#AprilBlogADay (post #5) Questions??

Prompt: How should we foster question asking instead of answer getting?

I know I am a little behind the times, over the weekend I was grading essays like a madwoman and didn't get to post anything. I am taking some time right now while I am waiting for my daughter to get done with her chess club. I guess I am not really writing on the prompts on the day of, because I am behind I am kind of picking and choosing which ones appeal to me the day of. 

One of the things I have gradually been doing over the last couple of years was shifting the way my class is run- student centered from teacher centered. I am no longer giving a lot of direct instruction. I am moving around and facilitating. Which means a lot of the onus of the students education relies on them asking questions, self advocating, and working independently. 

How am I doing that?

• Flipped classroom

• Personalized Learning

• Differentiation

• Student Choice

Flipped Learning

This was my first movement into student centered. At first it was because we were making the move to STEM and I didn't know how to cover science topics in my English classroom, and I didn't want to lose my curriculum time too to do it. But then I gradually saw how much better the in class time was when we were applying what we were learning. I no longer had to spend time lecturing and waiting for the slowest kid to get the notes. Instead I was working one on one, and walking around and checking for understanding with the students constantly. In the end I can go deeper and move quicker through units then my colleagues because they aren't flipping. While it took awhile upfront for video production to become second nature to me- when I started there wasn't a lot of English videos pre-made, and because we are a mastery grading system my units were pretty specific and it was hard to find things that worked really well for me. 

Personalized Learning

The biggest change for this was genius hour, I started seeing this idea pop up again and again in my twitter chats in November of 2014 and I got pretty curious. The idea behind personalized learning is that the students start with the idea and what they want to learn. They become the expert, this is the same principal with genius hour and the buy in from the students is HUGE! Genius hour has changed my school. We were piloting the idea in a few classrooms last year and now were are doing it whole school. I think it is a great way to work with students and teachers to get them to think about their classroom in a different way. 

I was recently working with a teacher as the technology integration specialist in my building, many teachers are still working in the "recipe" lesson category. I need this on this page/slide, and (fill in the blank) for this page/slide etc... instead give students the general perimeters of what you need them to cover and then let them ask the questions and get creative. You can move to a student centered/ personalized learning environment if you are telling the kids EXACTLY what to do and how to do it. There are no questions to be found in that environment, you have preemptively shut down the critical thinking environment at that point. 

Differentiation 

This one is more for the summative assessments than anything else, especially since we have to be aligned as a department on both our formative and summative assessments. We create at least 3-4 different versions of the assessments and then using Schoology we are able to group the students into their "skill based" groups and assign the assessments to only a particular group. While it can be a pain getting all the different assessments made there are ways to ensure you are getting different level reading pieces etc. use the technology to your advantage. Using Schoology for instance makes assigning assessments that much easier and the students are none the wiser that one student has a slightly different assignment. It might take a bit of time on the teacher end prior to officially assigning it but once class starts it is a breeze. Yet, another way that you are moving your hand and instruction out of the spotlight.  

To create a free account on schoology and look a little more at this program click here! 
Use the referral code: ncarter15

Student Choice

Where possible I also like to allow the students to search for their own topics and articles so that they are engaged with the content beyond me demanding that they do a specific thing. Allow them to ask questions on what they are passionate about and what they want to learn.

Then on a side note I also like to teach the students to be able to tell the credibility of their sources. We start with that early on in the school year so they can start to question the world around them and the information that they are constantly taking in in this connected world. I would like to finish up now because I feel like this is a very long post. But it was a good reflection piece for me. I am going to continue to think on it.