I am passionate about creating an environment in which my students leave with skills they can take into the real world with them. I want them to be able to collaborate with other people; to discuss good ideas with each other and make them better, and to value other people's opinions. I want them to be able to use technology efficiently. So they can not only find an answer to their question, but can find an accurate and logical answer. I want them to push their thinking and form opinions as they figure out the type of person they want to be. I want them to be able to analyze a broad scope of information and put it together in a way that makes sense to them and to others. I want them to be able to find creative solutions to their problems, and to feel safe enough to take risks. When the risks don't pay off, I want them to be brave enough to try again. I also want them to be reflective as they stop to think about their learning and how they can improve. I want them to be life long learners - always striving towards learning more. If we want our students to be successful in this information rich world in which we now live, we need to do more than just teach the content. We need to give them plenty of opportunities to practice these 21st century skills.
This year, I will be teaching science 8, science 10 (a provincially examinable course), and biology 12 (along with a block for instructional leadership at my school). Ideas for how I can improve my lessons have been percolating for a while now. Last year, I flipped my Biology 12 class. The actual creation of videos (using Camtasia) took A LOT of time and energy. The learning curve was steep, for me, as well as the students. Many students were excited right from the first day. They thought it was great that they could watch the lecture wherever they wanted to. Others, especially the more successful students, found the change very difficult. They resisted!! But after a month when they realized that they needed to figure out how to be successful in a new way, more and more students began to 'buy in' and eventually really liked the process. So much of my time went to creating the videos, however, that I didn't have a lot of time left over to successfully 'flip' the classroom the way I wanted to. This will be my main focus this year.
21st CENTURY SKILLS
I have modified a work ethic form that I received from KLO middle school by adding more 21st century skills to it. Here is a work ethic/21st century skills rubric, which students will use to self assess after each activity. This will be recorded and will help them (and me) to see if their skills are improving throughout the year. It will keep the skills ever present and in front of students so they know that I BELIEVE (and they should too) THAT THEY ARE IMPORTANT!! Declining work ethic has become a big issue at our school, and we have plans to work really hard on it this year. I'm hoping this is a step in the right direction.
MASTERY OF LEARNING
I have also decided to continue developing my ideas around mastery learning. I have decided that in my grade book (I use Jupiter grades, which is AMAZING) I will be recording only the TARGETS (plo's). There will not be a mark for quizzes, assignments, homework, etc... all of that is purely 'for learning'. For each of the targets, students will give themselves a 4-3-2-1-0 (and I will determine if I agree with this self evaluation) based on the standards, and this mark will be recorded in my grade book. Students will have a duotang with all of the targets, on which they will be continually re-evaluating their self-assessments and, hopefully, will be able to change a '3' to a '4' as more learning takes place.
This level of understanding may be reached with one of the applications done in class, and it may be shown on a unit test. Each test will be arranged by target. Instead of #1, #2, #3 ... the questions will be posed A1, A2, A3 (for the unit on cells etc...). The questions will be based upon higher level thinking skills, to see if students can apply the information they have learned to different situations. If a student receives a '2' on a target during the application of knowledge, then earns a '3' on a test, I will record the 3. If it is the other way around, then the mark would become a '2'. If, however, that student then writes the final, and his/her understanding has improved, I can change their mark to a '4'. The grades will be 'rolling' (Thanks to Carolyn Durley for this idea), and will keep rolling until the end of the year. What a novel concept. So, instead of punishing kids for what they don't know, it's more about celebrating and growing what they do know!
TECHNOLOGY LITERACY
Students will be asked on the first day to BYOD to class, to get a twitter account and to choose a blogging platform (ie: blogger, weebly...). We will be using a lot of technology in my classroom (ipads, twitter, blogs, google...), because I believe that one of the most important skills we can teach our students is how to take the massive amount of information on the internet, find answers, and then synthesize the information and make sense of it.
APPLICATION & REFLECTION OF LEARNING
I intend to create a catalog of learning application opportunities for each of the units that I teach. These may take the form of PBL lessons, medical case studies, CT2 criteria based critical thinking activities, free labs, scientific inquiry, twitter posts, models, role plays, web page creation, white-boarding, ipad creations, videos/screencasts, etc... And then will pick from these, and/or let students pick from these as they choose how they best want to demonstrate their learning.
I have students sitting in teams of 4, and each day those teams will be randomly chosen by my ipad. With 8 teams, I am going to request 8 mini-ipads from my adminstration. This would open so many possibilities as to what my students will be able to create!! wish me luck!! Having ipads (1/team) would also account for the 1 out of every 4 students - on average - who don't have devices in my classroom. I am also contemplating creating 'role cards' which I will laminate and then have students create criteria for (ie: what is the role of a leader? artistic director? fact finder? synthesizer of information? peace officer?...). Then, at the beginning of any activity, once they understand what each of the roles mean, students can choose which one will apply to them on any given project.
I have also decided that at the end of each day, I am going to have students work on their REFLECTIVE BLOGS. They may want to take a picture of the work done during the application process (ie: a pic of the team whiteboard story), or post a link to something they created, and then will reflect on the learning that has taken place. This will be their 'portfolio' of work, which will be evaluated at the end of the year (and will become a part of the rolling grades).
A new thing that I am contemplating is TED TALKS! I find them fascinating and frequently use them to introduce a lesson or to spark a conversation. We talk about 'science in the news' at the beginning of each class. I'm thinking that instead of me summarizing the article/ted talk and having students write a response in a journal that only I see, I will instead tweet the link to an article and have students respond via twitter. This twitter feed will be posted at the front of the room via the projector, so students can watch the other responses and respond to them. We will watch and respond to many TED talks and have conversations around what makes a good TED TALK. Then, I will tell the students that they will be doing their own TED TALK at the end of the semester in the theatre. They will choose their own topic (related to the course material), create their own presentation, and with passion! (I hope) will inspire others about their chosen topic. I'm still hashing out the details on this one.
I have also been looking into: 'explore - flip - apply'. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to do this on a daily basis, and still be able to cover all the curriculum. I'm looking forward to seeing how the curriculum will change in the coming years, and am hoping that the BC gov't is getting the message that "less is more"! However, I am not going to give up on this idea. I may just attempt it in smaller bits and pieces this year, and fine tune it in later years.
I HAVE REALIZED...
What I have realized is that the actual creating of videos is such an incredibly small part of the flipped classroom, and that I should be spending less time on the video creation and more time on what we can accomplish together with the students. There is, as always, a lot of work to do! But that is the kind of work I enjoy! Because in the end, I want to make sure that there are meaningful learning opportunities happening in my classroom all the time.
I'm looking forward to continuing my learning over the summer, and getting started with not only my Biology 12 class, but my other classes as well (although it will have to be modified due to age level and provincial exam requirements). I also anticipate failures and will, as always, reflect and learn from those as I work towards bettering my practice.
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