Reflection

In my opinion there are two things a teacher can do to improve their teaching and have a better classroom experience. 

1.  Reflect.

2. Say YES.

Today I want to talk about reflection. (Say YES, is coming soon...)

Today was one of those days.  It followed a SUPER AWESOME lesson on the Declaration of Independence (found here) and unfortunately turned out just blah.  (Although part of this could be that I hadn't seen my 8th graders in 5 days...block schedule is murder on a holiday weekend!)

The students were required to do more independent work with two different sources that had different opinions.  The problem was, they weren't getting it.  I'm still not sure if this is because they truly don't understand what to do, or because they want to be spoon fed answers so that everyone gets an A.  Honestly, it's probably both. 

Now to my point of this post.  Reflection.

I could just sit here and create a post about why kids today want all the answers and how no one wants kids to EVER fail, so that creates teens who don't want to work and just want everything handed to them.

I could say that kids today are just lazy.

It is very easy for teachers to pass the blame of a poor lesson on to the students.   But that doesn't make a better classroom.  The students end up getting the same poor lessons, and the teachers just continue to get mad because of "kids these days..."

Reflection is something that will make a better teacher and an overall better classroom because it is ongoing. 

But it is hard.

You have to take a good HONEST look at your lesson or activity and try to figure out what didn't work.

Then you have to fix it.

About half way through my class today I figured out how to fix it.  How to make it better.  In fact, how to make it awesome. 

(Awesome in "teacher vocabulary" not teen talk, because my idea involves preparing the students throughout the entire unit to write an essay at the end.  They don't think it's awesome.  For some reason anytime I mention that they are going to have to write, there are groans and moans like I just told them they were going to have creamed spinach for lunch.)

The good news is, some things, methods and delivery I can change right away.  Daily work instruction and modeling to get the results I want, and be SURE that the reason for a poor lesson, wasn't my approach.  The problem is that to make the entire unit awesome, I can't do until next year, when I start again.  This unit is almost over, it would be unfair for me to try to force an essay on them, which I haven't prepared them for.  However, that doesn't mean I can apply the methods to future lessons and units :)

In the mean time, I have taken notes, written down what I want to do and how things need to change.  And am beginning to rethink everything for next year. 

HONEST reflection is a MUST for any teacher who wants to continue to improve and make their classroom better.   Good teachers do things that are difficult.  It can be very difficult to look at yourself, your teaching methods, and your poor lesson with open and honest eyes to discover what the REAL reason was. 

Then go to work and make it better.

History in a Bag - Part 2

"Mrs. Weber, why do we need to learn about history?  I mean, it's in the past, what does it matter now."

The "typical" history teacher response usually goes like this.  "Because in order to not repeat the bad things in history we need to learn from them."

Yeah, yeah, that may be true.  But that's a boring answer.

Today, my students got another answer out of me.

I prepped this activity with my previous blog about the first day of school activity "History in a Bag."  If you missed it, click here, and read about it.  I'll wait...

....All caught up?  Good.

***This post is long.  Read it anyway.  You will be glad you did.***

Today my 7th graders came in seeing a big box which had a grocery bag taped to it with the words "REAL History in a Bag."  (The items were too big to put in the actual bag.)

 There were also 5 questions on the board with the statement that said:  By the end of today's activity you should be able to answer the following questions.

1. Was the person who owned all of these items male or female?
2. What was his or her name?
3. Where did he or she live?
4. What did he or she do for a living?
5. What were some of his or her hobbies.

We then reviewed our two vocabulary words from last class period.  This sort of shocked them because we never wrote down definitions, used terms in sentences or drew illustrations.  I never even said "we have two vocab words we are going to learn today."  They didn't even realize we talked about vocab words last class.  Then I told them to think about their bags and what the purpose of that activity was... and wouldn't you know, they were quickly able to identify our words.  Primary Source and Infer.  They could also tell me the definitions and give examples.

I love it!  They learned and didn't even realize!  Score one for the teacher!

Next I told them today we would be taking the process we learned last time and applying it to a "real" history in a bag, with primary sources.  (See what I did there...taking something we previously learned and APPLYING it the next day.  The education gurus would be so proud of me!)

***There were literally hundreds of ways that I could have organized this lesson, the way I finally decided to do it was based on purely time.  How to squeeze in 5 cool primary sources, discussion, and learning in one 75 minute class period.***

• I started off by handing each student a worksheet and a playing card.  The worksheet was divided in to 5 sections, one for each station, which would each have an item from the bag.  Each station had 3-5 questions that the students were to answer by studying the items.  Each object started off with the question:  Is this a primary or secondary source?  And What type of source is it; Artifact, Letter, Newspaper Article, or Photo.  After that the questions were specific to the item that was there. 

• The students looked at their playing cards and went to the station that matched.  All they needed was a pencil and their worksheet.  I then passed out the items that belonged at each station.

1. Jewelry:
   
2. Letters:
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Box #1: A Tackle Box (the kids did not know this...they had to use the clues)
   
   
   
   
4. Box #2:  Sewing Box...again, students had to use the clues.
   
   
   
   
5. Newspaper Article
   

• Students now got to spend 5 minutes at each station studying the items and answering the questions which included "What is this?" "Who made it?" "What was the purpose of this?" The newspaper article and letter asked questions over what they read.
  

• When time was up and all stations had been visited, the students went back to their seats and discussed with their groups the answers they inferred from studying the items.  After about 5 minutes of team discussion we then discussed as a class.  I wanted to hear what they inferred.  Some of them were correct, some of them were wrong.  But to hear the students talk with such enthusiasm (and in some cases, argue) about what they thought about each object was exactly what I was going for.  They cared.  They wanted to be right.  And they WANTED to learn the truth.

• The next task involved team discussion again.  I instructed the group to write down answers to the five questions on the board, based only on what they discovered from the objects.   This was again, everything I wanted from them.  All groups all day long answered every question right.
• Was the owner of these items male or female?  Male
• What was his name?  Paul A. Lohmeyer
• Where was he from?  Kansas City
• What did he do for a living?  He was the president of a jewelry company called, The Green Company Inc. 
• What were some of his hobbies?  Fishing and sewing (sewing wasn't really a hobby, the story is much cooler about the sewing box...I'm getting there.)

Finally we were to the point of class that all the students were waiting for.  The answers.  The stories. 

• I passed around a photo of Paul Lohmeyer so they could put a face to all of this information that they discovered today.
  

The Answers:

The Jewelry:

Mr. Lohmeyer was President of the Green Company Inc.  He made these two pieces out of a thimble cut in half and dipped in gold.  The flowers were old tie pins that men used to wear to hold their ties in place on their shirts.  These pins were a gift for his wife.

The Letters:

One of my favorites!  Mr. Lohmeyer had many high profile clients.  He designed and sold a charm to Princess Grace of Monaco, more popular in the U.S. for her movie films such as "To Catch a Thief."  Grace Kelly.  This is the thank you letter she sent him.  Watching the students try to figure out the signature was great!  They did a great job using the clues on the envelope to discover that Monaco wasn't her last name, but some type of city or country.

The Tackle Box:

Probably one of the easiest.  Mr. Lohmeyer enjoyed fishing.

The Sewing Box:  (Are you ready for this...)

Mr. Lohmeyer also served in the Army during World War Two.  He raised to the rank of Captain and was placed in charge of a German Prisoner of War Camp.  His treatment of the prisoners respectful and fair.  To thank Captain Lohmeyer, the POW's made this box for him.  Without tools.  The screws were inserted with a can lid.  Even some of the pieces were fashioned out of a can.  See...I told you.  Cool stuff.
 
The Newspaper Article:

I do not have the actual newspaper article for the kids. I had to copy the words myself.

 Mr. Lohmeyer stopped off at an animal auction one day, just for the fun of it.  With all the bidding excitement he joined right in and ended up buying a Hampshire Lamb, and taking it home in the back seat of his car (can you imagine his wife when he got home???)  The lamb lived in his back yard and his two daughters would walk the lamb on a leash up and down their suburban street.  The neighbors must have been entertained!

The conclusion:  Mr. Lohmeyer bought that lamb in October of 1967, little over a year later on December 3, 1968 he was killed in a car accident on his way home.  He was 55 years old.  This picture is a school photo of his youngest daughter in 7th grade, less than a year after he died.  Her name is Julie.

This is her today on the far right. I am pictured on the far left with my sister in the middle.  My daughter is the cute little baby.

Gasps.  Oooo's.  Ah Ha!

The kids figure out the connection.  Paul Lohmeyer was my grandfather.

Why do we study history???

Because HISTORY. IS. AWESOME.  Because history is more than just dates of events that took place in the past.  History is full of stories, awesome stories about ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives.  History doesn't just tell us how our country was founded and who fought who in which war. History tells us who WE are and how WE got here.  It is a part of all of us.  And it is AWESOME!

History in a Bag - Part 1

I always hated the first day of school as a student.  Not because I had to go to school, I liked school fine.  Because all we did were rules, rules, and more rules.  Ugh!  Suckfest. 

I am embarrassed to admit it, that the first few years of my teaching career that's what I did.  I tried to disguise it with a "scavenger hunt" or station "activities," but it was still just rules.  I still hated it.  I was still bored by it.  But I felt like I HAD to do it.  The kids need to know what to expect in my class. 

By the end of the day I wanted to beat my head against the wall.  So I'm sure my students felt like that too. 

So a couple years I changed it up.  Each day I do a few "Need to Knows."  Select rules and policies that the students need to know on that specific day.  The first day my 7th graders meet me, they need to know that they must be an ACTIVE participant in this class.  It is a must.  But they don't need to know my late work policy until we start having assignments. This allows me to spread out my "rules" and get right down to business.

Today was my first day with 7th graders, and after a brief introduction of myself, tour of my classroom, and the select "Need to Knows" for the day we jumped in.

The activity is called History in a Bag and I took the idea from here.  But you know me (or you will very quickly) and know that I can't just leave it at taking someones idea.  I have to jazz it up a bit.  Make it fit my classroom and what I want my kids to gain from the activity.

Today was part 1. 

• We had a discussion on what history is, how historians find the information, what a primary source is and how historians use a variety of sources and points of view to infer what happened.  The more sources and the more reliable the source is, the easier it is to be accurate in the story.  I told the kids that today they would get their first chance to "Think like a Historian."  Something they will be asked to do MANY times this year.

• I gave each student an empty paper bag and instructed them to fill the bag with 5 items that they have with them (or in their lockers) and place the bag on the empty group in the front of the room.

  

  Bags filled with artifacts ready to be discovered!

• Each student was then given a bag at random along with questions to answer about about the owner of the bag.  They could only use the items in the bag to answer the questions.
• The questions were...
• Is the owner of the bag male or female?  What makes you think this?
• What is a hobby this person might have?  What makes you think this?
• What type of music do you think this person likes to listen to?  What makes you think this?
• Who do you think is the owner of the bag.

• For some students the answers were easy.  Pink lip-gloss, perfume, and a key that says Princess were some good artifacts to use to answer the questions.

  

  Male or Female???

  
  

  

  Hmmm...Deodorant?  I wonder if he or she play sports?

  
  

  

  "I don't even know what this is?!?!"

  
  

  

  "Cherry Limeade chap-stick.  Female."

  
  
  
  
  

  

  "I think this person is female because there is a picture with three little girls"

• For others, they had to use some reasoning and critical thinking to answer the questions.  Like the student who found a pair of running shorts in the bag.  He decided that her hobbies might be running or working out, that they would need fast, fun music, so he inferred that the owner of the bag listened to pop/rock music.  Great reasoning.  Awesome thinking.  

  

  Running shorts??

For me the best thing about this lesson is how it sets up the next one.  You see, what I described above is pretty much step by step and word for word what I took from Glenn Wiebe's back to school blog post.  In our next class period I will have a "real" History in a Bag filled with actual historical artifacts, pictures, and articles.  The students will have a series of questions to answer based on what they discover by studying the artifacts.

Stay tuned for part 2 next week!

Out of My Comfort Zone

Teachers are lucky.  We get two "New Years" to set resolutions and make changes. 

January and August.

I love the start of school (most years...) and this year brings on a whole new burst of excitement and energy.  I start each year with a few changes or points of focus that I want to put my attention to.  A few years ago, I started this blog.  And while I don't get the opportunity to post as often as I would like (you should see the number of posts I have started and never had the time to go back and finish...) I still enjoy writing about what goes on in my classroom.  Whether you are a parent of one of my middle schoolers, a teacher looking for ideas, or a friend of mine who just likes to see what I'm doing, hopefully you all find something interesting about this blog.

Last year my focus was survival.  Maternity leave is hard.  I wanted to survive and not completely hate coming to back to school after new little baby was born.  That didn't really work until the end of the year when I had a renewed spirit. 

This year my focus is communication with parents. 

I am well aware that getting information out of teenagers about their day at school is about as easy as breaking into a bank vault.

So I want to help with that.

I have come up with a cool way to communicate with parents what my classroom procedures are, what cool lessons we did in class, and what we have coming down the line (student teacher, field trips, etc...)

I call it Weber Wednesdays

I plan to post a YouTube video of myself explaining various parts of my classroom to give parents a peak inside our walls.  The videos will start out every week for a while and then taper off to an "as needed" basis.

The cool thing.  I think parents and members of our community are really going to appreciate it. 

The not so cool thing.  I want to throw up every time I push "POST." A video of myself out in the big bad world of social media, scary.  (Seriously...I'm getting a little queasy just typing this out.)

This is WAY outside my comfort zone.

But when I think about what I'm doing and what the purpose it, I come to another conclusion.  Stepping outside our comfort zones only can lead to the discovery of new talents, new strategies, and personal growth.  These are things I want my students to do, and that I ask them to do on a regular basis.  Why wouldn't I want to model those actions. 

Because I hate videotaping myself.

But I'm going to do it.  And I hope the sensation to vomit goes away after the first few Wednesdays.

This Title Could Be So Many Things...

Stupid Me!  I'm an IDIOT!  It's the end of the year and my brain is obviously gone.

It's May..

The last Friday of the year. 

The final project for your 7th graders is due today.  You worked hard to create a relative, cumulative project that included technology integration, performance piece, and collaboration with other teachers.  You are proud and excited for it. The students have worked like champs to perfect their presentations for the two guest judges you have coming in.

The superintendent.

And the local education cooperative history guru (who planted the seed for this awesome project).  He is coming from out of town.

And because it's the end of the year.

And you have ZERO brain left.

And your the biggest IDIOT out there...

You tell your judges to be there an hour late.  Even confirmed it in an email last night.

Even though your first class had the SAME START TIME ALL YEAR LONG.

But it will all work out because I work with some amazing people who will work with me!

UGH! (But it's ok)

New web filter.  Kicking us off every 8 minutes.  Means impossible to watch the 15 minute video.  Google Drive not working at all.  Kids can't access the assignment.  All of this happening in 2nd block.

But...it will not defeat me.  I am nothing if I'm not flexible.  We are rolling with it.

But that doesn't diminish my frustration.

Reflections: History of Slavery Through Time.

We are finished!  A month later than planned, this due to two reasons.  Snow and Fantasticness.

Snow days on a block schedule are MURDER.  I didn't see my 8th graders for an entire week.  But I did get to spend three days cuddled with my girls at home...  If this wasn't a "no fault" year for state assessments I would be freaking out about how much time I have lost and how behind I am from previous years.  I am hoping the changes in standards and testing will help keep me more relaxed on my schedule.

Fantasticness.  It became apparent very early on in the project (after day one..) that in order to give the kids enough time for their ideas to turn in to products, this was going to take a lot longer than I previously thought.

TIME. WELL. SPENT.

That said.  I thought a list of pros and cons would be good for anyone thinking of doing a similar project.  Here is a list of what WE came up with (I say "we" because the kids helped me with this, their struggles, their reflections, and their successes.)

Pros:
* The students worked independently. They thrived when challenged with LESS instruction from me.  They came up with ideas for projects I never would have thought to assign.  The level of UNIQUE creativity was just amazing.

* They enjoyed the project and talked about it outside of class.  Kids who NEVER do homework were working on this outside of class.  They didn't see it as homework.  I never once heard "When am I going to need to know this?"

* They explored new apps, if they didn't know how to do something they wanted done, THEY looked it up or WE collaborated together to figure something out.  Sometimes as teachers we can get frustrated with the lack of student understanding and just give in and give out answers (don't act like you've never done it...), but this project took that away.  I truly didn't know the answers to some of their questions.  They had to be independent, collaborate with their partner and seek out the answer for themselves. 

* We had some STANDOUT presentations that were just AMAZING, the projects that weren't great were good.  And even the projects that turned out to be duds (and there definitely were...), those students still LEARNED MORE about slavery than if I would have just given a test.

Cons:
* Many groups wanted to do humorous presentations.  Slavery isn't funny.  After hearing some of the ideas we had to figure out ways to either scrap the funny concept all together or put humor in the characters rather than the subject.  After doing this project I have thought about moving it to a different unit of study (maybe Constitutional Convention) where there could be some humor added, but that comes at the beginning of the school year and I'm not sure if the kids would be ready.  Lost of thinking to do here...

* Early finishers.  I mentioned before that this took quite a bit of time for those groups that were working super hard and going that extra mile.  Well that was true for about 90% of the groups.  There were about 10% who finished early.  I had one group done in a day and a half.  What to do with them?  For this project, I pretty much left them alone as long as they weren't bothering or distracting other groups.  They were good to use as recorders and I could give them simple tasks to do for me.  I know when I do this next time I need to have something in place for them to do.  Maybe something truly awful and boring so they will want to do anything and everything to make their project better.  Any ideas out there???

*  Grading is hard...I didn't create a specific rubric based on specific guidelines that I didn't set.  I started out saying here's what you need to do

1. Have technology:  That's easy.  No technology no points.  They all have technology in some way shape or form.
2. Be creative.  This is the really hard one.  It is hard to justify one groups creativity vs. another.  I tried to link it to having a job in the future.  Someday you may have to give a presentation to a client.  If they don't like it, they don't buy it, or hire you, or pick your firm.  I am your client.  Impress me.  PowerPoint presentations will get a low creativity score. 
3. Presentation:  You have to be part of the presentation whether you are speaking, acting, drawing, singing etc... PRACTICE. 

I'm still not convinced that I graded this correctly.  Do letter grades even match this type of project?  This is truly the most difficult part of the entire project for me.  Letting go of the control was easy, but justifying the letter grade is VERY difficult. 

After some more reflection and exploration into rubrics, I have found ways to assess this project in the future.  Rubistar has some great ideas on how to score originality (a MUCH better word than creativity).  There ways to give expectations without limiting the possibilities. 

* Absences??? This problem didn't hit each group of students, but the ones who did experience the sick partner would probably say this is the biggest problem they had.  Absence can't be helped and they can frustrate the best and brightest students.  One thing I will do for sure next year is make sure the kids share project information from iPad to iPad.  If the partner who has ALL the material on his or her iPad is gone, this leaves the other out to dry.  Maybe that will solve itself if I move the project to the beginning of the school year and not smack dab in the middle of flu season.

All in all, this was a great project and I enjoyed seeing the results it yielded.  This being the first time I let go of the control, I liked it and hope to have more adventures with this method in the future.