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There are so many firsts in the beginning of a teaching career. These last five years (not the musical version, sadly) I’ve had so many awesome new experiences. This year, however, is the first time I’ve been able to take a second stab at a project. What a great way to put into practice what I’ve been learning about growth mindset! The only way I can get better in my practice as a teacher is to try try again.
Before the break, my students were busy bees preparing their arguments for their upcoming debates connecting “The Book Thief” to Canadian History using big ideas to unite the content of these seemingly separate areas of thinking. You can read my posts from last year about this project here.
Version 2.0 of this project is much more centred on fostering a growth mindset with my students using some pretty straightforward ed-tech-tools. Some of the basic changes are as follows:
1) Students were filmed giving a basic, fun, and unrehearsed debate. I uploaded all the clips to a shared Google folder. They reviewed the clips of themselves and completed a reflection on their “performance”. They judged themselves against a success criteria that we drafted together in class.
2) Once they had their basic arguments formed, feedback was incorporated, and they had a simple debate script developed (all on Google docs), they filmed themselves (in partners) on iPads. Before they hit “record” though, they had to review what they wanted to improve from their first filming and make efforts to improve this aspect with their second stab at it. Neither this stage or the first stage was evaluated with grades, to allow students the time and space to just make mistakes and learn from that process. All the videos were uploaded to a shared folder so I can view and comment on this assessment as learning experience, offering necessary feedback before their final debate.
3) The next stage will be for students to reassess themselves using this same success criteria above, and make a plan for what they want to focus on with the presentation of their final debate. My hope is that this three-stage process can be added to the students’ Blogfolios, chronicling their learning and their growth over time.
I’m surprised with how simple yet powerful it has been for students to be confronted with themselves so clearly. It’s impossible to ignore the weird fidgeting, constant “ums”, or shifty eye contact when you are looking right at yourself. If anything, students are TOO critical of themselves when viewing the recorded presentations.
But leveraging the “squirm factor” and obvious emotional reactions of watching yourself on screen is such a powerful way to promote authentic reflection and growth. I’m excited to see if the pay off is stronger final presentations!
Great stuff here Celeste! @smastromonaco would love to see this rubric and process too! We’ve been having a few chats about rubric creation and student involvement. What timing!
Thanks for this great post – and I ‘ve enjoyed reading your comments on the posts of others too! I hope you’re enjoying your March Break and your new haircut 🙂
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Hey Celeste,
Great post. I love how you are incorporating reflection and generating next steps into the process…you’re an Assessment For, As and Of Learning all-star! 🙂
I’m sure you’re into Carol Dweck’s take on a growth mindset, but if you haven’t seen this TED Talk on “The Power of Yet,” it’s a good one. I have been training all my students to say “yet” whenever they say “I can’t do XXX” and it’s been a simple, easy way for work on their mindsets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-swZaKN2Ic
This is an amazing piece of learning for your students, Celeste! Second chance opportunities can lead to the best learning, and unfortunately it’s something that students don’t often get a chance to do.
I love the idea of the ‘blogfolio’ too! 🙂
Hey Celeste,
I agree with Garth and Les in that it’s so amazing that students helped to establish the success criteria and that your are an assessment all-star. I’ve been so narrow in how to involve students in rubric creation – working within the matrix but having them reflect on how they want to improve for future tasks is something that I have had success with.
It’s so great that your students are getting to do this stuff at a relatively young age. You’re setting them up so well to become learners for life and I can only imagine that their metacognition will be through the roof by Grade 12. The universities won’t know what hit them! – which is a great thing!