Blended Learning and Mindset

I try to keep this as an all audience blog, and despite the occasional foul language, I simply could not resist using this clip to demonstrate mindset.  I mean talk about resiliency, grit, and the celebration of failure!  The coconut horse bit never gets old also.

I have been working for almost 5 years of teaching to change the mindset of students.  I have redesigned the structure of my course and assessment to undo the permanent nature of failure that exist for so many students.  That is to say...If a student fails a quiz, and aces the portion of a test on the same topic...why do we keep the quiz?  The quiz is not accurate anymore, the quiz is artificially weighing down the ability of the grade to communicate level of learning, and worst of all it is telling the student that failure is permanent and inescapable.

Which brings me to mindset

mindset  

Web definitions mentality: a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.

Quick summary of Deweck's ideas on mindset (she wrote a whole book on it so forgive me for all the stuff left out in these descriptions)

Closed mindset people see their abilities as fixed and are resilient to learning anything that does not come naturally or fits within their self image.  "I am good at math so I try, writing however I am terrible at...".  
Open mindset people see their abilities as dynamic and invite challenges as a chance to expand their ability, not question them.  

I want to build open mindset students and I am lucky, none of my students have ever taken physics and don't know that they are bad at it (a challenge HS Algebra I teachers face daily).  In addition to a grade that is 90% reliant on what they know or can do (test) and 10% everything else (HW, participation, labs, etc) and the regular opportunity to review and reassess old content, I added the following.

The initial delivery of material was done electronically and by student choice.  They were given objectives during the week and self paced through them.  I wanted students to have some voice and choice in the direction they took to mastery.  This infusion of technology + daily mindset coaching on how much I believe in their ability to learn Physics delivered the following.

11 students enrolled in AP physics (their senior year!...the average from P physics to AP physics is 1 student and the class is so hard (even by AP standards) that two years from now it will become a two year course!

10 of the 11 have never taken an AP science course before!

9 of the 11 have never taken any AP class before!

8 of the 11 are re-designated language learners,

and my personal favorite

5 of the 11 were failing the course at the first progress report...it's my favorite because I want to teach that failure is just a part of the process so long as you keep trying.

I am more proud of these statistics than anything else I have done as a teaching professional because they represent a change in student's mindsets.    The best part is...this is just the beginning, I didn't even know what I was doing and spent much of the time learning how not to run a blended learning classroom.   This is just the beginning.

Cheers!

Differentiated Suprise

Student have different needs...all of them...all the time

(friggin awesome video by the way, thanks Tammy Heflebower!)

After my first week of out of the lab flipping (that is too say instead of practicing in the computer lab, they actually did the work at home).  I came a cross a curious senario. 

Big gaps in needs based on assessment results on the idea that we covered (Newton's 2nd Law).  Some students totally understood what I asked them to learn.  Other students understood the core idea, but have gaps in their ability to take it to the next level when it comes to 2nd Law.  Other's are lacking application and understanding of the basics.  Once upon a time...next topic, or work my but off to create a 3 tiered lesson, mostly help one group while managing the others.

Now that I have been busting my but to produce online content in order to flip, I find myself uniquely qualified to handle the problem in a non-flipped way, using the material I have created.  

Group 1:  8-12 kids with me working in groups of two at the most in the front center of classroom.  Use a preexisting worksheet that I had that covers the three levels of understanding.  

Group 2:  5 or 6 kids can work on the following:  create extra problems with explanations on the computers (that I have attained through grants) show the set up and explain how to solve it or...move on to extra credit content requested by our AP physics teacher.  Both options I love by the way, they are making stuff that will be posted on my website to help other students who need more practice (and probably explain it better than I do) or do work that I regret is not worth presenting to the whole class. 

Group 3:  Students with holes in their learning working in groups of three or four.  Individually these student's don't understand everything, collectively 1 in 4 can help on any particular problem, question, idea.

The best thing about this lesson was my prep time was already paid when I created my lessons and coached them on how to navigate the content.  The membrane between the groups was semi-pearmeable (I'm teaching two sections of biology this year), that is to say students could demonstrate a level of learning and move to a different group or assignment.  Finally...it worked!  

I had a room full of people not just working, but doing the right work for them.  This is very difficult to plan, but the flipped culture (not just the structure) allowed the students to completely understand the design of what we were doing this day.  

Given that I am regularly struggling with actually home participation (more on my soon to be weekly "by the numbers" blog post) in the lesson viewing it is important for me to focus on small victories.  

Is this a victory?  Many that could be watching them at home are not.  The test is friday and purhaps the results will provide opportunity for a "come to jesus" talk about their own levels of participation.  

What if the home participation is low, but the test results are better than last year given the change in lesson delivery (even if it is mostly still happening in class)?

thoughts?

Cheers