Sarah Golightly---Student Agency—Course 2 Blog 3

Develop Growth Mindset

      This year I have a great group of students who have always made the honor roll and had few discipline referrals.  Yet based on the NTN Agency Rubric for Middle School my students fall into the proficient category.  The quote for the growth mindset includes effort, practice, and challenge.  My students put forth effort and they practice also; however, a wall is hit when a challenge is presented.

     I’m really not sure how challenged middle school students feel in 2017.  Now, an eighty is a B.  That statement alone speaks volumes!  A grade is not what will prompt the student to grow his intelligence.  An inner drive must be cultivated.   All teachers need to know about student agency and then as a community of teachers we can direct these young minds.

     Of the five categories for a student to Develop Growth Mindset, I need to concentrate on presenting a challenge to my students and let them take risks in the presentation of the material or even the words they speak.  If they seek a challenge and then succeed, the other four elements [effort, growth, confidence, and personal relevance] will be an outgrowth from it.   

Take Ownership Over One’s Learning

     The ultimate goal of all educators is to direct students to become mature leaders for life.  The advanced column pushes a child to give more than 100 percent.  Many students are visual learners and it would greatly help if they saw this type of behavior displayed daily from the adults they encounter.  We all remember that inspiring teacher who was ready every single day and was truly a master teacher.  Iron sharpens iron and we can help these children become polished, consistent, analytical, community minded, etc.

The Power of “Yet”

The abilities of all children can be developed.  No one wants to fail.  Their mindset needs to change.  This happens when we praise wisely.  Teachers need to encourage the process and effort.  In my opinion, not all A’s are equal.  However, we all recognize effort.  It has a look to it that can’t be fake.  You know it when you see it!  Students need to realize that effort and an A are equivalent.  A “not yet” will give anyone, especially a child, greater confidence.  We teach children and they need to see hope, possibilities, and a future.  That only happen with “yet”!

                                                                                                                                                                                          

Sarah Golightly--Video Self-Analysis- Course 2 Blog 2

Creating Commercials--Video Self-Analysis—Blog 2

Identifying What’s Important

In the video segment I am giving the students written and oral instructions on how to write their commercial.  I tried to emphasize that quality not quantity was important in their clip.  A step-by-step process was given on the promethean board.  The students were to do the following:  (1) Name the product. (2) Describe the product. (3) Explain why one would like/need the item. (4) Select a setting. (5) Identify the characters. (6) Write the script. (7) Think of possible props.  Students are given choice throughout this assignment.  They could even make up an item to sell.  No restraints were placed upon their creativity.

Making Connections

For several weeks we have been working on various aspects of Brian Robeson’s journey to survive in Hatchet.  Students have researched various chronic illnesses, made a nutritional chart, researched tornadoes, written an interview about the anguish Brian’s parents endured, etc.  Now, for this video segment, they must have thirty second to one minute commercials such as they have seen for the past eleven years on television.  The students are extremely excited about performing and do give their best at preparing for this performance in one week.

Incorporating Contextual Knowledge

Truthfully, I thought the students would perform better if they were able to work with their friends.  From the videos I submitted onto google drive, I feel certain that allowing student choice in this area was a plus.  The students were creative, excited, and willing to work enthusiastically.  Only one group had to be addressed and changed. Students were allowed “voice and choice.” 

Drafting Next Steps

The students began working on their commercials November 10^th.  On November 17^th most of the commercials were performed in the drama teacher’s room.  They were recorded and will be used in the news cast.  I would like to do this PBL next year and I plan to record everything in my room.  Mr. Timmon’s was fantastic; however, he had to give up two days of his lunch to record us.  I think/know that I can do that in the future.  Also, I plan to allow time for retakes. 

Julianna Lux PBL Course 2 Genius Hour Project

Genius Hour: Civil Rights Experts

I believe my Genius Hour assignment falls better into the category of Inquiry-Based-Learning than what I believe Genius Hour assignments should be.  I envision the creation of an object that someone learns how to do along the way.  My Genius Hour was incorporated into a new PBL created for this semester revolving around Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. For their Genius Hour, students would become experts on one aspect of civil rights, be it from the past or the present (it did not have to focus in on the African American Civil Rights Movement). I set out expecting my students to create something in the MakerSpace that would showcase knowledge they learned during a series of research sessions. In fact, after a few sessions of research, I met with the students in small groups to discuss the similarities of their topics (for example, childhood and adulthood of Dr. King, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Gandhi) and begin planning the final product.  We came up with some amazing ideas, too. Two boys who were researching Jackie Robinson planned to create a 3D model of a baseball field, complete with baseball players in the midst of a game; two students who researched King were going to create a version of the game of LIFE to showcase steps on his journey as a civil rights activist.  We made plans, but when it came time to actually create what would showcase our knowledge, my students were more concerned with socializing and pushing work off on someone else or not doing anything unless I was personally assisting them.  After one day in the MakerSpace, one group of three students only producing one letter outlined on a poster, three other groups producing not much more, and only one group really making any headway, I completely scratched the creative products as I deemed they would be a waste of resources and time.  Instead, we returned to the classroom to create individual research booklets using a basic template I provided. The students were more receptive and worked diligently for two days to find appropriate pictures and write what they knew in their own words. They enjoyed receiving printed and bound versions of their books.  Sample #1  Sample #2 Sample #3 Sample #4

While I’m proud of what my students accomplished, I’m wondering where I went wrong in the planning of the Genius Hour. Was it that I didn’t provide enough structure for my students? I initially had my students jotting down notes on notebook paper, but they weren’t writing down their sources anywhere. I provided them with a log to record where they visited during the sessions, but some still didn’t write down their sources.  Was it the topic? Many of my students began asking if the class had shifted to a history class, so they weren’t seeing the connection with ELA. One student even told me he just wasn’t interested in learning about the African American Civil Rights Movement; I guided him to the topic of the Little Rock Nine, and he showed a little more interest then.  Did I not give them enough time? During the six or seven days, they had about forty-five minutes to an hour to work on their research--generating questions, answering those questions, generating more questions, answering those questions. However, this was a somewhat open-ended task, and I did not give them a structured format to follow for recording these questions and answers.  I believe if I implement this again in the future, I will create a more definitive process that will limit the directions they can take but still be open-ended enough to grant them freedom to find the information they seek to find.  Perhaps this will allow them to better budget their time.  Did I have them doing too much at one time? We were studying King’s speech, writing our own speeches, learning new rhetorical strategies to incorporate into our own speeches, researching Civil Rights topics, and working on text-dependent analysis all in the matter of a couple of weeks.  Some of my students seemed lost from the beginning, while others appeared bored halfway through.

In the end, though, I call this a success. While I didn’t quite make it to everything I wanted to accomplish (students’ resources are listed as links instead of actual citations, which makes me cringe, but I ran out of time), they were proud of what they made and begged to take them home with them over break.  I only had to fuss at one student who tried to throw his in the trash.  Sample #3 was created by that student who just wasn’t interested in Civil Rights, and while his isn’t perfect (none of them were), this is more than he’s ever done for me before. Same deal for Sample #4 above; he typically does the bare minimum to coast by, but he worked hard on this book.  They learned how to insert pictures into a document; they learned how to change the font size and style; some learned how to cut and paste text from inside a table to outside of the table.  They learned how to use the binding machine and were fascinated as we used it.  And almost every one of them was excited to get it back and take it home with them.  They did a good job, and I’m proud of them. Even if my plans didn’t quite turn out the way I expected.

Julianna Lux PBL Course 2 Blog #2 Video Selfie Reflection

Assignment Overview: I recorded my class’s creation of their class speech.  Each student had already written a Dream speech during the previous class periods, with the exception of the young lady in maroon (she was absent on that day and her speech’s lines were later added in). The students’ speeches were cut up into individual sentences. During this class period, students were to sort through the strips of paper they were given and organize them according to commonalities (sentence starters, such as “I have a dream…,” “Together,” “Now is the time…” and ideas such as freedom and equality). They weeded out the sentences that didn’t seem to fit and selected sentences they couldn’t live without. After sorting out the commonalities, we looked for common topics--equality, school, homelessness, etc.  Students grouped those ideas, and then they began piecing all of these together into separate paragraphs, which they taped onto the posters.  I then took their individual paragraphs, tweaked them a little (but not much), and then gave them their speech during the next class period. In order to accomplish all of this, they needed to understand how to structure a paragraph, connect similar ideas, and work together as a group.

Identifying What’s Important

In the segment on which I’m reflecting, I’m moving my students on to the last step of a class speech writing session--organizing the sentences into a paragraph.  I wish I’d asked my students what steps they think they should follow to create the paragraphs.  Perhaps by creating that sense of ownership in the process, more students would be willingly involved in the assignment. I notice that I provide some good feedback to the students, helping them understand to which categories their strips belong.  I need to learn to ask more questions instead of making statements.  When I’m working with each of the partnerships along the center row, I found I directed them more than guided them.  How much are they learning if I don’t grant them that ownership?  I am proud of my flexibility, though.  One of the group’s sentences didn’t fit as a paragraph, so I asked them to go around to the rest of the class’s paragraphs and work them into what the other students were creating.  I was reluctant because of how I know my students handle that form of interaction/distraction; however, they did well, and I had less sentence strips to incorporate on my own.

Making Connections

I did not give my students an assignment sheet for this because I wanted the flexibility of adapting it as we went along.  For some students, I believe that made each step harder because they didn’t have a reference when they lost track of what they were supposed to do.  Providing them with clearer instructions would decrease the downtime and questions they had.  I would have more time to provide feedback to each of the groups and not feel like I was losing my mind.  I also would have more time to focus on the random questions my students ask; I noticed a few asked me questions that I completely ignored, albeit unintentionally.

Incorporating Contextual Knowledge

Students were grouped into small groups of two to four students according to who I know works well together and ability levels. The three groups who were initially groups of four were larger because of the number of sentence strips I anticipated them receiving during earlier steps. I divided one of the groups during this section of the class because the number of topics we’d gathered required more groups. This also broke up a group in the back that hadn’t been as focused as they should have been unless I stood directly next to them.

Drafting Next Steps

In the future, I plan to have a more structured plan with instructions either projected on the board or on paper for them to read. I also plan to have the tables arranged in a way that allows me to traverse the outside of a circle/rectangle and keeps the students further apart from each other.  I believe the structure and arrangement will create a less chaotic environment and encourage the students to focus on the work in front of them as opposed to the students around them.  

PBL Course 02 - Blog 03 - Smith, Robert - Student Agency

Student Agency

Student agency refers to learning through activities that are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests, and often self-initiated with appropriate guidance from teachers. To put it simply, student agency gives students voice and often, choice, in how they learn.

-          Renaissance EdWords (2017)

Students need challenges relevant to themselves and their current developmental levels. Those challenges are not easy to provide. We must know our students’ interests and likes; we must know what is currently culturally relevant to them; we need to understand their slang; we need to know who they are. Before we are able to offer them “voice and choice,” we need to actually listen to and learn from them.

Student agency is the level of control and power learners experience in the classroom. It can organically occur through their choices of learning environments, subject matter, educational approach, and pace of learning. We have to provide those opportunities. After reviewing the New Tech Network’s middle school agency chart, I feel that I do a good job in many of the rubric areas.

I.                    Develop Growth Mindset

a.       Use Effort and Practice to Grow

b.      Seek Challenge

c.       Grow from Setbacks

                                                              i.      I teach AP Pre-Algebra to sixth graders. These three traits are inherent in these learners.

d.      Build Confidence

e.       Find Personal Relevance

                                                              i.      Again, I teach AP Pre-Algebra to sixth graders. These traits are not inherent in these learners. We fail them in earlier grades by forcing them to abide by our rules and timelines. These learners can pass our weekly tests with little effort, so we do not require them to exert any effort. However, when they face the challenges of tougher courses, like pre-Algebra, they lose their confidence and have trouble connecting it to themselves in any meaningful way.

II.                 Take Ownership Over One’s Learning

a.       Meet Benchmarks

b.      Seek Feedback

                                                              i.      My students have these abilities when they walk into the classroom. Any classroom.

c.       Tackle and Monitor Learning

d.      Actively Participate

e.       Impact Self & Community

                                                              i.      My students are weaker in these areas. I have to work on bringing these abilities out in my students.