Design Thinking Opportunity!

I started my design thinking journey by reading the book Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley. At the time I was looking for ideas on creativity and how to foster it. I was excited to learn about the design thinking process, which I had not heard of. You can read my post about it here. The Kelleys are partners at IDEO, a design and innovation firm. IDEO, along with the Riverdale Country School, now has formed The Teacher Guild, an online community with the purpose of exploring education issues through the design thinking process. It is modeled on OpenIDEO, an online platform that tackles large, difficult problems by inviting all interested parties to participate in the process.

The Teachers Guild's first 10-week collaboration is going on now. The question is "How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of innovation in our classrooms and schools?" This collaboration is in the Discovery phase in which members contribute ideas, thoughts, and resources related to the question. Everyone can contribute, comment, and "applaud" others' ideas. The next phase, which starts soon, is Ideate. Participants will share and try ideas that address the question. The Evolve step continues the design process with feedback, then in Select participants vote for their favorites. The most popular solutions are announced followed by a reflection piece. The staff at The Teacher's Guild works offline in between some of the steps. Then a new problem is posted. The process is thoroughly explained on the website.

In the current Discovery stage, many people have posted. It is exciting to read so many ideas all aimed at helping solve a problem. There are ideas about question asking, mindset, failure as a positive force, physical classroom set-ups, and many more. My posted idea was creating a positive, supportive classroom atmosphere where students feel comfortable taking risks. There are also many comments posted on the ideas. It is a positive, energetic community!

I'm excited about interacting with other teachers interested in design thinking. I'm also happy to have an opportunity to experience the process, going through the steps with other teachers. My goal is not only to be able to use the design process myself, but to teach it, in a simpler, shorter form, to my students.

Sound intriguing? Check it out at teachersguild.org!

Searching for excellent biographies for kids

I am searching for excellent biographies written for upper-elementary age children. I seem to have many examples of less than excellent biographies. I'm hoping readers of this post will offer some suggestions.

I would like to find this type of biography to use both as mentor texts and for research purposes. One of the writing projects our 4th graders do is a research project on a subject related to the American Revolution. Many of the students choose to research a person and write a biography. Over the years as I have read more biographies written for adult readers, I realize the limitations of many of the children's biographies about those same people. Some are not accurate, or not complete. Some are just not terribly interesting to read.

I am a fan of the blog Two Writing Teachers, and when I read this post on "Teaching Authentic Information Writing," I realized the ideas applied to writing for children, as well as teaching children to write. The post is about a presentation by author Ralph Fletcher, on how to help young writers find the story in their nonfiction topics to create lively written work with a personal voice and without getting trapped into reciting a list of facts. This is exactly the type of writing that many authors of new biographies and books about history, such as David McCullough's and David Hackett Fischer, to name just two, are writing now. They are fun to read, as opposed to what I remember from when I was in school.

In our research project, we require each student to read at least two sources on his/her topic. One source is usually a below grade level book that can be read quickly to get an overview of the person's life. I like the books of David Adler (A Picture Book of...) for this part of the research. The second source is usually a chapter book. The purposes of the second book are to find more details and to learn about the importance of using more than one source. It's always interesting when students find discrepancies between sources and need to decide how to handle them.

I am therefore looking for strong examples of biographies for younger readers. I collect books about the American Revolution for this project, but I would love to have excellent biographies for my class library a to use as mentor texts and to inspire my students to read more nonfiction. If you know of biographies that fit my description, please leave a comment giving the title and author. Thank you in advance!

Mission Geography with NASA

I am a big fan of  NASA's educational materials. I wrote previously about using a lesson from Mission Mathematics as part of problem solving in math. NASA also has an excellent geography curriculum, Mission Geography, which is available free on the NASA website.  They have created different curricula for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Teaching a gifted 4th grade class, I have used units from both the K-4 and 5-8 bands.

My class has just completed Investigation 1 in the unit "Mars and Earth - the Quest for Life." This is part of the 5-8 units. Investigation 1 is "Where do we choose to live and why?" This is a question our 4th graders have been exploring for the entire school year in Social Studies, beginning with the early English colonies. In an earlier blog post I shared the lesson plan from Colonial Williamsburg in which students are charged with examining the characteristics of several potential settlement sites, ranking them according to different criteria, and defending their choices of site. Later in the year, we saw the importance of waterways as transportation in the French and Indian War. We noted in colonial times leading up to the Revolutionary War that the colonies were all on the Atlantic coast and the major cities were all ports.

"Where do we choose to live and why?" reinforces these aspects of geography in history and brings the ideas into the present. In the first activity, Students are introduced to the concepts of patterns, dispersion and density in populations. Then students are given a satellite photo of New England at night, so what you see are the lights of human activity. The photo is not identified, so the first task students have is to identify from it was taken, what time of day it was, and what it is. There are a number of questions to answer about what can be seen in the photo, including, what are the completely dark areas (water), what patterns do you observe, and finally, what cities, water bodies, and other features can you identify. In my experience using this for a few year now, students usually need some scaffolding in understanding the concepts of pattern and dispersion when talking about human population, so I give additional examples beyond what Mission Geography offers. I also have students work in partners to have someone to discuss the questions with.

In the second activity, students receive a photo of the continental United States (and parts of Canada and Mexico), but it has been turned into a puzzle, being cut into eight rectangles. Their job is to reassemble it using their mental map of the country, with the night lights of cities as the guide. Most students can easily identify the east coast, and often California and Texas with the Gulf of Mexico The center of the country is the challenge. At this point I encourage students to use an atlas, look for the major cities, and assemble the country from those clues. There is a more extensive set of questions to answer after putting the country together. Some questions ask students to think about why there are no cities in parts of the continent. Using an atlas, they discover that the more empty portions of the country are mountains and deserts. They also use a plastic overlay and markers to outline the U.S. and highlight certain features. This is always a popular part of the activity! I collect the clear plastic from the ends of laminating to use as the overlays.

So far these activities have been a cooperative effort, working with partners, and then discussing answers as a whole class. The final activity in this section is applying everything they have learned to determine where people would settle on an unidentified satellite photo of Australia. This photo is a color image designating elevation. I have been disappointed in past years when I taught this lesson because my students had difficulty in successfully picking logical places to settle. They would often pick a place in the middle of Australia, rather than the coastlines, even though we has been discussing this for most of the school year. I decided that part of the problem was with a lack of scale. Though many of my students recognized that it was Australia, they didn't have a clear idea of how big the country/continent is. So this year I gave them the area and the distance north to south and east to west. Another possible issue is the color code for elevation uses a deep green for the lowest elevation, which may give a mistaken impression of lush forests. Students had frequently chosen the center of Australia as a good place to settle, while in reality is is about a thousand miles from the coastline and a desert. This year I went over the color code carefully.

I had students begin work alone and after about 15 or 20 minutes offered them a chance to partner up and share their ideas. This gave me time to walk around checking on understanding and misconceptions before they worked together. I was very pleased with the results of these tweaks. Almost all of my students demonstrated understanding of what people look for in a settlement, as well as the types of places people tend to live.

NASA's Mission Geography gives context to geographical concepts and allows students to apply them. Students are required to think and use what they know. There are many more units than the ones I use - I wish I had more time to teach geography!

The Pencil Problem

It seems that pencils are always in high demand in my classroom. Where do they all go? I start the year with 18 pencils per student and sometimes by the end of April, I have none left.

I decided to do another Quick Challenge on this issue to see what my 4th graders could make of it. I had some ideas about what was happening to the pencils, but since I had learned so much about lunch from the last Quick Challenge,  I didn't share any of my thoughts.

We started by partnering up and brainstorming together what some of the problems were. I stressed that they were only to think about the problems, not figure out solutions. Then we collected them all on the white board.

As you can see, they came up with quite a comprehensive list. Next, I asked them to choose one of the problems, or more if they thought they were connected, to come up with some solutions. I suggested they choose problems that interested them or that they thought would be fun to solve. The solutions were pretty straightforward. The erasers on the ends of the pencils get used up quickly, but they can use a separate eraser instead. Students could write their name or initials on their pencils. (I though this was a bit extreme, but several of them did this.) There were a few pencil hoarders in the class, who had more pencils in their desks than they could possibly use. One of them came up to me privately and asked if he could return some!

We didn't take this too seriously and had some fun with this problem. The activity reenforced the idea of taking time to examine the problem, and only after determining the cause(s) to move on to exploring solutions.

Problem solving in Geography and History

Geography is another area that lends itself to including problem solving. There are many essential questions that elementary students can consider while they're learning basic ideas of geography.

In our 4th grade social studies we explore the early British colonists and Jamestown and Plymouth before moving on to later colonial times and the American Revolution. We look at exactly what the settlers at Plymouth were looking for in a site for their colony and what circumstances led them to pick Plymouth. Then we contrast that with the decisions that the settlers of Jamestown made about their location. Neither group made the ideal choice. The Pilgrims were very pressed to find something before the winter weather grew even worse. The Jamestown settlers were being directed long distance from England by investors who were mostly concerned with finding gold.

I had the idea that we could incorporate geography by having students use a map of the Plymouth area to decide on a settlement location. They knew that the Pilgrim were looking for a spot with a high hill for a lookout over the ocean, flat lands for growing crops, fresh water, a nearby forest for both hunting and lumber, and a deep enough harbor for ships. Students had to apply their knowledge of map scale in choosing a location, and note the lakes and streams in the area. The other three criteria, however, were not apparent on the map we used.

Then, I attended the the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute and came home with so many wonderful teaching activities! One of them was a geography activity with a scenario set in 1630. It included all the concepts we wanted our students to deal with in their problem solving. They need to evaluate the conditions and connections of five possible settlement sites. The map is a made-up location. Each of the sites has advantages and disadvantages, so there is no correct or easy answer. Students have to think about what the settlers' goals in starting a settlement are, as well as what the site is like (conditions) and what is nearby (connections). This is the map from the activity:

We have the 4th graders work in small groups on this activity. There is always a lot of discussion. They are asked to rate each site for both positive and negative aspects, and to pick the locations with the best conditions, worst conditions, best connections, and worst connections before deciding upon the best site to build a fortified town in 1630.

I have not been able to find this activity on the Williamsburg teacher site, but I found two versions when I did a Google search. They are both a little different than the version I have, having been adapted for specific teaching situations. They can be found at Conditions and Connections Near Jamestown and Geography Activity: Conditions and Connections.

Another wonderful source for geography curriculum that requires problem solving is NASA. I will post about those activities later.

makeschooldifferent

There's been a challenge traveling around Twitter recently with the hashtag #makeschooldifferent. The challenge is to list 5 things that begin with 'When it comes to education, we have to stop pretending..." There have been lots of responses with lists, covering lots of aspects of education today. As I read just some of the many thoughtful and thought-provoking lists, I thought about my own teaching, and of the frustrations many teachers face, and also my own children's experience in school. The challenge started with a post by Scott McLeod, which you can read here.

Here's my list:

We have to stop pretending ...

1. That covering the curriculum is the same thing as students learning skills and information.
2. The recess has no value.
3. That music and art are entertaining extras.
4. That a noisy classroom can't also be a productive learning environment.
5. That teachers are only teaching when they're giving direct instruction..

I teach at a wonderful independent school that serves gifted children from preschool through 8th grade. We have the freedom to try new things and we have been given many great tools to help us, especially in technology. Visitors to our school always comment on the positive energy and creativity they see. So my 5 things are not so much about my school as what I read  about education generally. But we still struggle with the changes that are constantly happening - in technology, student populations, what is important to teach in the 21st century, how do we fit it all it ...

An educator who I respect very much recently said in conversation that we are in a tsunami of educational change that we are not yet aware of. One thing that is certain is that education be different.

Houston, we are set for launch

When you're trying to add more problem solving opportunities to the curriculum, math is a natural area. A valuable source for math and science problem solving is Mission Mathematics, jointly published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and NASA. The book is available at four different grade levels ranging from preschool through high school. It contains many activities that require students to apply their math knowledge to successfully complete investigations that incorporate aeronautics, astronomy, and other space-related subjects. I have used activities with both kindergartners and 3rd and 4th graders.

One of the investigations that my partner and I do every year is the Protractor Rocket Launches. Like the other activities in Mission Mathematics, this is a structured investigation. Students are presented with the question of what will happen when a rubber band is launched at three different angles, 30, 60 and 90 degrees. They are given instructions on how to construct a launcher using a protractor, ruler, and tape. Then they use this to collect data by launching multiple times at the three different angles. Students work in small groups throughout this activity, which is a valuable collaborative experience.

Over the years, I have tweaked and added to the original directions for the lesson. I have students write their predictions before beginning. Most of my students realize that a rubber band shot at a 90 degree angle will go straight up, but they don't always intuit from that that a 60 degree launch will not go as far as a 30 degree one. A 30 degree launch can go quite far - we go into the hallways for the launching part of this activity.

Launching rubber bands and recording data

After the data is collected, we have students find the statistical landmarks, and then, thinking about what they learned from this experiment about angles of launch, they decide how best to graph the data. They have already spend a significant number of math classes on data and graphing, so at this point I stress to them that their goal is to communicate the big idea of this experiment, so how they choose to graph it must clearly show that big idea. I have had students try line graphs, bar graphs, line plots, and stem and leaf plots. Thankfully, no one has ever thought that a circle graph would work. Many 4th graders think they need to graph every single launch, while others realize that they can use the mean or median to communicate the important information. We use all of those choices to discuss what really is the big idea - that 30 degree launches go the furthest, 90 degrees goes the least far because it is going straight up, and 60 degrees is in the middle. Then we look at the variety of choices in graphing and think about which kind of graph best communicates this.

We also have students answer questions about whether one angle of launch is "best," or if there are appropriate uses for each angle. I also ask them to think about how they might improve the experiment or add onto it if they were going to launch more rubber bands. I have found that students often focus on other variables in the experiment that were not controlled for, such as how far everyone is pulling back the rubber band before letting it launch. These questions are often homework.

Altogether, this project takes us about 3 days.

This is a more structured experience than some of the open design thinking projects, but it requires thoughtful decision making, use of real collected data, and making connections to real life applications. It is also a productive break from the normal math lessons and an opportunity to use collaborative skills. Kids really enjoy this break from routine!