Old Dog, New Tricks

As our Grade 3 students investigated ‘How the World Works’ we wanted to find out ‘What cool things we could make using Newton’s Laws of Motion?’ After several investigations into Newton’s laws and a look at simple machines, we began to look at how people put simple machines together to make interesting things. This inevitably led us to Rube Goldberg and a plethora of machines designed based upon his wacky ideas.

After looking at some amazing examples- our favorites included OK Go’s ‘This Too Shall Pass’ and Joseph Herscher’s ‘The Page Turner’- and discussing the many simple machines and Newtonian Laws at work, we set to our design our own Rube Goldberg-style machines.

First, each student chose a simple task like turning on a tap, flipping a light switch or ringing a bell. The students then designed their machines on paper focusing on the sequence of simple machines.

Initially, I think the students were confused by the complexity of the examples they saw, and tried to design equally complex machines which led to some serious design problems. Perfect! Once the kids built their machines they got to experience how these design flaws (which seemed to work well on paper) were very difficult to pull off.

We set aside a whole school day to build, describe and share our machines among the Grade 3 classes. When describing their machines we asked our kids to focus on the concepts of ‘function’ and ‘connection’, and we asked them to use specific vocabulary related to Newtonian mechanics (eg. gravity, force, kinetic energy and the like.) Although very few of the machines were successful, the experience of trying to build a complex machine was very valuable and this students were able to both identify simple machines and the forces at work in them.

Play Video: The Tap Opener

 Our class spent time the next day reflecting on the machines that worked and discovered a few important ideas. First, we found that successful machines were all made by connecting simple machines that worked well. Second, successful machines were designed backwards; that is, the students started with the end of the machine and worked toward the beginning.

After reflecting, we set out to redesign our machines for another Rube Goldberg Day. This was a key move. Giving the kids another opportunity to go back to the drawing board, think carefully about what worked and what didn’t, and encouraging the kids to have another go at their machines led to a deeper understanding of how to connect simple machines into a more successful complex machine.

We had our second Rube Goldberg day yesterday and virtually every machine was both interesting and successful. We had plant waterers, t-shirt painters, coin flippers, bell ringers, stapling machines, chip dispensers, goal-scoring machines, and they all worked! Parents and other classes who viewed the kids’ machines and listened to their detailed explanations of the forces at work were blown away not only by the complexity of the machines but also the feverish enthusiasm of the students who built, displayed, and described them.

Play Video: Rube Goldberg Day at NIS

Objects at rest? Not likely in Grade 3. Objects in motion? You betcha!  Better wear goggles to NIS’s Grade 3 these days as our new unit ‘How the World Works’ has objects rolling, bouncing and flying. With the central idea ‘Understanding forces helps us to use them’ we have been investigating Newton’s Laws of Motion.

As a provocation I told the kids a story about a cool egg (literally) named Bob who loved to drive around too fast and talk on his cell phone too much. One day when he was being reckless he ran into a tree and…well, here’s what happened to Bob.

Bob- One cool egg

Video- Bob’s Demise

I asked the kids what led to Bob’s demise, and many already knew that he should have been wearing a seat belt. (Good for them!) But when we talked about why Bob didn’t just stop with the car, the conversation really got going. The kids had already seen a few Brainpop videos and had the vocabulary to talk about gravity, speed, motion, and friction.

Time for a design challenge. In pairs, I gave the students a small car and a ping-pong ball (a substitute for the egg) and asked them to think of a way to keep the ‘egg’ from ejecting from the car after a sudden stop. The partners brainstormed and sketched their designs before prototyping them. Once the building started, tape, string and blue tack were flying!

Video- Initial Prototyping

It was time for testing the prototypes so we brought their cars and eggs back to our inclined plane and let ‘em rip.

Video- Prototype #1 Tests

As we discussed the prototypes, some of the kids noticed that a few of the harness designs, while they worked brilliantly, made it very difficult to get the pingpong balls out of the cars because of tape and blue tack. So, we added a second parameter to our design challenge: the pingpong ball must be easlily and cleanly put in and taken out of the vehicle. The kids went back to prototyping.

We finally ended up with some very safe designs that adhered to our two design parameters, and the kids had an opportunity to think more deeply about forces in action through a design challenge.

Video- Prototype #2 Tests

As a follow up and to really drive home the importance of seat belts, I showed the students this video of an actual car crash with crash test dummies.

The next time these kids get into a car and buckle up they will, through action, demonstrate a greater understanding of forces and how to use them.

Three years ago I first heard about the Apple Distinguished Educator program while attending Flat Classroom event in Beijing. As I listened to ADEs talking about the program, it seemed like the perfect blending of two passions: teaching and technology. I decided right then that I had to become part of this community of educators.

Three years later I am sitting at a stunning resort in Bali overlooking the Indian Ocean ready to join the ADE Class of 2013.  I feel very satisfied with the journey that brought me this far, and know that I owe a lot to the many ADEs I follow through social media and rely on for inspiration. Most of all, the journey wouldn’t have been the same without my former teaching partner at the International School of Yangon, Perry Tkachuk who so enthusiastically embraced so many of the ideas that made our Grade 6 students become better learners through technology.

I am empowered by this journey, and this empowerment feels wonderful! I know it is how my students feel when they set goals for themselves and achieve them. I can see it on their faces when the rush to show me what they are most proud of. Each time, I know it empowers them to see that they truly can succeed at whatever they desire. My role is simply to help them realize that when you dream and then add a specific plan with manageable steps you suddenly have a goal. My students are learning that the best goals take time, thought, and work, and that the more of these one adds the more satisfying the milestones along the way.

Joining the ADE community is definitely a satisfying milestone towards my goal of becoming the best educator I can be.

Last year I created a stand for my iPad out of an old ring stand from the science lab and it works really well. My teaching partner had a fancy document camera that he was willing to share with me, but it was too much of a pain to move back and forth, coordinate our usage, and…whatever. Truth is, I love to make things so I made my own.

 One of the coolest things about my iPad doc-cam is that it records, and I’ve been using it a lot to gather evidence of student learning in my classroom. I record my students when the come up to the front and share their work. With a cool little app called AirServer my iPad connects to our SmartBoard wirelessly, and the students can show their work to the whole class. The iPad camera app shoots great video and the mic is close enough to capture their voices with volume and clarity. In math my students are encouraged to explain their mathematical reasoning, and my iPad doc-cam is great for preserving the explanations. Later the students listen to themselves and can reflect on their mathematical reasoning.

The kids love their recordings. At first they giggle at hearing themselves, but soon they are listening carefully and they really enjoy seeing their fingers swipe across their work as they explain their ideas. Now, when I ask for volunteers to explain their thinking to the group, I’m never without many hands to choose from.

1 Km of Kuai Video

I highly recommend a DIY doc-cam if you’ve got an iPad. There are probably a million ways to make a stand, but I think making friends with the science teachers is a good way to go. Not only can you have a cool ring stand like mine, but you’ve also got new friends!

Years ago when I taught at the International School of Islamabad in Pakistan, I worked with a dynamite principal who helped establish a powerful culture of caring among our students. Our school was guided by three simple principles: Take Care of Yourself, Take Care of Others and Take Care of Our Place. Our students soon learned that every action could be seen as an instance of one of these ideas. Ever since, no matter where I teach, I begin the year with an investigation of caring.

I’ve recently joined the amazing community at the Nanjing International School as a Grade 3 PYP teacher. My first week with my students was spent establishing our ‘essential agreements’. We began by discussing why we come to school and the students quickly agreed that ‘learning’, ‘making friends’ and ‘having fun’ are of paramount importance.

Once these goals were established we discussed the many behaviors that can either support these goals or keep us from them. After brainstorming these I introduced the three ‘caring’ principles, and the students sorted the many behaviors into one or more of the categories. They soon realized that each of the behaviors they imagined fit nicely into these three simple ideas.

Kids love to be on stage so I asked partners to develop skits that show us specific examples of how they can ‘take care of themselves, of others, and of this place.’ They had no difficulty showing us how to eat healthy food and get exercise, to help a friend who has fallen down, or to pick up trash or plant flowers.

After this I began each day by asking the kids to share different examples of the three caring principles. I also asked them to describe counter examples. This way we reinforced the many choices we make to take care of ourselves, of each other and of our place.

Children are natural artists so I asked my students to create examples in art of how we can take care, and they created thoughtful, colorful drawings.

The fourth day of school I reminded the kids of their goals (to learn, make friends and have fun) and I asked them if we can all agree that taking care of ourselves, each other and our place would be good ways to achieve these goals. They also came up with different ways that they should behave in class, but they found that these neatly fit into one of our caring behaviors.

By agreeing to these principles of caring, we take our first steps towards a culture of caring and our year is off to a great start!

My Grade 6 students are currently reading Jeanne DuPrau’s dystopian novel The City of Ember. As an exercise in comprehension and (let’s face it!) creating beautiful things, they set their hands to drawing characters, settings, or scenes from the book.

The students also crafted concise (300 character) descriptions for their artwork and ‘translated’ them into QR codes. QR (quick response) codes were created in Japan and can be ‘read’ using a QR reader on mobile devices like iPads, iPod Touches and phones. There are many such readers, but the favored one in my class is i-nigma. There are plenty of great places to learn more about QR codes in the classroom; good places to start are the Cool Cat Teacher Blog and Steve Anderson’s Live Binder.

My students really got into this assignment and worked carefully to create some stunning art.  Once their work was complete we put together an ‘art gallery’ in our classroom. The students loved ambling through the gallery discussing and admiring each other’s drawings, and they had fun translating the QR codes with their mobile devices. After the gallery walk we discussed those descriptions that really captured the essence the characters, settings, or scenes.

Are you using QR codes in your classroom? My class would love to hear what your students are doing with these pixilated products of technological wizardry.

A while back I posted ‘A Game-based Journey Through History with Google Earth‘ about a challenge to help my students address the essential question ‘How does WHERE we live affect HOW we live?’ I developed this project after reading some excellent stuff from Andrew Miller and Judy Willis on using the video game model as a learning tool.

The Grade 6 students have completed the project and there are now some excellent tours of Neolithic sites available. Check out an excellent sample here. Students can use these tours to compare and contrast how the first agriculturalists developed in different regions of the world. The final stage will be for students to demonstrate their understandings of our essential question.

The students really enjoyed the project. The first levels were content-based and required a good deal of research and writing. These were demanding but the students eagerly pressed on because they loved the challenge of moving from level to level. When the students reached level 5 and began adding their content to Google Earth, the excitement reached a fever pitch and things really got crazy! As expected the students really got into using Google Earth, but they now had the content to create a meaningful tour.

As the teacher I enjoyed the project because  it helped my students to create content-rich digital work using an amazing tool. Throughout the process we examined the difference between content (the ideas) and form (how we present ideas), and I am satisfied that my students have a clear understanding of the difference. It will be easier in the future for them to see the difference between projects that look great but say little and those that express great ideas in meaningful ways.

This project created a wonderful opportunity for me to differentiate my instruction. Students worked on levels at their own pace, levels were adapted for different abilities, and those students who excelled had the chance to become experts and guides for others. I even had a team of students who served as ‘gatekeepers’ and checked work to see if students were ready to move onto the next level. All this gave me the opportunity to spend more time with individual students throughout the research, writing, and game creation.

These Google Earth tours are now a digital record that can be shared with classes across space and time. Students in schools around the globe can use these tours as a resource in their own studies, and next year my own students can tweak and improve upon them as we explore different questions about the first human revolution.

There are a few things I’ll do differently next time. The biggest change I will make is to have the students work in teams to complete the tours. I’m not sure why I didn’t go this route this time, but teams will certainly help to complete the tours more efficiently so we can spend more time using the tours to explore our essential question.

I had prewritten instructions for each level ready to be emailed to each student once they finished a level. The constant mailings often interrupted my work with students. Early on I’ll identify a couple of keen kids and put them in charge of emailing the levels as students progress. I will also add deadlines. Initially there were no deadlines as students worked at their own pace, but I think that even flexible deadlines will encourage the more ‘methodical’ students to work more efficiently. Finally, I’ll figure out a way for students to include their answers to the essential question into their tours to add depth to our journey through time to the sites of the Neolithic Revolution.

Creating a game-based project is one way to avoid projects that look great but offer little in the way of meaningful content. My Grade 6 students are in the thick of a game-based research project on the Neolithic revolution, and things are going great!

The Inspiration

Andrew Miller’s excellent article ‘Game-Based Learning Units for the Everyday Teacher’ inspired me to create a project to help my Grade 6 students explore the different places human’s first made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. We are investigating the essential question ‘How does WHERE we live affect HOW we live?’, and by looking at different Neolithic sites, we can examine why people learned to grow different foods using different technologies, and why they developed very similar techniques independently across the globe.

The Dilemma

As an exciting culmination to this project the students will use Google Earth create a tour of these different Neolithic sites. My students love this tool!  In the past, however, I have struggled with projects that are amazing and fun because of the tools but are often weak on content. For most kids it’s more fun to shoot and edit video, write a play or tinker with tools like Google Earth than to do research and explore difficult questions. Miller’s game-based learning gave me a way to deal with this dilemma. This project isn’t about using the tool, it’s about creating an authentic experience to demonstrate an understanding of our essential question.

The Answer

The project  is designed as a challenge where the students must move through successive levels to complete their tour. In the early levels of the game they are locating Neolithic sites and researching their unique characteristics. Since students can only move onto the next level once they complete a previous one successfully; they must persist until they complete the level correctly (Angry Birds anyone?). Content-rich levels are first, and the fun of learning and building their Google Earth tours comes later. The problem of students getting distracted by the tools and not getting the content is solved.

The Polls Are Still Open

We are still in the early stages of the this project, but already I’m impressed with what my students are demonstrating. They are excited about the game and are enthusiastically conducting their research in the early levels because they are motivated to reach the later levels of the game where they’ll get to learn to create a tour using Google Earth. There is both independence and collaboration. Those who prefer to go it alone are quiet and focused next to those who, in small teams, are divying up tasks and sharing information. All are persevering, asking good questions, and uncovering deep and important aspects of our history.

A large spreadsheet in the classroom keeps track of each student’s progress and, as expected, the field is beginning to spread out. This is just fine because the differentiation allows students to work at their own pace, and frees me to work more closely with students who need my assistance. Throughout the game I can depend on the students who are in the more advanced levels to assist those in the earlier levels of the game. I love watching my students teach each other. A bonus ‘Super Star’ level requires the students to reflect on what they learned and explore our essential question.

For more information check out the Google doc: Google Earth Tour Project. Comments, suggestions and edits are always welcome.

This year I have the wonderful opportunity to explore technology to Grade 8 students. One of the first things I introduced them to was A Google a Day. I figured it would be a great way for them to spend a few minutes before the class begins,  jump starting their brains and learning to search like a ninja.

For those who aren’t familiar with A Google a Day it’s basically a scavenger hunt. Everyday Google presents a tricky question and players are meant to search for the answer. The questions often require one to hunt for some pretty obscure, but fascinating information. As a player, you can take your time or race the clock. My students like the race aspect. If you get stuck Google offers hints on how to search. I like this because it teaches my students different ways to look for information.

We started the year by completing A Google a Day together, and many of students were hooked immediately. Now I walk into class and look around to see the students with Google a Day on their screens and focused on finding answers to quirky questions like ‘What major historic attraction can [be found] on the road from
Xcalacoop to Piste?’or ‘[Who] threw Sicily’s highest mountain on top of a mythological monster?‘

Playing A Google a Day motivates students to use search engines more effectively and to find information more efficiently. This is cool! But my favorite aspect of A Google a Day is that it introduces them to fascinating people, places and ideas that they might not have stumbled upon elsewhere. And for me, I truly get to learn something new everyday.

Ahhh…the first days of a new school year. Thirty-nine new students, dazed, confused, but full of anticipation, came through my Grade 6 door last week. Moments before, I watched them through the window of my classroom. With their shiny new bags filled with celophane-wrapped school supplies, they eagerly greeted each other as they huddled around their lockers. As I surveyed the scene I reflected on the wonderful opportunity ahead. Of the nearly seven billion people on this planet, I get the chance to learn about and appreciate thirty-nine more of them. How cool is that?

Like most teachers I begin every year with an understanding of expectations: my students’ expectations for me, mine for them, and those they have for each other. As I see it, my number one priority is my relationships with my students. To get these off to a good start we spend a few days exploring our expectations for each other. We talk about our goals for the year and how our expectations will support these goals.

Students brain storm their ideas and generate lists of expectations for the different relationships they will have throughout the year. As you can imagine this list can get rather long, even when we account for repeats. It would be difficult to keep track of and remember them all so the final stage to this process is to help my students see that nearly any reasonable expectation in a relationship can fit into one or more of three simple, but very profound ideas: Taking care of yourself, taking care of others, and taking care of this place.

And so we proceed through our exciting year together with opportunities everyday to practice being the best people we can be by learning to care for life’s great treasures: ourselves, others, and the world around us.