November 20th : Genius Hour

Hello bloggers! I am here to talk to you about education for one last time. This past week my fellow classmates and I participated in something called genius hour I would like to share my experience about it. Genius hour by definition is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom. It provides students a choice in what they learn during a set period of time during school. In other words, genius hour is when a student will come up with their own topic of interest to learn about and it is up to them to find the answers by using whatever resources necessary to come to a conclusion. My Education classroom took on genius hour, students could get into small groups, come up with a question, and it was their job to answer it or find a solution. Although I have not heard my peer’s perspectives on the genius hour I would like to share my personal experience with it.

First of all, my group and I knew from the beginning that we wanted to pick a question that did not have a straight answer. We wanted to ask a question relevant to us and where we are in our lives. We also wanted to research in a format that was unique from the traditional ways, meaning we did not want to have to search the library resources for peer reviewed articles to give us insight on what we were trying to answer. This is when we began to ask ourselves questions. What is relevant to us now? What would we like to know? As potential future teachers we realize that the real world is not too far from us. Meaning very shortly we will be graduating Brock University and will be heading out into the real world to be teachers. Then we thought will we be ready for the real world? Will I know how to handle kids when I am being challenged or questions? Will I know how to appropriately manage my class and build strong, mutually respecting relationships with my students? I have always been inspired to be a physical education teacher because my teachers in the past have influenced me to be a better person and I would hope I can do the same for future students of my own. I realize this could only be done by having strong and positive relationships with my students. I also want to make an impact on my student’s lives. I chose physical education because I realize the need for students to learn to love physical activity and gain a sense of physical literacy that they can use through out their lifespan.  I would also want to yeach my students how important a healthy active lifestyle is and motivate them to be the best they can be. This makes me come to my other questions, will I be prepared to teach my students and motivate my students to be the best they can be? Will I be able to help them reach their full potential? All of these questions make me realize that I have a lot of learning to do before I can be the teacher I want to be.

Through discussions with my peers, they agreed that this was a mutual concern between all of us. We all have a lot to learn before we become the teachers we want to be. Then we wondered to other students have this concern? Is this concern mostly in students who want to be future teachers? Well, this is when we realized we had our genius our question.

Our question was: as a brock student, do you feel prepared entering into the real world when you graduate? From this question we generated some further discussion questions such as: how much effort have you put into school? Do you agree with that method of teaching that Brock provides? We decided to collect our data by interviewing Brock students and getting their opinions. We tried to get a range of students in concurrent education and other programs. We also got one student from Niagara College to hear a college perspective on their education. Now, I could go on about the many different answers we got but I think it would be easier just to show you the video that we came up with of our interviews.

http://youtu.be/ofUjBPeDnZg?list=UURdaUdnPv8Ai2VYD9qtiDFQ

That was our completed genius our assignment, but I would like to discuss what we took away from the experience. First of all we got to choose what we wanted to discover. This made the research and the assignment very enjoyable. I was motivated to work on the assignment and I even tried to learn new skills such as editing a video in iMovie. I did not become frustrated when things did not work out rather; it was more about the experience of producing a video that answered a question we were truly passionate about. This assignment also got us to test some skills we had never worked on. For example personally, I have never conducted any interviews or recorded any videos for a class assignment. This was something new and exciting for us and we definitely learned a lot about the interviewing process by throwing ourselves into this assignment. Overall, this assignment was something I was very proud of, we challenged ourselves to use new technologies and methods we had never played around with before and we got great results.

            Now, as much as I absolutely hate to admit when I'm wrong, I have a confession. In a previous blog I had a rant about chapter four from Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner by Susan Drake, Joanne Reid and Wendy Kolohon because it mentions students having the freedom to learn what ever they want it and they called it inquiry based learning. I strongly disagreed with this in my previous blog because I thought. How can we ensure students are learning the things they need to be successful in their future? How can we monitor what students know or what they don't know if they are all learning different things? A student searching for answers takes a lot longer than traditional learning so how do students have time to learn enough things? How do we know students are even coming across the right answers? After learning through this genius hour I can see how productive student self-motivated learning or inquiry-based learning can truly be. It is surprising to see the difference of motivation behind a topic that the students themselves get to choose compared to a topic or assignment chosen by the teacher. I still believe that students must learn set criteria of things to be successful in life but after this experience I am a lot more open to the idea the students choosing what they get to learn from time to time with a set criteria. Genius hour was a great opportunity to step outside of the traditional teaching and learning styles and explore something that truly matters to us and this is something I will remember and take with me for many years ahead. If you are still not convinced, here are a few videos you can watch to get a better understanding and see how it works.

Backwards design: November 6th 2014

Hello again,

Today I am going to talk to you about something called backward design. Backwards design is a new approach to designing lesson plans and unit plans. The term may appear complex but it simply  means that teachers will create their lessons with an end goal in mind. Teachers will decide what the students need to get out of the lesson, then the teacher will create the day to day lessons needed to get the students to the end goal. Before this idea, it is thought that teachers would plan lessons on a day-to-day basis. Meaning they would not know what they were working towards rather, they would create a lesson with a goal for that particular day.

Personally, it seems obvious to work in the backwards design model. In so many things we do we always work towards a goal in mind. As students we know how to plan ahead and what it takes to stay on top of things or else we would not be in a fourth-year education course. For example, my end goal of my entire university career is to get a job teaching physical education and I would like to travel to different countries and teach. Since I know this is my end goal I have been working towards this every day since I was accepted into my program. I know I need to study for exams, attend class and do my part as a student. Although this is a goal that will take five years to complete I know the importance in it and I am willing to work towards it. Also, on a smaller scale, thinking about end goals in terms of school work, when I go about writing an essay, I decide my end goal first. My essays would not be very strong if I decided at the end of my essay what I was going to argue.

When students become teachers I do not understand why the skill of planning ahead is lost. Backwards design seems to fit with lesson planning better than any approach to lesson planning. Teachers must know what the students are expected to get out of the course and this is done by scanning the curriculum expectations for the students. From there the teacher can create a final project that encompasses all of the expectations the teacher wishes to achieve and finally design day to day lesson plans where the students will explore and learn the material necessary to be successful.

Why don't teachers use backwards design? Well I came up with some reasons and I will also give you my opinion on why the excuses of avoiding backwards design are not valid. 

 Excuse 1: Backwards design takes too much planning.

 Initially, it may seem that backwards design does demand a lot more work from the teacher because the teacher must plan out every aspect of a lesson before they go in to teach it. However, I believe if you were to add up all the time it would take for a teacher to come up with a lesson every day then at the end add the time the teacher needed squeeze in any extra important curriculum expectations that may have been overlooked in a day to day planning style, the times allotted would be similar. On top of time, with backwards design it removes the stress and worry that could come with arriving at the end of a unit and having overlooked important curricular expectations. When I was a gymnastics coach it was part of my job to give a report card to every student in my recreational class. I took the day to day approach and taught the kids what I thought they needed to learn. However, always on the last month of teaching I would check the report cards and realize many skills of the gymnasts needed to pass on their report card I had overlooked. Then this would lead to a big struggle at the end trying to determine if these gymnasts could physically do the skills or I could teach the gymnasts the skills before the report cards were due. If I would have taken the backwards design approach, my gymnasts would have had a better chance of passing their report cards because they would have known from the beginning what skills they needed to work on and how to be successful in my class. So, does backwards design take “way more” planning? Depends who you ask, but the panning will be purposeful and will ensure students receive a fair opportunity to arrive at the end goal.

Excuse 2: It is easier to stick to what we know. 

Some teachers are not open to change. They feel that the way they have been doing things have been working and they don't see a purpose in changing it. Backwards design is a good tool for teachers to have to get organized. They can go about their days with a bit more ease knowing that they have planned their classes in a way that can allow for all students to be exposed to the tools necessary to reach the end goal. Yes, some teachers will need to be educated on how to properly use the backwards design model but my argument is, how do you know what model is better if you never give it a try? Why "fix what aint broke" you say? Well, how do you know it isn’t broken, when I was coaching, backwards design had never even crossed my mind but now that I understand it, I would have to say my methods of lesson planning while coaching were very broken.

Excuse 3 : Backwards design model will make no difference on the students. In the end they learn the same things anyways.

 Yes, this may be true. However the ways a teacher will come to the end goal is drastically different. With daily planning the teacher may seem unorganized and stressed due to the lack of goal they are working on. With backwards design the teacher has a set guideline for what needs to be achieved, this way if unexpected things occur, such as a student missing a lot of class the teacher will be prepared because they can inform the student about what they will be missing and a proactive student may even return to school prepared and almost at the same level as the other students. Also what if there are many disruptions during class time such as  many fire drills occurring during that class time, the teacher can plan ahead by leaving a few extra days for these interruptions so the class can stay on track. An unprepared teacher would get flustered and annoyed when their class was interrupted or a student was taking a lot of time off.

This video also gives very good insight on why backwards design is a step in the right direction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REAaEGdvMq0

October 9th 2014 : Inquiry Based Learning: What is it Good For?

Hello again I am back for another week to talk to you about education. Through my years of being a student in the education program I have come to realize teachers believe a lot needs to change for optimal student success in the school system. Many of my courses have suggested that as an educator I should take action to change the way the classroom is run. They say students should be seen as important as the teacher. Student voices should be heard in decisions, they should help decide how they are evaluated and they should choose in what they learn. Basically, students decide how the class is run. I'm sure to the average student today, this would sound like a dream come true, but even though these ideas have been shoved down my throat for about three years now, I cannot help but to be skeptical. Today I am going to focus on children choosing what they learn in the classroom. 

There are four factors as to why I'm skeptical to this method.
1. How can we ensure students are learning the things they need to be successful in their future?
2. How can we monitor what students know or what they don't know if they are all learning different things?
3. Students searching for answers takes a lot longer than traditional learning so how do students have time to learn enough things?
4. How do we know students are even coming across the right answers?

I am mainly going to focus on number one, but I will also briefly touch on the other points as well.

My idea for this blog hit me when I was reading chapter four in Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner by Susan Drake, Joanne Reid and Wendy Kolohon. The authors in this book were telling me that student should be learning in an inquiry learning setting. This means students would have control of what they are learning. They suggest schools move away from the mandatory credits required for high school students, rather they would like to enforce only two mandatory programs. One called digital literacy and the other inquiry learning. As you can imagine these programs would be vastly different from the regular math, science, physical education and art that are currently required. They would like to move towards courses that emphasize inquiry where  students explore their own questions and having a student voice, students sharing what they learn with each other in the classroom, online and with the community. Students are expected to show their findings to an audience that is targeted. Students gain community involvement by working with other students from other schools to find solutions. Students are given chances to be leaders by working with younger students. Inquiry learning suggests that play can lead to learning also if their personal interests are being learned about students will pay attention. Finally, students are expected to show what they have learned in the classroom and outside the classroom by networking.

Before we all go crazy thinking that this is going to revolutionize how we learn and is going to be beneficial for future students, I think we need to answer a few questions. First of all, when do we get to learn the real stuff? I mean, when do we learn Pythagorean theorem?When do I learn important dates of our history? When do I learn how to write an essay or how to properly communicate ideas? With inquiry learning we are not forced to learn anything. Rather students get to choose topics that they are interested and then explore them. How are the students going to know how to pay their taxes if they do not know proper math skills? How will doctors know how to fix us if they never have learn anatomy, physiology or even memorize the diseases and illnesses we could have. If students don't wonder the right questions they will never learn how to do some of the things that we are required to learn today. I am in school right now with the idea that if I work very hard I will get to do what I want I like later in life. However, inquiry based learning seems like the opposite; the students get to do what they want as students then are hopeless later in life. 

Yes, inquiry methods of learning seem great for the time being but will students be lost in their future? As a future physical education teacher, I believe that learning through doing can be one of the most beneficial methods of learning for students. Also, I have agreed with many of my education courses that students need the freedom to explore and learn about what they're interested in. on the other hand, I have also come to realize how important the fundamentals, we are forced to learn, really are. This realization came to me my first lecture of my mandatory biomechanics course. I mentioned before in my other blog post I have known from a very young age that I want to be a physical education teacher so, in high school when I was required to take math, history, etc. I would often get frustrated because I would feel it had no purpose to my future. However, who knew that my math skills would need to be re-learned in University. In my class, I am forced to use Pythagorean theorem, re-visit SOH CAH TOA, and use basic algebra skills to solve biomechanical situations. This made me think, if I learned in an inquiry learning space I never would have chosen to learn about these math skills. Therefore, in this class I would have no chance of passing the course. This biomechanics course is making me dig up many skills I have long forgotten but I know this course is going to be extremely beneficial to my knowledge in the future. It will help me analyze student’s movements to help them achieve the best results in my gym class and it is great for preventative measures because with this knowledge I can analyze student movement and know if it is safe or not.

What will kids do in the future? If they do not wonder some of the very important things that I, as a student, learned will they be behind in life? What will happen to them in university? Or will they have the opportunity for self-directed learning in university? The major issue is, what will happen to these students in the real world? Growing up, every student would have learned entirely different things from one another based on their individual wonders. What will happen when they hit the real world? If they have not wondered the right things they will not have the proper skills to be successful in their jobs or even day-to-day activities.

Also, inquiry based learning takes a lot of time. For example, in the textbook it stated students went on a hike up a mountain to see what the conditions were like. This would have taken multiple classes to gather enough information to answer the things that were “wondered”. If students learned this the “old fashion” way, they could have opened a textbook and within minutes the students would have the answers. Yes, I agree this is not as fun but it is definitely a faster way of gaining information. In my experiences in labs, I have learned things rarely go to plan. One time in my zoology lab, needed to determine if a turtle male or female. After two and a half hours of the class, I had no luck understanding where my turtle’s reproductive organs were.  I asked the teaching assistant who told me this animal was missing male and female reproductive organs. In cases like this, students can search and search for an answer but this doesn't mean the correct answer will be available to them and this also wasted a lot of my time by searching for something that wasn't physically present in my circumstance.



I think it is great that students are gaining a voice in the classroom. I feel this movement encourages students to gain a better sense of belonging and a stronger connection to the classroom. However, I believe too much freedom, like students choosing what they are going learn, is something students cannot handle because there is no way they will be prepared for their real life experiences if they get to pick and choose things that they want to learn. If someone can prove inquiry style learning can allow for success in the real world, I will consider it as a possible delivery method of information for my students. Without solid evidence comparing the traditional way of learning and the inquiry way of learning and proof that the inquiry way of learning is better, I simply do not believe it is a step in the right direction. 

September 25th 2014: Why Did I Fail My Assignment?

         Today I got an assignment back and I was not pleased with my mark. It was a simple homework assignment that should have been an easy 10/10.  When handing the assignments back the prof prepared the class for the not-so-great marks by saying he expects a lot more from us, hopefully next time there will be an improvement and these assignments should be easy marks for us. The issue was that a lot of my classmates, including myself, did try hard on this assignment. It was on soccer terms so I did my best to answer with what I learned from lecture and lab that week to fill in the provided chart. The things I could not answer I referred to the Internet and a phone call to my boyfriend, who had been playing soccer his whole life. I feel as though I went above and beyond in providing explanations and examples of the situations required. After I got my mark back I spoke with other students who also weren’t happy with their marks. Students who were soccer players growing up and who fully understood what the terminology meant but they still barley received a passing grade.

          What happened here? Was it possible that all of us students in the class just did not try hard enough? Or perhaps the teacher did not provide clear guidelines and express his expectations for the assignment. I believe I did go above and beyond the expectations. I followed the guidelines to completing the assignment and somehow I still got an unsatisfying grade.  To make matters worse, when I did read over the assignment there was not any comments that could possibly help me in my future to improve my homework assignments in this class. I think that this was not a valid assessment task because the low marks should mean that us students did not understand the material being taught. I am positive all students left with a strong understanding of what was taught because we all demonstrated a strong understanding of the concepts physically when we were in the lab.

        After reading chapter three from Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner by Susan Drake, Joanne Reid and Wendy Kolohon, a couple things stood out to me as things that could have improved the way the homework assignment was graded. First of all, I believe we needed to be provided with more specific guidelines or preferably a rubric. A rubric would have given us students a clear guideline to what was expected in the assignment, which aspects to focus on or which parts were significant and most importantly, tell the students how they could be successful in the assignment. I believe the rubric should have been discussed or created in cohesion with the students.

      Also, John Hattie made a good point, he said feedback was something teachers claim to give to students all the time but that teachers simply give the students information on behavioral and social aspects of their observations. Hattie believes that feedback should be from the student to the teacher, meaning the teacher has to become aware of where the student is in the classroom by observing and trying to gauge how the student is learning. This changes the role to the student showing the teacher where they are and the teacher taking this information to adjust their classroom to ensure all students can be on the same page. This relates to my soccer homework assignment because the teacher assessed his students according to guidelines in his head. This feedback to the students is sending the message that he was not impressed with our written work.  The teacher should have taken the poor homework scores and noted that perhaps the students did not understand the material as he had hoped and that the teacher himself should be changing his efforts moving forward. The teacher should have observed the great performance physically in the lab and compared it to the poor assignment scores and the teacher would have realized that there was a glitch in homework assessment. Also, the teacher is providing feedback on the students work and the students are expected to take this feedback and catch up to the expectation. With the students having no idea what the expectation is, the students are left frustrated and may not try in the future.

        I found an interesting video on YouTube that discussed how teachers should be teaching. One point from the video that really stood out to me was the emphasis they put on teachers to make their students confident. Students should gain confidence in what they have learned and in their abilities. It makes sense to teach this because if students are confident in what they learn they will be more willing to use the tools they learn outside the classroom. Another factor in giving students confidence is the student must experience success and be taught that they are capable of achieving success in their work. Going back to my soccer assignment I know many students are now discouraged from their low grade. We don't know where we can improve because there wasn't helpful feedback provided. We were not given success criteria or any guideline that could have shown us what we needed to do to be successful. At this point us students feel anything but confident because we are lost in terms of how to be successful.

         I think that this prof should rethink how assessment tasks are done and other methods of assessments could be used. The prof could assess the class by observations of our performance in lab and question and answers in the lab. It is clear that the students physically know what they need to know but on paper the students fell short of the prof's expectations.