by: Mery Tellez
Creating high performance in our classroom is
definitively a challenging and interesting question to answer. In an effort to do so, I am going to analyze
three different strategies or techniques, that have proved to help improve or
have been successful in different scenarios:
The strategies used by Chinese Math teachers, The STEAM and PBL
techniques, and the Whole-Brain Teaching Strategy.
So let’s get started with PBL. After reading about this, and watching some
of the classrooms working with PBL and STEAM, particularly, the Roller Coaster
Physics video referenced below, I can clearly see a couple of components that
get me excited about it. The management
of feedback between themselves (students) and evaluation pieces are clearly
determining of the success of this strategy.
Providing opportunities for students to be communicators and knowledge
or information bringers is definitively one of the highlights of the strategies
of PBL. It is remarkable and it seems
like this level of empowerment, is one of the pieces that contributes to the
development of a collaborative, well behaved class as well. This seems to be
the technique that brings together most of the positive behavior that is
experienced by a classroom with students, highly motivated and challenged.
The norms and procedures designed by the
teacher in this STEAM classroom, are designed to guide the progress and to give
some sense of structure to the kids while they develop their projects. Given that these projects are big tasks that
involve and require a long term planning and organization, it is understandable
that this level of organization and planning is pre-provided for the students,
but I cannot help but to wonder specially in some of the discussion that are
evident in the video from the Roller Coaster Physics lesson, if there isn’t too
much guidance from the teacher. How much of what is being presented is teacher
guided and how much is actually student created. I see a lot of teacher intervention. It is a
difficult balance to provide guidance without falling towards
intervention.
At the end, the most valuable piece of
information that I would like to transfer to my own practice is definitively
the intention of the projects. Real-life experiences do play a roll
particularly in student motivation and sense of achievement. Seeing a grade in a paper cannot compare to
the excitement that you can clearly see in the group at the end of the video
when the marble stopped and didn’t crash at the end of their roller coaster.
PBL creates the foundation for students to
later be able to translate the knowledge from their different areas into
products and ideas. My students in the
IB program will have to join other students in other areas of the group 4
(Sciences) to create a project in which each member will bring in pieces from
their different experiences, and I think that giving them the chance to face
challenges and to have opportunities for inquiry and discovery is the right
path to help them to be able to comply with that kind of challenge at the end
of their IB diploma program and later in life.
The second strategy or technique that has been
historically proven as efficient and high performing is the Chinese math
techniques. From the video and the
article from Reynolds (2014), I’ve taken some aspects that seem to be more
worrisome than inspiring. The whole-class
particularity that we can see in the video and in the article, might be
efficient, but one cannot help to wonder, how many kids are left behind in the noise
of the chanting. How many kids are
simply following along while the same ones are the only ones participating and
repeating?
I believe the success of the Chinese math
technique is not so much on the technique but on our evaluation system. Is not that it is effective or more effective
than any other, is simply that is such, that it benefits our current evaluation
and classification of abilities systems.
In the article we can see how in the Chinese
system, there are teachers that openly accept that they are teaching to the
exam, not to develop a skill or any kind of higher level thinking ability.
So, when it comes to the question of high
standards, I will have to say: definitively, but I also will ask to re-evaluate
what those high standards are or should be for our classrooms and educational
system.
The article also makes and emphasis on the lack
of horizontal alignment with other subjects, and it is quite interesting how
this contrast with the previous example of PBL in which great value is given to
integration of areas and application of knowledge. Skills that will be crucial
for our students in the future, much more so at least, that their latest score
in a standardized test. Bottom line,
this technique, gave to me a better perspective of what not to do according to
what I value and want to see in my students.
More on this later.
Lastly, I read and watched a couple of videos
about the Whole Brain Teaching. After
learning and reading about this technique, I realize that I might be much more
close-minded than what I thought I was, as I felt immediately reluctant to utilize
any of the techniques suggested by this movement. I forced myself to see the benefits in the behavioral
rules or in the expectations that teachers have for their students under the
whole brain institute, but I can only see a couple of very isolated advantages
in this technique. Particularly in
regards to discipline and control, or better, to keep students in task. It seems like it was much easier to identify
a student out of task during individual or group work as it is easy to spot the
one that is not doing crazy movements.
There are definite advantages in some of the
used strategies such as paraphrasing, and short lesson instruction. It is true that you lose kids as you extend
your talking. And grabbing back their
attention can be a real challenge.
I think this is one of the aspects that I feel
I could actually incorporate. Breaking
information in smaller chunks, and making really short lessons, then stopping
and giving space for collaboration and individual work, and then making the lessons
spiral into new content while reviewing the content covered already.
At the end, watching and reading about the
different techniques oriented to high performance, makes me question what does
it mean to have high standards for our students, and how can we define what a
high performance class is.
The performance of our classes is given by many
different measures; internal assessment, school wide or district wide
assessments, standardized tests, university acceptance, retention of students
in HS, completion of HS, all of those standards for performance are different
for each one of us and vary from country to country and from school to school.
In my current situation, I have a group of
students from 7th, 10th and 11th grade that
are going to be measured by international standardized assessments, and my
class will be classified as a high or low performance class based on those
results. These students come from many
different backgrounds and individual demands in their families and their
cultures.
For me, as a professional, my first measure is
their learning, despite the fact that I need to comply with my school and their
families’ demands, I go to my school and plan my classes everyday with the only
intention of helping them and accompany them while they progress against their
own levels and as they succeed on their own goals. But the reality is that I need to also keep
reminding myself of our external measures, and of my obligation towards them to
push them towards those goals as well.
In looking at the different strategies
presented above, I find myself doubtful as of to what use do any of them have
to my current classroom.
I guess there is value in any of the pieces I
mentioned already before, and I do plan to implement them and make it part of
my teaching, but to me there has to be something else, that makes me feel not
only successful number wise, but also motivated to see them grow, and not in
scores, but also as human beings, and as thinkers, and as future builders of
our society.
What I am aiming for, is more in the lines of
inquiry based instruction, and developing deeper thinking skills in my student
(along with whatever content they require).
I have seen first hand the adults that have come out from memorizing,
and content repetitive based system, and I have seen the current status of our
society, and I firmly believe that what we need is definitively not another
generation full of diplomas, high scores and massive amounts of information,
but instead we need an analytical, compassionate, creative and interested in
problem solving group of adults that could help our society to move forward.
The interesting part is that it seems like
there is such a think as a perfect scenario; methodologies and movements like
the deeper learning network (Lenz, 2014), have been able to successfully probe
the effectiveness of their programs under many of the afore mentioned
standards: school retention, higher scores, college graduates, stronger
interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, equal opportunities for learning and
being successful for diverse groups of students are only some of the results
compiled by this network.
“Test scores are everything but an indicator of
what our students can do” – This quote from Clay (2016), has been more compelling
for me, than any of the videos or articles I mentioned before. In this article,
Clay talks about intrinsic motivation or the lack of it, and its effects in
student performance.
Her strategy: Autonomy, Purpose and
self-motivation. Helping her students to
build these crucial skills, has helped her to improve test scores, but more
importantly to show them that at the end it is about them, about their own
growth. She has presented testing to her
students under a different light, and has show them real motivation on
improving, and I believe her success is more than anything else based on the
fact that her strategy came from them, from their needs, from their beliefs and
from their realities. Her first step was
to survey their feelings about testing, and the reasons they think hide behind
their low scores. Through this, she has
empowered them to take ownership over their own strategy for improvement.
With that in mind, I would like to conclude by
saying, that I intend to do exactly the same, I will not follow any of the
afore mentioned strategies, not even this last one, the only thing that I will
do, is to continue to get to know my students, is to connect with them, and to
find the best way possible to use any or all of these strategies as my toolbox
to device the perfect strategy that will fit only them, only this year, only
the now. I will plan for them, and not to follow a trend, a research or a
success story from far away. And I
invite you all to do exactly the same.
Sources:
Biffle, C. (2011,
May 31). Whole Brain Teaching Richwood High - The Basics [Video file]. In
Youtube. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iXTtR7lfWU&feature=youtu.be
Biffle, C. (2011,
February). One Minute Lessons | Total Visits 751 | Whole Brain Teaching.
Retrieved November 11, 2016, from http://wholebrainteaching.com/beginner/one-minute-lessons/
Chen, C. (2011, June
13). 3rd grade Chinese--math class [Video file]. In Youtube. Retrieved November
11, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7LseF6Db5g
Clay, V. (2016, May
11). Intrinsic Motivation vs. Standardized Tests. Retrieved November 11, 2016,
from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/intrinsic-motivation-vs-standardized-tests-valencia-clay
Migdol, D. (2012,
October). Roller Coaster Physics: STEM in
Action [Video file]. In Teaching Channel. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-stem-strategies
Lenz, B. (2014,
October). New Evidence: Deeper Learning Improves Student Outcomes. Retrieved
November 11, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-evidence-deeper-learning-improves-student-outcomes-bob-lenz
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