The Adventure Continues

As the school year winds down, my students frantically work towards final projects, tests, labs, and exams. I am madly scrambling through curriculum, extra-curricular commitments, and letting the Maple Leafs and Blue Jays toy with my emotions on a nightly basis. My Action Plan isn’t complete, but of course I’ve realized that it was never going to be complete in one year. I’m ready to make tweaks, extend the plan, and move forward. The Adventure Continues…

How Might We develop GRIT and Problem Solving Skills in High School Science Students?

Here is the link to my final Action Plan Presentation

After experiencing maddeningly low levels of perseverance, GRIT, and Problem-Solving Skills in my grade 11 physics summer school course last year, I decided to better prepare my students by building and developing these skills “before it’s too late”. While I’m not alone in “spoon-feeding” my students from time to time, I know that most university programs will do no such thing. I would rather my students get a wake up call in the comfortable confines of my classroom than in a much scarier University Final Exam. Thus, my Action Plan was born!

My Action Plan originally had 3 main parts:

1. Maintain interest in the subject through meaningful “Authentic Learning Tasks”
2. Provide feedback, support, and guidance throughout the problem solving process by encouraging collaboration. Scaffolding towards independence.
3. Monitor GRIT using Angela Duckworth’s Grit Scale

Part 1

I used many Authentic Learning Tasks, though of course I could use more. I discussed many of them in my previous blog entries – the Aluminum foil task, the Solubility Debate, Dilution task, and others. Hopefully I can devote more of my coveted spare time (perhaps this summer?) into finding and/or creating more tasks for future use. My department’s subscription to Chem 13 News magazine has already proven quite a good resource.

Part 2

Admittedly, Part 2 was never formally completed, but it periodically percolated into my lessons. I wanted to co-create some success criteria and problem-solving strategies with my students. That never happened, but I did give consistent support throughout several collaborative tasks, and my students are working towards more independent problem solving (most notably “What’s in the Big Beaker?” , where some students chose to work independently rather than with a partner).

Part 3

As for Part 3, I got my students to complete the survey only once, and I discussed those results in my previous post. Moving forward, I would like to use the survey as a baseline, and re-visit it later in the year to see if students make progress. (If you want to collaborate with me and @sregli to pool our data sets, let me know!). I’m also considering using a more qualitative “I used to think … now I think …” protocol (thanks @ddoucet)

Final Thoughts

I have been so fortunate to receive such tremendous support throughout this process from such fantastic Cohort people. I loved engaging in Tuning Protocols, lively debates, and support sessions via Twitter, Hangout, Face2Face, and even #TrainPD. I feel like I owe such a debt of gratitude to Derek (@ddoucet), Elissa (@egelleny), Les (@lmcbeth), Brent (@brenthurley), Tim (@timrollwagen) and the rest of the coaches and facilitators for all the time and effort they put in to helping me through. I look forward to continuing my Action Plan, and continuing to move forward on this fantastic journey, with all of you Cohort21 friends and colleagues.

#OnwardAndUpward