FLUXX MOD Project - Board Games in the Classroom

Although I am not affiliated with FLUXX® (or Looney Labs) in any way, I think that FLUXX® is a great game that everyone should own.

We often think of board games as a staple for Family Fun Night, and because many of them help teach soft skills and facilitate higher order cognitive abilities, teachers routinely incorporate classics like Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble and Apples to Apples in their classrooms. By the same token, creating MODs or skins for existing games is a time-honored classroom activity. A simple Google search will bring up a plethora of "create your own board game" classroom projects. For those of us that have tried it, we see it as an opportunity to review content, both as the game is being created or modified and while the students play them during those extra-long rainy day recesses.

A couple of years ago, my own children introduced me to a great little game called FLUXX® - The card game with the ever-changing rules. The game was very easy to learn and portable which made it a staple for my family. Over the next few months, we purchased several versions happily bringing them out as part of our game repertoire.

Not long after that, I started toying with the idea of not only sharing it with my students but also having them create MODs for it to play in the classroom since the gameplay itself is based on reaching a goal of paired concepts. This makes it super efficient in helping the students revisit concepts, while at the same time allowing for some deeper thinking about the relationship between ideas. For example, in FLUXX's original version one of the goals is Rocket Science, which "needs" Rocket and Brain on the table to win.

After a little refining and tweaking of the idea, I set about creating a project page with directions, templates and of course a rubric for my middle school students. I introduced the project on a Monday, and gave them two weeks to come up with their skins.

Of course, there were some students that did not know what I was talking about, which made me realize that before anything else happened, we needed to play a couple games of FLUXX. After a couple of rounds, and some more clarifying of where to find the "big ideas" and how to keep track of their paired goals so they would not repeat them, I had them get into groups (of 4) and choose a topic for their MOD.

Students took to this creative form of review in a way I had seldom seen otherwise. They loved the idea of coming up "funny" titles for their goals and were seen scouring textbooks and notes to figure out how they could pair ideas that at first glance may not have been obvious. In one of my favorite examples, a group that developed a Newton Motion FLUXX Mod, included Robert Hooke as a creeper.

Here is the full set of "Newton Motion" cards in case you want an example for students:

• Motion Goals 
• Motion Keepers Creepers and Basic Rules
• Actions (same as in project page)
• New Rules (same as in project page)
• Motion Backs

I have run this project now several times, and I am always amazed not only at the cards they create but also by the enthusiasm that they show whenever I declare "it's review time", and bring out stacks of student-created FLUXX decks.

For obvious reasons all of my students' FLUXX decks are science related (Motion, Evolution, Genetics, Matter, etc.) However, I can easily see FLUXX decks for novel studies, American Revolution, and even Linear Equations. In case you missed it above and are interested, here is a link to the Instructions and Templates that I share with my students.

If you try this, let me know. I would love to know how it went for you and your students.

Chrome Extensions for Teachers

Although I have been in a 1:1 classroom for many years and my students have been exploring Chrome extensions for a while, it was not until my district disabled student access to Chrome extensions that they became an issue for me. Perhaps it was that little rebel in me that questioned that decision or simply a case of "you don't know what you got till it's gone". While I understood the need to get rid of the annoying bee in student devices, having to go to IT to enable a specific extension pushed me to find the ones that I believe are a must for every teacher and student.

So what exactly is a Chrome extension?

Chrome extensions are small programs that live inside your Chrome browser, allowing you to customize Chrome, adding features and functionality. Once you install them, they appear next to your address bar, and you access them by clicking on them, much like you would a bookmark. Watch this video to learn how to install them.

The cool thing about extensions is that once you have added them, they are "attached" to your Chrome browser, so it does not matter which device you are using, as long as you are logged in to your Chrome browser, they are there for you to use.

There are thousands of extensions, and a simple search of education related extensions in the Chrome Webstore is bound to be overwhelming, so which ones are the ones that I chose for my students?

Chrome Extensions You Should Know About

Share to Classroom : Allows both teachers and students to push web pages directly to Google Classroom. Everybody goes to the right page without the need to type or copy/paste long URLs.

Mercury Reader: You found the perfect article to share with your students, but it is riddled with ads and distractions. With one click, this extension removes all that noise leaving only the text and images and helping your students focus on the content. You can even print the uncluttered article.

Read&Write for Google Chrome: By far the accessibility tool. With dual color highlighting, this extension will read any article, web page or document to your struggling readers. Premium functionality, as explained by Teacher's Tech, is available for free to teachers.

Scrible Toolbar: My absolute favorite collaborative tool for reading online. Scrible will allow you and/or your students to annotate any web page together! Once the permalink is created and shared among collaborators, Scrible will not only keep all notes and allow you to sort them, but also will notify you when you are on a web page you previously annotated.

Grammarly: Your students are ready to respond to a prompt, but they have been raised in a world with spell checker and although they know better, they don't always revise. Grammarly will identify misused homophones, subject-verb agreement and other common grammar and spelling mistakes. It can get annoying at times, but much better than the alternative.

Screencastify: If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is priceless. Screencastify allows you to quickly record, edit, annotate, store, and share video screen captures. Create a mini-lesson or have your students record their thinking as they work out a problem. The mini-videos are instantly stored in your Google drive for easy access and sharing.

Install and Remove Chrome Extensions

More Extensions, please...

For more Chrome extensions for education, I invite you to visit ShakeUpLearning's searchable database. And if you use one that is a must in your classroom, let me know!

Fines in a Gamified Classroom

Let me start by stating that I have two separate "but equally important" systems in my gamified classroom. The XP  system, which is tied to the students assignments (blog quests, mastery quests and PBL quests). In the XP system students are awarded initial points after submitting their work, and continue to gain XP as revisions are submitted. In true gaming style, one cannot lose XP. After all, once you have an experience you cannot undo it, you can only make it better. The XP system is shared out to students in my public leaderboards.

I also have a school currency system (we call them Patriot Bucks), which is tied to school and classroom behaviors, and stems from my school's PBIS. Students can earn Patriot Bucks at a staff member's discretion for things like picking up trash, participating in class, or basically any show of positive behavior. Students can use their Patriot Bucks to purchase items at the student store or enter them in weekly raffles. It is important to note that Patriot Bucks are a physical item (slips of blue paper, signed or stamped by the staff member who gave it out), and that no one, except for maybe the individual students, keeps track of them. This is what made it so easy to find a new use for them.

It all started a couple of weeks ago as I wrapping up of Back to School unit, which as in most classrooms involves teaching students the expectations, rules and procedures of my classroom. My students had just passed the Acceptable use Policy quiz, and were eager to get their hands on our classroom devices. I had taught/modeled how to take the devices out of the cart and how to put them away. I had explained how it was important that all devices be plugged (with their own plug) in order for all classes to have enough charge for the day, as well as how to make sure that each device was put in the correct slot. I even had students come up one by one and "show" the class just how to do it. Everything was going well until that first eager student picked up a "random" device (i.e. a device that was not assigned to him). The natural consequence for this is that the student would not have access to devices for at least that class period. But, I did not want to do that since that would mean that I would be the one to come up with something related to the activity, but that did not involve technology. The student in question suggested that he write a letter of apology promising to not do it again. It just so happened that I had just had a conversation with a fellow teacher about something she called the "opportunity log", where students write a reflection on a class misbehavior and promise to do better. I had shared with her that in my experience those almost never work. It is a forced apology, akin to a mother telling her children to "apologize to your brother for ____", only to repeat herself the next day and ask for another apology for the same behavior. I shared that with the student, asking him how many times he had apologized to a sibling without really meaning it. He sheepishly smiled, and stated that just that morning he had "apologized" to his sister, but he had no actual plans for "never doing it again".

At that moment, inspiration hit. I told him that in order to get his device he would have to pay a Patriot Buck fine. We agreed that 20 Patriot Bucks would be appropriate. He went back to his seat, carefully counted and came back to me with a proud look. He had just enough! He placed the "fine" on my desk and asked if he could go get his device. I simply thanked him and told him to get to work. The rest of the class exploded in questions about the "fine" system. For some reason they welcomed the addition of fines and saw it as a perfectly acceptable and fair way to overcome infractions. There were many questions about specifics, "What is the fine for not logging out? What about for forgetting to plug a computer?" It was the little things that bugged them as much as me that in their opinion should warrant a fine.

After much discussion, we ended up just having two categories of fines - minor infractions (20 Patriot Bucks) and major infractions (50 Patriot Bucks). Minor infractions include things like not plugging in a device, putting a device in the wrong slot, and taking someone else's device. Major infractions include things like off-task behavior or mishandling of the devices. I left myself some wiggle room, creating a third category that states "Fines for anything not mentioned before can be assigned at my sole discretion".

In a surprising turn of events, something else happened once the fines were in place. Students have begun to help each other avoid fines. Instead of simply walking away from unplugged devices (which of course still happen every once in a while), they take the time to plug them in for each other. I've overheard statements of,  "Dude, stop goofing off, that's a 50 PB fine!" This is already pretty cool, but there is more. A new student who did not have enough Patriot Bucks to pay for putting his device in the wrong slot, and who I was ready to excuse from the fine, saw his classmates (students he had just met), pool Patriot Bucks to pay his fine. No prompting at all, simply a spirit of cooperation and doing right by each other.

So far, this system is working beautifully, and I am wondering if you are using something similar. Do you have any words of wisdom to add? I would love to hear from you.

Chopped - An activity for the first days of school

The first day of school offers up many opportunities for us to define what our student's experience will be like for the remainder of the school year. Many of us spend this wonderful day asking students what name they prefer we use, going over classroom rules and expectations, passing out green sheets and having students look at our carefully crafted syllabus. The adventurous among us might even create a classroom quest to get students familiarized with the layout and having students look for different items, creating a classroom constitution or perhaps playing a round of "Find someone who...". These are all cool, and I guess important, but your students are either "listening" to you drone on, or participating half-heartedly. This year, I invite you to forego these tried and true activities for something more exciting, a Chopped design challenge.

Before the first day of school, prepare identical "baskets" of 3-5 mystery materials. These can include empty water bottles, paper towel tubes, cereal boxes, baggies of pom poms or beads, trinkets from the dollar store, etc. The more the mystery materials "don't go together", the better. You will need one mystery basket for each group of 3-4 students.

On the first day, assign  groups of 3-4 students randomly (using a count-off method or whatever you prefer), and distribute the mystery baskets. Then, in your best Ted Allen voice state:

"Welcome to Chopped. Your challenge - create a useful product from the mystery items hidden in each basket before time runs out. Every one of your mystery items must be used in some way. Also available to you, our maker items. When the bell rings (we have 10 minute bells), you will place your item in the judging table and clean up your space. During our next session you will present your product. Our distinguished judges will critique your work on usefulness and creativity. If your product doesn't cut it, you will lose the privilege of ____ for the remainder of the week ."

The maker items are any materials you have in the classroom. This may include glue, different types of paper and tape, cardboard, foam, etc. The privilege lost can be something like getting to choose seats or listening to music.

The student work time on this first day gives you the perfect opportunity to walk around learning student's names, conduct brief interviews and observing the class' dynamics.

On the second day, I provide students with a rubric to evaluate the products, and have each team present their product. Presentations on the second day allow students to introduce themselves to the class, and set the tone for peer evaluations which they will use for the remainder of the year. They also give you an insight into the students' personalities helping you create teams for future assignments.

As a follow up, you can hold a class discussion (or individual written reflection) centered around questions such as:

• What worked well/did not work in your group?
• How were decisions made in your group?
• How did you organize yourselves?
• What did you learn about yourself/your team members/your classmates during this activity?
• If we were to do this again, what would you do the same/differently? Why?

What do you think? Isn't this a much more fun and engaging start of the school year?

Simulations and the Gamified Classroom

The use of simulations in the classroom is a long-standing tradition. How else could we provide students with high end experiential learning, when our students seldom have access to anything other than basic scientific equipment, and in many cases not even that? If we want want our students to learn how to gather data, analyze it and come up with solutions grounded on evidence we need to provide them with the necessary tools, going beyond the simple inquiry that can be accomplished with household tools.

In the gamified science classroom, tech-based simulations are a handy tool to help us engage students in deep learning. Students can use simulations to develop and use models to predict outcomes. They provide them with data that is directly applicable and transferable to the gamified (and often real-life) scenarios that they are working in. Often, they have the advantage of already looking like a game, making it easy to assign them as part of your gamified experience.

The simulations best suited for a gamified classroom are interactive, animated, provide dynamic feedback, and allow for productive exploration. But, where do you find them?

PhET

PhET, created and maintained by the University of Colorado, Boulder, has hundreds of NGSS aligned simulations, complete with teaching resources. They have been working hard at converting all their sims to HTML, allowing access on any device. Not only that, they are constantly adding new sims.
PhET by NGSS for Middle School
PhET by NGSS for High School

Spongelab

Already completely gamified for you, Spongelab has  thousands of pieces of content that can be searched, organized and annotated. Take a look,  at their Energy Literacy collection as an example of how to integrate SpongeLab in your gamified classroom.

Glencoe Virtual Labs

VIRTUAL LABS offered by the Glencoe textbook company. These labs give the students the adventure of laboratory experimentation without costly supplies, worrisome environmental and safety issues, or time-consuming clean up. They are from all different areas of science: Biology, Physics, Genetics, Earth Science, Physical Science, and Chemistry.

Go-Lab

Go-Lab is a EU-based site that allows science teachers access to online labs and inquiry learning applications. The students receive the opportunity to perform personalized scientific experiments with online labs with access to virtual labs, remote labs and data sets. 

Setting up is a little time consuming, but they have a very well done tutorial.

Gizmos

Gizmos is the only paid service on this list. This service provides hundreds of Science (and Math) simulations, aligned to NGSS and searchable by topic, grade level and/or standard. Gizmos allow for manipulation of variables and include graphing tools that help students compare the results of their experiments, creating opportunities to apply the concepts to a variety of scenarios,


Let's take advantage of our students tech skills and allow them to use simulated tools and experiments. Go ahead and incorporate simulations in your gamified classroom. Your students will thank you for the opportunity to use technology, work in groups using sims as a substitute for real-life experiences and develop the skills needed to excel in the 21-century. 

Student AppSmash - A PBL success story

https://goo.gl/Gni2Bl

Many of you may have experienced that gut wrenching moment where, before the students have even begun to understand what the PBL experience they are in entails, they have already opened Google slides. The blank stares I get when I dare ask, "Are you sure that a slide deck is the best way to go?", tell me that they are much more product driven than I hope, and that most have been exposed to the "wrong" answer shown in the image above. Presentation equals slides! This is what has driven me to make sure that my driving questions are as vague as possible, at least with respect to the type of product the students create, which brings me to the real reason behind today's post.

A couple of weeks ago, my students began their exploration in our Interdependence of Organisms unit, which culminated in the students "Convincing the general public to care about an endangered species, and developing a realistic plan to bring it back from the brink of extinction".  As always my students launched into "presentation" mode, which was when I officially stated that I was incredibly tired of sitting through slides, so anyone "caught" even thinking about creating a slide deck without a storyboard would lose their tech. I then added that I expected to be entertained, because "no one cares about what is being presented if they are bored, so if the goal was to convince people to care, boring them to tears with slides was definitely not the way to go". What followed was a flurry of student engagement that culminated in one of my favorite student app-smashes of all time - the AyeAye Need You website

http://goo.gl/Z5LVrb

The Aye Aye Need you WIX website includes a student produced screencast-o-matic video, two Thinglinks (one of them used simply as a presentation aid), a HSTRY timeline and a Piktochart infographic.

I unfortunately did not think to record the students' presentation of their work, but their recovery plan included comments like:

- The US and Madagascar are not "besties", so they will need to put aside their differences and work together to restore the forest.

-  Why do we need charcoal? That just pollutes the air. What we need is more Aye-Aye's!



Did the student's achieve the goal of raising awareness, driving action and starting conversations to save the lowly Aye Aye? Yes.
Did they use technology to do it? Yes.
Did they "make a Google slide deck"? Most certainly not.

Now, on to the next step in this PBL evolution - guiding students to develop empathy for the user of a product before even thinking about what the product is/should look like/do.

The End is Nigh

The end of the school year is upon us. Students are dreaming about that long summer vacation. Behaviour issues are on the rise. You are asking yourself, what can I do to keep students engaged? How can I recap what was learned and end my school year strong?

Below are some of the assignments that I use:




I would love to add to these. What are some of the things you do to keep your students learning until the last day?

StunConference - A Student Led Unconference

If you are an educator you have probably have heard of un-conferences. Maybe you have even attended a couple. You might have even toyed with the idea of doing one with students, especially if you are a project based teacher. After all, they kind of feel a little like the "need to know" discussions you have after your entry event.

However, the logistics  seem daunting. Where are you going to hold it? How are you going to keep students on track? Do you really have the time? What if the students do not buy into it? What if a session creator gets no participants? These are the questions that good friends and masterful educators Samantha McMillan and Melissa Garcia had a couple of months ago when they decided to "Just do it". Today, I was in Samantha's class and witnessed what I had thought impossible: A 6th grade student led un-conference.

So, what did it look like? Engagement and deep conversation centered around "Imagine the Future". All students were:
- Participating
- On task
- Holding each other accountable
- Learning from each other
It was a teacher's dream.

Now for the tricky part. How do you achieve this?

Your break-out sessions do not need to be separated by walls. Student led un-conferences can be done in a regular classroom. You just need to have students sit together. It will get loud, but not much louder than in any group activity.

Decide on an un-topic conference appropriate for the students. It should be broad enough and interesting to the students. Start with a topic that inspires conversation: Imagine the Future (today's topic), College, Immigration, Equality. You know, the small stuff.
 

Provide students with some time (whether in class or out) to come up with break-out session ideas. Have the "Session Wall" posted for a couple of days at least. It does not have to be fancy, some butcher paper and post-its will do. Make sure you emphasize that not all students need to create a session. Have them read the session wall before adding topics. Remind them that if they want to lead a session that is already posted they can simply participate.

Prepare the students. Explain the structure. Go over the norms. Emphasize collaboration. Here is the website Samantha used with her students for today's topic: StunConferenceAdVENTURE (Be aware that some of her links are specific to her class, so they will not work for you).

With her permission, I have tweaked it into a generic one that you can use in your class, with specific ties to PBL - to make your own copy of the documents open them in Google drive and click File>make a copy. 

 StunConference 

The day of the un-conference, take a deep breath and step back. Visit the different break-out sessions as a participant. Above all, avoid taking over. Trust your students and see them soar.

If you are wondering about the electronics, that is where their note-taking documents are.

I invite you to try it out. You will not be disappointed. If you do, tweet it out using #StunConference. 

App Smashing - Hstry and Thinglink and Tackk, Oh My!

App Smashing began well before the term was coined. You might remember way back, when you created your first website (or really any digital product), and you decided to try to embed a video and then asked yourself, "How can I add some questions for my students to answer?" Perhaps you gave them a paper worksheet, or if you were a bit more adventurous, you might have added the questions directly to your site. Now you had the "problem" of collecting papers, so maybe you embedded a Google form.

As new tools became available you found yourself adding them to your repertoire, and sharing them with your students. Before long, you had your students creating rich multimedia projects and portfolios that included all sorts of cool things, from word clouds to interactive images. You had in fact taught them how to App Smash and you did not even know it...

What is App Smashing?

App smashing as defined by Greg Kulowiec (@gregkulowiecon Twitter) is the process of using multiple apps in conjunction with one another to complete a final task or project.

Why App Smash?

Even with all the options available to us, there is rarely one tool that can do everything you need/want. App Smashing demands creative thinking, making the issue of not having the "perfect app" into a positive. It allows you and your students to take a topic as far as it can be taken, providing opportunities to create engaging learning products. Most importantly, App Smashing is plain fun.

Let me share with you an example. This is a Tackk + Thinglink + wizerme + edpuzzle  + lessonpaths + blendspace + Youtube, in which the students will end up responding to a Wix by using Hstry. I know, it is probably too much, but I wanted to show you just how far you can take things. 

App Smashing Rules

https://goo.gl/Gni2Bl

There are really no rules. It is really about choosing what you (or your students) consider the best tool for the job. App smashing is really about pushing yourself out of the ordinary, and teaching your students to use technology as a tool to increase their learning.

My Favorite App Smashing Tools in no particular order

Mrs. Garcia's Classroom Webtools, by mrsgarciaserrato

Are you ready to App Smash?

For more on App Smashing, particularly with students, visit K12tecnology

Teach students to "Take Over the World"

It all started as a bit of a classroom joke. As most days, students entered and at least one asked "So, what are we doing today?" My usual response up until then would be to direct them to the board where I, as many of us do, had already written down objectives and an agenda. However, on this particular day the question triggered a childhood memory. Was it the timber of that student's voice? Maybe. I just know that the theme song for Pinky and the Brain song popped in my head, which inspired me to state, "The same thing we do every day... Try to take over the world!" The student giggled, and took his seat. The next day, he asked again, and I said the same thing. By the third day, my agenda board morphed into a "Today's Plan to take over the World" board. This soon became our classroom mantra, and has often helped me frame the day's lesson as my "Plans" started to include:

• What (are we learning)?
• Why (are we learning it)?
• How will I know if I am successful?
• How can I apply this?

All of this was fine and good. The kids got a kick of asking every day, and smiled as I responded the same way every time.

Enter Nick into the classroom, one of those bright students that often push your pedagogy forward. As we repeated the same questioning about taking over the world, he raised his hand and asked that all important question, "Mrs. Garcia, exactly how are we supposed to take over the world?" Fortuitously, I had just read an article on Edutopia describing Costa and Kallik's Habits of Mind, and in that magical moment it came full circle. I was not able to identify all 16 habits of mind for Nick on that day, but I remembered enough to say "Well, you would need to persevere and think creatively. You cannot take over the world if you give up or if you do the same thing as others are doing, right? So, let's get started with our lesson for today." We went about our business that day, but by the next day, I had done more reading, printed out some art for my walls and even developed a slide deck identifying each of the habits.

I tabled my science lessons in favor of a lesson entitled "How to Take over the World". We went over each of the habits of mind, and I encouraged the students to not only discuss each one as they were presented, but also to find examples of the habits they were already practicing. We had conversations about practicing to get better at soccer and at playing a videogame, the difference between hearing and listening and how they apply knowledge to new situations, amongst others. The students were able to see that the habits of mind we were talking about could guide us in our ultimate goal "To Take Over the World".

The moment has since past, but we have constant reminders in our Plan Board, the posters I hung on the walls, and the slide deck (which I turned into a screensaver for our classroom devices). Since then, the habits of mind are ever present in the conversations between myself and the students, "I see that you checked your work a couple of times. You are on your way to take over the world.", and between the students themselves, "How are we going to take over the world if we do the same thing as everyone else!"

And that, my noble readers, is how I know my students are getting ready to take over the world. I invite you to joint the conversation by posting your questions or comments.

My students are taking ownership of the NGSS - Part 2: The Crosscutting Concepts

In a previous post, I talked about how my students have taken ownership of the Science and Engineering Practices by identifying the practices and making their thinking visible. When it came down to tackling the Cross-Cutting Concepts (XCC) with the students, I knew that I had deliberately model the thought process and make the connections visible. I disagree with the statement, "If you are teaching the content, students will grasp the crosscutting concepts. I don't need to teach the connections"; I cannot expect the students to just magically connect the dots themselves.

This led me down the internet rabbit hole, looking for a way to clarify my own ideas about the CrossCutting Concepts, as well as a framework that I could share with the students. During that exploration I came across Peter A'Hearn's CrossCut Symbols. Not only does he provide some cutesy graphics, but delving deeper into his site, I discovered that he had taken the time to develop a series of questions that can guide students in their explorations of the XCC. The framework had already been created!

I printed out his graphics and questions, and placed them in the back of my room, really as my own reference to use while I was teaching. When the students entered, they noticed the change, and being who they are, asked "What are we supposed to do with that?". As usual, I put the question right back on the student's shoulders and replied, "I don't know... What could you do with that?" To my surprise, one of them answered, "Well, we could try to answer the questions." That simple statement was the beginning of the XCC interactive board, and what has become my go to exit ticket for all classes.

As I am teaching, I will move to the board and sometimes point to specific XCC as I explain my thinking. At the end of each day, students are invited to write post-its in response to connections they made to specific XCC. This is a win in itself.
I read through the post-its, but do not use them for anything other than to guide my instruction and address misconceptions if needed. The only "reward" the students get for doing this is when one of them makes a significant leap, and it gets mentioned during a subsequent lesson or as a starting point for a discussion.



Now, for the real ownership part. This exercise has started to trickle down to their weekly writing. Notice the wording of that last sentence. That is the XCC - Stability and Change.

Although we have a ways to go in the "explaining department", the fact that they are beginning to add those ideas to their weekly writings makes me believe that we are on to something great.

What do you think? I would love to hear some more ideas about how to help students take ownership of the NGSS.

Engaging your middle school audience through PBL

It is that time of the year where I am asked to teach a concept that does not readily engage my middle schoolers. Don't get me wrong, I know that there are many connections to be made, and real-world applications to be discovered. However no amount of me talking about it, having them create catchy posters or even building models (edible or otherwise) has ever been very successful in my book when we are supposed to be able to describe the function of a cell as a whole and ways part of cells contribute to their function (MS-LS1-2). The dreaded Cells and Organelles Unit is upon us.

As I once again began my search for a different approach for teaching this, I stumbled upon this post from Plant Cell Biology, which led me through the rabbit hole of Mr. Graba's work with  high school freshmen, and figured "OK, I can adapt that cell electoral campaign idea."

The premise: The nucleus has to resign, leaving a power void in the cell. A special election is being held to elect a new leader for the cell.

What the students had to do:

1. Develop a series of electoral posters describing the role of each organelle.

 

Pretty much a tired old cell project, but OK. The students plastered my classroom walls with these.






2. Develop a political advertisement for their organelle. This is already rather cool, as they really took to the "meat" of the concepts.



3. As students were getting into the previous components, they also had to create and respond to a smear campaign against their opposition. This is what really got them going, and probably what improved the quality and depth of the final work overall.

 

 


Not only were they "smearing" the other candidates, they added all this evidence for their ideas. This also ended up helping students learn about other organelles, and not just about the one they had been assigned. When they started telling each other to "read the resource closely" and "I have to get home early so that I can do some more research to be able to respond to that", my heart actually sang for joy!

As an added benefit to this project, the students also learned about how to structure an electoral campaign. At the beginning of the project, questions flew about just what would go in the posters vs. the video vs. the "smears". Instead of me giving an answer, I told them to go ahead and research different campaigns and determine what had made them "successful". They requested conferences and support with their social studies teacher, just because they wanted to win this election. I am still confounded by this turn of events, but hey, why would I stand against students taking full ownership!

As we come to the end of this project, I am left with one question that perhaps you will help me answer. I cannot assign another electoral campaign to this group. Do you have any ideas about how to spark this level of interest?

Gamified classroom - a year in review

About a year ago I set out to offer my students a complete gamified experience in my classroom (Setting up a Gamified Classroom). With quests, leaderboard  and student buy in we set out to train dragons, and overall it was a positive experience for both myself and the students.

My gamified classroom was set up so that the different units (quests) would unlock a power-up.  This meant that power-ups could not be accessed until we reached that unit.  This worked well for the students that wanted that power-up, and having all power-ups unlocked became a status symbol. The goal of having students revisit work (even if it was done months before) was achieved. In fact, a student that did not join us until the second semester took it upon herself to complete the previous units just so she could also unlock the powers.

On the flip side, I also had students that did not care about a particular power-up. Yes, the assignments were completed (as they would go in the gradebook), but my vision of having them revisit old work in order to earn the power-up did not materialize. However, this is not a failure  of the gamification experience, but rather missed opportunity on my part to find a way to encourage these students to refine work.

The "training the dragon" aspect was a different matter. The dragon training was tied to a weekly blog writing assignment and its end goal was to not have to do the assignment at all (blog immunity). Although only ten of the 140 students that I had this year reached the goal, most of them came close enough that they could taste it. I had students come up to me a couple of weeks before school ended asking, "If I write two blogs this week and score well, will they count towards blog immunity?" The logic of writing one post a week for the final two weeks vs. writing two posts in one week so they would not have to write a post the final week escaped them!

From the mechanics aspect, I will be honest and tell you that as much as I love my leaderboard, keeping up with it was not easy. A big part of the gamified experience for students is immediate feedback. In the real gaming world, students can immediately see if they have reached a goal or unlocked a power-up. In my classroom, they not only had to wait for the assignment to be graded and put into the leaderboard, but in the case of revisions, they also had to wait for me to be done with all other grading before I could even tackle revisions. Now, the students know and respect the fact that I do read through all of their work, and have a rather quick turn-around for grades. However, grouping the power-ups with the unit assignments meant that I was in fact keeping two gradebooks, sometimes with different scoring criteria. This is something that I will definitely be revisiting.

All that being said, I will continue on the gamification path. Wish me luck!

Student Exhibitions, an Integral Part of Project Based Learning

Student exhibitions are not the traditional open house you might have experienced, where the teacher selects some material to show to parents, and breathes a big sigh of relief when "cookie cutter" projects finally make it home. In the project based model we use at AdVENTURE, exhibitions have the students front and center as they present work, chosen by them. The students are doing most of the talking and are actively explaining their work. 

Student exhibitions are about celebrating hard work. They give students an authentic audience to present their work, and showcase their learning. The final product often takes a secondary role as the emphasis is put on the journey the student took to get there. The celebratory nature of the event gives students an opportunity to engage in deep conversations with community members, and take on the risk of becoming a "teacher of adults".

Exhibitions promote deep learning of the content. The projects being presented are the end result of an extended, in-depth period of learning, and require that students demonstrate mastery of the content and standards. Students show that deep explorations in learning can have many different paths, and provide students with new questions to guide their inquiry.

Exhibitions are also about accountability. Community members get to see first hand what the students are learning. This goes beyond rigorous academic content, and includes 21st-century skills. During the event, students get to demonstrate how they have grown in leadership, responsibility and innovation, as well as practice communication skills authentically.

Student exhibitions provide a sense unity of within our community. Although our PBL is not static, and new essential questions lead our students down different paths, the content remains. Our older students are given an opportunity to reminisce about favorite projects, and often take on the role of mentors for the younger students, giving knowledgeable and caring feedback. On the other hand, the younger students get to see what older students have done, and on occasion, even begin to plan for what they now know they will work on in the upper grades.

Finally, student exhibitions increase student engagement. Students take ownership of their work because they know their work will have an audience beyond their teachers and classmates. Although at times, students have been known to say "Another exhibition night? We've had like five...", you just need to see the pride on their faces during the actual event to know that our exhibitions are here to stay.

What do you think? Leave your comments and let's start a conversation.