Quest-Based Learning

This semester I have the pleasure to be enrolled in EDTECH 563, Quest-Based Learning.  One of our introductory activities was to read through a white paper that outlined the basic principles underlying Quest-Based Learning.  We were then challenged to think about how we could use this approach in developing and delivering our own curriculum.

There is a quote from the paper that really resonated with me, "Teachers in a quest-based approach do not assign letter grades to completed quests. Dismissing the industrial paradigm approach in favor of a digital age sensibility, teachers either approve a quest because it meets all expectations or return the quest to the student for revisions and re-submission.  Just like video games, quest-based learning supports multiple attempts without punishment to promote learning from mistakes" (Haskell, 2013). I love this idea of taking the focus away from letter grades and putting emphasis on learning and progress. I find it interesting that as a 5th grade teacher I can very much visualize this approach to learning being the norm in my classroom, but as a graduate student I am still locked into the old pass-fail, A or F mentality. I appreciate that EDTECH 563 is being conducted in a quest-based approach.

As I was thinking about how this could look in my classroom, my mind went to math. Math is a subject that even by 5th grade many kids struggle with confidence and often adopt the "I'm not good at math" or "I can't do division" attitude as soon as it is time to pull out the math notebooks.  One of the biggest reasons for this is that many students enter 5th grade missing some key foundational concepts that will allow them to be successful with 5th grade math standards. A quest-based approach could be a great solution to this problem. It is nearly impossible to get through all of the 5th grade standards themselves in a school year assuming that you don't have to go back and reteach earlier grade content or fill holes so to speak.  Using a quest-based approach would allow students to work at their own pace while reviewing and reinforcing foundational skills that would support their learning in 5th grade.

I don't feel that I am deep enough into my own learning about quest-based learning to discuss exactly how a project like that would look, but at this point I could see that being a very real application for quest-based learning in my classroom.

Rebecca

Haskell, C. (2013). Understanding quest-based learning. White paper. Boise State University.

Classroom Blogging Activity

As a final product for EDTECH 537 I had a lot of fun creating this classroom activity and plan to use it in my classroom this year. I think using a blogging platform to facilitate discussion and inquiry will allow my students to address this question in a more engaged way, something that hasn't happened in the past when I have given the same assignment using a request for a traditional essay as a final product.

Classroom Blogging Activity

Blogging Plan

I have really enjoyed this class and being pushed to blog more regularly. I have dabbled in it in the past, but am finding myself really enjoying it. I was never a journal writer, I would receive beautiful books and journals and have great intentions, but after about 5 or 10 pages I would lose interest. I see blogging as a similar idea, but electronically. The last couple of blog posts we had the freedom to chose the topic and style. I found it fun to be able to think for a minute about a question I had or a thought and then to go out and find resources to support my blog post. Here is my blogging plan for the next two months. I hope that some of you stop in after our class is over and give me an accountability check.

What Change Do We Need?

One of the activities in my "Back to School Kick Off Meeting" this morning was to look at data from spring testing.  It painted a dismal picture. I am new to this school, but in the short few weeks I have spent setting up my classroom and slowly meeting other teachers, I can tell that overall this is a committed, passionate group of professionals who love kids and want to see them learn and achieve. Why are they not?  So much time, debate, conversation, frustration, etc. is spent by many people asking this question. This post certainly contains no answers, but perhaps some things to consider.

I just read a blog post by a classmate who discussed what it was like to live and teach in South Korea, an extremely competitive and high performing country as measured by international test scores. Perhaps it is cultural, but I have to wonder, is the pressure and the stress that students go through worth the test results that they achieve?

I dug a little deeper into another country who consistently performs at or near the top on international tests, Singapore. Looking at this video and the following article one thing REALLY stuck out to me. One major difference between the US and other high preforming countries is the time, money, and overall investment they make in their teachers.



Singapore's Lessons About Education

It does seem to me as a part of the education system that we are trying all kinds of strategies to boost our student achievement, but investing heavily in our teachers is not one of them.

Can Video Replace Education?

Today was my first day back to work. Ahhhh Professional Development.... one of the items that we covered today was a presentation on how one of the teachers in our district has shown significant gains in student achievement to which she attributes in large part to student's use of Khan Academy. Let me clarify by saying that she is an amazing teacher who knows her content and has the pedagogy to match, but she has decided to leverage a technology solution and it seems to be working. Check out the video from Khan founder, Sal. I love how he explains the origins of his organization. It was not meant to be a replacement for instruction, but as a resource to allow students to reference when needed. This was powerful to me. How many times does a student not ask for help when they need it because they are embarrassed or shy. I plan to implement Khan in my classroom this year. I look forward to sharing the results with you.

Math or Reading? A Poll

So I will preface this entry with the acknowledgement that this is a math focused blog. If you have read any of my posts you know I am passionate about teaching math. I often am given a hard time about my enthusiasm for math, and I find that working in an elementary school, I am surrounded by A LOT of resources to ensure kids are successful in literacy, but not as much in math.  I know that I believe that math instruction is just as important as reading, but wondering what you all think?

A study completed by the National Center for Education Statistics completed a study on the number of hours spent, on average, per week on core curriculum in elementary schools. The results are interesting:

retrieved from - https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/97293.pdf

For anyone who has never worked in an elementary school, I will tell you that these numbers are quite accurate. Here is a GREAT article from greatschools.org that discusses why math is as important as literacy in elementary and preschool education. 

So, what do you think?

Video Post #2 - How TO Teach Math

In 11 minutes, Dan Meyer provides the best professional development in math I have ever sat through. I hope you take the time to watch.

Video Post - How to NOT Teach Math to Kids

This has got to be one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE videos about teaching math. While it is quite exaggerated I think that we can all remember a time when we felt this way... "Maybe if I speak louder or slower, they will get it." I never get tired of this one.

Social Media vs. Scholarly Publication: What is the Best Way to Reach Teachers

Today I would like to share a fabulous podcast from two professors who discuss their use of social media in forms such as blogs, Twitter, and YouTube to share their thoughts and findings. They contrast this to their work in publishing scholarly articles and studies and discuss the effectiveness of the different mediums of communication. ENJOY!

Fluent in the Language of Multiplication - The Importance of Multiplication Fact Fluency

In an earlier post I commented on the differences between a spiraled curricular approach and a mastery based one. Is is better for students to work toward mastery of one topic before moving on to the next, or it is better to touch on a broad range of topics briefly every year?

The idea of whether students need to be fluent in basic multiplication facts in a similarly debated topic in mathematics education. Some people argue that students must be fluent in multiplication facts by the 3rd possibly 4th grade at the latest in order to successfully move onto higher mathematics concepts successfully. Remember the timed tests? Remember Rocket Math? Remember earning a reward every time you mastered a fact family? Flash cards? This practice and philosophy have very much been the best practice for years. Others argue that teaching students a set of strategies to help them quickly compute multiplication facts is more powerful than just pure memorization, and in essence is a different type of fluency.

Research does show that in order to free up cognitive load and allow students to progress in more difficult mathematics concepts they need to have a firm foundation in basic computation. When students struggle with basic fact fluency their success rate when working with multi-digit multiplication using the standard algorithm is not good. Below are some articles that discuss the importance of computational fluency, specifically multiplication fact fluency in successful mathematics education.

Developing Multiplication Fact Fluency - Brendaful, J. L.

Innovations and Perspective Blog - Virginia Department of Education

Automaticity of Basic Math Facts: The Key to Math Success?

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics - Fluency: Simply Fast and Accurate?

Math Fluency 

In Other News

I created this blog specifically for EDTECH 537 and my focus is primarily mathematics education, but I have become inspired by this platform and since my blog is officially titled "Rebecca Davis Education Technology" I feel compelled to share something from EDTECH 542 (Tech Supported Project Based Learning). After a very intense 10 weeks a classmate and I have completed a pretty amazing PBL project focused on integrating sports statistics and math standards. Feel free to check out our project here.

Not only did I learn A TON about Project Based Learning, but it was also a great learning experience in collaborating with a classmate completely digitally. My partner in this project is a 4th grade teacher from Texas. We have never met, and most likely never will, but thanks to the power of Google and other Web 2.0 tools we were able to seamlessly create our project. Technology is AMAZING!!!

Teaching Digital Natives

I do not consider myself a digital native, in the sense that I did not grow up with the technology readily available to students today. My family got our first computer when I was 16, I vividly remember printing my senior paper on my dad's dot matrix printer. Anyone else remember that sound?? The horror! I did not get my first cell phone, the iconic Nokia, until I was a junior in college. I do consider myself a very well adjusted digital immigrant though. I have embraced all that technology provides, the interaction, the connectedness, the immediacy of information available to me. I remember thinking caller ID was the best invention, third only to fire and the wheel, but now I cannot imagine living without being able to Google any thought on my computer or smart phone.

While I do not feel I am a digital native, I LOVE the fact that my students are. My school has a written policy against bringing electronic devices to school. One that I have blatantly turned my back to in my own classroom. I feel that if devices are such an integral part of my students lives, to separate them from education just perpetuates the idea that formal education is disconnected from their real world. I also believe that if we embrace the possibilities of marrying education and personal technology that we have an opportunity to influence our students on how to appropriately use their technology. We have all experienced that moment in a restaurant or other public setting where a couple or family spends the entire time glued to their individual devices, it is painful and sad to watch. We, as educators, have an opportunity to not only teach content and digital citizenship, but also the ability to discern when it is appropriate for "screen time" and when it is not.

Personal electronic devices... bring them into my classroom! They are a powerful learning and interacting tool, but know when to put them away and engage with me and your classmates in the "old fashioned" art of conversation.

Guest Blog - Mathematical Discourse

My guest blogger this week is a dear colleague of mine, Mickie Barrett. We have taught together for 4 years and share a mutual love of mathematics, Pinterest, and rigor in our classrooms.

Mathematical Discourse

I’ll admit it. I like a quiet classroom. I enjoy the low hum of students hard at work. There is something somewhere that makes us think that a quiet classroom full of working students means they are learning. I’m not sure where that comes from. Maybe from the days of classroom management equaling control equaling quiet. Maybe it’s just me.

I remember during my student teaching learning about setting up effective centers. I put in a lot of work to create the perfect set of activities for students to practice what they’d learned and explore extensions. When the time came for them to be engaged, they were. And it was loud. I was in a panic. I kept looking around for students to redirect, but they were all on task. Then, my cooperating teacher told me something I won’t soon forget. She said, “There are two types of noise, off task noise and on task noise. Which is this?” At that point, I realized they were doing exactly as I had hoped.

As a teacher, I’ve discovered I’m one of those people who is easily distracted. I find that when there is noise, I struggle to focus on small groups or individuals I’m working with. I tell students if I’m distracted, others probably are, too. Therefore, we need to always be aware of our volume and sensitive to the needs of others.

Which leads me to the conflict of mathematical discourse. The old methods of teaching expected students to sit quietly, practicing problems just modeled on the board. Recent work in mathematics calls for students to TALK, and talk often. Recently, I read a book titled What’s Math Got To Do With It? By Jo Boaler. In it, she details the benefits students gain from mathematical discourse. It’s no longer only about computation or finding a single correct answer. Allowing students to discuss their thinking and solutions involves them asking questions, creating models, justifying methods, in addition to calculating with procedures. They learn to communicate different ideas. Students discover their misconceptions and strengthen their learning by helping each other. All skills readily practiced in other content areas, but not traditionally math.

Jo Boaler (2015) starts her book by telling us that math is “the study of patterns” or “ a set of connected ideas”. Allowing students to explore these ideas together strengthens their communication, reasoning and inquiry skills. Students learn that they all have something to contribute, emphasizing success for all. They take more ownership for their learning and enjoy math more. Plus, teaching them to be flexible thinkers keeps them connected to the context of the situation, developing skills they can apply again. These all sound like amazing life-long skills to me, and who doesn’t want to send their students out the door with a pocket full of those?

So, how do those of us who like quiet manage the noise? Carefully. Teach students what appropriate discourse looks like. Ask them thought-provoking questions. Give them feedback that will encourage problem solving and celebrate their successes. Structure. There is a time and a place to have “on task noise”. This may seem like common sense, but I see teachers all the time struggle to find this balance. I know I do. But, if I can step back, watch and see authentic conversations and learning happening, then what’s the harm in a little noise, right? If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll hear a student who previously thought math was hard and they were bad at it declare, “I love math!”

Boaler, J. 2015. What’s Math Got To Do With It. Penguin Books. New York

Commentary - Effectiveness of 1:1 Devices in Education

I recently accepted a teaching position at a new school. In conversation with a fellow teacher, who also happens to be my aunt, I was discussing all of the "pros" for my decision to move. One of them was the fact that my students would have access to 1:1 devices. My aunt asked me, "Do you really think that 1:1 devices make a difference?" I immediately jumped to the answer "yes!" and while I do have my reasons, which I will share, I did wonder what research has to say about their effectiveness.

A recent meta-analysis research study reviewed 86 papers submitted on the effectiveness of 1:1 devices on student achievement and by and large the findings both quantitative and qualitative show that 1:1 devices do have a positive impact on student achievement. Perhaps it is because I am a graduate student or it is just my innate nature that "wants to know things", but after scanning through these findings and reading deeper a few of the papers that interested me, I feel better about my opinion given that research does show a positive correlation between student achievement and access to 1:1 devices.

This blog entry however is not meant to be a review of research, but a commentary on what I think. Here are the reasons why I believe 1:1 devices are beneficial:

• Our students are digital natives. It is important that students be introduced to the functions and capabilities of technology to develop the necessary 21st century skills they will need to succeed in our tech driven world.
• The internet is an incredible WEALTH of information. I am old enough to remember the days of card catalogs and color coded note cards that I used to research information for a report and am thankful that my students will not need to do that. Yes, it is important that we put limits and parameters on what sites students access, but teaching them to be a discerning internet researcher is a wonderful skill to develop.
• They offer an opportunity to teach digital citizenship. Social media, all of its benefits and drawbacks, are a part of our society. It is important to teach our kids how to interact appropriately and safely in a digital world.
• To be honest, there are a lot of freaking cool apps, games, and websites out there that support the standards students need to learn. They are already drawn to technology so why not leverage it as a resource to help meet our curricular goals.
• Standardized tests (like them or hate them) are administered on computers. Students should be familiar with the workings of a computer so that they can focus on the content being tested, not how to operate the technology. 
• 1:1 devices increase student engagement and participation. Students are not able to blend into the background as easily. 
• There are a lot of programs and apps out there that can provide students with individualized learning experiences. 
• Many technology applications can also build teamwork and collaboration skills. Another essential to a 21st century learner. 

I am incredibly excited to have the opportunity to work in a 1:1 environment next year and look forward to all that my students and I will be able to do. 

"Linking" Mathematics for Elementary Students

In my K-12 education experience I LOVED math! It was a straightforward subject that required little inference. Procedures were taught, practiced, and tested. I was successful in math and it gave me confidence. When I became a teacher 6 years ago teaching math looked a lot different than when I was in school. There was no textbook, no teacher guide, no worksheets, and no clear schedule of the scope and sequence of the topics to be taught. I knew my standards, but was at a loss when it came to how to teach my students these math concepts effectively.

As a teacher in Idaho, it is required before you can re-certify that you take a week long, intensive professional development class developed by professors at Boise State University and aligned with the Mathematical Thinking Initiative (MTI). Ummm HELLO!!!!!!! This was not the way that I learned math in school. The cognitive dissonance I felt that week was very tough for a former "math star". I left that week with an understanding of the why behind some basic math principles and a budding understanding of how to begin to help my students make meaning and connect to the math they needed to learn.

That one week was not enough, I was hooked and the following summer I began working on a graduate degree focused around these math principles. I can say without a doubt, after finishing my program, and working together with kids to learn 5th grade math standards the last 6 years that my feelings about math have grown even stronger. I am the annoying family member who wants to talk about my latest breakthrough with my students and their place value understanding instead of current movies or sporting events.

Below are some links to articles, blogs, and videos that I read, follow, watch, in an effort to continually refine my math pedagogy and understanding.

Four Principles for Deeply Effective Math Teaching

Dreambox Learning Blog - Best Strategies for Teaching Elementary Math

Dr. Matthew Beyranevand - 6 Ways to Help Students Understand Math - Edutopia

National Council for Teacher of Mathematics (NCTM) - an incredible wealth of information and resources!

One of my favorite resources - retrieved from www.nctm.org

One of my favorite articles - Effective teaching in elementary mathematics: Identifying classroom practices that support student achievement.

Research Based Best Practices for Teaching Mathematics and Improving Math Attitudes

8 year old explaining the subtraction algorithm

retrieved from - youtube

Professional Development on CGI

retrieved from - youtube

This list of links could go on forever! There is so much fabulous information out there. I fill close by saying that while the shift we have undergone in the last 5+ years to Common Core Standards or some form of more rigorous standards has been painful for many in the profession, students, and parents, I believe the new approach to teaching mathematics will reap rewards and create a generation of "math stars"

Rebecca

Spiral vs. Mastery Instruction in Mathematics Education

We all have memories of our experiences in math class. A text book, a chalkboard/whiteboard, a teacher who would model procedures for solving problems, and homework assignments. Maybe sometimes if we were lucky, the teacher would assign the odd numbered problems so you could check your answers in the back of the book. This type of mathematics education is embedded in American society.

In a world that is becoming increasingly intertwined it has become apparent that the U.S. education system is not preparing our students to compete and lead in this global environment. The Pew Research Center and the Brookings Institute both report that U.S. scores on international tests like the PISA and the TIMMS consistently show the U.S. ranking well behind other countries, especially in the area of mathematics. It has become clear to everyone that something needs to be changed in order to prepare our citizens to be global leaders.

Approaches in mathematics education have changed somewhat from the scene I described earlier, but effectiveness and consistency have yet to be proven or achieved. A debate rages on among educators and those involved in education policy about which approach to teaching mathematics is best: spiral curriculum or mastery based curriculum.

In a mastery based model it is believed that math is learned best when learned incrementally, with one skill building on the next. In a mastery math program, a student develops a thorough comprehension of one topic before moving on. This is widely considered to be the best approach for teaching mathematics currently as the goal is to insure that students "master" something before moving on to a new concept. It is also worth noting that Singapore, which has consistently ranked number on in mathematics as measures by international tests, uses a mastery based approach. Critics of a mastery based curriculm bring up the ideas of:

• student fatigue - getting tired of a topic before they are able to demonstrate mastery
• student frustration - it is common to many students to be successful in one area of mathematics such as algebraic thinking while struggling with geometry, in a true mastery approach a student may be "stuck" in a topic that is naturally a struggle for them.
• students do not have a chance to go back and practice skills that they have previously shown mastery in. 

A spiral model presents a given set of topics that repeat from level to level. Each time the material is revisited, more depth is added, linking new concepts to the learning that has already taken place. The spiral approach is what has been widely used in the U.S. since the 1960's. The spiral curricular approach also receives criticism with the most powerful being, that if this is what we have been doing for the last 50 years, it does not appear to be working. Spiral math curriculum also does not allow for serious intervention when a student does not understand a topic. It is moved on from, and when presented the next year, with added complexity, students are missing the foundational pieces they need to be successful at higher levels.

What do you think? Is spiral the best approach? It certainly is what is familiar to most of us. Is mastery the best approach? Just because other high performing countries are doing it should we too?

Greeting fellow EDTECH 537 students! My name is Rebecca Davis and I am excited to be learning all about blogging with all of you! Below is an infographic that gives you some information about me, also visit my About Me page.