1. We did Genius Hour for the first time in two weeks. I did not hear a lot of complaints about it, but I did hear a lot of yesses when students remembered it was Genius Hour workday. They came in the room, grabbed their computers and got to work. We tweeted, e-mailed, sent out Google Forms, and saw our first two presentations which included us giving feedback to students about specific skills.
2. I have a class that is doing a "homework" experiment. Instead of traditional homework assignments, this class liked the idea of doing one alternative "homework" assignment for the week such as oberving the Moon phases for a week, designing an experiment, doing an experiment, talking to a family member about what we are doing in Science, watching a PBS Science show and reflect on it, etc. (We'll add different options each week if we decide to continue this). The only thing I required was a reflection sheet that asked students to write at the beginning of the week, middle of the week, and end of the week; this was more of a tool for me to see what students accomplished. The issue- I received a small amount of sheets today. The impressive thing- all of these students said they enjoyed the opportunity to do something they wanted.
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? (Yes, it does.). If a student doesn't turn an "assignment" in does it mean they didn't learn something from the experience? (Not sure.). I realize that I can have students share their findings with me in other ways (Vocaroo, e-mail, Voxer, Padlet, voicemail, drawings, blogs), so this is something the class and I will have to make some decisions about.
3. I watched half of the NOVA special "School of the Future" on PBS:
I could only watch half of it so far because there was so much to process; it is good. There is a section on middle school where a study was done with a social studies class. The teacher quizzed the students every day to help them retrieve the previous day's information. These weren't graded quizzes, but opportunities for students to practice their ability to retain and retrieve information; the data showed that this helped student achievement. Quizzes without grades. Students accountable for their own learning. Rigor. Essential questions. Things we do now, but with a different focus. Retrieval for the sake of learning, not for the sake of reward or punishment in the form of a grade. I am still processing what this means, but it felt like viewing this special could be a turning point in this journey.
What do all three of these observations have in common? Students need to be given the opportunity to have academic experiences that increase their learning. They need to "do" the learning.
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