Comments for Classroom as Microcosm

Comment on Prompt #3: The Writing on Learning Exchange: Who Taught You? by jazzytower

jazzytower — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:41:05 +0000

Hello all, here is my response to prompt #3 Who taught you. below is the link. And while you are there poke around a bit.

http://thoughtsandentanglements.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/footsteps/

Comment on When the Syllabus Goes Wrong by Theasaurus

Theasaurus — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:45:38 +0000

I’d like to comment on your use of presentations and resultant low attendance rates. I struggled with the same issue for years, and after trying several different approaches, I’ve found a great solution that works for me.

First, I think assessable presentations are a really useful learning tool, but as teachers, we’ve got to be very clear about the parameters for such a task, otherwise students will run with it for 20 minutes, and nobody has time to sit through 50 x 20-minute presentations.

I’ve been using the Pecha-Kucha style for the last few years (6m 40s = 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, automatically timed, and minimal text). I’ve found that Pecha-Kucha works on several levels: it forces students to boil down their discussion to the most essential points; its strict timing and set structure trumps any reason or excuse from students for going over or under time; and it encourages students to use images rather than chunks of text to complement their talk.

Perhaps you could try something like this next time, with definitive guidelines, e.g. max 5 slides for the synopsis, min 10 slides for analysis etc. This will ensure that students spend a set amount of time presenting on certain aspects of their topic (and they will gain/lose marks according to whether they meet these criteria). It’s a very directive approach to an assignment, I know, but I’ve found that students prefer to have assignments that have very clear boundaries – it sorts out any confusion at the start of the semester and saves you a heap of time sitting through long winded presentations. Plus, in my experience, weaker students need this guidance and structure just to get through this type of assessment, whereas the stronger students tend to bend the rules to their advantage – and they often do this exceptionally well.

As for getting students to rock up to your classes, try introducing a peer review system to the presentation assessment task. I always make participation for this optional – but if they participate, they can earn an extra 5% towards their final mark. You would be amazed at how many students rock up not only on time, but early, for classes when they know that they have to be there in time for the presentations just so they can get that little 5%.

This technique nails several aspects of learning and teaching in one blow, and it’s particularly pertinent to creative writing and literature subjects. I get students to fill in short critical feedback slips for every presentation they hear. Presentations are always in the first 30 minutes of class, so students have to arrive on time to participate. Writing critical feedback also means they have to be attentive. All written feedback then goes to the presenter. It’s like your blog system, except all you have to do is collect slips of paper, glance through them to ensure there’s nothing inappropriate written there, keep a tally of which students participated that week, and assign them a mark for participation at the end of semester.

This type of peer review system teaches students how to give constructive feedback, encourages them to pay attention and absorb the information, and if it’s worth some marks, even just 5%, they will attend all your classes on time.

Comment on Student Blogs: Challenges by yvonneeileen

yvonneeileen — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:26:27 +0000

How do you write about math? What age are your students?

Comment on Student Blogs: Challenges by yvonneeileen

yvonneeileen — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:25:22 +0000

First, I have never used blogs in my classes of eighth graders, but we did venture into technology with writing all their work using Google shared docs. I have had short conversations about blogs with my students and received nothing more positive than bland somewhat curious questions if not complete rejection from many of my students. My co-teacher, more adventurous than I, had an edublog, a Facebook account, Twitter account, etc. before me, and I had the same reactions to her suggestions. In saying this, I understand the technological divide that births the negative reactions in my students. For many, an adventure into an unknown territory in writing isn’t fun or exciting–it is frightening; however, I now blog. I dove in with the same spirit that I used to share Google docs with my students. It wasn’t easy, but they have come to love it and, I believe, that they will come to love blogging (maybe not ALL of them) as a piece of the total required writing repertoire because I think that they will view it as giving them a greater degree of freedom than they currently have with formal assignments. I can’t take 150 journals home a week to read and respond to them, and they don’t want to use their hands with a pen and pencil on paper to write–yuck! Manual writing. While I enjoy class discussions, I have difficulty in rewarding their thinking with a grade and granting enough class time for meaningful thinking and discussion to happen regularly. I believe that many who already own smartphones will want yet another reason to use them in school (and yes, they use their smartphones to write their papers in Google docs) especially when they get to respond to others’ writing (which at this point, we haven’t required). So, don’t quit–lead the way, please. After all, your students sound like bigger versions of mine.

Comment on Student Blogs: Challenges by melissahaigh

melissahaigh — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:24:32 +0000

As a former student of Leeds Metropolitan University, completing an undergraduate degree in Education, I was given a module, titled: Personal Professional Development Portfolio. All online, of course, in simple-man terms, this in essence was a blog. Which over the course of first, second, and the all important third year, had to be completed independently. Full of evidence of learning, development and critical thinking. At first, myself and a the majority of others despised the module, saw no point in it, and failed to find the time to connect with the module, let alone to sit down and write.
After a couple of weeks pondering, I found my niche in this module, and fell in love with writing. I found my times of the day where I was most creative, and was impressing not only my tutors, but the programs co-oordinator.
I think blogs within education are wonderful, and with the right student can work. As a student I found myself connecting more with my studies, and over time developments were made not only personally, but also academically and professionally. Having that space to write and do what you want and to make it your own can help a student, not only find who they are, but to voice their thoughts.

Comment on Student Blogs: Challenges by Kate MacInnis

Kate MacInnis — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:21:15 +0000

I used blogs in a calculus class, which on one hand is a whole different kind of beast (I had the additional resistance of “how does a person even write about math?!?), but on the other hand, I had a lot of similar issues to yours.

I think you’re right that blogs have the potential to be the perfect learning tool. It’s the figuring out how to do it right. I didn’t give my students enough guidance (I would love to see the instructions you gave your students, if you’re willing to share) and I still ended up with some awesome stuff. I had other students who struggled a lot. I’m going to try again in the fall, with my main goal being to better support the struggling students.

I do think it’s worth taking another stab at it (obviously, I’m taking my second stab myself). I look at it as one of those “fail better” situations. It was a highly imperfect ‘experiment’ that I got a lot of information from. I’m going to use that information to perform another ‘experiment’, that I’m sure will be highly imperfect as well, hopefully in new and interesting ways.

It may be something you want to try next in a course you’ve taught repeatedly. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it for a course that was brand-new to me. I also didn’t try again immediately (although that was mostly due to have a baby after that semester) and I think having the time to reflect is beneficial.

Comment on Student Blogs: Challenges by Susan

Susan — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:26:00 +0000

Well I just love the whole blogs idea, especially since it’s much more ‘real world’ than essay-writing. But even just listening to you describe it, it sounds like an evaluation nightmare. I wonder–would a single class blog, made up of a series of ‘guest bloggers’–ie, each student according to a schedule they sign up for — with clear expectations for commenting and responding to comments, would something like that maintain the benefits and bring it more into a reasonable scale for the teacher? I’m thinking I might try something like this in a new course I’m planning — or rather, ‘planning’

Comment on “But miss, this zero might affect my whole future…” by Marta

Marta — Sun, 19 May 2013 14:00:26 +0000

RT, Go baby go ! You are right, but the system is so strong that unless more speak out it can not (and will not) be fixed.
I hope that others read your post and share it. This needs to be taken on, the sooner the better. Maybe if we do take this on someday the students I get will not be so spoiled, uneducated and entitled. And maybe they will get an education !!!

Comment on “But miss, this zero might affect my whole future…” by yvonneeileen

yvonneeileen — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:50:33 +0000

It seems to me that most eighth graders don’t know how to conceive “future.” There are a few though who think about their tomorrows. Even without this level of maturity, if they would only “be present” when they are sitting in the seat, it would encourage me. Thank heavens, for our school system, it is summer break as of last Friday.

Comment on When the Syllabus Goes Wrong by yvonneeileen

yvonneeileen — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:45:13 +0000

I want to say first that, as a learner, I would have loved this course. I am rooting for you to tweak it and try again. When I feel bogged down by grading and heavy instruction/remediation, I divide assignments into three categories: ones that can be self-assessed, peer-assessed, and teacher-assessed. In order to do this, you may have to teach a mini-lesson on summary writing and let that be peer assessed. To lighten your burden in giving feed back on the blogs, every other week, have students rotate writing with reading and then responding to others’ blogs –dividing your work in half and giving the students a chance to interact with each other. Again, you may need to model for students how to reply to a blog in a productive and open-ended style. Another way to ease the blogging and focus it, is to assign students to read and then write book reviews (Goodreads is a source for some interesting book reviews.) For motivation, help students create book clubs by allowing them to group together based on an exterior element of their chosen books, such as similar themes, same gender author, time periods, etc. Then those students can meet together regularly with some type of self or teacher generated generalized focus for their discussion that could be used as the next topic in their blogs–discussion that would further their investigation character–paired with a quote or passage from Tough’s book (which because of you I am currently reading). Then, I would change their presentation focus–make it more like a book promotion–sell the class on the book–instead of an academic focus. This may lighten the perceived work-load of your students by making an element of each part easier to evaluate and more student-centered. As for the research component, it would be interesting to find common threads in the life story of an author and the prevalent themes present in their books (such as Gary Paulsen’s consistent theme of a cheating or weak mother and Kate Dicamillo’s characters who are mother-less and lost). Finally, for their final paper, have students focus on a specific character trait that they feel is vital for literature of today and then identify books which exemplify it which would give you a final product to evaluate summary writing. I hope these suggestions inspire you. Just so you know, I really look forward to reading each of your posts. Your candid reflections are inspiring to me.