February Strategy Sharing: Application

With a focus on Application, Strategy Session #4, was a great opportunity to hear about some of the cool projects that students are engaged in across the curriculum, allowing them to demonstrate what they have learned. A few examples:

• The 3A Cohort got to hear about the process Doug Hundley's students engage in when designing a set for an upcoming production

• Chinese teachers Haiyang Jian and JZ Jiang both shared about movie projects they’ve done that have been popular with students. You can see the real-world model that Haiyang used here: it's a commercial that aired on CCTV that highlights seven values connected to the Chinese New Year celebration.  JZ posted her project handout in the Schoology discussion, including the scoring guide.

• James Linzel brought examples of his Innovation students' Electric Car Designs. The 3B cohort had lots of questions about the process and how he used the makerspace for this project.

In addition to the many examples of assessment tasks that require students to transfer their learning in meaningful ways, there were also some strategies shared that could be used across a variety of content areas.

Tom Musk shared a graphic organizer that he had originally gotten from Science and then modified. The idea is to get students thinking about historical events (such as the Scientific Revolution) as Systems, identifying inputs, outputs, etc. I could see potential to use a version of this schema in a variety of content areas. Tom's example is posted on Schoology in the Application discussion.

Simon Williams had some great ideas for facilitating peer feedback that he uses in his theater classes. In "Center of the Universe", a student (or students) stands at the center - like the sun - and the other students position themselves around that student as planets, with their proximity indicating how warm or cool they felt about the student's performance. Verbal feedback and discussion about why students had the reaction that they did results in the performers thinking about what they might change. A twist he had on the "Spectrum" strategy is "Grape to Raisin", where students indicate on a continuum how juicy a performance was. The continuum can be drawn on the whiteboard and students can point with their eyes closed, so they are not influenced by their peers in their rating.

Thanks to everyone who shared! Also, check out the bulletin board in the mailroom for templates that you can use with some of the Active Learning Strategies. Digital copies of Anticipation Guides, Word-Phrase-Sentence, Three 3s in a Row and more are available from your instructional coach! You can also find them on Schoology in the "One Stop Strategy Shop" Templates folder.

November Strategy Sharing

Many fabulous ideas were shared by your colleagues at the November Strategy Sessions. If you have a chance, I recommend checking out the resources posted on the Deepening & Reinforcing Learning Discussion board. I've included a few highlights below:

How is this picture like the law of diminishing returns?

• Brandon Wolf shared four different strategies that he uses and posted the templates. He talked about how his students find non-linguistic representations helpful in solidifying and personalizing concepts, giving the example of students who remembered the law of diminishing returns because they had represented it with a box of donuts or another who connected it to Spotify. I also really like the At Home Discussion Chart, where students summarize a conversation that they had at home about their recent learning and reflect on why they better understand the concept discussed as a result.  
• Dakota Cronin shared the Feynman Technique, which is based on the idea expressed in this quote from Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." The basic idea is that the process of explaining (verbally or in writing) a concept without using complex vocabulary or jargon helps you to understand it better. Learn more about this mental model in this 4 minute video.
• Dominic Mooney shared one of his favorite tools for curating content: Pocket. With an easy to navigate visual interface, Pocket is a great way for you and your students to easily save articles, videos and other resources that are related to what they are learning about. All of the content goes to one place, so you can view it anytime, on any device. You don't even need an internet connection. I'm sure that Dom would be more than happy to personally share with you how he uses it - just drop by his lair and ask for a tutorial!
• And finally, here are a few ideas that teachers shared for grouping students: by VIA strengths, clock partners, popsicle sticks, the flippity.net random name picker, which also creates random groupings, playing cards, and multiple copies of pictures/visuals related to content passed out as students enter the room. Plus, did you know that Power School has a random student selector tool? I did not. This handy tidbit was shared by Robert Ogle. 

Thanks to everyone who has shared ideas so far! The next round of sessions isn't until February, so you have lots of time to try something new. :-)

Strategy Sharing

During the September and October Strategy Sessions, some great ideas were shared. I'm posting them here so everyone can benefit!

In September, Dan Inns shared how he starts out a new unit and prepares students for new learning by using a variety of interactive technology tools:

"When we start a next section of the course, I will have students brainstorm using pollEverywhere or wordle.  We then identify key words that match with the IB Sports, Exercise and Health Science syllabus and we will do a T/P/S (Think Pair Share) or a W/P/S (Write Pair Share).  Alternatively I may ask the students to do a 5 minute exploration on a given 'word' and then feedback to the rest of the class.   I have also used Plickers with a selection of 5 questions to establish what the students already know."

Plickers allows you to set up a student response system with printed hold-ups that you can scan with your iPad or phone and easily collect the data. It gets every student participating and gives you accurate information about what each student knows. You can read more about it here and print out your own cards here.

Another great idea for implementing a modified "hold ups" strategy was shared by Doug Andrew. If you don't have physical whiteboards, Doug suggested creating a Google presentation with enough blank slides for each of the students in your class. Assign them each a slide and they can type in their answers. So innovative!

Mr. Jerry Koontz introduced Newsela to the 4B cohort and posted about it on the Schoology Strategy Sessions group. Newsela is a free website that features current news articles; topics range from politics, science, environment to social trends and quirky events. According to Jerry, "The most useful aspect of the site is that articles can be leveled to the appropriate lexile reading level of each student with the click of a button. The same article, different reading levels. The students enjoy reading the articles and each one comes with a 4 question quiz and short writing prompt.  All done online so it's easy to check progress. Although the benefits to an ELA program are obvious, this website also could be used by Social Studies, Science, Health, and Spanish teachers (articles are available in Spanish)." 

One last handy tip, brought to you by James Linzel. James wanted to display a timer for pair shares, table group discussions and other activities to manage pacing in his class, but he was not happy with having to toggle between a presentation and an online timer. He discovered that there are a plethora of countdown timer videos on youtube that you can embed in your presentation. Just do a google search for the time that you want, e.g. "3 minute timer video." Seamless!

Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas in the first two sessions. See you in November for more inspiring suggestions. 

Center for Inquiry and Design

If you haven't had a chance to visit the new space, here are a few snapshots of teachers and students in action. While there is still work to be done, there is definitely an air of excitement surrounding the opening of the Center for Inquiry and Design!

The grade 9 Innovation Institute students are starting off on day one
in a large group with all four instructors teaching in tandem. 

Upper division students are utilizing the space for quiet, independent study as well as more collaborative and interactive learning during their free period.

Chris and Khadijah co-taught their Freshmen during 2A and utilized one of the larger spaces, as well as the wall of whiteboards.

Here a few more photos! When you have a chance, go check it out. It's inspiring. :-)

MWH Museum Exhibits

The Modern World History team wrapped up the year with a PBL unit focused around the question: How do individuals create and change culture, authority, or governance? Student teams were required to establish a clear connection between an individual and the resulting change by using historical evidence, logical reasoning and persuasion. On the last day of class, they presented their final product in a museum display and answered questions from their peers, as well as teachers and staff who visited. A variety of well-known historical figures were featured, including Che Guevara, Adam Smith, Fidel Castro. Malcolm X, Mao Zedong and Jesse Owens, to name a few.

The centerpiece of each display was the group's collaborative persuasive piece. These included "Crash Course" style videos, documentaries, comics, web sites, and even an issue of Time Magazine that featured economist Adam Smith. Each student also contributed their own individual persuasive piece to the display, such as a propaganda poster or video, letter to the editor,  or photo essay. The final component of the displays were multiple primary source documents and the students' accompanying analysis.

Students talked about the benefits and challenges of working collaboratively, with many groups mentioning negotiating and coming to consensus around their thesis as being one of the significant hurdles they had to overcome. The products were both informative and creative, and the students reported that they enjoyed the learning process, and ultimately came to a deeper understanding of how the individual they studied impacted the world they live in today.

Feature Friday: Summer Reading!

Summer break offers a great opportunity to reflect on our teaching and to catch up on some of the reading that is so hard to fit in during the school year. There are a variety of summer reading opportunities that you can take advantage of as a member of the Puxi HS staff.

August Book Club Discussion
If you like discussing books with others, but can't fit it in during the school year, an August Book Club could work for you! Participants would read the book over the summer and then we would meet when we get back to Shanghai in August to discuss. Professional reads and just for fun titles are both an option. Interested? Click here to give your input by the end of the day on Wednesday, June 1st, and then look for more details in a follow-up email.

Teacher Professional Library
As we shift our focus to assessment next year, you may want to get a jump start on ideas for yourself and/or your PLC, or perhaps do some reading to learn from the experts in the field. You can now check out books right from my office (thanks to Marie for setting that up!). Here are a few examples of available titles that are relevant to our current work:

• Classroom Assessment for Student Learning (Chappuis)
• Kid by Kid, Skill by Skill (Eaker & Keating)
• Collaborating for Success with the Common Core (Baily, Jakicic & Spiller)
• Essential Questions (McTighe & Wiggins)
• Learning Targets (Moss & Brookhart)
• Test Better, Teach Better (Popham)
• Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom (Tomlinson & Moon)
• How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading (Brookhart)
• Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning (Larmer)
• Five Disciplines of PLC Leaders (Kanold)

Need Something Shorter or More Portable?

The bulletin board in the mailroom currently features a selection of articles focused on sound assessment practices that support the implementation of Question 2: How will we know if they know it or are able to do it? If you are a member of ASCD, you can access these digitally; otherwise, pick up a hard copy to read on the flight to whatever cool place you're headed this summer. 

Another awesome option is The Main Idea: Current Education Book Summaries. Founder Jenn David-Lang creates an 8-page summary of a current education book each month and maintains an archive of all past titles. The summary contains the core ideas of the book, and she organizes those ideas with enough accompanying details and examples so that you can have a working knowledge of its content. While The Main Idea is a subscription service, I will confide that I have found some of the summaries posted online by using my Google machine. Definitely worth a browse!

World Language Projects

With the year coming to a close, many students are engaged in completing projects that highlight the knowledge and skills they have acquired. Here are a few projects that wrapped up recently in the World Languages department:

Spanish 4: Mr. Kelso

A student tries to convince his father to allow him to attend Julliard to
 study music. The father wants his son to go to Stanford or Harvard.

"The project of writing a play in Spanish (Proyecto obra de teatro) was actually a confluence of thoughts," says Ahmed Kelso. "At the beginning of the second semester I had the idea of talking to my students from Spanish 4 about writing a play but never mentioned it. When we returned from spring break, however, one of my students made the suggestion of creating a play. The project was born. Students began working on the play in early April and worked on it in stages. Except for some minimal editing that I provided after revisions, each stage was managed by the students."

The students performed their final "obritas" on Tuesday in the BBT to an audience that included their peers, parents and SAS staff. Students had memorized their lines and did a good job of thinking on their feet and ad-libbing when they didn't remember the exact line. Themes ranged from self-acceptance, to forbidden love, and even having the courage to follow your dreams. Audience members were provided with English translations of the scripts so non-Spanish speakers could follow along, and the students had fun showcasing their Spanish skills.

French 3: Ms. Fogiel

"In French 3, we learn through the PBL model, where students work on 4 projects per year," explains teacher Caroline Fogiel. "Individual topics are chosen by students within the broader areas of study that the class identified. I started off the year with a focus on History, because I wanted students to get significant practice with the past tense." Based on the interest of the students in the class, Sports, Music, Arts were then identified as the themes for the other three projects.  Presentations are roughly 3 minutes long, and students are required to use key vocabulary and relevant grammar. Another key component is to include a detailed description of a picture, as this is a skill students will need to master for the IB exam. 

In addition to having choice about their topic, students can also be creative with the format of their presentation. Each presentation is followed by questions, and then the listeners summarize the content to consolidate their learning and reinforce active listening skills. "The learning journey is for all of us in the classroom," says Caroline. "We all learn from one another. Throughout the year, we learned about Chinese music instruments, famous painters, famous music composers and above all, about people who meant something special to students." 

Sofie Fella created a video highlighting the Cles D'Une Passion exhibition
taking place in the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.