Tag Archives: learning

It’s the Little Things

Yesterday I dug out my macro lens and started playing with it again. It’s one of those things that I love, but I have to stop what I’m doing, take the cover off my phone, unscrew the macro lens from the wide angle, attach it and then lean in to photograph my subject. Using the macro means coming close, taking time to steady myself and my breathing, and holding still for the perfect shot. It’s easy to get the focus wrong and come away with a blurry shot.

And in spite of all of that, I love the vantage the macro lens offers. I get to see small things in new ways. Things that are easily overlooked suddenly come into focus, creating a stunning new way of understanding the subject.

A familiar TED talk also crossed my Twitter feed this morning. Angela Duckworth talking about her research about what makes students successful…was it intelligence or something she calls grit? She found in case after case, holding all other variables steady, that grit made the difference.

This 6 minute video is well worth your time. But it’s also important to think about not just students and how hard they work, but also how teachers view persistence and effort. A growth mindset, as described by Carol Dweck, means that errors are seen as part of the learning process. Mistakes are an opportunity for learning, not an indicator of lack of effort or lack of intelligence.

So back to the macro lens and the little things. With the help of the macro lens I can appreciate the beauty of things I hadn’t paid much attention to before, like this half blown dandelion in my yard.

And with a growth mindset I can also appreciate the little things about my students as I notice how they approach a math problem or understand a science concept or even where their struggles are with decoding. Instead of seeing what they can’t do, I pay attention to the beauty of what they do know and help them use their strengths as tools to make progress where things seem hard.

Like these tiny, ethereal dandelion seeds, learners can take the seeds of understanding from one subject and plant them in others. And as teachers paying close attention, we can help our students identify their strengths and repurpose them in other situations.

When I went outside this morning the cactus flower blossom in the pot near my front door was closed…looking droopy and like it might be ready to fall off. But since I was playing with my macro lens, I leaned in and got close…and captured this.

Without the lens, my eyes did not capture the beauty and colors that my camera could see (all of these photos are unedited originals). I noticed later in the day when the sun had reached the door that the blooms opened, yellow and vibrant.

I’m glad that I took some time with my macro lens today…and with Angela Duckworth’s TED talk. Tomorrow I return to my classroom after a week away for the Thanksgiving holiday. And I’ll be looking closely and leaning in to notice all that my students bring to the learning…even when it seems hard…to appreciate their strengths and re-view their mistakes. We’ll be developing our grit…together.

Systems Thinking

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In addition to learning about circuits in the Hacking Your Notebook session, that I described here, at the NWP Annual Meeting in Boston, I also had the opportunity to participate in a three-hour workshop about e-textiles where we made puppets. This session also involved the basics of circuitry and using a small battery to light up LEDs.

But Melissa and Kylie framed their session in the theory of systems thinking, which has continued to occupy my mind and thoughts ever since I left the session. They talked about the ways we often simplify explanations in our society by turning to a binary cause and effect model. Here’s an example of the cause and effect model: if we elect a new president, then the economy will turn around. Actually, there are many other factors that impact the end result…and in fact, who is president may not even be the most important factor.

Our educational system (and our government) seems to spend a lot of time in the simple cause and effect model, rather than helping our students think more deeply about systems and the ways there are multiple factors, interconnections, and possibilities at work in the outcomes we see. So the making of puppets in this workshop was about more than learning how circuits work or developing language and writing related to the puppet, it was also a way to think about systems and the problem solving and iteration that it takes to understand and make changes to the overall system.

So…with systems in mind, we proceeded to explore circuits with a watch battery, LED lights, and wired alligator clips. Because of my work with circuits the day before, this part was super easy! And then they asked us to explore how a switch would work. It didn’t take much to figure out how to touch the switches to each to open and close the circuit, lighting the LED, and then separating them to turn off the light.

Our goal was to make a puppet that had a light (or two) that would light when you turn on the switch (or make a connection that closes the circuit and turns on the light). We had two pieces of felt cut out in a puppet pattern, a battery holder, a LED light, and two switches (small pieces of conductive material) along with a host of buttons, ribbons, fabric, yarn, and other materials to use to decorate the puppet.

We began by making a plan. Tracing our puppet on paper, we drew a diagram of where we would sew our battery holder, LED light(s), and switches, labeling the +/- poles and drawing in the stitches we would sew in with conductive thread. Having our model in front of us to plan was a perfect step. We could test and physically trace how the connections should flow as we drew the diagram.

Like in yesterday’s post, there were trickier plans I could have tried, but I opted for a simple plan that I knew I could complete in the time allotted. And then I got to work.

As people worked through their plans and settled into sewing their circuit the room hushed and you could see the intensity of engagement.

For some the sewing was the hardest part, for others it was working through the circuitry, and for others it was totally about creating the puppet character they had in mind. Here’s my end result…his heart lights up when his hands touch.

There are definitely some things I would do differently the next time I make a puppet. I learned after I had sewn my circuit in that putting the hands together covered the light…you can see a glow, but it isn’t the effect I had in my head. Other people were working on pirates and butterflies, some with eyes that lit, some with noses that lit.

And my takeaway has much more to do with systems thinking than it has to do with circuits. I find that I have a better grasp of how to explain some of the approaches I use in my classroom. Like why design is so important to student learning, why mistakes are valuable to learning…if you take the time to work through what you did and figure out a better outcome, and why students need space to create their own plans and work through the spaces where things are not working the way they intend.

It also has me thinking about other learning opportunities. I learned to sew as a child, and making clothes and other project definitely involves some systems thinking. You have to think fabric, including weight, texture, stretch… Even using a pattern, you have to think about how to lay out the pattern to make best use of the fabric, work with the grain, match the design if the fabric has one…

I’m worried when we make things in the classroom too “neat” that we are working harder and learning more than our students. That’s one of the things I love best (and hate the most) about teaching writing. When it’s at its best, it’s messy. I can have an overall plan in mind for the outcome, but my students benefit from getting “just right” instruction along the way. And not all my students need the same instruction…and some benefit from learning by watching and listening to their classmates.

After all, the classroom is another system. When you tweak one aspect, there are many working parts that are impacted. As an educator it’s important to problem solve and iterate. It is impossible to make a year-long (or even week-long) plan that won’t change if you are really paying attention to the needs of your students. We can help break things down for our students, but they also need to figure out how to examine the pieces of a system for themselves in order to understand how the parts interact with the whole. After all, our students today will be the leaders of tomorrow!

What do you do in the classroom to help your students understand and work through the complexities of systems?

Work and Play

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I’ve been accused–more than few times–of being a work-a-holic. And maybe there is some truth to that notion, but it is because my work is so much fun that a lot of times it seems like play.

I headed out at the crack of dawn Wednesday morning to fly across the country to join my writing project colleagues in Boston for the National Writing Project Annual Meeting that is held every year in conjunction with the Annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference.

The Annual Meeting is an opportunity to gather with writing project people from all over the country, to learn from each other, to share ideas and reconnect. And it is fun!

This conference begins by seeing old friends and learning about what is happening in their places and then offers more formal opportunities for learning from each other.

We’ll spend all day Thursday and Friday in more formal settings, thinking about our students and our teaching…and thinking about how to support teachers and their learning too. We’ll consider writing in all possible contexts, across all content, across platforms, and across ages and experiences. And even though we will think hard, write a lot, and at the end of each day feel exhausted, we will continue our conversations over dinner, walking to and from our hotels, over an evening cocktail, and maybe even into our dreams as we finally sleep. Because these moments spent face to face with our colleagues from all over the nation are to be savored. They are work and they are play.

We’re here, Boston! Ready to work and play in this special place.

Reach for the Sky

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I spend many Saturday mornings immersed in professional learning. This morning was our first meeting of this year’s SDAWP Study Groups (a hybrid of book study and teacher research). Sixty teachers met this morning to participate in one of five groups…and the energy in the room was palpable!

In three hours we wrote, discussed our writing and the connections of our processes and preferences to the students we teach…and then broke into smaller groups to get to know one another, explore our new book, and make plans for reading and exploring ideas in our classrooms. All this on our own time, because we want to grow professionally with others who are also passionate about teaching and learning.

As I was leaving, I noticed hang gliders and paragliders soaring in the sky near the university. I remembered that the Torrey Pines Gliderport turn off was nearby, so I turned and followed the road down to a dirt parking lot. And there, along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, was a spectacular view of the gliders and the ocean!

In spite of the cooler weather (after our 80 degree temps earlier in the week), the conditions were perfect for gliding…and for watching and photographing the gliders in action.

While I have no real desire to glide over the beautiful beaches of San Diego, I understand the urge to fly…to experience the freedom and excitement of soaring with the wind currents and looking at the world from a new perspective.

In some ways my experience in study groups this morning was a lot like hang gliding. There is energy and excitement in gathering with other interested educators to continue learning together. Interactions with teachers of all levels (K-college) and a variety of schools, districts, and teaching demographics offers new perspectives and views of teaching. Rich conversations stimulate thinking and encourage actions…we can’t wait to come back next month to share our beginnings and continue our conversations and learning.

What conditions for learning allow you to soar? How do you set up those conditions for your students?

Layers

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Today’s Weekly Photo Challenge asks us to think about layers…how they reveal, conceal, and make things more complex. When I think about layers, I think about teaching and learning.

When I teach I have to decide if I will start with the broad overview…the big picture and then zoom into the details. Or if I will start with a detail and continue to pull back to let the bigger picture be revealed. The best teaching is layered…creating a foundation that is continually built up so that learners can access the tools they need to keep growing. Learners need to see the beauty so they will continue to dig and uncover the magic of the subject at hand. This pier makes me think of all those different views, it’s like windows layered on each other, creating a view of possibility.

Some layers are more like the supportive structure of bridges or scaffolding. The layers create footholds and braces for continual progress. They are less about the view, but more about feeling safe enough to take some risks. It helps to know that when you stretch to reach the next rung, there are some toe holds to prevent a total collapse. When I teach, I want to layer supports like this bridge does, allowing students places to hang on to as they reach and stretch toward the next level.

Other layers are more like the stripes on these monarch caterpillars. The stripes represent the way our knowledge and skills continue to grow and build, layer upon layer. It makes me think of the small group of students who gathered in the classroom before school this morning. We’ve been learning computer programming…and some made a bit of a breakthrough earlier this week (see this post), and have been working in whatever stolen moments they can find to continue the designs they started. They’re excited and motivated…and they’re teaching each other and learning from each other as they learn from their successes and their mistakes along the way.

Like these caterpillars, they have been layering on their knowledge, black on white on yellow, black on white on yellow…as they experiment with the programming tools in Hopscotch. And like these caterpillars, they are getting bigger and stronger…and closer and closer to transforming into beautiful butterflies.

Layers are like that!

They’re Back…

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Last school year we planted milkweed in the planter box in front of our classroom…and had a front row seat to view the intricacies of the monarch life cycle.

As the school year continued, what was left of the milkweed (after the caterpillars had decimated it) died away and a native volunteer took over the box.

A week or so ago, a classroom mom came by and cleared out our box and replanted milkweed. And before even an hour had passed, a monarch friend had already visited. We’ve all been on the lookout for evidence of eggs and caterpillars since.

This week, they made their presence known! Teeny tiny yellow, green, and black caterpillars have made an appearance and are busily chomping away at the milkweed.

It is amazing just how quickly they grow from almost invisible to the eye, to plump little crawlers.

These are actually much smaller than they appear in the photo thanks to the magic of modern technology and cropping techniques! But you can see they have been quickly devouring this plant.

And so now we wait. Will these caterpillars survive long enough to grow to the size where they form a chrysalis and transform into butterflies? Is there enough milkweed there to sustain them? What predators will they have to avoid?

These beautiful creatures are fascinating to watch (and photograph), and seem to thrive in our school environment. I love that we don’t need to buy a butterfly “kit” to have our students learn about the majesty and wonder of the insect world.

I always find that the more I learn about something, the more I appreciate and notice the natural beauty right in front of my eyes! What critters sit outside your door for you to learn more about?

More Adventures in Coding

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It’s Halloween…the perfect day to continue our adventures in coding with our first, second and third grade students!

And thanks to Mark, our ed tech guy, the kids had the advantage of having someone other than their regular teachers reinforce their initial learning and suggest some next steps.

We returned to Beebot today. Our students love this friendly bee that responds to their fingertip commands. And it becomes the perfect vehicle (pun intended) for reminding them that programmers have an idea in mind for their code. Today’s challenge: can we make Beebot travel in a square and return to where he began? (The answer was yes!)

And then we transitioned to Hopscotch. And our students were in for a treat! Hopscotch characters were dressed for Halloween today…a special Halloween update. (The room was electric as the students discovered this new edition on their iPads!)

Mark guided the students as they matched the commands they used on Beebot to the blocks on Hopscotch. And they carefully coded their first character to make a square.

As you might expect, there were a few glitches…a perfect opportunity to do some “debugging.” And then we all tackled making a triangle.

That was a bit harder. And some students figured out if you used the repeat block, some interesting triangle designs resulted! And here is the basic square and triangle we aimed to code for today.

I hope students take away the value of being able to make the characters do what they want them to do. This planning is not to get in the way of “happy accidents” but instead to help students do more than move blocks and push play randomly. I know that many of our students can hardly wait to create some more triangle designs. Our next invitation might be, what picture can you make with triangles and squares?

The Halloween costumes will go away the next time we update the app…but I hope the lessons learned on Halloween will remain…and become a platform for continued learning. I know I learned a lot today and am more interested in programming than I was before! I can’t wait to figure out what my students (and I) will do next!

Structures

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I treated myself to a walk on the beach today after a writing project meeting at the university. So instead of walking on the beach near where I live, I walked on the beach down the hill from the university. It was foggy and cool, a perfect day for thinking and reflecting.

As I was walking I was thinking about the meeting…a follow up to the Invitational Summer Institute (a 4-week intensive leadership institute in the teaching of writing)…and the structures that we need as learners to move along the continuum from novice to expert (with the endpoint constantly moving) and from follower to leader.

The structure of the Summer Institute (SI) is designed to immerse teachers in writing, researching, reflecting on their practice, and critical conversations about teaching and learning. The structure is strong and well built, based on the 40-year-old model developed by National Writing Project founder, Jim Gray.

This pier is also a carefully designed, well built structure made to withstand the battering waves of the Pacific Ocean and the relentless wind and sun. I love the way when you look through the pier it narrows and provides a window through the corridor of surf out to sea just like the SI helps teachers look carefully at policy and practice and then focus on instruction that best supports the students in front of them.

And some of the structures we depend on are organic like these cliffs.

They are shaped by the natural environment. I watched our SI participants create their own structures as well. They gathered this morning, organically, catching up with each other as we, as facilitators, finalized our last minute plans.

And then there are structures that are light and flexible, like this feather on the beach.

It makes me think of our Twitter Fellow of the Week. This playful use of social media supports more weight than you might imagine. While we originally saw this program as a way to connect to one another within our project by giving each other a glimpse into a week in the life of an SDAWP educator, it has proven to do more. When teachers use Twitter as a professional learning network, their interactions begin to impact their practice. Suddenly they are reading more professional articles about education, “listening in” to debates about policy and practice, getting and sharing ideas from others (within our site and beyond our site), and making their own classroom practice more visible.

Today we asked our SI 2013 cohort to sign up as Twitter Fellows…and starting tomorrow we will begin to get a glimpse into their lives. (You can follow @SDAWP_Fellow on Twitter) Those who are more confident on Twitter signed up first…but others are willing to dip a toe into this unfamiliar world of tweets and hashtags and mentions. And they have the rest of the SDAWP community who are happy to help…and the others in their cohort will also be “listening” on Twitter, ready to respond and retweet and favorite…so they won’t be hollering into the dark.

My beach walk today was quiet and introspective as I thought about all the structures I noticed…and those we use to support learners. Structures can help us stretch and reach and connect as we learn and grow. What structures support you? What structures support your students?

I Am a Connected Educator! (writetheworld.me)
SDAWP Reunion (judymko.wordpress.com)

Horizons: The Edge of Learning

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Today’s Weekly Photo Challenge on the Daily Post is about horizons…that place where the earth meets the sky.

And as I headed to the beach to capture one of my favorite horizon vistas, I found myself thinking about the comfort of familiar places like the beach…and the stretch of reaching for new horizons.

In some ways my horizon photo this afternoon represents my feeling of reaching for new horizons and feeling the “edge” of learning as I work with my students to learn computer programming. There’s that sparkle and shine and thrill of the new along with the hazy sun and encroaching marine layer representing all of the unknown and uncertainty.

Today a parent in our classroom came in and shared his work as a video game programmer with our students. He showed us a few of the games he has made…

the first with a team of three including him. The most recent included a team of 1,000!

Then he helped to connect this work that he does with our work on Hopscotch (an app), built on the shoulders of Scratch (a program developed at MIT). He showed us a few kid-made Scratch programs and had the kids make suggestions for changes. In a matter of a few minutes, he showed how the iterative process is essential for programming.

At this point there were about ten minutes before recess, so we offered our students this short time to return to Hopscotch and try their hand at some more programming. Students were quick to get set up…and were immediately focused and engaged with working with code.

I watched them try something and then go back and make a change and run their program again. When students showed me something they had created, I also asked them to show me the code–and in many cases asked them explain their thinking behind the code–so I can learn along with them. When it was time for recess, we offered students a choice…they could put their iPad away and go out for recess or they could stay inside and continue their coding. Only 8 of our 44 students chose to go out. The rest were totally absorbed with programming on Hopscotch!

I’m working at my edge on this new horizon of learning to code with my students…and it’s uncomfortable at times. But knowing that this is also where learning happens is exciting. I’ll probably spend some more time on Hopscotch (or maybe even Scratch) this weekend. If you have any coding advice, I’m happy to receive it!

Here’s a great TED Talk by Mitch Resnick, one of the creators of Scratch, explaining why students should be involved in programming. Maybe we should all try it out!