What happens in your classroom the first day of school that makes students run to be there the second day?

By Linda Ashida

What a great question!

This recent tweet by  Alice Keeler reminded me how important it is to consider what we do in our classes on the very first day.  Do we engage our students in such a way that they look forward to returning the next day?

Today on the first day of classes at Elk Grove High School, I realized the Physics team had an answer!

Eleanor Pattie invited me to her Physics class where teams of students were engaged in a problem-solving design activity. Eleanor credits fellow Physics teacher Phil Winter for suggesting the activity. Along with Eleanor and Phil, the other Physics teachers planned to do the same activity as well:  Mary Kemp, Chris Rogers, Tom Boczar and Peter Wang.

Here's what they told their students:  

The Challenge:

Design a free-standing chair using paper and masking tape with at least 4 legs and a back that can hold more books than any other team's chair.

 Constraints:

Limited resources
Chair with at least 4 Legs and a back rest
Rise of leg must be at least 1 cm
Chair must hold weight of books for at least 5 seconds

Here's what I saw in Eleanor's class:

The Process:

Teams brainstormed and asked each other a lot of questions to decide how to best tackle the challenge with their limited supply of paper and tape. They came up with very different ideas and began testing them out. They tinkered, assessed and revised their ideas to decide on the best plan.

 

After trying out a few ideas, they began building.

After the chair building was complete, they began stacking the books, and assessing the integrity of the structure. Would it work?

Feeling confident, another group began stacking. Six books and preparing for more.




Time passed. More books.  Another group wondered. . .  28 books?!! Would it hold for five seconds? Oh the suspense!

 

Would it hold even more?!!!! 30 books?!!! The team steadied them for another five-second test.

Could they be outdone by another group?!

11 books . . . then three more . . .

 

23 books and counting!  But wait, those extra big books count for two!  That's 56!!!

 

 

The Result:

 Bravo!  The winning group of the day with 69 books atop their paper chair!!!!!!

From the very first day the students were thinking like physicists. The design challenge with constraints was a a problem solving activity that got them working in groups, asking questions, posing solutions, testing hypothesis and reflecting on their results.

All of that, and they had fun, too. I'm guessing they'll will be looking forward to going back to class tomorrow!

A shout out to the physics team for sharing their ideas, and Eleanor for inviting us in!

Using Metacognitive Strategies to Increase Student Reading Engagement

By Jackie Figliulo 

Whether asking students to engage with class-assigned texts or books of their choosing during independent reading, I’ve always struggled to get students interested in being readers.  And why should they be interested?  Because-the-teacher-said-so works for very few students.  Then when a text challenges students, its subject matter is “boring,” or their cell phones are mere inches from their itching finger tips, because-the-teacher-said-so just simply won’t cut it.  

Enter metacognitive strategies.

Telling students to think about their thinking piques their interest as we start our class each year.  Showing them that we all approach and experience a variety of texts in our own way allows them to understand there is no one way to be a reader and a thinker. Showing students it’s ok to not know everything and to ask questions is a valuable part of being a reader.  Promoting metacognitive strategies in class also tells students that their individual experiences matter and are valuable.  
     

In my English classes, I most intentionally employ metacognitive strategies during independent reading.  Students bring a book of their choosing to class on Fridays and are instructed to read for a given amount of time (25 minutes in quarter one, 30 minutes in quarter two, etc).  Once they’ve read, they complete a metacognitive reflection, answering five out of seven questions that applied to their reading experience that day.  Each quarter we make improvements to the reflection sheets so that students can use them in ways that make most sense to them as critical thinkers.

Now, how can I assess students’ thinking and reflections in a meaningful way? The metacognitive conversation.  

Each quarter, I return the students’ reading reflections all at once.  They get to look through their reading experiences from the last ten weeks and reflect on their progress, problems, and evolving thinking.  Using their own reflections as evidence, students prepare for our summative assessment:  the metacognitive conversation.  

Students must prepare for the metacognitive conversation by answering six to seven questions about their reading for the quarter.  They must reflect on what they did throughout the quarter and then set goals or propose solutions to their reading road blocks for the following quarter.  The day before our formal conversation, we review the procedure, expectations, and evaluation [see assignment sheet], then choose two student facilitators to guide the discussion the next day.  In order to participate, students must have their reflections and admittance slip (completed questions).  During the conversation, students discuss their thinking, approaches to the text, problems they encountered, and make recommendations to each other about text choices or methods.  At the close of the conversation, students complete a self assessment of their performance during the discussion.  Their reading reflections, admittance slips, self assessments, and my notes make up their final grades.  
The metacognitive conversation is a valuable, focused evaluation of one of my overarching quarter learning targets: students will be critical thinkers of texts and their own thinking.  It allows students of all reading levels to show growth and be measured on their own personal progress.

Another benefit of using metacognitive strategies and this method of assessment is the community it builds in our classroom.  I come to know how my students think as individuals and can use that to inform and differentiate my instruction.  Additionally, students get the chance to relate to one another as academics, not just as peers sharing the same space each day.  

I continue to struggle with intentionally embedding metacognitive strategies in all parts of our curriculum.  I hope to create a classroom where individual, critical thinking becomes the class norm, not just something we do on certain days.  However, the metacognitive conversation days give me hope that my students and I are at least on our way!

Please feel free to come observe a metacognitive conversation at the end of May (exact date, TBD) periods 2, 3, 6, 7, 8! :)

Collab Lab Happenings! A typical week of teacher-led professional learning at EG

Written by Linda Ashida

In case you haven't been to the Collab Lab lately, or kept up with recent Collab Blog posts, we thought we'd share some highlights of the many - and varied - professional learning activities that have happened in the Collab Lab during the last week. Read on to learn from, and be inspired by, our colleagues! 

Invitations to visit classes:  

We always enjoy when teachers invite us to their classes for us to see strategies in action and/or offer support.  In addition to the 16 class visits we enjoyed as part of our EG/BG Learning Exchange, we also were happy to have invitations from Eleanor Pattie and Joe Bush.

Eleanor invited us to her ELL classes to see open inquiry labs designed by her students. Check out her tweets @MrsPattieChem to learn more!






Joe invited us to join his students in a vision setting exercise. He challenged us to create a detailed plan of our preferred futures. Follow his tweets @josephdbush or his class hashtag #EGLTS to learn more. 

PLC Pull-Out Professional Learning Days

District PE teachers and Elk Grove Biology Teachers conducted professional learning meetings in the Collab Lab.  If you have a pull-out day scheduled with your PLC, we hope you will consider meeting in the Collab Lab.  Our ITF / DTC team enjoys learning with the teams, supporting any way we can, and facilitating interdisciplinary connections.  The Collab Lab whiteboard wall facilitates great team brainstorming and incubation of ideas!

Lesson Strategy Brainstorming Sessions:

Over the course of the last week quite a few teachers have stopped by or made appointments with us in the Collab Lab to brainstorm strategies for their classes.  We are always happy to support our colleagues and learn with them.  If you are inspired by the following examples, or have your own ideas to work through, we hope you'll contact us!

Andrea Izenstark (CTE): Social Curation Tools

Andrea is planning to engage her students in weekly Current Event Friday activities in her Intro to Business class.  We brainstormed ideas to create collaborative groups and have students curate current resources, and later present them,  using social curation tools such as FlipBoard, PopBoardz, Padlet or Google Docs.
Interested in learning more about Social Curation tools? Please come see us!  

Mike Radakovitz (PE):  Google Apps Integrated with Schoology

Mike is creating an impressive system with Google Sheets for his PE students to enter weekly data on their workouts to monitor their progress. He wanted to explore the best ways for students populate their own data in the Sheets and also to have them submit the data to Schoology.  Did you know that Google Drive is integrated with Schoology? This allows Mike's students to submit their data seamlessly.

Want to learn more about apps that are integrated with Schoology for streamlined workflow?  Please connect with us!

MaryBeth Khoury and Cindy D'Alessandro (Science): Twitter for Professional Connections
MaryBeth and Cindy stopped down for Twitter tutorials.  We discussed tips for creating a good profile, for establishing a professional following, for connecting with colleagues using hashtags. For example, Cindy and MaryBeth can connect with science teachers throughout the country - and the world - by exploring #biochat or #sciencechat. (We also may have shared strategies for voting in Mascot Madness!)




Let us know if you are interested in learning how you can use Twitter for professional learning, to have your students share their work with authentic audience, or to do research.


Kasia Paplinski (Social Worker): Google Forms for student feedback and data analysis
Kasia met with us to brainstorm the best way to move to a paperless system for soliciting feedback from students for large group programs such as SOS, or even small group meetings. We examined Google Forms and Backchannel strategies such as Today'sMeet or Twitter.  Kasia was pleased with the way that the Google Forms streamlined her team's ability to connect with, respond to, and analyze the student feedback.





If you are interested in learning efficient ways to solicit student feedback and respond to student needs, let us know.  You might also refer to this previous Collab Blog post on Google Forms by Kirsten Fletcher.

We always look forward to connecting with our colleagues in these kinds of collaborative professional learning experiences.

Do you have strategies you'd like to explore?  Do you have successful strategies to share?  Please keep in touch with us!