Creating a Culture of Wonder

Photo by Samet Kurtkus on Unsplash

"SCHOOLS SHOULD BE BUILT AROUND STREAMS OF WONDER. THESE STREAMS OF WONDER SHOULD CONSTANTLY BE IN MOTION ALLOWING YOU TO DIP INTO THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN. " - Chris Fancher, Educator and Author

January 26, 2014. That's the date on the draft post I was thinking about writing. It is one of about 10 "draft" posts I have on my blog. I'm about to shift this blog over to Wordpress and away from Blogger. I have 276 blog posts altogether. Most were written over a 4 year period when I was actively writing (2011 through 2015).

So today I am cleaning up the pile of posts and I will start finishing some of the draft posts - starting with this one.

The idea for this post was brought about after attending an Educon conference. Educon conferences are one of the best conferences an educator can attend. I would recommend that you all put that on your educator bucket list.

I attended a session on "Wonder, By Design." The beauty of an Educon is that the room creates what the attendees get out of the session. In this case we were instructed to come up with a table manifesto.

I know from my notes that all of the people at my table I knew from Twitter. And, most of them I am still in contact with via Twitter 6 years later.

"Wonder By Design." 
I loved the initial brainstorming around that statement:
     Learning is an opportunity -- not a location.
     Curiosity builds on curiosity and questions lead to questions.
     Wonder and curiosity go hand in hand -- one builds on the other.
     Wonder evokes open-endedness.
     There is no limit to imagination.
     Schools should be built around wonder.
     Schools should be built around wonder and ideas of everyone.
     Wonder invites joy.
     No one has the right to steal someone else's wonder.
     Wonder is essential to learning.

You can see that we were ready to take the concepts of wonder, imagination, and curiosity and find a way to create a manifesto that could be applied to all of education. So what the heck is a manifesto? Well, it just happens to be "a written statement that describes the policies, goals, and opinions of a person or group." Therefore, we needed to take these statements and put them together for our manifesto.

What we found as we started working with these statements was that we were heading down a path that led to the idea of wonder flowing through a school. This moved us into various water analogies. Fountains of wonder. Waterfalls of wonder. Streams of wonder. Someone even brought up Herodotus and a quote of his about water (I told you these were some pretty smart educators at this conference).

And so our first group of ideas became: 
(1) We believe that wonder and curiosity work together -- you cannot have one without the other and each spurs new ideas, new possibilities, and new creativity.
(2) Wonder is essential to learning and can be reflected in our spaces, our practices, our mindset.

These were great on their own but we felt that they weren't manifesto-y enough. So that led to these two statements:
(1) Schools should be built around wonder.
and, (2) Schools must be streams of wonder that are constantlly in motion - carving new paths - which you can dip into again and again.

My take on these two give you the following as my education manifesto:

SCHOOLS SHOULD BE BUILT AROUND STREAMS OF WONDER. THESE STREAMS OF WONDER SHOULD CONSTANTLY BE IN MOTION ALLOWING YOU TO DIP INTO THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN.

How can you build streams of wonder in your school? How do you allow students to dip into their creativity and imagination as a matter of routine? We all need to pause and consider those questions for our own classroom, building, or district.

NOTE: If you like this post feel free to look through the archives (on the right side of the page). Most are about PBL and/or Math. And, stay tuned for the shift over to ChrisFancher.com. The webpage is already there but the posts need to be shifted over. Coming Spring/Summer 2020.

5 Things to Jumpstart PBL in the New Year [Math Version]

@amyshamblen

   You've enjoyed the holidays and you have a few more days until school starts back up so you've been catching up on your reading. Several of your friends have gone to trainings during 2018 where they have learned about Project Based Learning and you are intrigued. But everything you have read gives you a headache because you couldn't possibly add anything to your full curriculum pacing guide. 

   This post is for you. And it's for anyone who wants to "just kick the ball down the PBL road." Where do you begin? How do you get started? Well, in my opinion, it should start with inquiry. 

    (1) Start every (yes, every) day with an opportunity for your students to ask questions of you and of each other around the topic of math. It does NOT have to be about the current thing you are doing in your math unit. As a matter of fact those who espouse spiraling in topics throughout the year would argue that you should choose things that are not in your current unit. And, it is ok to give a problem that you haven't covered yet. Let your students struggle with figuring out the answer and then let them know that they will be seeing many more problems like that in a few weeks. 

  Want a question to start it off? Look at the image at the top of the page.  Ask you students to estimate the number of total balls that were in the glass. Then ask them to estimate the volume of the glass. And, finally, have them estimate the volume taken up by the balls when they are all in the glass. An "extra credit" might be how many more balls could you add to the glass until it is full?  Notice there weren't any numbers given. There weren't any formulas given. Just tell them that there isn't a correct answer but there are an infinite amount of incorrect answers - those that came without sound reasoning. 

    (2) Encourage your students to reflect on what they already know and what they will need to know to be successful in the next unit. Start by going to the Extended Questions or Gifted and Talented Questions at the end of the chapter you are about to begin. Find a question that you can bring to life and assign it on the first day of the chapter. If you don't have something like that then explore online resources for questions about the topic you are about to cover and select a rich question. Make sure the question can not be solved on the first day by the majority of your students. Once you have shown the question to the class, ask them to come up with what information they need to know to be able to solve it. List these on the board. Check those items that the students have not yet covered. Explain to the students that these checked items will be what you will be teaching them in this unit. 

    (3) Give your students opportunities to discuss how to solve problems in groups. Give them problems that might have multiple ways of solving. Allow time for everyone to attempt the problems. Then have them form groups and take turns explaining how to solve the problems. Encourage multiple ways of solving by asking them to come up, as a group, with more than one way to get to the solution. Teach the students how to give constructive feedback for problems that are incorrectly solved. 

    (4) Find ways to have students present their ideas to the rest of the class. (a) Start safely by using a fishbowl where a group discusses solutions in their group while the rest of the class observes and takes notes on the discussion. Just make sure the observers are held responsible for giving constructive feedback to the group in the fishbowl. (b) Have students paired up (Pilot/Co-Pilot) with the understanding that each day will change whether it is the pilot or the co-pilot who is responsible for explaining solutions. When working with your lower groups you can have it that either can answer but the selected position must tell the other person if he or she isn't going to be directly answering. 

(c) Have a presentation day where students write their solutions on poster paper or on a white board. Then have a gallery walk where students give constructive criticism to their peers. 

   (5) Put it all together. (a)Give an assignment over a topic that has not been covered. (b) Create a knows and need-to-knows list that students generate about the assignment. (c) Give students opportunities to work in groups to find solutions to the the assignment. (d) Have opportunities for students to share what they know with others in the classroom. Include an end of chapter/unit day when the solutions are "officially" presented. 

    What I have just shown you (paragraph 5 above) is the basic structure of project based learning.  If you committed, today, to doing this for each of the units/chapters you have left for this school year then you and your students would benefit from the deeper learning that would occur. 

    Then, next Summer (after an incredible Spring), you would want to commit to continuing this process in the Fall semester. When you planned for the Fall you would look for a math topic that is related to a news item or other item of interest in your local community. You would, then, find a way to connect with someone involved with the community issue. Then you would figure an angle for your students to do some math to help solve the problem (or, as a minimum, have them find several possible solutions to the problem). Finally, you would make sure you have a presentation day that your students would be tasked with presenting their solutions to the community. That one problem would demonstrate what true PBL is all about. It would have a "real world problem," it would have inquiry, it would have collaborative work and discussion, it would have reflection and analysis, and there would be a public audience. 

     It is my belief that students need three things to help them go deeper in their learning: Something that makes them wonder; time to discuss what it is that they are wondering about; and a non-negotiable deadline where they have to tell someone, they don't know, all about this thing that they have been wondering about. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

     Following these steps will help your Spring semester be the best you've ever had. Isn't that what all teachers should wish for on this New Year's Eve?  Happy New Year and best of luck in the coming semester. 

Some books to help you on this journey: 

Jo Boaler's Mathematical Mindsets is just plain good reading. 

Geoff Krall's Necessary Conditions is about great math teaching.

My book, Project Based Learning in the Math Classroom, (co-authored with Telannia Norfar) will help you go deeper with what I have written in this post. This book is now available for pre-sale and will be out in April 2019. 

Which Came First PBL or Small Group Instruction?

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Ye Olde Chicken-Egg story. Why am I wrestling with this? Because many consider me pretty smart about Project Based Learning(PBL). And, our school which calls itself a PBL school, is pushing small group instruction.

So, is PBL just a version of small group instruction? Not sure. And when you infuse a very structured form of small group instruction will teachers feel that they can't do PBL any more? Yes, unfortunately.

True confession. The title doesn't really align with what you are about to read but, hey, it got you to click on the link and start reading this, didn't it?

Right now our school is in its third year of using PBL as its primary mode of instruction. Now, primary is a funny word. Two years ago we started with our 6th grade teachers and many of them struggled to understand how to do a project. Many, however, excelled and became known for their expertise.

Last year we pushed PBL out in all three grades and also insisted upon having small group instruction. The same 6th grade teachers, who had success in the first year, continued to do well and incorporated a rotation to a teacher table into their daily process. A few additional 6th grade teachers took on "a project" during each semester. And, many teachers created projects during each semester. Almost all of the ELA teachers and most of the Social Studies teachers created classrooms with good to great small group rotations.

So, at the end of year two we had a large group of teachers doing good small group instruction. And, we had a large group of teachers who had run at least two projects during the year with varying levels of success. The best news was that we had teachers in both sets: a win-win situation! We decided to minimize change for year three and the word we used was "enhance." As in we will enhance our instruction.

Then we discovered Glenna Tabor and her Tabor Rotations process for small group instruction. If you get nothing else out of this post, go look at Glenna Tabor's stuff and, better yet, figure out how to get ALL of your math teachers to one of her trainings (or get her to come to your district). A day with her was one of the best PD's I have ever attended (if not the best ever).

Tabor Rotations is a VERY structured plan for small group instruction. And, that is its biggest strength. I held a half day training with math and math-inclusion teachers yesterday for our school district. We will be sending nearly 40 people to a Tabor Rotation training day in Dallas next month and I wanted to pre-teach some of the concepts and give them an overall view of the process. Our inclusion teachers summed it up best - "With Tabor Rotations you get all of the best practices for SPED and ELL students rolled into one package."

So, here's the dilemma - Tabor Rotations is very structured and many of our best PBL teachers are in the math department. Why is that a problem? Several felt that the structure doesn't work with what they do. With Tabor Rotations we have 4 heterogeneous groups for part of the week and 4 homogeneous groups the remainder of the week and these teachers are used to project groups of 3 to 4 students in each group. When you have a class of 30 students that means 7 to 10 groups for projects. Do we have 8 groups of students who are working on a project; a different set of 8 students working in their Tabor Rotation groups for a couple of days; and, a third set of 8 students working in their Tabor Rotation groups for the other days of the week?

And how do we do Tabor Rotations with research days and presentation days?

All of these questions are now fully engulfing my brain. Our teachers will be going to the training in two weeks and then I'll have other brains to help me figure this out. Because we will figure this out. PBL will work in every environment. PBL will help your students go deeper with their learning. Tabor Rotations will help your students go deeper with their learning too. The marriage of the two will be a truly magnificent thing. Just give us time to perfect it - because our teachers can, and will, figure this out.

Fix Those Problems (Math Teaching 101)

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First, and foremost, I am a student of instruction.  My resume says I have taught math from 6th grade to college algebra; I taught middle school science; I taught introduction to engineering design and digital electronics at the high school level. And, I facilitate teachers in using project based and problem based instruction (PBL).

What I enjoy most is reflecting on my practice and pursuing better ways to perfect instruction in the classroom.

During the last 6 years I have tried to figure out how to best teach mathematics in a PBL environment. As a practitioner I tried differing ways of providing inquiry while including repeated practice. Then I was introduced to problem based instruction where the depth of inquiry was constrained so that the time frame could be reduced from the normal project length. This worked better in math, for me, and yet I have seen teachers who were still able to keep the longer project settings.

In recent years I have been working as an instructional coach and I have started working for the Buck Institute for Education, BIE. Through these I have been able to offer ideas to many math teachers and I have listened to their concerns.  The common thread between these teachers is the difficulty of following the guidelines for project based instruction while dealing with students who have math skills that are as many as 5 years lower than the class they are sitting in. This is true whether they were teaching in California or Maine.

In Texas we now have state exams that are "more rigorous" (gag me - hate that word, rigor) and with the common core (CCSS) standards you are expected to think logically and to demonstrate concepts. No longer do we just show basic mathematical manipulation of numbers. We expect that students will read a scenario and then apply mathematics to reach a conclusion about a numerical relationship.

Teachers keep asking me to give them good examples of problems with the "proper rigor" (there's that word again). My answer is that all you have to do is look at any, yes ANY, math problem in any math book and take the root problem and embellish it.  The following is an example from a Glencoe Pre-Algebra book. I took it from the 5th chapter and it is question 5 from the chapter test: "Trish bought a CD player for $37.58. The price she paid included a discount of $6.63. How much did the CD player cost before the discount?"

Now let's make it better and bring it up to 2014: "Trish wanted to buy a used iPhone at Best Buy and had saved $50 to buy it.  She searched online for savings coupons and found 3 that said they were the "best buy at Best Buy." The first was for $6.63 off of any used phone marked $40 or less. The second was for 15% off of any used phone costing more than $30. And the last was for "any phone in stock" and was for 12.5% off of the list price.  Which coupon should she use so that she spends less than her $50. Explain to her why she should choose that one. Also assume there is a 6% sales tax in this state that will be applied to the final cost."

In this problem students still need to look at percent increase and percent decrease, which was the main skill being tested in problem 5. But now they have to do some thinking. And, if you let them work in pairs they can have discussions about which is the best answer. That took me about 10 minutes to get it into the post. I looked at problems on the Glencoe website, picked the problem, and then I upgraded it.

What if you did that with one problem every day? What if every summative assessment had problems like that and your students could work in pairs to get the right answer - but each person had to write the correct answer and the reasoning of why it is correct? Need another example? Here you go...

"You are carpeting a rectangular room that is 3.5 yards by 4.5 yards. The carpet costs $15 per square yard. How much will it cost to carpet the room?" This is from Big Ideas Math. Now let's make it better.

"Mr. Smith wants to put carpet down inside of the doors that lead out to the playground so students can wipe their feet when they come in. He wants the area covered to be rectangular and be as wide as the doorway but extend at least 3 yards into the room.  Explore 3 stores for prices of carpet and determine how much it will cost to buy the needed carpet. If you can not measure the width of the doorway assume that it is exactly 2.5 yards wide. Be ready to explain to Mr. Smith which store has the best price and why it is the best price"

It's time to take back your classrooms. Give your students opportunities to work together and analyze situations. The infamous "they" want your students working on rigorous math problems. You have math problems all over the place! Use them, improve them, and then let your students get to work on them. It's not rocket science - but with the right guidance your students might just become rocket scientists.

It's Always the Right Time to Write

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School starts up on Monday and I've started thinking about all of the January hurdles that are approaching. There's "Benchmark Week" when all of our core classes will be taking benchmarks that are designed to see where we are in our progression towards the state mandated testing. It also gives our students a feel for what it will be like during testing as we go to a full testing feel to the school. We have modified schedules and lunches and students test in their testing rooms for the 4 hour duration of the test.

We also will look at the middle of the year (MOY) tests for math and reading from online testing sites. We will look at our student progress and we'll reset our response to intervention (RTI) groups for the lead up to testing.

The last January hurdle will be our writing benchmark tests in all of our ELA classes. I, for one, am not looking forward to how we score with those because our focus this year has been on reading and most of our ELA teachers have pushed that while pushing their writing to the back burner. For the early part of December we started refocusing on the writing process and the relationship with writing and reading. If we do it right, our writing processes can help our struggling readers. That will be our theme for the remainder of the year.

Writing is NOT just an ELA thing though. We need to be doing a better job of writing in all subject areas.  That will be my personal focus as we start back next week. I think the best way to get that going is to have our teachers create one written assignment for their students each week in January. And after that, I'd like to see them assign a writing requirement into each of their project plans.

Having a writing component in a project is an easy step. We can have written proposals. We can have written journal entries. We can have written explanations for steps taken by a team. It gets a bit more difficult assigning "authentic" writing into the project. A post by Sara Hallermann, a fellow BIE National Faculty member, from last year is something I recommend to people who want to make the literacy piece more authentic.

From the New Tech Network I always fall back on the expertise of Alix Horton and her Literacy For Living blog.  There are great nuggets to found in all of the posts but this one, from last July, about literacy in the math classroom is really great. Never tell me, a former math teacher, that you can't do writing in the math classroom! Don't they need to explain to you how the steps in solving a problem? How many ways could you have them do the explaining? Hmmm????

Ever hear of the Literacy Design Collaborative?  Go to their site and click on the Tasks tab and you will see some great ideas for writing assignments. And if you just need sentence starters, go to Google and type in "sentence starters for...(math, science, social studies, english, etc.) and there's tons:

If you are not writing in your classroom every week, it's time for a resolution to do so. Yes, reading is a major issue throughout the United States. Work on the reading skills but incorporate writing into your routine and you will help those low readers become better readers. And, even though we use Google (or Bing, or..) to search for spelling, our students need to use dictionaries so that they can think through the spelling process.

So, starting next week, we will have our teachers work writing into their weekly plans. I haven't talked this through with our principal or our literacy coach but I'm not worried about getting them on board. Our students need it and it's what's best for them. That's the only argument I need to use.

Loving What I See At Our School

Today I was able to get into a few of our math classes. I started with two of our 6th grade classes. Since they plan with me and we all plan together, I knew that they would be teaching the exact same concept but we really push the idea that every teacher is their own person and can teach in whatever way they feel comfortable.

The concept: Finding Greatest Common Factors and Least Common Multiples with Venn Diagrams

In the first room our teacher was starting with a video rap about multiples. His surround sound system with max base had the class rocking. Then he projected a blank venn diagram and asked for students to explain how a venn diagram worked. With this still projected he brought up a video explanation with the video venn right where the other had been.

The students, meanwhile, were taking notes and following along with the videos that were embedded in our LMS (Learning Management System) called ECHO.  When I left, the students were engaged and actively working on this:

Across the hall I went to the other classroom where I found the teacher engaged in an explanation of accessing something on the iPad - in Spanish. We are happy to have many bilingual teachers in 6th grade and with dozens of students who have Spanish as their primary language, it sure helps.

As I entered the room I couldn't help but notice that the activity (above) was up on the board.  The students had their iPads open and were busy working.  As I scanned the room I noticed some QR codes on a board for each period with "Answers to Friday's Quiz" written about them. Since I was in 3rd period I scanned the 3rd period QR and it took me to a Padlet that was blank.

The teacher told me I should scan the ones for 1st and 2nd since they had worked on this and so I scanned the QR's.  There I found students had placed the problems from the quiz that they had worked out using Educreations.

Two different classes. Two different teachers. But the same content. Both classes were steeped in technology use but were using different apps and/or sites. I went to these classes randomly and I left feeling really good about the math instruction our 6th graders are getting. A teacher, new to the school, asked me as I walked back to my office, "Would you have your kids at this school?"  That's a resounding YES!