Mo Physics Mo Problems

Personalizing learning is something I’m very passionate about in my classroom. As I was driving using the new version of Apple Maps, it led me to some essential questions when framing paths to outcome mastery to give learners more autonomy. There needs to be different ways to demonstrate the same skills. If the constraints put on learners isn’t a part of the skills or content being mastered, it doesn’t need to be essential to the process. Most due dates are created by the teacher. If mastery is the key, does it matter if it happened on Monday or Tuesday? There are so many great tools to assist all learners in letting them get to where they are going.  You are one of them. You need to know where you learners are at before you can determine their first step towards mastery. Pre Assessment is key. Rapid cycle feedback from teachers is more powerful than any grade. Reflection and self-assessment are even better than teacher feedba

This post was written in isolation.  So if it is a little scattered, you can blame my peer editors. In the spring of 2013, my district proposed the following questions to a cohort of educators: Describe your preferred future environment? What formative (short-term, less than 6 months) and summative (long-term, year-end, 2 years out) data can be used to demonstrate the impact of your preferred future? How can you leverage initiatives currently underway (e.g. literacy, Art & Science of Teaching, etc) to better align your preferred future with the work of the district? Individuals were asked to use these questions to guide the process of writing a proposal to change learning in their classrooms. That first question is quite personal.  It is not one that I think can start with a team of educators.  That first question requires ownership of an idea. It ties back to the idea of empowerment. Educational teams are essential, and each member can be engaged in

Too often I hear the words student voice & choice smushed together. It's one thing to offer choice in your classroom, but how do you hear the voice of every student in your classroom? Voice in terms of where students are at in their learning, their struggles, and what is working for them is what should be driving the choices we design (or co-design) in our instruction. In a previous post, I discussed how I've changed up my quiz structure in the classroom.   This is thanks in big part to a tool called Pear Deck . They have a new free Google Slides add-on that makes creating interactive slideshows much simpler for everyone. Rather than explain what the Pear Deck add-on is, I'd like to walk you through a gif tour of how to use it.  To get the add-on start a slideshow and go to the add-on menu. Now you're ready to create a variety of interactive slides through the add-on.  You can edit anything on the slide.  The only rule is: Don't delete the banner

The prompt for this week in the IMMOOC is What is one thing that you used to do in education that you no longer do or believe in? Why the change? When I read this prompt, the practice of mine that has changed the most and continues to evolve, my use of quizzes in the classroom. Forgive me if you've read me talk about this before.  But, it is a process that keeps evolving. As I began my student teaching and over my first decade of teaching, quizzes looked the same in my classes. There was a warning ahead of time for students.  Students were expected to study for the quiz. The quiz was a sheet of paper that had 1 or 2 sides of questions. Students would complete the quizzes in a silent environment with no interaction with other learners in the classroom. If they did not know the answer, they should make their best guess. I would take the quizzes home and return them the next day after putting scores into the grade book.  I've always been told that quizzes are formative

As a physics teacher, I am constantly looking for new ways for my students to conceptualize their knowledge and experiment with it. For this reason, I am always on the hunt for great new simulations. PhET Interactive Simulations have been a fantastic resource for my classroom. They are a great way for students to manipulate variables and see the effect instantaneously. These simulations aren't the only place they would see digital representations of physics. Every platform game has some form of a physics engine in it that students get to interact with. In my classroom, one of the games students analyze is Angry Birds. As I think more about this process on using simulations, I feel that there is something missing. Yesterday at the Wisconsin ASCD conference, I was able to hear Agnieszka (Aggie) Salter speak about the passion her elementary students have for coding in the classroom.  I honestly know very little about coding.  In fact, I dropped a Java course in college after

Learners in my classroom are very comfortable doing what they are assigned to do. They aim to complete the task at hand as defined by me. Many do not question the why of the learning because of an understanding that this is what it means to “do school”. When given an assignment, it is a task to completed. The learners in my classes are very compliant in that way. When given hands-on tasks that ask them to create a product, they are highly engaged. Some take the opportunity to unleash their creativity and go beyond the norm to own the process while the majority create within safer prescribed paths. I want to provide more opportunities for students to  own their choices on a daily basis in our classroom. For a few years now, I have been working with freedom of choice in forms of summative assessments in my classroom.  But, the day to day practice work in my class has really fallen into the compliant practice question mode. The practice work my students do has several faults t