First Teachnow Blog Assignment.
This first post is for the completion of an assignment that is part of the work I am doing for obtaining my teaching certification. I am required to analyze given resources for the way in which teachers set high expectations for their students. The first video is Roller Coaster Physics, and it shows how students in a STEM lesson for 5th-6th graders in New York apply an engineering process to examining the Physics behind roller coasters. Students are building model roller coasters using foam pipe insulators, marbles, adhesive strips and sandpaper. They have to design and build roller coasters for safety, fun and length of travel, similar to how Engineers design to a specification. The language used by the teacher to describe the way the problem is posed is the same as the language used by Engineers. This is a subtle way to create high expectations as students researching various aspects relating to their work will find many internet pages of engineering companies that use the same terms. Students who see that their work aligns with adult work, will start to see adult work as being attainable. That is a high expectation for 6th graders. The teacher also restricts the quantities of materials given to force the students to be creative in how they use the limited resources. That is also setting a high expectation. Another aspect, is how the teachers movements and interaction with the students project an image of the teacher-as-facilitator rather than teacher-as-leader. That movement cedes the space to the students and also sets an expectation that the students are expected to do the work.
The use of the "chiming" strategy to promote peer discussion also creates a expectation of acceptance and learning to appreciate the strengths of peers. Her referral to the students as Engineers sets a high expectation as does her prompt to discuss the challenges of past work.
The teacher also requires students to justify all requests for materials, she is not handing out materials passively. All students are expected to explain their ideas. No one opts out.
Assigning roles to each student also stops students from opting out, and provides an opportunity for students to try different roles and see what they are good at. This makes it easier to establish the norm that everyone has value in learning. The norm of working together is established through the fact that there is no attempt to stop students from getting ideas from each other. All groups are working together and share information.
High academic expectations come from the fact that they have to make a working roller coaster, They can't make a pseudo-roller coaster. It has to work.
In my experience, using a process to lead your teaching removes the focus off the teacher and the student, making it harder for students and teachers to have negative thoughts about themselves. It is a failure in applying the process, not a failure in the person. This change in emphasis makes it So much easier to encourage a growth mindset.
In the video about the Third Grade Chinese Math Class (that is not actually in China), the teacher is much more traditional in her approach, but she has the students singing together in response to her questions. When all are involved in a common activity, there is an expectation that all will complete it. It is a subtle technique, but one that is effective as kids at that age want to be part of a larger group. In addition, the kids have behavioral norms that foster staying focused. Almost all students sit with their arms behind their backs, making it harder to poke, prod and annoy classmates. There are several points where the teacher uses techniques similar to the brain-based learning, like clapping or saying a certain phrase and having students echo back. She also accepts the yelling out of answers and uses that as a segue into singing rhymes as a group. I don't know enough Chinese, but I suspect there is a degree of Mnemonics used to help students recall the information. The teacher also acts out scenes while students are reciting information which makes the work fun and engaging to the students. The lesson is more of a fun sing-along rather than a lesson with high standards. The teacher is also praising the work of the students (The term Faichung which means good ) appears often in her comments to the class.
The most significant way in which she sets high expectations is through the reliance on doing the arithmetic mentally. Students don't get the option to take the easy way out and use their fingers, write on paper, or use a calculator.
One point about the influence of a language on learning Math is here. It makes some interesting points about how the mechanics of Mandarin make it easier to have a deeper understanding of arithmetic concepts. Basically, there is no need for some of the explanation needed in other languages for fractions in arithmetic because you literally cannot say the words for a fraction I Chinese without understanding basics of what a fraction is. (Watch the video and you'll understand what I am saying)
The Whole Brain Teaching videos I saw for High school showed a strong level of student engagement and strongly applied and embraced norms. All is explicit and overt. However, the standard is appalingly low. This video shows a lesson that covers material that is taught in SEVENTH grade at my school. I would be fired for teaching this to High School students in China. Students and parents would be insulted by it. So I see no evidence of setting a high standard for achievement within the subject. To guard against inadvertently choosing a bad example, I looked for other videos about Math. This other video shows a more advanced lesson that seems to be better, but the students are basically rote memorizing in a collective way not that different from the methods seen in the Chinese video described above. In general, there is not a lot of content relating to High School Math and it is all Middle School basic content that doesn't require significant investment of time or depth of thinking. I see these techniques as being ideal for large Middle School classes where the content can be broken into smaller chunks. Trying to use these techniques to teach the creation of a cumulative frequency curve from raw data and determining probabilities of events from the curve is not something I can see occurring quickly.
The high standards in While Brain Teaching come in the class norms and strategies used to engage attention of the students. Class/Yes, Mirror Words, and OK teach are all quite effective for transitioning between explanations by the teacher and peers. I can definitely see how these techniques work for large classes or packed rooms. I also think they align better with students who still need scaffolding with the development of their self-management and meta-level learning.
The Whole Brain Teaching is not something I really see how to apply for the High School Syllabi I teach. The International Baccalaureate math curriculum exceeds AP Math in the USA for the courses I teach. You cannot cover the material in that depth with such shorts bursts of teaching and release. Just explaining a problem takes longer than all the videos combined...
The use of the "chiming" strategy to promote peer discussion also creates a expectation of acceptance and learning to appreciate the strengths of peers. Her referral to the students as Engineers sets a high expectation as does her prompt to discuss the challenges of past work.
The teacher also requires students to justify all requests for materials, she is not handing out materials passively. All students are expected to explain their ideas. No one opts out.
Assigning roles to each student also stops students from opting out, and provides an opportunity for students to try different roles and see what they are good at. This makes it easier to establish the norm that everyone has value in learning. The norm of working together is established through the fact that there is no attempt to stop students from getting ideas from each other. All groups are working together and share information.
High academic expectations come from the fact that they have to make a working roller coaster, They can't make a pseudo-roller coaster. It has to work.
In my experience, using a process to lead your teaching removes the focus off the teacher and the student, making it harder for students and teachers to have negative thoughts about themselves. It is a failure in applying the process, not a failure in the person. This change in emphasis makes it So much easier to encourage a growth mindset.
In the video about the Third Grade Chinese Math Class (that is not actually in China), the teacher is much more traditional in her approach, but she has the students singing together in response to her questions. When all are involved in a common activity, there is an expectation that all will complete it. It is a subtle technique, but one that is effective as kids at that age want to be part of a larger group. In addition, the kids have behavioral norms that foster staying focused. Almost all students sit with their arms behind their backs, making it harder to poke, prod and annoy classmates. There are several points where the teacher uses techniques similar to the brain-based learning, like clapping or saying a certain phrase and having students echo back. She also accepts the yelling out of answers and uses that as a segue into singing rhymes as a group. I don't know enough Chinese, but I suspect there is a degree of Mnemonics used to help students recall the information. The teacher also acts out scenes while students are reciting information which makes the work fun and engaging to the students. The lesson is more of a fun sing-along rather than a lesson with high standards. The teacher is also praising the work of the students (The term Faichung which means good ) appears often in her comments to the class.
The most significant way in which she sets high expectations is through the reliance on doing the arithmetic mentally. Students don't get the option to take the easy way out and use their fingers, write on paper, or use a calculator.
One point about the influence of a language on learning Math is here. It makes some interesting points about how the mechanics of Mandarin make it easier to have a deeper understanding of arithmetic concepts. Basically, there is no need for some of the explanation needed in other languages for fractions in arithmetic because you literally cannot say the words for a fraction I Chinese without understanding basics of what a fraction is. (Watch the video and you'll understand what I am saying)
The Whole Brain Teaching videos I saw for High school showed a strong level of student engagement and strongly applied and embraced norms. All is explicit and overt. However, the standard is appalingly low. This video shows a lesson that covers material that is taught in SEVENTH grade at my school. I would be fired for teaching this to High School students in China. Students and parents would be insulted by it. So I see no evidence of setting a high standard for achievement within the subject. To guard against inadvertently choosing a bad example, I looked for other videos about Math. This other video shows a more advanced lesson that seems to be better, but the students are basically rote memorizing in a collective way not that different from the methods seen in the Chinese video described above. In general, there is not a lot of content relating to High School Math and it is all Middle School basic content that doesn't require significant investment of time or depth of thinking. I see these techniques as being ideal for large Middle School classes where the content can be broken into smaller chunks. Trying to use these techniques to teach the creation of a cumulative frequency curve from raw data and determining probabilities of events from the curve is not something I can see occurring quickly.
The high standards in While Brain Teaching come in the class norms and strategies used to engage attention of the students. Class/Yes, Mirror Words, and OK teach are all quite effective for transitioning between explanations by the teacher and peers. I can definitely see how these techniques work for large classes or packed rooms. I also think they align better with students who still need scaffolding with the development of their self-management and meta-level learning.
The Whole Brain Teaching is not something I really see how to apply for the High School Syllabi I teach. The International Baccalaureate math curriculum exceeds AP Math in the USA for the courses I teach. You cannot cover the material in that depth with such shorts bursts of teaching and release. Just explaining a problem takes longer than all the videos combined...
Hello Nader,
ReplyDeleteWow, definitely a thorough and extremely detailed analysis of all three videos. I definitely agree with your assessments on all three of the videos, especially for the third one. I admit that I was wincing as I felt slightly embarrassed for the students. In their place I would have been, because I find that kind of chanting childish.
By the way, "feichang" means "very", not "good", though she was saying "feichang hao" which does mean "very good". So yes, she was doing some positive reinforcement. However, I do hesitate to praise that type of feedback, as it directs kids to look to the teacher to always have the correct answer rather than to look to themselves for answers. I see this all too often with my current students who have been raised in the traditional Chinese education system, and it's especially difficult as I teach literature, which generally has no correct answers! They're waiting for my "correct analysis" when there isn't any. This type of feedback has been something that I've been cutting back on as a result.
Hi Nader,
ReplyDeleteGood insight on your reflections about the three videos. I agree with your assessment of the first activity: the instructor has VERY high expectations of the students. They're working in a group AND their roller coaster actually has to be functional, so they can't just phone it in.
I quite like your explanation about Mandarin. I know nothing about the language, and love learning new things about how language works, so you point about having to understand the concept of fractions just to use the word is fascinating to me. I think I'll look around for more resources about how the language itself actually supports comprehension of the concepts.
Hi Nader,
DeleteYou have some very good details in here. I fully agree on the 'whole brain teaching' strategy. I have taught middle and high school students and I can't see them using such an approach to learning content. It would have raised a few eye brows among my previous colleagues if I had used this in the higher age group classes. Absolutely, you would need a lot of scaffolding for students when covering some of the complex math structures you have in the classes you are teaching.
Nader; you and I both appear to focus on real world applications for the science experiment- we both highlighted the emulation of an engineer’s actual criteria. I notice that you also commented on the use of the “chiming” strategy- I tend to use similar techniques, but I have never made a specific activity out of it as the teacher does. I wonder about the value of making it separate like that? Is it worth the time it takes, rather than doing something more informal? I didn’t catch the terminology of the teacher referring to the students as “engineers” which is indeed a subtle but effective way of conveying expectations. Finally, while the final product was important, high expectations aren’t only seen in the end goal, but through every step of the process and through the individual roles.
ReplyDeleteMost of the stuff about the mandarin I also talk about in my blog- it definitely helps us understand why they tend to be better at math at an earlier age. I also mention one additional thing which is about how much mental energy it takes to remember numbers- since Chinese numbers on average require less time to say, they have more room mentally to hold the numbers in their head. A more in depth explanation is in my blog.
If you have a process as the center of your teaching then you can gradually introduce elements of it in your teaching. That way it won't be the time sink it could be. So you may make setting up a problem the focus of a few lessons, then the checking may be done in a different lesson, and so on. That way when you get to teaching the entire process, they have been exposed to the parts before.
Delete