What I've learned from Rewriting our Academic Honesty Policy (part 1)

I have given up on #28daysofwriting.  It isn't that I haven't been writing.  It is just that I haven't been writing here.  I have been trying to rewrite the school academic honesty policy while at Gladstone's Library in Flintshire.  I am quite amazed that I have spent at least 2 hours a day on it.  Sometimes much more.  I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up for not writing here then.  However, what I haven't done is reflect, as I promised, on my teaching of key words nor on anything to do with the Human Library project.

So here I go with what I've learned from re-writing the academic honesty policy!

I had thought that it would turn out to be much simpler to rewrite than it has.  The parts that needed to be removed since they weren't really policy were really easy to spot.  Why do we need to describe what Wikipedia is and how it can be used in research and how it shouldn't.  This isn't really policy.  And there is a lot more like that, relating to citation creators and library online databases.  So I have put lots of crosses through pages of the present document.

However, I then looked for a workable, easy to understand definition of academic honesty within our present documents.  There wasn't one.  In the high school document, I got to page 7 before I found a list of different types of plagiarism: the ghost writer, the photocopier, the potluck paper writer, the poor disguiser.  You know the sort of thing, or at least you will if you are a teacher or librarian these days.  If I were a student, I would never have gotten to page 7 to read this.  I would have given up somewhere around the discussion of the IB Position Paper October 2012, on page 3.  The MYP document wasn't much better.  Furthermore, neither were written for their largest audience - the students.  They especially weren't written for students for whom English is another language.

Thus, a project which I thought would be more copy and paste with a few adjustments, has turned into a major rethink.  I had hoped to have this finished by the end of February but I now think that it will take all the allotted time given to it and I may be lucky to have it finished by the end of April.

I started by reading a number of similar documents from other schools and decided to write the definition in a way that students could easily understand it.  I described what academic honesty and  dishonesty would look like, giving examples.  I have to thank The Canadian International School in Hong Kong (or was it Singapore) for the structure and ideas.

Academic Honesty is demonstrated when:

• You create authentic work, based on your own ideas and words
• You respect the intellectual property rights of others by giving accurate credit to the sources used in your work
• You show that you understand the difference between collaboration and collusion
• You adhere to the designated rules for all assessments, including external exams

Academic Dishonesty occurs when:

• You intentionally or unintentionally, represent the ideas, words or work of another person as your own by not giving proper acknowledgment through correct referencing.  You might also use translated materials which are not acknowledged.   Both of these instances are known as plagiarism.
• You collude with another student or students in committing academic misconduct.  An example of this occurs when you allow your work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another person.
• You collaborate in a group, the work is not shared equitably but equal credit is given to all group members. 
• Your conduct in an assessment is dishonest, including during external exams.  This may involve taking unauthorised materials into an exam; behaviour that disrupts the exam or may distract other students; communicating with another student during the exam; and any other specified activities set down by the exam board or school.
• You present your own work to be assessed when it has already been submitted by you for another assignment.

I moved on next to the expectations and responsibilities of each of the stakeholders.  I used the order in our present document and then decided as I wrote this post that it was wrong since it put the students and parents as the last of the groups.  It seems to me that the students should be first and that their section should be written in student friendly language.  So this was/is my attempt at that:

Students will:

• Go through the academic honesty policy with their parents/guardians and teachers.  If they are unsure of any part of the policy, they will ask someone to explain it to them.  This could be a parent/guardian, a teacher, or the librarian.
• Make sure that they understand the rules for all assessments, including tests, quizzes, and exams (e.g. semester, end of year, MAP, GCSEs, MYP and DP).
• Make sure that they know how to reference (cite) their sources and make every effort to do so correctly.  If they are unsure, they will ask for help from someone who does know, such as a teacher, librarian, or parent.
• Use the school’s referencing style (e.g. MLA until grade 11) and the school’s online referencing tool (Noodletools).  If they are unsure of any aspect, they will ask for help from a teacher, or librarian.
• Use online digital and print resources ethically, legally and responsibly.  If they are unsure they will ask for help or advice from a teacher, librarian or parent/guardian.
• Make sure they understand what the teacher expects of them when they are working with a partner or in a group and ask the teacher to explain again if they don’t.

Human Library: Search Terms

(To start with I feel a failure for having started a challenge to write every day for 28 days and for having fallen at the first hurdle!  I wrote one entry and then nothing after that till today.  I could just give up.  Instead, I will redouble my efforts and write during the day when I'm not tired!)

I have struggled for a number of years to work out how to teach students to research effectively.  Yesterday's class with the grade 9s was about developing search terms.  I don't really think that the class was all that effective.  It followed on from a class activity the previous week where we used Mindmup to create mind maps of googleable questions for our topics.  That activity went fairly well, though I think that many of the students wondered why we didn't jump straight into a google search of the topic. 

This week, I wanted them to start developing search terms based on their questions.  Here is what the activity looked like:

1. Using my topic of pop up books, I went through my googleable questions and came up with a list of search terms in various categories.  I broke them down into these categories so that the students could see how a list of search terms could be enhanced.

• (Obvious) key word/s - pop ups
• Synonyms - mechanical books (I found this by using the search terms: "pop up books other names", rather then simply "pop up books synonyms" - which hadn't produced the results I wanted)
• Modifiers - (words which modify the search) history, culture, specific countries (such as Japan), construction, children's, adult
• Context terms - pdf (may give me books, pamphlets, articles); images; videos; illustrations; how to.

We have talked about the different types of search terms in other classes when students have come to the library for research lessons.  It seems to have little effect on their searches but I keep working at it.

2. I didn't but should have shown them the results of each of my searches - perhaps next time!

3. Students then were given sheets on which to come up with their initial list of search terms.

4. Next class, we will start to research using those terms and then they will further develop their lists.

It is my hope to show them how to develop and modify a list of search terms over the course of their research and how this will improve their results.

For a Future Class

I need to work out a way to show how a search for information develops over time in a graphic and easily understood manner.  Home work for my holiday!

Post Script

I went home last night and mulled over the class and one of the conclusions I came to was perhaps a bit of a cop out:  well, they are only 14 year-olds!  Yes, it is a cop out but at the same time, when I think about how and what I researched at 14, I realise that I didn't learn to research in a day, a month or a year.  It took me a very long time to mature as a researcher.  Perhaps that is still the case.

Human Library Revisited (28 Days of Writing)

Here we are in February and I am back into the Human Library project with my grade 9s.  We introduced it two weeks ago and followed that up with some activities to help students identify their "passion" or if not passion, at least some of their interests.  As with last year, the students will be a "human" book on their passions or interest.

I was not surprised that a number of the boys in my group had decided to be a book about a sport, either basketball or football.  It will be my challenge to help them find some aspect of their topic beyond their favorite team.  One boy wants his book to be on the rules of basketball.  I can't help but wonder how he will make that interesting to the readers.  We shall see.

Last week we started work on googleable and non-googleable questions with a Ted talk on a Japanese nursery school.  When I started to show it, I think I had a number of puzzled students.  What did this have to do with the Human Library?  Below is the lesson plan I created for the three classes and teachers.

1. Play your class our TED Talk.  It will hopefully lead to a provocative discussion and questions.
2. Give students plenty of post-it notes to write one question per post-it in a short period of time - maybe 10-20 minutes.
3. Ask students to post their questions onto a window or wall, under two headings: Googleable and Non-Googleable
4. Discuss what might constitute  googleable and non-googleable questions.  Ensure they understand the difference.  
5. Once they have their questions posted, share the googleable questions out for them to find the answers;
6. Give some time for students to present some or all of their answers;
7. Should there be sufficient time, examine the non-googleable questions and decide which might be most interesting to examine further (in another class)

Teaching teens to write formal emails and what I learned

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)