Cantilever Discovery Activity

My grade sevens were busy doing their great spaghetti cantilever o'science building challenge.  We talked about cantilevers while making a human cantilever in class with a long 2 x 8 board, a classroom table and the students as parts of the cantilever.  Then, it was time for them to try one for themselves.  They were given 25 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, 30 cm of tape and 60 cm of string.  After we tested their creations, we then did our notes on cantilevers and did a little classroom/school grounds search-and-find for cantilevers in real life.  Two periods of fun and learning.

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Get Crackin' Egghead Helmet Project

We  had fun learning about material science by designing, building and testing a helmet for our egghead friends!  (Most named Shell-don, Shelly or Egg-bert.)  The students had fun drawing on a face before their egg  was dropped through the test chamber in the drop zone we made from an old packing box.  

I am adamant that the kids must be immersed in essential learning outcomes from the program of studies while doing project work.   Without an emphasis on content through the project, I fear the students will be engaged and have fun, but with a shallow understanding of science.  The students used their word wall words in planning and explaining their design.  They used the key terms and the accompanying concepts as parameters for their helmet (i.e. they had to describe how they made it aesthetically pleasing, how it was environmentally friendly and they had to work within a budget of $50.00 "Bill Bucks" in honour of our favorite scientist, Bill Nye.  They loved to come to the materials store and purchase supplies with their Bill Bucks! Students had to pay an environmental levy if they wanted to use materials that the class deemed to be bad for the environment.  They used terms like composite, layered, aesthetics, durability, and function in their write ups.  They are getting better at explaining their thinking with correct science vocabulary.  I refer often to the anchor chart we co-constructed on how to communicate like a scientist.   Students incorporated their numeracy skills by compiling data, calculating averages of success of different material types and drawing a graph of their final data.  A fun few class periods of learning with lots of rich learning (and lots of splattered eggs in the drop zone!)

Get Crackin' Project

budget list

notes chart

Why I Do Performance Based Assessments

My grade sevens were finishing up their interactive notebooks on shapes in structures and how to reinforce them.  They were very proud of the work they had created and felt confident in their learning when I talked with them.  Looking at their Do Now answers from the start of the class and their exit slips, they appeared to know the content.  It was time for a summative assessment.

I told them that their assessment would be a building challenge.  One student asked me if it would be multiple choice!  I explained that they would show me what they have learned and what they still need to work through by building a structure using the knowledge they had just been working through.  I introduced the building challenge and had them working through their designs in their teams.

One student asked me if it was cheating by working together on an assessment.  It was clear that my students had preconceptions about what an assessment should be and that I had not done a very good job of explaining why I wanted them to build instead of circling "c" on a paper.  I stopped the class and the students at her table team to answer a few questions about what we were learning.  They could tell me what the strongest shape was, how it was strong, how to reinforce it, how to use it in a building  design, etc.  They answered each question I asked them beautifully.  Then I asked them to look at what they were designing for their challenge.  None of those ideas were present.  I asked each team to look at their design- were they applying their learning from the textbook tower challenge, form their notebook work and from the discussions we have had  to the new situation?  I told the class that THIS is why were doing our assessment this way.  I told them that they have memorized the vocabulary wonderfully, but we needed to see that they truly LEARNED the concepts.  It was a beautiful moment of clarity for them.  We briefly discussed memorizing vs learning and why we do assessments that check how well you learned the vocabulary (like exit slips and multiple choice tests), and how well you learned and can APPLY the concepts, like team assessments.

I will continue to be overt in explaining my assessment methods to my students throughout the year.  I hope it helps them be more cognizant of their role in their own learning and to wean them of the do a test-get a mark way of thinking about learning.

Here are some pictures of a straw bridge building assessment in which teams of students had to apply their knowledge, build and test a structure, then write about it using their word wall words and key concepts.

Setting criteria with students

I was fortunate to attend an Anne Davies conference in August with a few wonderful colleagues from my school.  As my school district has done much work on assessment, much of the conference was reaffirming and a reminder of powerful best practices.  One that I was excited to learn about is a twist on my practice of creating rubrics with students.  I have been doing this for years, but the method Anne taught us takes the students away from grades and focuses more on student analysis of their essential learnings. It frustrated me when I spent time with my students creating rubrics and providing written feedback to their work when all they would do is look at the number when they got their work back.  "I got a 3; that means 75%)  Urgh!  Much of Anne's work presented at the conference focused on creating criteria with students around the outcomes from the program of studies with no numbers attached (including a 1-4 rubric scale).

With my grade seven students, we co-constructed criteria on what it means to collaborate.  My school  has a strong focus on 21st century competencies that provide a strong base for project based learning.  I am hopeful that having the students consciously think about what it means to collaborate before we begin our first project will result in deeper learning for all.

With my grade nines, we co-constructed criteria on what a lab write up should look like.  As we are starting our year with chemistry, it was a logical fit.  Students then self assessed their first lab against their criteria and made improvements.  The resulting lab reports were of higher quality than I usually see at the start of the year.  More importantly, however, the students can articulate what their strengths and areas of challenge are when designing and conducting a lab.  We will continue to work through similar processes as the year progresses.  It seems to be quite a successful strategy thus far.

Criteria for Lab Write Up

Criteria for Collaboration

Criteria for Communication

Leaning Tower of Textbooks Mini Project

I began the Structures and Forces unit with my sevens by introducing their first project- the Leaning Tower of Textbooks.  I have used the same activity in the past, but not in the framework of PBL and not with the same lens of student competencies (AKA 21st century skills).  As this is the second year of operation of my new school, I wanted to see what my sevens internalized from a year of PBL and competency work under their belts.  I also wanted to see if the learning was different when the tower challenge was presented to them in PBL fashion.  The students did a fabulous job and demonstrated reflective thinking on what they were learning.  It was indeed a deeper level of learning for them than my former students, based on the conversations we had and the analysis of the success and failures of each structure tested.  Having a driving question, creating questions we wanted to answer, and other aspects of the PBL model created a framework to take the task to that higher level for the students.  It was more than just a fun activity that they had to debrief at the end.

The students also did a good job working on their collaboration competency.  We co-constructed criteria on what effective collaboration looked like and students self reflected on how well they met the criteria at the end of the process.  The act of making the competencies so transparent and upfront with our students has been beneficial to them.  I am looking forward to diving into our next project.  I know my students will do great things!

Leaning Tower of Textbooks

Update on student notebooks

My students and I are still new at building notebooks that are more interactive and meaningful to them than ones filled with  note sheets created by me.  We all have much to learn and perfect, I expect.  With only a few weeks into the experiment, I have to say that they love doing the creating!  I also gain valuable feedback from seeing what they are doing with the information, seeing what misconceptions they may have, and seeing how they process the essential learnings.  It is assessment without a worksheet in site!

For their latest concept, my grade sevens chose from 4 formats to create meaning on common shapes used in structures.  They came up with some wonderful ways to sort their research and enjoyed sharing their ideas with their peers.  We discussed the many ways to organize their learning and they shared supplies with each other as well as using the common supplies I have in my classroom.  It will be interesting to see how the engagement in this process impacts their sustained learning, if at all.  At  first, I was reluctant to "give up" photocopying my notes sheets that I have constructed over the years, as I felt they were well thought out, organized and required student input.  This bit of ego was fleeting, replaced by my strong hope that the messy business of students creating their own meaning would lead to deeper understanding.  (And hopefully having them see value in their notebook and pride in the work that they created!)