Keepers for Next Year

As this year wraps up, I'm thinking back to some tools/strategies I used this year that will be "must use" in my middle school classroom for next year. .

Boom Writer: 

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Reading the teacher blog Cult of Pedagogy, I was intrigued by a new writing tool called Boom Writer. BoomWriter is an online writing tool that allows students to enter writing pieces into an in-class competition for the whole class to see and vote. Teachers write a prompt for students to respond to in writing. Then, after the teacher approves the pieces (or asks students for revisions), the class can vote on who wrote it best. I used it to have the students practice using their vocabulary words. The other sixth grade teachers and I have been looking for ways to have students interact more with the meanings of their vocabulary words. This seemed like very good tool for that purpose. Students loved having an audience for their writing and the built in extras of having a little character to decorate appealed to the students (while giving me as a teacher a little time to read their work and approve/ask for revisions). Students had great informal discussions going on while writing about word meaning and loved reading each others' work.  Even normally reluctant writers were eager to try it again!

Socratic Seminars

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We had a great time with using Socratic Seminars this year. Mostly we used the classic inner circle/outer circle format with everyone having a role during the seminar.

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I also tried out a new "Socratic Seminar" style to see if gamification spin could help pull in those that were a bit more reluctant to join in the argument. It at least gave them a way to reflect on what was happening. What is Socratic Smackdown? Basically, the Socratic Smackdown is a modification on the classic Socratic Seminar. It has students focus on a set of argumentative strategies that they earn points for if they use them well in an academic argument. It was lots of fun but one of my classes lost focus a bit and had to be redirected. I'll be fine tuning before using it again. My slideshow I made to introduce the format to students is embedded in this post. The idea is from Institute of Play that has other resources that I will also be checking out in the future.

Schoology:

We used this online learning system, Schoology, extensively this year at my school. It's free to sign up and use. Here's just some positive uses for me and my classes so far:

Discussion Posts: I wanted student to reflect more on their learning, see what roles they played in collaborative projects, and be able to share out their work with the class easily. Schoology's discussion posts became an awesome place to accomplish all of these goals. I would use the discussion post format to describe the assignment for students so that they had a resource to go back to for expectations. Then, as we worked on projects or when the project was complete, one student in each team would post the project link. All in the group would follow-up by replying to their team post by answering 2 or 3 reflection questions. I used this Edutopia list for ideas of reflection questions. I also used it share out about endangered species topics while projects were in progress and followed up with a lesson on giving effective peer feedback on a recent endangered species project.

Schoology Groups: I created groups for Yearbook, Garden Club, Engineering Club, and also for my sixth grade partners and I to share resources. This became a nice place to collect useful resources such as fonts to use in yearbook and how to send designs to the 3D printer for engineering. My fellow teachers and I used it to share assignments created as well as quizzes for vocabulary (which we could each help proofread and revise for clarity). It was great!

Rubrics: These made it easier to grade and cut down on copying off all those little slips. Plus, parents and students could refer back to them to see (no, loosing the rubric paper before showing curious parents or partners who were absent when they were handed back)!

I'll leave it there for now, but as teachers know it is never ending! So many more tools to find and refine practices. . .

Science Family Night

Science Family Night is sure to become a yearly event for our middle school program, Leading Edge Academy. It was challenging trying to wrap my head around the idea of it at first. We knew that we wanted more parent engagement for the event and that we wanted to let them have the experience of what it is like to be one of our students participating in science curriculum at Leading Edge. Luckily, last fall I went to the CSTA conference and they had the perfect session for me about planning a Science Family Night. Caleb Cheung from Oakland Unified led it and I left feeling empowered. I immediately sent off a huge email to Amanda and Jillian planning out stations and imagining the video. Luckily also they humored me and we had the amazing LE Live student team with video editing experience who were willing to help put the intro video together. As the event came closer, planning hand-on activities for 100+ people was fun, but figuring out what supplies we'd need and gathering them (while teaching, grading, planning, etc.) was a bit of a struggle. Jillian was a great support in getting the big signs together and up on the walls with a team of students.

The Event Line Up

Introduction Video: Student made video was being shown on repeat in the science lab. It talked briefly about NGSS, engineering practices, and the passport process.

Stations:

• Flight Zone (drones, paper airplanes through hoops)
• Scopes (Microscopes, Foldscope guessing game, cheek cell slides)
• 3D Design/Art (Tinkercad, 3D printer demo, digital drawing pads)
• Newspaper Towers (newspaper + masking tape + ingenuity + persistent parents = a whole lot of fun)
• Science/Math Contest Area (showing off Exploravision and math projects, parents/kids writing down problems they wished were solved, flyers for Young Scientist Competition)
• Photo Booth (safety goggles, cylinders, lab coat, etc. with a student-made backdrop. . .  We tweeted out the photos in real time.)

Snack bar: Parents and students turned in their passports for goodies at the end (4 stamps = two food items/ all 6 stamped=three food items)

Surprises

I was surprised by just how into it the parents themselves were. I was expecting our students and their siblings to jump in with both feet to the activities, but really the parents were the ones who came to life the most at our stations. They built newspaper towers challenging each other to build higher, folded paper airplanes to fly through hoops, wrote down meaningful everyday problems they wished would be solved, learned about our 3D printer, and squinted through microscopes/foldscopes. 

Successes

Having an introduction video and passport system were very successful. Having hands-on elements at each station was also great. The best part of all was having so many student volunteers take ownership of everything from making signs, to greeting families, to running stations, and even tweeting out pictures. Having music playing throughout also seemed to help set a festive and fun tone. My playlist brought in some songs with science theme ("Weird Science"), songs from other events this year ("Jai Ho" and the Greek alphabet rap) which students would understand the references to, and songs that were uplifting and fun ("7 Years Old" and "Stressed Out"). Here's the link to my list. I remember looking around shortly after the event began and thinking, "Wow, it's running itself now." and then shortly later, "This feels like me as a teacher summed up. It feels like my classroom when it's in full swing."

Looking Ahead

Next year, I would find a way to make the activity cards larger. They were kind of small on the tables and became a bit buried. I think they helped give direct, but would've have been better if some large, poster-sized copies were on the wall by each station as well.  I'd also set up the 3D printer extra early and have the job in progress well before. Putting it on a sturdier table dedicated just for it would be good. I'd also think even more about the layout more for better flow and easier access to all areas. It wasn't bad but maybe some seating by the snacks area would help. 

Also, I loved having an introduction video but wished the route was clearer to families as to where to go. I did put it out in all of the flyers and messages to start in the Science Lab. However, many still came up to the MPR asking where to go (with some wandering in confused even after student volunteers directed them down the hall). Some mentioned that it made it more of an adventure starting off in a quiet classroom then heading over to the big, fun room though.

I wondered too if an hour might have been a more appropriate amount of time. We had our biggest crowd at the beginning and were running out of food at the snack bar by the end. Perhaps pushing it all together into one hour would work (or closing off the intro. video after 45 minutes at least) would be better. 

Next year, I think we'd also need to do a different theme to keep it fresh. I bet we'll have even more families attend next year because the eighth graders were gone to Ashland this year and also families just seemed to have so much fun. I think they'll want to come back for more. My mind is already spinning about using a CSI theme. Maybe something around a certain guinea pig who has gone missing. I can imagine families taking fingerprints, looking at dna data, analyzing hair samples, watching videos of "suspects" who each seem to have a reason to want him gone (custodian with allergies, teacher who thinks he smells, student who thinks he'd be happier at his house, me tired of nagging kids to clean his cage. . .) It could be a lot of fun and now after planning and running one it seems a whole lot more doable than it did at the beginning of the school year.