Monday, September 23, 2013

Breaking Assumptions: International collaboration through a new project to merge data management and internet awareness

One of my favourite TED talks is Chimamanda Adichie's Power of a Single Story. Having been very lucky myself to have traveled to numerous places in the world, living and working with the people there, I have understood the challenges of having a single story of a place or people. Prior to each of my experiences, I felt that I had read up on current events, history and the culture, to only be reminded when I got there about how individual each person in a place is and how challenging it can be to feel that you "know" a place.

I wanted my students to have first hand experiences with this. In the past, I was able to sail into new ports with students and see first hand how their awareness would change as they met and participated in cultural and social activities. However when teaching at a school in Toronto, it isn't as easy. So to bring the same awareness, I developed a project (that has just started) that I hope will bring the same thoughts and reflections to my students while staying inside our school's walls. I am calling the project the Breaking Assumptions Project.

Breaking Assumptions Project

Students will be asked to go online and explore another school/city/location on a website(s). In small groups, they will be asked to use their preconceived ideas and the pictures/information they gain to create a general picture of the people that live or work in that area. They will be guided to think about demographic categories (quantitative) as well as what a day in the life would be like (qualitative). As a class they will summarize their image of the other population and send it off to them. 

The students upon receiving the information from the outside party will analyze the responses. As a group they will reflect to see if they agree or disagree with the responses. They will be guided to prove the statements true or false by creating a survey in which they can collect the information necessary. Once the survey is completed, the results will be analyzed and presented in the form of an info graphic. This info graphic as well as the results of the survey will be both posted within the school as well as sent back to the original group to better inform them about our schools population and demographics. The original group will be encouraged to respond to share if the data better informed them, or if it left them with more questions. They will be the evaluators of the success of the project by completing an evaluation created by the students who completed the survey and info graphic. 

Day 1: (lesson plan)
Through a connection at my school, I was able to make contact with a teacher at a school in India. She was very excited about being apart of a project and offered her English class who were also in middle school to participate. After emails discussing each of our goals, I sent her the following document which outlined what I was hoping her class could accomplish (click here).

In summary, her class would look at three online sites that my school had produced. Her students would complete a See/Think/Wonder activity. To do this they would identify something they saw in the online document/video/pictures, what it made them think about and then what it made them wonder about who we were as students of our school. As a class they then did a summary of who they think a student at my school would be based on the information they gained.  They sent this information back to me, and it was excellent!

My students started off their first class completing the same See/Think/Wonder on the other school's website. After sharing what they saw and thought, I shared with them that this school did the same activity for us. My girls were really excited to see what they had thought.

Each group was given one of the response sheets that the school in India had sent back to look over. The gasps and outcries told me that I had hooked them. "Why would they think that?" or "Thats not right... we are not all blonde!" were heard around the class. By the end of the class it was determined that we needed to prove or disprove the assumptions that were made. Through a discussion of how to do that which included writing individual letters, making a movie to taking photos of each person proved to be too much work or too confusing. in each class a student would come up with the idea that perhaps doing a survey of the grade, asking specific questions would allow the school in India to see the results would allow them to gain a better understanding of us. And with that, the girls were hooked and the project was laid out

Day 2:(lesson plan)
Students needed to create the survey that would prove or disprove the assumptions that were created about them. To do this we had a short class discussion about how we could make sure that the information we collected from the survey was valuable. Through this discussion they learned the definitions of bias, open and closed questions as well as how questions can lead someone to select a specific answer. Each student was provided with an assumption that was taken directly from those sent from the school in India. In a small group of three, they had to come up with what question should be on the survey that would prove or disprove the assumption that was also a closed question, unbiased and the results would be useful to them. At the end of this class the survey was created and it was sent out for students to complete.

Additional Notes:
Coming up with the questions for the survey proved to be harder than I had thought for the students. They really wanted to make sure that the questions would be unbiased and also closed. To differentiate, I ensured that the assumptions that students received would challenge them appropriately. These assumptions ranged from "All students are Canadian citizens" to "Due to small classes, students must have good relationships with their teachers". The first assumption can be translated easily into a closed question, while the latter requires some creative thinking.

As the teacher, I did not edit or change any of the questions prior to putting them into a Google Form that was used for the survey. When putting in the questions, I already could tell that some questions would not gain the feedback necessary to prove or disprove the assumption. Also some questions were not well worded and could result in many different types of responses meaning different things. When the students go through the data, we are going to have the opportunity to share which questions were challenging to answer and why. My goal is by working through the experience and feedback students will be able to see the importance of well worded questions to collect valid data.

Final Thoughts:
Going through this project for the first time has been exciting but also slightly worrisome. Since I am not editing or providing feedback though this project, my students are going to be learning from their mistakes and ultimately feeling the pressure of sending these mistakes to their audience in India. I decided prior to this project that it would be a formative activity and not be marked. Their signature assessment (marked assessment) will be an individual task that will occur after this project is completed and the students have identified how they could improve and what a good data collection methods and analysis looks like. My goal with that is for them to create the rubric by which they will be assessed based on their experience with this project.

Also, working collaboratively with someone who I have never met overseas has also been challenging since communication and understanding of goals wasn't clear at first. But I am VERY thankful that my partners at the school in India have been excellent and have made this project possible for my students. I hope that this will be provide them with the same valuable experience as it has for my girls.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Bansho: Applying Primary School Strategies to MS Math classes

A quick summary of a Bansho from my understanding would be that students solve a problem, share their unique solutions to the rest of the class allowing the teacher to identify various strategies and methods that could be used. The teacher consolidates the methods by creating a summary of a good strategy by identifying or combining various students work. Students then take ownership over the work and feel it is possible to understand since a peer/peers were the originators of the ideas.



I decided to use a Bansho as a way to assess what skills and understanding students had about percentages. I did the Bansho on the first day of class (lesson plan here) also to create the sharing and collaborative culture that exists in my Grade 8 classroom. As students went through the period, they experienced the values of creativity, perseverance and selected challenge. I created a small slide show to guide the work (found here) and and wrapped up with only four questions for homework.

I adapted the idea of the Bansho that I was introduced to match both my teaching style and needs. By using this method I was able to see more than just who was able to solve the problem, but also able to see the following:

  • Clear awareness of students who have been taught in a procedural method
  • Risk taking abilities
  • Number sense abilities
  • Ability to explain and justify their ideas
  • Ability to see similarities and differences in mathematical procedures
  • Ability to make connections to prior knowledge
  • Preferred learning style (visual, oral, etc)
  • Prior understandings
  • Introverts/extroverts
For an activity that took only 50 minutes, it provided me with a better understanding of who my students were and allowed me to flag students who needed both support and a greater level of challenge and where that would need to take place. More than I have ever done on the first day of class. 

Upon reflection I would say that a Bansho would be a valuable teaching strategy for all grade levels. In the high school level it would be a beneficial activity prior to introducing a new functions, rates of change, geometry proofs, to beginning calculus. By asking the students to come up with as many different solutions to a problem you could see their understanding of previous concepts, ability to compare methods to each other and analyze what aspects of various methods create a more accurate and useful solution. For me since the Bansho, I was able to understand how my students already viewed proportional relationship problems and then teach to their methods directly. Overall a great experience and one that I highly recommend to all teachers at all teaching levels. 

Learning from other divisions. How I learned about Bansho.


Last year I attended a OAME conference (Ontario Associate of Mathematic Education) and participated in a "Mathematical Literacy" group. Sitting among the teachers, I quickly realized that I was the only middle school teacher, or pretty much the only teacher that was above the Grade 5 level. As the presentation proceeded, my eyes were popping out of my head as I was seeing strategies that I felt would bring the clarity and ownership of mathematical procedural learning to my students.

However, as I looked around to the other teachers, I saw that they were not as interested as I was. When questioned as to why they weren't as "blown away", one women sitting at my table said "Honey, I've been doing this in my class for 10 years. This isn't new information to me.". A few sessions later, I was sitting in a session meant for Grade 11 and 12 teachers only this time I was the one telling those senior school teachers that the "amazing" strategies that they were being introduced to were common practice in middle school classrooms. It was at this point that I realized the valuable strategies that work for students are not being used or applied beyond the designated Primary, Junior, Intermediate and Senior divisions. So I made it a goal to see what I could take and use from the Primary/Junior divisions, as those are the areas that I have never taught in. And this is how I was introduced to a Bansho.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Back to school and New Goals

New school year, means a fresh start and of course the creation of goals for the year. For me, this is my first year that I will be teaching in the same school as I was in June. Also it is my first year teaching the same grade and curriculum. With my goals usually being something surrounding me trying to "figure things out" and "stay on my feet", I can now slow down my pace and take a look around. It feels great to be able to look ahead to the whole year, able to picture it, but with that also comes with the awareness of what could be lying around the corner. One of my students said it best when sharing her hopes and fears for the Grade 8 year. She indicated that in Grade 7 she had many fears and hopes since everything was new, but now that she knows about the school and the expectations, they are bigger hopes and even bigger fears. Being aware of what is around the corner, didn't make things easier, just made her more aware of what was to come. 

For me my goals are the following:
  1. Remain flexible. Just because I can see beyond the week, doesn't mean that I need to lock myself into any set ideas or plans. A strength I feel I had from my previous years was the idea of things can always change, and I always need to be open to that change.
  2. Use my resources more. We have a great Junior school in my building. I hope to go and see how they work through their math curriculum with the students and see what skills I can gain from them. Also I hope to continue reading my RSS feed each sunday which has consistently introduced me to new and creative thinkers. 
  3. Fine tune and challenge my Challenge by Choice (Green/Blue/Black) program. Ever since being introduced to it while living in Jakarta by David Suarez, I have adapted it to fit my teaching style, resources and students. Now applying it in the same school, two years in a row, I can really explore and make bigger changes to fit my students.
  4. Keep in touch with my online professional community. Last year I was apart of a program geared to help teachers develop a blog. It was the encouragement I needed to do something that was a goal for a while. Now that I am out of the program, I hope to keep up the reflection and communication as best I can. I have changed the site (using blogger) and hope to gain any suggestions.
So here is to a great year. As my roommate on the ship said so well after finishing our first semester, "The first bit we just tried to survive. Now we can truly live the experience". And with living, my buy-in is greater, making the highs even higher.

Hangout with Formative Feedback - A personal youtube video for feedback

For those teachers in Ontario, you are well aware of the Growing Success document that was published in 2010 and is the guide for how assessment and evaluation is implemented in our schools. Having taught overseas for my first years as a teacher, I came back to Ontario in 2011  lucky to learn the document and participate in PD at the same time as my colleagues. Here is a summary of the 7 fundamental principals.

7 fundamental principals



This year my goal was to develop the last principal. I wrote about my experience and process in my previous post  and also the experience of the 13 year old student driving there education. The one challenge that I had with this last principal what how the students were using the diagnostics, formative check ins, class conversations activities to identify their needs. I found that my written feedback was not having as great an impact for the amount of time and effort I was putting into the work.

My goal was to have the students think through the feedback that I had given them and develop an internal conversation about how they could improve. A teacher friend of mine told me that she would highlight areas on student work and ask them to think about why she had done so, causing them to reflect on their own work. I liked her suggestion and wanted to do the same thing with my students. My challenge was that I was hoping to give differentiated feedback, asking students to revisit key concepts, but also to challenge other students to show their thinking or show them new ways to communicate their ideas. So I decided to make marks on their work, but follow it up with a guiding conversation afterwards... for each student. One on one conversations are not possible in class, so I decided to video tape my feedback to the students. But with limited computer space to save so many files and a challenge to share them, I looked for options on the internet where I came across Google hangouts and Youtube streaming.

The solution is a personal video, recorded directly on youtube and sent as a private link to my student to watch, comment and use for their feedback. It was a one step process from recording the video to sending a link automatically to my students without any uploading or fancy editing. Here is how I did it:

  1. Add Google Hangouts to your chrome apps
  2. Open a new hangout, name it and ensure that you also say that it is a private video.
  3. Record the video
  4. Send the link of the private video to your student
  5. Track the "views" to see if your student was able to watch it. Also you can set up the comments to create a private conversation to talk about the video. 
The feedback I got from my students was great. They said that they enjoyed the private feedback, and by watching it they were able to think through what I was saying more compared to when they read it. Also, they knew exactly where the feedback was so that they could view it again before they did a final assessment that affected their grades.

My goal is to continue this next year. It took a lot of time, but the payback was great. I also plan on asking the students to do their own videos and save them to their online portfolios. This way they can talk about their own process of learning and their own next steps.