A School Teacher Summer

Ahh eight weeks off. Or more like “off”. While I am very excited at this stretch of time ahead of me to relax and hopefully begin planning, I thought I should also take some time to reflect on my first teaching assignment.

I was extremely lucky in my internship to not only have a great co-operating teacher at a wonderful school, but to also connect with other really amazing educators. I was able to spend a lot of time subbing in the classes at that school and when it came time for one of the teachers to take a (planned) leave, it was me who she wanted to run the classroom while she was away.

This opportunity was literally a dream come true for me. I had always admired this teacher and felt like her classroom was what I aspire mine to be; it was warm, welcoming, calm, and organized. It also didn’t hurt that the kids were a truly incredible group.

Coming into a classroom at the end of the year (the last 7 weeks of school) was very interesting. Planning was pretty easy, again thanks to the regular classroom teacher’s organization, we mostly carried on with projects already on the go and as those wrapped up I was able to introduce some of my own ideas. The end of the year also bring a ton of outside the classroom activities, maybe even especially so with grade 8 students who will be transitioning to high school next year. Plans were constantly being adjusted to ensure that students had ample work time as well as outcomes that needed to be met were being met. One aspect of end of the year teaching that I don’t think I was exactly prepared for is how high energy students are. They (and we) can feel the end near. The weather is warm, there are all these fun things happening, the countdown is on. In 7 weeks our room had 3 seating plans. Two planned, the third happened on the fly. The third worked best by far.

I got to do a lot of pretty cool things for a first time teacher. I took on SRC, as I was involved during internship with the teacher who’s leave I was covering, and got to run a whole school dance. I was able to plan a Play Day for the K-4 students with the SRC and my classroom. I facilitated a BreakoutEDU, spent a day at Sherwood Forest and an afternoon watching bowling, battled another class at Capture the Flag in the park, had slurpees and sundaes, and competed against my kids in many Kahoot quizzes all in the last week after report cards were due.

While some days those kids drove me crazy, there was never a day that someone didn’t make me smile or more likely make me laugh like crazy. I am so sad not to be returning to those kids in the fall, and I will always remember how lucky I was in my very first teaching assignment.

Thank you so much to Mrs. Klein and her 7/8 class of 2016/2017.

Jen Chyz

Making Math Engaging

I was tasked with doing a little inquiry of my own this semester.  The question posed to me was “what do you wish you knew more about?”  With three weeks of math on the horizon I really wanted to know how I was going to make math engaging.  Math was never my favorite subject.  When a student says they hate math and don’t understand it, I get it.  I was that person.  I could take great notes about math, but give me a word or number problem and I was lost.  I didn’t want my students to feel that way too (their success in my unit is a story for another time maybe).

Me doing math

I partnered up with a few other ladies who wanted to learn the same thing – shout out to Amanda M, Amanda K, and Alisha – and off we went researching.  Each of us came up with a list of resources that we thought would help us and others make math engaging.  We annotated our resources and created a Google Slide presentation so we could easily share with others.  Some of the resources are links to different math games or apps that can help with both student engagement and student learning and some of the resources are other individual’s blog posts that provided good tips and information to teachers.

If you have any ideas that you find make math engaging for your students, please share them with me!  I heard somewhere that a teacher can never have too many resources!

 

Inquiry Inquiry Inquiry

Throughout this year we always seem to come back to inquiry.  What is it? Is it good for student learning? How can we teach it?  Since part of my teaching philosophy is centred around inquiry, I hope that I know what it really is.  This government of Ontario document describes it wonderfully.  Inquiry based learning is turning wonder into knowledge.  What do the students wonder and how can I facilitate their learning of that content?  I think people struggle with two parts of inquiry.  One part is releasing some control in the classroom and the other is under-planning.   Those seem a bit contradictory, and I agree with you, they are.  But that does not mean that inquiry based learning does not require both of those things.

Inquiry may seem like something that the students just do and you as a teacher can sit back and get some other work done.  Tis not the case.  If you plan on teaching through inquiry, and you should, you better be ready for some serious planning.  Inquiry requires a lot of scaffolding.  Students need to know how to properly navigate the internet, how to find credible sources, how to research, and the many ways that they can present their results.  As students continue to do inquiry based projects, it does get easier.  There will be less scaffolding required but you will still need to check in with your students all the time.  Without students being required to check in, you will never know that they are on task and on the right track.

The other point, releasing some control (notice I don’t say ALL control), is tough for teachers who train their whole degree by planning out every aspect of every lesson.  Giving up all control would be less like inquiry and more like Genius Hour; which is its own amazing strategy.  Inquiry can and should still be able to fit into the curriculum.  There are plenty of outcomes that aim to teach inquiry but within a given topic.  So open up topics in science, art, health, and language for students to inquire within.  Then give up some control and allow them to teach it to themselves and present it to each other.  Take a small step back but always be within reach to facilitate the learning and support the students.

Teaching through inquiry, if done correctly, has the potential to increase student engagement tenfold.  So I challenge you to try it.  If you fail, try it again.  It is not something that we will all be perfect at in a day.  Let your students know you are trying something new and ask for feedback from them as often as you give it to them.  We try new things in our lessons all the time, so make some room for inquiry.

Good luck!

Assessing Assessment

What do I know about assessment?  It still feels like not nearly enough.  I think I have only received bits and pieces about assessment as a whole; like a puzzle without a real picture to guide me.  I have heard a lot of terms – formative assessment, summative assessment, assessment for learning, standardized assessment, Professional Learning Communities, self-assessment, quality assessment – but what do I actually know about each of them?  What benefit do they have for myself and for my future students?  Better yet, which of those things (or combination of those things) is going to be the most beneficial to my students’ learning?

Early on in this experience I thought about assessment as this tool that I would have to use to see if the student is meeting the curriculum expectations.  I thought about assessment as a mark on an assignment, project, or test.  In my own life I have pretty much only encountered that type of assessment.  I would do a test or an assignment, I would get a mark for that test or assignment, and then that mark would make its way into my report card.  Sure, sometimes the report card mark would be accompanied by some kind of comment.  However, that comment usually had something to do with me being a “good girl” or “too quiet” or “too talkative”.  Confusing right?  As a student, that doesn’t really give me much information about what I know or what I still need to do to reach my goals.

I think that teachers need to ask why we are assessing, what we are assessing, as well as how we will assess it.   Questions like these are key to Professional Learning Communities.  By focusing on what the outcomes are really asking us to teach, we can figure out what we actually want our students to learn.  By using the right assessment practices, we can figure out how we will know when a student has learned something.  Teachers need to use differentiation so we can respond to students who are experiencing difficulty in learning as well as students who have surpassed the content being taught.  These are the guiding questions of a PLC and they support the idea that all students can learn at high levels when given the appropriate time and support.  An effective PLC has a collaborative culture, a focus on learning, is action and results oriented, and has a commitment to continuous  improvement through the use of research based practices (Ontario Principals’ Council, 2008).  That seems to say a lot of really good things, but what does it look like in action?

I want to focus on the second question; how will we know when our students have learned something?  I ask my earlier question again: what type of assessment practices are the ones that will be most beneficial to my students?  Assessments should be of sound design and should involve the students (Popham, 2003). When a student can help to create the assessment criteria, they have a better understanding of what is being asked of them.  Allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge using authentic performance tasks or by looking at a portfolio of student work often provides a truer sense of student knowledge (Popham, 2003).  So, we get our students to perform authentic tasks that they have helped create the criteria for. Now what? Then we take that task, grade it, and put it in the report card? I don’t see how that is any different than what I experienced as a student.

One of the main messages of this class seemed to be differentiating between formative and summative assessment.  Most of the other content seems to fit somewhere under these blanket headings.  Summative assessment is the assessment that makes its way as a grade or mark into the report card.  Grades can be represented in percentages or letter or number scales and it often varies between school division.  I still feel like I have so much to learn about summative assessment.  I know examples of different types of summative assessment but I don’t know how I should weigh those things to come up with a final grade.  Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, on the other hand I feel like I could almost be an expert in.  Formative assessment is something that can be done quickly, often times on the spot, and gives feedback to both students and the teacher.

If I could have only one take-away from ECS 410 it would be feedback, feedback, feedback.  Dylan William talks about how feedback is the biggest contributor to student success.  When given feedback alone, students have shown a 30% increase over those just given grades or even grades and feedback (William, 2011).  In a class discussion with Doug Reeves, he talked about the FAST feedback model.  Feedback must be Frequent, Actionable, Specific, and Timely.  I think there is more to great feedback than just those four components.  Grant Wiggins talked about seven keys to effective feedback and I think they provide more to the student than the FAST model alone.  Students need to have a clear purpose or target (William, 2011). They must have a goal.  Wiggins (2012) would say that the feedback a student receives must be related to that goal and tell the student whether they are on track to reach that goal or if they need to adjust their course.  Students should be able to take the feedback that they received and know exactly how they should adjust their course. As teachers, we need to avoid giving too much highly technical feedback to our students.  Students need to be able to understand what the feedback means before they are able to implement it. That leads to another of Wiggins’ keys; students should receive feedback in a timely manner.  It should be timely not only for the fact that they won’t have completely forgotten what they did in the first place, but so that they can use that feedback, make the adjustments, and try again.  This is what Wiggins calls the “Powerful Feedback Loop”. We need to give students the opportunity to use feedback. Lastly, feedback needs to be consistent (Wiggins, 2012).

I get it, this seems like a ton of extra work.  You are probably thinking “You expect me to look at all 30 of my students’ projects multiple times and leave meaningful feedback each time? You are crazy.  I have absolutely no time for that. Did you forget that I am a teacher and also have 100 other things to do a day?”  To that I answer “No, I did not forget.  I feel your pain and I am sorry for upsetting you.”  The thing is, we should be so consistent in the feedback we give students that they come to know and expect it.  Once students know and expect it, then you have trained them to be a mini version of you.  They are able to give student-to-student feedback that is just as valuable as the feedback you provide.  Sure, it is more work in the beginning, I will give you that.  But if at the end of the year your students are more successful than they would have been by receiving grades alone, then isn’t that what teaching is all about?

You can make it even easier for yourself if you begin with clear expectations (Popham, 2003).  Prepare your students for success by not leaving them in the dark about what they should be learning. A great way to do this is by drawing their attention to the outcomes.  Start with the word for word curriculum and break it down with your students.  Make them a part of the learning experience.  If a student knows from the beginning what they will eventually be assessed on, then nothing should come as a surprise to them.  Sure, you will eventually still have to put something in that report card, but that also shouldn’t be a surprise to students.  Students should know where they are in terms of their goal (reaching outcomes) at all times.  They should know why they are falling behind or getting off course.  They should also know what needs to be done to get them back on track.  

Feedback isn’t just good for the students, the feedback you are giving students should also be guiding your teaching strategies.  Maybe you tried something you thought was great and after a quick formative assessment, you see that only about a third of the students know what the heck you are talking about.  That, my friend, is a learning experience for you.  Do you move ahead with just a couple students understanding? I am going to say that “no” is probably a good answer.  What didn’t the students understand? What misconceptions are they having?  Use the answers to those questions as a guide for how you are going to teach it again.  This is why it is so important to be assessing all the time.  All. The. Time.  It doesn’t always have to be big projects or tests, in fact, it shouldn’t be.  It should be something that just takes a couple of minutes. Here is a list of 50 quick assessments for learning that you can do to gauge student understanding and the success or failure of teaching practices.  I think it is important to remember that you get to decide what you are using as summative assessment and what is formative or assessment for learning.  If something you designed as summative ends up showing you that students had absolutely no idea what you were talking about, then it is time to give formative feedback and let students give it another try.  As a future teacher, I want to always be setting my students up for success.  Maybe that is just the sweet naivety of someone without a lot of experience, but it is where I plan to start regardless.  

 

Works Cited

Ontario Principals’ Council. (2008). The principal as professional learning community leader. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Popham, W. J. (2003). Test better, teach better: The instructional role of assessment. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1). Retreived from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx

William, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.

You’re Looking at an Official SHEA Contributor

I am often proud of the work I do.  I put my best effort into the things I do, so why wouldn’t I be proud? This year I created my very first Year Plan.  We were given a choice of assignments to do in EHE 317 and I chose a year plan as one of mine.  It was the first time I had been given the opportunity, and it felt like it might be the last opportunity I would have as well.

I am not going to lie, I was a little scared.  I knew that “Phys Ed Kathy” expected a lot from her students and was a tough marker and this would be the first assignment I would hand in to her as “Health Kathy”.  By the way, we refer to her as Health Kathy and Phys Ed Kathy in the most endearing way.  You can feel her passion in both subjects and you know that she really just wants you to learn and take as much from the classes as you can.  She is just a little more… sunshiney teaching us Health.  So with all of that in mind, when I got my year plan assignment back from her I was crazy happy.  In university, a 90% is basically a 100%.  No one gives out perfect marks here, I have come to accept that.  So, a 90%? Woo hoo!

In class we were looking at resources from SHEA (Saskatchewan Health Educators Association) and Kathy said they were always open to receiving resources from teachers and future teachers that would be shared on their website.  I was so proud of my year plan that I thought “Hey, why not?”  I made the adjustments based on the feedback Kathy left me and sent them my year plan.  Now, that was quite a while ago already – much before we all went off to pre-internship.  So you can imagine my surprise and delight when an email came in from Shelley Barthel, thanking me for my submission and letting me know that I could find it on their website!

She is talking about me!

I have been published twice before.  I worked on a project in my Psychology degree with some really great people and had a paper and a poster published with my (maiden) name on them.  I am proud of that work too, but having this published feels a little different.  This is something that another teacher could pick up and actually use.  It could make the life of a teacher easier.  It’s not a long research paper that is only applicable to a very specific field.

Published and Presented at the 2012 Arlington ADAA Convention

Lots of times as future teachers we try to create everything from scratch, but we need to internalize that collaboration is key!  SHEA has lots of great resources and mine just happens to be one of them!

Lessons for Everyone!

Hey blog-readers!  I have recently updated my blog with ALL of the lessons I taught during my pre-internship!  If you have any trouble understanding what the heck I am talking about, I am always available for questions or just to swap stories!

I’ll Take a Job!

With the end of the semester looming and internship coming up a lot of us are thinking about our future in Education.  Do we cram as much as I can into the Spring/Summer semester so we can potentially get a job right after internship?  Some people are stressing out about if they should go so far as to convocate in December.  In my opinion, the answer to all the questions are yes.

Get your name out there and in the job market before at least 120 other people (in Elementary and Middle Years)? How could that be bad?  Unfortunately, for my fellow BEAD students and I the option of convocating early is not an option.  One requirement that we need, EPSY 217 is offered only in the Winter semester.  So regardless of how much I cram into the Spring/Summer semester I will be back here in the halls at the University of Regina in December.

Memes are my lifeblood at this point in the semester.

However, according to the Saskatchewan Professional Teachers Regulatory Board I can still be certified to teach as long as I have 48 Education credit hours, a practicum, two language or reading classes, and any two EPSY classes.  It is pretty annoying that the University won’t offer that one required EPSY class for us so I end up losing out on taking something that I really want to take (ECMP 355) to take a third EPSY class.  It feels so strongly like a money grab.  What is even more frustrating is the fact that I have an entire Honours Degree in Psychology! A whole 5 years! How can that entire degree not count for one single EPSY credit?

I digress.

The end of this story is that I will do exactly what the University and all of my instructors want and that I will do it my very best so I can move on to real life.  Because in the end, that’s why I am here isn’t it?

Jen

 

Pie, Anyone?

Delicious, Right?

I find it hard to believe that my pre-internship has come to an end.  So much preparation and planning for probably the fastest three weeks of my life.  It was here and gone in a blur.  I absolutely loved it.  It has made me so excited for next semester, and what will come after that.  I have had a wonderful experience with a great partner, great co-op, great school and administration, and mostly great kids.

When I was in middle school, and if we are being honest I still am this

A Student’s Work from a Lesson on Nutrition – March is Nutrition Month! *Notice he is giving up broccoli?*

way, I never questioned or “disobeyed” my teachers.  I was a rule follower through and through.  I wanted good grades and I wanted my teachers to like me. I was one of those students who, when assigned a task, started working immediately and put my best effort into it.  I have some students like that in my current class, but I also have some who are not like that at all.  Sometimes kids just don’t get it (as I talked about in my last post) but sometimes kids just don’t want to do it.  Even when it is a fun thing! They just don’t want to, so they just don’t.

 

As frustrating as it can be to see a student who you know is really smart (or any level of intelligence) refusing to do something you have planned, it is important to know how to deal with them.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I didn’t try to get them involved by asking what they would rather do or why they didn’t want to do it. The answer most often received was, “I don’t want to do this” or maybe just a staring-straight-past-me-with-no-response-whatsoever response. Encountering this kind of student is a really good experience.  Whether a student is going through something temporarily or they are constantly disengaged, you can’t stop trying your best for them.  Not every super awesome lesson you have planned is going to go over well with every student, but hey! Don’t fret! Do your best for each and every student and there is no way you can fail!

Are you still wondering about when you get pie?  Sorry, after scraping it from my face there was none left!  Let me start a little earlier.  Our pre-internship started the same week as the Z99 Radiothon, which raises money for the NICU every year, was being fundraised in our school.  We had a few days of loose change collection, a Boston Pizza lunch, and a delicious student led bake sale.  In all of the students’ projects they ended up raising and donating $3064.80! That was $1064.80 over their goal! But back to the pie.  If the students manage to reach their goal, all staff (including pre-interns) get a pie in the face by a student of their choice.  Yaaaay!

Being the resourceful teachers that we are we turned it into a lesson.  We had our students write a persuasive sentence/paragraph telling us why they deserve to pie us in the face.  From the best we drew three names.  My pie-er said she would be so nice and gentle and la la la.

Journey attempted the old persuasive technique known as “the guilt trip”

She really is such a nice girl

Check it out.  Personally, I think she was a little too eager to throw a pie in my face.  Don’t worry, nothing was hurt except maybe my pride!

What About When They Just Don’t Get It?

When you are only given 10 days to teach a whole unit, what do you do when some students just aren’t catching on? Some students are done in 5 minutes and some are stressed out and disengaged because they just don’t understand, or they just don’t want to participate in Math. I want to go back and clear everything up for students but that cuts into the rest of the information I have to get through. Such a short period of time to get so much done.  At the same time as wanting to get through my whole unit, I definitely don’t want my co-op to have to go back and reteach anything.

Math is one of those hard subjects.  By grade 5, students already “know” whether they like math or hate it.  They “know” whether they are good at it or not good at it.  I think Math is one of the only subjects that people develop such a negative emotional reaction to. You don’t hear many people going around saying that they hate English Language Arts or that they hate Arts Ed.  I am trying my hardest to make Math engaging and fun for students.  I am teaching through games and through hands on activities, but I feel like I am failing if some students don’t get it.  Maybe not everyone learns through games.  Maybe I need to focus more on instruction and making sure that students really understand a lesson before letting them strengthen that learning through play.

They teach us in University that direct instruction is the worst.  That no one learns when someone is up at the front of the class telling them what it is they need to learn.  But is Math different?  While some people think that you will never use the lessons you learn in Math ever again, the unit I am teaching – Measurement – is one that students will absolutely use for the rest of their life.  Whether they are building something, cooking something, or trying to figure out how much of something will fit in a box or jug.  The lessons I am teaching them now are a foundation to much more learning in later years.

So what the heck do I do if some students just don’t get it?  I don’t have an answer, so if you do please feel free to share your wisdom with the rest of us.

Everyone is Still Alive!

You guys, Sarah and I were basically in charge of our students for a whole day and everyone survived.  On our second day of pre-internship. What?! Someone just give us our permanent positions already!

I was pretty nervous for the first day back.  While everyone was stressing about finishing all the assignments before pre-internship, I was stressing about the possibility that maybe I forgot how to teach.  It was a real fear.  I mean I hadn’t been in a classroom since early December, let alone plan a lesson or teach.  I planned a cool first lesson, using Plickers and a carousel brainstorm, to pre-assess my students knowledge on centimetres, centimetres squared, cubic centimetres, and litres.  I was trying something new and was pretty excited for it.  Then I found out my faculty advisor would be sitting in on my very first lesson. Ah!

Thank goodness I was brave and kept my lesson the same, my faculty advisor LOVED my activities and while the students had different levels of “on taskness” during the carousel brainstorm (see below for doodles), the lesson was a huge success.  I found out what my students knew (and what was completely foreign to them) and overall they were really engaged.  They loved Plickers and it worked great.  I can’t wait to use it again.

Scanning Students’ Plickers Cards

Carousel Brainstorming (and student doodles)

Our second day was planned out to be a pretty easy day, Sarah and I were both not scheduled to teach anything, just help out and observe.  Then at 7 am I checked my email.  Sitting there was an email from our co-op that started with “I will not be in today so you two will need to take over.” Hahahaha what?!  While we did have a sub in the room, Sarah and I did all the teaching, explaining, and managing. We were facing our second day of pre-internship, on a Friday, with a movie planned, and a substitute teacher in the room. Basically a recipe for disaster.  Thankfully Sarah has the same level of organization that I do so we met in class a little early and got ourselves prepared.

Surprisingly, or maybe we should give ourselves more credit than that, they day went well.  Sarah and I co-taught the whole day (without any lesson plans!) and anything I missed, she caught and vice versa.  Even during the movie when the students were able to have snacks while they were watching and completing a worksheet they were quiet and focused.  It might not have hurt that we were watching Inside Out (one the best Pixar movies ever with themes of emotion, mental health, and relationships).  What started out as a panic, ended up giving us a little more confidence in our teaching abilities.  Plus, everyone, including Sarah and I, survived the day.  Mark that in the column of pre-internship successes.

Students Watching Inside Out