PLP Webinar #2

PLP Blog Post

Last week I also wrote a blog post for PLP Pathways about our work with the Flyin' Ryan Hawks Foundation. Here is the piece I wrote it is going to go live this week. I also have a webinar on Thursday 11/19 at 3:30.

When looking at the Personal Learning Framework one of the key components to the Identity section is having students think about who they are and their core values. Ultimately, this can be a foundation to help students design goals.

For the past few years I have been trying to help my students think about their identity and develop a sense of self. However, I was finding that I always had a group of students who really struggled reflecting on themselves and communicating their values. Being an avid-skier, I had heard about something called the Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation and felt it may fit this need in my classroom.

The Flyin Ryan Hawks Decision Program

Ryan Hawks was a well known freeskier out of Mad River Valley who went on to compete in the Freeride World Tour. Ryan passed away from injuries sustained at a Freeride World Tour event in Kirkwood, California. Shortly after Ryan’s passing, his family found a document on his computer where a few years before, Ryan had crafted his own core values.  The Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation was established “with the idea of EXPOSING people to Ryan’s core principles, INSPIRING them to explore and compose their own set of core values, and ACTING on the core principles they have composed.”

Implementation at Peoples Academy Middle Level

Being personally inspired by the Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation, I started to hear more and more about the Decisions Program the Foundation had started. This program brings Ryan’s Core Values into schools and organizations as a way for students to write their own core values.  I knew this would be a great fit for my students, especially those who had a hard time engaging in self reflective work.  I reached out to South Burlington High School teacher, John Painter, who had a Rowland Fellowship last year where part of his fellowship was to work with area school to implement the Decisions Program. After my meeting with Painter, I knew that the FRHF Decisions Program would be a great way to kick-off this year’s PLP roll out in September and I could not be more thrilled with how the project took off.

In the start of year year we introduced our students to the FRHF and Ryan’s core values through video on the Foundation's website. Students were instantly inspired by Ryan’s story. It is so important to give our students real life examples of things we ask them to do. Ryan not only thought about his core values, but also set goals and achieved many of them. This was a powerful way to engage our students to think critically about their own core values, which can be a very difficult exercise for 12 and 13 year olds.

Next, we had our students reflect on how others saw themselves. How would their family describe them? How would their friends describe the student? Finally, how would they want to be described?

This started our conversation with students about their core values; the qualities and characteristics they want to be have in their life that will guide them. As teachers, we also were crafting our own core values list and sharing them with the students. We asked students to come up with a minimum of four core values, but many went above and beyond those expectations.

Finally, we had students go into iMovie on their iPads and turn their core values into a movie that would become a part of their PLP. The iMovies included images and music of their choice as a way to highlight their personal core values.

Students were so engaged in this project, many of them worked on their videos at home and shared them with their parents and friends while they were still in the creation stage. Having students craft their core values in this way gave us great insight into what drives our students and who they hope to become. We used these core values to then launch into the PLP, looking at how their core values will guide them in their life and think about what goals can set to help stay on the right track.

Parents Reactions to Students Core Values iMovies

One of the most rewarding aspects of this project was the reaction parents had while viewing their students’ core values iMovies. We had students start their student led conference this year by showing their video which was placed on the About Me section of their PLP. You could see the joy on the parents’ faces while watching the videos. Many parents asked to watch the videos multiple times and asked thoughtful questions to their children about both the process and the values the students selected. We asked parents for feedback after the student led conference, and it was overwhelming how many parents commented on how nice it was to see their students’ core values iMovie.

For more information about bringing the Flyin’ Ryan Decisions Program to your school or classroom please contact John Painter at jpainter@sbschools.net.

Maura Kelly is a 7th grade humanities teacher at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville, Vermont. She has a passion for working with young adolescents and believes in the power of a strong middle level program in developing students to be ready to face challenges in our world today. When Maura is not teaching you can find her out skiing and biking around the state of Vermont.

Vermontfest

On November 5th, I traveled down to Killington to present at Vermontfest. This is an annual
technology integration conference that is highly attended by Vermont educators. I presented on the implementation of PLPs at PAML looking at how a whole school developed and implemented a school wide plan, but spent alot of time focusing on how we are implementing them at the 7th grade level and my work with PLP Pathways.


The presentation can be found here.

There were over forty people that attended the presentation and I received great feedback. People were very interested in what we are doing here and were very impressed with what we are doing with grades 5-8. There was a teacher from South Burlington who was there who wants to hear more about what we are doing and is going to his PLP committee to see what questions they have and will partner with the PLP Pathways for support.

Audrey Homan was there from Tarrant and she recorded audio from the presentation and is thinking about putting together a podcast for Tarrant. She is also interested in interviewing some of our students on her radio show to get their perspective about PLPs in the 7th grade. This seems like a neat opportunity for our students. Audrey also sent me a thoughtful thank you card for sharing my thoughts about PLPs with teachers just starting to think about how they are going to make them happen in their classrooms.

I also have a video of part of the presentation that John Downes took that I will upload after.

Goals 2015-2016

Domain 3:  Instruction Component 3d: Using Assessment in Instruction

Specific goal: Over the summer we started working on proficiency based learning and assessment. My goal for this year is to integrate the implementation of learning scales into my humanities classroom for three of my units of study. I would like to use learning scales as a way to monitor student learning and to give feedback to students. I would also like the learning scale to allow students to self assess and monitor their progress within a unit of study.

Strategies for working toward achieving the goal:

1. Work with Jordy to collaboratively build three learning scales for units of study over the course of the year.
2. Have students use evidence of their learning to reflect on the learning scale in their blog.
3. Design mini-lessons that specifically address elements of the learning scale for students to work on.
4. Use power school to track comments given to students while conferencing with their about their learning scale on specific units of study.
5. Talk with other humanities teachers vertically about the learning scales that they are creating and using in their instruction.

Evidence which will be used to assess goal attainment:

1. The three learning scales that I will create.
2. Evidence of students blogging about the learning scale and annotating their work as evidence of learning and growth.

Specific goal: 4d. Participating in Professional Community 4e. Growing and Developing Professionally

Last year I was approached by Susan Hennessey of Tarrant Institute and Don Taylor, teacher at Main Street Middle School, looking into doing a monthly google hangout about PLP implementation in the 7th grade in the middle school. I instantly jumped on this opportunity and found that it was one of the most enriching professional development opportunities that I have taken over my time as a teacher. This Don and I are partner with the Middle Grades Collaborative to bring our PLP google hangouts to a broader audience. My goal for this year is to participated in a larger professional community through partnering with Don Taylor to build a professional development platform for teachers around the state to implement PLPs in their classroom. I think that this goal will push me to think more about how I am implementing PLPs in my classroom but also help to create a professional learning community that is across the state.

Strategies for working toward achieving the goal:

1. Partner with Don Taylor to build a PLP Pathways site that will hold resources for educators about Act 77 and PLPs in the middle level.
2. Host monthly PLP Pathways google hangouts with Don Taylor for other educators around the state.
3. Write a scrips and record a webisode resource for teachers every month offering resources and examples of PLP implementation.
4. Write blog posts for the PLP Pathways website
5. Use twitter to connect with other educators to share resources about PLPs
6. Present at conferences about PLPs at PAML

Evidence which will be used to assess goal attainment:

1. Recordings of the monthly google hangouts.
2. Blog Posts about the PLP Pathways
3. Conference attendance certificates
4. Recordings of the Monthly Webisodes
5. Links to the PLP Pathways website with pages I have contributed to  

It's Common Sense!

On Friday I felt like I hit a home run. It was the first dance of the year AND the new Hunger Games movie was coming out. It was the perfect storm of distractions for the students. Oh and did I mention that our first vacation is next week? Yes, it was one of those Friday's teachers dread.

But, we were going to be working with primary sources, analyzing and using text as evidence to support our claims. However, with the insight of master teacher Phoebe Slater, we turned this into a highly engaging inquiry based role playing lesson.

We have been reading the book My Brother Sam is Dead by James and Christopher Collier. In the book a family from Redding Connecticut is  being torn apart by the Revolutionary War. The son who is living in New Haven leaves his family to join the Continental Army to the dismay of his loyalist father.

We used this as the spring board to set up the lesson. Jordy, my teaching partner and myself split the class into two groups, we have the loyalists from Redding Connecticut and the rebels from New Haven who are all receiving shipments of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet and the citizens are getting fired up. The loyalist are calling treason against Thomas Paine and are ready to go to New Haven to set the record strait. The people of New Haven are using this as a reason to fight and are gathering fellow rebels, organizing and storming into loyalist towns to take their weapons in preparations of the fight. 

The two towns (groups) were given excerpts of the text to use to find evidence to persuade the other town when they meet each other at the markets and to use the text to start protests. We are using the "Teaching Democracy" framework to help facilitate this inquiry the students are working on.  Let's just say the students were so excited and were so engaged in the text trying to start the revolution. The rebels have even started making hats to wear as they protest! 

    

November Challenge

I have been really excited about signing up for Thinglink and introducing it to my students. As I have been doing some research on how others are using it in the classroom I stumbled upon the Thinglink Appsmash November Challenge!

If you want to know more about Thinglink it is a powerful took to embed information, graphics, videos and audio to images. There are countless ways to use it in the classroom. Here is an example Thinglink that I grabbed off their website:




Here is the information about the app smash! I cannot wait to try it out:

http://thinglinkblog.com/2014/11/08/take-the-thinglink-app-smash-challenge/

First Thoughts on Rick Wormeli

Last week I was able to go and see Rick Wormeli at CVU with the VAMLE board. He was giving a presentation about standards based grading. I have really been thinking about the whole idea of teaching with "GRIT" which yes I know is a four letter word, but I think it really addresses the issue of teaching students to be independent, critically thinking, hard working people.

If you are unfamiliar with Wormeli, he has put out numerous books and articles from around current trends in education and school transformations. Here are his thoughts on standards based grading:




I am still reading about his ideas for standards based grading, but I know as a teacher I really struggle with the whole grading thing, how do I assess students and give them a number on a scale of 0-100 for an assessment and put it in grade book and then have that accurately tell the student and their families where they are in connection with the standard and enduring understanding that we are working on. I am feeling like as a teacher that only shows such a narrow perspective on how the student is doing and that I need a better way to communicate with families about the growth of their learner. I am excited by all of the work that is currently being done around the state on standards based grading and have great hopes for where this work is going.

One thing that made me go "woo hoo" inside was that he said the best way to show student growth is through the use of a portfolio. It made me smile on the inside knowing that the work that we are doing is on the right track.