txting julius casear: bewr the ides of mrch

This week I'll try...

...to actually write a blog post.

...to give each student, everyday, a chance to show his mad Shakespeare interpretation skills. 

Two weeks ago, I signed up for a group text messaging service (Cel.ly) and set up two of my courses. Students joined a "cell" for the class and it allows me to send group text messages (without my knowing the students' phone numbers), receive responses from students that are only seen by me, and share selected student responses with everyone. I sent an MFTB (Men from the Boys) question the first weekend, where students had to interpret a few lines from Julius Casear, to try it out and I heard from many students (mostly "boy" responses, for now). 

This week I'll try something similar everyday, from the night's reading, giving them several short (1-3 lines) passages to choose from. (This is an idea that was sparked by Joy Kirr's recent blog post - http://kirrscholars.blogspot.com/2013/02/paraphrase.html). We do close reading everyday in class but this will be the first time I'll get a chance to hear from everyone each day. It will give us a jump on the next day's discussion and I'll see how they are doing with the reading. Hopefully, this will also give those whose hands rarely go up a chance to be heard when I use their correct response as an example to everyone. 

Students will be able to submit responses via text through Cel.ly, online via a form (Google), or old school on paper handed in at the start of class. We can go over a few responses and discuss which are closest and why. The advantage of the text and online responses is that sample responses can be displayed for the entire class to see. What I still need to determine is if it makes sense to give the students a correct answer after their response or wait until class the next day. I am sure they will have the answer for me by the end of this week.

Boost Learning in Presentations and Games

For those teachers who use games for learning and review, it's apparent the rise in engagement that they bring to the classroom. But, does this engagement and enthusiasm always lead to learning? According to research by neuroscientist Paul Howard-Jones, adding an element of chance can help further increase the chances of learning. It's just a matter of adding it at the right time.

For instance, the addition of a simple 50/50 chance of losing all points associated with a correct answer leads to more effective learning. But where in the process does the learning peak? I asked Howard-Jones via email and it turns out that the following sequence works well: 

  1) student/team answers question

  2) student/team is given a 50/50 chance to "double or nothing" their points

  3) correct answer is revealed

It turns out that even if they lose points or answer incorrectly, the learning is still at a peak because of the state of mind of ALL the students involved. Good or bad, even those who are not answering have heightened awareness because they apparently enjoy watching their classmates lose points. Which is probably better than enjoying them getting no points because they answered incorrectly.

There are many ways to offer the chance, from coin flips to die rolls to online tools. The chance element can even be added to a typical presentation as Howard-Jones teamed with a gaming company to create a way to gamify a presentation using zondle.com called Team Play.

It turns out that to increase the effectiveness of learning in (and out of) the classroom, students need to take a chance.

Think with Ink

During a recent Engchat discussion about student writing I contributed a comment about an activity I do with students which I call Think with Ink. There were several questions so I thought I would expound on the process.

     The idea of Think with Ink originated in a professional development session held at my school close to 20 years ago. Please note that I am almost completely avoiding a snarky comment about actually learning something constructive from a professional development session conducted by an "outsider." While I believe that most of the time the best PD does come from within because the PD leader knows the audience, MUCH can be learned from "outsiders" on a continuous basis through Twitter, hashtag chats, and webinars. That outside voice has become essential for my growth and constant learning.

     At its core, Think with Ink (my name for it) is a simple exercise. Students are given an open-ended topic (i.e. Good - "We are about to read an example of a Western story. What are your expectations about the characters, plot elements, and settings of a Western?" Not good - "What color was the bad guy's hat?") and they do three minutes of non-stop writing. Students MUST write the entire time. If the student does not know what to write then he writes the word "stuck" over and over until something related to the topic comes to mind. I tell students not to worry or correct spelling, grammar, or handwriting. Just write.

     That's it! I say "go" and they write while I verbally refocus anyone who stops to stare and "think" without writing. After a few sessions I am usually able to write with them but that only comes after a little training of the students. After I have them stop I ask several students "at random" to verbally decipher the good stuff from what they wrote. In other words, I don't want them to read it word for word but just add their new ideas to the discussion.

     Think with Ink (or Use Your Head with Lead as one of my students came up with because he was using a pencil and I think was feeling slighted) allows me to hear from everyone, even those who are usually reluctant to raise their hands. It forces them to think for THREE WHOLE MINUTES (snarkiness intended) about something and so it is a very rare occasion that a student doesn't have at least one thing to add. I allow students an out every once in a while ("All I came up with were 47 'stucks' and what Joe already said about chickens.") but they soon realize that they can't do that every time so they work to get it right. 

     The process does work and even this post helped me realize that once again. The entire "side note" about outsider PD only happened as I began writing and thinking about how much I learn from outsiders each day even as I was typing that outside professional development was a waste. I was literally contradicting myself while I typed which turned this quick post into something that has me typing (and thinking) far longer than three minutes.

When is not a blog a blog?

I like to play golf but do not do it very often, therefore I am not very good. But that's okay because I have no aspirations for the PGA and it gives my golf outings a sense of adventure beyond the course itself (woods walks searching for wayward golf balls and/or clubs that have "slipped" from my grasp, etc). All of this allows me a more casual approach to my scoring, i.e. a lost ball does not mean a penalty to me because I believe the lost ball is penalty enough. It helps keep the experience less stressful.

It's time to take the same stress-free approach to my blog. 

My number of posts are very infrequent, similar to my rounds of golf, but I would like to change that. They are not as frequent as I would like for many reasons, but one of those is the time I have been spending putting together tutorials, lessons, and web pages for the faculty at my school. To remedy the stress of blogging, or lack thereof, I decided to use the "lost ball" approach and stretch the rules a bit because I am in no way destined for the PGA of blogging. It involves taking a 21st century take on texts and count all of these web pages as a type of blog entry. After all, they do convey information and personal opinion. In addition, if a blog should contain insight and you are looking for it here, an argument could be (and probably is) made that my blogs don't seem to contain much of that anyway. Therefore, it is easy for me to count the lost time as penalty enough from my blog writing and I will count these as entries - they are just in a 21st century form.

When the Ripples Return

A couple of days before the last day of class one of my colleagues, Paul Clark, mentioned an end of the year idea that he was doing with his English classes. He gave his students ballots to vote on different categories for the readings they had done in class: Best Novel, Best Character, Biggest Jerk, etc. He gave them the ballots the day before classes ended, tallied the votes, and created cards and envelopes for students to read as part of an awards ceremony in class. He said students had a good time doing it each year and it was a good way to reflect on and appreciate all they had done over the course of the year.

Of course, I stole it.

I did add a few technological twists and it was one of these that created a surprising ripple effect. My students voted using a Google form that I set up for them and therefore, all the results were placed in a spreadsheet. The next day Paul was using tally marks to compute scores before classes began. I sat next to him, showed him the spreadsheet, pressed one button, and the results were automatically computed and a colorful piechart created for each category. There was hardly any taunting at all in my huge grin as I moved the screen into his face.

"But you don't get to see the drama of the vote unfolding," said Paul.

Totally true. I think I mentioned that as teachers, we've got plenty of free time to devote to tally mark drama. It's difficult not to be a little snarky by the end of the school year.

It was something I added at the last minute to the "ceremony" that created the unforeseen ripple. I decided to Tweet out the results during my last period of the day but expected little to no response - like a stone tossed in a pond: Plop. Ripples. Silence.

But that was not the case. There were several retweets from former students a few years removed from my class, usually mentioning one of their favorites from their time in my class. Maybe it was their retweets or the fact that I put the school name as a hash tag but the response became even more interesting. There were severals former students who were "outraged" that a particular novel was voted as "worst." Of course, they had every reason to be upset because there is nothing on my book list that could ever be called worst of anything! I had to explain to them that that category is especially useful to me in determining which readings I need to do a better job of teaching. If I had done a better job, it would not be a worst. If that explanation didn't satisfy, I went to the tried and true and mentioned that they were only freshmen. They have some learning and growing to do.

The ripple created by those simple tweets became a way to draw in past students and continue a conversation that began their freshman year in high school. It also gave them a chance to see what had left an impression after several years.

One of those former students is lucky enough to get to do it every day of the school year and he does an amazing job in the process. Hopefully, one day, I can show him how to overcome his reliance on tally marks.

How do students know what they know? (an effective exit slip)

I remember sitting in class a few (plus!) years ago and at times totally following what was going on. It could have been almost any subject but there were times when it seemed to click. 


At least I thought so.

Then I got home and started the homework. Different story. It just wasn't that clear anymore and I realized that I didn't quite get it the way I thought. This was not exclusive to homework as it also happened at times on quizzes and tests. I thought I had studied enough (which, admittedly was what I always thought) but it did not pan out.

I want my students to avoid this problem and the trick is for them to answer the question: "How do I know when I really know it?" But how?

I recently saw a tweet for a webinar run by Ray Jimenez, who is a great webinar presenter by the way, entitled "Learners Don't Know What They Don't Know." Of course, I was excited to get the long-awaited answer to my question in one interesting hour but, ironically enough, I assumed incorrectly because the topic centered on something a little different.

The traditional exit slip asks the generic question, "How well do you understand today's lesson?" The problem is the same, though. Do they really know? The key to the exit slip (or daily quiz in my class) needs to focus on exposing how well they know the material. It should be a question that shows their understanding, not their opinion of that understanding. 

That question will be a lot less generic than the "How well..?" and therefore more difficult to create, but in the long run it will be one that is far more effective.

Move over Jeopardy and Blingo, this review is a Space Race

While I like to give the students an opportunity to do a game-like review (Jeopardy and "Blingo"* are two popular formats) before a test, the time and resources are not always available for me to create an appropriate amount (and type) of questions. But now I have the students generate the questions and then it just takes a cut and paste to build the review into Socrative.com.

The review session is done in pairs with students sharing an iPad (or netbook). In a couple classes there was an odd number of students so there was one group of three, but the third person seemed a bit left out and could not read the screen very well with the others. In most cases, as they worked through the review, one student read the question out loud and they both discussed the answer before selecting.

The review game in this case is Space Race, which is part of Socrative.com. At first appearance it may seem a little "young" for high school students but my freshmen and senior classes have found much enjoyment in it. Student pairs are assigned a colored space ship and with each correct question it slowly advances. The display is projected from my laptop on the LCD projector and students can see (and comment on) the progress of all the space ships. It is the lack of progress of certain color ships that garner the most comments. There are usually two or three teams assigned randomly to each color and then they ask out loud who else has the same color to figure out who they are working with. The game continues with words of "encouragement" for each other which adds a fun and competitive spirit.

To build the question bank, students were asked to create one or two multiple choice questions (with 4 or 5 possible answers) that deal with main points or themes of the readings. I tried to get them to focus on what they thought was important and relevant (hint, hint - our notes) and not random, minute details. Reading over their questions gives me a chance to see if they are on the right path in looking for the ideas (as opposed to the trivial facts) that matter in the readings. Some of the questions end up appearing several times in different form, depending on how the student worded it. One student commented on how helpful that was to him in remembering some of the key points. Heading into the last test, students asked to do this review game again because many of them thought it was a great help in preparation. But the student generated questions can create some controversy.

These sessions have been very lively. The student generated questions are included, warts and all, which creates constant debate. At first I thought that this was something that was not going to work but that changed.
"That's a (insert your choice of adjective here) question!"
"They spelled that wrong."
"That is NOT the correct answer!"
These were just a few of the comments directed at the question creator/offender, even if he wasn't in the room at the time. Would they feel as comfortable discussing these problems and mistakes out loud if I had created all the questions? Probably not. It seems they have no problem letting each other know when they have made a mistake and I think a lot of good connections comes from these comments and the discussions that follow. It reminds me of the way gamers comment to each other, whether they are playing together in the same room or online. Certainly it has some similarity to group study and the way they argue, discuss, and, hopefully, laugh. In any case, it is not a quiet, individual activity and that is exactly what I was looking for.

The process: The students create the questions in a Google form I have created. I copy the information from the Google spreadsheet to the spreadsheet template from Socrative. At that point I upload the quiz through Socrative and it is ready to go. The process has become so quick that on the last one, I completely forgot to do this before class and was able to complete it as they walked in the room.

*Blingo is very similar to Bingo and gets its name because the middle "free" space features a picture of Mr. T. The game card was designed by my brilliant colleague, Sam Haller.