ways our cooperating teachers plan what they teach, adapt according to how things go, make sure they are reaching all of their students the best they can given the time they have. I am very impressed with the flexibility and intelligence these teachers are bringing to their work.

I also see the students' innate and powerful curiosity about the things and people in their environment, their willingness to dive deeply into what interests them, and how they so often let their hearts and souls show on their faces. I'm studying how teachers try to balance the limitations of time and resources in the classrooms with the need to address these kids' soulfulness and depth.

Recently when we had a guest teacher at our placement, a kid was finished with a dictation they were being given, and it was important that the other children have a quiet atmosphere in which to finish theirs. The boy was whispering and laughing with his neighbor, so I asked him to come over to a side  table. I gave him some paper and a pencil and told him to draw what the dictation sentence is about.

He started in, and did not look up until most of the other kids were out the door for recess. I was amazed at how quickly and how deeply he entered into this spontaneous project.

 If even experienced, talented teachers barely have enough time to teach their students what they need to teach them, I want to learn the efficiencies that make depth of experience and personal connection with kids possible, as often as possible. I am noting them as I see them, but I would love others' observations about what they are seeing along these lines.

Ok, now I want to own an ipad mini.

I've been waiting for this since the quarter started. I could see that I was eventually going to figure out a way to get a personal relationship with this ipad, but I found it yesterday, and I'm soooo happy.

I've been wanting to find a way to do/learn/play with animation that made sense for my needs. I have been interested in "serious" puppetry for a long time, and what I've done with kids is sort of a hybrid of animation and puppetry. I believe I might have used the absolutely most labor intensive way possible of doing animation during the summer ("Oedipus the Snowman," still available on YouTube). It was ridiculous, ridiculous. But I loved it, too, and the potential for teaching using animation.

Saturday after I got the istopmotion app, I tried it out by trial and error,  and it's pretty intuitive, so I figured it out pretty quickly.

The reason I'm this happy is that my brain has been ready and waiting for something like this app, so it snapped into place like a missing puzzle piece.

Wish me luck.

Facing Technology

"Learning is amplified by the number of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is not about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world.

(http://langwitches.org/blog/2013/01/27/learning-in-the-modern-classroom/)

I chose the image at the top of the page because it is beautiful, impressive, and to me, kind of daunting in its complexity. How do you enter this building? How do you get from place to place in it? There are colorful, interesting-looking things in there; what are they?
I'm thinking of this as a metaphor for encountering all of the tools of technology for learning, teaching, and communicating. There is so much potential. An overwhelming amount of potential?

·      When I read Grow Your Network: Become a Detective, it motivated me to just start following more people on twitter. They are fenced into their own columns in tweetdeck; I will be tending them for a while and seeing if they fit me. So that is one nice entry point for me into the Information Entity.

I chose the quote above because it is a nice summary of what we have been learning this quarter, the importance of the students' connection with others, with the world, and with themselves as learners and citizens. It's clear that technology for technology's sake is not very useful, but it's good to be aware that some people may not be so discerning about the specific uses of these tools; we should watch out for that ourselves. I am most interested right now in the potential of technology to allow our students to use visuals and audio in their learning.

I also have a question about students, teachers, and technology: how can we make the best, most meaningful use of these tools to connect with other people?

Non-Googleable Questions?

August 6 Post

Studio Visit

All of the activities in the studio were engaging, but the most affecting for many of us were the human organs. I agree with other cohort members who said that it felt significant to hold and examine a brain that had actually come from a person.

Real physical artifacts are so powerful for kids, too, and we should seek them out for our students whenever we can. A few years ago, I hoped my students would be interested in a diary from an Oregon Trail emigrant that I borrowed from a friend, so it was really nice to see their amazement and respect for it. The context really helped; we had been working for a few weeks with photos and diary excerpts, which brought the subject down to a more personal level. Anecdotes from diaries on historical websites gave the students a relatable view of daily life and the attitudes and feelings of individual emigrants.

When I brought in the diary written by a man named Dan, we looked at the cover first, which was understandably very beaten up. Then when I opened it up, they could see the beautiful script that some people of that era wrote. The students all gasped. It was a wonderful moment, because as we went through the residency, we could almost always refer back to Dan. The kids felt a connection to him because we had the book that he had carried on the trail, and even though he must have been exhausted at the end of each day of traveling, he wrote in it most days.

When we looked at the human hearts in the studio, there was a personal connection for me. My dad has been dealing with congestive heart failure for quite some time, and one of the hearts we looked at had that same medical issue. I don't understand why, but I didn't feel the slightest bit upset looking at it. My thoughts were more along the lines of understanding better how hard the body can work to adapt itself to its conditions, and how strong human bodies are. I think that, despite my dad having had five heart attacks and three open-heart surgeries, among endless other things, he must be a really tough guy to have withstood all of that, and to have retained his quality of life for the most part.

After his second bi-pass, his surgeon came out and explained to us how it went. It was a pretty rough operation, as there was so much scarring from the previous surgery. He said, "to clear away some of the scar tissue, I lifted his heart..." and he showed with his hands how he had lifted my dad's heart up. We could not stop staring at his hands after that. He had held my dad's heart in his hands!

If we give kids opportunities like the one we had in the studio to learn in such an engaging way, they will probably remember some of those experiences for their whole lives.

August 2 Post

Jumpin'

I chose this photo for my entry because it shows a kid who looks engaged cognitively in the head and arms, and also ready to run in the legs and feet!

Today was the first time our cohort did any physical activity together that was lengthy. It seems that the overall mood at the beginning was agitated, but then it calmed down a bit as we focused on what we were supposed to do.

I would guess that many of us had fairly intense experiences while doing this. Our cohort has proven itself to be supportive, but there is also an element of competitiveness.

We will need to discuss the issue of competition with our students. I think competitiveness can be positive or negative. My daughter is very competitive, and the issue of fairness is also important to her. We talk about and practice good sportsmanship when we do things like play badminton, but my goal with her learning to be a good sport is a long-range goal; I don't think she is quite developmentally ready to take on what I now think is a very complex attitude: being a "good sport." It seems that to adopt this attitude you need to have some empathy and awareness of how your own behavior may affect someone else's experience. I think anxiety ("will I be good enough?") can blunt a person's ability to care about what others are feeling, so it would make it even more important that as teachers we involve the students in creating a supportive classroom community.

Lesson Plans, Micro-teaching, August 1 Post

Lesson planning: learning how to do this is like getting the key to a treasure chest.

I have been reinventing the wheel as an art teacher for a long time. I am lucky enough to have wonderful human resources to call upon for advice about teaching; my best friend is an art specialist, for example. But it's been ridiculously hard to get enough information to suit me.

When I went to the informational talk about the program that Amelia gave, she said, "You will know what you're doing" by the time we finish the fifth quarter. The picture of what this means is gelling for me with every class we take.

I also feel so appreciative of the cohort. The two examples of micro-teaching we saw were as instructive as the other information we are getting about how to do it. The support we give each other is so sustaining to me.

The Important Issue of Abuse

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Today's class gave a teacher's-size view of the issue of child abuse. I'm sure most of us in the cohort thought about people we know, or have known, who were victims of abuse, and many may also know people who have abused children. Thinking about the situations of the children listed under the different categories of abuse was really effective for my thinking about my own role as a teacher.

I think adopting a child with a complex history has opened up my perspective on the range of experiences, good and bad, that can make up the early life of kids. My daughter's experience was pretty benign, but in various settings I have learned of really traumatic events in the lives of children I have known. As sad as their stories are, it is amazing to see kids' resilience, too. Some kids who lived their early lives in deprivation take off like rockets once they get what they need, and our adoption medicine pediatrician says that some of the physical growth of kids who have been adopted has disproved what doctors previously thought were firm biological limits.

I love what she said to me about six months after we brought our daughter home: "LOOK at her growth chart, IT'S GORGEOUS!"

Running your class

Eadweard Muybridge

Entry for July 31st

Today's race-for-the-bones activity made me remember how powerful physical activity is, and how it can positively impact learning. 

My experiences in elementary school with exercise were very traditional: hopscotch, tetherball, baseball, basketball. I am glad to hear that in some high schools, students are getting a chance to do things like pilates, dance, and yoga. Learning ways of moving that they can use all of their lives seems like one way to really serve the students in a meaningful way.

The skeleton activity was brief, but was enough to blow the cobwebs out of my brain, like hitting the "refresh" button. The fact that there are so many possibilities to combine movement with science or math, or really anything, is one reason why I wanted to become a teacher. Working with kids doing visual and performing arts and combining these with other subject areas like social studies showed me some of the potential for creativity in learning and teaching. 

July 25th post for Health and Fitness

An idea from today’s class that really interested me is using a concept map to represent information, and the way it shows how bits of information can be linked. It was challenging to put it all together, and raised some questions for me. I am now wondering about different ways concept maps might be used by teachers for teaching, and by students for learning. It makes me want to find interesting examples of how the visuals and the content can connect with each other.

I can see how dividing up information into discrete chunks for the concept map allows you to see it with a fresh perspective. I think figuring out how the chunks can be organized and linked forces a focused sorting process of those chunks.

            

Listening for silence

NASA researchers conducting tests on aircraft engine noise in 1967

 

As we think about what kind of spaces where we will work with kids, I am thinking about the different qualities of sound. This year, the classroom where I volunteer shares a wall with a special needs classroom. Although sometimes shouts and other sounds come through the wall, the children I work with have become used to the sounds for the most part. I think they have gained some comfort with this proximity to these sounds through visiting the class at times and doing activities with both classes together. The special needs kids and "gen ed" kids know each other to some extent, which is good for everybody.

 

When I have had students who will be using their voices in performance, I do different listening experiments with them. I have them say words or phrases in different ways and at different volumes. Then I have them start listening to "negative space,"i.e., what it sounds like immediately after making a sound. Of course, there are echoes and ambient noise that most kids would not have noticed previously. But there are also subtleties in the transitions from noise to noise, or noise to "silence." For example, some kids experience the silence following a loud sound as spreading outward from a central point in the room, filling the room. I have kids think about these things for several reasons. There is so much to be learned by noticing your surroundings while engaging with your senses. We can also connect emotions to sound. When possible, I start a project with a quiet activity like painting, and I play music that is meditative but also has steady energy. Later we talk about how they felt during the activity, and why they think they were affected that way by the activity and the music.

 

Because children's lives are so full of noise and stimulation, we can also bring that into the discussion. How do they feel the moment after they have ended a video game? How do they feel when they are riding in a car? What ambient sounds are in their homes? Are there any sounds in their lives that will be memorable and emotional for them when they are adults? What's the quietest place they've ever been? (Mine is in a shop that sells all kinds of foam, located in the U-District. I challenge anyone to beat this example for silence.) What is the noisiest place they've ever been? I might ask them that next time they're in a quiet or noisy setting, to try to hear as many individual sounds within it as they can.

 

I feel these kinds of exercises help kids feel more connected to the places where they work, play and perform, and they enrich their experience when they are in these places. In the Choices, Choices, Choices blog post, she describes the benefits to kids of being able to chose where to work in their classroom. I can picture including small, one-person or two-person sitting "nests," making them out of foam with three walls to surround the student(s). The reason it would be small is that the noise-absorbing foam would be pretty close to the ears of whoever was in the pod, and I bet it would be noticeably quieter than the rest of the room. It would be nice to let kids experiment in making such spots to be in, also.

Acoustic diffusing mushrooms hanging from the roof of the Royal Albert Hall.

 

 

 

 

 



Guess what this is a map of ?

 

 

Make a guess in the "Comments" section.

Friends of the brave self-conscious

Once again I feel so lucky about the quality of our certification program and the people involved with it. When we read our “I am” poems, it reminded me of when I’ve had students perform in front of (sometimes large groups of) people.

Performing is very powerful, and creates the possibility for deep personal experience. I’ve been so proud of my students, and felt honored that they have taken a risk in my class and moved through the vulnerability of being seen and heard by an audience. There was something that we did that made it easier for them.

Before the beginning of a performance, when the audience is assembled and we’re ready to start, I get my students on stage and ask them what they would like to ask for from the audience. We talk about this together beforehand, so they come up with about three or four things. They often ask for the audience to understand that they worked hard on their performance, but are a little nervous, to pay close attention during the performance, and to enjoy the performance.

Then I ask the audience what they would like to ask of the performers. They always ALWAYS ask my students to relax and enjoy performing, and sometimes say they understand what it’s like to be nervous too. We keep it really short, but it has been extremely helpful.