Saturday, November 9, 2013
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Continuing Evolution
As I begin to read more about rubrics and students using them, I realize one thing I am missing is helping students actually write rubrics based upon projects/work that is already done. Giving students finished products to look at and then ask them to differentiate between work that is above expectation, meeting expectation, or below expectation can help them understand how to differentiate those same characteristics in their own work.
I will continue to read and work out how to do this, but I think after the students turn in their first project, I may be able to use their work to help them then create better rubrics for the next projects.
I will continue to read and work out how to do this, but I think after the students turn in their first project, I may be able to use their work to help them then create better rubrics for the next projects.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Changes
As I began my inquiry process, I thought I was going to look at how to use blended learning modules with my gifted students. This didn't work out too well. There were a lot of things that created stressors in this work. The biggest issue is that I only see the students for 20 minutes once a week face-to-face. As eleven year olds, they are used to being in charge of their learning at this point. They need to learn to do it - which was part of what I was planning to do. But when they go a week at a time with no face-to-face time, they don't have the opportunity to learn - they were simply expected to do it.
As the year has progressed, I realized that I can work towards my ultimate goal of self-regulated learning and student-led learning by helping my students learn to differentiate for themselves and write their own rubrics. I have begun to read about the use of rubrics in general and student-created ones in general. In my own past experience, I have had issues with rubrics because I feel like they are generally written to the lowest end of mastery and make it easy for gifted and talented students to make a 100% without much effort on their part. My hope is that by creating the rubric themselves, they will have greater ownership and mastery of the criteria will prove to be more than simply crossing t's and dotting i's.
For the past six weeks, Learning Community has been learning about the Events Leading to the American Revolution. All students were tasked with choosing a position: Patriot, Loyalist, or Undecided. They were then asked to prove their position with evidence from the texts that they have read. Part of the task is to write an editorial proving to showcase their learning. The students are now four days away from their first projects being due. There are 15 gifted students and for this first project and as a part of my inquiry, I let the asked the gifted students to choose their own project beyond simply writing an editorial. I have several students creating websites, a couple using Minecraft to reconstruct an event from the time period, a couple creating stop-motion animation, two writing stories, and one writing a choose-your-own-adventure book. I haven't seen any finished products, but I have been encouraged by their ownership and excitement about the projects. My hope is that they are able to accurately and portray their knowledge of the events and to know the information deeply. That is what I am really looking for as I receive the projects this first round.
I plan to use what I find out to guide our future endeavors with student-created rubrics. I don't know if I'll be able to have them choose their own projects every time, but we'll see. What I do have to work on is creating an effective reflection for the students at the end of this project. I have so many things going on in my head for how to progress. As we now have 1:1 iPads, I want to have the students do a lot of reflection and use technology to explain a lot of their thinking - but I don't know that it can all be part of my inquiry. So for now, I will focus on the reflection and the student-created rubrics.
As I move through the year, however, I would like to explore the following:
As the year has progressed, I realized that I can work towards my ultimate goal of self-regulated learning and student-led learning by helping my students learn to differentiate for themselves and write their own rubrics. I have begun to read about the use of rubrics in general and student-created ones in general. In my own past experience, I have had issues with rubrics because I feel like they are generally written to the lowest end of mastery and make it easy for gifted and talented students to make a 100% without much effort on their part. My hope is that by creating the rubric themselves, they will have greater ownership and mastery of the criteria will prove to be more than simply crossing t's and dotting i's.
For the past six weeks, Learning Community has been learning about the Events Leading to the American Revolution. All students were tasked with choosing a position: Patriot, Loyalist, or Undecided. They were then asked to prove their position with evidence from the texts that they have read. Part of the task is to write an editorial proving to showcase their learning. The students are now four days away from their first projects being due. There are 15 gifted students and for this first project and as a part of my inquiry, I let the asked the gifted students to choose their own project beyond simply writing an editorial. I have several students creating websites, a couple using Minecraft to reconstruct an event from the time period, a couple creating stop-motion animation, two writing stories, and one writing a choose-your-own-adventure book. I haven't seen any finished products, but I have been encouraged by their ownership and excitement about the projects. My hope is that they are able to accurately and portray their knowledge of the events and to know the information deeply. That is what I am really looking for as I receive the projects this first round.
I plan to use what I find out to guide our future endeavors with student-created rubrics. I don't know if I'll be able to have them choose their own projects every time, but we'll see. What I do have to work on is creating an effective reflection for the students at the end of this project. I have so many things going on in my head for how to progress. As we now have 1:1 iPads, I want to have the students do a lot of reflection and use technology to explain a lot of their thinking - but I don't know that it can all be part of my inquiry. So for now, I will focus on the reflection and the student-created rubrics.
As I move through the year, however, I would like to explore the following:
- blogging (maybe KidBlog?).
- using Evernote - I'm not sure if this would just be a rehash of blogging.
- Using educreations to show their thinking and learning processes for different topics including:
- literature circle topics
- home reading projects
- higher-order mathematics reasoning
- others?
Again, I know this is too much for an inquiry, but I'm really interested in helping these students go beyond simply learning and moving toward the creating.
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