Reflection on a Big Year

Reflections from 12-13

It is so interesting to look back at what the past called the future to be.

The first part of this document was part of a reflection asked of me by my principal. I wrote in the heat of battle and coming out a semester of trial and error.  

Failure is a great teacher, and there was a lot of it this year.....but then along with failure come opportunities to learn. 

Learning for me, was the key and foundation to successful year of transition.

Smiling and reading my thoughts of transformation in my classroom and more importantly how students are transformed in the classroom environment we shared in 2012 - 2013.

For your reading pleasure......or not.

Dassel-Cokato High School

Professional Development Goal 2012-13 (Self-Study)

Teacher __________Mark Peterson_____________    Date ____30 November 2012   Follow-up date (s) ____________________

Using the Frameworks for Teaching and reflecting upon your teaching this past year or your preparation to this point…

Domain 3: Instruction

What has gone well for you?  This has been an amazing year so far. I think that the school year got off to a great start in setting up my classroom with two huge transformational movements: Standards Based Grading and Flipped Classroom. It has been revitalizing with both of these efforts. The SBG has been a hard look at what I do, how I teach and comparing that to standards as set up by the National Science Standards as well as the Minnesota Science Standards. In pushing students toward mastery of these standards, I have to reflect on what I do to help them get to that level of understanding and really become self-motivated learners. That is where the Flipped Mastery Model comes into play and hopefully providing adequate content and background for the students to achieve mastery of content/standards. This year, I’ve been down next to these students having conversations, asking questions of understanding and using formative assessment (in a documenting, formal way) more than any time in my career. The classroom has become the practice field…work has become practice for the summative assessment that will determine first of all what they have learned and secondly, what their grade is. The goal to say when this trimester comes to an end, more learning than ever will have occurred. 

What area(s) of your teaching would you like to improve? This year has seen many challenges with regards to keeping the content relevant and connected to student interest. I’ve been focusing so much on the standards, that I’ve lost some hooks that in the past would bring students to the Engage part of the learning cycle. So far, there has been some Explore, but without the Engage part, the hook part, the rest of the cycle is difficult to bring about. I would like to keep the SBG going well and bring in either case studies or Project Based Learning problems….both of which provided the “hook” that I’m looking for in biology. Without relevance, we fight an uphill battle in the classroom. Some students play the game of school. I want students to be active participants in what they decide to study. Both the case study approach and PBL do that…I’d like to implement some of that second trimester.

Goal(s) (Specific - Measurable - Attainable - Results Oriented - Time Bound) 

Goal sources: *Frameworks for Teaching Areas *My self-reflections ideas *Building Goals *District Goals *Other

**For 2012-13 please consider a goal from Domain 3 of the Danielson Framework, self-evaluate and select 1 or 2 goals related to these topics.  If you feel these areas do not meet your needs, discuss with Dean and possibly select a goal that is relevant to your assignment from another source.

Action Plan:  State strategies, activities or steps you'll take to achieve the goal(s).  Indicate approximate date when each step will be accomplished.

There are a couple of components that jump out when I look at Domain 3 of the frameworks: 3c engaging students in learning and 3d using assessment for instruction.

3c: As I mentioned above, the course needs to be relevant to what students need to know about biology. Using current events or things of interest to students is the best way to address this learning. For example: we are approaching a unit in biology second trimester about energy and cellular processes. If you have a vested curiosity in these things, it goes well. But that applies to 3 of 100 students. The hook here, I think, is in energy drinks, and how they work. Students know about Monster, 5 hour energy…..many have used them for one reason or another. How do they work, if they work at all? In the news of late, there have been deaths tied to these substances….high interest, high relevance and the hook. Students can identify the issue, ask investigative questions and look at what the research says about these products. Then come to their own conclusions….then share data with peers. I think this could be a powerful statement for biology and its relevance in their lives. As far as action plan, this will occur in the second trimester of this school year and then keep adding layers of PBL or case studies as the course progresses.

3d: My gradebook to date is full of formative assessments of better yet, I like to call them informative assessments because it offers information to myself and the student about learning. It offers me feedback about what students have learned and need to learn. It also offers the students descriptive feedback about where the holes are in what they know and what they need to know to get to mastery/proficiency. I hope to continue to assess on a daily basis against the standards that I am teaching. Assessments have included Moodle assessments and quizzes that offer an amazing disaggregation of data, along with the use of spreadsheet manipulation of data to sort through and identify strengths and weaknesses of learning, classroom assessments using whiteboards or cards to “check for understanding” and just plain old fashion “sit down here and tell me what you know about x.” Action plan and dates: this is an ongoing and evolving process. The evolution includes what is happening in my classroom, how students are using the information from the formative assessments, how I’m using the FA, and how parents transition to understanding the purpose and point of assessments that don’t immediately impact grades, but eventually do. I will continue to work with the understanding of students in this process, continue to inform parents on how this “works.”

Method of measuring results (How I prove I worked on my goals):

Artifacts that could speak to my goal…

3c: Over the course of the year, students will have the opportunity to create their own knowledge about a topic. They will demonstrate that in the form of an assessment: perhaps a poster, prezi, powerpoint, essay, podcast….it will be up to them to choose the method to demonstrate what they have learned. I want them to be waving what they have learned in my face, to demonstrate mastery of a topic by a method of their choice and construction.

3d:  The artifact will be my gradebook. Take a look at the number of assessments and how the practice leads to mastery of a topic. Students will have repeated attempts at a topic to practice and gather the momentum to achieve mastery (I define mastery of a score of 75% or 3 out of 4). Students will produce numerous artifacts: formative assessment scores or whatever.

I wrote this at the end of the school year.....

Assessment of Results: To be completed by the teacher and reviewed by the principal when completed.

Check - Goal(s) was/were:

_____ Fully achieved __X___ Partially achieved _____ Not achieved

Explanation of Assessment:

This was a grand undertaking for the year. To engage in a standards based classroom and create a flipped environment all in the same year, yikes. In reflecting on the year, I would say it was a success for myself, the students and the department. Let me start with the department. That was not an easy transition for all the members. I don’t know if the department yet buys into all the tenets of what a SBG classroom should, ought look like. It has made us talk about assessment: formative and summative in ways that we have never spoken of before. It has made us talk about student learning in ways that we have never spoken before. It has made us talk to each other about what and why we do like we never have before. It has made all of us reflect on our profession and student learning, probably made us a bit queasy about the uncertainty of how and why we are doing SBG, but it is made us a better department. I never began this venture with that in mind, but the ripple effect was strong. My students are in a better place. I focused on student learning and trying to engage them individually, trying to help them learn their best way. I feel that I know this group of biology students far better than any other group I’ve worked with. I know how they think about things because I’ve had conversations with them, squatted down at their desk or pulled them over to my corner of the room to interview them about biological concepts and their understanding or mis understandings. Watching 2^nd and 3^rd trimester students, who had not had me before explain to a new student how it “works” was cool. As the year went on, and students became more comfortable with the SBG idea and how learning is such a big part of it, there were lots of celebrations of learning. Handing back an assessment to a student to hear them rejoice at a 4, that was cool….or on the flipside, when the student didn’t get a 4 to see a student stomp off in disgust, only to reschedule the assessment and nail it. Those learning moments were amazing. The students had questions about how SBG worked, those challenged my understanding and caused me to seek answers or reflect on what the best practice should be in that situation. 

For myself, this has been a year of tremendous growth as a teacher. I’ve pushed students to mastery of material. Some went along with the idea, some did not. In the general biology classes, mastery learning became the focus. As the year passed, students became better learners because they understood what it took to get a 3. I also became better, because I gave them better statements that defined a 3. The “I can” statements that accompanied a unit was a big jump for both of us. The students had, in their hand, statements that corralled them into what a 3 or 4 would look like. Early in the year, I struggled with how best to give timely meaningful feed back to students. I chose to use Moodle a lot for assessments. It gave them and me immediate feedback on MC types of questions…but MC questions don’t always get to the heart of understanding. I tried using Google Forms, but those are slick for collecting answers, but not so much for the feedback portion. I used Moodle to download and upload documents, I used documents on a flash drive they would hand in, I had students email me work. The technology of my classroom limited some of the feedback tools. I will continue to refine the best way to give students timely feedback. I’ve fallen for spreadsheets to track student progress and work, especially conditional formatting that you can use to disaggregate data to look at what standards a student has yet to master. Campus has been a struggle to allow the reflection of growth efficiently and effectively, but unless there is a major change in that over the summer…..I think I’ve got it figured out.

I look forward to a second year with SBG in the works. There was a lot of stumble, trial and fail in this past year. But as I’ve said to students, failure is a good thing. When you can fix what you’ve done wrong and make a better product, you’ve learned something.