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| TPS Makerspace |
This week, I would like to highlight all of the learning possibilities our libraries are providing to kids. As libraries around the country are becoming more than an inventory of books due to the introduction of e-readers, computer-based programs and videos, our MITS have begun to explore new and different ways that students can see an even bigger reason why the library is the hub of learning for the school.
Throughout the district, students are coming to the library to "make". In other words, students are using the library to create, experiment and explore. Students at the primary are making new worlds like the one you see to your right. Elementary students are learning about coding, stock markets, the history of Tatum and other technology based tools, and middle school and high school students are learning how to use Raspberry Pi's to make robots, and Sphero's to learn how to code in a meaningful way.
Our libraries are doing a great job meeting the kids where there interests are and offering opportunities for students to create products that you won't find on a test. Thank you to Jennifer Day, Cindy Haston, Veronica Wilkerson, and Cristi Whiddon for all of their hard work. Stay tuned next week, as I share a video highlighting the progress of our Maker-movement.
Growing Excellence (+10 for ALL)
Motivation can add 10 points to a test. It can take 10 seconds off of your long distance run, and it may just add 10 years to your life. When we are motivated, we get more done and we get it done more enthusiastically. To put it another way, motivation is exponent of life. The more of it we have, the more fruitful our life will be.
Well, what if you're not motivated?
Bill Ferriter shared an interesting article by @MindShift about the brain research behind motivation and it revealed that if we psyche ourselves up and focus our thoughts on being successful, we will ignite the neurons in the part of the brain that controls motivation. So the evidence is conclusive, we can motivate ourselves if we want to.
So what if our students are unmotivated learners?
After reading the article, I was drawn to a @MindShift article called 20 Strategies for Motivating Reluctant Learners. The piece highlighted Kathy Perez an educator and consultant who shared her ideas to fire up the neurons of our unmotivated students. She pointed out that motivated learning requires lots of action and excitement. Here are a couple of reminders that we must never forget if we want to fire up our kids for learning.
- Student attention equals 1 minute per year of age. For example, 8 years olds have an attention span for any given activity for 8 minutes.
- Boredom is Motivation's Kryptonite - If you don't respond to student boredom, they will lose the motivation to learn.
- Goal Setting is Essential - If we want kids to stay motivated, they must help set measurable and attainable goals that will keep them focused on the learning for the day.
- Group Collaboration with short time limits - As opposed to allowing 5 minutes to do group collaboration, Kathy recommends using seconds, like 72 seconds, to collaborate. The short amount of time actually focuses kids on more active learning.
In order to motivate the unmotivated, it requires us to matter to kids. It has to be learning that it attainable, but most importantly it has to be safe. The biggest turn-off to learning is not just when the learning is boring. It is when the learning makes kids believe they can't learn the content.
Motivated Learning is SMART.
If you want more kids excited about the learning in your classroom, you have to determine if the learning faciliates the SMART mentality.
- Specific & Stimulating - Does the learning have a specific goal, and is it introduced in a way that piques our students' curiosity to want to know more about it.
- Meaningful & eMpowering - Do we find a way to make the learning meaningful to our kids, and do we create learning opportunities that empower them to make their own meaning of learning.
- Attainable & Applicable - Do we stretch our kids to reach attainable short-term goals along the way, and do we allow our students to apply what they learn in predictable and unpredicatable situations.
- Results-Oriented & Real-World - Do our learning tasks yield tangible results that students can use to drive their next steps in learning, and does our learning apply to real-world that our students know and understand.
- Time-Bound & Targeted - Does our learning optimize time and give kids a clear target to shoot for at all times?
The best part of my reason was this video that I found at the end of the second article. It clearly articulates what kids need to be motivated to learn.
College AND Career
Check out this TNT video by Tori Robinson on how Annie Thompson's Grad Point class is helping students reach their College and Career goals.
Google Me This - Slides
Google Slides are for more than presentations. In this video below by +The Gooru you can use slides to create a wide variety of newsletters or newspapers for your classroom or campus. Beyond using it for teacher or leader purposes, students could use this tool to make all kids of products to show their learning. Here are just a few ways that you can have your students use Google Slides as a formative assessment.
- A history class could make a newspaper from a time period that they are studying.
- Science or math classes could make a study guide over a unit of study and embed videos they find on YouTube or other sources.
- English classes could make a newsletter from a novel they are reading together as a class.
- CTE classes could make a want ad for careers they are studying.
- Foreign language classes can make a vocabulary or conjugation study guide and add videos they create to show proper speaking of the language.
Google slides are too cool not to incorporate into your instruction for a number of reasons. First the layout provides so many more opportunities for graphic creativity. Second, images and videos are easy to embed into the document, and last, there is no one correct way for kids to show their learning. The teacher can assign each student or group of students a page for them to edit and when the students are complete, you have a multitude of pages where students have shown their thinking. Google Slides help students learn from one another's work as they create evidence of their learning.
Upcoming Dates
- Thu, 3/24 - Deadline to enter Mock tests & FAs into DMAC
- Fri, 3/25 - Bad Weather Day / Good Friday
- Tue, 3/29 - Fri, 4/1 - STAAR Testing
- Tue - 4 & 7 Writing, 5 & 8 Math, English 1
- Wed - 5 & 8 Reading
- Thu - English 2
- Fri - Make-up Testing
- Thu, 4/7 - TELPAS Verification
What I'm Learning
A Bigger Vision by George Couros
Movenote is a great way to use technology to do a virtual presentation. It can connect directly to your email and you can create and share your presentation to your kids.
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