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Use curiosity to reach every student!

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I have always been attracted to unusual things. When I see something that looks interesting to me, I always try my very best to figure out the what, why and how. After I became a mother, I continued to be impressed by my daughter’s curiosity. For example, my daughter sees a penguin as a duck. To figure it out, I carefully examine the features of penguin and duck and eventually gain some knowledge in ornithology. After that, I started to realize how powerful the role our curiosity plays in our learning.

Here are some strategies that I find useful to spark my students’ curiosity.

Strategy 1: Flipped learning videos

Traditionally, flipped learning videos have been used as wonderful tools to reach every student. When thinking of a flipped learning video, we often consider videos with teachers’ direct instruction. However, I have found that flipped learning videos can be more than that! Starting this school year, I changed the way I use flipped learning videos and have received amazing feedback from my students. I make my videos with interesting scenarios and animations. Without directly teaching the students, I try to spark their curiosity and arouse their interests in learning.

Picture 1: a glance at a inquiry-type of flipped learning video

A glance at a inquiry-type of flipped learning video

Strategy 2: Trigger students’ observation

Activities like “Notice and Wonder” fit perfectly for the role to spark students’ curiosity. Have you ever noticed that Target’s sign is red in the United States and black in Australia? Same company with different branding. How about an emu and an ostrich?  How similar and how different are they? Trying to answer simple questions triggered by our curiosity can lead to a huge difference in learning.

Picture 2: Can you tell which one is Target Australia and which one is Target USA?

Can you tell which one is Target Australia and which one is Target USA?

Strategy 3: Look for a pattern

I love looking for a pattern. A well-known Californian teacher Fawn Nguyen created a website called “visual patterns.” Not only my students, but I would also spend minutes and minutes on the website trying to find the general rule for a set of visual patterns. By looking for a pattern, my students and I gain excitement and achievement by accomplishing the mystery of the pattern.

Picture 3: Visual Patterns created by Ms. Fawn Nguyen at www.visualpatterns.org

Visual Patterns created by Ms. Fawn Nguyen at www.visualpatterns.org

Curiosity is such a powerful tool for us to engage our students. Almost all people are attracted to unusual or unknown things. If you are looking for a way to reach every student, why not considering trying to spark your students’ curiosity.

 

Use gamification to reach every student!

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As teachers, we hope that all students are engaged during the whole class period. However, for most of the time, there still exits a small proportion of students who seem to be un-interested in what we are talking about. The issue of student engagement has always been my first priority so I continue to seek out ways that would help students to engage more. Today, I would like to share some gamification strategies that I have found useful to reach every student.

Strategy 1: Incorporate classical games with the content knowledge.

Have you ever considered incorporating classical games with the content knowledge that we are teaching? One thing I have found to be powerful in a classroom is to add our content knowledge as an element of classical games such as jigsaw puzzles, jeopardy, coloring, cut and paste, mad lid etc. With the help of Google slides, nowadays we can easily turn the puzzles of the classical games into solving and assessing the content knowledge that we covered a few minutes ago. For example, instead of asking trivia questions in a jeopardy, why not ask them to solve the solutions of a quadratic equation!

Picture 1: Incorporate classical games with the content knowledge

Incorporate classical games with the content knowledge

Strategy 2: Lock and Unlock/Rules and Reward

Another thing I love about gamification is that it creates excitement in class. Imagine that you and I have to unlock the envelope in limited time. Wow! How fun is that! Who wouldn’t fall in love with the kinetic experience plus the uncertainty of mystery? If you’re looking for something easy to implement, how about trying the simplest “Rules and Reward”. When students follow the rules, then they get to enjoy the reward. Something as simple as “turn in your assignments in time to get 5-minutes study break,” works out perfectly for my students.

Picture 2: Lock and Unlock/ Rules and Rewards

Lock and Unlock/ Rules and Rewards

Strategy 3: Gamification Software

I also found some gamification platforms that are made just for the purpose of gamification. My favorite two are: Pagamo and Classcraft. Pagamo is a Role-Play-Game incorporating content knowledge assessment. Students need to get their lands and earn some special props by answering the question correctly. Classcraft is a fancy gamification platform. By setting rules for each class, students can get different rewards in the classcraft platform and level up! How cool is that!

Picture 3: Gamification platforms: www.pagamo.org and www.classcraft.com

Gamification platforms: www.pagamo.org and www.classcraft.com

Gamification can be a great tool for teachers to keep students engaged and eventually reach every student! I love gamification because of the excitement and fun. If you’re looking for something that creates an unique experience for your students, maybe you should consider trying to gamify your class!

Could Flipped Learning Be as Effective as One-To-One Tutoring?

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Written by Steve Griffiths

In 1984 Benjamin Bloom wrote an academic paper that reported on research comparing student achievement under conventional instruction, mastery instruction and one-to-one tutoring.  Students that received mastery instruction achieved final achievement scores one standard deviation above those that received conventional instruction.  Students that received one-on-one tutoring achieved final scores that were two standard deviations above the conventional instruction students (figure 1).  Bloom went on to describe a quest to identify group instruction methods that could be as effective as one-to-one tutoring.   Bloom found that mastery learning could be combined with changes in teaching practices to achieve additional improvements in student performance.

Bloom proposed that student performance is improved with one-to-one tutoring because the students continually receive feedback, reinforcement and encouragement and the tutee is actively involved in the learning process.  Bloom recommended that instructors employ a mastery approach to instruction as well as implement teaching practices that promote students to actively engage in the learning and that provide frequent feedback and clarification to students.

In-flipped mastery may be a method that can achieve student improvement that approaches the improvements achieved by one-to-one tutoring.   To help explain why this might be possible, we must first define mastery and explain in-class flipped mastery.

One definition of mastery learning is “an instructive strategy in which students are expected to reach a certain level of proficiency.  Students study material at their own pace, receiving the assistance they need in order to meet the predetermined level of mastery, which is typically set at 80 percent on an objective test”  (The Greenwood Dictionary of Education, 2003). Mastery has traditionally been hard to implement in a conventional classroom.  However, the flipped classroom makes mastery possible and very effective.

The in-class flip involves students progressing through the study material at their own pace by watching teacher-made videos (in-class) and then practicing and deepening their knowledge through activities and problems, again at their own pace.  The student-centred nature of the in-class flip frees up the teacher to interact with every student.  The in-class flip allows the teacher to reach every student, in every class, every day and this may be why student achievement can approach that of one-on-one tutoring.  The teacher checks student answers, monitors their progress, ask them questions and clarifies misconceptions.  The interactions are frequent and individualised.

The daily interactions with each student in the in-class flipped classroom augment the formal mastery checks that characterise mastery learning.  The teacher is continually assessing mastery with every interaction with the student.  Not only does the teacher assess mastery of the content and skills but also the student’s mindset, their grit and their agency.   The teacher can then tailor their intervention specifically to each student.

A key aspect of mastery is that learning is individualised for each student.  Based on student performance on mastery checks, each student is prescribed an individualised program of correctives to master the content or skills or to extend students that have already achieved mastery.  It is little wonder that mastery learning is practically impossible to implement effectively in a traditional classroom where all students progress through the unit in a lock-step fashion.

In Bloom’s quest for group instruction that is as effective as one-to-one tutoring, he recommended mastery learning with teaching practices that promote active learning and regular feedback and clarification.  Flipped mastery ticks all of these boxes and is a powerful tool that can potentially transform the way that students learn.

The recent report into the state of Australian schooling, known as “Gonksi 2.0” has called for more individualised learning for students.  In-flipped mastery is a promising technique that can go some way towards achieving more individualised learning.

References:

Bloom, B. S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational researcher, 13(6), 4-16.

Collins, J. W., 1948, & O’Brien, N. P. (2003). The greenwood dictionary of education. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.

Saving Swimmers in the Flipping Pool

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It has occurred to me that some days I am like the pool lifeguard, in a flipping pool. I’m up there on my high chair, I’ve got the pink zinc across Help Saving Swimmers in the Flipping Poolmy face like war paint. I have my whistle for the troublemakers, I have my flotation device for those who entered the pool and weren’t ready to. I’m also there to support the new swimmers and to provide slow lanes for the more adept swimmer who have been at the pool a long time and are keen to keep swimming but at their own pace. I’m also clearing lanes for those swimmers who are keen to take on Michael Phelps and occasionally get a leg cramp. I look after them all.

I am privileged to have teachers honestly share their concerns about teaching with devices and associated organisation systems with me. These concerns centre around the expense to families, robotic replacement and how to make a measurable difference with the devices. The transformation that the journey of flipping brings to these challenges is so positive.

It has literally, for some, been the difference between quitting or remaining employed. Time and time again I have been told that before starting to use flipping, resignation letters were written. PLD has turned this around and reignited a passion for teaching, teachers often use the lifesaving reference, “Thanks, this is a lifesaver.”

Teachers frequently begin their digital journey, worried that being a 1:1 device environment would be another extra, in a place where there is already a deficit of time and energy. However, as we near the end of our 1st full year promoting inflipping with KAR, I am finding that this is changing. There is now a view that digital is the nuts and bolts of being able to flip and still have time to do the extra things that teachers always dream of doing.

The flipped online PLD courses and face to face training that I do, has given teachers the confidence to bridge the digital divide and the pedagogy to feel confident that embracing a digital classroom can maximise learning not just enhance distractions.

Teachers are embracing a structure that allows them to teach and meet all of the different goals and individual education plans without putting themselves through the mincer. I personally used to give the analogy that it was like facing a very hungry nest with baby birds all squawking at the same time. Now with the ease of Google Classroom and inflipping as one teacher put it to me today, “The kids have lots of learning chances, as many times as they need.”

But “it just makes sense” is another thing I am often told usually with a lament that why was this not shared sooner? In my role across many different schools, I have not had one teacher ever come back to me and state that they disagreed with the notion of inflipping or that the approach could not assist their practice in some way.The leadership in the cluster of schools has been exceptional. It is a fantasy to dump devices into the hands of students and expect staff to miraculously instigate innovative pedagogies. Staff have been given the time and support to trial practice and learn just as we would hope happens in classrooms with students.

Digital immersion is consistent with the virus model. The virus of excitement. This involves seeking out teachers who are keen and open to trial new things. Effort is put into engaging these staff as early adopters. The teachers you know like to explore the deep end of the pool. Once these classrooms are underway with the right support, the next tier of staff will

Virus included in the Flipping Pool

want to see what all the excitement is about. Adults all subscribe to the Keeping Up with the Jones’ theory and thus the virus will spread. The excitement of staffroom talk regarding the success of the inflipping is also key to this virus spreading and student success will also provide a motivator.

We have started small with teachers choosing a curriculum area they are confident with and then inflipping 1 unit or 1 groups tasks. VERY VERY quickly this escalated due to student success.

I have found that by assisting as many staff as possible to complete the level 1 Flipped Course there becomes a shared language and pedagogy for staff to scaffold each other in shared learning, “techy tips” and resources. We have also used differentiated teacher PLD days to engage and motivate staff. This has culminated in a mini-conference with staff from my cluster sharing with others including staff from other schools. The power of teacher led PLD for teachers is undeniable as is using an open classroom strategy where amazing practitioners welcome observer teachers into their rooms. The level of awhi (support) that this collegial support brings to a school on a shared journey is inspiring to be a part of.

When teachers share success with me, with as much enthusiasm as the children they teach, you know the passion for education has been reignited. Active learning inquiry, thinking based projects, 20% time had almost been driven out of education in a relentless pursuit of higher reading, writing and math grades. The joy and interest these pedagogies can bring to a classroom and to student learning is mirrored by the engagement and enthusiasm teachers have for motivated learners. The boredom of drill and skill …page 23 in your textbook practice cuts both ways. Teachers who are inflipping in our cluster now have the time to do the stuff that sets minds churning and creativity is making a wildly organic come back.

Quite apart from the first-hand observations I have made, where teachers are brimming with excitement, is the depth of worldwide research and practice. As a leader and facilitator, a solid platform from which to engage in what is, for our region, a very new shift in practice.

The foundations that the FLGI online course structure provides affords a differentiated scale that makes this an extremely useful resource to augment my inflpped PLD.

So I’ll continue to support and watch from my life guard chair. I’ll enjoy the view as the people in my pool are once more becoming enthusiastic about what they love to do. I’ll watch as they relax and become more confident in their careers. I’ll be happy with the spread of this virus in my pool. There will be no more semi drownings on my watch.

Gamification 1st Edition: How we gamified our classroom

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Acknowledgements

When we started we didn’t have much of a roadmap and we relied a lot on journal articles, blog posts and our experiences as gamers, we eventually started to really need some more guidance. For this guidance, we leant very heavily on the work of Lee Sheldon (@lee_wpi) and a little later on the work of Matthew Farber (@MatthewFarber). Their books have been absolute touchstones for us. Lee Sheldon’s work, in particular, inspired many revisions to how our game ran. Unfortunately, Farber’s book came a little later in the peace. It is an excellent book though and I cannot recommend either of these books highly enough. Both are still being relied on constantly in our revisions.

Our bible in this endeavor.
The field guide that we could have used six months earlier

Go for it, get these books ASAP if this is something you’re considering. If you only get one go for Sheldon but both are excellent.

Gamification as Mastery

Almost four years into our flipped classroom practice we (my teaching buddy @jfcatto & I) decided that it was time to move beyond Flipped 101. We knew following our attendance at FlipCon 2015 that we wanted to move our students to Mastery Learning. We had dabbled in this before but hadn’t had much success; following FlipCon we felt we might finally have the tools.

Eventually, we settled on Gamification as our key to Mastery. It made perfect sense to us as two men who’d spent way too much time gaming ourselves – I would learn much later while recording or podcast that John was a mad WoWer in times past. I’ll write more about why we decided on gamification in a future post but suffice to say the concept of beating bosses before you’re allowed to move on really appealed to the D&D nerd in me.

What did we gamify?

Our school has allowed us to implement a cycle of Action Research. Usually my approach – like when I started flipping the classroom for the first time – is an all in, knock down the doors with enthusiasm kind of approach. Since we’ve started using Action Research as our main form of Professional Development we decided that to be a bit more objective on whether or not this has worked we’d run it as an AR project – this meant we needed to be a bit more conservative in our approach.

So we chose our Year 8 Science classes (both were parallel classes), my senior Chemistry classes and John’s senior Biology class. If you wish to see what their online platform looks like you can check out the class website at https://sites.google.com/site/catfisheducation

How did we gamify our classroom?

It all is set up to look like an old-school RPG. As I said, I am a D&D nerd. I’ve always played D&D or some variant. Put simply D&D rules and all teachers should be playing it for lots of reasons – but more on that in a future post also.

Level 1: Story

Casual games and casual gamers are a great trend -growing massively thanks to mobile technologies. What I feel makes them ‘casual’ is their lack of story and immersion. This is the opposite of what we want. We want something immersive with longevity. If this was to have the rewards we thought it would (and ultimately did) then it was going to need to go the distance. If you don’t want to invest in a long story at least come up with a theme (that’s what we did) and let the students tell the story from there.

Here are some themes that we have used or toyed with:

  • Post-apocalyptic Earth.
  • Colonising Mars.
  • Stuck on a desert island/survival.
  • Historical adventure.

Basically, it could be any adventure scenario. All we really needed was a hook to hang the curriculum from. The other reason we found it so appealing was that it lends itself to project-based learning as well. In fact, that was our original goal.

Level 2: Character

We thought character development would be much more important than it turned out to be. I think in future editions of the game that we’ll get back to this being key. We made our characters too complex. We stuck too closely to the d and d style character sheets. All we needed it seems is for a character to have a name, a job/guild and a stat block.

We used the jobs/guilds to break the students into groups based on what they thought their strengths were in the class. For example, each party (an RPG term for a group/team) is three to four members from different guilds – engineers, mathematicians, librarians & reporters. The players didn’t have to be experts in these areas – just where they were more comfortable and could start to take leadership roles there.

The Stat Blocks were a set of five stats that were subject relevant. The players could start with a 5 in each stat or break up a total of 25 based on what they thought their strengths were. The Stat Block was vital to the game. The stat block was a self-reflective tool. Whenever the players leveled up or completed certain tasks they were able to add points to the skills in their stats where they felt they’ve improved.

Level 3: XP and Levels

The Cornerstone of the game was the XP and leveling system. XP stands for experience points. XP is how a player shows they are progressing through the game, it is a way of marking their achievements. When a player gains enough XP they move to a new level – they level up.

The XP and level system is the toughest part of a game to get right. Even after quite a lot of tweaking, I feel as though it still isn’t balanced quite right. The coolest thing about this though is that XP are accretive. Players can only gain XP they can’t lose XP (except in special circumstances). Players can monitor their growth and progress through the course in a very explicit way. It is a rewarding process for those who do work when contrasted to a punitive process for those who don’t do their work. The hope here is to promote a positive and growth-mindset when it comes to player’s learning – they can always get better.

So how does a player gain XP? Do things. That simple. Each task that students complete gains them XP. The XP are linked to their end of semester grade and the tasks fall into several categories.

  • Core Videos: These are videos for the flipped classroom that must be done to progress. These are the lowest level of quests (tasks) as far as XP are concerned although more can be gained by asking questions or answering the questions of their peers.
  • Side Videos: These are videos that are supplementary and aren’t required to progress through the game. XP rewarded for these activities are higher than Core Videos.
  • Core Quests: These are all compulsory tasks. Core Quests need to be done and are worth more XP than videos. For our classes, these included presentations, experiments, research tasks, etc. The XP were weighted (hopefully) according to the time required to take.
  • Side Quests: These were tasks that were extra on top of the Core Quests. The XP were weighted the heaviest for these tasks.

Core Videos fit under the Bloom’s category of Understand and Remember. Side Quests tended to fall under Analyse, Apply, Evaluate and Create.

capture
Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Flipped Classroom looks more like a diamond than a pyramid. Not quite a Dimaryp.

XP were originally recorded for each class in a google spreadsheet. The students had access to this spreadsheet that allowed them to keep track of the work that they had or hadn’t done.

When a player levels up they gain HP (hit points) and items.

Level 4: HP

While obviously, we hope the students will do the work we set for good intrinsic reasons, this won’t always realistically be the case. HP, also known as Hit Points, are the class’ discipline system. Players start at Level 1 and have limited HP. If a student breaks a rule then they lose a corresponding amount of HP. Early on in the year, when a teacher might need to be more strict Player Death comes a bit quicker.

Player Death occurs when they are attacked in Mob Attacks and their HP falls below zero. At zero HP a student receives a punishment we called this a Throw of Woe. We used a D12 (twelve-sided die) with punishments of various severities (extra tasks, class presentations, clean a lab, loss of XP and a 1/12 chance of completely escaping any punishment – the mighty hammer of justice misses this time).

Level 5: Items

Players receive items and powers that they can use in class whenever they level up or complete certain tasks. Generally, gamification has resulted in higher intrinsic reward in players’ education but this has provided a buff in the terms of extrinsic reward.

Level 6: Quest Log (Syllabus Design)

So now that we’ve got a rough idea of what the game should look like it was time to map the syllabus to the game. For us, this meant a Quest Log/Quest Book. So we got to planning.

We looked at our syllabi and worked out the outcomes that needed to be mastered to be competent in our subjects and mapped them into a running order. Next, we planned our videos and activities which needed to meet these standards at a minimum. These made up our Core Quests and Core Videos. Side Quests were made up of the extra tasks that could (hopefully) lift you from an average student to an A-Level student or a L337 Player.

The syllabi were given to the Players as a Quest Book – this can be seen at https://www.catfish.education/

earning-xp
XP earned for various types of tasks. Notice that the XP increase as you move further up Bloom’s Taxonomy

Level 7: Mastery and Boss Battles

This is where we feel that this system works well for Mastery. Just as Mario can’t rescue the Princess in his slightly heteronormative display of rescuing a damsel in distress without passing all the obstacles – neither can the students in our game. Although, ladies are encouraged to be their own saviours in Operation Midnight Pheonix.

mario-1-1
Just as Mario can’t move on without passing all the obstacles – neither can the students in our game.

Boss Battles are how we solved this problem. Players must defeat Mini-Bosses and Epic Bosses. Mini-Bosses occur in the middle of the unit and they are signposts along the way. To move on to the next sub-level of the game you have to beat it by scoring 75% or above. Players must show mastery. The same for the end of each Level where the players battle the Epic Boss.

Boss Battles are essentially Google Forms that are set up as quizzes. Here is a short video on how to do this. The new format of Google Forms allows them to be graded individually within the user interface. It is an absolute dream.

Grading can be done automatically (with pure multiple choice) or as a combination of automatic marking and teacher grading giving individual feedback. It is very easily done on a clean and easy to read interface. The results can then be forwarded out with individualised feedback to the students. They know what they need to work on to master this level.

Boss Battles like this are great – students always see that they can get better. Losing a battle is a chance to lick your wounds and work out how you can beat it next time. That’s the awesome sauce here with gamification. Students don’t go backward – only forwards.

If you have any questions or we can help you out with anything at all in setting up your own gamified classroom comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

This post is a X-Post from my personal blog mrvanw.com

Pete Whiting