Shodor + Dublin

As the Principal Investigator for the Elon Noyce Scholars Program I have access to some great supplementary professional development opportunities. I was just able to take advantage of one such opportunity after I applied for and was selected to participate in one of the Shodor Foundation's workshops for Noyce participants in Dublin,  Ireland.

After an overnight flight to Dublin during which my sleeping habits were noted by a few colleagues,

I had the chance to spend five days in Dublin with a group of other Noyce PIs and some of Shodor's staff. The opportunity to meet the other Noyce program PIs was a nice side benefit to the experience as we had chances to exchange ideas about our program's opportunities and challenges. We had an enjoyable slate of cultural activities as well. I promise none of these cultural activities involved NSF funds paying for my Guinness - we even returned today, just before St. Patrick's Day!

The meat of our program was our participation in a joint workshop at Dublin City College with European teacher educators focused on inquiry-based science education. Our European counterparts were mostly Irish, although we did have a Welshman in the mix. Shodor's Dr. Bob Panoff led the workshop, which included information on many of the helpful tools created by Shodor. The other Noyce PIs and I found the resources we learned about to be impressive, and I was tweeting and e-mailing links from the workshop back to my STEM teacher education colleagues in the US. In particular, I thought the Interactivate tools looked quite powerful. It was also beneficial to meet and collaborate with our European colleagues during our time in Ireland, and learn about different STEM and teacher education initiatives underway there.

At Elon we are fortunate because Shodor is just down the road from us in Durham, so we'll be able to bring Bob to our institution soon to share their resources with more of our faculty and teacher education students. We'll also encourage our Noyce participants to apply for future opportunities to participate in Shodor programming.
 

Five Principles for Better Student Collaboration

Principles for effective student collaboration.
Many young teachers are enthusiastic about including student collaboration in their classrooms. That is until they try it, and things don't go according to plan. It's not easy to have students work together effectively. That, however, does not mean you should give up on collaboration. Here are five principles that I find help students work more effectively together.

1.   Start Small 
Build from smaller, simpler collaborations towards larger tasks. I've seen many teachers try to take collaboration from zero to 60 in five seconds. I like having my students frequently do think-pair-share activities. Their pair conversations are on a focused topic, and because I will often call on pairs to share an idea out, there's some accountability for being on task. If you have your students in the habit of engaging in such productive pair conversations or other small cooperative tasks, moving on to larger group projects or assignments is easier for them. Frequent, little moments of collaboration build an effective foundation for larger more complicated cooperation.

2.     Socializing
When you expect students to work collaboratively on a significant assignment or task, give them an opportunity to break the ice in their group and build rapport. Adults outside of school who work together rarely get right down to work without some small chat and socializing. This is normal human social behavior. We should build it into longer collaborative tasks if we want our student groups to work effectively. A simple way to get a group started down the path to effective collaboration is a things in common activity or sheets. I have written about these in other blog posts. The basic principle is for students to quickly realize something they all have in common. Once they recognize they have these shared bonds, it is hopefully easier for them to move forward and do good work together.

3.     Let them Work
Give your students clear directions and objectives for their collaboration and then step back and let them collaborate. I've seen a lot of teachers who assign ostensibly collaborative activities to their student but then take over or interrupt so much that they might as well just lecture. If your true goal for students is to collaborate, then your role after providing them with the task at hand should typically be more to listen and monitor. If you find yourself having to insert yourself into the students' discussions and conversations, then you should probably be giving them clearer directions and more structure from the outset. When you add in your ideas, it often takes over the conversation and changes the direction of the students' work. Let the students collaborate! 

The other problem is that if you are inserting yourself too much into individual group's discussions you are probably not effectively monitoring the class as a whole. It should come as no surprise to any of us that students can wander off task when we asked them to collaborate. A little of this is inevitable. It gets worse however, when our attention is too sucked into one group. If, however, you focus on monitoring and listening, groups will more likely stay on task. After you have given the class an appropriate amount of time to collaborate, you can pull full group back together to discuss, debrief, share out. This is generally the better time for you to add in some ideas or feedback, instead of interrupting individual groups while they try to work. 

4.     Numbered heads for accountability
Whenever students collaborate, there is the potential for more extroverted students or motivated students to take over. Introverted or less motivated students may learn that they can sit back and let others do most of the work. Numbered heads is an easy way to build some accountability within groups. In my classes, if I have a group of students discussing or analyzing, I am almost always going to have them share out from their group a main idea or question. It's easy to have groups of three or four students number off, and I don't know who is what number. Then when I ask the group to share, I pick a random number to share out the group's idea. This way students become a accustomed to the expectation that everyone in their group has to understand and participate in the group's work so that they can effectively share out the group's ideas.

5.     Process & Assess student collaboration.
If you believe collaboration is important, then you should have ways in which that collaboration is processed and assessed. Often times, only the product of a groups work is assessed, but the process of their collaboration should receive attention as well. An easy way to assess collaboration is through what I call a "participation pie chart." After collaborative tasks, I give students a document that has an empty circle and a few prompts to students. They divvy up the circle as a pie chart showing who in their group contributed what percentage to the group's works. I also have the students write a few sentences explaining their pie. One variation is to have students do this anonymously and then you share their results among the group. In addition to this individual self- and peer-assessment of the group you should allow time for groups to debrief their collaboration and for the class as a whole to discuss what contributes to effective collaboration. 

Some students come to us without great collaborative skills, so it is incumbent upon us to put into place structures that will help them develop those skills. I've seen teachers give up on assigning much collaborative work because of challenges they experience, instead of figuring out the skills they need to teach their students and the scaffolding they need to put in place to make it successful. When your students are collaborating, you are often more likely to notice they are off task sometimes. However, probably just as many students are not actually with you during your lecture, even if they give the appearance of attention or compliance. Don't dump collaboration just because 100% of the kids aren't on task 100% of the time. A lot of learning can still happen even with a few tangents and distractions thrown into the mix.
 

Six tried-and-true Ways to Show You Care About Your Students

Students will want to learn more from you if they know that you care about them as people. Just because you do care about them as people doesn't mean they know you care about them! You have to make sure that your actions and words convey that caring. Here are six ways I have been successful in communicating to my students that I care about them.

1. Find Extra Minutes
One great way to show your students do you care about them and to build relationships with them take advantage of the non-academic times in the school schedule. When students come in and out of class, chat them up! Doug Lemov of Teach Like A Champion calls this "Threshold." Instead of shuffling papers or checking email, utilize the precious time between classes to ask students how they are doing. Find out the latest on their extra curricular activities.  These little moments of interaction add up to knowing a lot about the students and to them feeling that you care. Although there's often plenty to distract you as students are coming in and out of the class, your priority during these times should be the opportunity to develop relationships with your students. If you have an effective structure of using "Do Nows," or "Bellringers" or another type of warmup activity, you should be able to take care of some of that pesky paperwork while your students are engaging in those tasks.

2. Open Classroom Lunches
Another great way to buy extra minutes with your kids is to have your classroom open at lunch at least a couple days a week. Although there are times where understandably we need a break from the kids or need to focus on grading or planning, an open classroom during lunch is a powerful way to  connect with your students. Many students appreciate an escape from the chaos or drama of the lunch room. And you'd be surprised what you'll learn about your students while they are hanging around in your classroom, not doing academic work. Sometimes during these open classroom lunches I would be working on my own business and peripherally listening to their conversations. Other times I would engage more actively in conversation with them. In both situations I would learn a great deal about what my students were interested in and pop culture that is so important in their lives. Sometimes I had students who would come to my classroom for lunch who were not all-stars in my class. But during lunch I could get to know them even if perhaps in class they were not as extroverted. When I had learned more about them through their presence at lunch, I was then able to better connect classroom content to their lives and interests and then draw them out more. 

3. Attend Extracurricular Events
Although your class is obviously THE most important thing in all of your students lives, they may also be participating in some other activities at school that mean a great deal to them. So the caring teacher needs to attend some extracurricular events in your school. Now, there's only so much time in your busy schedule, so I'm not suggesting that you attend every event on the calendar. But over the course of the year, hopefully you can attend one event for most of your students who are participating in school-sanctioned teams, bands, theater productions, etc.  Be strategic, and try to attend events where more than one of your students are involved, or you know a lot of students will be in the audience with you - you'll probably get at least a little indirect credit for caring from those fellow audience members.  Also be sure your students (and maybe parents) see you are there. If you are putting in this extra time, be you sure you get full credit!

4. Wall of Fame
Even if you can't attend oodles of after school and weekend events, one alternative way to show your students that you care is to follow local media and draw attention to when your students are in the news. For students, it's a huge deal when they make the news for sporting achievements or other extracurricular or academic success. If you draw further attention to these achievements with a Wall of Fame, you will find that you have many of these students eating out of the palm of your hand!  Put up newspaper or website articles highlighting their achievements, and they will love it. Nowadays there are websites that follow many prep sports teams, so you should be able to find some clippings or printouts related to your student athletes activities. Plus, thanks to your efforts to show you care by other means, you'll know other activities to keep an eye out for related news.

5. Talk Past & Future
Another way to show you care about your students is to not just talk about what's going on currently in their lives; find ways to ask them about their pasts and their futures. This communicates that you are interested in their lives not just for the single year or semester they are in your class. A favorite assignment of mine was at the mid-year point, having my students write me a letter in which they told me something I didn't yet know about them, either about the past or their plans for the future. This assignment often elicited interesting information. Halfway into the year, they usually trusted me enough to reveal more of who they were. And it was good for me to learn things about the students that broke the mold into which I may have begun to place them. This assignment was often the key to opening the door to a more meaningful teacher-student relationship.  Although you can decide to change the particular details of such an assignment, the point is to somehow give opportunities for your students to share more of who they are with you part way through the year when they've had a chance to develop more trust.

6. Learn from Them
Another great way to show students you care about them, particularly in our increasingly diverse schools, is to have them teach you things. I had great success with this with my immigrant and refugee ELL students. It's easy to learn 10-20 words in a language, and when I would use those extra minutes I found (see #1) to be their students, they loved it. Students love the opportunity to be your teacher and also usually find your butchering of their language quite hilarious. Proverbs exist in just about every culture, and having students teach me proverbs from their cultures was another guaranteed winner. Typically, I usually did learn something interesting, and the students perceived that I cared about who they were and where they came from - I wasn't just trying to teach them English.


Remember, many students won't care about what you know unless they know you care about them.

 

Five tried-and-true First Day of Class (and beyond) Activities for Building Classroom Community
If you spend half a year to a year with a group of students, your classroom will become a community whether you like it or not. It's up to you as the teacher to decide if it becomes a healthy community for a dysfunctional one. Here are five methods that I have used with success in the past to start off a course.
1. Two Truths and a Lie
I break my students into groups of three or four for this activity. In two truths and a lie, each individual makes three statements; two of the statements are true and one is a lie. The other members of the group listen to the three statements and then guess which is a lie. Many students will tell interesting & memorable stories as a result of this activity, and usually the students' lies provide some humor that can be mined for the first couple weeks of class. Students will often share truths that they might not otherwise reveal because of their desire to make statements that could appear to be lies. I usually have group selects the person who had the best three statements to share out with the larger group when sharing out with the larger group, and we then have the larger class gas again which statement is the lie.  Finally, I end this activity by sharing my own two truths and a lie. To build some anticipation, I don't reveal which statement is a lie until the next class day.
2. Name Stories
I've also had good luck having students share name-related stories in small groups. Students can explain what their first, middle, and/or last name means, or tell why they were given their particular name. This activity often generates interesting stories and reveals aspects of students' personalities, families, and cultures. This activity can be powerful in particular in our modern diverse classroom; sometimes immigrant and refugee students may feel badly about their names because of a history of mispronunciation or lack of understanding of their names. The opportunity to explain some about their names is often empowering and is a way for the class to make sure they were saying people's names correctly.
3. Things In Common
I learned this technique from legendary Baltimore area educator Doug Strebe. I don't know if it's originally his idea, but he's the one I stole it from. The idea is that before we expect students to work in small or large groups, it's a good idea to help them recognize that they are not as different as they may think. Things in common activities helps students realize shared interests. When moving students into groups, it's easy to ask them to quickly identify something that they all like; for example, easy options are ice cream flavors, restaurant, TV shows, sports teams, websites, etc. With high school students, it can also often be fun to have them identify things in common that they don't like. Things in common sheets or activities can be quite simple and can take anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes. I've had my students write down these things in common or just discuss them. If you are having a group work on an extended task, the things in common information can then serve as the basis for a fun team name that will further contribute to student rapport.
4. Student Interests Survey
The first day of class I always hand out a survey of some sort that allows me to gather information about students interests and lives. I ask them to share with me a list of favorite books, TV shows, websites, bands, etc., and to tell me a little bit about what they do with their time outside of my class.  This is away for me to show that I'm interested in the students not just as consumers of my academic content, but as whole people. I then keep the survey information in a binder on my desk. It's easy throughout the year to randomly open the binder, pick out some information about a student, and connect with them in a spare moment before or after class, at lunch, in the hallway etc. The survey is also a good way for me to keep in touch with the pop-culture floating around the students. I hear about websites, books, celebrities, bands and movies that I would not otherwise be aware of. I can then possibly connect classroom experiences or content to these things that are important in the students lives. You can also ask students questions on the survey about more directly academic matters such as their learning styles, past teachers, favorite assignments.
5. Identity Bingo
Another activity that is good near the beginning of the semester or school year is identity bingo. This involves a simple creating a simple bingo like grid on 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and filling each grid with statements that represent at least a couple students in the class and will get students talking. For example, good  "speaks Spanish;" "has two dogs;" or "traveled outside the U.S." The phrases should be things that will allow students to learn something interesting about their peers, and like the things in common activities, maybe help them realize they are not so different from some other classmates as they might have thought. Students find peers who can sign the different boxes of the grid that represent them. I give the students 10 minutes to mill around trying to get as many signatures as they can. After this time, I call on individuals and ask for something interesting they learned about a peer as a result of the activity.

It is important as teachers that we foster and build strong relationships with our students and also facilitate strong relationships between those. Classroom community is not just about teacher-student relationships, but also about student-student bonds. It's worth our time and effort as teachers to regularly do activities that support the healthy functioning of our classroom communities.