Genius Hour...Passion Projects...Being Innovative

What does it mean to be innovative? To me, it means being willing to try new things, even if you don't know if they'll work or not.  It also means being able to reevaluate and tweak things on a moments notice.

One thing I do that I consider innovative is my passion projects.  I don't consider it innovative because it's a new idea.  I consider it innovative because each time we do it, it looks different and unique, depending on my kids.

My students have done 3 different projects so far.  I've found that my kids need to start with a little more structure in order for them to be successful with less structure (did that even make sense?).

For our first project my students all chose a dream job to research.  They were totally into it, and loved sharing what they learned.   For that project they didn't really have to make anything, rather write up their information and share it with the class.

For our second project the kids all chose a famous person or place.  After writing their research report they had to choose the 3 most important facts they learned to share.  Then (and here is where the innovative part comes in), I decided to bring in a giant tub of Lego's from home.  I set them around the room and told the kids to impress me.  They had to make something that represented their project.  While they may not look like much, the kids had a blast and could explain in detail the creations.

Tony Hawk

Abraham Lincoln

Muhammad Ali

For our most recent project the students had to learn how to do something.  This has been the most interesting so far.  I had students learn to do soccer tricks, frost cakes, fold origami, code computer games, do a fishtail braid, and even make these crazy intricate bracelets.  I was SUPER impressed by their work.  The funniest thing was, my project (what I wanted to learn how to do) was an epic failure.  I desperately want to learn how to whistle with 2 fingers...you know that loud shrilling whistle that some people can do? After weeks of trying, all I ended up doing was successfully spit all over the place!  What was really cool was that my kids taught me some new tricks on how to make my normal whistle louder :)

Soccer Tricks

Learning how to bake cupcakes

Teaching the class how to make origami fingers

Making donut cats

They tasted amazing!

Pushing My Students Beyond "Good Enough"

My class using a rubric system for grading ELA and math...The scoring, be it the academic content or the behavior content, is essentially the same:

1 - I need help.

2 - I need some reminders.

3 - I got this (independently with no help).

4 - I can use this knowledge to impact others.

Student created content comes when my students are trying to push themselves from a 3 to a 4.  There are a variety of ways they can do that...here are just a few:

• Review videos (my kids LOVE this)
• Review games on Kahoot (my kids LOVE this too)
• Create a board game (I have several laminated blank board games they can fill in)
• Solve a "real-world" problem (I have at least 1 of these for each math unit)
• Student choice (I always leave an option open where students get a chance to come up with their own idea for a project)

While not everyone has a chance get to this point, there are many who work really hard to get the opportunity.  

I would love more ideas on what kids can do to show that they not only get it, but can push themselves deeper into the content, push themselves to do more than what is just "good enough".

10/10 Project

So I'm sitting in Pittsburgh chatting with my good buddy David Fouch & he says to me.  "You know what, I think we should do a project together."  At first I thought he might be kidding because he teaches AP US History & I teach 5th graders, not to mention the fact that we teach in different districts...seriously, how in the world could we do a collaborative project with our students.

As it often happens, one comment leads to an idea, which leads to another idea, which leads to something awesome!

So here's the project...his 10th grade students will be creating some video lessons on topics in history (topics my students choose).  My 10 year olds will watch, and complete an assignment (which his students will also be planning and giving feedback on...yeah me!).

In the meantime, my class will be learning about the elements of a good story and the historical fiction genre.  Throughout the month of March we'll be reading The Watson's Go to Birmingham - 1963 and the students will be writing their own historical fiction story.

Here's the catch...their story has to somehow connect to what they learned from David's class.  So let's say they are interested in learning about the Olympics. When they write their story, it needs to somehow involve the Olympics.  Maybe the main character is an Olympic athlete in the games, maybe the setting takes place in the Olympic skating rink...who knows???

When they finish their stories, we'll submit them to David's class (sometime after the AP test because lord knows he has plenty of material to get through before then), and they'll give feedback and help with any historical innacuracies.  Then they'll have 2 weeks to perfect/illustrate/publish their stories.

The really fun part of this whole thing is that close to the end of the year my class is going to go hang out with his class for a day & share our stories.

Today we started learning about historical fiction AND story elements.  Today David's class started planning their videos.

Today my class got SUPER excited because they found out that a bunch of 10th graders are taking the time to make something for them.  Today David's class got all worried because they don't think they'll have enough time to make their videos perfect.

And so the 10/10 Project was born (get it, 10th graders and 10 year olds)...I'm just hoping it's as awesome as I think it's going to be!

Trying to Make it Fit...the Neverending Battle

How to fit it all in?

I find that I am much better and getting all my ELA content in over my math...so why is that? It's not because there is less material, it's not because I'm a better ELA teacher than I am a math teacher.  I think it comes down to the fact that I teach ELA during all my other subjects.

We write about math.  We form opinions, arguments and support about social studies topics.  We research about famous people & places.

Bottom line, my students are reading and writing in all their core content areas.  And what do I flip??? Math.  It seems odd that the subject I flip (which opens up my in-class time), is also the subject I can never seem to get through.

I don't have the answer.  I actually struggle with this.  I struggle with it Every. Single. Day.

What I want to do is take several of my math units completely off the table, which would give me a couple extra months to really dig in to the rest of the material.  What I want is to have the time (and resources) to create really in depth units that weave together science, social studies, reading, writing AND math into one beautiful inquiry...ahhhh, wouldn't that be awesome!  Unfortunately, that is not my reality.

If I'm being 100% honest, I can't blame it all on the curriculum.  I admit that a lot of the reason I don't get through all my math content is because my students waste way too much time during math class.  We have math in the afternoon, and the students are often times very distracted.  This has been a constant battle this year (and for many years).

As it is becoming painfully clear, I don't have the answer to this problem...I'd love some ideas from someone who does.

Willingness to be different...it's a game changer.

Most teachers don't like change.  I am one of those weird teachers who needs change to keep me fulfilled.  For that reason I am constantly changing/tweaking/improving on how I run my classroom.  I have found that my year if fairly cyclical.

I start off strong with some whole group lessons on how to actually watch a video.  Then slowly, as the kids develop some independence, I let them take over the video & we start doing some whole class activities together in class.  

Sometime around the end of the 1st marking period I end up needing to change up my day-to-day lessons.  This year we moved into a math workshop format.  The students did really well with it...until they didn't.  As soon as they got too comfortable, they started to waste a lot of time, and do a lot more talking (about non school stuff) than is really necessary.  For that reason, we had to change things up a bit.

Right now my class is a hodge podge of things.  We're at the end of our most difficult unit of the year (seriously, could double digit division be any more challenging????).  I have some students who have already passed their test & are working to push their grade up to an "exceeding excpectations" mark.  I have some students who are still stuck, and are getting some help, and I have a large chunk of students who are taking their test.  

I plan to have math discussion groups using my math circles format when we begin our next unit.  We've done this for a few videos in the last unit & the kids did great.

What will I switch to when this stops being effective? No idea!  When asked what makes my classroom successful, I think it comes down to my ability to change when I realize something isn't working.  Change doesn't have to be scary, I'd argue that it keeps things interesting.

2 brains (or 3, or 4) are better than 1 #flipclass #flashblog

Last week my principal sent out an email asking us to prioritize what we want in regards to specials for next year.  It seems like a relatively simple email, but looking at it made me realize that I don't know how to make my class work like I want it to work...there's not enough time.  Not enough time for me to be with my students, and not enough time for me to properly plan what I want to plan.  I quickly ignored my email (okay, I didn't really ignore it, but I definitely closed it down & moved on to other things).

The next morning one of our 4th grade teachers came in & said, "Did you get the email about specials? What are you going to say?"  Hmmm, I thought, I am not alone.  Then our interventionist came in & joined the conversation, and before you know it, the 3 of us were brainstorming possibilities, and instead of being all grumpy we began to get kind of excited about the possibility of doing something different.

Our big problem is that my district is moving to mastery based learning (which I 100% agree with), but we're not to the point where we don't move the kids on if they haven't mastered their learning.  It's a very awkward place to be in.  I know exactly where my kids are at, what they don't understand, and what they totally get, but I don't know when to fill in the holes they have, reteach what they're confused on when our day is so packed.

We talked about a number of things, and decided we should probably get more people involved in the coversation.  So now we are planning big meeting with all the 3rd, 4th & 5th grade teachers...and the interventionists...and the resource room teacher.  My hope is that all those brilliant minds will come together and come up with something awesome.

As I write this I am realizing how important it is going to be that we start off with a positive attitude.  It's so easy to spend an hour complaining, which gets us nowhere.  As of now, our meeting is scheduled for next week...we'll see how it goes!

Learning, Growing & Collaborating

So my weekend started off pretty sweet.  Thursday night a huge snow storm came through Michigan, and we got the notice that school was closed the night before.  That rarely happens.  Then on Friday my class was featured on our local news station as being the classroom of the week.  If you're interested, you can see the short spot here.  Then Saturday, I attended (and helped plan) the 3rd MIFlip conference, and it didn't disappoint.  I was fully prepared for there to be a small crowd, since the weather in west Michigan was brutal the day before.  As it turns out, we had over 70 people attend.

Steelcase was nice enough to host the conference at their Education Center...holy smokes is that an awesome facility! I kept trying to talk them into furnishing my room for me (for free of course), and I got no takers ;) Seriously, though, the venue was beautiful, and perfect for encouraging a collaborative feel.

David Tebo was our keynote speaker and he was unbelievably inspiring.  A few things he said that really stuck with me were: Flipping done right is an incredible tool...notice he said flipping done right.  That one little word is so hugely important.  The second thing he mentioned was that we need to change the way we're doing things.  Time has changed, but schools haven't.  In my district we are going completely mastery based, eliminating seat-time from our graduation requirements.  We are still in the very early stages of this process.  As of now we're at a point where the teachers are being asked to real go outside of their comfort zone & people are uncomfortable...really uncomfortable.  It was reassuring to hear someone outside of Kenowa Hills talk about what we're trying to do in such a positive way.

After the keynote I led an elementary session.  I didn't plan any sort of presentation because I was hoping that we could have more of a discussion.  It turns out that was a good plan because we had a great discussion and everyone had an opportunity to ask questions.

I spent pretty much the remainder of my afternoon working with David Fouch, a high school AP teacher from Forest Hills.  We had this grand plan to do something collaboratively, and we tried to work through some of the details together.  I will have a whole other blog post on that coming up, but I think it's going to be excellent!

To sum it up, I had another great experience at MIflip.  I am always surprised by how much I learn, grow & get energized when I get together with other educators in a positive environment like this :)