micro:bit, macro:thanks

Matthew Griffin, Operations Manager at Kids Code Jeunesse (KCJ), was in our classroom yesterday. He came to teach us about the micro:bit - a hands on tool that makes teaching code fun, easy, and accessible. KCJ is bringing micro:bits and a FREE micro:bits workshop to schools and educators across Canada. I read about this initiative on Twitter through my PLN - big thanks to Doug Braden (@DugBraden) and Michael Leonard (@mfleonard23) in particular. I applied for a workshop and was fortunate enough to get a spot.

Matthew did a great job of working with the students and presenting the material to them at their level. The students were partnered up and each group of two had a Chromebook. After an unplugged activity, the students were introduced to the block coding site where they would start putting instructions together to be tested out on the emulator and then downloaded to a micro:bit. This experience was a great opportunity to practice showing grit (persistence + resilience) as the students failed forward in their quest to program the micro:bits.

Aside from my students having a great time learning how to code the micro:bit, I have to say that this was excellent professional learning for me. Since Matthew was directly teaching the students, I had the same learning opportunity as them and I got to walk around the room and help students as well as troubleshoot some of their issues. Rather than leaving the classroom to attend a workshop on my own, it was embedded in my class with my kids so we could all learn together. This has turned out to be quite beneficial for me because I was learning it with them and because it came naturally to some of them - more than it did for me! Now I have "experts" in the room who can support their classmates. This is a big win for me and for them.

When school started this morning there were a handful of students asking when they would get to work with the micro:bits again. They are excited and want to engage with the technology to learn more about how it works and the things they can do with it. I was provided with some resources for next steps and will certainly be using them to help the students who are keen about continuing their learning around coding.

If you are interested in trying this out, head over to https://kidscodejeunesse.org/microbit.html and apply to have someone from @kidscoding come to your school to work with you and your students. You won't regret it!

The Spark

A couple of weeks ago I emailed all the teachers at my school and asked if anyone had any interest in learning about 3D printing.

No one responded to the email. I was feeling low, but realized that we were in the middle of writing progress reports.

I decided that I would approach a few people and talk to them - face to face. Before I could get out of my classroom three staff members approached me about my email! I was feeling high again - ready to chat with and support teachers and students who want to bring their ideas to life with respect to their learning at school.

One of the grade 6 teachers decided to dive into 3D printing by allowing his students to spend some time playing with Tinkercad in order to familiarize themselves with the software they would be using. The next step involved providing them with an assignment to create a key-chain with specific dimensions. The teacher was a bit apprehensive but also quite excited about the process his students would enter into.

You can imagine how happy I was when two of his students came to my door late this week to ask if they could print their key-chains. They were excited to see the machine and how it worked. We loaded their stl files into Makerbot and hit print. They were mesmerized as the machine started to do its magic.

A few hours later they were holding their key-chains and amazed at how they had visualized what they wanted to create. They put their thoughts into action to get their ideas out of their heads - into a computer - and then finally into the palm of their hands.

The classroom teacher was full of excitement as he talked to his students about their key-chains. He talked to them about the success criteria attached to the assignment, asked them to reflect on it, and together we made notes about how the machine works and how to maximize what the technology can do and the connection to the design process.

I left school on Friday feeling good about the support I was able to provide the teacher and his students and look forward to what comes next with respect to their learning and bringing it to life with the 3D technology.

As I was pondering this blog post this morning, I received a message from one of the Grade 3 teachers asking about providing him support this coming week with the technology. Of course I said yes and can’t wait to see what his ideas are and how his students respond to the challenges that will be presented.

Sometimes, a spark is needed to get people to take a risk and try something new - something they are not comfortable/familiar with. When it comes to technology and its integration into the classroom I don’t necessarily need a spark, but I recognize that others do. These teachers have started their learning journey - I can’t wait to see and hear their students in action as they embark on the same risk taking that their teachers have undertaken.

I AM NOT a Math Person

As an elementary school teacher, one of the content areas I am responsible for teaching is Mathematics. If you allow me a moment to speak in a negative way, I will tell you the following:

I am not a "Math" person. 

I didn't enjoy learning it when I was young and 

I am resistant and generally scared of it as an adult.  

From a positive perspective, I know that I can teach it and that there are lots of resources to assist me in teaching it. What I stated above is how I feel when my back is against the wall and/or when I am at a Math workshop/pd surrounded by people who seem to know what they are doing when it comes to numeracy and how to teach it. 

When I was interviewing for the teaching position that I am currently in, I was asked by the Principal what I thought I had to work on from a professional perspective. My answer? Mathematics. I told him that I am frightened of it. It gets done and I am constantly learning but that it has always been an area of weakness. I am thankful that he didn't hold it against me! He told me that our school is provided with support in the area of mathematics and that I would get to be a part of that. I was up for the challenge and that time and I am still up to the challenge now. 

Fast forward to this past week when I had a chance to meet with the Numeracy Coach attached to my school. Ms. Dosman will be working with my students and I. In an email to myself and the other teachers involved she provided us with the focus of our first sessions of collaborative inquiry: what impact would daily number sense routines, and rich number tasks have on student flexibility and tool strategy selection? The email also asked us to consider where our students' greatest needs are in relation to our inquiry focus and an example question was provided:

There are 18 animals in a pet store. Some are birds, and some are dogs. There are 50 legs in all. How many birds and how many dogs might there be? Show your thinking.

I decided to take the question and present it to my students.

Here is the email I sent Mrs. Dosman the morning after my students tried the problem:

Ok, so they didn't solve the problem completely. Some of the kids said they were going to work on it at home so we shall see what happens today. I am going to try something to see if it kickstarts them in a positive direction.It was nice to see some of the students step up and take a risk - many of the students didn't jump in. I had more success with the number string we did (dots). Hopefully when we start with the number string today they will feel more confident. We shall see!They needed prompting but I was careful not to provide too much as I didn't want to be the one doing all the work.They focused on the legs and then forgot that there had to be 18 animals. Will update you today if any more comes of it.

Here is what ended up happening when we addressed the problem again:

My message to Mrs. Dosman:

Ok, so I drew a picture for them. It was the pet store with 18 legless animals in it. We had a lot of fun and finally solved the problem. Some students wanted to eliminate animals from the store and some were saying that we would have birds and dogs with no legs!

I took some liberties the second time around with the question. They were able to solve the problem and I was able to gather important information about what my students were doing and not doing with this question. I ignored my lack of confidence with math and did my best to praise my students for taking risks and providing their thoughts and ideas. 

Shortly after the students worked on the animal/leg problem, Mrs. Dosman came into our class to do a pre task activity with the students. They were provided with three questions (progressing in difficulty from the first to the third question), a pencil and paper activity. They were allowed to use any strategy/tool (except calculators) to complete the questions but could not seek assistance from the teachers or their classmates. It was tough to not provide them with any ideas or direction but we had to see what they could do on their own. It was over an hour before the last student finished and we could gather the class to debrief. 

Mrs. Dosman working with one of the students.

By this point they had worked with me on the word problem twice and the pre task for an hour. I thought that they would not want to actively engage in something like this again any time soon but I was pleasantly surprised when one of the student asked a great question in class. It was pizza day and the student wanted to know how much it would cost to purchase an entire pizza! He had two slices but was wanting me. I (the non math person) felt an excited and asked the class if we could play around with his question. They said yes and wanted to get to the bottom of this!

Here is a photo of what ended up happening:

I told the students that I personally like to draw information from the problem. I then solicited their thoughts/ideas and we went from there. As you can see, we ended up talking about money, fractions, and skip counting. More students engaged in this problem than the last one and they seemed to be more at ease with the process. For me, this is such a gift. 

One of my goals for this school year is to look at mathematics as a new fluency. One that I can jump in and out of with a confidence around the ability to learn new things and be able to apply them in order to help my students with their learning and love of math. With Mrs. Dosman's coaching and my self directed PD, my hope is that 1) my students will become comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas in math; 2)  they will willingly enter into working through problems like the ones above; 3) that they will acquire a variety of tools/strategies and know when and how to use them; and 4) a flexibility in their thinking when dealing with math problems. 

Jumping into Deep Learning

Last year my students and I participated in a twitter chat about New Pedagogies for Deep Learning during their annual global event. It was such a great experience that I made it a priority point to participate in this years event. As I kept my eyes open for information about this years conference, I stumbled across this tweet from our 21st Century Learning Consultant, Ferdinand Krauss:

Ferdinand's tweet encouraged students and teachers to participate in this years NPDL deep learning task. He also attached the task and other important information:

Thanks to Ferdinand, I had everything I needed to get started with my students. The prompt involved students to think about "What the world needs now" and to share their ideas to develop global competencies in our school/town/city/nation. The students started by taking a look at the UN Sustainable Goals website. We decided that each student would research one of the sustainable goals and then share their knowledge/new learning using 1 google slide. Once the students finished their slide, they would share it with me and I put them all together into a single slide show.

At this point we seemed ready and excited to share our preparation for the global discussion. As a class, we had accumulated information about the sustainable goals and looked forward to applying some of our knowledge to talk about what we think the world needs right now. We tweeted out our work and responded to people who were following the #npdlworldneeds tag on twitter. 

People were seeing our work and tweeting about it and connecting with us. Things started to feel "real" for the students and they had a 'global' audience that could could interact with.

We were especially fortunate to connect with two educators from our school board who were in attendance at the NPDL conference in Vancouver - Kelly Roberts (WCDSB Research Coordinator) and Richard Setler (VP at St. Kateri Tekawitha). They provided us with prompts to consider and and even recorded a video for us while they were at the conference.

We responded to their video by creating a quick one of our own...

Within a week of returning from Vancouver, Richard and Kelly connected with our class via Google Hangout to share their experience and to continue to prompt the students to think deeper and to work on using the NPDL competencies to analyze situations and problem solve. 

Shortly after this hangout Richard reached out to us with a wonderful opportunity to work with a grade 1/2 class at his school.

The students were more than happy to oblige.

This new connection with Ms. V and her grade 1/2 students is proving to be an excellent learning opportunity. The grade 4/5 students are happy to help out the primary students and are challenging themselves with the questions/prompts coming from Richard and Ms. V. The discussions have been deep - allowing students to think about their perspectives and then explain their thinking. Students are respectfully challenging each others thoughts/opinions while they decide what information they want to provide the grade 1/2 students with. 

Having gone back and forth over Twitter, we are now working on bringing the students face to face in a Google Hangout. 

We are scheduled to meet with Ms. V's class early next week. The students are really looking forward to it. As their classroom teacher, I am quite impressed with the effort they are putting into this activity as I observe them work through it. Thanks to Richard and Ms. V, I am provided with the opportunity to assess my students with respect to the skill sets known as the 6C's (see below). My assessment will help me determine where my students are at with respect to the competencies and what my next steps will be to help my students attain the skills needed to excel in our complex world. 

Screen shot taken from http://npdl.global/