This semester, I'm encouraging students to create portfolios that they can carry with them through their years of schooling and beyond. I see posters around my district that read, "Ask yourself: is this MyBlueprint worthy?", advertising the latest application for saving student work. A question asked less-often is how long MyBlueprint will keep students' work after they graduate; however, the concept of having students curate collections of their best work is a neat one. It demands they reflect on what they've done well (or could have done better) and rehashes the concepts taught by each project they revisit. It also provides a great opportunity to teach in-demand skills like graphic and website design!
I've assigned two of my classes final portfolios this semester that follow these criteria:
Coming soon: a rubric!
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Despite our curriculum's push away from passive learning (lecturing/notes) to active engagement (conversation/activities), teachers I've talked to realize we can't completely detach ourselves from the need to hand students a fair amount of information before they're able to actively engage with it in any meaningful way. I often struggle with finding new ways to transmit information. Whether or not my students mind the day-after-day routine of copying down notes from a textbook, I know I can't handle planning a unit that follows that structure. For my own benefit then, I am always on the hunt for different approaches. Below are a few that I've seen at work (some more productive than others depending on the group, unit, and air of concentration... or lack thereof). Class Slides (1-2 lessons) Materials: computer lab or devices Rather than making students sit through yet another slides presentation of your own making, create a blank slides template for the topic and share it on your google classroom. Students are responsible for completing the information on one slide (either of their choice or yours) by using the textbook or internet. This can take a full class. When everyone has completed their one slide, or you are out of time, share the whole slides presentation on the projector and go through it as you would a presentation of your own creation. Depending on the students, you can ask them to share their slides orally or just present them yourself and ask if they have any further comments. Variations of this can be done with a boatload of apps other than just Slides, though the fact that all slides are accessible and in one place is helpful when students need to access the information later. In my SS9 Confederation Unit, we did a similar activity, but used iMovie trailers instead. Students created a movie trailer for why their province decided to join Canada. Puzzle (1 lesson) Materials: Main information/content of the lesson divided into paragraphs or main topical points Scissors to divide the paragraphs To get students up and moving while filling their brains with information, ask them to puzzle together a lesson's notes. I will write the main points of the lesson on index cards or scraps of paper, shuffle them together, and lay them out around the classroom. Before letting students go, we'll create a table on the board that they copy down in their notes--one that organizes the information into main topics such as Who, What, Where, Why, etc. depending on the information. Students' job is to travel the room writing down the information from each card/scrap in the correct section of the table. After all is written, we discuss their completed tables together. Alternatively, you could have students arrange the cards into a physical table before asking them to write it all down. This saves some time and ensures everyone has the right info in the right place, but may not challenge them to think individually or allow discussions about why some students may have made different choices in completing their tables. Choose your own Adventure (1 lesson) Materials: depending on the site you use to create it, individual computers or a projector By the end of the semester even the powerpoint and puzzle options felt old, so I took a stab at making a choose-your-own-adventure. I used Twine, a fairly straightforward site to figure out, and jumbled together a narrative about why my students would have wanted to participate in the Red River Rebellion, and the consequences of doing so. It took a bit of stretching--I had to keep prodding them towards rebellion--but they got the gist of what issues the Red River colonists were having and what the government did in reaction. Twine only worked in my account's browser (not entirely sure why) so instead of letting every student do the adventure on their own I threw it up on the projector and we went through it together as a class. Because I'm crazy, I told them the loudest answer would win when I asked them which way to go. This is not something I recommend. This site gives a bit more information about Twine and some of its alternatives. Well, these are all the alternatives to lecturing I have for now, but I expect to stumble upon more as I get more teaching under my belt. If you have any questions, comments, or other options I'd love to see them in the comments below!
Whew, it's been awhile since my last post. What have I been up to? Classes, conferences, and practicum (check out the Lesson Plans page for a few of my units) among other things. Today marked the culmination of UVic's summer institute and the last official classes of my university experience! It also afforded me an opportunity to share the Art + Language Fluxus kit I made. Fluxus is an art movement based in experience and interaction. My kit is intended to teach perusers the why and how of using art to teach language through a collection of items that both explain and embody the approach. A flip book presents the idea that making art deepens students' vocabularies through reflection and explanation, a box of mirrors and questions suggests that art reflects and grows students' cultures and identities, and maps/puzzles highlight that art creation connects students to each other as well as the wider community. Pedagogical underpinnings and scripts for art-language activities are also included.
As a fluxus piece, it's hard to explain simply in text or by talking but if you're interested in hearing more you can check out this video. The kit was a pleasure to make and an approach to explaining pedagogy that I'd love to explore further. I've been looking into UDL a lot lately, namely because it's a term I'd been hearing around but didn't know what it is. Turns out it's a pretty simple concept: use different modes of instruction within your classes so students who learn in different ways can be supported. UDL encourages teachers to change their teaching approach to meet their students' needs, rather than asking their students to adapt to their teaching approach. Once you spell it out, it seems like a pretty obvious concept, though it raises a lot of questions about how content can be taught differently and how a teacher's role might change. These questions made me want to learn more about UDL, so I've made a website to share my learning and the resources I found. Visit udlandbeyond.wordpress.com. You'll be glad you did. I had the opportunity to guest-teach an English 12 class today on a topic I devised and felt quite excited about. Some backstory: last week in my ELA curriculum class I drafted a lesson plan for teaching poetry—specifically layout and form. After sitting in on the grade 12 class earlier this month and learning they’d soon be studying poetry, I asked the teacher if I could try out my lesson on his class. He said yes, which I very much appreciate.
My lesson plan was roughly as follows:
Though I didn’t get the whole lesson covered, I think it went well overall and I enjoyed the responses I got from students. They loved House of Leaves, as I hoped they would, and freely spoke about how the changing text affected their reading before I could prompt them to do so. As an exemplar text then, the novel worked perfectly. It also motivated a discussion of similar works—ones like Infinite Jest and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close—many of which the students had passions for and eagerly shared. This discussion was a bit of a tangent and cut into the time I’d planned to work on the poems, but I hated to cut it short. Actually, as the teacher was actively involved I don’t think I could’ve cut him off (me being a guest in his class). I’m grateful he took the time to let the students discuss their interests though because it let me see how engaged they can be when they’re sharing interesting or personal material. I think moments like this one are valuable in any class because they make the students more familiar and comfortable with each other—something extremely helpful to future discussions—and let them feel their voices are heard. To stop their conversation about something meaningful to them in order to move it to something I deem more worthy feels like, well is, an act of domination over the students and I can see it very easily shutting down their engagement in the following activity rather than increasing it. Of course we have to get back to work sometime, but letting moments of genuine conversation play out is definitely something I value as both a student and teacher. The discussion of similar texts ended on a semi-related note to what I wanted to move into next: the poetry rewrite. Though the teacher had asked students to bring poems to class today, few had remembered. Luckily, the teacher had an in-class library in his classroom with a brilliant poetry collection, and I had brought several printed poems I thought would work well for the activity. Students quickly chose poems and rearranged the classroom from our reading circle to desks where they could write. There was a low hum of conversation in the room for the remainder of the class while they worked through the activity, which I quite enjoyed. As a student, I find silent classrooms only helpful during tests—otherwise I appreciate the background noise of people chatting and working through activities together. This is even more appreciated when I’m teaching because silence brings a lot of pressure, both to not make noise, and to make sure students are engaged rather than daydreaming. Returning to the activity though, I went around to groups of students or individuals for the rest of the class time to check in with them. Initially many had questions about whether they were analyzing the poem or not, which I should have clarified. Most students understood when I asked them again to pick out the major theme of the poem, or even just a few lines, and see if they could represent that by arranging the text differently. There were also some excellent rewrites that came out of it. One student in particular had challenges because she didn’t feel she could connect with poetry at all. We had a conversation about what she did like reading—mainly fantasy, one series in particular—but she maintained that she wasn’t reading a lot recently. She also didn’t particularly enjoy music with lyrics, something that also could've worked well for the activity. I tried to interest her in a few of the texts in the teacher’s library but failed. Eventually she said she’d keep looking through the poetry book she’d first grabbed and try to make do. I moved on after that but didn’t feel like I’d effectively helped her. Are there some students who just can’t connect with anything? She said she liked video games, which I know deserve a place within English courses but I don’t think would work for this activity. Is there a point when I have to tell students to simply work with what we have? To just do the exercise? That feels again like I’m simply exerting my authority over them rather than meeting them in the middle. It’s not something that I’m comfortable with or know how to handle yet, though it seems like something that’s going to come up a lot unfortunately. Near the end of the class most students were either done one draft or well on their way. There wasn’t time to share the poems before the bell went, but the teacher asked them to bring their completed poems to share in their next class. I can’t be there but I hope the discussion is fruitful. Most students seemed to enjoy the activity and a few said it really helped them understand the arrangement of certain words and the power that layout can have on understanding. That being the major takeaway, I’m satisfied I taught the lesson well. More than that, I’m ecstatic they loved the book and I hope to have similarly passionate conversations about stories and reading experiences in my future classes. I experimented with the website Canva in making this graphic. It's a user-friendly and free way to bring top-notch graphic design into your classroom or other work. I had some issues with saving and it took some inventiveness to make a template suit my needs, but overall it's a site I'm excited to use more in the future.
I'm new to this teaching thing and still full of the gung-ho drive that more grizzled members of the profession chuckle at. Several profs have assured my cohort that the highly-detailed lesson plans they'd like us to produce will soon be mocked by practicum mentors who've mastered the art of lightning-quick lesson prep. And the fact is, they know how it really works. They know you can't deliver your best, most dynamic lesson every day, and that even if you could some days just won't work as well as others. They're comfortable telling students they won't get marking done by tomorrow because they have families at home. This isn't all teachers of course, but it seems to be the ones able to bring their best selves to class every day--maybe because that self is genuine. A tired teacher can certainly relate to her students, all of whom also have families and commitments outside the classroom.
While I have yet to find my own sense of balance then, I'm trying to appreciate my current state of mind as a learning opportunity. If some teachers emphasize the importance of leaving their work at school, then why shouldn't the same apply to their students? Likewise, if I understand the havoc caused by having assignments for every class due the same week, why wouldn't I try to coordinate due dates with my future colleagues? Or eliminate them all together, à la UDL? When I know how hard it can be to find time to read a simple article, why wouldn't I set aside time to delve into one during my class? I haven't spent much time looking into the debate of whether to homework or not to homework and have little practical experience to draw upon from a teaching perspective. I suspect, though, that my eventual opinion on it will have a lot to do with how I manage to find balance in my own life. Who knows, maybe the only homework I assign will be to get a good night's sleep--we all know how hard it can be to get an A+ on that one. For more reading on homework, check out these articles. I attended a conference today that differed wildly from any I'd been to before. There were no facilitators, no speeches, and no reserved question-and-answer periods because the entire day was modelled as a series of conversations. Attendees nominated topics and discussed them as equals and everyone had opportunities to share their own experiences.
Common questions that guided many sessions asked about the role of physicality in schools, how to address anxiety, ways to facilitate inquiry, and engaging indigenous students and knowledge, among others. The sessions themselves were times for conversation, reflection, and sharing between teachers, counsellors, parents, and university students like myself. The overarching message that grew from each of them was that the best learning environment is an open, authentic, and safe one. One where teachers are their best, honest selves and aren't afraid to make mistakes or ask for help with the gaps in their understanding. When teachers are themselves, they show students that the best people they can be are their own selves. This message got resounding agreement from everyone, but I found in conversations with my fellow pre-service attendees that we still felt the need to grasp for more practical answers. We wanted directions on how to handle specific situations--specific, but general enough to be applied elsewhere. How do I break up a race-based argument? How do I engage with the student who is too anxious to speak? We sought direction for the kind of worst-case scenarios I'm sure every teacher has imagined but not everyone has encountered. It's often difficult to think beyond the desire for practical answers but I'm learning that the best teachers don't succeed because they're always prepared for the worst, they do because they set themselves up for the best and approach challenges with the right attitude--one that's honest, open, welcoming, and guided by their students. My #edcampvic experience was an exciting one and gave me ideas for conversations as well as my current and future classrooms. Many thanks to the event hosts, Lambrick Park Secondary, and speaker Shelley Moore (@tweetsomemoore). What a warm way to spend a rainy Saturday!
What is this Creative Commons licensing I've been hearing so much about? It's a way to protect material under copyright while making it sharable. Under the CC licence I've added to this website you're welcome to share my blog posts in any format, provided you give proper attribution to their author (moi) and don't change the level of licence they're protected under. CC aims to "give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work."
Why might one care about such permissions? Well, if Company X wants to use your work in their next campaign, they'll have to attribute it to you. There are also some restrictions about what can be sold commercially under CC. When applying for a license, CC asks you to consider two things: "do I want to allow commercial use or not, and then second, do I want to allow derivative works or not? If a licensor decides to allow derivative works, she may also choose to require that anyone who uses the work — we call them licensees — to make that new work available under the same license terms"
The above image depicts different levels of licensing CC offers. The image itself is protected under cc-by-4.0 and is attributed to wikipedia user Shaddim. The top two levels are remix licenses, meaning the content may be changed and shared, while the bottom two levels restrict what can be done to derivative works.
CC's overall project is "creating a commons of freely reusable materials," or Free Cultural Works, that can be shared internationally without risk of being privatized or stolen. In a world where we dump so many of our creative works online, I think it's important to give credit where it's due, while keeping those works available to anyone who wants them. Check out the Creative Commons website for more information: creativecommons.org edventures-of-sarah by Sarah Matheson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |
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edventures-of-sarah by Sarah Matheson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |