5313
Creating a Significant Learning Environment
I find myself struggling to gain my students' attention as I try to teach them the wonders of the world we know of as science, a plight I think many of my fellow middle school educators face in the war against technology for attention. This issue is further compounded by this generations' apathy to traditional authority figures in knowledge and news, preferring to gather information from a variety of resources like TikTok, Google or Apple News, YouTube, and other online articles instead of just blindly trusting any one source.
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I found the ideas outlined in Douglas Thomas and John S. Brown's A new culture of learning: cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change to get at the heart of many issues in modern post-COVID classrooms. Thomas and Brown (2011) posits that in order to truly educate our students in a way that is impactful and beneficial to their future we must embrace technology to create an authentic learning environment that enriches society and increases the depth of learning. The solution to the student attention crisis? We need to focus on the aspects of technology that students, and people in general, find to be so irresistible and replicate that in our classrooms, the best way to do this is by focusing on the sense of community that is achieved using technology in which all members of the community are contributing and learning from each other (Thomas and Brown, 2011, pp 50-58). Thomas and Brown (2011) argued that the reason these niche online communities such as World of Warcraft, the “Click Here to Learn More” Diabetes support group, and even Harry Potter wikis and fan groups lead to deeper understanding
and mastery of complex skills because background knowledge and personal experiences
he refers to as tacit knowledge, is bridged with technical knowledge and skills to create very complex and unique connections (pp. 75, 76). On top of the seamless blending of tacit and complex knowledge, participants are constantly engaging with each other and making suggestions to improve the outcomes of the products that the group is creating. These suggestions from peers and constant innovation within the group drives the process in which a learner will continually question how things are done or what can change to make the best possible outcome, which Thomas and Brown (2011) termed “indwelling”, which according to him can become second nature or almost reflexive to a learner that spends enough time continually pushing themselves to the next level by continually reflecting on their work and creating changes to it based on an internal line of questioning (pp. 85-88). This process of building a community, exchanging knowledge and ideas, and indwelling as described by Thomas and Brown (2011), is the basis to what I consider true learning and their description of this new learning culture is the spirit that I would like to incorporate into my own classroom through my blended learning ideas (pp .57-71, 85-87)
The reason I want to incorporate the fundamentals of a digital community and collaboration discussed above into my classroom is because I agree with Thomas' (2011) idea that in order to educate and prepare learners most effectively for the world that awaits them beyond school, we must harness the power of a digital community in which all participants are gaining valuable experience and knowledge by continually engaging with each other, sharing ideas, and making changes in their knowledge. I, and many other educators, already acknowledge the power of collaboration within a classroom. As educators I think we have all heard the advice “just pair that student with a high achieving student” because it is effective to have learners share their knowledge and correct themselves. I have seen that sometimes a student can explain something to another student very similarly to how I explained it, but for some reason it clicks when coming from a peer. To harness this in a way that students can continually build on each other’s ideas and add more knowledge or connections to the discussions the more powerful learning will become, plus digital collaborations like this offers a place for a learner to come back to for inspiration as long as they would like to.
One aspect of rotational blended learning that I have been struggling with is how to make a cohesive, collaborative environment while allowing instruction to be differentiated for all the diverse needs my students have. I know that I want each unit to end in a capstone project with all students progressing through the lesson at their own pace with guidance and support from me, but I didn’t want to lose the value of collaboration and creating connections to tacit knowledge along the way, because I know that discussion with peers is so helpful for learners, especially those that may have educational gaps that makes learning in the traditional sense difficult. I don’t see any educational strategy being effective if it doesn’t allow for creativity and meaningful connections to shine. In my experience, in order to get a struggling learner to try and care about the learning you have to create a relationship and culture that is encouraging and positive and then you have to relate the learning to something that the student finds personally interesting or important to their life. If I am not able to capture my student’s in this way, I will never be able to compete for their attention and they will give up on my class before I ever had a chance to reach them and teach them anything. At my middle school it is easier for my students that are struggling to pretend they don’t care and act up than it is to admit that they need help, which is why I plan to develop a discussion board set up that will require students to respond to a video, article, or question/writing prompt and challenge students to incorporate their hobbies,
passions, or personal experiences to the content they are directly learning while they create their initial post. This gives all students a chance to make interesting connections and learn from each other. It is low stakes to all learners alike because they all start with the same amount of input knowledge and then have to research and think about cool connections from that information. Students will be encouraged to discuss what they researched and gather feedback or answer questions that stem from their posts. Finally, as part of the capstone project for the until I would require students to take their original post, reflect on the comments they receive, and make changes to their answer and expand on their thinking and write a longer paper on the topic. This allows students that may not be able to write a paper from scratch easily a chance to have help and feedback as they start a paper, thus closing an educational gap by scaffolding the writing process into little pieces.
I truly believe that the best way I can make an impact on closing the academic gaps as a result of COVID-19 is to build a digital community into my blended learning units to promote learning from others and collaboration to solve problems and understand the content we are learning in class. Students of all walks of life enjoy learning about something in their life, like Fortnite, animals, hunting, fishing, or even conservation efforts based on their interests. I asked some of my students why they say they can’t remember anything or learn, but they can tell me all about how to track a hog or whatever their hobby is and the most common answer I got is because the learning was authentic and driven by their own inquiry and framed in a way that they learned best - by actually doing the activity on their own and figuring it out through trial and error. They were then able to go back and reflect on their performance and research strategies that can make them successful for the next time. In other words, students are very capable of learning, but they only learn well if the learning feels authentic and important to them.
Knowing that my students need to be given freedom to figure things out while being given information that seems authentic and important to their lives and futures and being able to implement changes in my classroom based on that knowledge are two very different things though. I teach science in Texas, which means I have to follow the TEKS and these topics aren’t always the easiest to create authentic learning with, in fact, I have struggled with making recognizing the moon phases relevant to my students at all, because if we’re honest they will never need to have that information memorized because they can just Google it if they ever came across the need for the information. In some cases like learning to calculate protons, neutrons, and electrons in an atom, there is no way to let students just figure it out because the content can’t be seen and is more abstract. In cases like these I think having a platform in place that mimics digital communities like the groups described by Thomas and Brown (2011) will prove helpful because students will be able to help each other understand the content while also sharing their tacit knowledge, personal experiences, and even research questions together, which will make the learning authentic and meaningful (Thomas and Brown, 2011, 52-75).
Another struggle with this new culture of learning and implementing it into my classroom is that learning is not measurable in quite the same way. Standardized tests are the standards of learning right now and administrators at my school push for teaching methods that are more traditional and push the importance of data and testing over almost everything else. Stepping away from the constant testing and teaching directly to the test is going to make many uncomfortable, especially with how much we have on the line with STAAR testing and STAAR scores. Experimentation with any other strategies will be very short lived if I cannot prove academic growth using standardized assessment data. However, I believe that if this rotational blended learning embraces this new learning culture, I will be able to show academic growth on standardized tests because my students will already be familiar with the inquiry and indwelling processes that use questioning and critical thinking as the basis for all other learning.
Most importantly, I think that embracing the new culture of learning outlined by Thomas and Brown (2011), will create a more positive campus culture among students and staff, because students will be equipped with tools to learn that work for them and enrich their tacit knowledge. We are a lower performing campus, and many students have given up by the time they reach us because they have not had much success on standardized tests and have been made to feel like they are failures and efforts in school are futile. I think this program has the power to make students believe in themselves again because they will be able to make connections to their studies and feel like they are important and capable. They will see that their work and research is continually enriching the classroom discussion and they will be able to see other students’ perspectives and experiences and not only learn from them but build even more knowledge from that. I think our campus behavior issues will decrease as students become excited to learn and collaborate instead desperately trying to put on armour of apathy or “class clown” out of fear of failure or looking like they aren’t intelligent.
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Resources:
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of Constant Change. CreateSpace?
CSLE Response
CSLE is best described by Dr. Harapnuik as "giving your learners, choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities" (Harapnuik, 2023, p. 33). Basically you empower students in their learning process by incorporating a real-world based project and then give students freedom to choose their topic and apply their interests any way they can to the content being taught formally. When looking at building middle school science rotational blended units it is important to understand that relationship building and the learning environment are hugely important elements to consider in a classroom for this age group due to their specific developmental and social needs. Relationship building comes natural to me, but I know that I must be very deliberate and intentional with the resources and learning activities I utilize in the units I develop. Mindless engagement without a very clear purpose will not be successful because I won't be able to rely on student's ownership of the learning to drive the learning in my classroom. I won't be freed up to guide students in their journey instead of having to directly teach content to my students. In order to create a significant learning environment in my classroom I will build backwards from using the main TEK and creating an authentic learning project that would require students to solve a real world problem or create a final product that connects in class content with their individual passions and interests in their daily lives. With the end in mind all learning activities would directly help students complete their projects and guide their learning in a natural, authentic way.
Aligning Outcomes, Assessments, and Activities
To create an effective blended learning 8th grade chemistry unit for classes with 23-30 students in each class period, much thought must be put into the learning environment and situational factors. Students have 45 minutes in total in my class everyday and will be expected to have blended learning aspects that bridge academic gaps and give everyone a chance to get the same kind of base line background knowledge and connections that are needed to fully understand the lessons and activities within the unit. This extra support is necessary because I am at a rural Texas school so I have very diverse learners both in socioeconomic status and cultural differences as well, which is why blended learning could really help close some gaps in background knowledge because it gives every student a base line to connect with and inspire their own tacit knowledge.
While I have some autonomy in the learning activities, I am held to strict standards to the TEKS and cannot deviate from those overarching learning standards and generally accepted best practices of teaching. Science is a combination of practical and theoretical learning at this level so some topics will be readily observable while others require a solid imagination in order to grasp the concepts, which is especially true of this chemistry unit I have chosen to focus on.
As an educator I firmly believe that a good science education is one of the most important things a child could ever have. I think that students not only learn important lessons about how their world works, but they also learn how to question things around them to become discerning adults (they need discernment at those voting polls, y'all), it also gives self-confidence in their learning because the best scientists discovered things because they didn't know something and kept asking questions and refusing to give up until they got a good answer.
UbD Design
Template
Designing an entire unit of study from scratch is not easy and many educators are facing the anxiety and uncertainty of tackling new Science TEKS in the 24-25 school year. These new TEKS force educators to rebuild lessons and units of study that have been redesigned and refined over the course of several years based on student feedback, student performance on exams and district benchmark tests, and teacher observations and experiences. While nothing can fully replace this invaluable information, educators can use the UbD template to critically think about the learning activities and assessments that will be offered to students. By using this template to keep the essential questions and major learning goal at the center of all learning activities and discussions, educators can build a strong foundation in their lesson designs that can be easily altered and refined as needed through the learning process. This template also slows down the design process to encourage consideration of scaffolding and differentiation as well as considering possible misconceptions that will likely need to be addressed. By considering this up front educators will have already brainstormed possible lessons, activities, or discussion that could fix these misconceptions, freeing the educator up to implement effective well-planned interventions instead of reactive interventions that may not be as effective.
Growing my Idea of the Growth Mindset
In true growth mindset fashion my initial ideas on the growth mindset have begun to change. While I am still excited about the positive effect growth mindset lessons and modeling have had on my students' success, I now know that these effects will most likely not last after they leave my class this year. Unfortunately the growth mindset is not enough to completely turn a student around on their academic journey, especially students that struggle academically and have the most gaps in their learning. For these students, I fear that they will go on to high school and forget the growth mindset and let the challenges overcome their newfound sense of self-confident they have gained when they aren't exposed to this type of thinking daily. I think that I am going to have to rethink exactly how I will continue to implement this in my class in order to make the impact the growth mindset can have a little more strong and impactful to them. I need to work on building them up in believing in themselves and their ability to learn if they keep putting the effort in.
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In order to make the growth mindset more impactful I am going to have to build up grit in my students. I think that I will keep most of my original thoughts about growth mindset as it is a great framework for how I will now implement this and combine it with building grit to really bring learners to a point that they will actually internalize the message and essence of what growth mindset is. I think the first step is capturing the students passion and showing them how to start incorporating their passions into what they are learning in the classroom. While this will only start in my classroom, hopefully will be incorporated into their other classes and subject matter until they are passionate about learning. The power of yet I spoke of in my original growth mindset plan will be paired with open ended activities throughout the year that will challenge students to think outside of the box to create original things or solve real world problems in which there are no real wrong answers as long as there is thought and creativity behind the ideas. Through this students will build up stamina in their work habits and will start to see all their efforts in the classroom pay off in their pursuit of high school graduation and success in college or work beyond.
The key to success in the implementation of my rotational blended learning units will be to slow down and use backward design to create authentic learning projects that I can relate all class work and activities to so that no work feels pointless or like busy work. By using the 3-column charts and backward design methods I will be able to ensure real learning and not just active engagement with no mental involvement. There will be real value in a job well done and students will see that the feedback they receive on one assignment isn't just a set value in the gradebook, but a chance to improve and make the values in the gradebook higher. Grades will start to become a form of feedback in where they are at the moment and they will know that there is a chance to grow and improve and make the grade higher. With this system of feedback and improvement students will learn more and they will be less concerned with the grade and more invested in the learning process. Grades and self-worth will not be tied like they are now in most classrooms in our current education system models and I think that is going to be the key turning point in many students' lives and the way they think about their learning capabilities.