B.A. Social Studies
The second of my goals for this year is to successfully implement student blogging into my classroom (for the first see this link: http://basocialstudies.weebly.com/blog/infusing-inquiry-into-pbl-week-1). Three weeks in, I am excited to share that it is going better than expected! Heads up though, it takes a little extra time every week to first assign and allow students to create posts, and a little more time to read through and respond to students’ thoughts, reflections, and learning. Coming into the year, I wanted to offer my students more authentic voice in my class and a way to connect their learning with the “real world.” Across the board the benefits have outweighed the drawbacks. Here are my thoughts on the challenges of the implementation of student blogs to this point. What are the Challenges and Benefits that Outweigh Them?Choosing a Platform:
Two weeks into the year, I can tell you that it took a bit of prep time deciding on the blogging platform to use. There are 10+ great options out there with each offering a bit different options and price points. Eventually, I settled on Edublogs due to the options that it offers for the price ($39.99/year, which seems to be the lowest cost for any student blogging platform) which includes classroom management options that allow the teacher to control all aspects of the blogs/websites but will still allow me to release my students blogs back to them to turn into a portfolio that they can take with them and build on when they leave my class--also a long-term goal of mine. Time: It takes a lot of time to work through 90+ separate blog posts per week, which I will elaborate on below, but If you’re looking to include more student voice in your classrooms, provide an opportunity to informally formatively and summatively assess, and offer more authentic feedback to your students, there seems to be no better way to go. The connections that I’ve made with my students up to this point have been positively affected by introducing blogging to my classroom. The blogs provide a way to get to know students as individuals better than I have ever been able to. Also, I feel that they take their writing seriously due to the authentic audience provided by the opportunity. Grading: This is not the most simple thing to do with the platform that I chose as all pending posts are displayed from most recent submission to least recent. I’ve done a ton of flipping between gradebooks in my SIS system, and at first, when I wasn’t familiar with the students and which class periods they were it, it took a ton of time to get those in. Also, there is the challenge of balancing providing students with the opportunity to write without squashing their excitement to do so. Across the board, my simple explanation and emphasis for my students when they are writing blog posts is that their job is to communicate effectively by using proper writing skills along with proving that they are learning by including specific details. I often remind students that I am using their posts in lieu of other assessments, which typically provides them with the understanding of the purpose and intent of their blogs. Feedback: As I mentioned previously, it is time consuming to provide feedback to students, but the gains in connecting with my students have made it worth it. As we know, learner autonomy and buy in is huge in getting students intrinsically motivated. The only grades that Ihave entered into the grade book at this point in the year are for these blog posts. Nothing else has been necessary, as my students are getting the purpose of activities due to the reflections that I have been asking them to write on a weekly basis. I think that it is helping them understand learning as a process and that they are learning along the way. Participation in class activities has been as close to 100% as it has ever been (in fact, I can’t think of a time when I’ve really had to get after a student to this point to join an activity--just the typical, “make sure the conversation that you’re having is on task” stuff). I attribute this to the fact that my students have received feedback which proves that I’m reading what they write. Reflection and Thoughts After Three Weeks: I’m excited! I was a bit nervous that the students would not take it seriously, but they’ve proven that they are happy to have the responsibility to become digital citizens and understand the power of having a positive public place to share their work. I think that they understand the long-term implications that their blogs can have and their value. It’s exciting to see them take the next step in taking control of their learning and understanding the intent of the blogs as a reflection and public display of their learning. Finally, be sure to stop by fhssocialstudies.edublogs.org and comment on my students posts and work! Based on my reflection of the development and implementation of PBL into my classroom last year, I have decided that one of my two key focuses for this year is to improve and implement stronger inquiry based strategies into my curriculum (the other being student blogging--a subject for a future post). The intent of making this change is to allow my students to have better control over their learning and to begin thinking of research as a continuous inquiry process with the end goal of justifying their opinions and supporting them with evidence. Last year as I developed my project/problem based curriculum I began each unit by providing my students with their “essential question” that would drive their learning for the duration. To begin, we broke down the question into many smaller or more detailed ones. In general, students struggled through the process because they did not understand the purpose of it. I explained it as part of the research process and in general, they played along, looking for the specific number of questions that I assigned for them to put together. We created questions as a group, and in general, the students came up with decent ones, but after all of that, I took those questions, and chose which ones met my needs regarding curriculum and content. I found that I was artificially having my students drive inquiry and we never came back to their questions after developing them. After reading Make Just One Change from the Right Question Institute (RightQuestion.org), I found a new method to try to drive this inquiry process and actually provide my students to take more control of their learning by allowing them to drive the research process more completely. In general, the only variation that I made was changing my essential question into a statement that I decided to introduce to my students as a hypothesis for them to prove or disprove. For example, in my government course, my first unit essential question last year was, “What are the most significant principles of American Government and what are their origins?” I changed that to the statement/hypothesis, “The ideas put into the Constitution by the Delegates at the Constitutional Convention were original.” We spent a week on the process of developing our driving questions. In the end, each class now has developed their own research question, from which each group will begin their research. My students were challenged and highly engaged throughout the entirety of the week and I’m excited to see where it takes us. Here is a summary of the first week of the process and implementation specifically. I encourage you to give it a shot! Day 1: Introduce the “Question Focus” and the “Rules for Questioning” from the Right Question Institute. The Right Question Institute (RightQuestion.org) has gone into great depth to develop a Question Formulation Technique (QFT) which is the basis for the development of this portion of our unit in class. I used their rules for developing questions for students to follow which include the following:
Though I didn’t use their QFT to a tee, I did follow the basic direction that they provide and their rules briefly explaining the purpose of the rules in this activity. Next, I introduced the Question Focus to each class. In the government course, it is “The ideas put into the Constitution by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention were original” and in economics it is “The economy is in better shape now than at the beginning of President Obama’s administration.” In the introduction to how each statement should be used in regard to question development, I explained that the students’ job was to prove or disprove the statement using credible research including data for the economics course and primary sources for the government one and that their questions should drive their research. Finally, the students, in groups of two or three, were provided with as much time as needed to develop questions based on the focus statement. It is a process full of ebbs and flows, students struggled getting through the first few questions, but went through highly productive spurts along the way. As I circulated the room in many cases, they were struggling, then when I came back around they had five or ten more questions down. The key to making this process work is to be involved and constantly remind the students of the rules. In general this can be done in a light hearted way and the process is pretty collaborative and enjoyable for the students. Day 2: Prioritize the Questions and Place on Brainstorming Wall To begin the second day, students were asked to prioritize their questions based on the idea that they were developing them to use in their research, reminding them that their goal was to prove or disprove the Question Focus. In order to help them with this process, in their groups, students evaluated each one individually. Upon completion of that step, they were assigned with the task of choosing their top five and writing them on a note card in Sharpie that was eventually taped to the wall (in our hallway due to space restrictions and wanting to offer audience for their work). Students were also asked to evaluate on their process of developing the questions and to write a blog post to share their thoughts. In those blogs, students acknowledged the challenge and the thinking skills that it took to develop those questions. Days 3-4: Creating the Class Research Question: The final phase of class inquiry consisted of two sections, top question selection, then another round of prioritization. To begin the process of narrowing our research focus, each group was offered the opportunity to vote for the three “best research questions” on the brainstorm wall which now included all of the classes’ top questions using a sharpie to dot their votes. Each group also chose the #1 question that they saw on the wall that they thought would be the best to start research. From that point, the top questions that each group decided was the best were written on the board and shared with each class. From there, they evaluated each one, ranking them from most important for beginning research to the least important of the ones on the board. Each group provided their number for each question and the numbers were averaged to come up with the starting question for the class to begin researching. At this point, each class has decided on their own research direction based on their entire class contribution combined with the contributions of the other section of the course. It is interesting to note that each class chose a different question to begin their research.
Day 5: Introduction to Researching the Questions At this point, the students have understood that this course will be made up of sustained inquiry as a part of their project based units. Therefore, they understood that they were not done asking questions. Although we had narrowed our research focus, I still wanted to offer them the opportunity to personalize the question if they did not necessarily agree that it was the “best one.” For this reason, students were asked to evaluate the class question, then break it down into five more detailed research questions. Finally, students divided up those questions among their group members and were set to begin their basic research with the caveat that they were expected not to answer those questions, but to begin creating a database of people, places, things, documents, ideas, etc. that will direct their next set of questions. It’s awesome to see that the students have taken to the process of developing the questions and that they are wanting to dive in and answer them, but I am still working them through the process of developing research by expanding their net before just trying to answer the question. This will be a continuous process, and I’m excited to see how it continues to challenge them and promote higher order thinking. |
AuthorBrian Anton currently serves the Purdy R-II (Missouri) School District as the 7-12 Principal after working in the PK-12 Assistant Principal and Athletic Director roles for two years. In the 12 years prior to moving into administration, he served as an award-winning high school social studies teacher. Archives
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