This post includes my thoughts, ideas, and reflections based on the content from #DLMOOC Week 2. Some ideas may not make sense unless you reference the source mentioned.
Panel discussion: Looking at student work for deeper learning
1. Connectivist MOOC – not the readings or videos, but the community that creates the learning. (define connectivist explanation). Showcase the power of this mindset and thought process. This is an idea I want to explore more in my own G+ Community as well as my job as an instructional coach.
2. When looking at student work, we need to check to see if it has value – can it be used by others?
3. What are we looking at when looking at student work?(tinker time)(idea I want to dig deeper with personally)
-what comes up for you? (give them a picture, photograph, drawing)
-do this around a table and nobody can repeat answers
-is the work connected to the rubric
-what did you learn by looking at student work?
-you can learn about your own practices and how you scaffold via lens of student work. Don’t look at it just as an end product, but through the process
– we need to determine the right purpose for the student work. Are we using student work as an example of excellent work or if you are using it to determine if teaching matches up?
– In America it is viewed as embarrassing to celebrate mistakes in learning and helping students solve problems as opposed to always showing the perfect work.
– do not mix cold and warm feedback because they only part heard is after the BUT (love this and need to explore more)
– Another interesting way to respond to critique is by communicating higher standards.
– SLICE protocol
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/deeper-learning-student-work-ron-berger
My takeaway from reading this article is that we(BMS) need to create a spotlight of student work for others to view and connect with. Working with admin and tech department to build this page. We are also going to create recipe cards for staff to share their projects with the world in connection with examples.
I love this part of the interview
What’s become clear to me is that a lot of teachers don’t actually have that much clarity. Their learning targets are often vague. And if they don’t know exactly what they want to come out of it, then it’s really hard to prioritize which features in the piece of work they want to really home in on. If you’re going to drill down on something, it has to be the thing that is your key learning target for that concept or that lesson or that day.
When I observe teachers doing lessons, I’ll often interview them afterwards and say, “What was the most important thing that you wanted them to get out of that lesson?” And they’ll just look blank for a moment and then say, “Well, there’s a lot of things.” But they haven’t really thought ahead enough to be able to say, “When they leave this room, I really want them to have this clear.” And if that were clear before their lesson, everything would have gone differently. I think that applies equally to a critique session or the use of models. Why did you choose that model? What is it you want to use it to show? Why are you showing it? It’s about having that level of clarity.
Another thing that gets in the way is that a lot of teachers are afraid to be candid with their students about quality.
I marked this piece because I think what he shares is so vital to education issues currently. Working with many teachers daily for project launches and ideas has shown that we still struggle to gain that clarity. As an instructional coach I need to work and develop better skills to help them find that clarity. It is easy for me to ask these questions, but I need to develop some protocols or tools to guide them to clarity. This is so important because if we don’t have clarity, then the students cannot have clarity in which leads to frustration to everyone involved – educators, school, students, parents, etc. These questions will work perfect in project tunings.
I know this is geared towards younger kids, but what a powerful video. I think that we often forget or I should say we neglect to take time to work through drafts. Students hate doing revisions and drafts. We live in a society of now and instant. I think this video speaks volumes to not only teaching practices, but to the teachers as well. As I work with teachers in my building work towards a fully immersive PBL environment we often forget that our own ideas need help. We have implemented project tunings, but after a few months of doing this I realized that many times teachers could benefit from several tunings to get a project to the high levels of learning that we are all striving to reach.
This video is amazing in the sense that you can see the development of learning and the importance of feedback. Each time the student drew a butterfly he received feedback to make it better. Each time the butterfly developed more and more and in the end it was hard to believe how much progress he made. I think we need to do the same. We need students to see their progress. Often times I think their learning is not meaningful to them because they don’t see their progress. As educators the same idea applies.
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