LC meeting week 5

Abrash began the conversation so that we could look over where he was in his AR work and what questions we had from him. We encouraged him to make the process available for everyone to see (or at least the professors so that they can understand where you are going.)
We also spent a lot of time talking about writing and putting writing out there. How it is such a scary thing to publish for the world versus publishing for just the teacher. This is such a difference with an online Masters degree as well as with education today-Such a transformational difference. We tried to be encouraging and motivating for him to try something new and put him out there. We are here to support him and help him along. Hopefully, we can encourage him enough to at least share his thoughts with us.
Matt and tanner reviewed their projects as well. Tanner- adaptive expertise in the classroom- what classroom environment is most conducive to create experts. Learning theory and adaptive experts –cycle one, cycle two- what struggles do they face? Tanner also went over some stats from cycle one:
• Number of students who feel they are on the path to expertise 26%
• Number on path after class 70%
• Kids see change in themselves:
o Number who didn’t and now do 70%
o Expert students 13%
Tanner alluded to one struggle is with kids changing classrooms and moving into his classroom. We discussed why is this hard for them to change classrooms? Why is it hard to change? Why is change hard? We all seemed to discuss because of our OMET work that we notice the difference in teaching- we are now different teachers- we are facilitators not just teachers “provide the spark for them to learn with”, learning what is important to them and how they want to learn.
We seemed to end his presentation on looking at cycle two and trying to help him uncover the layers to get to the next cycle possibly looking at defining expertise? What how and why?
Matt discussed creating a digital computer classroom that allows for collaborative inquiry with students: teacher asked questions of students, kids came up with gold standard answer that fits that piece of history. Style of teaching turns students own ideals of learning onto their heads. Students realized lecture limits their learning and processing and thus they saw their grades tank. Learning is a three dimensional process: auditory, kinesthetic and visual- getting learning in three different ways. Rigor and time sensitive- kids are preparing for an AP exam. Collaborating online with one document- changed Matt’s views on how this was going to work. Kids aren’t talking to one another but rather than groups setting. Work in halves of the room. Cycle one- survey- learner in beginning v learner you are now. One idea we discussed is to do Myers Briggs testing? We also discussed how much responsibility for learning that lies on the shoulders of a teacher. Worst thing is to hear that you learned nothing from the class (so hard on the teacher) Kids do not remember what you teach but how you teach. That is what we need to remember.
I teach you how to learn not teach you computer science- awesome quote from Tanner
Then we went over my project and I went through my cycle one report asking them to give me feedback on this and the questions I have for my cycle two survey.
After they helped me work through the questions, we talked about the next few weeks and what we want to have done for each session. I really was pleased with our entire discussion. We were very supportive of Abrash with his anxiety over his writing, and I felt like we all developed a common ground to begin this next learning circle. We all shared our anxieties about writing and publishing work for the world. Hopefully, this will be a great starting point to move forward from.
I also sent my survey questions onto my principal and added a few of his suggestions to the form. I have the survey ready to distribute at the end of this next week using a Google form that can be embedded in to a blog. So cool!
Finally, with my cycle three work, I had been asked by my student teacher to lead small groups of students in the hallway with further work on their position papers. What I really enjoyed about this is I was able to maintain a connection with the kids, the group of 8 got more 1-1 learning time with individualized instructions, and it helped the other kids who were ready to move along, move along.
We decided after to have the kids reflect on how that 1-1 learning time went with them. Out of the 8 kids, 6 of the 8 rated it a 4-5 out of 5 on helpful. We are going to keep doing this throughout the cycle three along with the written feedback on their work to meet the AR goal of helping students be more successful learners.
Looking ahead, I can see us doing the pull outs about 4-5 more times and then we will also have our written feedback on their paragraphs that many times as well. This will be a big data set to qualify, but I think very meaningful.
Luckily, Randon and I are doing this stage together so it will be interesting with his feedback on the process as well. He and I created the feedback form for the 1-1 session:
I am revising my timeline a little as we are working through all of this. I think now I am looking at end of February/ beginning of March to be writing up my cycle two report and end of March beginning of April to be completing my cycle three report. Wow, time is moving along.