Category Archives: Meaningful Learning Activities

20 hour Project

There are some definite perks to having a husband like George Couros. He pushes my thinking, asks questions and has high expectations for my teaching and learning. I appreciate all of these qualities immensely and would not be the teacher I am today without his guidance and support. I was talking with him about how I enjoy the idea of Genius Hour and my students really enjoy working on projects like that, but I find that we end up making a bunch of things that eventually get taken home or go in the garbage. I know that the learning is more in the process than in the end product, but I was wanting to try something where the students acquire a skill that they could use for the rest of their life, something they could take with them. My husband, of course, had something for me to watch and told me that he thought I could definitely do this with my kids.

This video is about the 20 hour project. What Josh Kaufman explains is that we can learn a new skill in 20 hours. The way he proposes that we learn this skill is through a few simple steps.

  1. Deconstruct the Skill (Break the skill down into smaller and smaller pieces- practice the most important skills first).
  2. Learn Enough to Self-correct ( Get 3-5 resources about what you want to learn. Too many resources and you procrastinate, learn just enough so that you can start and self-correct as you go. Get better at noticing when you make a mistake, and then doing something a little different).
  3. Remove Practice Barriers (Don’t get caught up in the research phase. Remember that in the end, the point is to actually practice the skill, not just learn how to practice it.)
  4. Practice at Least 20 Hours

I love that this is a simple premise that can yield some pretty amazing results. There are so many skills that students could learn and so many ways to learn them. YouTube is an amazing resources and has hundreds of experts waiting to assist you. I wanted to try the 20 hour project myself before I got into it with the students so that I could show them my example.

My 20 Hour Project

In high school, I ran cross country and really enjoyed it. I didn’t keep up with it in university and when I started my first year of teaching, I tried to get back into it. The first time I ran, I was so itchy I was dragging myself across the concrete (a ridiculous image, I know). The next time I went running, I was luckily with a friend, the reaction was worse. He had to call an ambulance and take me to the hospital ( my blood pressure was dangerously low and I was passing out, and my whole body was covered in hives). Needless to say, after that I avoided running. Fast forward to almost 7 years later and I finally got my doctor to recommend me to see a specialist. What the specialist concluded was that I have something called “exercise induced anaphylaxis”  so basically, I am allergic to running (which no one believes me, so I also asked him for a doctors note). He told me that I would be able to run, if I ran on an empty stomach (hadn’t eaten for 4-5 hours) and took an antihistamine before I went. I was so elated that I could finally run, I rushed to the drugstore and bought some Aerius and started researching. I found 3 resources and an expert who has been running for a long time (my husband) and made a plan. Since I haven’t run in a long time, I started with really short runs and have started working my way up. The first week, I did short 1.5 km runs (because I wanted to stay close to home incase the medication didn’t work). Then, when I realized it was working I started interval training. The first 2 weeks I ran for 2 minutes and walked for 1. Then the third week I ran for 3 and walked for 1. I even started bringing my dogs on the run so that they would push me. The end goal is to be able to run a 10 km in an hour. I am currently only running 4km to get myself used to running and I will continue to increase the distance as I get more comfortable. I am currently running/walking 4km in about 21 minutes, but I know I will get slower as I increase the distance I am running. When I started, it was really tough and I NEEDED that walking time, but as I practice more and more, I feel like I need it less and less. I am really starting to love running. I have also been biking and doing runners yoga to stretch my muscles and help with my performance. So far I am about 5 hours into my project and really liking the idea and the end goal.

As I go through my journey, I have started planning how I can assist my students with their project. I found this resources that has some ideas as to which skills students might choose. Students are definitely not limited to this list, we will also brainstorm ideas and help each other refine our ideas.

One important aspect of this project will be that students do some research. Students will need a mentor to support their journey. They can tweet out asking for help or use YouTube to find an “expert” to support their learning. Students will find 3-5 resources and add them to their 20 hour project google doc. This will allow them to easily find their resources, as well as limit themselves so they don’t procrastinate.

Along with research, we will also need a way to display what we have learned and the process. This way, students can self correct and share with others their progress and ask for support. Students will blog or vlog their progress to illustrate their learning. They must blog each time they work on the project. That might be a few sentences about what they have done that day, their struggles, their success or a video showing progress.

Below is an example of a video of me vlogging my experience. I will continue to document my progress, and ask for support from others as to how to improve my time and how to train smarter. This vlog is only up to day 10, but I will try and update it as I continue to run more and talk about my progress.

 

 

MicroSociety®

As a kid, one of my favourite ways to play was to mimic society. My mom would bring home old forms from the bank and my friends and I would fill them out and play teller. We would open our own spa and set up massages and manicures for our moms. For a while, we even played gas station and made idol chit chat while pretending to fill up each others tanks using a hose (that was really hilarious for our neighbours). Play is important. Even today, I really enjoy playing, creating and imagining. When no one is looking, I’ll admit, I lip sync to popular songs and imagine myself as a superstar. As a kid, if I had had the opportunity to mimic society at school, I would have enjoyed school even more.

Recently I visited a school called “Aspen Heights Elementary School” in Red Deer Alberta. There I experienced a MicroSociety® school in action. According to the Aspen Heights Website a MicroSociety: 

“[Aims] to prepare students for the real world. In MicroSociety, the school is run like a country with student run banks, businesses, an elected government, police, postal service, newspaper and non-governmental organizations. Each student fills out a job application, goes through an interview process, and has a work performance assessment completed by their manager.

All students earn wages in the school’s ‘micro’ currency, make deposits in the ‘micro’ bank, and pay taxes. In addition, they work together to overcome problems encountered in their ventures while becoming responsible citizens. In a MicroSociety students learn and grow to their potential. Most importantly, they experience the pride and benefits of their labor, as they become business owners, bankers, legislators, and entrepreneurs in a safe and supportive learning environment.“

When I arrived, I was greeted by Aspen Height’s Prime Minister. She looked me in the eye and shook my hand. She was well spoken and very respectful.  I was very impressed with how grown-up she seemed and she later explained to us that she used to be quite shy. In grade one and two she barely raised her hand and was afraid to be called on. In MicroSociety she pushed herself outside of her comfort zone so that she could grow as a person. When she started as Prime Minister she was nervous to make announcements in the morning or greet new people. She said now, a few months into her role,  she feels like “it’s no big deal”.

While I walked around to the different ventures, I was able to speak with many of the managers and owners (grade 4 and 5 students usually). Often the students would see a new face in their venture and they would come and shake my hand and let me know how business was going. In MicroSociety, ventures need to pay rent as well as pay their employees. I met an owner in a venture that was working on her market day (a day that students usually don’t work and are allowed to shop at the different ventures). When I asked her why, she said she needed to work that day so that she could make rent. Not only was she learning delayed gratification, she was also understanding the responsibilities involved in running a business.

My tour guide, the treasurer, was an energetic and excited grade 5 student. As we were touring around, two members of R.A.M.P. (Aspen Heights police force) stopped us to alert our guide that he had lost his ID badge that all students must wear. As a teacher, I could see myself saying to this student that he needed to go find it and be responsible for his things, but that is not how the students handled the issue. In fact, the two police officers radioed to other officers to let them know that our guide had lost his ID badge and to be on the lookout for it. About 3 minutes later, there was an announcement made over the intercom letting all students know that the ID badge had been lost. The way that the students spoke to each other was with respect. The police officer was clear that our guide needed to find his badge, but went the extra step to help him find it. It was not about catching people for a ticket, but ensuring that everyone was following the rules and if there was a problem, they would help solve it.

I was so impressed with the idea of MicroSociety and all the real world skills the students were developing. Experiencing “Market Day” was truly amazing. I believe that the skills that the students of Aspen Heights are learning in the MicroSociety, create better citizens and allow students to grow in a comfortable space with their peers. It is an amazing program and I hope that more schools can use this model to better prepare our students to be active participants in society.

 

Teacher for hire: Googleyness a necessity

At the end of a long and wonderful day, I sat down to tackle my ever growing list of emails. In the impossible quest of emptying my inbox, I came across an email from my principal Travis McNaughton about our PD session tomorrow. He asked us to watch a video featuring a talk by Tony Wagner about innovation in the classroom.

During the video, Tony Wagner talks about Google and their hiring practices. Google hires people based on their ability to think outside the box, as opposed to focusing on grades or standardized test scores. When I looked on Googles website, they had a list of things they look for in a potential candidate. Their criteria include: Leadership, Role-related knowledge (someone with a variety of strengths and passions), How you think (problem solving) and Googleyness (what makes you, you as well as how you work in a team). They are not looking for someone with a large content background, because they realize that all people have access to the internet and can easily Google what they need to figure out. They need someone who has skills and the ability to persevere and work through problems. They want employees with passion and creativity.

How do I transfer the ideas from Google to my classroom? What do I need to do to as a teacher to facilitate leadership, passion, problem solving and teamwork?

My question is, how do I get students to think like a Googler? How do I prepare my students for a world that focuses less on content and more on skills? How do I become and innovation facilitator?

Please excuse the mess, we’re learning here

Screen shot 2014-07-10 at 6.44.59 PM

This upcoming school year, my goal is to relinquish control and allow learning to be more “messy”. For the past 3 years I have been working at a school that promotes group work, but expects students to be in rows, so learning has looked very neat and tidy.
I can admit that I like control and that I like to think learning is a linear path. As we know, it’s not. Often the best learning happens when we make mistakes and fail the first time we try something. In this upcoming school year, I would like learning to be messy. It’s okay if we don’t get the correct answer right away, or if we work on projects that don’t have a correct answer.

I am very excited to change my space and my teaching to suit this practice. I will be following Nicholas Provenzano for tips on how to change my space. I want the space to flow so that we can change configurations quickly. Horseshoe for  discussion, pods for group work, pairs for small projects and free floor space to work on projects or to read. I am excited to make my classroom flexible, so that the space is best for the learning we are doing.

I also hope to give students more choice and creativity in the projects we do. Choice can come in many different forms. It ranges from “choose the country you would like to research” to “In whatever way best suits your learning, share what you have researched about the country you choose”. This year I hope to move away from “small choices” to “big choices”. This will have to happen in baby steps, allowing smaller choice in the beginning until the students and I (okay this is mostly for me) can get used to what this type of learning looks like. For example in the beginning of the year I was hoping to do some “copy cat ” writing. Where students use a story they have already read and write a story with different characters and setting that follows the same format. This allows a little choice, students choose the story they use to “copy” from. By the end of the year I hope to do a project where students display their learning of “quality of life” using whatever medium they want. Our entire social curriculum this year is based on this overarching theme, so it will be a good way for them to display their learning from the year.

To someone who already practices “messy learning” these ideas may seem small, but I need to retrain my teaching from 3 years where learning looked very neat and tidy. Every student working on a different project is a foreign concept for me, I hope to adjust quickly. I would love suggestions on how other teachers support real learning in their classrooms. How is your classroom set up to support learning? How do you frame units and projects? I would love ideas and help!

Collaboration

Every great teaching idea I ever had was inspired by, harvested from or straight up stolen from another educator. There… I said it. We hate to admit it, but we need each other to be successful. When asked a question, I often need a minute to create my own opinion, then I want to talk to others and get their opinions and ask questions. Bouncing ideas off others is how we achieve great ideas.

This year I have started using Twitter and have experienced the power of connecting and collaborating with others. Teachers who don’t have grade level partners are no longer isolated, they can turn to Twitter to allow them to connect and collaborate. In February, I went to Parkland School Division to learn how teachers in that division are using technology effectively in their classrooms. George Couros, Divison Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning in PSD, set me up with several innovative teachers. Through this experience, I was lucky enough to meet Kelli Holden , an exemplary grade 4 teacher. She explained to me the power of Skype and how she utilizes it in her classroom. I was immediately inspired and asked if I could be involved in her next project. Kelli created an amazing project to help students learn about the Canadian troops leaving Afghanistan. The five classes involved in the project were able to learn more about the troops through a Skype sessions.  One of the teachers,  Catherine Dohn, spoke to all 5 classes about her husband, who is a Peace Keeper. She provided pictures, information and a first hand account of what Peace Keepers do. She was able to give my students an experience that I would never have been able to supply on my own. We also had students use a site called Chatzy, which allowed the students from all 5 classrooms to chat with each other about what they knew and what they had learned. They were able to learn from each other’s facts and questions. This was all made possible for my students because I connected with other teachers.

As an adult, I love collaborating with others and getting to hear their view points. I constantly collaborate with other teachers at my school and have begun to also reach out to teachers through twitter. If collaboration is so beneficial to adults, then why in the classroom do we often ask students to work independently? Some reasons I have heard from fellow educators are: “Students don’t know how to work collaboratively”; “they will just copy off each other”; and “they can’t work in groups without getting off task”.

Just like every other skill they acquire, students need support, practice and some instruction on how to be collaborative. In my class I use a program called Kagan to help my kids work collaboratively. The program provides a structure to allow students to work together and participate equally. As educators, I believe we have to let go of the notion that students are “stealing ideas” from each other. Collaborating is not copying, it is a way to learn from others and to increase your own knowledge of a subject area. We need to allow students to work with each other to create projects, have conversations and ask questions. The old adage, 2 heads are better than one, is truthful and something we should consider for our students.

Powerful Connections

This year is very special to me because I am teaching many of the same kids in grade 4 that I taught in grade 2. Not only have I seen them grow from readers to book enthusiasts (thanks Dawn Ackroyd, your book whispering in grade 3 is inspiring), but I have seen them develop a point of view and a sense of self. The most important thing in my classroom has always been the relationship I form between my students and I. Not only knowing their favorite colour and food, but helping them carve an identity in the classroom.

One of my students, struggled with creating friendships, so I found out about him and became his friend first. Once he and I were friends I would throw “that is so jimmy, he LOVES planes” into classroom conversations until other students picked up on his passion and started commenting on it themselves “Jimmy, the book I’m reading has a pilot in it… Come check it out”. Jimmy felt valued and other students helped him build friendships.

I tell many stories about my family in class… In fact even the parents of my students feel like they know my brothers :). Students will focus on a task for much longer then they normally would if I tell them they may get a “Miss B story” before the end of the day. In fact, we were reading a story in class about showing good character. I have an infamous childhood friend, who would always got me to do things I wasn’t supposed to. Mid story, a student raised her hand and said “I’m sorry to interrupt Miss B., but this story totally seems like something your friend Dodie would do”. Her saying that, not only meant she understood the story (linking her ideas to prior knowledge) but she wanted to share the link with me because she knew I would understand. The other day I was telling a story about my oldest brother and  another kid commented “that is classic Adam, Miss B.”. The point is, they know me… and it’s important for me to know them.

Creating relationships with students should be easy and organic for a teacher. If a student in my class is struggling, I feel it, if they experience success, I feel that too.

I am a human to my students, not just their teacher, which makes my experiences with the kids so much more authentic. They know I make mistakes and that they are welcome to do the same. They know I cry when happy things happen and they embrace it. Because I show my human side, they are more willing to show theirs.

Creating relationships with my students is so much more memorable and powerful than anything I we ever teach them.