The Lunch Project Day 4

Here are the observations that some of the students made after looking through yesterday's datum:

• Francisco: Chicken patties are selected >80% each Wednesday
• Jace: 'Brought' stayed between 5-10%;
• Nicole: Salads range between 3-10%
• Katlynn: Pizza are selected >80% Fridays
• Brittney: When 2 popular items are on the menu, they have a really close percentage (nachos and chicken rings)
• Juan: Salads are never more than 10%
• Cheyenne: When it is Chicken Patty or Pizza, fewer salads are chosen
• Julian: Chicken Patty and Pizza seem to be the most popular
• Johann: Chicken Patty was 85% 3 weeks in a row

After discussing these observations the students began to work on finding mean, median, mode, and range for each lunch choice. 

Students asked a few questions about the food. They were interested in how the food was ordered, how they decided how much quantity to order, and other things like that. One of the students decided to ask someone in the kitchen to come and talk about this with us. Hopefully they will agree and come talk about it.

The Lunch Project Day 3

Today we worked on finding the percent each lunch choice had been chosen daily. Then we started looking at that data. The students are looking now at the datum to find any interesting or seemingly significant trends or observations. I am not expecting much, I am not sure they have ever been asked to look at data and draw conclusions from it in this manner before.

Just a few of my own observations:

• The Friday that we had Valentine's parties had the largest attendance of any day.
• Chicken patties easily squash any other choice on Wednesdays.
• Chicken rings and nachos seem to be equally popular.
• Pizza is constantly a twelve to one choice over PB&J.
• Wednesdays seem to have better attendance than Fridays. Does this mean kids come for chicken patties that miss for pizza?
• Some of my students are beginning to find this interesting, others not so much. I am fascinated.

The Lunch Project Day Two

Friday the class came together and we looked at the work they were supposed to complete, finding the frequency of the second choice of meals. They found nineteen different choices over the thirty-three day period.

Next we identified the number of choices that had been used as a choice one and a choice two, of which there were four: hamburger/cheeseburger, nachos, tomato soup with grilled cheese, and grilled chicken.

We figured the percentage of time each choice was given throughout the period. Luckily we collected data for 33 straight days (not on purpose, but I will take all the luck I can get) and soon discovered we could multiply the number of times a choice was given times one percent. The largest percentage was with the salad which is the third choice daily.

The question I asked to the class was, "Is it significant that 33% of the choice opportunities is one food item?" They thought that it was, but I explained we wouldn't know for sure until we saw how often students chose a salad. We are going to have a lot of tough discussions about salads as a choice when they discover (as I have seen while glancing through the data) that it is going to be a pretty small percent of students that choose it.

I also spent some time surveying the class and asking out of the four most offered choices, which ones did the students like the most. Chicken Patty was the favorite with twelve of the twenty students picking it as their first choice.

After we did the informal polling we watched a couple videos on how samples are used statistically. Next we will be looking at identifying the percentage each was chosen daily. We should be able to identify the more popular food choices and also start to look at if the position of the food choices are important.

The Lunch Project Day One: Beginning the Project

In my math class we have started a large project. We are analyzing lunch data collected over the past month. Originally my ideas was to find a project the students could do some measures of central tendency with that would be better than textbook questions. At the same time (not exactly the same time, I don't multi-think any better than I multi-task) I was pondering our lunch program and the number of my students that always took the first choice for lunch. They often chose it without even knowing what the choice was.

I went to the lunch secretary and asked her to keep track of the information for what students lunches the students chose daily. Every day for the past month she ran a copy of the number of students by grade level that picked each choice. Today we started breaking it down.

The first thing we are doing is identifying what choices are repeated most often. Every Wednesday is chicken patty day, every Friday is pizza. Yes, it is as boring as it sounds. Tomorrow we will start working on finding out which choice was picked most often.

The students are already thinking about other ways they can address issues with the lunch program. This could end up being a very large project. 

That Time My Network Didn't Become Trolls

I was doing a quick check of my Twitter feed when I saw a comment from @JonBecker  that led me to this post by Will Richardson.  The conversation revolved around the comment by Don Brookover, a student at the University of South Alabama. Go ahead and read the post and the comment.

The conversation around the comment was at first of irritation (anger?), but it eventually evolved to addressing this issue. I found Mr. Brookover's blog and suggested that instead of talking about it on Twitter it might be better if it happened on the post.

This could have gone badly. I see too often people react very poorly to thoughts they disagree with online and their responses are worse than the original post. Let's face it, there is a lot of frustration and anger in the education technology field driven by our perceptions of the direction schools are headed. When confronted with a pre-service teacher that seems to flippantly discount what we are trying to do online, becoming angry is a very real possibility.

Fortunately, the network responded with respect and dignity. They responded to engage and educate, not to shame or hate.

As I thought about this throughout the day I could see a very real parallel between Mr. Brookover and students that I have. They have different experiences, different backgrounds, and they think differently than I do. Shame and hate won't help my students learn either. There are lots of lessons for us in this story. 

I Hide My Disability

This was originally posted on Education Debate

I’m not interested in being politically correct. I don’t think we should treat people differently, I think we should treat each other with respect and dignity. I see no respect or dignity in labels. Having written that I am immediately going to do the exact opposite and label myself. (I doubt I have to worry about offending myself anyway.)

I have a problem that causes me a lot of grief. It makes being a professional educator difficult. It has caused me to lose sleep, become very anxious, even decline to do things that would be beneficial for me and others simply because of the stress it causes. To sum it up, it isn’t any fun at all.

My problem is social anxiety. I haven’t been diagnosed by a doctor, but I know the effects. As a child I was very, very uncomfortable in new situations. The problem was so bad that I ran away from kindergarten every day for the first week of school. Of course there was no diagnosis, no trips to a counselor’s office, just my grandfather picking me up and taking me back. I had to “tough it out”.

If I am in a new situation, especially meeting new people, I can be very quiet. I even developed a coping mechanism, yawning. I don’t know where it came from or why I do it, but if you see me in social situation yawning I am not bored, I am anxious. Obviously this habit does not endear me to others.

I find it very difficult to be in new places. I often find it difficult to go to places I am familiar with by myself. I have been known to pass up gas stations hoping I have enough to get me home because I can’t stop at a station that I have used many times.

My wife, Dianna has been very helpful. She for all intents and purposes becomes my coach exhorting me to go beyond my comfort zone. Without her prodding there is no way I would have presented at METC this year. There is no way I would have attended ISTE in San Antonio a few years ago if she hadn’t gone with me or EdCampKC for that matter. Sometimes she is just understanding enough to let me be and not get upset that I can’t return that item to Wal Mart because I am just too anxious right then.

What accommodations have I made for myself so that I can be successful? I try to always have someone I know with me. I try to arrive at new places early so I can become familiar with them before the added stress of the event that is taking place. I carry something with me like a book or hand held game so that I can retreat into a comfortable situation. I decline to do a lot of things that I later regret. I talk to people online.

I have discovered that the social issues I have in the face to face world go away when I am typing on a keyboard. I can have conversations with people I would never be able to even say “Hello” to in person. I have even found that by having these conversations online I can transfer that confidence to face to face meetings.

How many students have a “hidden” disability? Students can often go for years hiding illiteracy, how much easier is it to hide something even less obvious than that? What are you doing in your classroom for kids like me that some days are barely hanging on until they can get back home where they can relax? Have you actively sought out the quiet kids or the ones that don’t seem to make friends and spend a few minutes with them? If you go out of your way to make them more comfortable, they will be more successful in your classroom.

Modeling Bad Behavior

A couple days ago I was using an aluminum foil boat to collect data for our math class. We were practicing on mean, median, mode etc. (see post below) and I wanted to tie it in to what I had planned to do in science. As I conducted the experiment the students kept asking me about what I was doing. They knew it was to collect data, but they wanted more information. Kids get indignant when you refuse to share information with them!

A thought occurred to me and I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to have them watch me do an experiment and allow them to critique what I did. This would give me a good idea about what they already know and what we should focus on. Today I conducted the experiment.

I was looking for the students to identify a few specific behaviors that I modeled incorrectly including:

1. I did not have my instructions for the experiment.
2. I did not do any measuring or data collection.
3. I played around by shaking the wet aluminum boat at a nearby student.

Most of them didn't identify any of these three behaviors. They were more focused on safety (I didn't wear gloves!) and the fact that I left my tools out instead of putting them away. I suspect that both of these ideas have been well instilled in them and now I know where to put in my effort.

Was this a better pre-assessment than giving them a multiple choice test?

My Mostly Positive Experience With Donors Choose

This was previously posted on the MSTA blog. 

A few years ago on a lark I asked my wife to buy me a ukulele for Christmas. After almost two years of noodling with it at home and at school (modeling learning to my students) I decided that I wanted to start a ukulele club at school. I talked to my building principal about it and she was very supportive. With money always an issue I told her that I would like to try Donors Choose, a site where teachers can ask for money to be used to fund projects.

I went to the Donors Choose site, DonorsChoose.org, and set up an account. I had to look carefully and read a couple help files to figure out how to set up the project. I wish it had been easier, but I did eventually figure it out. As I was setting up the project I discovered a few things that almost made me stop.

The first problem I had was that there was an 'optional donation' figured into the price. After reading the information I saw that it was to help defray any changes in the amount that was quoted because many projects don't get funded in the usual 30 days the quotes are good for. Any monies not used that way are then used by the organization to help fund other projects. This seems reasonable to me.

The second problem is that I was restricted to specific sites to order from. The ukuleles I wanted were $20 cheaper on Amazon than on the site I was required to use. That being said, choosing the products for the project was as simple as adding them to the cart. That worked seamlessly and I was very impressed.

After finishing up putting all the information required for the project I submitted it to be checked over. Donors Choose uses volunteers to make sure the information meets the site's expectations. It only took a few days until I received the email that it was approved and live.

After getting the email I wrote a blog post for my class blog. There I explained how to use the match code I received from the organization. This code allowed donations made through the first seven days of the project to be doubled up to $100 a piece! This effectively made each donation using the code double. Because of this, I tweeted the link on Twitter to my post that gave the match code. I wanted all the matching funds I could get!

While waiting for the project to be approved I spent some time talking about it on Twitter with my friends. I had several that asked t be notified when it went live so I tweeted to them first. Many of the donations I received came from people that I talk to on Twitter. Don't underestimate the power of social media to help fund your project! If you don't use Twitter, Facebook can also be a great place to ask for help.

I anxiously kept a watch on my project site to see how the donations were going, I was completely shocked that in less than twelve hours it was fully funded. I received notice the next day that the items have been ordered (much faster than going through my school district's bureaucracy :) I was very surprised by the speed of the whole process.

Enrichment Needs to Be Embedded, Not Added On

Being a teacher in a high poverty, rural district I have been expected to read a lot of books about how children in poverty are different when it comes to their ability to learn. Typically the argument is that the life they lead outside of school makes a difference in how they learn and what they learn.

I'm not brain researcher and I have no experience with students that come from upper middle class or wealthy homes either so to speculate on the truthfulness of these arguments would be just that. What I do have is a long term exposure to children that live in poverty because I grew up here from the perspective of a middle class upbringing (although to be truthful my parents worked long and hard to get to middle class even though they both have college degrees.)

I have been reading Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen. I see a lot of familiar information in the book, things I have been exposed to since I was in my education classes. Something that is sticking with me from this book is the idea of student enrichment. The idea being that students in high poverty areas need more enrichment opportunities at school because they get fewer of those opportunities at home.

Did I mention we have a very large percentage of our students that ride buses home? Guess who don't get to participate in enrichment activities outside of school?

This year my school started a before school enrichment program (with a 'let's increase our test scores by doing computer based learning' component). Students have the opportunity three times a week to participate in an activity during time they used to sit in our gym to get ready for the day. I am pretty sure this just isn't enough enrichment to bridge the gap.

I realize that enrichment to my students has to happen in the classroom, but what exactly does that entail? How do I give my students enriching learning activities during the school day? I'm pretty sure that I can't do it successfully if all I do is test prep. Seriously.

When Something Isn't Working, Recognize it and Do Something Different

I have known for about a month that my math class wasn't working. Let me give some background first. This is the first year I have taught math in the last ten. I only have a couple years' experience as it is so I am by no means a master math teacher. Because of my lack of experience I was given the 'high' math group, the idea being that they can learn without me if needed (more on this later.)

I started the year explaining that we were going to spend more time trying to really master the math, not just go through it. To foster that idea, I emphasized that when students didn't show mastery through their assessments they needed to go back, identify the problems, fix the problems and retest. We spent a lot of time after every assessment modeling that behavior. It seemed to work very well as long as the math was easy, it has fallen apart now that it is harder.

A typical lesson runs like this, the first day I would work examples of the new material on the board and then assign practice work for them to do. The answers for these problems are in the back of the book so the students can check their work. The next day I would ask if they had any questions or needed any particular problems shown to them. Usually I ask that question and hear crickets. Then I assign the problems that don't have answers in the back. The third day I answer those questions and do a quick assessment to see if we are ready to move on.

Over time I noticed that several students were not doing the practice work, and doing miserably on the 'ungraded' work. (I try hard to not take grades on any practice.) Not surprisingly, they failed the assessment miserably. I thought they had learned their lesson and they did much better on the make-up assessment a couple days later. I assumed wrong. The cycle is repeating, but their is no drive to learn from the mistakes.

As you can imagine this is a pretty frustrating development. The lack of effort seems to be spreading and I am at the point that I have to change something because this is not working. Do you have any ideas you would like to share?

A Great Time for Reflection

I am using this last full week of class to have my students do a little reflective writing. The topics they can choose from (which you can see on the picture above) can be answered quite simply, but I want them to dig in much deeper.

We need to give our students opportunity and time to think reflectively about lots of things including school. I am really curious to see who chooses which prompt and how they are answered. We will find time this week to share them and hopefully on Friday we will blog them.

What reflective questions do you ask your students?

Is School Learning Valuable Enough for the Time Our Kids Invest?

I heard screams coming from outside so I saunter out onto the porch just in time to see my youngest daughter Quinci flying down the hill on a bicycle. She and her older sister Aidan have been "riding" for a few days. By riding I mean they push their bikes up the hill and coast down it. Quinci is getting ready for the new bike she asked Santa for Christmas. Aidan is helping her learn how to ride.

Later Quinci comes to me with a Sharon Creech book in her hand. She asks me when she will be "allowed" to read it. I was a bit taken aback, I didn't realize that kids had to ask permission to read books (especially my kids in my home). I told her she can read anything she wants to and she is now sitting next to me reading The Unfinished Angel.

What do we teach kids at school that is worth 7-8 hours a day that they can't learn on their own? If a seven year old and a ten year old can teach each other to ride a bike, what do they need a teacher for? How much school time is used to teach things only good for the community of school? Why did Quinci think she needed permission to read a longer chapter book than she was used to? These are the questions that make me wonder about what I am doing at school with my students.

Hayley's Book

Hayley wrote a book, then she read the book to one of the staff at school and asked her to record it and put it on Youtube. Hayley already understands that an audience is very necessary to motivation. 

What makes it necessary for us to feel the need to share with others what we create? I realize not everyone feels this way, but there are a lot of people that do. What are you doing to fulfill this need for your students? For other teachers' students? 

Hayley is giving us a wake up call. If we don't meet her needs to share, she will find another way to do it and there is no guarantee the path she would choose would be in her best interest. If you don't believe me, take a trip through Youtube and see what kids are uploading on their own.

Maybe Your Progressive Teaching Ideas Are Not What's Best for All Your Students

As a teacher that experiments often in the classroom with different teaching methods and exposes my class to different learning methods I see that how students respond differently to them. One of the reasons I change what I do with my teaching and what I share with my students is to allow them to identify what works best for them so they can make informed choices about how they learn best and what they need to do to be successful.

Lately I have become more much sensitive to condemnations of traditional teaching methods. There is a place for these methods in the classroom. They do work well for some students. Many of us are successful products of the old teaching methods. (Yes I know many are not.)

I am not advocating that we never try progressive methods. I am simply saying that all students need the opportunity to learn in their best way. If you summarily reject the past to be progressive, you may be harming some of your kids. 

Edublog Award 2012 Nominations

I have been nominating people for the Edublog Awards for years. It has been a great way for me to show my appreciation for all the hard work they do. Each year it seems to get a little harder to identify 'the best' of the sites that I frequent.

• Best Group Blog: Education Rethink John Spencer and Chad Segersten are always posting diverse, thought provoking ideas. A must read for any person interested in education.
• Influential Post: Sometimes posts are influential because they have a huge reach, sometimes they are influential because they have a huge impact regardless of the reach. Being a Social Outcast by Solal Bauer reminds me of the power of blogging for our students. If you want to read a post that demonstrates the importance of sharing and conversing, start here.
• Individual Tweeter: Jabiz Raisdana aka @IntrepidTeacher Twitter is more than a place to share education links and practices. It is a place to share ourselves and I know of no one that exemplifies that better than Jabiz.
• Teacher Blog: Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension by Pernille Ripp is everything you ask for in a teacher blog. Pernille is honest, thoughtful, and reflective. This is a model teacher blog that centers on the classroom. Why aren't more teachers doing this?
• Free Web Tool: Kidblog is the best free web tool because it makes it very easy to give students a voice on the internet. If we are all about kids, our tools should reflect that too.
• Best Open PD: EdCamps They reinforce the value of face to face collaboration and sharing without ignoring the need to collaborate and share online.  

A Very Successful Writing Activity

To start with, I didn't come up with the idea for this writing activity and I regretfully admit I don't remember who on Twitter told me about it. I really hope they read this and leave me a comment so I can fix that.

Today my class tried out a new writing activity. It might as well be called speed writing because I can't think of another name. We started with a topic and I gave them three minutes to write. when the time was up I added another story piece. After three minutes I added another. Here are the prompts and extra pieces:

• Today my class took a surprise trip to the zoo.
• then Mr. C fell into the gorilla pit!
• Mr. C started poking an alligator with a stick
• then Francisco (one of my students) came back with no shirt on
• When we were ready to leave, we discovered Jason (another one of my students) was missing.

At first the writing prompt didn't inspire many of the students, but when I added myself falling into the gorilla pit the writing took off. I spent twenty minutes watching my students write furiously and listening to them giggle as they wrote. When we were finished the students asked to do it again. In fact they asked to do it again the next time they came back to the home room! 

Here are the two stories we managed to get published on our new writing blog. 

Brayden's Zoo story

Brandon's Zoo story

LiveScribe Post On My Donors Choose Project

Part I

Part II

This is my first post using the LiveScribe Pen. What do you think? I would love some constructive feedback. Was it worth the extra time to listen to the post? Did the pictures help or distract? 

Bambi, Frankenweenie, and Storytelling

In 1975 I attended the re-release of Bambi at my local theatre. I am sure many of you had a very similar experience. As 'Man' entered the forest my anxiety rose, when the Great Prince broke the news to Bambi that, "Your mother can't be with you anymore." I completely lost it. That was my first experience with storytelling that could really manipulate my emotions.

My youngest daughter had a similar experience last night. We went to the theatre and watched the movie Frankenweenie. Without ruining the plot, Quinci was absolutely mortified throughout the second half of the film. I think she was equal parts sad and scared. 

My first instinct was to take her and leave. I didn't because (as bad as it sounds) I was really enjoying the movie. The homage Tim Burton made of this movie is amazing. 

After the movie was over I thought about what had happened, remembering my own experience with Bambi. I was really devastated for days over the death, but I still remember the movie. Having watched it several times with my own children I still have that sadness present. I don't think this is a bad legacy, it is really a gift.

As teachers our goal is to make a qualitative difference in our students. We want them to attach an emotion to the time we spend with them. We want to be remembered. Storytellers know this inherently. They tell stories that are emotional to them in a way that transfers that emotion to the listeners. They make us feel. Maybe we should learn from them.

Creating a Visual Sequence of Events

Having finished the book Peter and Wendy we are now making a visual sequence of events. The pictures will be displayed first in the hallway and later in the room (for comparing and contrasting with the future versions of Peter Pan's stories.)

A visual sequence is a great way to help kids that have trouble reading visualize the story. 

Real Learning is Messy, Embrace It

Here is Stephanie working through an expression with a variable. I just introduced this concept today and there was a lot of push back from the students. Apparently they didn't want to be challenged. This is a real lesson where this wonderful student struggles and is slightly embarrassed about it. We have to push kids beyond their comfort zone and allow them to struggle. We have to push them to show what they are doing and how they are doing it. If we are fortunate they may even share what they are thinking too. Compare this to a Kahn Academy video. Which do you think is more valuable? Why?