This week in class I have been asked to reflect on my own journey through 21st century learning and how I am growing in the skill of implementing better 21st century skills in my lessons. Interestingly enough, in our last staff meeting, we were asked to reflect almost on the same thing but especially on our use of technology. It was made clear that rigor and deep learning can certainly occur without technology but if used correctly, technology can enhance these factors. So I had to ask myself, am I using technology in my teaching because I was told to? Am I using technology to do the same thing I would have done without it? Or am I using technology to do something new that wouldn't have been possible before? Yes, yes, and yes. In order to really get assignments from my students last spring during distance learning, I had to learn how to use a new tech tool that our district choose for lower grades, Seesaw. In order to talk with multiple kids at the same time and see their faces, I had to learn to use Zoom. At first, I used these tools to replace what I would normally do in the classroom. As I've learned about the programs and other fun features, I am slowly learning how I can do things that wouldn't have been possible before, and with enough modeling and guidance, my students can too! These are very simple things, but they feel like growth for me personally. For example, I have learned to use the "participants can only chat with the host" feature in Zoom to quickly check for understanding. I've also been experimenting with using Seesaw's blog feature where students can comment on each other's work that is published there. The blog allows for a wider audience of family members and classmates so students really feel like their work is being published. In the classroom, I often only had time for a few writing presentations and then had to move on. Now, everyone gets to present their hard work after every project. As a second language learner myself, one of the best things I could do was write in my second language and read it back. With online video and voice recording tools, students all have the opportunity to read their work allowed and even listen to their own recording. As I dive into my research question surrounding peer teaching in math, I want to continue to master these technological collaboration tools so that students find them to be a help and not a hinderance. In the SAMR hierarchy of Substitution-Augmentation-Modification-Redefinition, perhaps I am between augmentation and modification, just beginning to get a glimpse over the horizon of using technology to make large gains in learning by doing what was previously impossible.
In my latest reading of Darling-Hammond's book, The Flat World of Education, I learned of research that showed just how valuable quality teacher training is. I have to say that, while I feel like I am in a very demanding teaching situation, I am also so thankful for the training I have received. As I've noted in a previous blog, it is absurd that teachers faced with the biggest challenges in classrooms with the most need, often get the least support and training. I am glad I got precisely what I was looking for when I decided to come to this district. As a last note, I know that 21st century learning is not just about technology integration and my hope is that my skills will develop evenly in technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK). I know I have an unending road of 21st century learning ahead of me but baby steps will continue to lead me in the right direction.
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Guess what! My driving question changed! After conferencing with my professors, I have decided to focus more in the direction of peer-teaching than on digital feedback loops. I still love feedback but I was finding that I did not have clear Need to Knows that I had a good plan for how to go about researching. Through John Hattie's synthesis of other educational research, we learned that students retain more of what they hear from peers than information from the teacher. I'd like to capitalize on this in the subject area of math and see what the results would be on academic language and overall engagement in 2nd graders. I have a hard time moving forward when I don't have my measurement tools clearly in mind. This is the problem I was having with my initial driving question. With my new driving question focusing on peer teaching in math, I know I would like to collect data in multiple ways to perhaps draw multiple conclusions. I would like to students to somehow record their experience as tutor or tutored student. By collecting video recordings I hope to also assess academic vocabulary. My school has a special emphasis on language acquisition. I'm curious which language students will choose to interact in and if I should implement any language requirements (math in second grade is conducted in Spanish) or if these will hinder the peer teaching that will take place. I could easily use Seesaw to collect this kind of information. As a second measurement tool I need something that will give me qualitative data so I can measure academic growth in math concepts. The math screener suggested by Bridges on their resources website was not great. I already gave it to students and the majority of the class passed with flying colors. The test was primarily comprised of single digit addition facts and had two story problems. This will not help me measure growth in math. The unit assessments in math are complex and change drastically with each unit depending on the concepts. They also don't come in a digital format so I would have to adapt them. Sometimes they contain visuals or exercises that students are not familiar with because the low amount of paper and pencil practice that the Bridges curriculum has for students. I'm wondering if I should create my own assessment based on what I plan to teach from now until December but this would be a best guess as to what I would cover. I've heard the district has purchased STAR tests with very comprehensive reports but I'm not sure if these are meant for lower grades as well or if they will be primary aged children friendly. If I convert some other math screener questions to a Google Form, how will students show me their work in drawn out models? If I use Seesaw, I will need to make a multi-page assignment that may be quite cumbersome for students and I will need to print out or transcribe their results onto a better data sheet since Seesaw just lets you grade with a number of 1-5 stars. Reading Falk's "The Power of Questions" was a helpful way for me to get my mind wrapped around organizing my research progress. I made a google doc with a few of the tables she suggested and am excited to fill them up with helpful informational tidbits for my driving question. However, when I got around to researching in the databases, my results were coming up...not so great. I conducted research in college and even since then but conducting a quality internet search for information seems to be a skill that goes into my short-term memory. I copied down some titles and linked them into my literature review spreadsheet but they are on the back burner since I'm still finding the work around of how to avoid paying for them. I haven't found much related to peer-teaching among elementary students in math but I'm not sure if this is a result of a lack of research in this specific area or simply due to poor database searches. I will continue my quest for knowledge as the week roles on and get to work on those data collection tools. Why are we educating kids in batches? That was a question asked by Sir Ken Robinson in his talk on Changing Education Paradigms. We are still hung up on some outdated ways of doing education and he is trying to shake us up. Of course we would never agree to this ideology today but our education system is built on and for those who excel in traditional academia and hasn't grown to be flexible and nurturing for many others. One of my favorite parts of his seminar was when he asked why we still hold to this "assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are?" It is wonderful to have kids of similar ages creating friendships and learning together but perhaps that is not the best way to meet learners' needs. When I attended middle school in a one room schoolhouse, kids of all ages 1st - 8th grade had to learn to play kick ball and capture the flag together. There wouldn't have been enough players for a team if certain kids were excluded due to age. There were many benefits to learning to help and play with kids of different ages. In our current system, kids feel less than if they don't move with their age group along the path of "grade-level" concepts. But if this expectation could be done away with, and we could normalize the idea that all of us develop understandings in different areas at different times, perhaps we could even build a much healthier student and parent body that was less prone to comparison. Another fascinating point brought up in his speech was the study on "divergent thinking," or creativity in problem solving. Robinson stated that the highest level of divergent thinking found in students occurred in Kindergarten and decreased in these students as they advanced through school. That was a sad statistic for me and one I would like to learn how to reverse at least in my own practice. Strangely, while divergent thinking decreases as students move through the education system, these same students have access to information through technology unlike any generation before them. So much information is constantly available to both students and teachers. We can't even conceive of what that information availability will look like and how we will access it in the future. We are teaching a world of new citizens for a world we cannot yet imagine. But as Adora Svitak and Dalton Sherman share, us adults have to be ready and willing to prepare kids to lead us into the future AND to let kids lead us into the future by empowering them. For some reason I was under the impression that videos demonstrating the use of technology in the classroom, even in the young learner classroom, would be prevalent on the internet. While I'm sure they are, I had a hard time finding them. Finally I ran into a video called "Differentiating Instruction Through Interactive Games (Tech2Learn Series)." When I saw this video, it reminded me of just the kind of thing I had always wanted to do with technology. I have always wanted to use technology to keep kids learning the basics in an engaging way, while I take small groups deeper into their own need to knows. I loved watching how the students in the classroom used various strategies to solve math problems. Another beacon of hope was that these were younger children who were benefiting from adaptive math game technology and an adaptive math program that my district has purchased for us! I've had so many conversations with my brother, who is fairly into gaming and is confident that if the classroom contained more game-like elements, leveling up, points, attainable challenges, etc., then students would be so much more motivated to participate. The classroom in this video seems to portray just that. From what I've noticed over the years, intervention, when available, is primarily put towards reading. I can agree that reading is of the utmost importance in life. However, this means, that whatever intervention resources there were, have now been used up, and math is left trying to catch up. I've wondered how students could get the differentiation they need in order to succeed and feel confident in math. I think technology would make a huge difference in this way. For a couple of other awesome videos that are also linked in my Innovative Learning Portfolio, take a look at:
Need to knows, need to knows,...what do I need to know? A lot! After watching the video on an Introduction to Research Education, I began to realize most of what I believe to be true and successful in education is not based on scientific data. But I do have a really good feeling about it!...We do focus on data and data cycles at school....a lot! But for some reason I don't feel empowered by the data I take away from them. Perhaps one of the biggest skills I've taken away from them is how to make a really narrowed down pre and post test specific to one standard. My driving question for my own research at this point is still: How can digital feedback loops enhance metacognition in math for primary students? I want to capitalize on this metacognition in math by following John Hattie's findings that information learned by students from other students, is the best retained information. After learning about Pekka Peura's Hundred.org project where students took daily self-assessments in teams and then helped each other in their areas of weakness, I was inspired to somehow offer my students a space where they could teach each other as well based on their own assessed needs. Is this possible for 7 year olds? Is it possible during distance learning? Here is a table of burning questions I have before I can even get my feet off the ground: Need to Knows
Perhaps distance learning hasn't exactly thrown a wrench in my plans since when I started thinking about my driving question, I was pretty sure it would be still be with us come fall. My being forced into technological tools early might even have helped me get ready to collect data in a better way. With young kids, however, there is always the comfort zone of paper and pencil data. I think this will be one of my need to knows, how reliable is digital data from 2nd graders and which formats of digital survey data are most useful? I had 4 hour drive I had to fit in at some non-crucial time during the first full week of distance learning classes this week. I decided to multitask by listening to my masters course reading assignment via audiobook while driving. Twenty minutes into the book and I found myself falling rapidly into the black abyss of the current dire situation we are facing as a nation. Perhaps this wasn't the best book to listen to instead of read, because every few minutes I found myself replaying the last 30 seconds of narration. "Did I just hear that statistic right?" "Is it really that bad?" "Are we really ranked that low on the list?" Of course, however, I knew the answers to these questions already was yes. I've heard many of these statistics before.
Why has the United States not undergone the educational revolutions that other countries such as Finland and Singapore have? One statement by Darling-Hammond really resonated with me about our apathetic stance on equity. We are too comfortable with inequality and the idea few getting more and many getting less. The idea that we have digressed when it comes to segregation in American schools is astounding. Another good point brought up by the author is that equal funding does not mean equal access to opportunity. Will schools with large numbers of special education needs and English language learners have differing and possibly more expenses to meet their students' needs? Yes. I always get a little uncomfortable when someone starts to talk about ineffective teachers...This was the topic of a portion of the first three chapters. Most everyone who gets into the teaching profession knows that it won't be an effortless path leading them to the top of a mountain of disposable income. They are usually people who like learning and want to help others. I have to say that there are varying degrees of teacher effectiveness and we know that is a key element of student learning. It is sad that there are so few teachers at times that districts recruit teachers straight from credential programs before they've even experienced student teaching. As a side note, the "teacher shortage" phrase is a myth. There are plenty of people who would like to become teachers if they knew they would be given the freedom and respect as the teacher-action researchers that they would become. A competitive professional salary would also make a big difference in teacher candidates. My first two years teaching were in a small (3 teachers) school in a very low income community. With the often difficult community/cultural aspect of the work and the complete lack of salary schedule, the school had teachers coming in and out year after year. As a result, kids didn't feel very impressed with their school either. This was an independent charter school which makes budgeting different but even with regular district public schools, it seems obvious that teachers who have a more difficult work scenario where student needs are higher, should be paid more. Instead, they have the low paying jobs and students in those schools can never get their foot in the door of successful education and effective teaching when they continually have to build relationships with new teachers. What needs to change? We live in the land of competition. This can be good and motivating at times, but kids, teachers, and parents should not have to engage in a competitive battle to gain their right to an effective and successful education for all. We have to be uncomfortable with inequity. We also have to do better in training such a vital workforce as the teacher workforce. How is it that my last educational technology class before the pandemic of 2020 was a college course (it was great for its time) in which I made a webquest? Aside from training in technology, teachers and teacher candidates need time and mentors, not more assignments. I once read that new teachers in Singapore are given many hours less a week of classroom teaching and more hours of preparation and reflection with mentor teachers. Going from a teacher credential program to your first two years teaching in which you complete almost the same types of assignments over again but now with a full time teaching job, is not what I would call supportive of the already stressful situation a first year teacher faces. This is not to say that assignments and courses in credential programs can't be improved either. It's time to rethink what we've been doing and how we've been taught. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
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