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~ A blog about teaching, learning, and leadership by Jennifer Rimnyak

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Staying Inside the Lines: Reflections on Learning from my Adult Colouring Book

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by jenpieon in Uncategorized

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creativity, FSL, goals, growth mindset, instructional practice, learning skills, reflection

I have never been very good at art. Dramatic Arts yes, music definitely, but visual arts were never my cup of tea. Despite this, I asked for and received an adult colouring book for Christmas, and I must admit that I’ve become slightly obsessed with it. I have spent so many hours flipping through the pages, trying to select which one to colour, then agonizing over which colours to choose, then engaging in the slow and meticulous process of filling in the design. And although colouring is not visual arts per se, my somewhat meditative hours spent in the book have brought me to reflect on my very first statement and the nature of learning.

Reflection 1: On the Messiness and Scariness of True Learning

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I began this post stating that I’m not good at art. Most of that is my own fault. As a child and a teenager, if I wasn’t good at something right away, I stopped pursuing it. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately?), at the risk of sounding braggy, I had a natural aptitude for enough things that I had the luxury of avoiding those areas where I struggled.

I have always said that I love to learn; as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult, I have never strayed from the desire to discover new knowledge and skills (I mean, look at the title of this blog!). But reflecting now, the learning that I loved as a student was the easy, neat kind: the kind where the next piece of knowledge followed logically from the previous and fit perfectly into my cognitive construct, where the next part of the skill flowed perfectly and built directly upon the foundation I already had. When learning was too challenging or messy, I ran for the hills. Again, at the risk of sounding braggy, I was a gifted identified student and considered by my peers and teachers as one of the top students in my grade, but my mindset was so narrow and fixed. So many of our students, especially those who are gifted or who usually pick up on new concepts quickly, do respond as I used to and avoid the struggle.

It wasn’t until my math courses in university that I encountered a situation where I couldn’t avoid the struggle anymore. This was the first time that I found math to be truly difficult, and I couldn’t just pick another course as math was my chosen minor. I had to engage in some productive struggle and stretch myself in order to understand, but in the end, some of that learning was so much more satisfying than any of the learning I had done before. Again, even though colouring is not me creating a visual arts piece from scratch, I’m considering it my first small step toward stretching myself in that area and truly learning some new skills.

Reflection 2: On Perfectionism

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Every time I have gone outside the lines on my drawing so far I have cringed. The patterns are so intricate that sometimes a small error is unavoidable. But when I zoom out and look at the whole image, those little imperfections fade away, and all I see are the beautiful colours and patterns.

As a teenager, you guessed it, I was a pretty hardcore perfectionist. Those tendencies still rear their ugly head from time to time now in my adult life, but as an educator my mindset really has changed. It was always so important to me to pour hours and hours into each project and task, to script and time oral presentations exactly to the teacher’s specifications, to check and double check and triple check math questions – all with the mindset that the final product was final, the endpoint, and there would be nothing more to take from it once it was completed and submitted.

Now I know, and try my very best to demonstrate to students, that there is still learning to be had and that perfection is not the ultimate, nor really an attainable goal. Instead the focus should be on continuously learning and improving, reflecting on those products that were thought to be final. In French classes, so many students are afraid to speak in discussions because they don’t want to make a mistake (totally the teenage me). As a teacher, I always call attention to my own oral production. As a bilingual person and a teacher of the language, I still make the occasional grammar mistake when writing or speaking, or can’t find the word I want to say and need to talk around it or use a more basic word. Obviously my students (and myself) are working toward more grammatical precision, but at the end of the day, if their message is clear despite some mistakes, then the goal of the communication has been accomplished – just like when I zoom out of my coloured image and my scribbles outside the lines become less and less evident. As long as we are improving each time we engage in a task: whether that task is a math problem, engaging in a second language conversation, or colouring, then perfection ceases to be the be-all and end-all goal. Learning instead takes its place in the forefront.

Funny the thoughts a simple colouring book can provoke.

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Goal-Setting, Reflection, and Metacognition in FSL – Part 1 of Ontario FSL Curriculum Transition Series

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

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assessment as learning, creativity, curriculum, FSL, goals, growth mindset, instructional practice, learning skills, metacognition, reflection, self-assessment

For the first official post in my blog series about transitioning to Ontario’s new FSL curriculum in my classroom, I begin with some context. I have been teaching in a secondary French Immersion program for almost three years. This semester is the first time I have had an FIF course on my timetable. During the first two and a half years, I taught the other courses in the program, such as Mathematics and Dramatic Arts, in French. Right now, I have two FIF2D courses and a PPL3OI (Co-ed Immersion HPE). I have been experimenting with aspects of the new curriculum in my two FIF2D classes and that’s where my reflections will be coming from.

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Speaking of reflection, the new curriculum now has a metacognition expectation in each strand, and goal setting and reflection comprise one of the Enduring Ideas addressed in the front matter of the document. I spent the first two weeks of the semester simply engaging in diagnostic learning activities with my students. We listened to French (mostly through videos), had small and large group discussions in French, read two short stories in French, and wrote two short compositions in French. After these initial diagnostics addressing each strand, students consulted their feedback – written comments I had made on their work, assessment rubrics indicating their levels of achievement in various aspects of oral and written communication, and their own impressions of their strengths and growth areas. I then asked each student to set a small, specific goal for improvement. They each wrote their goal on a post-it note (in French of course), and stuck it to the wall of the classroom, so that all of our goals were visible and so that we could hold each other accountable. (Side note: writing goals was a great opportunity to review futur simple [“I will…”], futur proche [“I’m going to…”], and verb + infinitive [“Je veux faire/atteindre…”]).

At the end of February, I had a one-on-one oral interview with each student as an evaluation of their oral communication and as a check-in on their goal. Each student took their post-it off the wall that day and brought it with them to the oral interview. They were also given a self-assessment organiser with a short rating scale and some questions to guide their reflections about their progress over the first month (this tool was developed in conjunction with the French Immersion Department). During the interview, each student justified their choice of goal – why was it their choice, where did it come from – and then also explained what steps they had taken so far, and if they had been successful in achieving their goal.

Many students set a goal that was too large and complex to accomplish in two weeks, but all students had at minimum made progress towards their goal. This shows me that I need to be more purposeful about explicitly teaching goal-setting as a skill, as well as breaking down your big goals into smaller ones to make tracking progress simpler.

In addition to this multi-step process, I have been including reflection pieces at the end of evaluation tasks, a practice that I had already been using regularly, mostly from the influence of teaching Dramatic Arts and Physical Education where reflection and self-assessment occurs constantly. For example, we had a class debate on the topic of which educational program (French Immersion, IB, Coop, SHSM, etc.) is the best course of study. Following the debate (which occurred in teams), each student completed an individual written reflection discussing their personal opinion after hearing everyone’s arguments, which other students they found to be the most persuasive and convincing during the debate and why, and a self-assessment of their personal performance in the debate. Most students gave quite an honest appraisal of their level of achievement for the debate, and some were even more critical of themselves than I was.

Finally, I often ask students in all of my classes to self-assess when they are about to submit an evaluation. They take out their rubric (or grab a new copy from me) and either circle or highlight the levels of achievement they believe that they have demonstrated and submit this along with the task. Then I use a different colour pen or highlighter when I complete the evaluation. Sometimes I also have students complete a justification, either in writing or through a conversation. This works best when the rubrics have either been co-created with students, or are designed with clear student-friendly descriptors for each criterion.

If you are curious to see any assessment tools or the tasks that I have discussed in this post, please feel free to visit my class website at fif2d1i.wikispaces.com. What have you done in your classroom to promote metacognition, reflection, goal-setting, and student self-assessment? I’d love to hear ideas from other teachers, FSL or otherwise.

New Semester Resolutions

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

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goals, instructional practice, learning skills, parent communication, professional learning network, study habits, tests, twitter

In general, I’m not the resolution-making type. I was raised to continually set new goals whenever the opportunity arose and to celebrate my successes along the way. Moreover, January hasn’t held the strong sense of a new beginning for me. Having been a student and now a teacher, I’ve lived on school time for virtually my entire life. For me, September is the month that provides the strongest feeling of beginning, and to a certain extent, February does as well with the start of the second semester in secondary school. The first three years of my teaching career, February was just as much the opening of a new chapter as September because I moved to new schools for each of my first seven semesters. This year (halfway through my fourth year) is the first time I will experience staying at one location for an entire school year, and hopefully put down some roots.

Even with this particular February having less new-ness to it, this time of the year for teachers is like January for most people. With first semester courses wrapping up, we welcome new courses and new crops of students for the second half of the year. It is a natural time to reflect on our practice; our greatest successes, our wishes for do-over lessons or interactions with students or parents, and our thoughts on improvements in our teaching practice should come to the forefront as January draws to a close. Since I am without the distraction of starting at a new school in February and needing to focus on learning new routines, meeting new staff, and finding my niche in an unfamiliar environment, I can for once focus on my own professional practice and how to better myself as an educator for the coming semester. Following are my three resolutions for semester two in the areas of professional development, communication, and instructional practice/AER.

1. Professional Development: Craft a Blog Post once each month and Broaden my Professional Network on Twitter

I started a food and music blog this past August with good intentions. Once September rolled around, it got lost in the sea of teaching three new courses in a new building. I found it again this month and have been posting semi-regularly. My resolution with this new blog project is in the hope that I won’t let it fall by the wayside as I did my food blog in the beginning. I have just started reading education blogs this school year, from which I have learned countless new strategies and techniques in all the domains of teaching, and I have had many of my own practices reaffirmed as being effective. I believe I have something of value to contribute to the online education conversation, and I think that authoring this blog each month will be an opportunity for more regular reflection and personal growth.

As well, as part of my Annual Learning Plan for 2012-2013, I signed up for Twitter with a teacher account. During first semester, I mainly utilized the platform as a method of communication with students. I posted location changes for classes (eg. library, computer lab), reminders about upcoming tests and assignment due dates, and for general positive reinforcement and praise (eg. congratulating my HPE class on their enthusiastic participation that day, or expressing my excitement about my drama class’s monologue performances). Toward the end of the semester, I started following more administrators, colleagues, and professionals in the fields of my subject areas, and in just two months, I have seen the power of growing a professional network. My goal for this semester is to seek out more people in the Twitterverse and interact with them more frequently as opposed to simply reading and learning from their tweets.

2. Communication: Make More Contact with Parents

I think this resolution of mine is a common one for many teachers. With so many responsibilities and items on the to-do list, I find that the one thing I consistently push to the bottom is calling a parent. I’m ashamed to admit that, but part of moving forward and changing my practice is about being honest with where I am right now. My plan for this semester is to be more proactive about informing parents about my website (with a calendar for the semester’s due dates) and my Twitter account to keep them in the loop with what’s going on in my classroom. To assist me in ending my cycle of procrastination with making parent phone calls, my plan is to schedule in time to contact parents each month. I give progress updates to my students every month, sometimes more than once a month, because it is important for them to know where they stand and feel like they have some power over their learning and achievement. I just need to add one more step to this process – calling home to inform parents of progress. I can’t just assume that students will tell their parents how they are doing. As a new teacher, I have been hesitant about having meetings with parents. I worry that they won’t take me seriously, or will try to pressure me because I look so young. But I can honestly say I haven’t yet had a poor interaction with a parent. The bottom line is that teachers and parents are partners in the education of our children. It’s my role to include that partner and inform them of the challenges and successes of their son or daughter.

3. Instructional Practice/AER: Spend More Time Teaching Students How to Study

As high school teachers, we assume many things about our students coming in. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but just like with my admission about my lacklustre parent communication, I’m being honest about secondary teachers as a group. It seems understood that students should arrive in high school with not only the knowledge and skills of the curriculum expectations from elementary school, but also with a set of other school skills, one in particular being good study habits. This, however, is not always the case. Considering also the fact that high school tests are usually longer and more complex than those in elementary school, and that students must write exams for the first time, I think we are doing a vast majority of our students a disservice if we don’t spend at least some time reviewing the fundamentals of how to study.

I realized this one early on – during my first year of teaching in fact. I had a Grade 10 Mathematics class, and their first test was a disaster, despite strong evidence of learning on formative assessments throughout the unit. I had a class discussion about what happened, and we got it down to the fact that most of them didn’t know how to study for a math test. So, I took a break from the curriculum the next day and gave a lesson on study strategies. I talked about how different subjects sometimes require different tactics, and different students will find success studying using different methods depending on their learning style. We developed a checklist together of possible ways to study for our next math test, and I gave every student a copy of the checklist the next day. I then added the checklist at the end of each unit test for students to complete for me and for themselves. This forced students to reflect on their study habits and learn which methods were the most effective for them personally, and it showed them a direct link between studying and success on evaluations. This assessment as learning made my students better learners not just in mathematics, but in all subjects as they added to their toolbox of effective learning strategies.

So if I’ve already done this, why is it my resolution? Well, that story is from my first year teaching, and I’m now halfway through my fourth. I’ve gotten away from using the checklist and discussing study habits with students without really meaning to. I could lay some blame on my courses this past semester, as I only had one traditionally academic subject with tests (Geography) and two with virtually all performance tasks and authentic evaluations (Dramatic Arts and Health & Physical Education). I was reminded of the importance of taking time to teach studying at the end of the semester as I saw the stress of my students attempting to prepare for their first ever final examinations. I took some time in my Geography class during review before the exam to talk study tactics, but it’s something I should have been reinforcing throughout the semester.

I’m inspired now writing this post to come up with a list of other school skills that we expect students to have, such as time management, prioritizing tasks, etc. that would benefit from some revision and reinforcement in the classroom. A lot of teachers would argue that there is not time to teach these skills if we expect to get through the curriculum. I would counter that developing these skills in our students makes them more efficient, effective, and confident learners who have a stronger awareness of how they learn. As such, spending time on these skills can actually facilitate “getting through” the curriculum. My analogy is this: as an English teacher, you wouldn’t simply ask a student to write an essay without first teaching them how to write one. As teachers in any subject, why would we ask a student to write a test without first teaching them how to write a test? I think that’s a point worth pondering.

Now I’ve laid out my three resolutions for the coming semester. Assuming I stick to #1, my plan is to write a follow-up post in June assessing my progress and how well I stayed true to these goals. Then, of course, the process restarts for my new adventure in September.

Fellow secondary teachers (or even elementary teachers – it is halfway through the school year for you also): What are your resolutions for second semester?

Recent Posts

  • To Westdale’s Class of 2016
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  • One Day at a Time: #MTBoS Week 1 Post
  • Staying Inside the Lines: Reflections on Learning from my Adult Colouring Book
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