A memorable lesson

On Friday, March 12 we had a memorable speaker. Dr. Sharon Friesen came to talk to us about what inquiry looks like in the classroom. She discussed how to plan for inquiry in the classroom, and indicated that Alberta Education is pushing for inquiry in all programs of study. Upon discovering that she not only used to teach high school, but also had access to the Minister for Education, I had to pose the following question:
"How does the Minister for Education see the future of an inquiry based curriculum in conjunction with grade 12 diploma exams?"
Dr. Friesen had some pretty good responses to that. First of all, she described the vision for changing the way our grade 12 students are evaluated at the end of a course. She indicated that the province is entertaining the idea of developing assessment that is more holistic than just multiple choice testing. Of course, this might be expensive. Dr. Friesen indicated that the best way to make these funds available would be to reduce provincial achievement tests in grades 3, 6, and 9 to their intended purpose, a snapshot. It would then not be required to test every child, and money would become available.
Dr. Friesen provided some very practical, sensible help for negotiating inquiry within the context of the current system of diploma exams in Alberta. Her technique was based on her own personal experiences as a high school teacher, and it seems like something that all of us who hope to teach high school can take with us. She said don't ignore diploma exams, but don't fret either. Teach the course through inquiry, but reserve three weeks at the end of the year to prepare for the diploma exam. Have the students analyze the curriculum and map it. They can make sure that all the big topics have been covered by their work that semester. Teach the students about the way multiple choice tests are constructed. Explain the different types of questions, and what they are assessing. Explain how the answers are generated, and what each answer is trying to do. Then have students construct multiple choice questions on the curriculum topics. Discuss the answers, and why they are correct or incorrect. Have students trade student-made exams and try them. This way, students are not only deeply knowledgeable in the curriculum, but also have an excellent understanding of how to write multiple choice exams.
This information may just help some of us, as new teachers, take the leap into inquiry at the grade 12 level.

In Response to the Great Task

This activity of actually doing a great task is very valuable for learning how you might carry it out in a classroom. First of all, you get a very good idea of how long the task might take and how much work goes into it. How frustrating it would be for students if their teacher set unreasonable expectations for completing a task when they were new to the technology and trying to learn class material at the same time. Another valuable lesson from completing the great task is learning about what is possible with a project. Doing it yourself gives you a good idea of what can reasonably be expected from students and what a final product looks like. Then you also have an exemplar for your students. Not only that, it’s helpful to work on your assessment procedure as you work on the great task because you learn what is difficult, what requires more direction, and what really helps students with their learning of the topic.

There were definitely some frustrations that occurred during this process. The most significant frustration was the fact that the majority of our work was done over reading break and when group members were out of the city. That means we didn’t have many opportunities to work on the task together in person. We ended up dividing up the work and then posting our work for the other people in the group to comment on and revise. While this was still collaboration, it meant that not everyone got experience using the different types of technology used in our task.

I learned a great deal about using technology for learning while doing this task. Every project I have done this semester with groups, even in other classes, has helped me learn more about the power of online collaboration with Google Docs. I also learned more about the power of a presentation program like Keynote through Darren’s work with making a presentation into a video using the animation features. It is very useful to know what is possible with certain programs. In addition, I gained some experience using online rubric building tools in IO, which will be very useful to me as I begin my work as a teacher. I love that these rubrics can be saved and easily revised without any formatting issues.

Completing the task helped me work toward some of my professional goals because it gave me more insight into completing hands-on work with high school students. This is something that I really want to focus on in my teaching. I also learned the power of simulations or models. When you are trying to design a simulation that will be able to teach others, you have to know and understand the topic in much greater depth than you would just to answer questions on a test. The learning is also deeper because you are attributing words and images to the concepts learned in class, and you have do some of your own research to come up with the final product. This project lead me towards my personal goal of finding meaningful ways to go deeper into topics with students. The model or simulation and newspaper article give students different ways to construct and show their understanding, which is something I would love to see more of in the science classroom.

My strengths with regards to contribution to this group were the ability to see the project as a whole and understand what little things needed to be done to put it all together. I felt like I was often managing a bit. I organized email updates, made sure everyone in the group knew what everyone else was doing, and addressed the components like the rubric the description of the task and the feedback form for peer review. As a weakness, I was not able to help out with the movie because I didn’t have the knowledge/perseverance/creativity that Darren had to be able to figure out how to do it. When we started we had no idea what program to use to make a model or simulation, and it was challenging to try out different programs and fail.

The comment that we received multiple times during the peer review process was to be more explicit about what is meant by a model. This is very important for enacting this great task in a classroom setting. The model as we presented it is perhaps too open-ended. Students would need some ideas of where to start and some technologies that they might use to do it. It might be useful in a class to narrow it down and say that everyone has to do an animation or a video using one or two different technologies. That still gives students lots of flexibility in how they actually carry out the task.

Our peers liked the project because of its application to multiple intelligences, the way the newspaper article made the product accessible and meaningful to a wider audience, how the references to celebrities and pop culture makes it interesting to high school students, and how the task could be transferable to other subject areas as well. Some suggestions on the final product were to slow down the text in the video, to include definitions from sources other than Wikipedia, and include a section in the rubric to address the students' use of technology.

The peer editing process was very valuable. We were able to gain ideas from things that other groups had done, like the evaluating of websites and careful referencing of images. The feedback we received was valuable because peers not only gave us ideas on how to make our end product really strong but also gave us suggestions on how to enact the task in the classroom. Seeing other group’s work gave me exposure to new technologies I hadn’t used before and ideas for great projects.