Anxiety and Student Accountability

Anxiety and Student Accountability

With guest star: Procrastination

At a recent staff meeting, it was mentioned by one of our counselling staff that the instances of students missing school due to anxiety, depression, and gaming addiction. There isn't much I can do about gaming addiction, but the anxiety surrounding school I felt was at least partly the responsibility of the teacher. 

Being the consummate scientist (nerd?) that I am, my first step was to do research. My first search brought me to the personality-project.org's PDF on anxiety(1). Interestingly they made the link between Anxiety and procrastination. They state that procrastination is often a result from anxiety which I found fascinating.  Teaching in a computer lab, I have a huge number of students that procrastinate on a daily basis. Perhaps this is because they are anxious about the assignments I have given them? I didn't want to take this one source at face value, so more research was required.

What else causes anxiety? Neuroticism seemed to be the biggest culprit(2). Neuroticism is defined as an over sensitivity to stressors, as well as a higher reactivity to those same stressors. An example may be how an individual experiencing neuroticism would view a deadline vs someone who does not. Both individuals would likely have some level of anxiety around a deadline; however, the individual experiencing neuroticism would have a far larger stress response (release of adrenaline, cortisol etc.) from the same stressor (the deadline). The truly unfair aspect of this is this response can be "learned" or rather the response can be strengthened through repeated experiences just like any other kind of learning(3).

How does this relate to procrastination? It is a re-focusing of the mind. The individual shifts their attention from the "painful" stimuli (the due date), and onto less painful stimuli (snapchat, supersnake.io, etc.) , with the big bad stimuli gone, the mind can relax again (and possibly reward itself with a healthy dose of dopamine for a job well done(4))

Understanding why students procrastinate is one thing, preventing it in class is a bird of another feather. Without going into too much detail on anti-procrastination techniques, the biggest and easiest step seems to be just to start. Once an activity is started (no matter how small the step), it has been shown that anxiety abates if individuals can simply start whatever it is they were anxious about. Something as simple as writing a title page can be enough.(5) The theory behind this technique is the stress of the upcoming task is no longer there when the task is no longer upcoming. It seems odd that the stress of an event approaching would be greater than the actual event itself, but that is the paradoxical nature of anxiety.

What can I do to help students develop OUT of their habits rather than deepen them? Mindfulness seems to be the ticket. Students procrastinate, they know they procrastinate, but rarely can they state WHY they procrastinate. When asked recently, the vast majority of one of my classes stated "It is just who I am, I procrastinate because I am a procrastinator." Boy, was that ever a long conversation after that little informal poll! Mindfulness can help students become more aware of their behaviour, and then eventually the causes behind their behaviour. The argument goes something like this.

1. Many of the issues we see in the classroom (and in life) come from dysfunctional self-regulation. (6)
2. Functional self-regulation requires functional emotional-regulation
3. Mindfulness increases individuals emotional-regulation abilities(7)
   QED
4. Mindfulness can help with issues in the classroom (ta-da!)

One source I have found useful is the "Get Things Done" model developed by David Allen. You can summarise the steps thusly:

Step 1: Mindfulness exerciseStep 2: Capture your ideas- get them down on "paper"Step 3: Clarify- Focus on the ideas that are important and flush them outStep 4: Organise- Which are things I can do now, which soon, which laterStep 5: Do it!

Nothing there is particularly surprising, but I have noticed a significant decrease in "time wasting" activities by my students on the days that I ask them to do this. Below I have an example of how I used this with a grade 8 class.

• Start: Re-Introduce students to mindfulness, state that the purpose is to focus on their personal emotional state, and the things that are on their mind. I provide an example of my own how I wasn't aware that an upcoming family dinner was on my mind so much (and distracting me), until I took to the time to "be still" and relax a bit.
  
• 3 min mindfulness exercise (youtube has a million of them[133,000 to be exact])
  
• Introduce the purpose of the days lesson- problem solving skills - prototype development - ask the students to write down what code they think the will have to put into the sphero (robot) to make it move around a question mark (they have already done it with a square) (3 min)
  
• Ask students to collaborate with their group and make a master copy of their draft code (including why they excluded some ideas and included others)
  
• Show students the project criteria (they have to film their trials, communicate their thinking and their learning in the video) ask them to make a plan on how they are going to get me a final video (listing digital literacy skills they might employ and predicted problems )
  
• I check their plan to make sure it is reasonable (if not, then they get sent back to the drawing board with more direction)
  
• Students film themselves programming and testing the robots, writing down anything that would not be clear through film. 

I don't think I had to tell a single student to stay off their cellphone in this class (compared to previous classes doing similar things where I would have to tell a different student every 4-5 min to stop using their cellphone inappropriately) I have yet to try this type of lesson with Sr. Grades, so stay tuned for more examples in the future. 

What do you think? Questions? Do you have experience with procrastination/mindfulness? Where do you think the problems come from?

References: (it's my blog and I'll cite how I want to ! ) 

1. Procrastination and Anxiety (Dopamine) - Personality-project.orghttps://www.personality-project.org/revelle/syllabi/301/301.anxiety.pdf - taken from:Source: http://www.sh.lsuhsc.edu/fammed/OutpatientManual/Anxiety.htm taken from 5. Gliatto, Michael F. Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Am Fam Physician. 2000;62:1591-600, 1602
   
2. Anxiety and Neuoticisim - https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2016/01/neuroticism-predicts-anxiety-depression-disorders
   
   
3. Anxiety and the relationship to neural connections- "The Neuropsychology of Anxiety" 2nd Edition by Jeffery Alan Gray and Neil McNaughton- Accessed Dec 13 2016- Page 171 - https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_M4owh-vs-8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR15&dq=are+reactions+strengthened+through+habituation+neural+networks+anxiety&ots=KVOzLqKYn7&sig=JsHjpz4DLAQCWbRx7vqhfMrpT7c#v=onepage&q&f=false
   
4. Dopamine and Procrastination Neurogistics- "Procrastination- Is Dopamine to Blame?" by Emily Roberts
   
5. Tools to treat procrastination - "Procrastination the Time Robber" by Dr. Thomas A. Richards http://anxietynetwork.com/content/procrastination-time-robber
   
6. Importance of Self-Regulation in the classroom- "Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance".
   Pintrich, Paul R.; de Groot, Elisabeth V.
   Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 82(1), Mar 1990, 33-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.33
   Special Section: Motivation and efficacy in education: Research and new directions.
   
   
7. Mindfulness' efect on behaviour- "Feasibility and Preliminary Outcomes of a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Urban Youth" Mendelson, T., Greenberg, M.T., Dariotis, J.K. et al. J Abnorm Child Psychol (2010) 38: 985. doi:10.1007/s10802-010-9418-x
   
8. Getting things done- http://gettingthingsdone.com/  and http://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-getting-things-done-1551880955 

Digital Reflections: Graduated Release and Interviews

Digital Reflections: Graduated Release and Interviews

Inspired by: Learn rich by:Ben Richardson

    So I had a few fleeting moments before the bell went today and I thought I would catch up on the blog by my friend/coworker  Ben Richardson, or as I call him Benny R (link in the subtitle). He is exploring how to shift his conversations with students into more of communications with students. He is currently giving a lot of feedback in class but in a more informal way. That forced me to reflect on how effective my feedback currently is, and I've realised the answer is "Not very effective". So the following is my plan on how to remedy that. 

Step 1: Improving the student side (Graduated release)

     This is an iron that I already have in the fire. I have been working on it (rather haphazardly) for the past two weeks. For those of you unfamiliar with graduated release, the mantra goes something like this. "I demonstrate, you watch. I demonstrate again, you help. You do it, I help. You do it on your own". That is the formula for 90% of my math/physics classes and it has worked well for me so far, so why not apply it to (digital) reflections.

    I will use the example of my IT9 class for the remainder of this, but I am doing similar things with my other courses as well, with similar results

    I started this near the end of a unit on Photoshop. I wanted the students to reflect on the major questions I have had them reflect on all semester:  

1. What did I know at the start of this assignment?
2. What did I learn? 
3. Where is the evidence of that learning? 
4. What do I still have to learn going forward? 
5. What problem solving strategies did I employ?

I didn't want to just give them a script to regurgitate, so I gave them an example of my learning about how to use the "animate frames" tool in Photoshop (essentially it makes a simple animation). As I described my learning to the students, I typed it out. This forced me to slow it down a bit, and gave the students something to reference later on. It looked something like this:

"Coming into this learning, I wasn't sure how animating would work on Photoshop. I viewed Photoshop as simply a tool for making pictures. Pictures and videos occupy very different places in my mind. Another teacher reminded me that early animations were just a series of pictures that you flipped through quickly (like a flip book). I had done flip books as a student (sometimes at the corner of my note book when I should have been focusing on something else). So I now had the background knowledge for how animation worked, now I needed the technical knowledge to figure out how to actually get pictures to flip through. I decided to google it. I knew there were teachers that knew how to do this (because I saw them do it), but I also knew that I learn better by being able to reference material as I move through an assignment.

After googling it and working through it in Photoshop, I animated a ball bouncing around the screen. As you can see I used the knowledge of the shape tool in Photoshop to make a ball, then duplicated the layer and moved the ball to make the frames of my animation. When the ball hit the edge of the canvas I added layers where the ball squished, then expanded in a new direction. I stopped making new layers when the ball returned to its original position. That was all old knowledge. The new knowledge came from using the "timeline" tools, using the "create slides from frames" option, and then playing around with the timing of each slide to make the ball look like it was moving smoothly. If I let the frame linger too long the ball looked like it jumped, not long enough and the ball moved too quickly to see. 

I'm not sure how this can be used with real pictures, if I can take a series of photos of people and make it look like an animation. I have seen GIFs that look similar to my animation, so I suspect you can.

I struggled a few times with the timeline tools." I persevered and applied past knowledge to a new situation and I remained open to continuous learning" [tools of the mind PDF #1,8,16 respectively] There is one button that does not have the typical button appearance (I think the shadow on it is too small, so it looks like a title) If you don't press it then the tools required for this don't appear in the timeline menu. This is a common thread for my problems with Photoshop. I had to ask another teacher to show me once quickly how they did it.  Tools not appearing used to throw me off , but I am starting to detect patterns. If tools don't show up, it is usually because there is a setting that is off. For example, if you load a picture that is in grey scale, any setting to do with colour is not available  (because there is no colour to adjust) 

Phew, it looks long on a page, but it only takes about 15 min to go through with a class (less if you type faster ☺ )


Stage 2: The interview- I write you help

This is where I am at the planning stage. Inspired by Ben Richardson's blog "Learn Rich", My plan is to interview 3-4 students every class. I will get the class to start their work for the day, then start at one end of the class list and work my way through (keeping track of who I've talked to on google spreadsheets). I will use an assignment that they have already completed and help them to shape a meaningful reflection out of it. This will ensure two way communication of their learning. I will use the online tool "Fresh Grade" to ensure that the student has that conversation to look back on, and because I have chosen to include the parent in their portfolios, the parent will see the written portion of the conversation as well. I will point out the relevant sections of their assignment and get clarification from the student

Stage 3: The interview - You write and I help

Similarly to the previous stage, I will go through the class list, 3-4 students per day; however, this time I will give them the computer to write the conversations and I will be the more passive one. They will take the pilots seat and I will just nudge them in the right direction where required.

Stage 4: The Summative Assessment- You write, I mark. 

Only at this point, after I have given them plenty of resources for writing a meaningful reflection, will I attach a permanent mark to their work.

This is where things get tricky. With 30 students, it could take 30 classes to get through stages 1-3. In that time there will probably be at least one major assignment that they have done, and several minor assignments that lead up to it. I will still have to provide marks for all those assignments (and reflections). That isn't much of a problem, but because the students will be improving as we go, I have to provide them with the opportunity to re-submit old assignments with their new reflective capabilities.

Any ideas? Thoughts? Criticism? Post them in the comments.

Reflection and the Curve of Forgetting

Reflection and the Curve of Forgetting

     One of the learning concepts I like to brief my students on is "The Curve of Forgetting". The concept deals with how memory is stored/lost over time, and has huge implications for all types of learning. The graph below shows generally what is going on when a student is trying to learn something. 

Forgetting curve: Showing % remembered per day. Taken from 4mylearn.org

     The various studies vary, but most agree that within a day most people will forget ~25% of what they have learned, and if you stretch that out to 3 months that increases to well over 80%. That loss can be mitigated through well timed repetition, typically 1h after learning, 24h after learning, 1 week after learning, then 1 month after learning. Reviewing material at those four critical stages has been shown to flip the results, and increase the retention of the learning to 80% rather than the loss of that information. 

     Even with the decreased content in the new BC curriculum, I don't think there is time to review the same content four times. Ideally your students would be studying on a regular basis, but I don't think risking students forgetting the vast majority of what they learned is worth the risk. Reflections are helpful here. Let's take a math class as an example (as I feel this curve is especially apparent in the math classes I've taught) 

Beginning of class Reflection: What do you know about the Pythagorean theorem?

Example: "I don't know anything about it, I know theorem has something to do with an idea, and the name Pythagorean sounds foreign to me"

Direct Teaching: During the class you provide examples of how if you make squares out of the two smaller sides of a right triangle, you can cut up those squares and they will fit inside the square made from the largest side. Introduce the language of "Leg" for the smaller sides, and "hypotenuse" for the largest side. 

Student independent learning:  Students practice what they have just learned hear, example problems should start simple, and move to more complex problems with real world examples. Challenge questions can be useful here

Final Reflection: "Compared to what you knew at the beginning of the lesson, what do you know about the Pythagorean theorem? What do you think we are going to learn about next?" 

This serves as the first "inoculation" of learning. This is the review ~1h after learning something that students require in order to ensure long-term learning. It also provides you an easy feedback mechanism. If you get 20 reflections stating they didn't remember anything, then you will have to go back to the start :( 

The Next Day: Alternate between a reflection "What did we learn last class" and a one question quiz with a simple example from the last class. This is the review 24-48 h after the learning. This is the second booster shot to their learning

One week later : What do you remember about the Pythagorean theorem? (This should not take longer than 3 min) 

One month later: Provide an example of how you could use the Pythagorean theorem with [insert what you are learning here] 

This is a time intensive process, and it takes a LOT of planning. Your day plan might look like this

Expressions Lesson

Reflect: 

5 min -Pythagorean Theorem && Cartesian Coordinates ;  

5 min -Flash back quiz- tessellations; 

6 min -"If I have a formula 3-5x, what will happen if x=0? What do you think will happen if x gets bigger?" 

60 min -Insert lesson on expressions here including practice-

10 min- Final reflection "how did my prediction at the beginning of class pan out? Was I right? What did I base my answer on? What would I have to change about the formula in order to make my prediction right?

It isn't perfect, and it is time consuming, but I feel like it is best practice. What do you think?

Over-caffinated conundrum

Over-caffeinated conundrum

** I have gone back over the notes I wrote on the articles I read and added in reflective comments. These are denoted with [   ] around the reflection. 

     So a Seattle based coffee company currently has a buy-one get-one-free premonition going on.  My wife and I decided to each get a "holiday inspired beverage. " Unfortunately my wife enjoyed neither her drink nor mine, so I was left to polish off the better part of  40oz of milk and caffeine. Once my stomach forgave me for the injustice, my mind took over on punishment for my poor judgement thus depriving me of my much desired sleep. 

      tl;dr: (Too Long; Didn't Read) I had too much coffee and can't sleep. [ don't ask me why there is a semicolon there, as far a I know it is just internet convention.  I was curious as well and that rabbit hole is deep. Feel free to take the red pill here though  http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-the-semicolon-in-tldr-ironic ]

The result of my lack of somnolence is shown below.  I got lost in blog posts and masters theses  (thesises... Is that right?) And in the end thought I would write down things that felt relevant. Are they relevant? Will they be coherent?  Can our intrepid, insomniac  author get to the point?  You decide

For blog:

1. Assignments provide snapshot of learning. 
2. Reflection is the thread that ties that Polaroid to the other snapshots AND explains the meaning of the pictures
3. Digital portfolios are both assessment as learning and of learning.
4. The assessment of the learning is obviously the final stage of the portfolio,  and ideally will be done with the student.
5. The assessment as learning has a few parts

    i) cements the learning that has taken place [future blog on curve of forgetting ]
   ii) focuses reflector on the big idea / purpose of the assignment
   iii) teaches metacognative strategies
   iv) provides a logical application point for skills that may not have been obviously applicable to an assignment

Part 4 (iv) of this is hard to explain. Imagine a math assignment where a student has to examine a math "shortcut" figure out how it works, then explain it to a small group.

Using the bc  maths 8 curriculum as a guide  ( https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/mathematics/8 ) 

the student would likely show "reasoning and analyzing " skills and " Understanding and solving " techniques,  but it is unlikely that there would be an organic  way to show their ability to "Reflect on mathematical thinking". I can't recall many group presentations that had the presenter stop and think out loud regarding their thinking strategies. (Maybe they should though...ooh meta^2). I'm not sure if that cleared my point or just muddied the waters.

3) End point reflection should probably include :

A) what skills did I develop /refine
B) what knowledge did I gain / sharpen
C) What do I still have to learn / work on for this course?

4) [Clearly I was getting a little bit over excited here]

• DO I DIRECT TO THE CURRICULUM,  GUIDE THEM THROUGH THE CURRICULUM OR TELL THEM WHAT THE GOAL WAS????? 
• Are the curriculum documents written in such as way that your average high school student can understand them? 
• If not, is it better to re-write the curriculum in "kid friendly" language, or walk them through the "unfriendly" language? [Upon further reflection I would rather walk them through the "unfriendly" language. It develops literacy, helps me re-focus on the task at hand, and provides the students with another tool to help their understanding. ]

Clear as mud? Questions, Comments,  Concerns?  Post them in the comments.

Digital Portfolios: Practising What I Preach

Digital Portfolios: Practising What I Preach

When I first began to ask students to reflect, quite often it would look something like this

         "Okay students, reflect. Here are some questions you can answer, go!"

Quite often I would get answers like

         "I found this assignment difficult because the tools I was using were hard."
or
          "This was an easy assignment because I was good at it."

Obviously this wasn't really the detail I was looking for. I wanted to actually get an idea of what the students found hard, and why they found it difficult, or what skills the students came into the assignment with that they leveraged in order to make it easier for themselves.

The root of the problem was obvious, but I couldn't see it because I was so wrapped up in providing feedback and chasing students around for not completing their work. The issue was I wasn't asking the right questions, or rather the questions I asked were to vague. I had also provided no exemplars for the students, good or bad. What is worse (in my opinion at least) is the students only have a vague idea of why were were reflecting in the first place!

Here is an example that I have found more success with:

   "Okay students, lets reflect! Not so fast, I go first."
*open an assignment*
   "So lets take the high road, lets talk about the successes I found in this assignment, who can give         me some things they see that are good about this assignment"
*students provide me a list of good things*
   "If were were to reflect on what went well in this assignment. What would be the purpose of such a    thing?"
*Students hum, haw, and shift awkwardly. Finally one brave soul shyly puts up a hand*
    "To tell you.... to tell you  what we learned?"
*Balloons fall from the sky, lights flash, a band starts up!*
   "That sounds pretty reasonable, so what kinds of things would a teacher like me be interested in    hearing about"


We then proceed to write a basic reflection on one positive thing together. How I made it, what skills allowed me to make it, how I solved problems I encountered etc.

I then ask the students to take 15 min and write one for their own assignment. After 15 min I come around to each student and provide them with verbal formative feedback.

After doing this four or five times with a class, the quality of  their reflections have improved dramatically. It doesn't work for all students, and it might not work for you, but it works for me :)

Digital Portfolios - How

Recently some colleagues and I got together to talk about Digital Portfolios. Here is what we came up with . Stay tuned for a video on all this :)

---

We’re here today to talk to you about the “how” of reflections within Digital Portfolios.

Digital Portfolios allows your students to show you their continuum of learning; including what they know going into the lesson, what their progress is mid-way through and at the end of it  what they know now and where they may go next. This communicated through reflections.

From here on out I will be discussing what has worked well for me.

Initial Major Reflection:

This is where we hook them and determine the initial baseline of their knowledge. This includes what they already know, what predictions the can make about the upcoming learning, and potentially some strategies they may use.

Midway Major Reflection

This occurs partway into your project or assignment. This stage is where you provide opportunities for student to reflect on their current learning including: weather their initial predictions have been corroborated or rather their learning has gone off on an unanticipated direction. Students can also highlight any initial successes and discuss current difficulties.

Final Major Reflection:

At this point students will summarize their learning journey [cue don’t stop believing] They will describe what they thought they knew, what they actually knew, and what they learned. Hopefully students will also reflect on  what is yet to be learned as well. [Remember, this is just what has worked well for me]

They will also describe their skill development - The strategies they thought they would deploy, the strategies they DID deploy, and how effective they were. Effective reflection should also include where they struggled, how they coped or how they should have coped.

As the learning facilitator, your role in the reflections is to provide guiding questions, examples of your own reflective practices, as well as formative feedback on their reflective abilities.

ç

What you as a teacher do:

Before they start:

Give them an outline of what the assignment is about both topic and skill development.

Give them formative feedback on their plans and predictions.

(e.g. So you know romeo and juliet is going to be about teen suicide? Interesting, why do you think that? ~Or~ You are going to try and solve this problem by making a graph? Why do you think that will work? Have you tried that with a similar problem? ~and~ You think we will work on gathering, interpreting, and analyze ideas about the bubonic plague and communicate what you learned and some decisions about that? Do you think your plan addresses all that, or are you missing something?)

Middle:

This is still the realm of formative assessment / feedback. And it should still be on both their acquisition of knowledge, and the development of skills.

(e.g. This sentence in [insert language here] of your story seems like it is missing something. If it were in english, what would you say could make it better? ~OR~ Your hypothesis seems to be missing something, compair it to the examples from your notes and see what is different ~and~ You said you were going to collect information about settlers when discussing the impact of the colonization of canada, but you decided to switch to the Cree in Alberta. You went from a huge topic to a much smaller, totally different topic, that is an interesting choice, what made you make that choice?)

End:

Here is where the forces of formative and summative collide. With the feedback from the middle section, we assume the student has made the best iteration of this assignment that they can. We are saying they have squeezed as much juice out of this apple as possible. Assess their learning, how well have they shown you that they have learned what you wanted them to learn? But help them for the future as well, tell them what they could have done better, where you saw promise etc.

“Everybody has a plan until they are punched in the face” - Mike Tyson

On Digital Portfolios

First!


So the school I work at has been toying around with digital portfolios as a way of communicating student learning (CSL). Typically I teach sciences with a supçon  of Tech, this year it is all Tech all the time! While I miss my precious sciences, teaching all tech is giving me the tools and time needed to really shift my practice. Hence the digital portfolios.


I see the digital portfolio helping in a few important ways.
1) Forces me to force them to reflect.
2) Changes my focus from from the result to the process.
3) Provides me with tools to better communicate students' learning with parents.
4) Allows me to shift from a numbers based marking system to a standards based marking system (mastery?)
5) It shifts the responsibility for learning more to the student (growth mindset)


Details:

1) A portfolio without reflection is really just a collection of assignments and doesn't show learning anymore than a messy 3-ringed binder does. I am hoping asking students to reflect will

• Re-focus them on what they are actually learning
• Improve their problem-solving skills (habits of mind?)
• Give me a better sense of what they actually know, rather then trying to interpret it from an assignment. 

2)  I know that the process is where the learning comes from, but breaking out of 20 years of schooling (don't judge me) is hard, and I often find myself drifting back to "results, results, results". Focusing on the portfolios drags me away from that (kicking and screaming at times)

3) "Your child is getting 75%" doesn't tell parents much, and doesn't give them any way to help the student develop. "Your child is proficient in their critical thinking but still beginning in gathering ideas from group members" is a lot more useful (in my opinion at least)

4) I am not satisfied with how accurate my marking is in terms of understanding. I have had conversations with "A" students where they show very little understanding of the material, but the "C" student next to them can explain what is going on perfectly. I am unjustly penalising students that don't have test taking skills, and unjustly rewarding students that have "figured out" testing.  

5) I feel like a lot of my teaching has been "This is what you need to learn!" followed by "Prove that you learned it!" I much prefer "what have you learned, what else can you learn, what would you like to learn" I think this will help student develop a growth mindset (another new passion of mine).

More to come on digital portfolio fun!