Category Archives: Project Based

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”The product isn’t as important as the process.” (Or – “Getting to a final product is an important part of the process.”)

During my classroom experience with “hands-on” project/problem based learning I would often hear from colleagues, “The product is not as important as the process.” I think there is truth to that, but during my years of observing / facilitating numerous projects I found it somewhat shortsighted. I’m not saying that the product always has to be polished, however I found that getting the project to be beautiful or stable is where much of the problem solving, art/design and creativity happen. Example: The gizmo you’ve built requires 2-3 people to hold it together while another pushes the button or it doesn’t work or falls apart, versus we got it to work now we have to find a way to house it, have it work consistently and maybe even make it aesthetically pleasing.

Yes, getting the gizmo to work at all or even close to working still involves lots of problem solving, collaboration and all the other goodness that comes from a project. Pushing through to get the gizmo to work and then making it more stable so it is held together with no help and maybe even designing a container that it fits in nicely, get into design and esthetics and an understanding of what goes into making a final product. Throw in making it beautiful by redesigning the container and deciding on color and shape and form adds even more creative exposure. This is some of the hardest work, thinking and problem solving that can happen. How often do students experience that part? I found it can take as long as the initial design.

Again, I’m not saying to go there every time. It’s not feasible because of time and other constraints, but consider it as a powerful piece of learning …  even once or twice a school year. The polish piece is an important learning piece that is way too often skipped or not appreciated as valuable. Yes, the process is very important, but don’t forget that getting to a stable, polished design is also very important. Messy, but very important.

Learning is messy!

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How can we connect more students during this time and/or how should we move forward?

Last week James Kapptie, a middle and high school tech trainer in Wyoming, contacted me about having a conversation on his blog about connecting students during this time. He posted the conversation we collaborated on through a Google Doc on his blog Our Children Are Calling and suggested I post it here as well. So I did! See below.

How can we connect more students during this time and/or how should we move forward?

  1. What does connecting students mean now that we have been dealing with the COVID 19 issue?

BC: We should have been connecting students globally for the last 10 years. Connected learning is a very powerful learning environment that leverages all that is good about project / problem based learning. But powerful connected learning that utilizes social networking requires all the safety considerations that students should learn from a very young age. We wouldn’t wait until students are in middle or high school before we teach them fire, bus, stranger, first aid, using scissors, playground and other safety issues. But to a certain extent that is what we have done with technology. If students, under the guidance and modeling of a classroom teacher, starting in at least kindergarten had been learning safe, ethical use we would be in a much better place. If this was the case students could be doing so much more learning that they make choices about. All the communication skills and collaborative connections they could be utilizing under the moderation of their teachers would be a good thing right now.

This is why I like blogging as a choice now. Student blogs at any age can be set up so the teacher moderates and OK’s everything before it goes live, whether it is an outgoing post or an incoming comment. That way if students (or teachers / parents) currently lack experience, knowledge or time during a work day in keeping children safe, the teacher is there to guide students appropriately. Also blogs can be writing, photos, videos, podcasts … almost every kind of sharing and collaborating is doable on a blog.

JK: Totally agree that we are a little behind the curve with technology.  I liked blogging but feel we need to give it an image refresh.  It’s like Facebook to our kids.  We must show how the other pieces can connect, video,podcast, photos etc., and then highlight how blogs can be shared across the different channels ( Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) to balance the ability of monitoring safe use and allowing it to be cutting edge.  

As with all things for teachers, what type of PD would help them feel more comfortable and not see it as one more thing is important to consider.

BC: Teachers have a lot, too much really on their plates these days, having said that we have an issue with educators not being willing to use these collaborative tools mostly because they don’t feel they have “permission” and that there are safety issues they might get blamed for. The PD, with total support from administration, should move teachers to new learning platforms and pedagogy and away from “the old ways.” I always say that society wants schools to change fundamentally how they do things as long as when they’re done changing they’re pretty much just like school was when I was a kid so I understand them. But PD on new ways and resources typically fall flat because we don’t take any current curriculum resources or requirements off teachers plates, it just seems to be layered on. Teachers in general don’t trust that they can innovate after all the years of test and punish mentality. So education in general has to build trust and a sense of capacity and time to make real change.

  1. How can we increase quality connections with students in a hybrid or virtual environment?

JK:  I think this is a question that is very similar to the “old normal” classroom.  Quality happens when students feel connected to the teacher in some way.  To build those connections we have been given opportunities to connect with kids in private and personal ways.  I know that there will be student safety conversations to follow about this, with good reason, but the advantage is that schools and teachers have very direct ways to connect and hear from students and families.  Quality will happen when teachers find the way that works for each student/family and talk to them.  Education, under the “old normal”, has often allowed one size to fit the needs of the masses. We have parent teacher conferences, we have mass robo call/email systems, we have put information out on social media, but in general we have provided information in a one way fashion.  How do we improve the quality, we ask and we listen!  

As an example of how we evolve.  Some districts dove into Google classroom and the result ended up with students and parents getting hundreds of emails a day and overwhelming them immediately.  Parents wanted less  before we even got started. Schools had to come up with ways to share assignments without just posting them. One simple way was to create a “day assignment” that included all teachers the student had.  This highlights the challenges schools face; what’s too much & what’s not enough?  

Quality comes from two directions: staff has to work as a team and be willing to listen to students.  We no longer have a CAPTIVE audience locked in a classroom so we have no choice.  Are there potential software tools we can use, sure but we must protect the human side of communication.  Students get feedback and communication from digital tools everyday but its not personal and quality can be debated.

BC: Despite what we are experiencing right now we have a great opportunity here to make some real, robust changes in schooling as well. We have to be careful not to end up using places like Google Classroom to do what school has looked like for too many years but just do it online instead. Let’s get students learning what they want to learn about more often. We know that when anyone is learning about something they are passionate about they will focus more, spend more time, and have more incentive to do quality work. Now they have motivation to improve reading, writing and math skills so they can share their learning AND if they collaborate with others they build a support system of collaborators that learn from each other as they go.

JK: What a great way of saying that. Do what school has been…just now in Google Classroom.  You are right.  This is our chance to not just throw a new coat of paint on the house but to remodel it.  And in remodeling we are not totally destroying what is there but reimaging what we can do.

  1. What does quality interaction look like when using tools like youtube, blogs, social media, etc.

BC: Besides the ability of posting work to the world, these applications open up the possibility of collaborating with and learning with the world of learners out there. Instead of just having access to immediate classmates as collaborators, now collaborators are available globally. Teachers, again have to be there as guides and moderators (and parents and other community members have a role here too) and be ready to note when a student needs skill  support or connection support or idea support and more, but teachers have always had those roles, now they’ll just happen in other venues and timeframes. And note, now a student’s address is less important because when collaborators are global the effects of where you live and socio-economic levels get blurred. I’ve lived this in my own classroom, where my at-risk, second language learner students often were pushed by their collaborators from around the world to deeper understandings and vocabulary and language skills. And when you engage globally lots of unintended learning takes place … time zones, and seasons, and weather patterns, and customs, and flora and fauna, and a whole plethora of other knowledge creeps in.

JK:  Opening students work up to the world and more collaborators is so important.  If we look at what the COVID19 issue has shown usat a professional level; we have the tools to connect remotely but overall there are alot of us that aren’t very good at it.  Working connected, while apart is the skill that our children are going to need for their future.  

The fear of something bad being commented must not keep us from exploring and using the moments to learn.  Using safety features to help moderate comments and chats will help and the possibility o f messy learning is why we should explore.  Students come across inappropriate communication in lots of social media but are often at a loss on how to appropriately deal with it.  This is where real learning can happen to create a more skilled generation.

BC: Part of not being very good at it is the intimidation many feel about using applications, but also what could go wrong and then who is responsible. The time issue for many, that sense that they don’t have time for this, that it will take them away from “covering” all the curriculum they’re supposed to cover (for THE TEST) – like this kind of learning is only an extra piece instead of learning that is really important, so we don’t have time for this added on piece. In addition, many, many educators don’t feel they REALLY have “permission” to go there despite what the administration says. Some feel their students know more about these technology pieces and they’ll look bad or students will take advantage. We have to get past all of this. Imagine doctors feeling their patients knew more about medicine than they do. You have to stay up to date on all the new tools in your field and educators have not been put in a good position to do that based on “accountability,” time and access to technology (and more). So this situation as bad as it is may have the silver lining of educators getting more acquainted with the tech and in some cases more access to tech that makes connected learning doable and powerful.

  1. What positive impacts could be realized and carried over from this experience for teachers and students after students are back in the classroom?

JK.  We never know what we are capable of until we are pushed out of our comfort zones.  COVID19 took teachers, schools and education instantly from the question of: What can technology tools do for schools to how do we use all these tools to reach students?  Lots of pieces of the education process had been reluctant to try or use or implement tools that had amazing potential as it might upset the apple cart of traditional education.  So what now, what can be carried over?  I think the vast amount of experience has shown a taste of possibilities to not only students but educators.  As a result we know we need training to effectively use some of these tools past just screen time.  We also have all the new questions about equity and access to work to answer as well.  One thing to me that is very clear is that it should be clear that just going back to what we did isn’t enough.  We have lots of new exciting ways to explore how we evolve education for sure.

BC: When first stepping into collaborative technology use I often suggest to educators to make some fairly simple connections to attain some experience and competence in utilizing it as a learning platform. Too often though, I see teachers using video-conferencing to do 10 to 50 “Mystery Conference Calls” a year around the country and not much else. Those kinds of calls are fine, especially to gain experience, that’s basically what I did (same with blogging and other social media), but if that’s more or less all you do with video-conferencing or blogging, YouTube, etc. you’re missing the point. 

Educators have not embraced technology as a powerful learning tool for a number of reasons, fear, access, school policies, and more. But one of the biggest factors that drives those impediments has been lack of experience with the tools. One thing this Covid-19 experience has given us is more experience with the tools of collaboration along with more access to them and “permission to use them” because we were forced into it. Many of those experiences were not quality learning experiences, but mostly to “fill-in” during an unprecedented time. So when we get back into the classroom we should leverage the experience we’ve attained and now focus on how we can connect outside our own classrooms and schools and realize the powerful learning that makes accessible.

Studying a topic in history, science, literature, really anything? Connect with an expert anywhere and have them teach your students and answer questions or mentor a project or share data. Connect with students in a part of the world you’re studying and have them tell what it is like to live there. We used to use Google Earth to visit the locations of books we were reading, or the pyramids, or a volcano and so much more. We were reading a book that takes place in Saskatchewan, Canada, so we found a school there and video-conferenced with them about the locations in the book as we zoomed in on them with Google Earth. We also then learned about climate and culture and history of the area even though that wasn’t the main reason we were connecting. We sometimes did the same science experiment (sometimes live) in each other’s classrooms to see if location makes a difference in the result. Just collaborating in your classroom doesn’t require the tech, use the tech to get out into the world and find a plethora of collaborators.

This would be a major take-away that could be realized from this experience.

JK.  There is no turning back now.  You are so right, when we step back into the classroom, set goals as to how we will continue to find ways to share and work together.  Model, model, model and model some more.  Take your experience and build.  We can work together to be ready for all that education is becoming.

JK. Thank you Brian, your perspective is thoughtful and important.  I appreciate you joining me on this adventure.

BC. Thank you James for the opportunity. Will be interesting to see how things unfold from here.

Brian Crosby http://www.learningismessy.com/

James Kapptie https://ourchildrenarecalling.blogspot.com/

BIOS: 

Brian has been an educator for 38 years. 30+ years as a classroom teacher and more recently as the K-12 STEM Learning Facilitator for northwest Nevada. He has co-written a book on blogging, Making Connections With Blogging and maintains the blog Learning Is Messy: learningismessy.com Twitter: @bcrosby

James is a 20 year classroom veteran.  His experience includes Middle and High School, Administration, Technology Director, Education speaker and consultant, and Computer Science and “Purposeful Technology” Evangelist.  Creator of #wyoedchat.

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High Hopes For Our Students and the World! Free STEM Project

From a past High Hopes mission over 90,000 feet above Nevada. That’s Lake Tahoe on the left. At this altitude the balloon is in “near space” above 98% of the Earth’s atmosphere. Note the thin blue line of the atmosphere and the dark of space above.

We’re launching the world’s “High Hopes” to the edge of space on a high altitude balloon and then releasing them to float gently back to Earth. Its easy for you, your students, their families and anyone else to submit high hopes to be included. We’ll print them out on special biodegradable paper that is embedded with wildflower seeds so that upon landing your “Hopes” become one with the Earth – its very symbolic. Here is a link to the “High Hopes Project” blog where you can learn more.

You can easily submit your “hopes” for your learning, your community and the world here through a Google form. Or you can submit your “hopes” through Twitter by using the hashtag #hhpSTEM.

This is the shadow of the Moon from about 23,000 meters (75,000 feet) during a balloon launch we collaborated on with NASA in Idaho during the total eclipse in 2017
High Hopes being released from above 90,000 feet during a mission in 2018.
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Africa’s plastic bag ban seems to be working, and a STEM challenge idea

My wife and I were fortunate to travel to Africa this past summer. Our itinerary included Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. We were notified by most of the listed countries when we applied for tourist visas that we were not to bring plastic bags into the country under penalty of heavy fines. This sparked my interest since during the past year I had helped develop a 5th grade STEM engineering lesson on reducing plastic pollution in the ocean.

I photographed this leopard with a Canon pocket camera with a 40x zoom lens in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania in July 2019.

We spent most of our time on safari in Tanzania, and I asked our guide about the reason for the new law. He explained that the small towns (and other areas) we would occasionally pass through had become heavily polluted with plastic trash. Towns were severely blighted with bags and other plastics stuck in trees, bushes, power lines and blowing drifts of trash on the ground. As we were passing through I was impressed by the cleanliness of these towns now. There was an initial national program that collected the plastic and now the goal is to keep them clean by banning plastic bags and other types of plastic trash.

You can imagine this scene with plastic bags stuck in the trees and grasses and how that would effect the wildlife and beauty in so many ways.

Other issues with plastic pollution is that bags collect water when it rains and then become perfect breeding ponds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. Plastics wash into the drainage and sewer systems where they clog and back-up the sewers and eventually dump their load into other waterways and the ocean.

Of course one of the driving forces behind the ban was to keep plastics out of their beloved national parks. Parks that are vital to their economy. Our experience bore this out. The scenery was beyond spectacular. In the parks you are immersed in animals – they are everywhere. And in nine days in the Serengeti I saw no plastic trash, except where it was supposed to be … in the trash.

Plastic pollution is a great STEM challenge for our students of all ages. It is a difficult problem to address, but it effects all of us. It involves not just removing the plastic and micro-plastics from our water and land, but also cutting off the flow of plastics that enter the environment every day. You’ve seen the photos of animals with plastics wrapped around and stuck in their bodies. Those photos of animals and plastic infested waters are also great motivators to our students to get involved with and persevere in finding solutions.

Baby Giraffe. Still had some of its umbilical cord attached.

Students can design machines and other methods to remove plastics that can involve computer programming to operate and stress re-design, and collaboration. Students can also mount marketing and public awareness campaigns using social media in powerful, “real life” contexts where they really make a difference. Think social media and photos, videos and other sharing media used in ethical, meaningful ways to promote keeping plastics out of the environment.

Sunrise over the Serengeti. Wildebeests.

This is “messy” learning for sure. It takes time to do well and so it mostly doesn’t happen in our schools even though we know it is the very kind of learning experience we should be providing. It is the work and powerful learning that is so lacking today. It promotes awareness of the world around us, the wonder and issues the world provides AND the motivation to do real work. Work that cries out for collaboration, problem solving, creativity and perseverance.

STEM and inquiry learning should not only be jumping from one cool project or experiment to the next. We leave too much of the potential learning behind when that happens. At least a few times each year the take a project to a refined ending, including integrating (writing, speaking, social studies, math, PE … really anything) analyzing the data, collaborating (globally if possible), continuing the engineering design cycle through multiple iterations and even taking the time to “polish” the end product. That polishing is where the connection to art often flourishes. Shape, color, textures and more of the finished product are difficult and provide new challenge and problem solving that connects to more students.

Consider the learning projects solving issues like plastic pollution provide for students and jump in!

Learning is messy!

(More photos can be found here and here)

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – A 5th Grade Learning Sequence

Plastic pollution in an ocean gyre. Some floats on the surface, but more floats beneath the surface.

I am part of a team that is facilitating the “Nevada Engineering Fellows Program” for 5th grade teachers in Nevada. The funding for the program came from the Nevada Governor’s Office of Science Innovation & Technology. A major goal of the program is for teachers to learn how to design and build NGSS aligned STEM units with an emphasis on engineering, and to be able to evaluate the quality of units they find elsewhere.

The plastic pollution problem in our oceans has become catastrophic. Plastic never goes away it, just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces (micro plastics) that are ingested by sea life (and then us).

Chris Jordan http://www.parley.tv/updates/2016/3/17/chris-jordan-midway-message-from-gyre

We started by having the participating teachers experience a model unit we designed on removing plastic from the ocean. They spent all day on a Saturday in October learning the unit. Then we provided all the materials required for the teachers to take the unit back to their classrooms to do with their students. We visited every classroom to observe how things were going and to consult. The phenomena that kicked off the unit is the video below (there are many others to choose from BTW if you search the web). Teachers and students reported to us during our classroom visits how compelling watching and re-watching the video and making/sharing observations of what they saw and heard … really motivated them to want to take on this engineering challenge.

Here is a link to the unit plan.  Kris Carroll did most of the heavy lifting on the unit design with plenty of  help from Stacy Cohen, Tracey Gaffney and myself.

The graphic organizers referenced in the unit plan and some support materials:

Engineering INB Phase A_3_5_ElementarySchool 

Engineering INB Phase B_3_5_ElementarySchool

Engineering INB Phase C_3_5_ElementarySchool

Engineering In NGSS Handout

Engineering Design_Grades_3_5

Here is the materials list for making a plastic gyre for each group (although we substituted somewhat and some teachers added to it): Materials for gyre

Here is a link to a Flickr set from teacher trainings in- Southern Nevada, Northern Nevada

Here are photos from 10 classrooms in Northern Nevada.

BELOW: These are the plastic plant trays we provided:
IMG_4705

But some teachers substituted with larger containers: IMG_4718

The trays of water were somewhat problematic in that they were small (so they could be utilized more easily in moving to and from student tables) and students struggled with scale. One big suggestion based on our experience, after the initial trial of their design, have a complete debrief that includes a discussion of size of both the plastic debris (which should be cut much smaller than you see here) but also that the devices students build need to be smaller than you see here as well. In addition discuss how the trays represent a tiny, tiny part of the ocean (students really struggled with understanding the size of oceans). Also we suggest after the initial experience have students brainstorm materials that they believe should be included in the materials they have available to build their plastic removal/gathering device – then gather them from the school and have students find things at home to bring in to provide themselves more options.

We had an all day class for the teachers after most of them had completed most of the unit. They all reported that they and their students were highly motivated by the experience (and we noted the same during our classroom visits). Next teachers are designing their own units to match up with their curriculum using this experience as a model. I really feel I’m sharing only a sliver of the potential for this lesson and how it went here, so feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Learning is messy!

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NSTA Position Paper on Elementary School Science

The National Science Teachers Association makes the case for more science learning

From the NSTA Position Paper on Elementary Science:

“High-quality elementary science education is essential for establishing a sound foundation of learning in later grades, instilling a wonder of and enthusiasm for science that lasts a lifetime, and in addressing the critical need for a well-informed citizenry and society.”

No Child Left Behind and other well meaning, but very misguided (at best) education reform legislation narrowed out science (as well as a long list of other invaluable subjects) from the curriculum, especially from “at risk” schools. The thinking (wishing? assumption?) was that students that were behind in language and math would “catch-up” more quickly if schools and teachers just focused on those subjects. In addition the “research-based” programs that were promoted and funded tended to rely heavily on direct instruction and very little on making sense by doing. The assumption was made, promoted and implemented (with rigor and fidelity) that students would catch-up on the science, social studies, art, PE and more once they got to 7th grade. (Mostly … they aren’t catching-up)

In my own 30+ year experience teaching elementary students, mostly “at risk” students, I found over and over that science and making experiences motivated students to read and write and use oral language skills to explain their thinking. I shared some of those experiences during a TEDx talk I gave in Denver years ago. I’ve also shared numerous blog posts here about the learning my students have done because we did hands-on “doing” pieces that lead to lots of language arts and math … in fact I believe more powerful language arts and math than just following a program.

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for direct instruction, just that direct instruction and practice is way too sterile and uninspiring to slog through day after day. It tends to be a desirable approach for “other peoples” kids to be subjected to.

The curiosity and wonder that evolve from science and STEM inquiry (as well as art, social studies, and more) should be consistently promoted by daily science instruction and experiences. AND language arts and math time should be devoted when applicable to science. I note that the NSTA Position Paper on Elementary Science espouses:

  • There must be adequate time in every school day to engage elementary students in high-quality science instruction that actively involves them in the processes of science.

and that:

  • NSTA recommends that science be given equal priority as other core subjects, so schools should strive for at least 60 minutes of science instruction a day, including significant science investigations.

How many students have become disengaged and bored by a curriculum that focuses on skills and has narrowed out the subjects and activities that many students connect with? A focus on language arts and math are interesting to students that connect well, are successful with and motivated by those subjects, but too many struggle and are frustrated by that focus. Use the subjects and activity that they connect with to give them reason and curiosity to engage more with learning. Understanding how things work and feel and smell and sound brings meaning to reading that another worksheet or skill lecture can’t develop.

The NSTA Position Paper on Elementary Science goes much deeper into the many reasons science  learning time and quality experiences should be expanded and nurtured in our schools. It is well worth reading.

Learning is messy!

 

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Science Task Prescreen

Help with thinking through STEM / Science learning

In my work with teachers on assessing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) I find one of the toughest shifts for them to make is to develop tasks that are meaningful and really worth diving into. The NGSS are performance based standards that are very different from science standards many (maybe most) teachers are used to implementing.

The NGSS standards are not about explaining and showing students (the “sage on the stage” approach) and having them read about it and answer some questions. Every NGSS standard begins with the words, “Students who demonstrate understanding can:” Example from 5th grade –  “Students who demonstrate understanding can: Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.” To meet this standard students have to be able to do this, perform this on their own, not watch the teacher or Bill Nye do it and explain it and then answer questions. This standard will take time and multiple experiences to master.

To help educators design lessons and tasks for their students Achieve has provided this “Science Task Prescreen.”

“The purpose of the Science Task Prescreen is to conduct a quick review of assessment tasks to determine whether they might be designed for standards based on the Framework for K-12 Science Education, like the Next Generation ScienceStandards (NGSS). The Prescreen is intended to reveal whether tasks include “red flags”—i.e., challenges commonly found in science assessment tasks.”

I’ve used this with teachers and find it really helps them begin the shift from old style science instruction that was more about answering questions and less about doing and understanding. Check it out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning is messy!

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Nevada – 5th Annual Statewide Recycled Art Contest

Make a Difference. Make a Masterpiece

Chris Jordan http://www.parley.tv/updates/2016/3/17/chris-jordan-midway-message-from-gyre

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a 5th Grade Engineering Fellows Program I am co-facilitating here in Nevada. We are kicking off the program soon with a lesson on plastic waste in the ocean (follow the link above to see a video and more that explains the issue). We’ll share some video and other background, and then to make a long story short, we’ll challenge the teachers (and then they’ll go back to their classrooms and challenge their students) to engineer solutions to gathering the waste (although some experts contend that instead of focusing on collection, the main effort should be on not adding additional plastics to the oceans). I’m hoping to add the entire plastics lesson we are building in a future post.

Then in a very timely fashion I was made aware of the contest I pasted the press release about below. More info about the contest can be found here NevadaRecycles.nv.gov. We will share this with our “fellows” as a way to add an art connection to their engineering piece. For those Nevada teachers / residents that are interested here is the press release:

From: Recycling and Water [mailto:ENVIRONEWS@LISTSERV.STATE.NV.US] On Behalf Of Patricia Moen
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2018 9:02 AM
To: ENVIRONEWS@LISTSERV.STATE.NV.US
Subject: 2018 Recycled Art Contest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Southern Nevada: Rachel Lewison, rlewison@ndep.nv.gov, 702-486-2850, ext. 268

                 Northern Nevada: Patty Moen, pmoen@ndep.nv.gov, 775-687-9466

5th Annual Statewide Recycled Art Contest
Make a Difference. Make a Masterpiece

CARSON CITY, NV – The Nevada Recycles program has partnered with The Venetian Resort Las Vegas to support a statewide recycled art contest to increase Nevadans’ awareness and interest in recycling. In support of Earth Day’s 2018 campaign to End Plastic Pollution, this year’s projects must be made with used or found plastic materials. Fastening materials may include tape, glue and/or string, and other materials as needed for structure or support. Submission of an entry form and photos of artwork are due by October 24, 2018.

In addition to a $250 prize to the first place class project, The Venetian will provide first, second and third prizes ($200, $100 and $50 respectively) in five categories: Kindergarten-Grade 5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult, and Professional Artist.

In 2017, Nevada’s recycling rate was 21%.  Based on residential and commercial sector data, Nevadans (including the influence of the tourist population) throw away about 5.8 pounds of trash, per person, per day.  That is approximately four million tons of trash that enters a landfill each year.

“Recycling is the easiest thing we can do to save energy, conserve natural resources and create green jobs,” said Pranav Jampani, Director of Sustainability for The Venetian, The Palazzo and Sands Expo.

Winners will be announced on America Recycles Day, which is Thursday, November 15.  More information about the contest, along with submission guidelines, is available at NevadaRecycles.nv.gov.

Patty Moen

Northern Nevada Recycling Coordinator
Solid Waste & Recycling Branch
Bureau of Sustainable Materials Management

901 S. Stewart Street

Carson City, NV 89701
pmoen@ndep.nv.gov

Learning is messy!!

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Class dynamics and culture are really time consuming AND really worth every minute!

When you visit awesome schools, it always the culture you notice and talk about

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about assuming students have collaboration skills and building class culture. These vital learning pieces were greatly deemphasized and cut (even ridiculed as a waste of time) during the last 15 years or so of school “reform.” I meant to include a paragraph or so about how time consuming building class culture and group dynamics is (what tends to be called “Social Emotional Learning” today) … which is one of the reasons they were vilified, since making sure every piece of every “researched based” ELA, math, intervention and writing program must be implemented with absolute fidelity, and that took up the whole day … no time for anything else (even apparently  science, art, social studies, PE …..).

I was fortunate to be part of a staff long ago that was told in no uncertain terms before school started, that we should take 4 to 8 weeks to focus on building a supportive, collaborative culture in our classrooms. The principal was looking for that happening from the first day of school and the staff worked together on lessons and activities and literacy pieces and projects all designed to foster and build that culture. I remember my first year at that school wondering how that would take 4 to 8 weeks (with follow ups throughout the year). BTW it wasn’t like we didn’t teach reading and math and science and everything else … its just that we took some of the time for those subjects, especially early on to teach whole lessons and discussions and talk about what we were reading (Crow Boy, Maniac Magee, and others were favorites) that centered on respect, collaboration skills and more.

My students even produced some award winning video projects that sprang up around our work in these areas: Don’t Laugh At Me and Being Different come to mind as student initiated projects. And these took a lot of class time for students to produce. But the language and discussion and writing and creativity they spawned were incredible. And if we had problems come up later in the year it wasn’t unusual that we would watch and discuss these videos and revisit discussions about books and activities we’d experienced. IT TOOK TIME! Valuable time, but valuable time well spent (and note the arts and hands-on technology use … and when I run into these students from time to time (now past college graduate age whether they went to college or not) these projects and others are what they want to talk about.

So my message here is it shouldn’t just be that you have a Social Emotional Learning program at your school with siloed lessons …. we should be spending the time to make this kind of learning and work part of the culture at school and in our communities. I think we are currently experiencing the results first hand of cutting these experiences because ELA and math were more important.

Learning is messy!

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Never assume your students know how to work together on a project

Early in the year do some mini projects to scaffold them

I remember back in the day (or do people still do these?) when teachers in 4th or 5th grade tended to assign “the state” or “the country” report. Way too often the assumption was made that the students pretty much knew how to do these. The teacher would pass out the “packet” that explained the project, showed an example of a bibliography and often included templates for specific information that was to be included (state name, population, area in square miles, draw a map labeled with specific information and so on). Photos, usually from cut up National Geographic Magazines or brochures from travel agents were required. Typically the report was due in a month or six weeks. Each week they would have students check in with their progress and to allow students to ask questions about anything they didn’t understand about the report.

Like science fair projects it often appeared like someone a bit older (and maybe with a college degree?) might have “helped” somewhat …  or they were incomplete or were of poor quality. Some did well, but how much learning actually occurred was questionable. This was the way this had always been done, it was “challenging” and, like the infamous science fair project, expected.

One of my main concerns about these projects was the assumption that students knew how to do all the work that went into the report and this was just a chance for them to put together a big project integrating all those skills. AND, after all, they were allowed to ask questions about what they didn’t understand (like they would even know exactly what they didn’t understand or know how to do). Since these were really long term homework projects the teacher didn’t see the work being done which made facilitating difficult.

Early in my career I had the same experience when facilitating projects in my classroom. I knew doing projects was supposed to be “good stuff,” so it was important to do them.  Things would often hum right along as students worked on a project and I would allow myself to get sucked into observing from across the room, just to keep an eye on things, and would even do a quick task like lunch count or attendance or a quick email. Questions would pop up or a student or 2 would need some redirection, but often it was great to just let students work – or so I told myself.

Too often though after a “way too short” a period of time, some students would start claiming they were “done” or “done with that part”. Their work was almost always poor or incomplete or was off subject or all the above. This led to frustration on my part and a decreasing interest in the project by students (which was more frustrating since this is an awesome project dammit!!!).

Another observation I noted was that students were often very poor at working in a group. Even though I’d make groups have a meeting before they could get to work to go over what needed to be done that day and split up the work … which everyone in the group had to agree on so the group couldn’t just dump certain tasks on certain individuals. There would still be individual students off task, wandering around and too often causing issues. When the group would complain the student would often claim the work was dumb or boring … the group would respond that they agreed to do that part and weren’t getting anything done.

It took me awhile to understand that what was really going on (at least most of the time) was that this off track student didn’t really understand what to do, or how to do it, or even what the reason for it was. Anger, name calling and frustration was often the result (and more frustration for me … “the students were so excited about this project!!!”)

What I learned from these experiences and various classes, PD sessions and conversations with peers was that I was assuming students knew how to do these things … and mostly even the “on-task” students didn’t have a good grasp of them.

 I learned to do some relatively simple individual and group projects, early in the year especially. I’d do some without much work on group dynamics and let problems arise so we could talk about the real feelings they were having and then give them some skills to constructively deal with them.

One they loved was role playing the very issues they had just experienced. I would usually take a seat in a group and demonstrate how calling each other names was probably NOT going to lead to cooperation. Instead I would teach them to ask questions like, “Toni do you understand how to do that?” – Often that was the crux of the problem … the group mate just didn’t know exactly what to do but didn’t want to admit that and look dumb. Another important skill was just noting that maybe 2 students in the group should work on that part together … which led to students experiencing really being included.

We would brainstorm how to talk to each other respectfully. Next we would role play different “off task” situations and have every group talk through the issue to a positive conclusion (how to deal with a student in their group wandering around or throwing things or just sitting there). These were a hoot, lots of laughter, especially when a student that had a reputation of being a “model student” took on the “off task” student role. It was so obvious the more we did these lessons that one of the issues was that students just didn’t have the words or skills to deal with conflicts that arise.

I also had a rule that I would not come to answer a question unless everyone in the group had the same question and had their hands up. This promoted using your group members as resources and saved lots of time. You don’t end up or bouncing around the room or with the line of students waiting  to ask you a question they could have had answered quickly by the group. It also fostered a “working together” culture.

We’d talk about how fast the time goes by when you are truly cooperating and looking out for each other. And they saw this play out.

In addition I started walking around the room and sticking my head into each group to listen and watch –  all the time … I’d take notes about lessons or “mini-lessons” I should consider when I’d note anything from paragraphing, a science concept, how to use a technology piece or tool, how to add white glue to paint so it doesn’t crack when you paint landscapes and other cooperative group dynamics issues and more.

I stopped making these projects homework, unless a student or students asked if they could work on it after school or at home. It was way too valuable to do assessment through their doing. Observing and facilitating student work gets to individual and class strengths and weaknesses and students see that this is something they didn’t know how to do, but has value in their learning and doing.  What I made homework was resource gathering – materials, but also experts in their lives – someone’s family member that had a certain skill or knowledge to share. Some even found experts online and we had numerous video-conferences with experts contacted by students. 

When I work with teachers in my current job and bring up these ideas the number one obstacle for them is not believing they have the time or “permission” to spend on building a culture of learning.

This blog is entitled, “Learning Is Messy,” and building a supportive classroom culture is as messy as it gets. But in my experience it is what this testing, accountability and assessment culture has gotten us away from.

So as you start this year off, think of doing some simple projects to build a learning culture on.

Learning is messy!