Think Like a Teacher

Teachers are careful about the things we do and say. We cringe when remarks accidentally slip out and  wish we had a verbal “undo” button. We beat ourselves up when words intended as neutral feedback somehow echo back sounding negative. When commenting on writing or anything student-created, I deliberately “sandwich” what a student needs to improve between two positive observations.

This blog post makes me pause to wonder if my praise has been reinforcing the “wrong” things — or the right ones — both with my students and my own children. More importantly, I wonder how small changes in comments on student posts in MySciLife  or on student blogs and online projects might build creative confidence far beyond the hollow “great job” or “interesting idea.”

Maybe it is better to comment before kids publish. Or to comment on the struggles we see them go through before the finished product.  Or maybe we should emphasize ongoing process by asking where they will go next:

I love your video, especially because I know you had to redo it three times to get it right. Your extra efforts were worth it, and  your outtakes show how much you improved! I salute the changes you made! Where do you want to take it next ?

Katrina Schwartz’s post about praise, girls, and process made sense of two experiences I had as a student that have always stood in higher relief, though I never analyzed exactly why  until now:

In sixth or seventh grade art class, we were assigned to build a Rube Goldberg type invention out of found materials. I don’t recall the details. I do recall that I spent three art classes coaxing a windmill-like contraption, precariously taped and glued together before the era of Superglue, to work. It had several rubber bands and used plastic spoons for blades, and I was trying to make it pick up and throw a ping pong ball. The best it got was one lucky throw amid scores of attempts, and I never replicated that “success.” But I remember it,  not much more except the trials and trials. I also remember that Art class in general was one of the places where I felt especially successful.

Many years later, as a grad student, I wrote a paper on creativity — a topic near and dear to me. As he handed it back to me emblazoned with an “A,” the prof asked. “Now what are you going to do with it?” I rattled my head slightly and asked, “What do you mean?” No one had ever asked me about going further than the “final grade” to consider publishing or sending it anywhere other than the trunk-of-finished-papers in my basement. That question twisted around me then and squirms inside me with every product I have made since: from fabric projects and writing pieces to an entire graduate exhibit of art quilts.

Schwartz’s post is right. The nature of praise does matter. Process and open-endedness matter. I am sure you have personal experiences that rise as evidence from your own memory.

I wonder if we would we be better teachers and continue to improve if we were praised for PROCESS, for trying again after “failures” (lesson flops) more than if praised for what we have at the finish (like test scores)? Yes, the results matter, but we will get better ones if we are resilient learners, too.

If you frequent this blog, you know that writing matters to me. As a teacher, I helped many a student improve his/her writing skills, even when the subject was not “English” or “Language Arts.” As a college prof helping educate teachers-to-be, I emphasized the importance of writing for a teacher’s professional presence, even in the short notes scribbled to go home in a backpack or in the short paragraph of directions at the start of an assignment. Today’s Common Core underscores writing across the curriculum as part of college and career readiness. If you cannot write, you are very limited in what you can accomplish. Even the carpenter who left notes during my basement  renovation had to write understandably so I knew what he was asking. So, yes, writing is a passion of mine. In this post I share two recent Featured Sites from TeachersFirst that sing out to me.

One focuses on poetry. Poetry, while not a life skill, certainly celebrates the power of a single, carefully selected word. Like the scarf that picks up the blue in your eyes or the bright orange sweat socks that define your persona as a tennis player, a single word can relate far more than its own meaning. A tool like Tranquillity  lets us play with poetry. Poems are infinite jigsaw puzzles of ideas: the piece with a green edge and one with a curly, jagged side fitting together after you flip them around until they make sense. Tranquility lets you play with words and shows the value of one word to fulfill a rhyme and hit the final note of your thought melody. Play with some words in Tranquillity. (This really should be an iPhone app to de-stress people waiting in lines!) Share it in a science class, and challenge students to write poems to explain Newton’s Laws or to tell the tale of oxidation/reduction in chemistry. Even self-described “tech nerds”  like those who created Tranquillity enjoy poetry.

The second, Slick Write, is my dream tool. I have been looking for this tool since I was fellow in the Capital Area Writing Project in the early 1990’s. I tested a simple piece of software back then that could tell a writer about such things as the number of prepositional phrases in a passage. Why bother?  A surfeit of prepositional phrases means you have weak or imprecise word choice. As a statistician would put it, conciseness of writing varies inversely with the number of prepositional phrases. (Take that, data mongers!). Slick Write also targets other writing foibles: passive voice, cliches, and much more. You can configure it to focus your writing self-analysis on one area at a time. (Sports coaches know the importance of focused correction in skill building.)

I like Slick Write I so much I’d like to politely share it with my adult friends and colleagues, especially those who… well, don’t get me started on the amount of passive voice I read. Try it secretly and see if it makes a difference in how you write.

—————Stop reading here if you don’t care about the example——————-

Slick Write analysis of the above: (I have bolded the things I wish to improve)

Words: 508
Function words: 217 (42.72%)
Adverbs: 22 (4.33%)
Pronouns: 66 (12.99%)
Uncommon words: 69 (13.58%)
Filter words: 9 (1.77%)

I posted last week about playing with words and the ways wordplay can build vocabulary, enrich word choice, or simply enhance appreciation for our own language. Although I am pretty good at mental math, I find it a little tougher to imagine “gamifying” math with as much enjoyment. So I challenged myself to rediscover some of the resources that open my mental playspace for math. Some are sites that let us play with number sense, some that connect math with graphical representations of geography  and places (maps), and some that show math applied in real world settings we might not think of as “mathematical.” Hopefully, any imaginative gamer can find ways to play with math among these.

Number Sense-ations

Every Second on the Internet  simply gets you thinking about HUGE numbers (and time), all related to the phenomenal growth and use of technology around us all the time. This one begs us to ask each other, “So how many xx do you think  appear each second on the Internet?”  in a sort of stump-your-friends style of oneupmanship with tech statistics.

Virtual Number Rack is just what it sounds like: a virtual manipulative (aka hands-on toy) where you slide beads back and forth on rods. You can add multiple rods, thus creating “place value” to please your math teacher. You can also invent games to play: create patterns, ascribe meanings to the negative spaces (and spans)  between the beads. or even invent a digital “code” to send messages using beads. As you play with red, white, and space, you are playing with math. Shhh. Don’t tell kids that. You’ll ruin their fun.

If It Were My Home gives more statistics than you can imagine about places all over the world. Compare where you live with another place. Look at all those statistics. What do they mean? Which country has twice as much? Which one has half as many? As you wonder about the reasons behind the stats, you start to play mental games with the comparisons.This is real world math with a bonus: all that comparison builds number sense, too.

Mapping Math 

Overlap maps. What a cool way to care about area! The concept of “square miles” never meant much to me, but this does, especially if I use a place I know well. I have driven across Pennsylvania or Massachusetts enough times to know what each “area” feels like. If you put Iowa on top of Iran, which would be bigger? What about Colorado and Tibet? Challenge your friends to predict which map would be larger than the other… and prove it here.

Maths Maps is Tom Barrett’s project to merge math and Google Maps. This one begs for your contribution. I personally like the idea of locating shapes in various places and making placemarkers for them. But I could see mapping all sorts of mathematical concepts. What about a  creating a treasure hunt using maps and math?

Math (invisible or applied) in the real world

9 Most Mathematically Interesting Buildings in the World  and  10 Amazing Examples of Architecture Inspired by Mathematics tell what they are all about. As someone who likes art and thinks visually, these have me at “click.” Can you find a building in your community that uses math creatively? What about that building in London that is melting things because of its curves? Why? What other weird buildings are there — and what is their math?

Yummy Math has math problems related to today (or this week), but they are not simply :George has seven pumpkins” for an October “word problem.” They are REAL events or people. MY immediate reaction is to try some but to quickly move to inventing some. What math problem can you create from today’s lead story in Google News? The questions might be a bit shocking, especially when the lead story is about chemical weapons or a Navy Yard shooting, but math certainly takes on meaning this way. Make reality into a math game. It might have a secondary benefit of helping us cope with nasty news.

Get the Math makes math hip. Here comes a math teacher’s favorite question: Where will I actually USE this? Answers: In fashion? Check. Music? Check. Video Games? Check.  Forget justifying math. Just go play in the many places where math sings its own tunes.

Homestyler is one of my very favorites. Design a dream home in 3D. You have to know about measurement and proportion, of course, but who cares.  I want a cool kitchen and big windows. Hoe many homes can your design? Can you design a home for someone who is 6 foot 7? What about a mini-house for kids to play in? Design a “fun house” with weird proportions to confuse people who enter. Make design a game, and  it will never feel like “math.”

Arounder See and imagine all that travel entails: plan the travel costs, count the miles, choose the best route, and more, all inspired y these amazing 360 tours. Invent your own world math challenge  beginning here.

I thought it would be hard to generate a list for gamifying math, but now I find myself wanting to GO PLAY. 

Sometimes the simplest tools can be the most creative places to play and learn. The trick is approaching them with some curiosity and playfulness — making a game of it.

Try MoreWords. This very simple tool, apparently designed to help you cheat at crossword puzzles, word scrambles, and other word games, is also a lot of fun for finding new words and playing with letter combinations, prefixes, suffixes, and more. (You WILL have to ignore some annoying ads.) I tried entering crypto—— and found several new words all related to codes. What a great way for kids to get hooked on words. Try entering various numbers of blanks before a suffix or around a root. You could even make it a “gambling” challenge: I predict there will be seven words that have seven letters followed by the suffix proof. How many do you predict? Before we enter it, how many can you name?  OK, I was wrong in my prediction. How close were you?

Here’s another one: WordCount. It analyzes English statistically to tell us word frequencies. Sound like something Google would do, right? But imagine predicting or asking which word is used more frequently: wrestle (rank = 25905) or fight (rank = 1484) ?  (To enter a word and find its rank, click just to the right of  the tiny text “find Word” and type it in.) Think of other word pairs you might test. Ask students to choose one word in a draft they have written and suggest a lesser-used word to replace it. How do you know? Use WordCount.

Looking for more word fodder? Try Alan Cooper’s Homonym List. (What’s the difference from “homophones”? Click  Go to All About Homonyms to decide what to call them). This innocent looking, alphabetical list of homonyms begs us to write clever sayings, sentences, or tongue twisters. Can you figure out why some have red squares and some blue? This list could become a series of writing prompts. Choose a set of homonyms . Create a clever, visual way to show them in correct use in writing and show their differences, perhaps with images, comic characters, or even video.

If we gamify word choice and word study through wordplay, words can become as much fun as apps, and a LOT more productive. If all of us played with words as much as with Angry Birds, imagine how articulate the average American could become. Surely, there would be lasting benefit in that.

Our classrooms face the same engagement challenges that the Wall Street Journal describes at historic sites across the U.S. More and more, consumers enter school doors with digital devices glued in their hands or tethered to their brains. BYOD/BYOT (Bring your own device/technology) is here. Even if the devices are NOT officially allowed, they are here, hidden under desks or behind books.

Historic sites have responded more quickly than most schools. You can play a texting game in Williamsburg, scan QR codes to learn more at almost every museum these days, or load an app to let you interact while physically standing at historic sites. Curators and education staff worry about the invasive juxtaposition of technology in a Shaker barn and the constant need to update their apps to avoid appearing “outdated.” Teachers face the same concerns managing new technologies. If they believe they must “stay ahead.” they are doomed to fail. We will never “stay ahead” of  what enters the school in students’ pockets.

Historic sites must woo consumers to perpetuate their income stream. They face a digital challenge: “How do we continue to appeal to consumers armed with — and distracted by– devices? What activities and apps can we make that will engage them via those devices?” But schools are more or less guaranteed  our “consumers” for longer periods of time. We therefore have a chance to flip the digital challenge around, asking ourselves, “How can we make students active participants in making the ‘school’ experience one where we not only participate, but create,  leaving a legacy for future learners?” Historic sites have little chance for participant legacy beyond good reviews on TripAdvisor. The difference between a historic site “visitor” and our “learners” is the legacy our learners can leave for those to come.

As I read about the digital experiences at Williamsburg, I wonder if we could gradually make school a digital immersion. Imagine a classroom filled with QR codes — that the teacher does not have to make. The learners make them. Imagine texting games or QR treasure hunts that kids embed in the physical space of a classroom.  Image simple apps, games,  and interactive maps created by kids. As current technologies age, they could be replaced by later student projects. Instead of “turning in” student projects for a grade, we could “turn on” student projects for future audiences of learners. In many classrooms, teachers already have students creating digital projects. The missing step is making them part of a perpetual learning place called school.  Imagine how much harder kids would work for such a vast audience. It would be interesting to find out whether a seventh grader would continue to monitor responses that come in to his fifth grade game about Explorers or would monitor the number of times her QR Treasure hunt was accessed. I am not sure, but I’d sure love to find out. If I were in charge of a physical learning space today, I’d be one of the learners alongside my students, plastering it with digital experiences for any learning consumer who walks in.

Today’s rapid-fire, tweeting world loves lists. We see numbered lists on Twitter, in headlines, on magazine covers, among the “popular” stories on our Google News sidebar, among our Facebook friends’ links, on blogs or sites we follow, and even on television. The lists often outnumber any significant substance. The headlines read “Ten best ways to do this,” “Top seven blunders of that,” “50 Best blah-blah,” “100 top whatever.” I admit that I have fallen into the numbered list trap when in a hurry. It’s simply easier and quicker to list a bunch of stuff than it is to finely craft a single idea.

I am tired of lists. Give me one solid, deep article or critique any time over a long list that allows the author to avoid a firm decision or  investigation of  one option in full detail. I would like a supported opinion on one book, a recommended investment, a classroom management strategy, or tip to deal with an ornery two year old, not a long list of possibilities that I must sort, probe, or filter. Yes, I like choices, but I also like to hear an opinion supported by evidence and flavored by nuance. Numbered lists are quick, but they share as much subtlety as an all you can eat buffet. They scream,” My smorgasbord is impressive because it has so many serving dishes, not because any dish can actually stand  on its own culinary merit.”

As teachers, we expect our students to provide visible steps for their solutions to equations, solid evidence for the thesis of their essays, and connections between data and conclusion in their lab reports. Would we allow a “Top ten options in solving for X”? or “Seven possible reasons for the Civil War”? I hope not. Numbered lists have value as brainstorms and for idea gathering — as preliminary investigations, not as ends in themselves.

We should model what we expect. If we write lists for our students (or parents), we should prioritize the items and explain why. If we allow Top Ten lists from our students, at the very least we should ask,”Now that you have chosen ten, can you rank them, explaining why you chose that order?”  If we write articles or blogs, we should skip lists and focus on one thorough critique or discussion.

Ready to go listless? Here is a teaching idea to promote 21st century skills and an opportunity for authentic learning: Have students collect as many examples as they can of numbered lists from their own experience of the media, web surfing, or social networking: articles, blog posts, videos, etc. Then ask them to select one list they care about, research it, and rewrite it based on evidence to support a specific rank order. Of course, they will need to write their explanation in a manner  understandable to the list’s intended audience, including all the supporting evidence, appropriate voice, and conventions needed for publishing in that venue. Have them share it as a comment, blog post, or in-kind response to the original author.

“Listless” could become a very productive oxymoron.

I must share this awesome foursome of writing resources that grabbed my creative eye as I prepare for an online OK2Ask session  in August. 

Gone Google Story Builder (reviewed here). Layer writing on top of digital storytelling about writing using this tool that plays back the writing and editing process as a video. Here is a tongue in cheek (?) example. Imagine assigning students to write s story about writing, portraying two or more characters in the process. Suddenly, the writing matters because we are highlighting the actual process of writing. But the metalayer is that we can “see” the persona doing the writing. What a wonderful way to make students aware of narrative persona and of the thinking processes involved with writing. It would be great fun for a student to show an internal tug of war as he/she writes, such as the impulse to be wildly creative and the impulse to please admissions committees reading a college essay. To actually use this in class, you might have to start by simply brainstorming characters who could be writing and editing a piece together:  a parent and a teen, Jekyll and Hyde, a dog and a cat, Hemingway and Dickens, etc. It also might be easier to make this a partner project. Then ask students to jump back and describe the message of the writing “story” they have told. Layer on layer…

Five Sentences (reviewed here). This is simply a challenge to become more succinct and get to the point in emails. Email is a boring old people medium, but it is also a workplace (and adult) reality.  It is a very practical way to focus writing for a purpose. Students could start with examples of long emails they or their parents have received, rewriting them in five sentences.  Then they could write their own five sentence emails for a real purpose. [Five sentence end here…got the gist?] Many web sites have “contact us” boxes with limited text fields, so the five sentence limit is good practice. Brainstorm things teens might be asking for: a refund, a replacement for a defective product, information about something, etc. Then have them write the five sentences. Make a five sentence rule for emails to YOU as the teacher, and promise to respond in five sentences. Do you think parents would comply?

750 Words (reviewed here) Everybody needs a place to mind-dump. This private space is a good one to vent, collect pieces of writing you don’t know what to do with, lines from songs you like, or angry words you should never actually send via email or text. If your students have email accounts, they can have 750 words accounts. These personal spaces are great for daily write-to-think time, but they are even more likely to be used if students have permission to write off topic at last part of the time. Instead of having them write for you, have them write for themselves.  Keep a class 750 words account where students can enter simply the TOPIC they  wrote about with their own 750 Words today. That list will become inspiration for others.

Quest (reviewed here) Write a game. A long time ago on devices with small black and green screens, there was a game called Adventure. Players made choices about their moves based on text descriptions of where they were and what their options were. The writing must be very clear and consistent, but the option to use vivid description and clever plot twists makes text-based game-creation addictive. A science or history teacher could incorporate writing and gaming to reinforce concepts. For example, a game written by students could include accurate geologic formations or chemical reactions. A game set in a certain place and time in history could include encounters with actual historic figures. This seems a perfect collaborative task for a group of 2-3. Just realize that it could spin into weeks of game obsession. Got gifted? Toss this one at them as a way to use what they know and write their way much further.

I love summer for getting the creative juices flowing.

We’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’…

Remember how it feels to complete a project you are proud of? As teachers, the “projects” we complete are most often teaching tasks, such as getting our grades in on time or commenting on ALL our students’ drafts or completing rubrics for 20-150 projects.  Rarely do we celebrate something we have created. Our creative process — and a valuable one it is!– is most often applied to generating lesson ideas or coming up with a way to engage a struggling student. We just don’t have as many chances to proudly celebrate and share something we create.

Earlier this week, I found that feeling again. After a manic, messy, and thrilling creative push, TeachersFirst proudly announced Gettysburg by the Numbers, a way to learn about the watershed moment in the Civil War through infographics, data, and questions that are meaningful to us today– especially if you happen to be in middle school or early high school.

It feels good. It feels really good.  It feels good enough to make me wonder how many of our students get to experience that feeling. If we do our jobs well as teachers, they may experience it with authentic projects. But do we, as teachers, experience it enough to really know what kind of projects we should be designing and assigning? Do we know the experience of that lovin’ feelin about something we create? I don’t believe we can be effective as teachers unless we do. If we do not create things we are proud of –with some regularity–how can we really understand “authentic”?

I suggest that each of us should start by creating a me-portfolio where we can exhibit and share the lovin’ feelin’ moments we do have, however few and far between. Set up a simple web page using  Infinite.ly or Loose Leaves or Weebly and embed things you create elsewhere on the web (loads of tips here).  You could even house it on a simple wiki. What do you include? The sample projects you made to show kids how GoAnimate works or your Voki that explains meter in poetry. If you, like me, play with the tech toys and create samples as models of just to help you “figure it out,” save the samples as creative products of your own. There is a very good chance you will find yourself making better examples because you are collecting them– and getting that feeling. And you would be modeling a me-portfolio that you can show to kids. There is nothing wrong with letting your students know that you like that lovin’ feelin’,  and you hope you can all find it together.

I love verbal challenges, so what better way to round out this series of “Happy 15th Birthday, TeachersFirst” posts than to use a six word story? Thanks to Jonathan Olsen’s Edutopia post for reminded me of this minimalist challenge for masterful messaging. Reflecting on how TeachersFirst began, what we have done in fifteen years, and what we strive to do into the future would seem to explode the six word limit. But I will brainstorm a few possibilities:

Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers- trench tactics!

Teachers learn, thinkers grow, technology helps.

Internet mysteries evolve to teaching masteries.

(Continuing my brainstorm, I stop to wonder: Is punctuation is allowed? Do six word stories often end up having meter or some sort of rhythm, as mine often do?)

Web-filled minds imagine limitless learning.

By teachers for teachers for years.

Just in time  — for fifteen years.

Learning imagined by friendly, tech-savvy teachers.

Imagine teaching that makes you think.

I could go on for hours, but instead conclude with this personal birthday thank you:

Happy Birthday to TeachersFirst,  the best “workplace” any teacher could ever hope for.  I love all the Thinking Teachers I “meet” in this job  and love imagining those  “out there” whom I will never know. 

(In case you are wondering, you can create your own images from letters on Flickr with this tool.)

It’s poetry month. Take time for a poetry break. Why does poetry matter? Poetry is the literary equivalent of a microcosm and a sound bite all rolled into one. You can find tiny representations of huge ideas and short snippets that resonate and “stick” in your mind like the smell of your favorite cookie baking or the horror of watching Kevin Ware’s basketball injury last weekend. Poetry is distilled insights and sensations not designed to meet a standard or a bottom line. Poetry is the greatest freedom words will ever have.

If you teach math, poetry is the equivalent to the equation you extract from an elaborate word problem.

If you are a scientist, poetry is the DNA that tells a full-blown experience of life how to grow and thrive.

If you are an artist, poetry is the three primary colors we use to express endless pictures through words.

If you are a musician, poetry is your lyrics, your melody, and your counterpoint. Poetry conducts the orchestra of our minds.

If you are an engineer, poetry is the perfect schematic with projections from every angle, forming a three dimensional reality much greater than the sum of its succinct pieces.

If you are a child, poetry is curiosity and music bouncing together.

If you are a pragmatist, poetry is a frivolous moment that suddenly strikes you with meaning.

If you are a gym teacher, poetry is the fluid combination of the word skills that move beyond drill to a slam dunk.

If you are a historian, poetry is the  artifact that tells the story of a lost civilization.

When did you last share a poem with your class? You have 17 school days left.