Tiered Assessments and Addressing a Gap in my Classroom

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It has been so motivating reading and seeing all the fantastic HMW questions this season, and I wanted to finally take some time to share mine and the work I have been doing, as well as my plans for the rest of the current school year and on.

This year my HMW has to do with creating ways to address a large ability gap I have found in my math class. As I see this continuing to be a trend as we move through the years post Covid I wanted to ensure I build in some strong practices that help all my students. To do this I have decided to expand out more of my math assignments and to explore the concept of tiered assessments. None of these are new concepts and I am not reinventing the wheel, but I want to improve in this area. Differentiating and providing more choice in my math class is also something that fills my bucket.

To that end, I’ve decided to begin with a tiered thinking task that I will be trying out in my class. The assignment itself will have 3 levels of challenge. Level 1’s challenge is to reach 8 points and in doing this all of my students will complete the curriculum standards I need to cover. From there they can also try challenge 2- to get 12 points, then challenge 3 to complete all the questions. Each question is worth different points depending on it’s difficulty and novelty.


Below I have included some examples of problems. Some being simple one and two step equations, and some being ones I took and tweaked from Jo Boaler that are outside the box and engaging.  From there I’m giving my students a survey to assess things such as the challenge level they chose, why they chose it as well as their confidence when tackling the problems.

In this I’m hoping to dig deeper into missed concepts as well as address a potential lack of confidence in my students.

My goal is to do 2-3 more of these assessments and surveys before the end of the year. This combined with student survey data will allow me to see if I have begun to bridge some gaps or at least identify how much of it might be math anxiety or a gap caused by remote learning.

I also am curious to see how many students will try challenges they normally would not pursue as they get more comfortable with this type of assessment practice.

I’m excited to see where this will go in my math class!

 

 

 

Holding Myself Accountable

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As we move forward into another great year of Cohort 21 I have been really enjoying looking at all these fantastic posts about their Urgent vs. Important. I found it important for me to consider what I find Urgent or Important this year as well. As I am off on parental leave this year I don’t have as many urgent things as a lot of you do in the classroom. I

know the feeling of juggling a million things and trying to sort out what can wait and what must be done. That being said I have some goals I want to work towards this year that I want to put out there to hold myself accountable.

My first goal is to do more work on applicable coding. I find that a lot of material currently out there is great but much more ‘gamified’ and not actual coding. I understand that a lot of that is to do with teachers not being programmers but I would love to do more work on finding approachable and usable lessons on coding language such as python, html and css.

My second goal is to continue my work on learning more about resilience, failing and helping students be more comfortable with making mistakes. To that end I am reading ‘The Right Kind of Wrong – The Science of Failing Well’ by Amy Edmonson. She is a psychologist who has focused on research on how to create group dynamics where making mistakes is encouraged and responded to positively. I am really excited to learn from this book and share with you all!

I look forward to seeing you all at our second F2F!

Robin

Reflections on the final F2F

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As we sit here and reflect on our journey through the year. I am continuously grateful for the opportunities I have been given with Cohort 21 to meet, discuss and learn from other educators who approach the field with such passion.

To finish up the year I would like to use some of the question prompts to reflect on my HMW question.

How might we design a learning skills and work habits assessment around failure and resiliency?

What was the “Why?” behind your action?. What motivated you to engage in this action? Paint a picture for us here.

My HMW is the culmination of years of work with Cohort 21 in which I initially wanted to encourage my students to make more mistakes in math. This has grown to focus more on opportunities for failing and learning.

In my mind, resiliency has just as much importance to me as other learning skills and work habits such as collaboration and independent work.

I have slowly been incorporating this into assessment and have seen such wonderful results from my students in both their engagement and confidence that I feel it’s imperative to put more of a focus on it and create more opportunities to discuss it as a life skill and help my students grow.

As mentioned in my last post I do have a long term plan to try and make this happen. I am so excited to dive in to this and see what comes out of it.

Thank you again for such a great year!

Updated How Might We for 2023-24

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It has been a fun past few months in which my How Might We has grown and changed from my first year with Cohort 21. Where I have started with wanting to create opportunities for mistakes in math has led to me diving deeper in to my new question. I realize I cannot accomplish this question this year as I am currently off on parental leave, but I am having fun looking forward towards my next goal.

How might we design a learning skills and work habits assessment around failure and resiliency?

Below is my plan for when I am back in the classroom. The main challenge now is to keep my enthusiasm until I am back!

Reflections on my Cohort 21 Journey So Far- Leading Up to Our Second F2F

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As we head into our second F2F and people begin to reflect on what is urgent and important, I thought I would take some time to reflect on my journey so far, both as a participant and coach in Cohort 21.

What makes this next F2F so much fun, but also so intimidating, is that you take the time to try and hone in on a question. You take the time to consider what you want to focus on and the journey you want to take this year. This in itself can feel quite massive. Trying to find a direction, a way to work towards a solution to a problem you see as an educator.

When I started Cohort in 2019 I felt I had a simple direction; I wanted to become a stronger math teacher. I wanted to create more opportunities for students to become engaged in math and feel comfortable trying new things. With that being said, my ‘How might we‘ still felt massive. I am also happy to say that I have still not reached the end of my question. Simply because my initial ‘How might we’ led to another question, and another and another and another. Several years later my research is now on something completely different. It has taken me several years to come to my current ‘How Might We’, and I know it will lead me to new and important questions.

The point of Cohort is not to come to the end with a concrete answer, it is to create opportunities for constant reflection and growth. It can be uncomfortable but also some of the most exciting and motivating thing you can do as an educator and professional. My time in Cohort has given me such a fantastic and varied ‘teacher tool box’. I have become more responsive and much more comfortable in my own skin as an educator.

As we come together this Saturday please try not to feel overwhelmed, but know that you are going into a space where you can explore problems of any size, and that you will be surrounded by people that are just as curious and motivated as you are. It’s going to be a great day and I can’t wait to see you all there!

Reflections on Levels of Instruction and Structured Failure

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Today was a really fun day, I was able to try out my first round of woodworking in the maker space during Wellness Wednesday. The goal was to have students build a small box out of popsicle sticks and balsa wood. Within that task, they would learn to use proper measuring techniques, how to use Exacto knives properly as well as how to use wood glue and even small clamps if necessary.

While designing this activity I was constantly mulling over the level of detail and instruction I should give. Generally, when doing most hands-on STEM things, I try to present as bare a scaffold as possible so that students can take a general idea and run with it as far or as deeply as they would like.

When I thought about this more deeply I realized that the more instruction I provide, the less room there is for students to be creative and there would be more opportunity for students to focus on making mistakes instead of the final product. I don’t want students focusing on my approval at each step, I want them focusing on the task at hand and actively trying something.

My How Might We question this year is “How might we design meaningful situations where students can safely learn to fail?” In a culture that so intensely presents a need for success and excellence, how can students learn to fail or move forward after making mistakes? Failure is a learned skill and vital not just for academic success, but also for mental health and life in general.

In a maker space, mistakes and failure are a vital part of the building and design process. Many of my students coming into my room have never really built anything with their hands. All of this is new for them and I am so excited to see them try things, break them and build them back again.

What I’m left with now however is the same thoughts I had as I planned out this activity. How much instruction is the right amount to promote a healthy level of mistakes? @sreimer asked me some great questions about how to avoid the “is this correct?” question from her students and I am wondering that as well. I think my direction now will be turning towards the amount and detail in my instructions and how that can possibly lead towards a bit more creativity and room for safe mistakes in the classroom, maybe even failing at tasks without panic. However my mind still feels like the graphic @lmcbeth posted and I wouldn’t be surprised if these thoughts led me in a whole other direction. I’m also interested in hearing about what other Cohort 21 members think. How do you balance the level of detail in your instruction? Does any of this ever cross your mind?

Sharing Some Successes from the Start of the Year and Committing to a Goal

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I hope everyone has been having a good start to the year, it’s been a complete whirlwind for me but I wanted to take some time to reflect on some great successes I’ve had so far this year as well as commit to my goals for the future.

This year I was so happy to take on a new leadership role as the Middle School Tech Lead. With it came some new responsibilities such as planning out Wellness Wednesday activities for our Middle School maker space.

This year I wanted to try something new and put myself out there. One of my goals in the past was to learn more about 3D printing and how I can incorporate it more into our curriculum. Not only that but how can I present it to my colleagues without overwhelming them? To that end I decided to start small by using the software Tinkercad and having the students and teachers learn how to make their own name tags or key chains. Here’s an example of the first one I made!

I can’t begin to express how much fun I and the students are now having on Wednesday afternoons when they began to learn the software and create their own designs. The software is so user friendly and fun. I’m debating on making a post on how to use it if anyone is interested please let me know and I will make one! It ended up being a really approachable activity that (fingers crossed) the students enjoyed and will hopefully incorporate more into their own PBL projects in all other subjects.

There is another reason I was so thrilled with how this activity went, and it has to do with my personal goal this year that I want to focus on.

I want to create more opportunities for students to really try things, mess up and learn from their mistakes. My first year at Cohort 21 my goal was to learn more about how to make Middle School students more comfortable with trying things and making mistakes in math. But as I continued my research I realized that I wanted to go deeper. I firmly believe that we need to make more opportunities for students to really fail at something and learn how to deal with that failure. Failing at things is a learned skill, nots something kids know how to do inherently. A maker space is a perfect place for that to start. It’s a space where you build things, break them and build them again. The stakes are low but the learning opportunities are high.

This year I would like to develop more curriculum that centres around failing and moving forward with that failure. With the concept of learning how to fail and how to get back up again. I often wonder about how much we tend to protect our students in an independent school setting from failing and how that might correlate with anxiety and strong levels of perfectionism that I see among our students as they get older. I believe this goal is not only pedagogical but cultural and I will no doubt hit some bumps along the way, but I want to firmly point myself in this direction and try to take a step forward this year.

So, #sharpsweetandsalty here is my post and my first step. I am so excited to see what everyone else puts forward and to encourage you every step of the way!

Wait, what? Where did the year go?

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As I’m sitting here working with @lbettencourt over zoom all i can think of is the 8 million things I need to do currently, from checking student process journals to prepping home demos for science lessons. While I’m doing this, an itching in the back of my mind is constantly saying ‘what about the blog?…. what about your research goal?’ A lot of the time that little itch gets drowned out by other more important things (sorry Cohort 21), but as I look at the calendar and realize that next week is our final F2F I have panicked and realized I didn’t get to even half of the things I wanted to do this year.

sad hamster wheel

Yes I pivoted well, and yes I tried new things, but for the life of me I can’t remember what they are right now. I know I did things and some bombed and some worked great, but again, I have no idea what they are, at this point I can’t remember. I swear I did things, but I cannot tell you what they are. I know I have a huge list of things I want to do, but I’m having a hard time starting them.

All i can do right now is look forward and know that this feeling will not last forever, and remember that if I am feeling this way, my students are probably feeling worse. I also want to try and change my perspective, and look at my looming list with positivity instead of guilt. I want to keep growing and I have a direction, and that in itself is something. So I think I will write a bit more about it and remember these goals as I move forward towards the last few weeks of school. Hopefully after some rest and time to recuperate I will get to this list and come back with excitement to share. To that end here are my goals that I want to reach in the future.

Goals

  1. To learn to code on Unity and present cool video game design opportunities for my students
  2. To find new ways to incorporate 3D printing into my math and science lessons
  3. To work on finding more fun and exciting resources for a maker space and to present these to my peers in an approachable way
  4. To continue to find more virtual messy STEM and share it out.
  5. Working on a new way to present learner portfolios that are interactive (credit to @lbettencourt)

This is my direction, although I feel like I lost a year, I will continue to look forward and work towards these. I might not achieve them any time soon, but thinking about them gets me excited and I need to hold on to that. I hope you are all still safe and getting through, please know I’m thinking of you.

Robin

Sketches, Collaborating and Physics in Todays Classroom

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I left our latest face to face on Saturday feeling really energized and excited, especially to the concept of renewing my commitment to sharing what I am doing and how that has been helping me within my classroom.

To that end I decided to share a resource I have been sharing with my teammates at SMLS for the past few weeks. It’s made a big difference for me and I hope it is something that can help you! It’s a software called Nearpod.

Basically, Nearpod is a way to put a variety of activities into your pre-existing presentations, and instead of having to share your screen while in a meet or project slides, the presentation is visible to the students on their own devices and it becomes much more interactive. One of the reasons I love it, is that it allows me to change the pace and feel of my lessons. Built check-ins in the form of open ended questions, polls or collaboration boards gives me a really good feel of where my students are and what they are thinking. It lets me know in greater detail how much they understand and if I need to back track or can pick up the pace of a concept.  Above, you can see an initial selection of different activities to put in to your slides. There are just so many from taking a poll to using VR to visit Machu Picchu. For me, during remote learning, I was losing a lot of opportunities to have my students collaborate or present more of their tangible thinking. This was especially true when I was beginning to teach forces and force diagrams during my structures unit. This is where this software shines.

What you are looking at, is the option for students to draw a diagram using Nearpod. In this instance I showed them a video of two people rock climbing together. I then asked my students to consider the forces acting the climbers at any point in time as well as the pushing or pulling that they were doing while climbing.

Normally the girls would have chart paper or big white boards and we would be doing more hands on things when introducing physics, but with Nearpod I was still able to have them put down their ideas and get messy, even if only digitally! My students had a lot of fun and it was something I loved having up my sleeve.

If you are interested in trying this out the biggest thing I want to let you know is, this is not a complex software, you do not have to re-invent the wheel. That’s one thing I find often happens with tech PD is that sometimes there is such a big learning curve it seems impossible or demoralizing. Thankfully this is not the case.

Here’s two ways you can try it, the first is to make your own nearpod account and upload any powerpoint presentations or google slides you may have and from there choose some of the great options of activities to use. This is an option with the free account and something I have used a lot.

Or if you try out their paid service you can download the add-on on google slides and edit directly. This is the way I’ll show in more detail.

From there you can edit and add a lot of really fun options in to your slides.

One of my personal favourites is the PhET simulations that allow your students to dive right in and mess around a variety of STEM topics.

 

 

 

 

Or if you want to add a small assessment at the end of your lesson you are also given the option to put in small multiple choice quizzes in to your lesson. This includes a build in grade book that assesses the responses for you and allows you to break down your data.

 

And finally if this is all still overwhelming. Please feel free to just look through a ton of pre-made lessons. There are so many that I use and have a lot of fun with in my class.

I hope you try this out and mess around with this software and I hope it lets you get a little more hands-on and messy in your class than you could before.

Please let me know what you think and I hope you have a fantastic long weekend!

stay healthy helpful and calm

 

 

Keep It Simple Stupid

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So it’s been quite a while since I posted, and as I had stated before my goal this year was to find ways to keep STEM in the classroom as hands on and messy as possible while learning in this new environment.

This December I was fortunate enough to be sent to the ISTE conference and was blown away by all of the amazing software and ways that people have been able to present information in such cool and engaging ways. I promise I have a post coming for a lot of these resources!

But, as I was looking over all the great resources to share, thoughts kept coming to the back of my mind ‘who has time for this? Who really cares about this right now? Is this really the most important thing to be sharing right now? Is content the biggest concern right now?‘ and though I am excited to share these things and teach people about fun new STEM tools, I think right now it’s best if instead, I share things that have been working right now. Things that have made my students smile and stay engaged in our homeroom that haven’t been a source of stress for me or my students.

 

  1. Class Jeopardy- A really fun and engaging site, Jeopardy Labs is a website where you can make teams and either play pre-made games or make your own and play with your students. Students can get competitive and have lots of fun. I’ve used it in homeroom and gotten some really fun responses
  2. Quizlet– This might not be new to some of you but I love this website. It’s a way to introduce trivia or review that ensures collaboration. With Quizlet, each team is asked the same question but each student in the team has a different set of answers, this makes it so that students have to talk and share the answers they have and prevents one student from taking charge and answering every question. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t as it is a wonderful and easy tool. You can check out pre-made quizzes or even make your own.
  3. This last one might be something some of you disagree with as it’s not educational, but I will say, I had my students laughing, talking and fully engaged playing the game as a group. I have been playing a free game with my students on Friday mornings called Among Us. Some of you may have heard of this game or seen your students playing but for those of you that don’t know, it’s basically a murder mystery set in space, where 1 or 2 students is an imposter and the rest of you try to figure out who it is without getting killed by the imposter. During the course of the game we all were talking laughing and making dramatic accusations while working together. Some of my kids might feel like they’re drowning when looking at an assignment or when they’re sitting alone at home, but at least during this time with me, they are having fun and are still part of a community that can all get together and play. After all, they are still kids, and should have time to be kids.

I realize that some of the things I have shared here are not educational, but all I can say right now is that at this point, content is not king, relationships are. These are 3 ways I’ve been finding ways to have fun with my students that are light and don’t require you to learn or test anything new. I hope you try some of them and share any thoughts or other ways you are having fun with students!

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