by Andrew K. Miller | Mar 4, 2013 | Blog, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
Creating a safe and supportive learning environment is a critical to a whole child approach to education. Usually when we reflect and work on implementing the Whole Child Tenets in our schools, we forgot one critical component in making them manifest: the students. Students are as important as actors in creating a safe school as teachers. They can be actors in helping to create a safe learning environment, and project-based learning (PBL) projects can be a way in which we harness that service and target learning in the content areas. Here are some project ideas I have done, or have seen other school educators create.
School Norms: Often we create norms for students, or co-create them at the beginning of the year. However, you can take this up a notch and have a class or even a grade level create school norms where they address the needs of all stakeholders, including other students, parents, teachers, and even community members. Here students engage in in-depth research for an authentic reason, and engage in revision and reflection to make sure the norms created meet the needs of the entire school community.
Guns And Schools: This is obviously a controversial topic, but what better way to engage students than controversy? Through debatable driving questions, students create written products as well as digital media projects to examine the issue. They conduct in-depth research to support their ideas and present the information to a city council or the superintendent to ensure authenticity. Students also rely on community experts like police officers and lawmakers to make sure their work is accurate and well-developed.
Safety Audit: Instead of focusing on safety in just one project, allow students to evaluate the safety of the school and make recommendations. Students can create surveys, analyze data, and also research important related information. This prevents “death by presentation,” where all the presentations are the same and therefore bore the audience. In addition, it allows for student voice in topics that interest them and in their opinions and recommendations.
Digital Citizenship: School safety isn’t just at the brick-and-mortar facility, it’s also in the digital world. Even if you do not teach at a blended or online school, students need the skills to be safe online, and this type of PBL project can help them do that. Students create awareness around the issue or even give recommendations to other students about their “digital footprints.” Students have access to choice in products that show their learning, but more importantly have an authentic audience to receive it. From websites to letters, there is an opportunity for students to help each other and their community create safe digital learning spaces.
There are many more school safety projects out there, but these are just some of my favorites. Feel free to take these ideas and use them in the classroom. Now is the time for students to be active in not only examining the topic of safety, but creating safe schools themselves. PBL can be the key to that work!
by Andrew K. Miller | Jan 21, 2013 | Blog, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
21st century skills are quickly becoming taught and assessed in schools across the nation. Whether through explicit instruction or models like project-based learning, educators are quickly realizing that lower level content comprehension is not enough. The Whole Child Initiative calls for tenets that rely on these skills. We create a safe environment through collaboration. Critical thinking creates rigor and challenge. Communication can create engagement with the community. 21st century skills, when paired with content can create powerful and meaningful learning. The Common Core State Standards explicitly call for these skills, so through uncovering the 3 C’s in the Common Core, we can see how educators must teach and assess them.
Collaboration
In every grade level of the English language arts common standards, you will find the common standard that calls for “collaborative discussions.” I do mean every! This means that at each grade level, we must not only be teaching and assessing the skill of collaboration, but we must think about how it looks different from grade level to grade level. We know that group work and collaborative work can be effective, but now collaboration is more than just an instructional tool. It is a skill that needs to be taught and assessed.
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
Roland Case has done some great work on unpacking the concept of critical thinking into quality indicators. One of these quality indicators is perseverance, being able to complete a challenge and work through the obstacles. In the mathematics common standards, there are specific mathematical practices that are mentioned. One of these is “make sense of a problem and persevere in solving them.” This is an explicit call in the Common Core to teach and assess one facet of critical thinking. In addition, as you unpack the Common Core, you will still thinking skills and related language for critical thinking. From being able to “evaluate,” “reflect” or “analyze,” the focus is on higher-order thinking skills that require that critical thinking be taught to all students and assessed.
Communication
Across each grade level in the English language arts common standards, communication—both written and oral—is evident. The Common Core calls for students to communicate effectively, and through a variety of mediums. Digital tools are mentioned, as well as oral and written skills. English teachers have always been responsible for this skill, but now all subjects are being called to teach and assess communication skills.
Unpacking the Common Core State Standards allows us to see the need to teach and assess 21st century skills to our students. When we look at the Whole Child Tenets, we can see alignment between them and 21st Century Skills. Perhaps the Common core will leverage the need to teach to the whole child.
by Andrew K. Miller | Mar 30, 2012 | ASCD, Blog, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
Game-based learning (GBL) is a current trend in education reform and, as it becomes more widely implemented, we must make sure we are not simply focusing on the tools. Using games for learning is a great tool, but only if the use is intentional and aligned to best practices for student learning. GBL can, in fact, be aligned to the Whole Child Tenets—healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged—further leveraging it as a legitimate instructional model to reach all students.
HEALTHY
Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
There are many games for learning out there that promote health and well-being. Superbetter was just released and it includes a learning platform with quests and challenges targeted toward various physical fitness and mental well-being goals. Another fun mobile example is Run, Zombies!, an app that turns running into a zombie apocalypse story. There are plenty more games to choose from out there, and again, the games can help engage students in healthy activities in a fun way.
SAFE
Each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
One of the essential design principles of GBL (and games in general) is the safety to fail. Often in education, whether through punishing students by grading formative assessments (or not replacing earlier failures with successful summative assessments) or lack of multiple drafts, we teach students that they only have one shot to get the right answer. Games on the other hand make trial and error a safe norm. We can use GBL to foster a safe space for learning in our classrooms.
ENGAGED
Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.
GBL’s intent is to create an engaging environment where students learn both content and 21st century skills. Games engage our students through careful creation. From leader boards and avatars, to freedom to fail and immediate feedback, games and game mechanics can provide another learning model to engage our students.
SUPPORTED
Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.
GBL aligns specifically to the “personalized” aspect of this tenet. Although games are often collaborative, all games have important, individualized quests and missions. In a game that requires learning of content, the game is highly personalized. Success is only achieved through the individual’s play and learning.
CHALLENGED
Each graduate is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment and participation in a global environment.
Games are often quite challenging. Game designers spend time making the “flow” of the game perfect, where there is just enough challenge, but not so much that the game is impossible. We can use GBL to create an appropriate challenge to learn and practice content.
Through intentional and careful implementation, educators can use GBL and various games to address and meet the needs of the whole child.
by Andrew K. Miller | Feb 16, 2012 | ASCD, Blog, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
PBL can create engaging learning for all students, but that depth of learning requires careful, specific design. Part of this engagement is the element of critical thinking. Complex problem solving and higher-order thinking skills, coupled with other elements such as authenticity, voice, and choice, create an engaging context for learning.
One of the essential elements of a PBL project is the teaching and assessing of 21st century skills, including collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. The key takeaway here is teaching AND assessing. You cannot assess something you do not teach. How do we teach critical thinking? Through intentional instruction and intentional experiences. Therefore we need to make sure that the overall PBL journey is one that has both. Here are some elements of a PBL project that you can double- and triple-check to make sure your students are critically thinking
Driving Question: Through repeated practice, you can create a rigorous driving question that is open-ended, complex, and at the same time kid-friendly. A driving question is not “Google-able” but may contain many “on-the-surface” questions. By creating a driving question that requires higher-order thinking skills, the overall project will be infused with critical thinking, as it is present and used throughout the entire project. If you need help with a driving question, please check out these posts in which I go into more detail.
Audience and Purpose: One of the pitfalls that teachers can run into when designing their projects is picking a mediocre purpose and audience. When that happens, the product often becomes a regurgitation of knowledge. If the audience of the project is just the teacher, then the product may or may not have a rigorous purpose that requires critical thinking. If the project is for an outside audience, the purpose may become more complex, because that audience’s lens and needs are unique and challenging. If you pick an audience outside of the classroom and a purpose that is rigorous and challenging, then the project will require some critical thinking.
In-Depth Inquiry: Inquiry is a process that requires investigation, questioning, interpreting, and creating. This process is repeated over and over, because the inquiry itself cannot be finished in cycle. When creating a project, ask yourself if the project will require repeated cycles through the inquiry process. In-depth inquiry leads to repeated moments of critical thinking
Don’t forget that when you demand critical thinking skills, then you must scaffold these thinking skills with lessons, modeling, etc. If you are demanding that students evaluate, you must teach them how. This ensures success on the project and, more importantly, that students are learning how to critically think. The Buck Institute for Education has a great project design rubric that can help you refine your PBL projects to ensure the highest quality learning environment and includes the elements above. This rubric, coupled with the lens of critical thinking as part of the design, can ensure both engagement and deeper learning.
by Andrew K. Miller | Jan 2, 2012 | Blog, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
When we ask students to do, perform, and produce, we must ensure that these tasks or assessments demand rigor and relevance. But let’s be honest, sometimes these words are thrown around as buzz words in education or are difficult to truly internalize as teachers when we are design assessments. What does it look like to ask students to do rigorous work? What does an assessment that has relevance look like? I can make my own assumptions, but how do I know if my assumptions are truly asking for depth of rigor and relevance?
I truly believe that one of the invaluable resources and professional development I received in my years as a classroom teacher was around Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW). I was able to take AIW and apply it to the many teaching practices and pedagogy that I was using, from project-based learning to Understanding by Design® methods. AIW focuses on authentic pedagogy and student work.
When developing AIW assessments that are rigorous and relevant, think about
Construction of Knowledge: The assessment should demand that students are doing higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) like synthesis and evaluation. A lower rating in this area would simply be asking students to reproduce. This is pitfall of some performance assessments; reproducing in a new genre. When we ask students to construct knowledge, is the assessment asking for these HOTS?
Elaborated Communication: The assessment should show a deep understanding of the content being explored, and the assessment must explicitly demand it. There should be evidence, which usually requires a complex purpose like persuasion and analysis. Instead of multiple choice, or short answer, ask your students to communicate, which you can choose from a variety of forms and genres, and make sure that there are summaries, examples, samples, and other important pieces of evidence that show deep understanding of the concepts you want them to learn.
Value Beyond School: This is probably the most obvious and most important part of creating a good assessment. Yet, it remains a bit difficult to quantify and measure a good assessment that shows value beyond school. AIW frames it this way: Does the assessment demand students to solve a problem or encounter an issue that resembles one in real life? Does the assessment demand students to make explicit connections to their own feelings and situations? A lower score here might only provide opportunity to explore the real-world connections or provide little opportunity at all. Again, the assessment creates an imperative connection to the real world and values of students’ experiences.
Notice that all these components require explicit direction from the teacher. If you were to hold up the rubric and assessment by itself, it needs to meet the components of AIW. This isn’t about supposition or assumption; it is about transparency with students. Learn more about AIW and peruse resources, including a 2007 publication relating the framework to authentic instruction and assessment (PDF), by visiting the Center for AIW website. The center also offers rubrics pertaining to specific disciplines, including science, literature, math, and social studies.
by Andrew K. Miller | Nov 24, 2011 | ASCD, Blog, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
OK, so I am a gamer. Not that I have the time anymore, but I do venture now and again into a game, whether a first-person shooter (FPS) or role-playing video game (RPG). I am also a big promoter of Game-Based Learning (GBL) and Gamification. To clarify, GBL is when games are used to balance the learning of subject matter through gameplay with specific learning outcomes in mind. Gamification is applying the concepts of game design to learning to engage in problem solving. Again both are geared toward building student engagement and learning important content. GBL is one method that creates not only a great opportunity to engage students in content, but also keep them active.
Brain-based learning research tells us that being active in and around rigorous learning can help keep students energized in the learning. During the activity, oxygen-rich blood flows to the brain which increases the ability to concentrate. John Medina, published a great book about how movement can increase learning. PBS did a story about a school where students took active “brain breaks” that kept students moving around the classroom. There are many ways to integrate activate movement on a regular basis for students, and using video games is another opportunity.
Microsoft’s Kinect is the key to using games for learning that require movement. Kinect demands students physically interact with the content in front of them. Whether it’s jumping in an obstacle course or moving hands to push buttons, the body is not only engaged in a game, but also in movement. Although it may seem like a far cry to link these games to authentic learning outcomes, the idea is to balance the gaming with the learning; increasing blood flow and engagement while gaming increases concentration for learning content. The other good news is that there are a plethora of resources in this area, some from Microsoft itself. They have a library, some with specific targets toward physical education, which has activities and lessons for students. These classroom activities align the video games to the Common Core State Standards (although they could be a bit more specific), and indicate which video games are necessary. I highly recommend going to DonorsChoose.org to create a funding opportunity for a Kinect in your classroom.
In addition, a Twitter friend of mine, Johnny Kissko, has dedicated much of his work to using Kinect in the classroom with his website KinectEDucation. His site is complete with not only lessons that are tied to specific games, but also applications that can be downloaded and purchased. Because there are so many resources out there, there is no reason for a teacher to not give it a shot. Using video games, and specifically the Kinect, can allow us to harness the power of brain-based learning and the engagement of video games to create student concentration and engagement.
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