A Framework for 21st Century Instruction

The past few weeks have been extremely busy for me. I've had several projects that I've been working on for my classes and one HUGE project that I've been working on outside of school. This project has required a considerable amount of my time as I've been doing quite a bit of research and writing. The topic of the writing is teaching in the 21st Century. Through all of the work I've developed a framework for what I think are the most important elements of teaching in the present day. So I'm putting it out here on the blog to see if I can get some feedback. Here's an explanation of the different elements:

• Standards - As long as our education system is based on NCLB, every classroom activity must be based on state or national standards. Standards are not so bad in my opinion--they give me direction and eliminate any mystery about what it is I am supposed to teach.
  
• Engagement - Teachers then must integrate into the activity ways to authentically engage students so that learning can take place beyond just a surface level. More often than not, this means meeting basic internal needs. Among these are the desire for success, belonging, and originality.
  
• Assessment - Assessment is used for more than gauging student learning. By making students aware of the criteria for success, we can motivate them and support their learning. In other words, it’s not so much about how to assess (though I will talk about that), but more about how you can use assessment to engage students, support the growth of 21st Century skills, and meet state standards.
• Instruction - To develop critical skills for future success, teachers must use teaching approaches that require active engagement on the parts of students—inquiry-based and project-based teaching. It is of paramount importance that this instruction involve the use of technology.
  

There is so much more to each of these that I will try to write about in the weeks ahead. I've been getting some good comments here so let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Skills, education, teachers

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PVC Instruments

What should learning look like in the 21st Century? I have endeavored to answer this question this school year by turning my classroom into a laboratory to test the ideas that I have read about and listened to over the past year. Build Your Own Instrument: Blue Man Group Style, a culminating project for a unit on sound, was my latest attempt to define my concept of learning in the 21st Century.

This project required my students to create an instrument out of PVC pipes, the same sort of pipes that you'll find in your house's plumbing. I was inspired by the Blue Man Group, a "rock group" that most of my kids are familiar with and a few have seen live. This trio can make pretty amazing music from instruments constructed with PVC. I knew that once my students had seen them perform (check out this video from YouTube), they would be eager to build their own instruments. And just as I thought, my students tackled the project with a gusto from the design stage through construction.

So what how do I define 21st Century learning? Here are the competencies that I feel the project included/developed:

• Collaboration - My students worked cooperatively in groups of 3 - 5 on this project.
• Creativity/Innovation - Sir Ken Robinson has defined creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value." I'm not sure of the value of these instruments yet, but it was obvious from the multitude of different designs that each one was truly original.
  
• Problem-Solving/Critical Thinking - It was common for a group to put their finished design together, only to find out that their design was flawed. One group found that they need would need more than screws and pipe strap to hold their instrument together and had to find a new way to do it. Students tinkered with their designs throughout the construction phase.
  
• Right-Brain Competencies (see Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind):
• Play - The instruments that the BMG play are of the percussion variety. I knew that this type of instrument would appeal to my kids; what kid doesn't like to bang on things. Aren't we always telling our boys to stop using their pencils as drums? The project was meant to act as an assessment, but I purposely planned an activity that would make it an enjoyable one.
• Design - No need to elaborate.
  
• Symphony - Students created instruments that had a minimum of three notes. They accomplished this by using either a slide or changing the length of different pipes (see photo above). This required them to synthesize what they had learned about sound, particularly frequency and pitch.

So where is the technology? It permeates the project, but I can't say that what I or my students did with it was real innovative. Here's a list of the technology that was used:

• Google Video - To get the video of the BMG to spark interest.
• Think.com - I linked to Home Depot and another site so that students could create their budgets.
  
• Digital Cameras - each group took photos of their instruments throughout the construction phase.
  
• Microsoft Word - Students typed up the project summaries using this. They also inserted photos into their documents.
  
• Wireless Laptop Lab - Students completed the work on Apple computers.

The project has me thinking though--is this really learning for the 21st Century? Before 21st Century skills were invented, I (and many other teachers) had my students creating products in groups using technology. Don't most teachers make an effort to develop these abilities in their students through their teaching?


Technorati Tags: Blue Man Group, education, teachers

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A Whole New Classroom: Bringing Right Brain Aptitudes to the Classroom

One of the most influential books I have read since becoming an educator is A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. In fact, I have to admit that the books that influence my teaching the most are books that are not really for teachers at all; rather they are books targeted to the business crowd. With so many changes taking place in the world today, I feel that it is more important to know more about the world in which my students will work than to learn about yet another teaching strategy or technique to get more kids to pass a test.

What I like so much about Pink's book is that it not only describes the present and future world, but it also explains what skills workers will need to prosper in it. Pink's hypothesis is that they will need to develop right brain skills--design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning--to be successful.

What I'd like to do in this space is to explain how I have tried--knowingly and unknowingly--to cultivate these aptitudes in my classroom and what my efforts will be to do so this school year. One of my favorite right-brain skills to work on is design. Being a science teacher, it's easy for me to end most of my units with a project-based assessment--an assignment that requires my students to create an artifact that displays their knowledge of concepts learned in the unit. Most often this takes the form of a gadget. For instance, this past school year I had my students use their knowledge of open and closed circuits to create electric gadgets. Their task was to make the gadget work by creatively finding a way to complete a circuit to perform some kind of task. Batteries were the only power source they were allowed to use. With a little direction from me, and multiple examples from a book called Electric Mischief: Battery Powered Gadgets Kids Can Build by Alan Bartholomew, my students built incredible creations--cars, dice spinners, stop lights--that not only displayed their knowledge, but also often required a great deal of problem-solving and further learning to complete.

This project also required students to use the right-brain skills of symphony (combine their knowledge to form new product), and, I'm guessing, play (no test to assess their knowledge, but a fun project). I have planned similar projects for the coming school year. The one I'm most excited about is the Blue Man Group project--an assignment I will use to assess student learning of the properties of sound. I'm always looking for classes to collaborate with...


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Developing Reading Fluency through an iPod Language Lab

Reading Fluency

• What is reading fluency? Fluent reading is comprised of three elements:
  
  • Accuracy - the ability to recognize or decode words correctly.
    
  • Rate - the speed with which a reader moves through text
  • Prosody - intonation, syllable prominence, and anything else that contributes to expressive reading of text
• Why is reading fluency important?
  • Lack of reading fluency often leads to comprehension problems
  • Dysfluency leads to frustration and lack of enjoyment with reading
• Why iPods?
  
• iPods can be used to record and play back fluent reading models
  
• Every kid in the world either has one or wants one and what better way to motivate a struggling reader than to use an iPod

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The iPod Language Lab

• The language lab will consist of:
  
  • • 3 - 5 iPods with accompanying Griffin iTalk Voice Recorders
    • Leveled readers and worksheets to use in practice sessions
      
  • A small group of students will be chosen to come to the lab 2 - 3 times a week to work through fluency assessment and practice - This will be a pilot project with future plans to increase number of students
    
  • The lab will be run by teachers on a volunteer basis outside of school hours or as part of reading instruction during school hours (TBD)
    
  • Assessment - students undergo assessment of reading fluency indicators
    • Accuracy - Teachers listen to oral reading and count number of errors per 100 words. Can be recorded on an iPod for later listening by teacher
      
    • Rate - Teachers conduct timed readings
      • Student reads for 60 seconds - count number of words read correctly and record on a graph - this is the baseline
        
      • Teacher and student set goal for next reading and record it on the graph
      • Teacher conducts instructional strategies (see below)
        
      • Student repeats timed reading of passage and recording on graph
      • Student is timed at least twice per week
      • Students eventually record themselves and conduct the process
    • Prosody - observe student during oral reading to assess prosody
    
    Instructional Strategies (using iPods)
  • • Students record their own reading and then listen on iPod
      
    • Benefit - Allows independent judgement of accuracy, rate, and prosody
    • Students listen to fluent readers read passages on iPod. Typically this will be the audiobook version of a novel we are reading in class.
      
      • Benefit - Students are provided with a model of accuracy, rate, prosody
    • Read-Along Centers combine supported oral reading and independent repeated readings
      
      • Teachers conduct Read Naturally method
        
        • Student reads for one minute to teacher
          
        • Student practices reading same passage while listening to recorded fluent model on iPod
          
        • Student then continues independent practice (2-3 readings) without recording
          
        • Student then reads to teacher
    • Assisted reading methods help improve prosody--phrasing and intonation (with or without iPods)
      
      • Echo reading - teacher (or recording) reads a phrase and student repeats, focusing on prosody
        
      • Unison reading - student reads together with teacher (or recording)
      • Cloze reading - teacher reads the text and stops occasionally for the student to read the next word in the text
    • Check out iPods
      • Students can listen to audiobooks from sixth grade reading list at home. This supplements reading in class.
      • Teachers can listen to students reading any time/any place
    • Security
      Each iPod is engraved with Property of Wyoming Middle School label (see below)
      iPods do not leave classroom during the day - remain locked in a closet
      Students must sign iPod out before leaving school with one
      Students sign an agreement stating that they are responsible for iPod away from school
      

Assessment for Learning: What I've Learned this Year

In looking back on the 2006-2007 school year, I have to admit I learned a great deal. That's what I love about this profession--even in my seventh year of teaching, I'm still learning as much as I did two, three, even four or five years ago. Here's what I learned about assessment for learning this year:

• Short quizzes that are quickly graded and returned to students are great for rapid feedback on student learning.
  
• Self-evaluation sheets work well after assessments. When the whole class has committed the same errors on an assessment, handing out a self-evaluation sheet allows kids to see which questions were missed most and thus require further instruction. When a student has committed many errors on an assessment and needs to differentiate between simple mistakes and unlearned concepts, a simple question by question evaluation helps make them aware of this.
  
• Test blueprints, or a study guide that lists the learning target for each question on an assessment, help students prepare for tests, but the targets on them must match the objectives that students have been learning in class. In other words, students must understand what the question is asking simply by looking at its learning target.
  
• Teachers should give a variety of assessments. Students have different learning styles and creating assessments based on those learning styles allows every kid to shine. Furthermore, not all kids are good test takers. There are still some considerations that be must be made though:
  
• Assessments should still evaluate what the kids have learned - learning targets must be embedded in the project. I have seen many assessments that required students to create a product, dioramas come to mind, that in no way assesses what they have learned over the course of a unit.
  
• Students must be aware of what the learning targets are. In other words, they should know why they are doing the project and why certain requirements are in place.
  

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Technorati Tags: education | school |2007