Designing the Ideal Classroom

An idea that I have been toying with for a few years now is getting my students involved in designing the physical classroom space in which they spend so many of their daytime hours. It always seems like an insurmountable task during the beginning year, when we are working on developing routines, and then midway through the year has never felt like the "right" time to start something of this nature. The end of the year feels much more feasible, but then the students who are doing the design never get to benefit from the changes because they will have moved on to a new school the following September.

A sudden brainwave hit me this year though, and I have decided to embark on this project with my grade 7 ELA students. Being a French Immersion teacher in my school means that I teach a group of students in one subject during their grade 7 year, and then those same students become my homeroom class the following year. Sometimes I find that the grade 7 class is not quite ready for the organized chaos I employ with my homeroom class, but I decided to take the plunge this year and see what happens.

Inspired by the materials from this product by Rainbow City Learning on Teachers Pay Teachers, I created a workbook as well as an instructional website for my students. I introduced the project, and students have had just over two hours to work on their designs.

Their first reaction, when I told them I had been thinking of doing this and that they would be my guinea pigs was, "Wow! We're the first to do this? We're special!" Exactly what I was hoping!

Before the end of classes this year, I had each group or individual come and "pitch" one or two of what they considered to be their best ideas to me. These ranged from how to set up the desk (two lines down the middle, groups of 4 etc) to alternative seating options (bean bag chairs!) to a class pet (iguana, anyone?) to repainting the walls & installing a display case.

I've made it clear to the students that not all of their ideas will come to fruition right away (or maybe at all), but that we will work together as a class to make some of these changes. I am envisioning some work when we return in September on writing professional letters, writing grant proposals, and creating video pitches to submit to our administrator and the school board. So far, students have been highly engaged and I am hopeful that this will carry over into the start of the school year. I am also hopeful that they will have success in achieving some of their goals with this, so that it doesn't become discouraging for them. This will be an ongoing activity over the course of the year, and I want the momentum to continue!

Empowerment of students is so essential, if they are to learn to think creatively and critically, and if we want them to see themselves as agents of change in the world. For me, this is not a theoretical classroom design activity, the students and I will be actively designing the learning space for themselves next year. Student input needs to be valued and meaningful, rather than purely academic. I am excited for September!

Passion Projects 2018 - Year Two is Underway!

Last year, I introduced Passion Projects to my grade 8 students, and it was a huge success overall. Students were engaged in learning something they found personally motivating, organizing their time, reflecting on their progress, and problem solving throughout the whole process.

This year, I am excited to relaunch this project with a new group of students. We are on week 4, and there are some projects that I am really excited to follow. While there are some very strong plans in place, several students are definitely just "going through the motions" rather than really investing their time in something that they find personally rewarding. I am struggling with how to help them realize that their individual interests are valid and deserving of attention.

It's so sad to me that there are students who can't even identify something that makes them feel passionately - or if they have an idea, it is sad that they don't believe that it will be an acceptable one for this project. What is happening that students don't believe their interests and passions are valid? And how can we as teachers address this issue? It's not enough to give them artificial choices within the classroom, we have to help them to invest in learning in ways that will be sustainable outside of the school environment.

Every week, the day before we work on Passion Projects at school, students fill out a check-in page so that I have a sense of who will need support to move forward. Yesterday, four of these pages stood out to me.

This student got a "yellow light" last week because their peers did not think they had a solid enough plan. I'm glad to hear that he feels back on track this week! 

This student arrived this morning and told me they were unhappy with their previous choice of project (learning to play bass guitar) because it had become more of a chore rather than something they really enjoyed. They came prepared with a new plan, and seem very excited!

This student, in contrast to the one above, is stuck on choosing a new project. They have not come up with a new idea on their own, and they are one of the students I was referring to earlier who seems unable to articulate something they are passionate about.

This student received a "yellow light" from their peers last week and has really turned it around. They have come with an idea and a new sense of purpose after a conference with me last week.

I think I made a mistake this year during the roll-out of Passion Projects. Because I had already done a project last year, I had more materials to share with students than I did in Year 1. My project last year was to work at learning Spanish, and I shared that project with my students this year. I now have 4 students (out of 19) who are learning a language as their Passion Project. I'm not certain that it is because I presented them with my project from last year, but I am concerned that I may have inadvertently swayed them in a direction they might not otherwise have take. This is something that I need to consider for next year when I introduce the project again.


Random other thoughts :
We are currently undergoing a curriculum realignment for middle school that will be piloted next year in several schools in Nova Scotia. From what I'm hearing, one of the major components of the realignment is to integrate more project-based learning. Depending on the supports that are put in place, I think this could be a good direction for middle school education, and this model lines up well with what I have been doing in my classroom for years.

Modeling Mathematics With Flipgrid

One of the difficult parts of teaching the grade 8 math curriculum is the requirement for students to show their understanding of certain outcomes "concretely, pictorially, and symbolically." I am not arguing against the benefits of modeling mathematical concepts with concrete materials or manipulatives - however, trying to assess whether they can do so while simultaneously ensuring that the rest of the class is on track can be a challenge.

Today, my grade 8 students used Flipgrid to record a video showing that they could model their solution to an algebraic equation using manipulatives called Alge-Tiles. These are tiles that represent variables and whole numbers, and can be used to show why it is necessary to perform the same operation on both sides of an equation in order to arrive at the correct solution.

The Flipgrid website & app allow teachers to post a prompt, and for students to record a video response to the prompt. Students do not need an account - the teacher can either send them a link, or post a QR code that will take them directly to the prompt. It is extremely user-friendly, and free (with limited features - so far, these have been enough for my purposes) I created two video prompts (2x + 4 = 10 &  3x - 1 = 5) for students in which I modeled the use of Alge-Tiles. I wanted to make sure that students could review the steps, listen to the mathematical language, and access the example more than once. I have found this to be a valuable way of ensuring that all students hear the message as many times as they need to.

Students worked with a partner to practice modeling equations, and then when they were ready they chose one each to model in video form. Using iPads made it easy for students to scan the QR code and begin recording right away. And now that they have submitted their videos, I can assess them outside of class time - which means I can be more available to the class as a whole. I'm always excited when technology makes my teaching more manageable, and this particular app has a lot of potential to do just that.

Examples of student videos. This week, we worked on two-step equations with addition. Next week, I will have students create videos involving subtraction :

Seussville in MinecraftEDU

Over the past few years, I have been using MinecraftEDU in my classroom (see Recreating a Painting in Minecraft). This is a discontinued mod of Minecraft 1.7.10, which has since been replaced with Microsoft's Minecraft Education Edition. As a subscription-based service is not currently viable for my school, I continue to use the version I purchased several years ago.

One of the projects that I have consistently done with my students is to have them work in small groups to create settings from a Dr Seuss book of their choice. This year, we took it a step further, and students recorded videos of their creations to share with their parents and peers.

We used Screencast-O-Matic to capture the video, and then iMovie to record the narration. This worked well for my students, as they were able to use iPads to record narration and edit it together with the visual component. Allowing students to find a quiet space to record their voices streamlined the process, as everyone was able to record on the same day without the scheduling nightmare of sending one group at a time to a computer lab. By design, I ensured that each group of students had a relatively tech-savvy member, and most technology-related challenges were solved by students without too much intervention from me. This freed me up to work with a couple of groups who had fallen behind in the recording process.

I love the effort students put into their Minecraft creations, and into planning and recording their videos. Some groups struggled with what to say, while others were trying to cram as much information into their videos as possible!

Enjoy the final products below :

Green Eggs and Ham

The Sneetches

Oh The Places You'll Go!

The Lorax

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The results of the students efforts have inspired me to develop a project for next year in which students will write stories, then create the visuals for their stories in MinecraftEDU and record videos to share. Until this year, I wasn't certain which programs would be best suited to this kind of endeavour, so I am pleased to have done a smaller scale version of what I hope will be a longer-term project next year!

Literary Projects

Students in my 8th grade French Immersion class know that they are expected to be reading at all times, in French, at a level that is appropriate to them. We call this their "toujours devoirs" (always homework). They do not fill out reading logs, they do not write book reports, they do not have to read a certain amount per day, per week, or per month.

However, every five or six weeks, they are given approximately 5 hours of class time (over five days) to create a project based on one of the books they have recently read. There are only two main requirements that I provide to students for these projects : their project must in some way encourage others to read the book, and they cannot choose the same project they have previously completed (e.g. if they have done a painting as a literary project already this year, they cannot do another painting) The learning curve on what constitutes five hours of quality work is generally steep, but I find that my students appreciate the fact that I allow them to budget their own time and encourage them to do their best possible work. Most of the time, students impress me (and each other!) with their projects.

This is our third literary project of the school year, which means that students have already done two projects. I find that the third and fourth projects are generally ones where students are thinking outside of the box. Earlier in the year, they tend to choose the project types with which they are the most comfortable. By February, they have grown accustomed to my requests that they think creatively, try new things, take risks, and persevere.

Here are some things that my students are creating for their literary project today :

Two paintings, one representing the personalities of the characters in the book, the other showing an important object from a different book. 

At the top : a menu for a theme restaurant inspired by Le Petit Prince
On the bottom : a crayon drawing

The beginnings of a board game

A watercolour background is shaping up for this student's project

This student is creating a riddle-based scavenger hunt for the class to complete.

Another board game is shaping up nicely. This student required some encouragement to create something a little more "professional" looking - sometimes grade 8 students suffer from "good-enough-itis" ;-)

A website in progress

Passion Projects 2017 - Reflection #3

We are now on week 6 of Passion Projects in my class, and I wanted to take this opportunity to write about the experience of students who are have some struggles with the freedom this project affords them.

Our routine is to work on Passion Projects each Friday (if there is no school on a Friday, we work on Thursday instead) This regularity of scheduling allows students to plan for what they need to bring into school, work on things at home over the course of the week and report in their journals on Fridays, and predict when they will need to have tasks accomplished.

On Thursdays, I ask students to fill out a brief check-in page in order to let me know how things have been progressing with their projects, and to remind them that they need to bring all required materials the next day. As part of that check-in page, I ask students to mark on a line how they are feeling about their project - the responses can range from "Awesome" to "Meh" to "HELP!"

Weekly Check-In Page

This check-in page has been a great help in identifying students that are treading water rather than making significant progress. I go through them and schedule conferences with any students who are hovering in the "Meh" range (or who have indicated that they need HELP! - although nobody has felt that desperate yet...)

The "no unfortunately" was a red flag for sure!

This student changed ideas after the first week, and hasn't
seemed all that passionate about his new idea

This student turned things around without much prompting from me

At this point in the project, some students are recognizing that they have chosen tasks that they are not feeling passionate about any more. What seemed like a good idea at the time (using a new crocheting set, for example) has lost some of its lustre. The check-in page gives me a heads-up that someone needs to have a quick conversation and might need a nudge to get going in a different direction if they have lost their passion for their initial idea.

Out of 25 students, only 2 have found themselves in this situation so far (the third person was just feeling a bit overwhelmed and was able to get back on track with little difficulty). The vast majority of my students are engaged and excited on Passion Project work days, and work independently for the entire hour. The two exceptions are students who might have needed to reflect a little more on what really makes them excited before settling on their project idea.

I am still learning Spanish as my Passion Project alongside my students. If you want to take a peek, here are the links :

Week 1 - Why I Want to Learn Spanish
Week 2 - Progress So Far
Week 3 - Plateau

Week 4 - Letters and Learning

Week 5 - A Real World Encounter

Week 6 - Podcasts

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions (or if you are also doing Passion Projects with a group of students!)

Passion Projects 2017 - Reflection #2

This week's major assignment in the world of Passion Projects was creating a 60-Second Pitch. Students presented their pitches to the class, and their peers had an opportunity to ask them questions and to assess whether or not they think that each individual is on the right track to begin their Passion Project.

In order for a student to get the "green light" for their project, at least 75% of the class has to give them their approval. I used ZipGrade and bubble sheets that were numbered 1-25 (each student was assigned a number in alphabetical order) At the end of each 60-second pitch, students either coloured in the Yes bubble or the No bubble for the corresponding number, depending on whether or not they thought the project was thought through enough. This app made it very easy to determine how many people had voted to approve each project - doing it all by hand would have been painful!

I chose to "yellow light" student #2 as I also had
some questions about his project. A short conference later
and his idea was clearer and ready for the green light.

This worked really well, and most students were given the green light by their peers. A couple of students got the yellow light (between 50% and 75% of peers voted to approve their project), and nobody received a red light (which would have been less than half of the class voting to approve) I was worried that students would simply green-light everyone, but that turned out not to be the case. I was able to have short conferences with those students who received the yellow light, and helped them to clarify their ideas a little more.

So far, I have seen huge amounts of motivation during this project. Students are conducting independent research, helping each other by asking good questions, arranging conferences with me as needed, spending time on the project outside of school time... All in all, a very successful start.

I do anticipate that some students will eventually hit a wall in their project, and I am hopeful that it will be a learning opportunity for them. If they can learn how to deal with failure, how to persevere, how to be flexible in thinking and planning then I will consider the project to be a success overall.

I am doing a Passion Project alongside my students. You can find my Learning Spanish blog below :

Week 1 - Why I Want to Learn Spanish
Week 2 - Progress So Far
Week 3 - Plateau