We Broke Out!

After famously attending three sessions on Breakout EDU at the Google Summits in Auckland and Wellington (and attending one with a fellow Habitat Learning Coach) we decided to give it a go in our Habitat to get a positive start to term 2 this year.

For those of you who don't yet know what it is, Breakout EDU is a classroom version of escape rooms. Learners are given a task which involves finding clues to open up locks to break into a box. Each game has a story to go with it to make it interesting and often the clues are related to a specific are to help the learners consolidate their knowledge.

Given that we had 90 learners we decided to split the children into 4 groups and run two sessions concurrently and then two more later. We chose to use a game based off of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, but changed the objective that a mouse had come in and stolen some of my lego, which was locked up in the box.

Though I've played several games before (ISTE 2016 Champion) and even helped out with facilitating one, I had never done so by myself before. So I was very nervous and very worried I might make a mistake. The great thing about Breakout EDU is that they have very detailed setup instructions including a step by step video. Once I sat down with all the materials, it was quite easy. I really enjoyed hiding the clues throughout the habitat.

The actual implementation of the game went alright. We had a number of adults in the room who had never experienced it before and we discovered many issues with the way the clues were set out (they had a particularly hard time figuring out that a pot of pencils was actually a clue. But, as we stepped back and gave them tiny little hints, they did manage to figure out all of the clues and open the locks. As was to be expected, the learners didn't really talk to each other about the clues. One of them had decoded a message as to where something was, but didn't understand the message. She left it and walked away but didn't tell anyone. Later, when some other children were told of the clue, they immediately understood and found the key. It was a good talking point when we had our post-game reflection.

This was a really good chance for our learners to learn some real world problem solving skills. They had to think in ways that they hadn't had to previously. They also had to work together and talk. I think when we do this again, there will be a marked improvement in their communication skills (and the way they look at the clues).

So my next plan is to keep on doing these every now and then - the learners enjoyed them and I enjoyed doing them. Eventually I would like to start making my own games. At the moment they seem a bit complicated, but all I really need is a few hours to sit down and think when my brain isn't worried about other things. Given that we're making some big changes in our habitat at the moment, it's not likely that will come about any time soon, but one never knows... 

PMA Conference

Last Saturday I attended the 25th annual Primary Maths Association conference at the beautiful Waipuna Conference Center. Though I don't recall it being said (that of course, doesn't mean it wasn't said) there was a clear theme running throughout the day: Proportional thinking. Now this doesn't necessarily mean proportions, ratios and percent - but it does refer to multiplicative thinking. This, according to many speakers, is something we need to focus on as many learners are yet unable to think this way.

The keynote speaker, Shelley Dole, spoke of a three-step process of representing mathematical thinking for learners. The first is enactive - acting out the problems. This is probably something that is lacking in my practice at the moment. In the week since, I've tried to bring this back into my problem solving. The second is iconic - using diagrams or manipulatives that represent real life things. For example, this would be using things like counters, place value cubes, etc. I've been doing this to a degree, though including diagrams is something that I will work on adding (pun intended). The last is symbolic - which is using numbers and symbols to represent those mathematical ideas. This is something that we rely on quite a bit, and while necessary, it's important to remember that that doesn't have to be the only thing we do.

To be honest, a few of the big ideas in the sessions were not new to me, but it's always good to get a reminder of these things AND there were some practical things that I can use in my teaching.

One session I attended, called Learning Through Play, had a few ideas of things we as educators could use to make the learning of our learners more interesting. There was a lot of talk about using literacy to connect with mathematical ideas. A lot of this was about using stories to create math investigations. I like this idea, though it was very juniors based (read: Year 2 or under). It did remind me of the wonderful (American) resource of the Math Start books. Despite the obvious issues with the currency books, these are really great. I've brought my set back into school and am planning to share them with my learners shortly.

Another really important tip that was shared in this session was that learners should be encouraged to answer their questions in full sentences  - not just in one-word answers. The facilitator mentioned that this can have wonderful effects across all learning areas.

The last session of the day included a massive amount of practical real world maths problems. The facilitator gave us heaps of example questions using ratios and proportions that are real world problems. What I liked best about this session was that we had time to go around and have a go at solving them (note to any presenters out there: get us doing stuff or at some point, most of us will just tune out).

It was a good day to spark some thinking in me. I've always enjoyed math as a student, though that can be a challenge when it comes to teaching learners who don't share my excitement. I hope to use a good deal of the ideas in the coming weeks!

On Stepping Back and Watching

For a lot of my teaching career, I have been told that I must be doing something with the students. That maximizing time with me is what will make the difference for students. A buzzword that some principals and other leaders like to use is "direct acts of teaching." Our days are structured by how many groups we can see, as if this makes all the difference in the world.

But I'm here to ask if perhaps we've got it backwards. I'm not saying just let children be all by themselves the whole day - that has the potential for disaster (though I am somewhat interested as to what would happen if that were the case). I'm talking about pulling back and letting students have a go; letting them have a chance to make their own meaning and work through problems their own way.

A big focus of my teaching the last couple of years has been using the problem solving approach in mathematics. In it, I give my students some problems. We discuss what they might mean beforehand, then I let them have a go. Often I just step back and go help the other learners in the class and let them struggle. I've even gone so far as to ban children from asking me questions during their work time. I will drop in and out of each group, asking them to explain what they're doing (and sometimes even doing those - unplanned - direct acts of teaching, if necessary).

The struggle itself is what helps learners learn and grow. I could tell them what they need to know, but a) I doubt very much they're all listening, b) they all need to know different things, even learners who have achieved to a similar degree, and c) learners can and want to learn anything, so who am I to dictate what they should be learning by completing any given activity. There's even evidence that this gives bigger gains in the long run.

More recently (probably in the last few months), I've started doing this more, in other areas. Passion projects are a great way to do this. I've also stepped back in writing and have allowed my students to complete a writing project of their choice - which can range from writing a book to making a stop motion video. Everything we do, I want my learners to grapple with the ideas themselves, experience failure, and then move forward. We are risking the creation a generation of students who merely want to please someone else by spoon feeding them what they need to know.

In writing, I have also begun getting students to evaluate their own work. It was very successful this week. I had taught a quick mini-lesson on improving our vocabulary in our writing and the students went off and wrote on their own. Afterwards, I had them work with each other to identify the interesting words they had used. I watched the whole thing, but the conversations and debates they had ("Is Palmerston North an interesting word?") were much more valuable than me telling them or giving them a worksheet. I even joked during this time to them: "I'm not doing anything". But one student said to me: "Yes you are." They get it. They know it helps them.

There are definitely some interesting perspectives on this. Oftentimes, as teachers we need to feel like we are doing something, as explained in this article. However, I think we need to realize that we can be extremely effective by putting learners into positions where they will struggle and be able to figure it out for themselves.

I also came across this story a while back about WALTS (learning outcomes, objectives, etc for those not down with the lingo) and how they limit learning. Letting students learn their own way means that we shouldn't be dictating the learning outcomes. We can give them a task, but what they learn can be different from one student to the next. Just some more food for thought.

TAP Lab Visit #3

This Wednesday I returned to the TAP Lab to continue my education in all things Maker. Most of this involves Arduino and other types of coding, but we'll see where things take me and how much time I'll actually have in the future to come back (it is pretty far away - but definitely worth it).

Today's session started with me figuring out another sensor - a temperature sensor which is surprisingly accurate. Then the very helpful people at the lab started telling me all about all the parts I had in my Arduino kit, including some displays. Well, I was intrigued. My big thought was to get the display to show the temperature. Well, it was a massive job just to 1) figure out how to hook up the display to the Arduino board and then 2) figuring out the coding, which had a very simple, but inexplicable error.

The code we found on the Internet for the lights was giving some really strange results. We poured through it, trying to figure out what went wrong. Then we started testing things to see what changed. It became apparent, at one point, that the lights were doing the opposite of what they were meant to do in the code. So, I changed all the 'trues' (which the code said meant the lights would go off) to 'falses' and amazingly, the display lit up as it should have. It was a good lesson in debugging, though it got pretty frustrating at one point, and I was definitely in the dip (growth mindset FTW!). But this only led to a static display. I managed to change the display to my birth year and then discussed ways in which I could program the numbers to change - though due to the tediousness of the code I'd have to write, I put that off for another day.

Learned how to code a 4digit display today at @TAPLabMakers Next step: make numbers change! #MakerEdNZ #hacksterlive pic.twitter.com/KkrINLhHb2

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 31, 2016

Since I remembered to bring my mBot to the lab, I decided to have some fun with its display as well. It is much easier to program the lights there (it's all visual, and you just need to click on the squares), so I was able to spell out all the number words to ten and get it to count up. I bet I can modify this program to make it do addition or subtraction (or many other things). Hmmmmm.... I do love how learning one skill can get you thinking about how it can be applied. Have a look at the video of the lights changing.

Today was a fantastic lesson in what actually goes on in a makerspace. It was often quiet when I was working, but when I had a problem, many people there were willing and even eager to help me. That's the kind of atmosphere I'd like to create for makerspaces. I spent two hours there, but it felt like 10 minutes. Again, that's what I want for MakerEdNZ. 

CS4PS (Or My First Trip to the South Island)

I recently made the trip down to Christchurch (which incidentally was my first time on the South Island after living in New Zealand for 4+ years) for a Computer Science for Primary School course put on by some amazing educators from the University of Canterbury.

A major focus of the course was using Scratch to code. We talked about learning both coding and about using coding to teach other subjects. The things I learned in two days absolutely have blown my mind with respect to coding in the classroom, as well as the possible uses of Scratch.

We started off the two-day event by discussing (and completing) several unplugged activities to teach computational thinking (because that's what coding is about, NOT the computers). We learned about binary and how to represent numbers with only ones and zeroes. We did a massive activity which pretty much led us to writing codes with musical notes. We also discussed ways in which computers verify data (through ideas such as parity - see the Error Correction activity in the below link) and how data can be transferred through the Internet securely (hint: it travels through the web three times, instead of once). A lot of these activities can be found on http://csunplugged.org/.

Then came the chance to actually get programming with Scratch. Up until now, I've always looked at Scratch as a way to 1) make games and 2) tell stories. Though I have had some coding experience (FORTRAN in my first year of University, some JavaScript course on Khan Academy and lots of HTML coding), I never put 1 and 1 together. Well, I finally figured out what the 2 is. The following are some programs I made for activities we did this week as well as some programs that I might use in the near future (i.e. next week when I go back to class). Some of these came from direct problems - i.e. can you make a program that takes such and such info and tells you this and that result. Some of the challenges involved using only a small number of blocks. The programs are down in the order I made them, so you can see the evolution of what I've learned (keep in mind, this was over two days!).

Debugging is also an important skill that we discussed. The idea here is that no code will be perfect when first written, so we need to be able to go through our code in various ways to check that it does what we want it to do. There are many different ways to check. When using variables you can show them or you can have them said at certain parts of the way. All cases should be tested for to see if all cases work (boundary cases are specifically important). We got to do a quiz on this and I ended up winning some parity magnets for the efforts of my team.

These ideas will likely be the basis of the upcoming digital technologies curriculum in New Zealand, so this is a great way to get started. Computer Science doesn't need to be an add-on to our current curriculum, it can fit in nicely with everything we are already doing.

A side note: This was apparently the first Google-sponsored CS4PS in the world! It's definitely a great idea and should be repeated over and over for as many teachers as possible.

Student-led Classroom Discussions

In my quest to give students voice and control over their education and learning, I've started giving real-life problems for them to solve. For example, when we had repeated problems with picking who got to get the milk or the chrome books, I asked my students to come up with a solution so that no one would ask me (I have some issues with being crowded and this seemed like something that didn't need approval).

The first two discussions we had were somewhat productive. I was quite impressed that many students gave ideas and spoke out for what they thought was a good solution. They came up with ideas (not the ideas I'd have come up with) and they effectively owned those ideas. For these first two discussions I didn't intervene. I listened but didn't even have to join the circle.

Then we tried a third problem: Making sure the class was tidy. They quickly decided they wanted jobs, but a few other issues came up. One student was dominating the whole discussion and in essence was trying to bully (not really, but that's the closest word to what was going on) the other children to agree with him. The second was that the discussion very quickly descended into chaos as side discussions started happening

So I had to intervene. Even though there were some (most of my students, really) that were genuinely trying to have an open discussion there were some who weren't.

I had a think about it and decided that each of these discussions would have certain students playing roles in order to move things along.

Today we tried out five jobs:

Moderator - chooses who speaks, stops others from interrupting, makes sure everyone has a say

Challenger - puts forth an opposing viewpoint (if it hasn't been already)

Recorder - writes down/types anything that needs writing down

Questioner - asks people to explain their thinking more

Monitor - makes sure we are not taking too long, saying the same things over and over and that students are not disrupting the discussion or wasting everyone's time

I actually had to appoint two monitors today because a lot of students were being silly, BUT the two were pretty good at keeping the students focused.  I still needed to add some input, though. They kept on suggesting ideas and then asking: "Who disagrees?" That led to us pretty much going in a circle, saying the same ideas over and over. So I got my moderator to list the ideas and they took it from there - sort of. They have decided to make some pictures to print out for jobs and they want me to laminate it

Was all this hassle worth it? I could have solved the problem quickly myself and come up with pretty much the same thing. But I think that I've planted several seeds in these students now and they will be given more opportunities to have a say. The problem has not been solved, but we have a potential solution.

I do think I'll try these jobs with other aspects of group work and we can develop more roles that will be appropriate to different situations.

As always, suggestions are always appreciated!