Changes for the 2016-2017 School Year

Students started back for the new school year this past.  The past four years as the elementary engineering teacher has led to me seeking as much professional development as possible and changes each year in instructional practices.  I have also completed my Ed.D. in Educational Technology during these past four years and hope to publish more about the use of educational technology in the elementary engineering classroom.  With the "extra time" I know have after completing my coursework, I want to begin by publishing academic papers from my dissertation data and providing more resources for teachers who are interested through this blog.

During the past four years, instruction in the elementary engineering lab has focused on hands-on, problem-based learning.  Students work individually, with partners, and in small groups depending upon the project.  Projects include building working models with LEGOs, K'NEX, and Fischertechnik.  In addition, students complete 3D printing projects.  Students in first through fifth grade use robotics.  First and second grade students use the LEGO WeDo robots.  Third through fifth grade students use LEGO Mindstorms.  Fourth and fifth grade students complete a problem-based project with robotics that focuses on identifying a problem, designing a robotic solution, and building and testing the working solution.

As I mentioned to the students last week, sometimes when we try something new it doesn't work.  I told students we are going to try this and do our best to make it work. Updates on the progress of these new changes will be coming along with additional resources I am using in the classroom.

Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning Resources:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/science-inquiry-claim-evidence-reasoning-eric-brunsell
https://www.nsta.org/elementaryschool/connections/201104ClaimsEvidenceRubric.pdf
http://www.activatelearning.com/claim-evidence-reasoning/
http://bpssciencecer.weebly.com/examples-from-workshop.html

Student Menu Choices:
http://curry.virginia.edu/uploads/resourceLibrary/nagc_choice_menus.pdf

Bono's Six Thinking Hats Resources:
http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php
http://sisdtx.sharpschool.com/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=17274974

2016 Idaho MEMTA Retreat

After attending the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teacher Academy (MEMTA) in 2016, I became part of the Idaho MEMTA group.  Each year when funds are available, teachers who have attended MEMTA are invited to be part of the Idaho MEMTA retreat.  During this time, we get to reconnect with Idaho teachers we met at MEMTA, as well as, meet past and current attendees.  We are given time for team building in addition to continuing our personal professional development.  With all the educators being engaged there are so many ideas being shared.  It was simply amazing to me how many ideas I walked away with during our brief two days together.



Takeaways:

• How do we encourage more teacher leaders in Idaho?
• How do we continue to build capacity within ourselves and others?
• Talk, Task, and Tools
• Be thoughtful about the questions we as teachers ask.
• Convergent (closed, one right answer) vs. divergent (open-ended, more than one right answer)
• How do we create a safe environment for divergent thinking?
• Cooperative learning
• Bono's Thinking Hats for student scaffolds on the talking process.
• Allow students to have process time
• Perhaps have them write individually first (write or draw a picture) in their notebooks before taking verbal responses
• Prevent unintentional shutdown of ideas
• Think, pair, share
• Alternate which student gets to start
• Small group modeling
• Identify alternate ways of problem solving ( anonymously if needed to build student confidence first)
• Prelesson requires more time than the actual task
• Setup time
• Planning
• Prep

• Hot Wheels Speedometry set for 4th grade teachers
• Available intermittently for Hot Wheels at no charge (http://www.hotwheels.com/en-us/speedometry.html)
• Classroom set of Hot Wheels track and cars
• Use table tents to support and scaffold desired talk behaviors
• CER
• Sentence starters
• Respectful talk starters
• Can also be added to science notebooks rather than as table tents
• Supporting posters can also be placed in the room
• Project-based learning
• Buck Institute for Education (bie.org)
• Discuss observable and unobservable 
• Ex. What did the car do? vs.  What forces change the car's movement?
• GlobalLab (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9EBD53TjC1lYmx0TUlsQndDRFk)
• Your class can post their experiment data and have other classes around the world duplicate the experiment and share their data
• Your class can find an experiment and duplicate it.  Compare existing posted data with other classes around the world.
• Socially Situated Science
• Current events and student interest drives the science learning
• Choice or menu options for student work
• Tic Tac Toe
• Cafe Menu
• Use of CER (Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning)
• Not only does it support successful talk, but it promotes critical thinking
• Use of this terminology is in the ISAT tests
• Engineering Challenge Solo Cups

   

Apply to the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teacher Academy (http://www.sendmyteacher.com/) even if you didn't get accepted the first time you applied.  It's worth it!

2016 Texas Regional Collaboratives Conference

Texas has a system for teacher support and professional development that I have not seen before.  There are regional service centers that contract out for professional development to schools and districts for math and science.  These regional service centers are supported by universities around the state.  There is a chance that I am explaining this a bit incorrectly because even after asking numerous questions, I still had difficulty grasping the hierarchy and structure of the support system.  What I did come away with is Texas has numerous professional development opportunities for their teachers both through the region service centers and the local universities.  If possible, I would have stayed in Texas longer to take advantage of their coding sessions.  Nevertheless, in the short time I was there I was able to gather many takeaways, both from speakers and the teacher-led sessions I attended.
  

Takeaways:

• Computer Science Resources: Barefoot Computing, Computational Thinking Teacher Resources, Code.org, scratch.mit.edu, CSTA, Daisy the Dinosaur (K-2), Dash and Dot, Tickle, Pixel Press Flowers, Code Warriors (Ages 9+), Hopscotch, Lightbot, Scratch Jr., Bloxels, Tynker, Botlogic, Blockly, Enchanted, Wonder Workshop,
• Robotics - Ozobots, Sphero, BeeBot, LEGO WeDo, LEGO Mindstorm, Dash and Dot
• Create a Symbaloo for coding sites for students.
• Debugging is important in coding and robotics programming to develop computational thinking.
• Code. org has unplugged activities that don't require technology.  Use these activities in centers with students along with programming and robotics.
• Students designed arduino cars and printed their own wheel designs on 3D printers.
• Teach a group of students to teach other students
• Help them develop their knowledge of the materials and project to understand how to teach the other students.
• TI Inspire Apps for iPads.  TI Inspire has programmable brain.

• Science Notebooks can be designed to meet teacher and students needs.
• Designate use of sides - left =assignments and right=creative or left =student output and right =teacher input
• Use packing tape to protect cover
• Can use multiple composition notebooks by joining covers with duct tape
• Have notebook quizzes for accountability
• "Tell me what's on Page 2."
• Cafe menu for student outputs or assignments
• Store notebooks in rooms or take pictures of pages for students to recreate lost notebooks
• Dotstorming,com
• Remind101 for private team communications (FLL or Idaho TECH Challenge) or other group cmmunications
• "Why do some students wonder?"
• "Why do some students crave more knowledge?"
• Transitions between schools are critical moments to shape students' success.
• Capabilities (growth mindset) - if you don't believe you can excel you won't put in as much effort.
• So how do we shape students' sense of capabilities?
• Belonging (comfort/ownership) - Are the other students in the class like me?
• Gives you a sense of comfort and ownership.
• Purpose (why) - How might what they are learning be useful to others?
• Personal
• Help students develop long lists of things they are good at.
• Identify goals
• Students may have different goals
• learn content (learning goals) - increases likelihood of mastery response
• show they know the content (performance goals) - increases vulnerability to a helpless response
• May be different because students have different opinions about the intelligence (fixed or growth mindset)
• We can insulate students from their own bad self theories to combat fixed mindsets.
• ADI - Arugment Driven Inquiry
• identify a task or need to solve a problem
• generate and analyze own data
• produce a tentative argument
• argumentation sesssion with peers
• write an investigation report (formal communication)
• double blind peer review of investigation report
• revise report
• reflective discussion over the the inquiry
• ADI website

      

      

Collaboratives sharing ideas at the evening showcase:
        

Wrapup:

Dr. Coker and Dr. Taylor


http://129.116.119.51/fmi/webd/#TRC_Collaboratives15_16
http://www.thetrc.org/trc-21st-annual-meeting/

2016 MAVEN Elementary Teacher Summit

The MAVEN Elementary Teacher Summit was an application based professional development.  Housing and registration was covered, but travel was not.  The goal of the PD was to develop content knowledge about Mars and space science, as well as how to integrate the content and lessons into elementary curriculum.  The organizers were fantastic, but sadly, we were told this was the last year for this teacher summit.  Lessons can be found at http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/education-outreach/for-educators/red-planet/.  Besides having engaging presentations and lessons shared with us, it was great to network with teachers from across the country.

Takeaways:

• "Vote with your feet"- students move to a particular part of the room to show they agree or disagree.
• Mars is similar to Earth - ice caps, topography, etc.
• Still a lot we don't know about Mars...Scientists don't have all the answers.  Scientists still disagree and have discussions to come to a consensus.
• Let students self-evaluate themselves before and after the lesson. 

• Mystery Bag activity - would be a good lesson for introducing Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning.  Students are given a sealed bag that holds mystery items.  They have to make a claim and evidence based upon their observations.
• Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning (CER) vs. Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI)
• instructional approaches
• practices of science
• share, critique, and revise ideas
• find contextual evidence from text, activities, etc.
• Teaching magnetism goes well with Mars lessons.

• If you pin a location on Google Earth, it will show the similar location for Mars when you choose Mars as an option.  Compare where your school would be located on Mars.
• Transition from teaching scientific method to teaching scientific process. Play "Would you Rather" with living in different locations on Mars.
• Have a classroom timeline of Earth's history.  Could be compared to Mars or other timelines.  
• Print out some of the futuristic NASA travel posters.  http://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/
• Have students learn to create academic scientific posters.

• Plan for full solar eclipse August 21, 2017.

http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/education-outreach/for-educators/summit/

2016 Global MindED Conference

After receiving a scholarship for registration and a grant from the Micron Foundation to fund the travel, I attended the Global MindED Conference for the first time.  This conference was unique in that attendees included high school students, K-12 educators, higher education, and businesses.  Topic tracks included K-12, STEM, Health, Higher Education, Global Work Skills, Students, Technology, and Policy.

During the two day conference, I had big picture and classroom level takeaways.

Big Picture:

• There is no STEM pipeline, but rather individual STEM castles with moats around each.
• Education should help bring out students' innate strengths.
• Today's students are more risk averse.
• Host a school-wide Innovation Week.
• Use 6 Good Life Habitats for the school's character traits.
• No one is exempt from having a brilliant mind.
• Grit/gumption - resilience, perseverance, determination, resourcefulness
• Grow other students and teachers.
• How do you define educational excellence?
• Capacities to be independent
• Value the diversity of students
• Different talents (human potential)
• Different motivations (where does the passion come from)
• Different opportunities
• Do you provide different opportunities, spend time nurturing, teach or coach?
• We need the different passions in our communities.
• Find a way to help students see themselves in STEM careers and doing it.

Classroom Level:

• Consider long-term projects across grade levels.
• Kerbal Space Program and Learning Blade are good ways to integrate gaming and learning.
• Capacities to build in students - communication, teaming, and collaboration.
• Implement dense instructional units
• standards
• technology
• problem-based learning (Buck Institute for resources)
• Assess novelty/creativity, efficiency, and accuracy of engineered solutions, not just whether or not it works.
• Have expert guest speakers as hook at the beginning of projects or as resources throughout the project (virtually or in-person).
• How do I come across to my students?
• Be a self advocate.
• Take risks as a professional.

2017 Global MindED Conference - June 22-23
Scholarship applications for educators
http://www.globalminded.org/

Fantastic Summer of Professional Development

It's been another amazing summer of professional development.  I attended the 2016 Global MindED conference in Denver, the MAVEN Elementary Educator Summit in Boulder, Texas Regional Collaborative Conference, and the Idaho MEMTA retreat.  Furthermore, I taught camp for STEMBus.usa.  All of these events combined for an exciting time networking and learning more strategies and content for my classroom.

In order to make the most of these professional development events, ideas, and people met, I decided to keep one notebook for all of notes, worksheets, and contacts.  Usually, I use a different notebook for each event and then have a hodge podge of notes and handouts that are difficult to keep organized and access.  After a summer full of learning, I now have all my information in one place.  I also made sure to highlight specific items I would like to integrate into my classroom instruction.  Now, as I prepare for the fast approaching school year, I can easily find information key for the new year.

If you are interested in attending professional development opportunities, it is possible to do it without funding it yourself.  My PD opportunities came through applications, scholarships, and grant writing to fund any remaining costs of the training.  There are a variety of paid professional development opportunities out there.  Do some basic searches, and you will begin to find opportunities that fit your needs.