Category: In the classroom

Why PBL Works for Introverts

My school year is underway and as September just flew by, I have been completely overwhelmed by work – of course.  I am undertaking a new assessment method with a colleague of “feedback first and then grades” (blogpost to come when I give back the first set next week) but for now I wanted to comment on an article I just read this morning entitled “When Schools Overlook Introverts” that was posted on the Atlantic’s website.  This is a very thoughtfully written piece by Michael Godsey that is discussing how so much education is based on the idea of social constructivism which might be hard on those of us who are built to work best in “quieter, low-key environments.” This implies that the environments of collaboration and working with others are always loud, chaotic and multi-faceted.

And you know, sometimes it is.  Classrooms where kids are all at the board or working with technology can be messy.  Everyone’s talking at once, kids are calling me over and asking questions out loud (often the same questions 5 times in a row) and they are seeing themselves as the center of attention.  Once they understand, they move on and help their partner move on.  In my classroom, they take pictures with their iPads, record work in Notability or use GeoGebra to get a different perspective – either algebraic or geometric.  This can be quite chaotic.

However, most of the time in the PBL classroom.  everyone is required to sit quietly and listen to one student describe their thought process.  They need to learn to sit patiently while another student works though confusion and misunderstanding and ask questions of the presenter.  An introvert has a great deal of time of quiet to themselves being inside their head while the presenter is discussing his or her own grappling with a problem from the night before and the introvert can sit there and think, “Huh, that’s not what I did.  Should I say something and comment, or just accept that as the right answer?” The introvert grapples with different demons in the PBL classroom if they are a strong mathematics student in many ways because they might feel confident in the material but not confident that people care about their ideas.  Who knows?  It depends on their personality.

The introvert also has the opportunity to write journal entries for me and also to write bi-weekly learning reflections about what his or her learning successes were for the week.  This year I have a student with a speech impediment who was upfront with me about it at the beginning of the year.  This student has quickly become one of my best communicators because he realized how much I value what he has to say and that I would be patient and so would the rest of the class.  If he can’t say what he needs to say at the moment he wants to in class, he will always have an opportunity each week to do it.

I am very clear on my classroom contribution Assessment Rubrics that the grade does not depend on quantity of contribution, but quality.  Introverts should contribute because they have something important to add, an excellent question to make a clarifying point or something that will add depth to the conversation – never just to add to their grade. They can look at what they need to improve on by using my Student Analysis of Contribution which I will be doing next week – it’s about that time of the term.

I believe that although PBL strives to allow for all voices to be heard (both extrovert and introvert) it is the teacher that makes or breaks the classroom culture.  We need to be continually checking and rechecking the barometer of communication and tone of the class to be sure to all students are feeling heard. So that as Godsey says at the end of his article, the kids can learn with others and not by the “hell of other people.”

 

Disruption in Presence: Missing PBL Math Class

What do we all do with kids who miss out on the wonderful rich discussions where the learning happens in a PBL math class? @0mod3 asks what to do about kids’ absences. (thanks for the great question!)

It’s not as simple as “get the notes from somebody who was there” is it?  What did they actually miss by not being in class? Yes, new vocabulary possibly, new concepts, whether their problems were right or wrong – these things can all be “looked up” in some ways in another students notes or with a conversation with the teacher or a tutor just like in any other mathematics class.  So what is it we are really concerned with that they missed?

It seems that DReycer is hitting the nail on the head in her second tweet here.  Of course, it’s the experience of being a part of the rich mathematical discussions.  Hearing other students’ ideas and deciding for themselves or analyzing critically in the moment what they think of those ideas – is it right? wrong? potentially right? more efficient? similar to what I did?  These experiences are very hard to re-simulate for students who are absent from the PBL classroom.

When students come to me who have missed class.  I do tell them to look at other students’ notes.  However, this is because of how I tell students in my classes to take notes.  Kids are supposed to attempt the homework problems on one side of the notebook and then on the other side take “note of” what the other student who is presenting the problem did differently from them.  Eventually when we, as a class, come to some type of consensus about how the problem connects to a new concept or to a problem we have already done, it is then that a student should take note of the new idea as we formalize it into a theorem or new idea.

Absences will always be a problem for us who teach in the PBL classroom since we can’t recreate the in-the-moment learning that happens when a student sees another’s presentation (unless you feel like having parental consent for recording every single class, and even then you can’t really have the interaction with the student that missed it) however, what you can do is make the most of the time when each kid is there. PBL is by its nature relational learning and student and teacher presence is extremely important.  Be sure that students are the ones who are talking and asking questions in order for them to actively be engaging with the presenter.  Be sure that you are present to their needs when they return from an absence.  On days when they are not there, it might be enough for them to ask questions on the next day after they have read through the vocabulary or seen someone’s complete solution.  Sometimes active learning the next day can just be enough.

I’d love to hear other people’s ideas and thoughts!

Connections Between IBL and PBL

At the PBL Summit a few weeks ago, we had two wonderful speakers, Julian Fleron and Phil Hotchkiss from Westfield State University who are founding members of the Discovering the Art of Mathematics Project.  They gave a great key note address on Friday night about Inquiry-Based Learning and motivating students in an IBL classroom.  You can find their talk at our Summit Resources website if you are interested.  I wrote a blogpost a few years ago about my interest in IBL and the commonalities between PBL and IBL and I thought I’d reshare in honor of them.  Enjoy!

A number of years ago, I needed some kind of suport text for a Number Theory tutorial that I was doing with two rather advanced students who had gone through the curriculum at the school where I was teaching.  These two girls were advanced enough that I knew that if I used my notes and problems from my wonderful Number Theory course from college (some many years ago) we would have a great time.  I looked online and found a great book called “Number Theory Through Inquiry” published by the MAA which came with an instructor’s supplement including pedagogical discussion and some solutions.  It sounded so much like what I was doing with my other classes that I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to see what it was like.  So I ordered the book and while I was reading the instructor’s supplement I came across something that I had not heard about before (and now I am so embarrassed to admit this). The authors described what they called the “Modified Moore Method” of instruction or Inquiry-Based Learning and went on to describe what sounded interestingly so much like what I was doing in my classroom.  I had to learn about this Moore Method.

I ended up researching R.L. Moore online and it seems that he was one of the first math teachers – ever – to think about and act on this idea of not teaching mathematics with direct instruction.  He did it all the way back in 1948, but at the college level – and it was radical there!  The idea of Inquiry-Based Learning has expanded from there, but it has really only stayed at the college level in mathematics for a very long time.  There are many initiatives at the college level, including the folks at Westfield State University who are writing a wonderful curriculum project funded by the NSF called Discovering the Art of Mathematics with is a math for liberal arts curriculum at the college level.  I think it could be used at the secondary level as well for an alternative elective in the senior year for those students who still want to take a college-level math course but aren’t ready for or interested in an AP course in Calculus or Stats.  If there are any secondary teachers interested in beta-testing this unique curriculum please contact me and let me know.  I am on the advisory board for this project.

What made me think about the connection between IBL and PBL was this wonderful blogpost I just read by Dana Ernst, of Northern Arizona University in which he describes, in such wonderful ways, the pedagogy and nature of IBL.  The similarities between the definition of IBL he cites (by E. Lee May) and my definition of PBL are eerie – and it is one of the only ones that I’ve seen that stresses a reference to teacher authority being diminished.  Many wonderful resources are given by Ernst at the end of his post as well.

I do remember back in 2003, when I published my first article on my experiences at Emma Willard, after I left Exeter (where they called in Harkness teaching because of the table), in attempting to teach the way I wished to.  I had no idea what to call what I was doing.  I believe in my first article I called it teaching with a Problem-Solving Curriculum (PSC).  After I started my doctoral work, I found PBL and I realized that’s what it was.  Then I read more and more and realized that others thought PBL was project-based learning and called what I did discovery learning.  After reading about R.L. Moore, it sounds like he was doing it all along since 1948 and called it IBL.  In whatever branch of the pedagogical family tree you find yourself, if you are asking students to look at mathematics with wonder and question what they know – you should know that you are supported, know that you are doing good work and know that there is someone out there who has done it before and wants to discuss it with you.

PS – I’m hoping to attend the Legacy of R.L. Moore Conference next year in Austin, if anyone is interested!

Late night thoughts on Assessing Prior Knowledge

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So it’s 11:50 pm on a Tuesday night, so what?  I can still think critically, right?  It was the last day of classes and I had an amazing day, but then all of a sudden Twitter started gearing up and lots of discussions began and my mind started racing.  I had planned on writing a blogpost about a student’s awesome inquiry project (which, it ends up, took me about 2 hours to figure out a way to make an iBook on my iPad into a video to try to post on my blog, so that will have to wait), but then I read a great post by Andrew Shauver (@hs_math_physics)

Mr. Shauver writes about the pros and cons of direct instruction vs. inquiry learning but has a great balanced viewpoint towards both of them. In this post, he is discussing the how and when teachers should or can use either method of instruction.  It is important, Shauver states to remember that “inquiry can work provided that students possess the appropriate background knowledge.”

I would totally agree, but I’m just wondering how we assess that – does it really work to lecture for a day and then say they now possess the appropriate background knowledge?  Do we lecture for two days and then give them a quiz and now we know they possess it?  I wonder how we know?  At some point, don’t we have to look at each student as an individual and think about what they are capable of bringing to a mathematical task?  We should set up the problems so that there is some sort of triggering of prior knowledge, communication between peers, resources available for them to recall the information?

Joseph Mellor makes a great point that in PBL most of the time you might plan a certain outcome from a problem, or set of problems, but the triggering didn’t work, or the kids didn’t have the prior knowledge that you thought.  He says that he is often either pleasantly surprised by their ability to move forward or surprised at how much they lack. In PBL, we depend on the students’ ability to communicate with each other, ask deep questions and take risks – often admitting when they don’t remember prior knowledge – hopefully to no suffering on their part. This can be a big hurdle to overcome and can often lead to further scaffolding, a deeper look at the writing of the problem sequence, fine tuning the awareness of their true prior knowledge (not just what the previous teacher said they “learned”) or yes, maybe a little direct instruction in some creative ways.  However, I do believe that given the opportunity a lot of students can be pleasantly surprising.  What do you think?

Spring has Sprung – and so has the French Garden!

So the spring term means two things for my Honors Geometry kids – the technology inquiry project and looking at the French Garden Problem.  So for those of you who are not familiar with both of those I’ll try to quickly fill you in while I talk about how they just happen to so coolly (is that an adverb?  if not I just made it up) overlapped this week.

My Spring Term Technology Inquiry Project is something I came up with three years ago when I really wanted a way to push my honors geometry students into thinking originally while at the same time assessing their knowledge of using technology.  I did a presentation last year at the Anja S. Greer Conference on Math, Science and Technology and the audience loved it.  Basically, I give students an inquiry question (one that I attribute to my good friend Tom Reardon) that they have to work on with technology and then they have to come up with their own inquiry question (which is, of course, the fun part) and explore that with technology and/or any other methods they wish.  I have received some pretty awesome projects in the past two years and I don’t think I am going to be disappointed this year either.

The French Gardener Problem is famously used in my PBL courses at the MST Conference as well.  Everyone who has taken my course knows the fun and interesting conversations we have had about the many ways to solve it and the extensions that have been created by many of my friends – an ongoing conversation exists somewhere in the Blogosphere about the numerous solutions – In fact Tom sent me a link just last fall to a more technological solution at Chris Harrow’s blog. (We’re such geeks).  Great math people like Phillip Mallinson and Ron Lancaster have also been drawn in by the attractive guile of the The French Gardener Problem.  In this problem, the main question is what fraction of the area of the whole square is the octagon that is formed inside (what is the patio for the garden)?

So the other night, after we had worked on this question in class for a couple of days and the students had meet with me in order for me to approve their original inquiry question, a student stops by to discuss his question.  John starts off with, “I can’t think of anything really. What I had wanted to do, someone else already claimed.” (I’m not letting them do a question that someone else has already decided to look into.  So John sits in my study and thinks for a while. I told him that this part of the project was supposed to be the fun part.  I gave him some thoughts about extending some problems that he liked.  He said he had liked the French Garden Problem and thought it was really cool.  So I went back to some of my work and he started playing with GeoGebra.  Before I knew it he starts murmuring to himself, “Cool, cool….Cool! It’s an octagon too!”  I’m thinking to myself, what has he done now?  I go over to his computer and he’s created this diagram:

John's Original Inquiry Question
John’s Original Inquiry Question

I’m asking him, “What did you do? How did you get that?”  He says that he just started playing with the square and doing different things to it and ended up reflecting equilateral triangles into the square instead of connecting the vertices with the midpoints as in the original French Garden Problem.  Then he started seeing how much of the area this octagon was and it ended up that it was……you don’t think I’m going to tell you, do you?

Anyway, it just made my night, to see the difference in John when he came by and the by the time he left.  He was elated – like he had discovered the Pythagorean Theorem or something.  I just love this project and I would encourage anyone else to do the same thing.  Leave a comment if you end up doing it because I love to hear about any improvements I could make.

Succeeding at Helping Students to Fail?? Part 1: Meaning

Apologies faithful readers – those of you who know me well, know that I have been dealing with a great deal of personal issues and preparing for the summer PBL Math Teaching Summit, so I have taken a small hiatus from blogging for a while.  However, with that under control for now, I turn to reflecting on something that happened in class the other day and its relation to a great article I retweeted that was on TeachThought’s website the other day entitled Helping Students Fail.  I have been giving a lot of thought this year to the idea of Grit and Problem-Based Learning which has intrigued me for a while.  However, this article is one of the few I’ve seen that really speaks to some concrete steps that teachers can take to aid students on the journey of dealing with making mistakes and viewing them in a positive light.

I love the framework that the author gives here:

http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/the-role-of-failure-in-learning-helping-students-fail/
Helping Students Fail: A Framework by Terry Heick

Breaking the struggle into these four aspects of learning is very interesting to me (of course with respect to the PBL Classroom).  It dawned on me while reading this article that this is a continuous and completely ongoing process of learning to fail that happens.  It is so ubiquitous that the teacher and students are probably not even aware of it (or are so aware of it that that’s where the discomfort is emanating from).  It is so ubiquitous that I needed this framework for me to be able to even have it spelled out for me.

1. Meaning: In the PBL classroom, meaning is shaped everyday – the explicit separation between knowledge and performance is spelled out in discussion and the way students are asked to share their attempts at problems.  Jo Boaler might have spelled it out best in her paper desribing the Dance of Agency, where she explained the importance of sharing what she called “partial solutions.”  Using this language is really important to make sure that students don’t feel the need to have a complete solution when they present (because no matter how many times I say it, they still say, “Is it OK if it’s wrong/”)  In their mind, they feel their presentation is a performance.  However, the other day I had an interesting experience while students were presenting.  We were doing this problem in class and I had assigned two girls to present their ideas together:

A triangle has sides measure 9, 12 and 15 (what’s special about this triangle?).  Find the distances to the centroid from all three vertices.

The day before we had done a problem very similar to this with an equilateral triangle of sidelength 6 and the presenter had realized that he could connect this problem to the work we were doing with 30-60-90 triangles.  He then applied the Centroid Theorem which states that the centroid is 2/3 of the way from the vertex along the median.  So when the girls presented, they did this:

FullSizeRender (1)

They realized that the median from A was the hypotenuse of a right triangle and they could find its length with the Pythagorean Theorem. They then used the Centroid Theorem and found 2/3 of it. However, next, they did this:


FullSizeRender (2)It was great that they connected this problem to the previous day’s presentation where all of the distances were the same (I’m always asking them to look for connections). However, when I asked them the question of whether they expected those distances to all be equal, they had to think about that. We put the question out to the class and it started a great discussion about why sometimes they were the same and sometimes they weren’t. I won’t go into the whole solution here since the correct answer is not the point of this blogpost but what happened that evening is.

Later on that night, I received an email from one of the girls who was part of the presenting team. At the end of class, I had noticed that she seemed very quiet and I had asked her if she was confused about something else we were discussing towards the end of the class when the bell rang. She had said no and left class very awkwardly.

This is what she wrote to me:

FullSizeRender
I had been working so hard to make students feel comfortable making mistakes that I wasn’t paying attention to who had made the mistakes and that they were actually comfortable making the mistakes and proud of making those mistakes and wanted credit for making those mistakes! I was dumbfounded. I just couldn’t believe it. My perception of (at least) this student’s ability to be comfortable with being wrong was so different than what her’s was. She was proud that her “mistake was a good one” and not just a “silly error” and I needed to give her the credit she deserved for taking a risk. I learned such a great lesson from this student on this day and I owe her so much (and don’t worry, I told her that in an email response)!

The separation between knowledge and performance has been made clear to at least some of my students and I am going to keep doing what I’m doing in the hope of getting this message to all of them.

Tracking, PBL and Safety in Risk-Taking

I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to the idea of “tracking” in PBL, mostly at the prodding of the teaching fellow I’m working with this year – which is so awesome, of course.  Having a young teacher give you a fresh outlook on the practices that your school has come to know and accept (even if I don’t love them personally) is always refreshing to me.

I have taught with PBL in three different schools – two that tracked at Algebra II (or third year) point in the four-year curriculum and now one that tracks right from the start.  Anyone who has done Jo Boaler’s “How to Learn Math” course has seen the research about tracking.  So the question that my teaching fellow asked me, is why do we do it.  The answers I had for him were way too cynical for a first year student teacher to hear – “Because it’s easier for the teachers to plan lessons and assessments.” “Because the class will be easier to manage, as well as parents.”, etc.

In fact, I would have to say that in a PBL math classroom the experiences that I had with the heterogeneous groupings ended up being really advantageous for both strong and weak math students.  Here’s a great quote from a weaker student in a heterogeneously grouped math class, who was part of my dissertation research (that I have used before in presentations) when asked what the PBL math classroom was like for her:

“You could, kind of, add in your perspective and it kind of gives this sense like, “Oooh, I helped with this problem.” and then another person comes in and they helped with that problem, and by the end, no one knows who solved the problem.  It was everyone that solved the problem.  LIke, everyone contributed their ideas to this problem and you can look at this problem on the board and you can maybe see only one person’s handwriting, but behind their handwriting is everyone’s ideas.  So yeah, it’s a sense of “our problem” – it’s not just Karen’s problem, it’s not just whoever’s problem, it’s “our problem”.

This shared sense of work, I believe, rubs off on both the strong and weak students and allows for mutual respect more often than not.  Even my teaching fellow shared an anecdote from his class wherein a stronger student had gotten up to take a picture with his iPad of a solution a weaker student had just been in charge of discussing.  The presenter seemed outwardly pleased at this and said ,”He’s taking a picture of what I did? that’s weird.”

This mutual respect then leads to a shared sense of safety in the classroom for taking risks.  Today I read this tweet from MindShift:

I don’t really read that much about coding, but when something talks about risk-taking, I’m right there.  In this article, the student that decided to go to Cambodia and teach coding to teenage orphans makes a really keen observation:

“Everybody was a beginner, and that creates a much more safe environment to make mistakes.”

So interestingly, when the students in a classroom environment have the sense that they are all at the same level, it allows them to accept that everyone will have the same questions and opens up the potential that all will be willing to help.  I don’t think this has to be done with actual tracking though – I think it can happen with deliberate classroom culture moves.

I got more insight into this when asking some students in my Honors Geometry class why they don’t like asking questions in class.

“It seems to not help that much because it shows others how much I don’t know.”
“It only allows others to feel good about themselves instead of make me feel better that my question was answered.”
“If someone else can answer my question then they end up getting a big head about it instead of really helping me understand.”

I was starting to see a trend.  Now, this was not all kids, don’t get me wrong, but it was enough to get me concerned – This reminded me of a great blogpost I read by John Spencer (@edrethink) called The Courage of Creativity in which he write about how much courage it takes to put something creative out there and fail.  In mathematics, many students don’t see it as being creative, so hopefully John won’t mind if I change his quote a little bit (since I am citing him here, I hope this is alright!)

“All of this has me thinking that there’s a certain amount of courage required in [risk-taking in problem solving]. The more we care about the work [and are invested in the learning or what people think of our outcomes], the scarier it is. We walk into a mystery, never knowing how it will turn out. I mention this, because so many of the visuals I see about creativity treat creative work like it’s a prancing walk through dandelions when often it’s more like a shaky scaffold up to a mountain to face a dragon.”

Thanks John!

How do we get kids to value others’ ideas in math class?

Some recent common situations:

A very gifted student comes to me (more than once) after class asking why he needs to listen to other students talk about their ideas in class when he already has his own ideas about how to do the problems.  Why do we spend so much time going over problems in class when he finished all the problems and he has to sit there and listen to others ask questions?

A parent asks if their child can study Algebra II over winter break for two weeks and take a placement test in order to “pass out” of the rest of the course and not have to take mathematics.  A college counselor supports this so that they can move forward in their learning and get to Calculus by their senior year.

Tweet from a fellow PBL teacher:


Over the summer, a student wants to move ahead in a math course and they watch video after video on Khan Academy and take a placement test that allows them to move ahead past geometry into an Algebra II course.  Why would they need to spend a year in a geometry course when they have all of the material they need in 5 weeks of watching videos all alone?

It is a very accepted cultural norm in the U.S. that math is an isolated educational experience.  I’m not quite sure where that comes from, but for me, it remains a rather traditionalist and damaging view of mathematical learning.  I would even go so far as to say that it could be blamed for the dichotomous view of mathematics as black or white, right or wrong, fast or slow, etc.  For many students, if they don’t fit that mold of a mathematics learner who can learn math by watching someone do it, sitting nicely and taking notes for 45 minutes while we ‘cover’ section 2.4 today, then they are ‘bad at math.’

Leone Burton once said that the process of learning mathematics is an inherently social enterprise and that coming to know mathematics depends on the active participation in the enterprises so valued and accepted in that community (Burton, 2002).  In other words, if we accept the status quo of the passivity of mathematics learning that is what we will come to believe is valued.   In her research on the work of research mathematicians and their mathematical learning she found that the opposite of the status quo was true.  The collaborative nature of their practice had many benefits that mathematicians could claim including sharing work, learning from one another, appreciating the connections to others’ disciplines and feeling less isolated (Grootenboer & Zevenbergen, 2007).  Collaboration was highly valued.

We are doing students a disservice if we allow them to remain in the status quo of being passive mathematics students or thinking that they do not have to share and/or listen to others.  The CCSS are asking (well, requiring) them to critique others’ work and give feedback on problem solving methods.  They need to be able to say what they think about others’ ideas and construct their own argument.  How are they going to learn how to express their reasoning if they don’t listen to others and attempt to make sense of it?

When working and/or learning in isolation students are not asked to do any of this or even asked to make mathematical sense oftentimes.  They are just asked to regurgitate and show that they can repeat what they have seen.  How do we know they are making any sense if they do not have to respond to anyone or interact with a group?  The importance of the social interaction becomes apparent in this context.

So what I try to explain to students is that mathematics means more to me than just being able to have a concept “transmitted” to them by someone showing them how to do something, but for them to actually do mathematics in a community of practice.  Creating that community takes a lot of work and mutual respect, but it’s something that is definitely worth it and I encourage everyone to keep inspiring me to keep doing it!  Thanks @JASauer.

The First Followers…how do I get them in the PBL classroom?

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So I have one class this year that is rather frustrating and pretty tough to handle when it comes to buy-in with what I’m doing in the mathematics classroom.  Perhaps it’s because it’s first period, or perhaps it’s the mix of kids (quiet, shy, cynical?) – but I’m having a hard time inspiring them to speak out about their ideas or even be somewhat active in class.  This has made me wonder if I’m doing anything differently?  What’s the difference between first period and second period?  Why would this class be that much different in student make-up and personality than other challenging classes that I’ve had.

These thoughts made me remember a video I saw at a conference talk this summer and how important the “first followers” are.  This video is basically about a guy the narrator calls the “lone nut” who is dancing at a music festival (maybe you’ve seen it, it’s been around for a while) and how his leading becomes a “movement.”

It’s one of my favorites and so true.  But what I am afraid of is that the “first followers” I had in my first period class are not necessarily “followers” but students who realized they better do what I want or they won’t do well in my class.  This is not the same as “buy-in” to PBL.  This led me to think about what I needed to do in order to create first followers who would truly be inspiring and lead to more followers.  I’m not sure about this, but a couple things I tried:

  • talking about the pedagogy and how it’s different with the students
  • discussing the class contribution rubric with them and having them do a self-evaluation of their contributions to class
  • discussing listening skills when learning
  • Being deliberate about asking questions that are more open-ended (not just procedural)
  • Being less “forgiving” that it’s first period and they are tired – keeping my standards up of what I expect from them.
  • Giving praise when students take risks and learn from mistakes at the board
  • Offering a reward (like a Pez Candy) when a student is wrong but has taken a risk

So far my attempts have not been in vain, but I still don’t feel the “movement” as I do in other classes.  This has been an interesting first month with this group and I think many of them are actually learning, but don’t seem to be enjoying themselves.  I think I just need a couple more “first followers” to allow the others to see that what I am asking of them – although harder and requiring more energy and effort on their part – is actually an important part of their journey of learning.  I would love to hear from anyone who has experienced this and what steps can be taken to increase the followers in a “mob” of the whole class!

Blog Challenge Day 3: Do I really practice what I preach?

So the question for today is “Discuss one observation “area” that you would like to improve upon for your teacher evaluation.”  This is a tough one for me because as a teacher at an independent school formal evaluations are done in the second and sixth years so I don’t have formal evaluation “areas” per se.  Last year, I had a colleague sit in on my classes and give me feedback over a month’s period  and it was extremely helpful to have his perspective.  I also have many teachers come from other school at different points in the year in order to learn about problem-based learning, so I am used to having people in my classroom, but I haven’t really asked for feedback in one particular area in very long time.

However, I do believe that something I wonder about when I speak to teachers learning about PBL is how well I really facilitate PBL discussions.  I know what I’m supposed to do but the time constraints and the issues of adolescent life often keep me from being the best I can be.   I know I can be hard on myself, but if I had an expert in questioning, wait time, reactions to statements, inquiry and scaffolding who could come in and watch me teach for a week or so, that would probably be the best thing for me right now.  It would be so helpful.  So if anyone is willing…please get in touch!