Little did I know when I started to plan a unit in our grade 9 'study skills' class on writing formal and informal emails that teens at my school don't actually use email. All I knew was that the previous year group had had problems writing to their work experience employers, and that formal letters and emails were not taught in any other part of the curriculum. That left the 'study skills' weekly class as the only place lessons on this topic were going to take place.
I did a google search for lesson plans and other resources and put my unit together over a weekend. In particular there was a good work sheet from the BBC on the differences in format between formal and informal emails. However for some reason on the Sunday afternoon before the class on the Monday, I started to rethink the topic. I knew that students wrote very few if any formal letters. If that were the case, perhaps they didn't write emails either. When I thought about my own communications with friends, I realised that I rarely email them, I use Facebook Messenger for most communication and only when a friend doesn't have an account, do I email. For me email is mainly for work and for more formal communication. I then asked myself what would my students do. They wouldn't email friends any more than I do. Would they ever have a reason to write a formal email? Perhaps to teachers but not often. If I were right, then there was no point in me teaching informal email writing. Thus, I decided to change my tact for the lessons.
My first lesson became one of exploration. I wanted to know how my students communicated with each other, with other friends not at school and with family. It was fascinating and obvious from the start that email was the least likely form of communication for them to use. When I asked them to open up their school email, I discovered that most of them had hundreds of unopened emails. Though the school uses email to communicate with students, students rarely check to see if they have any. I don't think we had thought about that. Students said that they checked managebac for messages from their teachers but seldom their email. The irony of that is that they do email their teachers but never seems to read the replies.
So how do they communicate with each other? They use their phones (not surprising) but not to make calls as I would; instead my students use the apps on the phone such as Snap Chat. They tell me that they also text but rarely use the phone function of their smart phone. This knowledge led me to another realisation: since they didn't make phone calls, they were very likely nervous about making calls to someone they didn't know. So, though I had decided to include making phone calls as part of our unit, I decided that we would have to do a lot more work on it than I had expected.
Sunday 26 November 2017
Saturday 5 August 2017
Make It Stick
This week I'm away at Gladstone's library in Flintshire to do some reading and preparation for the start of school in a few week's time. I had come with the intention of reading They Say I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein and making notes and plans on how to use it with my extended essay students this year. Fortunately or unfortunately, time will tell, I was led astray by Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger and Mark A. McDaniel.
This post is part of a recall exercise I have set myself to see how much I remember from what I have already read and tested myself on. You will see how this fits in, I hope, as I write.
Gerald Graff and his colleague Mark Daniel are psychologist who have been working on memory and how to help learners improve their study techniques so that they can more readily move what they learn from short term to long term memory. In Make It Stick they lay out what they have learned, the science behind it and how learners of all ages can improve their retention of information. Roediger and McDaniel are the scientists and they have cleverly teamed up with Peter Brown, who is the story teller and writer. Thus the book becomes immensely readable to the non-scientist, of whom I am one. Though I only teach one class at the moment, it is called Study Skills, and so I was immediately drawn to the subject.
The authors start by discussing the misconceptions most people have about learning and I must admit to having fallen in to this when I was in the classroom full time.
1. That learning which is difficult is being approached in the wrong way.
2. That if we read something over and over again, we will remember it.
3. That if we underline or highlight important points, this will help us remember the information.
What they go on to prove is:
1. Learning needs to be effortful to be effective. The more we struggle with something, the more it will stay with us. Thus, they also encourage the learner to try to solve a problem before they are taught how to do it.
2. Reading material over and over again, known as massed practice, in other words, becoming familiar with it will not help you learn it. It may stay with you for a short time but a week or so later, you won't remember much of it. It's a great technique for cramming before a test but most of us want to remember that information for longer than the writing of a test.
3. The most effective method for learning and retaining information is to test yourself regularly (but also after a period of time has elapsed). Testing in this manner is known as retrieval practice.
4. Leaving time between study periods helps to improve the retention of the information.
5. Retention is facilitated by relating that information to what you have already learned.
6. Interleaving practice or study sessions with other information or problems will improve retention. To explain interleaving, they give the following example. Rather than giving students a large number of problems to solve on the same concept for homework, give them some on the lesson just taught and some relating to previous work done. By doing so, students are forced to recall previously learned information and thus strengthen the memory of it.
It basically comes down to this: To improve retention of information or skills, the learner should test themselves regularly (retrieving the information), leave time between study/testing sessions and interleave the studying.
Now, I have forgotten to talk about their emphasis on testing. This is not testing to see how much one has learned but testing to help with the learning. The authors give a number of examples of how teachers have changed their testing regime to increase the number of tests, in order to assist students with their learning. By testing students frequently, it forces them to study more regularly and requires them to retrieve the information and thus reinforce it.
Of course there is much more to the book and I have probably not summarized as well as I might have. However, the point of what I have just written is to test myself on what I have learned by writing a summary. I will now go over my notes and see how well I have done.
This post is part of a recall exercise I have set myself to see how much I remember from what I have already read and tested myself on. You will see how this fits in, I hope, as I write.
Gerald Graff and his colleague Mark Daniel are psychologist who have been working on memory and how to help learners improve their study techniques so that they can more readily move what they learn from short term to long term memory. In Make It Stick they lay out what they have learned, the science behind it and how learners of all ages can improve their retention of information. Roediger and McDaniel are the scientists and they have cleverly teamed up with Peter Brown, who is the story teller and writer. Thus the book becomes immensely readable to the non-scientist, of whom I am one. Though I only teach one class at the moment, it is called Study Skills, and so I was immediately drawn to the subject.
The authors start by discussing the misconceptions most people have about learning and I must admit to having fallen in to this when I was in the classroom full time.
1. That learning which is difficult is being approached in the wrong way.
2. That if we read something over and over again, we will remember it.
3. That if we underline or highlight important points, this will help us remember the information.
What they go on to prove is:
1. Learning needs to be effortful to be effective. The more we struggle with something, the more it will stay with us. Thus, they also encourage the learner to try to solve a problem before they are taught how to do it.
2. Reading material over and over again, known as massed practice, in other words, becoming familiar with it will not help you learn it. It may stay with you for a short time but a week or so later, you won't remember much of it. It's a great technique for cramming before a test but most of us want to remember that information for longer than the writing of a test.
3. The most effective method for learning and retaining information is to test yourself regularly (but also after a period of time has elapsed). Testing in this manner is known as retrieval practice.
4. Leaving time between study periods helps to improve the retention of the information.
5. Retention is facilitated by relating that information to what you have already learned.
6. Interleaving practice or study sessions with other information or problems will improve retention. To explain interleaving, they give the following example. Rather than giving students a large number of problems to solve on the same concept for homework, give them some on the lesson just taught and some relating to previous work done. By doing so, students are forced to recall previously learned information and thus strengthen the memory of it.
It basically comes down to this: To improve retention of information or skills, the learner should test themselves regularly (retrieving the information), leave time between study/testing sessions and interleave the studying.
Now, I have forgotten to talk about their emphasis on testing. This is not testing to see how much one has learned but testing to help with the learning. The authors give a number of examples of how teachers have changed their testing regime to increase the number of tests, in order to assist students with their learning. By testing students frequently, it forces them to study more regularly and requires them to retrieve the information and thus reinforce it.
Of course there is much more to the book and I have probably not summarized as well as I might have. However, the point of what I have just written is to test myself on what I have learned by writing a summary. I will now go over my notes and see how well I have done.
Tuesday 6 June 2017
What is the Human Library? Why did we have one?
May 30th, 2017 saw our first human library at ACS Egham International School. Thirty-six grade 9 student 'books' were loaned out to 50 odd 'readers', consisting of grade 4 students and adults from various parts of our school community. For an hour our performing arts centre buzzed with conversation on topics as varied as learning to knit and the American Women's football team. Readers left at the end with knitted items, nibbling on lebanese food and discussing the pros and cons of various tennis racquets. But what was this all about, you may still be wondering, and how and why did it all come about?
In November of 2015, I attended the AASL conference in Columbus, Ohio and came away from it more firmly convinced that we had to change the way we conducted our project based learning and taught research skills to our lower secondary students. For various reasons, research skills and the inquiry cycle were being neglected by our teachers.
At the same time, I was concerned about the fact that we had introduced a course for grades 9 and 10, called Study Skills and were teaching stand alone lessons relating to research, communication, self-management and thinking, in other words, the ATLs, which should be embedded in our curriculum. Putting the two concerns together I suggested that I become one of the grade 9 study skills teachers, that we get rid of the stand alone classes, and that we teach skills through a project. It was my hope that we could then present this project to the other teachers as an example of a way to embed ATLs in their project based work.
I was unsure about the subject of the project or even what format it should take and grappled with this for several months. Sure that I had come up with a solution, I offered to run a session at Dianne McKenzie and Katie Day's Inspiring Conversations in Prague. In the session before mine, I attended a conversation about Human Libraries and at that moment everything changed! Though my apple cart had been overturned completely, it allowed my presentation to become a true conversation in which I set out what I had planned and talked about how I would like to now change it. Dianne gave me the idea for the topic when she discussed a similar project she had done, entitled 'My Passion'. I had been stumbling around looking for a topic that students could take ownership of and this was it.
So what is a Human Library? The Human Library, developed first for the 2000 Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark in response to a hate crime, is about offering people as ‘human’ books which are lent out to 'readers' for a conversation. Books typically had titles that represented a stigmatised or stereotyped group of people in the community. (World Peace) However, in our case, our titles were to reflect the vast array of interests of our grade 9 students. Through their preparation for a Human Library presentation, students would research and present (as a human book) a subject about which they were particularly passionate.
In November of 2015, I attended the AASL conference in Columbus, Ohio and came away from it more firmly convinced that we had to change the way we conducted our project based learning and taught research skills to our lower secondary students. For various reasons, research skills and the inquiry cycle were being neglected by our teachers.
At the same time, I was concerned about the fact that we had introduced a course for grades 9 and 10, called Study Skills and were teaching stand alone lessons relating to research, communication, self-management and thinking, in other words, the ATLs, which should be embedded in our curriculum. Putting the two concerns together I suggested that I become one of the grade 9 study skills teachers, that we get rid of the stand alone classes, and that we teach skills through a project. It was my hope that we could then present this project to the other teachers as an example of a way to embed ATLs in their project based work.
I was unsure about the subject of the project or even what format it should take and grappled with this for several months. Sure that I had come up with a solution, I offered to run a session at Dianne McKenzie and Katie Day's Inspiring Conversations in Prague. In the session before mine, I attended a conversation about Human Libraries and at that moment everything changed! Though my apple cart had been overturned completely, it allowed my presentation to become a true conversation in which I set out what I had planned and talked about how I would like to now change it. Dianne gave me the idea for the topic when she discussed a similar project she had done, entitled 'My Passion'. I had been stumbling around looking for a topic that students could take ownership of and this was it.
So what is a Human Library? The Human Library, developed first for the 2000 Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark in response to a hate crime, is about offering people as ‘human’ books which are lent out to 'readers' for a conversation. Books typically had titles that represented a stigmatised or stereotyped group of people in the community. (World Peace) However, in our case, our titles were to reflect the vast array of interests of our grade 9 students. Through their preparation for a Human Library presentation, students would research and present (as a human book) a subject about which they were particularly passionate.
Our student ‘books’ would then be borrowed by 3 people per session for 15 to 20 minutes, during which time, the books would tell their ‘readers’ about their topic and share pictures or activities with them and then answer questions. ‘Readers’, who would come from various parts of the ACS Egham community, were to be given a ‘catalogue’ in advance from which to choose the book they were most interested in. Having done so, they would then sign it out. The reader was also to be provided with the protocols for their role in the Human library at the time of reserving their book. To assist our ‘books’ in improving for their next ‘edition’, readers were to be asked to write a short ‘book review’, which would be shared with the ‘books’.
And our library basically followed the format that I first envisioned. There was some tweaking to be done but not as much as I had anticipated might be needed. The day itself was stress free for the organisers, though I imagine our grade 9s may have been a bit stressed more stressed than we!
And our future plans? We definitely want to repeat this concept next year with the grade 9s. Moreover, other sections of our school community have asked about holding a human library and so 2017-18 may see an explosion of these libraries across our campus.
Monday 5 June 2017
Human Library Day!
Human Library Day has finally come...and gone! I am both relieved and suffering from a certain let down. So much work has gone into the organisation of it and now it is all over. I've asked the students to start working on their reflections and I suppose that I should do so now as well.
What Would I Do Differently?
I need to ensure in future that all students understand that they must have any visuals or notes printed well in advance, just in case the printer doesn't work on the day. Though I thought that I had made it clear that ours was a "print" book library, students still turned up on the day with laptops. I am sure that some of those who hadn't printed, didn't intend to print, hoping that I would let them use their electronic devices. They now know that I mean what I say!
A number of the students failed to bring in visuals or artifacts and so their presentations weren't as engaging as they might have been. Next time, I will model a presentation with visuals and an activity. I will encourage all students to have some sort of activity as part of their presentation. The most effective presentations in our library were the ones with an activity, such as learning to knit, playing chess for the first time, and making Lebanese food.
I need to emphasise the importance of finding a topic you are passionate about at the beginning of the process. It was the students who spoke with passion who really ignited their 'readers'. To assist students I should spend some time developing activities to assist them in identifying their passion!
I wasn't properly prepared for students to do reflections and though I gave them 3 guiding questions to use I think that those questions could have been better thought through.
What Worked Well?
I created a book report for each reader to fill out after their session and that worked well. We had lots of positive feedback from the readers and will share it with the 'books' in a few days time.
The room layout worked well. We had 35 students participating, 18 in the first session and 17 in the second. For each session, each book had a grade 9, grade 4 and adult reader. In some cases there may have been more readers when we had more grade 9s or 4s than sessions. The tables and chairs were set up as in the picture below.
Though there was no formal assessment for this project, most students 'got' the fact that not all assessment comes in the form of marks on a report card. In fact, having immediate feedback from your audience of 'readers' can be far more intimidating feedback than a mark. Grade 4s are quite blunt as well! However, next time I will have a self assessment form for students to fill out and share with us.
(As I think of more to add to this reflection, I will do so.)
What Would I Do Differently?
I need to ensure in future that all students understand that they must have any visuals or notes printed well in advance, just in case the printer doesn't work on the day. Though I thought that I had made it clear that ours was a "print" book library, students still turned up on the day with laptops. I am sure that some of those who hadn't printed, didn't intend to print, hoping that I would let them use their electronic devices. They now know that I mean what I say!
A number of the students failed to bring in visuals or artifacts and so their presentations weren't as engaging as they might have been. Next time, I will model a presentation with visuals and an activity. I will encourage all students to have some sort of activity as part of their presentation. The most effective presentations in our library were the ones with an activity, such as learning to knit, playing chess for the first time, and making Lebanese food.
I need to emphasise the importance of finding a topic you are passionate about at the beginning of the process. It was the students who spoke with passion who really ignited their 'readers'. To assist students I should spend some time developing activities to assist them in identifying their passion!
I wasn't properly prepared for students to do reflections and though I gave them 3 guiding questions to use I think that those questions could have been better thought through.
What Worked Well?
I created a book report for each reader to fill out after their session and that worked well. We had lots of positive feedback from the readers and will share it with the 'books' in a few days time.
The room layout worked well. We had 35 students participating, 18 in the first session and 17 in the second. For each session, each book had a grade 9, grade 4 and adult reader. In some cases there may have been more readers when we had more grade 9s or 4s than sessions. The tables and chairs were set up as in the picture below.
Though there was no formal assessment for this project, most students 'got' the fact that not all assessment comes in the form of marks on a report card. In fact, having immediate feedback from your audience of 'readers' can be far more intimidating feedback than a mark. Grade 4s are quite blunt as well! However, next time I will have a self assessment form for students to fill out and share with us.
(As I think of more to add to this reflection, I will do so.)
Wednesday 15 February 2017
Wednesday 11 January 2017
Successful launch of Grade 9 Project
After months of research and planning, and a little bit of anxiety, I launched the grade 9 project with the students today. It seemed successful! At least there were no melt down during the introduction and the brainstorming session afterwards. I suppose as always, time will tell. I did see worried faces when I told them that the Human library presentation slot would be 20 minutes long but they were reassured when we reminded them that a Human Library 'reading' involves conversation among the participants.
I must say a big THANK YOU to Kadri Tomson at the International School of Estonia for inspiring me to do this!
Today we gave a presentation to our grade 9s and handed out the following information to accompany the presentation:
These are three questions that each person will be answering over the course of the next few months, culminating in the presentation by each person in grade 9 of their ‘human book’, as part of the ACS Egham First Annual Human Library Project.
What is a Human Library?
“Just like in a real library, a visitor to the Human Library can choose a Book from a range of titles. The difference is that Books are people, and reading is a conversation…
The Human Library was created for the 2000 Roskilde Music Festival by a group of Danish activists who formed in response to a violent hate crime. Their idea was to use the language and mechanism of a library to facilitate conversations that challenge prejudice, thereby reducing the risk of tension and violence. From a base in Copenhagen the creators and founders of the Human Library Organisation have helped the movement to grow steadily across the world, and it is currently active in over 60
countries. The movement is growing!” (Human Library UK)
What will our Human Library be like?
1. Our library and books will be different from the one described above, in that our books will be about something that we are passionate about or have a keen interest in. Otherwise, it will be very similar.
2. Each person will be conduct research and create a 20 minute oral presentation based on their passion or interest.
3. A ‘blurb’ about your book will form part of the library catalogue, which will be given to the ‘readers’ to choose from.
4. On the day of the Human Library, you will be borrowed by at least 3 ‘readers’ at a time. These ‘Readers’ will come from various parts of the ACS Egham community, and will include one grade 9 student per book. In other words, one of your classmates will be one of your readers.
5. To assist our ‘books’ in improving for their next ‘edition’, readers will be asked to write a short ‘book review’, which will be shared with the ‘books’.
How will I prepare for the Human Library?
1) The majority of work will be done during your Study Skills Classes.
What will this preparation consist of?
1. Through the preparation stage of our project, you will have the opportunity to develop and refine your skills through weekly workshops in three particular areas: project management, communications and research.
2. Workshops and activities will include:
i. organising time allocation for each stage of the process;
ii. preparing and delivering an oral presentation;
iii. negotiating the ACS library online catalogue, databases and search engines to find information; using search tools such as keywords, boolean operators, and advanced search tools;
iv. Developing various skills for academic writing such as: note taking; paraphrasing, summary and referencing;
v. Collaborating with other students as ‘study buddies’ or as peer reviewers;
vi. Self assessment;
vii. Oral presentation skills.
3. The preparation stage will also include:
i. Time to carry out your research
ii. Time to practice your presentation
How will I be assessed?
1. Study Skills receives a pass/fail grade.
2. You will receive feedback from their peer reviewers throughout the preparation stage.
3. You will also receive feedback from your ‘readers’ after the Human Library presentation.
4. Finally, you will have opportunities to self assess throughout the process and after the presentation
After this presentation we broke up into groups and started an activity to help students identify their interests, and perhaps their passions.
They worked on it by themselves to start with and then shared with a partner. After that, students shared with another pair. We only had 7 pairs so Alicia, one of the other study skills teachers, and I joined in. Finally, we had one of the pairs at each table of 4 move to another table, and this included Alicia and I. Thus we were able to talk with most of the students. It was interesting to see the difference among them. Some had filled their paper, others had little on them. Dianne McKenzie said that when she did a "My Passion" activity, a lot of work was necessary to get students to the point of identifying something they were passionate about. I can see that we will probably face the same hurdle!
If you are interested in looking at the google doc of the outline of the unit to date, please follow this link. I would greatly appreciate feedback.
I must say a big THANK YOU to Kadri Tomson at the International School of Estonia for inspiring me to do this!
Today we gave a presentation to our grade 9s and handed out the following information to accompany the presentation:
If I Were a Book?
If I were a book, what would my subject be?
If I were a book, what would I look like?
If I were a “human” book, how would I present my book to my readers?
These are three questions that each person will be answering over the course of the next few months, culminating in the presentation by each person in grade 9 of their ‘human book’, as part of the ACS Egham First Annual Human Library Project.
What is a Human Library?
“Just like in a real library, a visitor to the Human Library can choose a Book from a range of titles. The difference is that Books are people, and reading is a conversation…
The Human Library was created for the 2000 Roskilde Music Festival by a group of Danish activists who formed in response to a violent hate crime. Their idea was to use the language and mechanism of a library to facilitate conversations that challenge prejudice, thereby reducing the risk of tension and violence. From a base in Copenhagen the creators and founders of the Human Library Organisation have helped the movement to grow steadily across the world, and it is currently active in over 60
countries. The movement is growing!” (Human Library UK)
What will our Human Library be like?
1. Our library and books will be different from the one described above, in that our books will be about something that we are passionate about or have a keen interest in. Otherwise, it will be very similar.
2. Each person will be conduct research and create a 20 minute oral presentation based on their passion or interest.
3. A ‘blurb’ about your book will form part of the library catalogue, which will be given to the ‘readers’ to choose from.
4. On the day of the Human Library, you will be borrowed by at least 3 ‘readers’ at a time. These ‘Readers’ will come from various parts of the ACS Egham community, and will include one grade 9 student per book. In other words, one of your classmates will be one of your readers.
5. To assist our ‘books’ in improving for their next ‘edition’, readers will be asked to write a short ‘book review’, which will be shared with the ‘books’.
How will I prepare for the Human Library?
1) The majority of work will be done during your Study Skills Classes.
What will this preparation consist of?
1. Through the preparation stage of our project, you will have the opportunity to develop and refine your skills through weekly workshops in three particular areas: project management, communications and research.
2. Workshops and activities will include:
i. organising time allocation for each stage of the process;
ii. preparing and delivering an oral presentation;
iii. negotiating the ACS library online catalogue, databases and search engines to find information; using search tools such as keywords, boolean operators, and advanced search tools;
iv. Developing various skills for academic writing such as: note taking; paraphrasing, summary and referencing;
v. Collaborating with other students as ‘study buddies’ or as peer reviewers;
vi. Self assessment;
vii. Oral presentation skills.
3. The preparation stage will also include:
i. Time to carry out your research
ii. Time to practice your presentation
How will I be assessed?
1. Study Skills receives a pass/fail grade.
2. You will receive feedback from their peer reviewers throughout the preparation stage.
3. You will also receive feedback from your ‘readers’ after the Human Library presentation.
4. Finally, you will have opportunities to self assess throughout the process and after the presentation
After this presentation we broke up into groups and started an activity to help students identify their interests, and perhaps their passions.
If you are interested in looking at the google doc of the outline of the unit to date, please follow this link. I would greatly appreciate feedback.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)