The Evolution of my Teaching

Over the past years I have been re-thinking my approach to teaching.

The focus of my evolution as a teacher is on the shifting of ownership. After all, who is supposed to own the learning?

I am in the process of evolving from having a teacher-centered classroom where I am the provider of knowledge and the designer of assessments to focusing on developing and supporting my students learning autonomy. I strive for a learner-centered environment where students actively participate to construct their knowledge and reflect on their learning process.

As part of my teaching evolutionary process I have taken some elements to focus on each year. Last year I focused on ways to engage my students through connections. You can read my blog posting here: Engage = Connect.

Focus: Assessments
For this school year, my evolution focuses on assessments.

What is the objective of assessments?
Is it how well my students can regurgitate facts or how well they can find the “formula” to solve a problem? What if the day before an assessment a student had a cello recital to prepare for or they had a basketball game and arrived home not until 10:00 pm? How can a grade on a quiz or a test reflect their best?

The word assessment has a Latin root: assidere. It means to sit beside. In an educational context, the process of observing learning; describing, collecting, recording, scoring, and interpreting information about a student's or one's own learning. 

I see assessment as an ongoing process that informs me and my students and gauges the learning progression. I partner with my students to facilitate their learning and they appreciate not being constrained by fixed deadlines and dead-end quiz scores as they have ample opportunities to demonstrate that “they can” accomplish every single one of our Learning Objectives.

Authentic Assessments

I like to offer a variety of authentic assessments in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential physics concepts and scientific skills.

The most important feature of authentic assessments is that they provide multiple paths to the students’ demonstration of their learning.

This is an example from our kinematics unit. The students were presented with a Lab Practicum challenge:

‘At what position will two cars moving at different speeds collide if they are released from opposite ends at different times? Cars are 2 meters apart and one car is released 3 seconds after the first one.’

Instead of writing a traditional lab report, students created a video of their lab by engaging in a collaborative approach to the construction of knowledge. Take a look at one of the teams presenting their video as a TV show reporting on a train accident. The team used the experiment as a model to investigate the incident and demonstrated their understanding of kinematics through multiple representations of knowledge:

Another assessment asked the students to pose a question and apply their knowledge of kinematics to answer their question. Within the final product they had room for different modes of expression. Here are a few examples:

Trey's Project: If baseball was played on the moon, how far would a Ian Kinsler home run go?

Hannah's Project: How does my free-throw shot compare to Coach Schroeder's shot? 

Dylan's Project: When the blue bird in Angry Birds splits into three, do the speeds change? 

McKenna's Project: What's the initial velocity at which I was thrown in a cheerleader's cradle?

The class also completed a series of Performance Task Assessments where they were presented with context rich scenarios that required a meaningful application of the concepts. Context-rich tasks discourage the ‘plug and chug’ approach. These multi-step problems are constructed as a short story in which the main character is the student.

Evaluation
At the end of the trimester I gave the class a thorough class evaluation. It was meant to help them look back into the first three months of class and think deeper about their learning.
Selected questions and student responses can be seen below:

So, where are you in your evolution as a teacher?

Credits:

Image Creative Commons license by Stefan 
Image Creative Commons license by toolstop 
Ideas:
Thank you to Kelly O'Shea and John Burke for inspiration in creating the evaluation questions.

Engage = Connect

As the beginning of the school year gets underway I ask myself this question:

“What learning environment will I provide so that my students can’t wait ‘til the next class?”

I believe that every person is unique and every child can learn, but I recognize that students learn best when engaged, where expectations are appropriately challenging within an environment that is both safe and that contributes to the dignity and self-worth of all. Students respond to encouragement and to a structuring of time and activities that reinforces their striving to meet and exceed those expectations while at the same time recognizing their increasing capacity to manage responsibility and independence.

I also believe that engagement depends on quality interactions resulting from connections that happen inside and outside of the classroom.

Here are some of my Engaging-Connection ideas to make learning exciting and enjoyable in Honors Physics this year:

1. I will engage my students by making connections to their passions:
In Sports:
Our first major project is to design a special issue for a sports magazine (similar to “Sports Illustrated”) for their selected sport. This project will engage them as they construct their knowledge of the concepts of kinematics and forces.

In Music:

- As part of our unit in waves and sound, the students will design and build their own musical instrument.
- Our last day of school before the holidays in December, my students will create and perform their own Physics Carols.

In Art:
For the 6^th year, my students will participate in the AAPT Photo Physics Contest taking their own photos and explaining the physics behind them. For the past two years we’ve had three students showcased at the AAPT Summer Meetings where their photos have been admired by hundreds of physics teachers and professors from around the world.

2. I will engage my students by making connections to popular digital games.

Take a look at our classroom bulletin board:

Students were thrilled when they found out that I am an Angry Birds fan (well, who isn’t?).

We will have an opportunity to do a quantitative analysis of the game in order to answer some of these questions:

a. What is the mass of each of the Angry Birds?

b. What is the gravitational field in Angry Birds world?
c. Using energy conservation, calculate the coefficient of restitution when a bird bounces off the wall.

d. Is momentum conserved when the blue bird splits into three?
e. Does the white bird accurately represent projectile motion when it drops an egg?
(Thanks to Frank Noschese for his ideas!)

3. I will engage my students by making connections to the physics concepts through investigations and experimentation.

The development of physics concepts occurs best in a hands-on, inquiry-based environment. My students will design and test their own investigations as opposed to just following directions in cookbook type labs.

In the unit of Simple Harmonic Motion, my students will investigate the factors affecting the period of a pendulum. The culminating activity of this unit will be their constructing their own snake pendulum just like this one:

4. I will engage my students by facilitating their connection to the world through their own blogs.

The use of digital tools will afford them the opportunity to deepen their skills in communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creation. At the same time, as part of a connected global community, my students will become self-starters who can model and coach while knowing how to learn and share with transparency and respect.

5. I will engage my students by enabling them to connect their learning progress to our physics learning objectives.

Our current educational systems, in both public and independent schools force the students to focus on their grades as opposed to focusing on their learning.

I have modified my grading policy to shift this focus from “getting an A” to “becoming proficient” in physics though a modified version of performance-based assessment. My students have received a copy of our Learning Objectives. As we move through the topics, the students have the responsibility of keeping track of their own progress. Their final grades will reflect their most recent learning. One nice caveat of this approach is the opportunity to skip homework assignments if they have mastered a specific topic. (Shhh, don’t tell them yet!)

6. I will engage my students by making professional connections:

a. With my colleagues at school:

Working together in vertical and horizontal teams will allow me to bring opportunities for cross-curricular activities that will enrich my students’ learning experience.

b. By participating in vibrant learning communities through Twitter and blogs and connecting with members of my PLN (Personal Learning Network) I will continue to grow as a learner and an educator.

I would love to hear your strategies for having your students engaged through connections!

Cross-Posted at Voices From the Learning Revolution (PLP Network #vflr)

Image Credits:

http://www.sxc.hu/profile/cobrasoft

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krish4u/