In my 21st century skills class, I always want to start the students off with a fun challenge. A teacher who used to teach the class suggested having the students spend 1 class period creating their best impression of the Monster Energy Drink Logo. Since her sharing I have used the assignment ever since. Students have the freedom to use any technology tools they want. Many often ask, “Can I draw it by hand?” My answer is “NO, you need to show that you can use a tech tool to produce the same results.” Below are the top three as voted on by the class. Please help us pick the best design.
Okay, let me ease the minds of many readers who feel a grade is a form of feedback. Yes, teachers need to give feedback on ALL assignments that is timely and specific. I for one don’t believe a letter grade (or number if that is what you use) is feedback at all. It is little more than a type of categorical ranking for a piece of work or period of time. It may be timely but is not specific at ALL. Why do schools chose to assign letter grades to work? What does the A, B, C, D, F (or now often an E) mean?
Our culture is obsessed with these grades. Grades are found everywhere, from Consumer Reports and stock ratings to ESPN and fashion magazines. Here is a quick rundown of the common understanding of letter grades:
A = The best can’t be better (unless +,- system used)
B = meeting the standards
C = Average but okay
D = Below Average but passing
F/E = Failing do work or not acceptable work
So, if letter grades are used as feedback, are they specific? NO not very specific and actually quit vague by most standards. These grades might be okay for a stock rating or to judge a person’s attire for an evening but that is about it. Consumer Reports uses a great model for grading. The magazine gives a letter grade, but backs the grade up with a paragraph or two of justification. Giving specific reasons why a product receives a certain marking. I would bet that the grades came after giving reviews for awhile and readers wanted a “quick” guide to how a product compared to another. As educators or parents should we care how our student stacks up to another?
I hope not. Education is not about where a student ranks, it is about getting a student to be the best they can be. Grades hurt this growth in our students. Students need the kind of constructive feedback that Consumer Reports gives products that it is reviewing. Details about strengths and weaknesses. Remarks about how they can improve on their work. Does a student gain a desire to improve when earning an A?
Students often see the letter grade as a destination. Asking “what do I need to do to get an A?” Is this what we want in our students today? Reaching an end goal and stopping? Schools need to instill the value of improving work. Everything can be improved. I am still becoming a better teaching now, after 13 years on the job. Letter grades inhibit this growth in our students. In the many conversations I have with students, they often reflect that they are doing well enough when their grades are B and above. Many refer to this behavior as “doing” school. Are we creating learners? or something else?
Parents can actually be worse about grades. Parents will call and ask how their child can receive an A. Not worrying about the quality or the work or learning behaviors. Parents will often use these letters to compare their child to others. Should we be making comparisons? I personally would leave that up to selective colleges or employers.
This leads us to one of the major arguments for grades: those darn colleges require them. Should they? I don’t think so. Colleges should have an application process that has performance tasks. Admittance to college should not depend on arbitrary letters a collection of teachers gave a student over 4 years. Admittance should be based upon what a student can or cannot do! Colleges are currently complaining about grade inflation and student needs for remedial classes. So obviously our current K-12 grading system is not working for college admittance. Another example of where letter grades fail the students has been shared with me from high school AP teachers. Regularly they will have a student who “fails” their class but receives a 3, 4, or 5 on the AP exam. This means the student would receive college credit for the class but not high school credit.
Our culture thinks grades are great for education. Schools need to change this perception. Grades are great for the momentary comparison, for products or ranking a draft. Remember it is momentary if not,Tony Mandarich, Charles Rodgers or any other first round draft pick bust would be in the hall of fame.
Feedback is important for learning. Students need to know what they do well and what needs improvement. One way of doing this is to switch to a Standards Based Grading System. Nationally recognized author Rick Wormeli (@RickWormeli) has been working hard to explain to the world why our current grading system is not working. Below is Rick explaining why the current system doesn’t work.
Help change grading from a ranking of students to feedback that would work to get the best out of our students. Make a system that helps students grow and become life long learns. Not striving for a letter on a piece of paper but to do their best!
Today it happened!! Our school took a slice of its regularly scheduled PD time and made a small change. Teachers signed up to share. Share something they are doing in their classroom that works. Something that they feel would help others. The staff then could choose a location to attend 4 or 5 of these mini-PD session. Sessions ranged from computer applications to be used in the classrooms to procedures to how to create a calm climate for learning.
Our principal took a risk by allowing the staff to guide their learning. I feel it let the silent stars shine. Teachers who usually are quiet took center stage. Shared what was working for them, and slow drifted back to silence. Sharing gave the staff power to decide what they felt ours might want. It gave our staff respect, by allowing us to pick what sessions we wanted to attend. It gave our staff power over their own learning. Ultimately it gave our staff, a nice feeling inside as we head into spring break and down the home stretch of the year. To top it all off our assistant principal felt we needed a snack after work before soaking in the PD so she prepared a “Tater” bar with all the fixings, for the entire staff to snack on as they soaked in the Edcamp style session.
As I participate in Twitter chats, read blogs, listen to Podcast and talk to teachers I am continually hearing about different teaching methods. Flipped classroom, blended learning, reader’s workshop, writer’s workshop etc. are all “hot” methods for teaching in 2013. Should teachers drop what they have been doing and make a change?
The quick answers is “It depends”. Should you make a change if you are being successful? How are you measuring the success? Change should not happen for changes sake. Changes in education should be made for two reasons:
First: Teacher is not being successful with current students. Change need to takes place. Learning needs to occur. Students need to be successful.
Second: New technologies exist that the students NEED to use for future success. When districts add 1 to 1 or other new technology programs.
When educators see new ideas they should take a closer look. Examine them for their merits. Try them out in their classrooms. When merits for new methods are seen then slowly incorporate them into their teaching. All teachers need to check out new ideas remembering that new ideas might not work for all students. The teachers that are using them are sharing because they have found successes, often more successes than with other methods. This might not work for other teachers. WHY? teacher and class is different. I don’t teach any two classes alike. Sure I cover the same material but I use different teaching techniques based upon the students in the class. In one hour I might need a hands-on activity in another the class might respond better to a video. Teachers have to remember that the students dictate the how the learning should go in the classroom not the teacher. Teachers have already learned the content. Students are the ones that need to explore how to learn it now.
Teachers need to realize that no teaching style is wrong IF the students in the class are learning. We need to use formative assessments to show that our teaching is being effective. Constantly monitoring and changing how we teach based upon the students progress in leaning. There is not a teaching style out there that is one size fits all or the “best”. All styles work depending on the teacher and the students. Whether you flip or give lectures, have a no homework policy or give it daily; examine your students learning to see if it is working. Share with other teachers when it is, but hold off judgement of your fellow teachers when they don’t change. They just might not see the same results.
I have been getting tired of the “I am done” syndrome I have been noticing more and more of with my middle school students. In November I started searching for non-academic ways to engage students to work with out them wanting to be “done”. I needed something that would engage all learners. The project would have to be easy to accommodate. Student would have to be able to work at their own pace and be challenged.
I ran across http://www.Sploder.com, an online gaming community that has a game construction platform. Students love video games right? Exploring further I found that Sploder has four different video game construction platforms and a large variety of tools to use on their platforms. After checking out their YouTube channel, I saw endless possibilities for use in my 10 week elective class. I wanted my students opinion on the site before trying it out in a lesson. My first hour advisory class were the prefect test market. After introducing the site, students were excited to check it out. In the computer lab they enjoyed making quick mini-games and playing the games others had made. “This is pretty cool” said one, “when can we get back to Sploder” said another the next day. Of course this was just an advisory trial with no learning targets or objectives but to just see if the task would be engaging.
How would it work in my class was the big question? What learning targets could I use to focus students learning?
After playing around with the game construction for a few weeks, I felt the best learning targets for my class would be “Learning how to use a new web tool” and “Create a video game that your friends would like to play.” I decided to introduce the platform the same way I did in advisory.
“Day 1: Explore the Sploder site, check out all the games you can play, try building simple games on he different platforms available.” My class was engaged. Enjoying all the games the site has to offer. Trying out the different building options. Some were frustrated at times when they could not figure out how each tool worked. We paused and I talked about learning how to play a new game, it takes time. Failure or lack of full understanding is okay. Some students were really excited after they “Created” a game.
“Days 2-6 Work on making your game. Trail an error to make it the best it can be. Make sure your game is not too easy or too hard.” Students dove into the project. Trying different platforms, attempting to make a game similar to all of their favorites. Students quickly learned what they felt was important to their game style. It was nice to see students trying so many different tools to create their games. At times students would get stuck. They would ask each other for help first and then ask me. Not knowing the all the platforms or tools, my answer was lets figure it out. Checking the help menu, frequently asked questions or consulting video from You Tube became the best avenues for success.
Anytime a student would chirp the works “I am done!” I would ask them to share the game with a neighbor and ask them for their opinion. We even created a game critique form to use with each other. I started to over hear students telling each other to add to their games and make modifications. After a couple days, students were not wanting to be done but started to become upset when the class was ending. “Just another minute Mr. Bloch, I have to finish this part!” was heard more than once.
Day 7: Self-Reflection: Reflect on what you have learned by creating the game and how do you feel about your final product.” My students had a hard time at first articulating all the different tasks they learned. So after reading their first drafts, I took the time to model the process for them. I reflected aloud about how I learned and the process I went through. It ended up taking two days, but in the end the results showed me that it was a success.
Why a success? The students were engaged for the entire time period. Since this class has ended I have had students share with me updates on their games. One student even came up to me in the hallway to tell me about how he learned to improve his game. The student reflections show accounts of how the students learned to troubleshoot problems and work on improving a product. One student compared the video game creation process to that of writing, “we started with a rough draft, kept making modifications and improvements, like my language arts teacher wants me to do with my writing.” I feel students learned the GRIT they need in life from this project. I am current working with my second class on the project, seeing similar results.
Now to figure out how to have the students maintain their grit for science class.
So it is a New Year! I have high hopes for 2013 as a professional educator. I have decided to post my resolutions for all to see to help me stay focused on the ideas and changes that I feel are important for this new year.
1. Stay positive: If I am going to make changes I have to focus on the positive and let the negatives lie where they are. I can give in and become an “energy vampire.” There is so much negativity surrounding the education profession today, it is easy to get sucked in an allow it to affect your teaching and you personally.
2. Expand my PLN: This past year of being a connected educator has helped me grow exponentially as an educator. I plan on continuing, I don’t think I could ever go back to being on “an island” alone with issues. Twitter, blogging, chats have so expanded my horizons and helped me find mentors and colleagues to push me as an educator.
3. Use more Formative Assessment in my classroom: Being my third year in the Formative Assessment for Michigan Educators program, I need to make sure I am using all of the wonderful techniques I have learned. I often focus on my favorites and forget about the rest. It is important to vary the Formative techniques I use. Need to focus more on allowing students to self-assess.
4. Lead by example: I need to continue by asking others to do as I do. Leaders leave the footsteps for people to follow them. I need to continue to press my feet into the ground for all to see and follow. If I say I am going to do something, I need to get it done. This goes for staff and students. I need to make sure if I ask the students to complete a task, I need to model it full for understanding,
5. Blog: I need to do a better job of sharing my experiences. I am a poor writer in general, but I can write. If I write more I will get better. I wrote 53 blogs last year, I hope to improve on that number significantly this year. In blogging more, I will also be holding myself more accountable for my teaching and actions. I also have hopes of improving this site, by adding pictures and links,
I hope everyone has a great 2013. Keep up with your resolutions. Help hold me to mine.
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Sweat to Inspire 