Teach Physics Concepts with Crayons

I played this little game for 45 minutes, and I can’t believe the educational value:  creativity, challenge, originality, and trial-and-error.  This simple game that mimics using crayons makes an addictive lesson in physics.  Draw and create levers, ramps, catapults, and more to get the small red ball to make contact with the star, which sometimes seems placed at impossibly unreachable places.  Download the FREE DEMO at http://www.crayonphysics.com — it has several challenges included.  Buy the full version to be able to explore more challenges and create your own challenges, using some unique tools like rockets and ropes.

• Just give your students a chance to learn or explore physics concepts with this game in the computer lab and offer them “prizes” for the most creative methods of moving the ball.
• Show the game onto a SMARTboard and have them take turns playing the game in front of the class, letting teams compete for the fastest solve times or most efficient methods.
• Use the game yourself to demonstrate physical relationships, and give kids a visual of the concepts you’re teaching.

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Practicing How to Learn

Seems to me that we do a great disservice to our students, if all we do is teach them some content. While the content is important, we cannot overlook the obvious challenge that most of our students will face. A 2008 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that on average, men held 10.7 jobs in their lifetime and women held 10.3 jobs. If anything, our students need to be able to manage their own learning to accommodate the many changes they will experience in the job market.

I get the feeling though that teachers feel pressured to cover content, and often the teaching of how to work as a group to find, analyze, and synthesize the content gets lost.

When I’ve attempted to use cooperative learning (a research-based instructional strategy), the most frustrating thing was having to tell kids howto work as a group in order to accomplish a common goal. But I’m starting to realize that I was setting them up to fail. I hadn’t shown them clear expectations and strategies for how to settle conflict, communicate, and feel accountable to their classmates.

In fact, I was under the impression that because I put them in groups, the magic would happen and the content would get learned. While several groups did succeed, many did not.

So, in my research today, I’ve found some interesting suggestions about using cooperative learning and making it more effective.

For a little discussion about the effectiveness of cooperative learning, try this resource.

If you want some practical implementation guides, try this one on Jigsaw Content Learning and this article on managing and planning cooperative lessons.

The overwhelming caveat? Plan excellent management systems. Provide a clear structure for how students need to act in groups to achieve the goals, AND show them how to do it. Model it, practice it. Practice the process of group learning — not just the content.

Any good strategy needs to be practiced. It just never occurred to me that taking the time to practice “group learning” would be worth the time spent. But research shows that not only do students gain more content, they learn a life-long skill of communication and teamwork.

 

Microsoft Outlook: Keep It All in One Place

You probably have a desk calendar given to you by the armed forces or a local university.  You usually write in the dates of your breaks, birthdays, and other non-pressure events.  Occasionally, you’ll put in a big event that’s coming up, but mostly your desk calendar serves only as a record.  The things you put on this calendar are things you’d remember without prompting anyway.

But what about the two or three really important emails that inform you about deadlines for projects or upcoming school events?  I’ve seen several people print those out and post them near their desk on bulletin boards or tape them to the monitor, when they don’t want to forget.  How many times has that failed?  If it has been taped to my monitor more than two days, it just becomes part of the whole picture and loses its significance.  So, how can we streamline our lives in the classroom to be more productive?  Start using the software to its maximum.

It’s not that paper is bad.  Paper is great at quick and accessible, but paper is horrible at reminders and collaboration and filing.  What teachers need is to integrate their paper systems with Microsoft Outlook (or other calendar system readily available — I say Outlook only because most schools have already purchased it for their teachers).  When you get a good idea or news about an upcoming deadline or event, write it down in your notebook or on a post-it — that’s great.  But later, when you get back at your computer, take a few seconds to enter that info into your calendar or task list and set the reminders, attach any needed documents, or link to pertinent websites.  Build a portfolio of items that will help you be organized and ready without having to take a lot of mental RAM or extra time to collect and file all the printed emails.  I mean, how many three-ring binders can you stack on your shelves?

The idea behind products like Outlook is to allow you to compile information, events, documents, tasks, and contacts so you don’t spend a lot of time on administrative tasks and spend more time creating, brainstorming, and collaborating to get great ideas and projects off the ground.  The problem is that along the way, most of us have continued to ignore the new tools that could increase our productivity because of the learning curve.  But we must remember something about technology:  the learning curve only gets steeper as time passes.  The best time to learn something new is when it is new.  As the technology develops, you’re not learning everything at once, you’re only learning the new developments because you’ve been mastering steps along the way.

So, I challenge you this week:  try something new in Outlook this week.  Attach a file to a calendar event.  Share a task with a colleague.  Share your calendar with several other co-workers to encourage collaboration and easier scheduling.  Find a way to make things easier for yourself.  Just get over the learning curve.

 

Teaching Productivity

How many file cabinets do you have in your classroom?  Where do you keep the list of usernames and passwords required for all the secure tools you must access?  How do you keep from double-booking yourself with meetings/conferences/tutoring sessions?  How do you communicate with other teachers in your building?  How many jumpdrives do you own?

Enough questions?

Teachers are usually very good at what they do.  But, I’ve noticed that so many teachers really STINK at organizing calendars, communicating with one another professionally, and filing materials efficiently.  I see way too many teachers refusing to use the professional organizational tools that sit right in front of them — the Microsoft Office Professional Software Suite.

Why have so many teachers ignored these wonderful (and expensive) tools?  The school system has paid good money for Microsoft Outlook, but I would hate to know how few teachers even use Outlook, Word, Excel, One Note, and Power Point extensively enough to warrant the price tag.  What a waste of money if teachers aren’t going to use these tools to make their day more productive!

This week, I want to show you some of the ways you can use the software that is sitting right in front of you to make your day’s schedule a little more productive — maybe a LOT more productive.  But, you’re going to have to decide something up front.  All questions of productivity require an upfront answer to this question:  Am I willing to sacrifice productivity NOW while I learn some new things in order to multiply my productivity LATER?

Most people just say “no” and move on.  They’d rather do what they know to do, rather than pause and learn a new way.  They’re too busy to learn something new!  But the busyness is the thing we want to remove so teachers can have more time to do what they are really paid to do — teach.

I hope you’ll take some time this week to check back in and learn some tips on productivity.

 

How Am I Doing?

I know this isn’t the most scientific way to measue myself as a teacher.  And, by no means, is this a vote to begin measuring teacher effectiveness solely on test scores.  However, this is something that I have never done — and never seen any other teacher do.

While looking at how MY students did on last year’s state exam, I’m at least able to get a snapshot of how I did in preparing those students for the state exam.  As a group, if they all did poorly in informational reading, then that’s probably my fault, right?  What about the students with IEPs?  How did their scores compare with those without IEPs?

These are just a few of the questions I asked myself as I looked at the data.  And, here are a few of the answers I found.

Here’s the breakdown of all my students.  Distinguished (D) is the top of the range, and Novice Low (NL) is the bottom of the range.  As a state, we are shooting for every student to be Proficient (P) by the year 2014.  So, as you look at these scores, the goal is actually a P not a D.  A D score is considered above the 100 — a bonus, if you will.

My students scored at 73% proficient last year.  What does this tell me?  Either most of my students were already proficient, or I helped some of them move up into that category.  I find it hard to believe that that 73% were already proficient readers, since I have no honors or advanced English classes.

However, this next graph concerned me a bit.  I don’t like that a kid with an IEP only has a 43% chance of being proficient.  My students without IEPs scored 81% proficient.  That gap is huge. Too huge to say, “Well, they have an IEP for a reason.”  They do have an IEP for a reason — to help them reach the general curriculum despite their disability.  A near 40% gap is too much.

The only other significant gap I could find was between males and females.  Females outscored the males 87% to 60%.  So, despite the fairly good numbers overall, I’ve got a lot of work today to shrink the gap between these demographics.

 

Start a PLC

[written Sep 24, 2009]

Just finished up my third Thursday morning talking with 5 or 6 of our new teachers at the high school. I’ll have a big smile on my face for the rest of the day. For most of my career, I have done my job in relative solitude. I’ve been to department meetings and PD days that gave glimmers of community, but overall my entire career as a teacher has left me believing that I must go this journey alone.

Not that I can’t do it alone. I can. I have. I’ve done relatively well (according to test scores). But, I could do better.

That’s the thing about a community. Everyone makes everyone else perform better. And, it’s more enjoyable to fight alongside someone than to continually have to fight alone.

There is a national movement for teachers to be in a Professional Learning Community, and I guess that’s what I’ve wanted all along. That’s what I’m trying to get started here at our high school. We’ve been meeting at 7 AM to discuss issues/struggles in our classrooms, and the conversations have been excellent. They aren’t gripe sessions or lectures from a “veteran” teacher. They are sharing sessions.

Many of the statements in the conversation begin with “I struggle with…” and “What I do is…”, which lets me know there isn’t a dominant voice in the mix. Everyone feels free to share what they’re doing and what they need help with. That’s healthy community.

That’s why I will smile the rest of the day.

 

Shout Out to KYTeacher

Ran across this blog, and while I don’t have a HUGE following, she deserves a link.  Maybe Google will rank her up a few notches.  Since I also blogged about Obama’s speech, I found this post to be pretty interesting, especially since it was done in Wordle (which I also blogged about).

Just nice to know that another teacher is confused by the public’s reaction.

You can follow @kyteacher on Twitter as well.

 

Intro: SAS Curriculum Pathways on Vimeo

A short intro to free teaching resources at SAS Curriculum Pathways.

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How Do I Measure Up?

Kentucky just sent out the results from last year’s test scores, which will be released to the public on Wednesday.  Our principal sat us down and went over our school results, but I did something different this year.  I spent a few hours looking at only MY students’ scores.  I went through and found all 79 of my English II students and put their race, special ed status, free/reduced lunch status, and test scores into a spreadsheet.  I’ll let you know the results later this week, but this little exercise taught me a few things.

First of all, I have never looked at the state test scores in a personal way. I have, as many teachers do, assumed that these test scores aren’t necessarily indicative of how I did.  I am very skeptical about basing the judgment of my effectiveness as a teacher only on test scores.  There are so many variables when it comes to trying to determine the impact of a teacher.  And, frankly, it scares me to think about what will eventually happen — test scores will override any other factor in measuring teacher value because it is “concrete” and “measurable.”

But, I decided that this year, I needed to see.  How am I doing at preparing my students for our state’s exam?

1.  Looking at MY student’s results, gave me a new sense of ownership of their learning.  I know what I wanted them to learn, but what did they actually keep with them and internalize?  One test isn’t necessarily the best way to assess all of what they learned, but it does give me a snapshot of one thing.  The state test does tell me how well my students were able to read and understand an unfamiliar text.  That’s valuable in some ways, and I’ve been ignoring that.

2.  Our yearly look at our overall school data should be done after each teacher has looked at his/her own students’ scores.  When I look at our overall school scores in reading or math, it means very little to me.  I didn’t teach ALL of those students, and the gaps usually look very large.  The amount of data we look at is overwhelming.  But, now that I’ve broken down my own students’ scores, I see how it fits into the larger picture.  The data is much more manageable now that it is personal.

3.  Teaching is about the students you have right now, and the need for a good pre-test/post-test of my own has hit me square in the head.  The scores my students made last year — that’s over.  Those scores will not help me see the weaknesses my current students have.  The data will not tell me what I need to focus on this year.  This group of students will have different weaknesses, different challenges, different starting points, and different interests.  If I am going to help these students progress right now, I have to know quickly where they need help and where they just need a review.

I do not support any initiative that judges teachers based on state tests or ACT-type exams.  A good teacher evaluation must consider all kinds of variables.  But, teachers need to stop ignoring the data from those state exams or standardized tests.  Use the data as a way of getting another perspective on how well you’re doing.  Let it be a part of your yearly self-reflection.

 

The Problem with Teachers

Dear teachers,

You are not the only people in the world who have hard jobs.

Let’s face it.  You get paid very well for working 190 days out of the year.  I know you attend conferences in your breaks, you tutor after hours, and you grade papers through the night.  I understand that all too well.  You put up with mean kids, try to encourage sad kids, and attempt to change the lives of all kids for the better.  You spend extra hours leading committees and organizing extra-curricular events.  You would break yourself in half if you thought your students would benefit.

I get it.

But stop playing the martyr.  Instead, realize you are a public servant.  Your job is a service to our future.  You won’t get thanked enough.  You will get tired.  You will think that all your effort has been wasted.

But as my principal is fond of playing over the intercom between classes, “Don’t stop believin’.”

Your job is hard.  Get tough and get busy changing lives as much as possible.

Your fellow teacher,

Jarrod