More Professional Development Opportunities - Paid

Of late, I have been thinking about how important professional development opportunities are for educators.  Every school day I come in contact with fantastic educators.  We do great things for students each day.  Some of the great things I am aware of but there are many more I may never know.  Within my own school district, I don't know if other teachers are using robotics or 3D printing.  What engaging and valuable learning opportunities have they found for their students?  It is difficult to find time to interact with local educators and especially educators from other areas.  Therefore, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of paid professional development opportunities.

Paid professional development opportunities do not necessarily pay educators for their time spent at workshops, academies, or conferences. Rather paid professional development cover the costs to attend the various opportunities for learning new instructional strategies, content information, and networking with other educators.  As an educator with three children in college, I do not have the funding to attend conferences or other professional development opportunities without assistance to cover the costs.  I often look for ways to earn money outside of my contract days teaching workshops, writing curriculum, etc.  However, there is still so much I want to learn and so many student opportunities to discover.  In order to attend or present at conferences, I write grants to cover or assist in the costs associated with travel, registration, etc.  Many grants prefer to support items that will be used directly by the students.  While this is understandable, I think it is important to remember that the most important tool students have access to each school day is the teacher.  The better the teacher, the better the results.

There are opportunities for educators to attend teacher academies such as Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy, Northrop Grumman Foundation Teachers Academy, and Honeywell Educators at Space Academy.  However, these opportunities are few and limited to a small fraction of all educators each year.  Furthermore, applications for the paid opportunities, while worth the effort, can be fairly time consuming.  Benefits for professional development extends beyond the immediate ideas taken back to the classroom.  Professional development can make educators feel valued and rejuvenated.  Meeting educators from around your state, country, or internationally, creates a vital network of support and on-going professional development.  The network creates an impact for colleagues back at school and students within the classroom.  Just visualize the ripple effect that can be created by teachers attending professional development.

There are so many fantastic educational conferences, workshops, and academies available.  It would be great to make them more accessible for interested educators.  Funding should not be the factor that prohibits educators from achieving their professional goals and growing their professional aptitudes.  There are so many fantastic educators.  We need to provide them a way to continue to grow and share their strengths with others.  My network continues to grow and I continue to improve my instructional practices.  I share what I can with others.  In fact, I love talking about my classroom.  However, I will never be done improving my practice. I will continue to seek opportunities that will make me a better teacher so my students can be better.  I simply wish there was more support and funding to make the process easier for all educators.

Conferences

Although it is difficult to be out of the classroom during the school year, I am excited to be attending the Regional NSTA Conference in Portland, OR in November.  This will be my first time attending an NSTA conference,  I am looking forward to all the learning opportunities and networking with other education professionals.  In addition, the timing for this conference does not require me to miss any days with the students, which is always a good thing.

In March, I will be presenting at the 2017 NCCE Conference in Portland, OR.  For this conference, I will be teaching a workshop, as well as, learning new instructional and integration strategies.  My workshop will involve participants working through an abbreviated City X Project curriculum, creating clay models, and designing their 3D solutions on Tinkercad.com.  Although I will have to miss some time with my students, I am looking forward to working with other educators and bringing new ideas back to my classroom.

I'll make sure to share all the great ideas I gather during the course of both conferences.  Keep watching for updates, additional conferences, and other professional opportunities.

Pilot Projects

I am so excited to get started on a couple of new projects, Cubit and Junior Botball Challenge.  I have been working with Cubit http://cubit.cc/ on testing and piloting their science curriculum and robots and should receive my materials in late October.  I just received word this week that I was accepted in the Idaho STEM Action Center Junior Botball Pilot grant https://www.juniorbotballchallenge.org/.  Both programs will be used in my after school groups to provide additional instruction in elementary engineering.  I am thrilled because both pilots come with existing curriculum that does not me require to search and plan instruction.  Furthermore, both projects will be valuable to students in the after school groups and then will be available for use in the school's makerspace to promote further exploration.  I have started working with Cubit on planning and discussing implementation, and can't wait to learn more about the Junior Botball Challenge.  Stay tuned for updates as the pilots get underway.

Update on Student Choice Menus

Since I only see my students once a week, my third-fifth grade classes have only been working on their menus for four weeks.  The first day of use was the honeymoon.  It seemed like all the students understood how to use the menus and progress from project to project.  However, the honeymoon was short lived.  The second day of class it appeared some repetition of how the menu should be used was needed.  I will say that the older the grade level the easier it was to implement.  Fifth grade is doing the best by far.  Third grade needs the most reminders.  However, third grade students have not completed any similar projects as listed on the menu before.  Therefore, the result is actually realistic and makes perfect sense for the students' prior experiences.

I thought I would be required to do less talking, but more monitoring of student progress.  Nevertheless, I have discovered that I talk more to explain the next steps in some of the main dishes and to remind students how to prepare to have their projects checked on an individual basis.  It has been fun to see students able to move at their own pace through various projects and be able to pursue their interests to a certain degree.  A third grade student came up to hug me while I was on duty outside at recess.  She told me she loved the menus in engineering.  While I am making adjustments to improve the implementation and use of menus, I believe they are serving the reason I chose to use them.  I want students to engage and find their interests in the learning opportunities offered in the elementary engineering lab.

I am excited for upcoming years of use because I will only need to teach new students and incoming third grade students how to use the student choice menus.  I am working to balance talking whole class to students as compared to individual instructions.  The student choice menus in classes of 32 students makes it difficult to assist students as needed and monitor students who might be using their time ineffectively.  I am also trying to improve my ability to monitor student progress to be able to readily assist students who may be struggling with using their time wisely and efficiently.

Student Choice Menus in Engineering

Well, I did it.  I created my Menus for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade engineering.  I have been introducing them to the classes this past week.  It has gone remarkably well.  I go through the process of asking the students if they all run the mile at the same time in P.E.  Do they all finish their classwork at the same time?  Or, finish reading a book at the same time.  I explain to them that building is the same.  This seems to make perfect sense to the students.

Realistically, this is probably just the honeymoon of the new instructional practice, but I have high hopes for students to progress at their own pace and increase engagement with less down time listening to me explain what they will be doing each day.  I know I will have to continually monitor and check in with all the students, but I think this will take pressure off the less experienced builders while allowing the more experienced students to try builds that will challenge them.

I am including links to the menus I created for my class, as well as, project guidelines for some of the projects listed in the Main Dishes.

3rd Grade Menu
4th Grade Menu
5th Grade Menu

3rd Grade Rube Goldberg Project
4th and 5th Grade Explorer Robotics Project
5th Grade 3D Printing Project

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!