The Best Self-Assessment Questions for Encouraging a Growth Mindset

The Best Self-Assessment Questions for Encouraging a Growth Mindset



A Growth mindset (GM) is one of the pillars to improvement.  While this article doesn't speak to what a GM is, I think it is pretty clear as to how the questions presented would be valuable questions for students  to ask. In fact, they aren't bad questions for educators to ask of themselves as well!

Summer Reading- Post 2 of ? : "To be a Scientist, you must always read"

Summer Reading- Post 2 of ? :

 "To be a Scientist, you must always read"

TL;DR - Science teachers should get students to read more scientific articles / information because it is their job, and what is best for kids. Reading aloud is one technique that I would like to use more, both to break down the culture of fear surrounding being wrong, and to add life and excitement to material that may otherwise seem listless or boring to some students. 

     In his book "Teach Like A Champion" Doug Lemov discusses techniques to optimize your students' classroom experience. One such technique that caught my eye was "Control The Game". Upon first reading the title, I assume this was going to be something about classical classroom management. That it was going to be some psychobabble regarding being the dominant presence in the room, or some such other thing. Imagine my surprise when right from the byline it states "Ask students to read aloud frequently, but mange the process to ensure expressiveness, accountability, and engagement."

     I have a confession to make. I am a big. fat. phony. At least that is how I feel after reading this chapter. I have long taken up the cause of the beleaguered Humanities teachers. A bit of back story first perhaps? 

1. One of the most important skills a child develops is how to read. The vast majority of research available indicates that the best way to get better at reading, is to read more.
   
2. Many science teachers recognize this, and bemoan their students inabilities to read and comprehend scientific information. Furthermore, they often level criticism at their Humanities counterparts. "Why don't you ask them to read more scientific information" they often lament.
    
3. It is not the job of a Humanities teacher to teach the skills of a science class.
   
4. It is; however, the job of a science teacher to teach the skills of a science class

--- Q.E.D.---

5. It is my bloody job to teach students how to bloody well read scientific information!

     So that sounds great and everything. But here is the problem. You see, nobody ever taught me how to read scientific information. It was something that I just picked up over time, and honestly, I am not entirely sure exactly what I do when I read scientific papers. So here is where the hypocrisy comes in... I haven't quite been doing that, actually to be fair, I haven't been doing that at all in my Jr. Classes. Do I ask my Jr. Science classes to read from the text book? Sure, sometimes. Do I bring in the occasional article? Yeah. But with my Jr. Science classes 1, I have been seriously lacking. 

     Back to the book. Lemov recommends reading early, reading often, and reading out loud. Furthermore, he suggests not just reading out loud, but reading with emphasis and emotion. I can't tell you the last time I had a student read out loud, let alone with emphasis or emotion! He continues in the chapter to further refine the "read out loud" theme. I'm sure you had a similar experience to mine. A teacher would start with one student, then predictably move around the class, each student reading one paragraph. You would look around the class, figure out what paragraph was yours, then promptly tune out. For that reason (tuning out), he proposes keeping students' on their toes by mixing how much they read, who reads, and obviously what they read. This connects with the technique mentioned in my previous post regarding a culture of wrong, and regarding mistakes a learning opportunity, rather than something to be embarrassed about. In addition, not accepting "I don't know" or "I don't want to read" as an answer. Even if they just read a sentence, or the teacher reads the majority of the material, but they pause and make the students read out important words. 

     I remember during my time in  high school, there was nothing worse than having to read out-loud, a new word, and then stumble and fumble over it. Part of the dread of reading out loud came from the fear of failure, or being wrong. If I can reduce that fear, maybe I can reduce some of the anxiety around reading aloud  and thereby introduce more meaning to the deluge of scientific reading I will be throwing at them ;) .  Furthermore, by reading the material out-loud I can bring more meaning and life to it. If a student reads something in a monotone voice, I can re-read it with emphasis on the parts that I found interesting or surprising, or I can ask them to re-read it doing the same. On occasion, it has been pointed out to me, not unkindly, that I am a bit of a nerd. That is to say, I am very passionate about topics that one is typically not passionate about. It is that passion that may be one of my greatest strengths as a teacher. What better way to try to get my students to match that passion then with matching my volume and cadence with reading a particularly juicy sentence out loud?

     What do you think? Maybe you disagree and you think it is the English teachers' job to teach students how to read different types of literature (science included). Maybe you think asking students to read aloud is cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe you didn't like how I switched between out-loud and aloud (I checked, they both suffice). You know where to comment. 

1- I am being a bit harsh on myself here. I think I do a much better job with my Sr. Science classes. I typically get them to keep a pdf I found regarding reading scientific articles, and I have a small selection of primary research articles for ecology and a few other topics. I also pepper in a liberal number of articles from "IFL Science" 

Summer Reading: Teach Like a Champ - Post 1 of ?

Summer Reading: Teach Like a Champ - Post 1 of ?

In this post: Checking for understanding, The culture of "wrong", and don't take "I don't know" for an answer.

In the dying days of the school year, and in a desperate attempt to maintain my motivation going into the summer, I decided to order a book of chapters.ca (No I won't call it indigo). I was torn between "Teach Like a Champion" and "Teach Like a Pirate". I was leaning heavily towards Pirate (for obvious reasons) but after learning that the latter book did not involve swords, parrots, or booty, I decided on "Teach like a Champion" by Doug Lemov [From here on out abbreviated TLC... don't go chasing water falls]

The book begins with some useful preamble about he purposes of the book, but in an effort to avoid stepping on the authors toes, I am just going to skip to the good stuff. The vast majority of this book involves techniques, so I will provide my take on some of the 62 techniques (Yes, you read that right, 62!)

The first six groups deal with checking for understanding, abbreviated as CFU by the author. This posed a bit of a problem for me, working as a lifeguard and taking quite a few molecular biology courses, CFU typically stands for Colony Forming Units and is indicative of how much feces is in the water.  But I digress.....

When Doug Lemov speaks of CFU, he isn't talking about at the end of a unit for the purposes of a report card, but rather activities at the beginning, middle, and end of a lesson to determine A) When it is time to move on and B) Where you need to focus some more attention. While reading, this is where I started to get really interested. I will be teaching math for the first time in a while starting in September, and all of this clicked well with how I was envisioning my math class. (These techniques will also work well with my Jr. and Sr. Science classes as well, and he provides examples on how to use them with an English class to boot!)

Unfortunately this first unit is also where I start to get a bit worried. Throughout TLC Lemov provides suggests that involve a great deal of preparation. He suggests having everything in a lesson planed out, from the questions you will ask, to the answers you expect to get from the students, and how you will address what you think the students will do incorrectly. At times it reminds me of some mad game of chess. That degree of planning might be obtainable for me after five of six times teaching a course, but I don't know if our curriculum will stay the same for long enough to make that possible (kidding....mostly) Here is my takeaway (I'm ignoring the parts that I don't agree with, or feel like I wouldn't have time for).

1. Ask probing questions in class.
      e.g. "Where is the energy transformation when a car stops? What else has a similar                       transformation? How do you know"
   These questions should be answered in full sentences so that someone walking by the room and only hearing the student answer, would know what was going on (more on that later)1. This ensures that the student DOES understand what is going on, and it isn't a fluke, and it makes sure that the other students understand it now as well (even if they didn't before) 
2.   Ask for volunteers infrequently. If you are asking questions of the class to assess understanding, and the same three students are answering your questions, you are really only assessing the understanding of those three students. Relying on the same few students also allows the remainder of the herd to relax and take a mental break during these question times. Not exactly what a teacher is looking for!
3. Don't take "I don't know" for an answer. Those herd members that want the rest know that if you just feign ignorance enough times, you will get that rest. Don't let them!
   E.g "Markus, Where would you find the largest biomass in an ecosystem""I don't know""Lets figure it out then. Where should we start to find the answer?""I don't know""What are the options""I don't know""Okay, Bobby Brownose, where would we find the LEAST biomass" "The apex predators""Correct Bobby, Frieda Cantfocus, why do you think Bobby said that""Because they rely on the next level down for energy, so if there were more of them, they would starve""I think you have the answer, but I'm not sure. Can you give that answer again, but convince me you understand it, maybe using the correct terms for everything""Apex pedators eat primary and secondary predators, so if there were more biomass with the apex predators, they would starve"
   "Much better Frieda! Now Markus, with that information can you predict where we would find the MOST biomass and why?
   This exchange would probably take 3 min, but would give a pretty clear indication of the general level of class understanding, but only if you used targeted questioning. You have to know who to ask that is least likely to understanding, most likely, and equally as likely. This requires you to know your class, but that is a post for another day (Attachment Theory etc) 
4. Change the emotion behind being incorrect. "Being wrong is embarrassing. It grates. It is to be avoided at all costs!" at least that is how I felt as a student. It wasn't until university that I realized I learned more with I got something wrong then when I got it right (sometimes by accident) The class (and maybe school) mentality has to shift. "Growth mindset" gets thrown around a lot. But that is what is called for by this book. 
5. Standardize your written CFU. Create a template to put your questions in, and have students write the answers in the same location with their work in another, laid out in a particular manner. This allows you to circulate and quickly understand what students understand and what they don't. Furthermore, he suggests you should have these problems all worked out in advance along with likely areas of misunderstanding. When you circulate, he suggests you write down the names of those students that had those misunderstandings. This along with the culture of "wrong is good" can help to shape your class discussions or single out students for more help at lunch/after school.
   
   I feel like # 5 is the tip that would help me the most in my Math classes, but I haven't taught them enough to anticipate the misunderstandings. That is where planning with a more experienced teacher would be great, unfortunately there is vanishingly little time in the school year to do things like that. I find this to be the most heart breaking because it is where "what is good for kids" does not seem  possible to me (sparing giving up my every waking moment) 

1- Using "academic language" is the only way to ensure students speak the language of academia and their points are taken seriously. Saying " the thing does stuff and that shows that process" will convince nobody of anything 

Mr H's Musings, the lost blog posts..

So this will be both short and long. It turns out I already started a blog a long time ago! Whoops. For posts from 2013, Follow the link :)

http://mrhmuses.blogspot.ca/

Final Interviews and What's Good for Kids

Final Interviews and What's Good for Kids

A search to define the seemingly undefinable

Well, it has been a while since my last blog post. It seems the end of a semester and the beginning of a new one don't lend themselves to idle reflections, more's the pity. You see, the end of one year and the beginning of the new have always been fertile ground for reflections, resolutions, and rebuilding. It is a little late, but here I go....

Too Long; Don't Want to Read : I find that doing a final interview is what is best for kids. I accept that time can be a factor, but with proper planning it can be done and I feel that for the sake of proper assessment and a fair shake for all students, it should be done. 

      This year with my Planning 10 and Digital Media 10/11/12 classes I decided I was going to take a chance, and try doing final interviews with my students. I felt that both courses had a few, very important, "key learnings" the students needed to get out of the course, and doing an interview for it should be pretty reasonable/quick. I wasn't totally wrong...

    While doing final interviews, I was absolutely able to gain insight into what the student had (and had not)  actually picked up from the course; furthermore, it was actually a predominantly positive experience. Unfortunately that was where my luck ran out, and quick it was not. For some students the interview took nearly 30 minutes. These tended to be those that knew the material, but struggled to bring voice to it. A combination of nervousness and lack of interview experience likely did not help these students. While it was long, both the student and I came away with a better understanding of what they knew (I think this would also count as one of the "reminder periods" for he curve of forgetting-- More on that in a future post)

   The students at the opposite ends of the spectrum stunned me (as you may be able to guess). Some students knew exactly what they had picked up from the course, and where they wanted to take it. I received some marvellous answers regarding aspects of the course that even I had forgotten! Did you know students appreciate learning scientific literacy strategies? Me either!

    Unfortunately the other end of the spectrum was stunning as well, for the opposite reason. I was fully aware that there were students that, regardless of how often you contact home, pull them aside and talk to them, threaten, bribe, or otherwise harass, were not going to try in your class. I was always of a mind that they picked up something, but just didn't put in the effort to show you. I have now been debased of that opinion. If you have a student that looks like they are learning nothing in your class, it is very possible that they are actually learning nothing in your class. It was disappointing for me to be sure, but it seemed like it was an eye-opener for them as well. To receive a report card that says "35%" or "F" depending on the student's age, doesn't really mean anything. You can shove that report-card in your backpack and forget about it until you get yelled at by your parents. Sitting there, face to face with the person you were supposed to be learning from, unable to prove that you've learned anything?  One of the key motivators for student procrastination is the avoidance of discomfort (see previous posts). A 30 min  interview  (maybe 10 min if I do it 4 times a semester) where you are unable to talk about anything you are supposed to talk about is probably the apex of discomfort. 

What do you think? Are final interviews something you do/could make a part of your practice? What problems do you see / encounter? 

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.