Tag Archives: TED talk

#LL2LU, Connecting Ideas, Learning, Questions, Reading, TED talk

Summer Learning 2017 – Choices and VTR

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How do we learn and grow when we are apart? We workshop, plan, play, rest, and read to name just a few of our actions and strategies.

We make a commitment to read and learn every summer.  This year, in addition to books and a stream of TED talks, Voices of Diversity, we offer the opportunity to read children’s literature and design learning intentions around character and values.

Below is the Summer Learning flyer announcing the choices for this summer.

We will continue to use the Visible Thinking Routine Sentence-Phrase-Word to notice and note important, thought-provoking ideas. This routine aims to illuminate what the reader finds important and worthwhile.

Sentence-Phrase-Word helps learners to engage with and make meaning from text with a particular focus on capturing the essence of the text or “what speaks to you.” It fosters enhanced discussion while drawing attention to the power of language. (Ritchhart, 207 pag.)

However, the power and promise of this routine lies in the discussion of why a particular word, a single phrase, and a sentence stood out for each individual in the group as the catalyst for rich discussion . It is in these discussions that learners must justify their choices and explain what it was that spoke to them in each of their choices. (Ritchhart, 208 pag.)

Continuing to work on our goal, We can design and implement a differentiated action plan across our divisions school to meet all learners where they are, we make our thinking visible on ways to level up.

When we share what resonates with us, we offer others our perspective.  What if we engage in conversation to learn and share from multiple points of view?

Ritchhart, Ron, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison. Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Print

Connecting Ideas, Professional Development Plans, TED talk

Strategic Teaming: leadership, voice, our hopes and dreams

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We know high-functioning teams have great impact on student learning.  How might we grow in our strategic teaming to commit to the good, hard work it takes to meet the needs of our learners?

Last year during Pre-Planning, we began our intentional work to strengthen faculty teams (see Strategic Teaming: 3 Big Ideas Learning Communities Embrace for details.)

Today, we asked each team to review and discuss the 3 Big Ideas high-functioning teams embrace along with the 4 key questions these same teams routinely ask themselves.

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As we grow in our leadership, teaming, and collaboration, how might we learn more?

In today’s session, we used the first 4:15 and the last 0:45 of Julian Treasure’s How to speak so that people want to listen.

I hope our teams will return to the talk to watch what we skipped.  The big takeaways for me are

  • …spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.
  • …authenticity…standing in your own truth.
  • …what would the world be like if we were creating sound consciously and consuming sound consciously and designing all our environments consciously for sound? That would be a world that does sound beautiful, and one where understanding would be the norm, and that is an idea worth spreading.

Strong teams regularly self-assess how well they function within their norms – the hopes and dreams for how they are when together.

Screen Shot 2016-08-12 at 7.46.16 PM

Each team had a quick open discussion of their work, successes, and struggles with last year’s norms.  We strive to strengthen our teaming by setting new norms.Screen Shot 2016-08-12 at 7.48.43 PMWe turned to another expert and provocateur by watching the first 5:45 of The Myth of Average: Todd Rose at TEDxSonomaCounty.

 How might we dramatically expand our talent pool?

Each team worked to update their norms and discuss tools they might use to hold to these norms and provide feedback when necessary.

As Marsha Harris and I closed this Pre-Planning session, we wanted to  connect to Tuesday’s Division Meetings.

We hope to model the connectedness, commitment, and collaboration we seek in our teaching teams. Maryellen Berry and Rhonda Mitchell both closed their faculty meetings by showing Android: Monotone as a metaphor and message.

One fear we encounter while forwarding the tenets of professional learning communities is the perceived loss of autonomy.  We wanted to send the message

Be together; not the same.

To reinforce and support Maryellen and Rhonda’s message, Marsha and I showed Android: The Making of “MonoTune.” In the above video, Ji makes it look easy.  It’s not.

When we are in harmony and in unison but we are all distinctly different, that’s when magic happens in the world.

Be together; not the same.

GoogleMobile. “Android: Monotune.” YouTube. YouTube, 15 Feb. 2016. Web. 12 Aug. 2016.

GoogleMobile. “Android: The Making of “Monotune”” YouTube. YouTube, 15 Feb. 2016. Web. 12 Aug. 2016.

Connecting Ideas, Learning, Professional Development Plans, Reading, TED talk

Summer Learning 2016 – Choices and VTR

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How do we learn and grow when we are apart? We workshop, plan, play, rest, and read to name just a few of our actions and strategies.

We make a commitment to read and learn every summer.  This year, we take a slightly broader approach to our Summer Reading Learning menu by adding two streams of TED talks, Voices of Diversity and SAIS.

Below is the Summer Learning flyer announcing the choices for this summer.

We will use the Visible Thinking Routine Sentence-Phrase-Word to notice and note important, thought-provoking ideas. This routine aims to illuminate what the reader finds important and worthwhile.

Sentence-Phrase-Word helps learners to engage with and make meaning from text with a particular focus on capturing the essence of the text or “what speaks to you.” It fosters enhanced discussion while drawing attention to the power of language. (Ritchhart, 207 pag.)

However, the power and promise of this routine lies in the discussion of why a particular word, a single phrase, and a sentence stood out for each individual in the group as the catalyst for rich discussion . It is in these discussions that learners must justify their choices and explain what it was that spoke to them in each of their choices. (Ritchhart, 208 pag.)

We have the opportunity to model how to incorporate reading strategies into all classrooms.  Think about teaching young learners to read a section of their book and jot down a sentence, phrase, and word that has meaning to them.  Great formative assessment as the lesson begins!

When we share what resonates with us, we offer others our perspective.  What if we engage in conversation to learn and share from multiple points of view?

Ritchhart, Ron, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison. Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Prin

#LL2LU, Connecting Ideas, Learning, Questions, Sketch Notes, Summer Reading

Contagious learning: lighting fires, deep practice – The Talent Code VTR SPW

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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
—W. B. Yeats

How might we send the right signals? What if struggle is celebrated and encouraged until it just clicks?

TalentCode-Chpt7

Summer Reading using VTR: Sentence-Phrase-Word:
The Talent Code
Chapter 7: How to Ignite a Hotbed

Then it clicks. The kids get it, and when it starts, the rest of them get it, too. It’s contagious. (Coyle, 156 pag.)

Contagious…it’s a good word. How might we empower learners to take charge of learning? Hear from Kiran Sethi:

Coyle, Daniel (2009-04-16). The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Connecting Ideas, TED talk

#TEDTalkTuesday: problems, inventions, school

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Alanna Shaikh:  How I’m preparing to get Alzheimer’s

There’s about 35 million people globally living with some kind of dementia, and by 2030 they’re expecting that to double to 70 million. That’s a lot of people.

Kenneth Shinozuka:  My simple invention, designed to keep my grandfather safe

… I was looking after my grandfather and I saw him stepping out of the bed. The moment his foot landed on the floor, I thought, why don’t I put a pressure sensor on the heel of his foot? Once he stepped onto the floor and out of the bed, the pressure sensor would detect an increase in pressure caused by body weight and then wirelessly send an audible alert to the caregiver’s smartphone.

Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School

What kind of school would have the teenagers fighting to get in, not fighting to stay out? And after hundreds of conversations with teenagers and teachers and parents and employers and schools from Paraguay to Australia, and looking at some of the academic research, which showed the importance of what’s now called non-cognitive skills — the skills of motivation, resilience — and that these are as important as the cognitive skills — formal academic skills — we came up with an answer, a very simple answer in a way, which we called the Studio School. And we called it a studio school to go back to the original idea of a studio in the Renaissance where work and learning are integrated. You work by learning, and you learn by working. 

Connecting Ideas, Questions, TED talk

#TEDTalkTuesday: Math in an Information Age

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Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers
We can engage so many more students with this, and they can have a better time doing it. And let’s understand: this is not an incremental sort of change. We’re trying to cross the chasm here between school math and the real-world math. 
Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover
 Math makes sense of the world. Math is the vocabulary for your own intuition.
#LL2LU, Connecting Ideas, Learning, Learning Progressions, TED talk

Productive struggle and essential feedback

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How might we teach and learn more about perseverance? I wish we could rephrase the first Standard for Mathematical Practice to the following:

I can make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them.

Just the simple exchange from problems to tasks make this process standard a little more global for learners.  What if we encourage and expect productive struggle?

Some struggle in learning is good, but there is a key distinction to be made between productive struggle and destructive struggle.  Productive struggle allows students the space to grapple with information and come up with the solution for themselves. It develops resilience and persistence and helps students refine their own strategies for learning. In productive struggle, there is a light at the end of the tunnel; learning goals not only are clear but also seem achievable. Although students face difficulty, they grasp the point of the obstacles they face and believe that they will overcome these obstacles in the end.(Jackson and Lambert, 53 pag.)

How might we make a slight change during the learning process to challenge our learners, to promote productive struggle, to persevere, and to learn, through experience, critical reasoning?

But many people are petrified of bad ideas. Ideas that make us look stupid or waste time or money or create some sort of backlash. The problem is that you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.  Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants–we all fail far more than we succeed. (Godin, n. pag.)

What if we reframe “failure” as productive struggle and perseverance?

  • Level 4:
    I can find a second or third solution and describe how the pathways to these solutions relate.
  • Level 3:
    I can make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them.
  • Level 2:
    I can ask questions to clarify the problem, and I can keep working when things aren’t going well and try again.
  • Level 1:
    I can show at least one attempt to investigate or solve the task.

We cannot emphasize enough the power of feedback. Given the right kind of feedback, struggling students can gauge how they are doing and determine what they need to do to get to mastery. It can help students quickly correct their mistakes, select a more effective learning strategy, and experience success before frustration sets in. (Jackson and Lambert, 68 pag.)

How might we highlight many paths to success? What if we make paths to success visible enough for learners to try, risk, question, and learn?

When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them.   And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. 39. Print.

Godin, Seth. “Seth’s Blog: Fear of Bad Ideas.” Seth’s Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2015.

Jackson, Robyn R. (2010-07-27). How to Support Struggling Students (Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching series). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.