After another PLC meeting we saw a video of a teacher in another context of learning allowing students to work in groups, view others work and give critical feedback and then have another opportunity to work again on the same topic. I considered all of these inputs and determined that I wanted to have students do meaningful work that included choice of topic, medium and work groups. We had been studying magnets, circuits and conductors and insulators over the last week so this was the subject I would attempt to have them create a quality product for with the purpose of teaching another student who was out sick about what they learned during class with investigations.
Our first stage was to determine the "stages of quality" for a creation product. Here is what they determined:
Stage One: Topic is clear, the written and spoken piece is easy to read or hear.
Stage Two: Topic is clear and has supporting information, the written and spoke work are scripted and clear in message. The presentation has two or more slides or scenes.
State Three: Topic is clear with supporting information including a clear beginning, middle and end. The script includes questions, answers and the thinking of the presenter. The work has been reviewed and revised before shared and published. The presentation has slides that are multimedia with a variety of pictures, drawings, text, labels, etc.
After this conversation I was very hopeful since the students came up with this criteria and I felt confident they could see how each stage was reached. The next thing we worked on as a group is determining the objective and topic for the lesson and what was going to be taught. The students came up with about three objectives for each topic that could be answered. They also created a list of terms that would need to be explained, used and understood by the viewer for each topic. Finally, they were able to decide if their work would be done with a partner, group or alone. At this point they went to work on a plan and then started creating!
One trend I can see in the work is they were more likely to speak about the topic as they went and not create a script. Many took a few takes, but never worked from a written script. Some still had misconceptions about magnet attract to metal and circuit conductors being iron. They also often used simplistic language instead of the science vocabulary terms. For example, discussing a circuit as being closed and working, many students said it was "on" or "off" instead of open and closed. In the case of magnets the terms attract and repel were used in the investigation, but students would substitute, stick or push apart.
So where does the work leave me? I think I am looking at this as stage one of the creation process myself. I need to continue to allow them to work and improve their quality. My next step is to give them a peer review form and examples of work from across my three classes and see what others are doing. I am going to give time for them to review digital work (please take some time to view some of the student work) and critique it in a way that applies the standards they create and give feedback to another about what they enjoyed and what they suggest for improvements. There is indeed some high quality work, some that needs work, but overall I think we are on our way to improving the quality of work.
I would love some ideas from those who took the time to read the post and viewed the work!
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