InnovativeEnglishClassroom.com – Whatever it takes!

My Year of Gamification

I love games. I always have. Even as an adult, I still play word games every morning before I get ready for work: crossword puzzles, word searches, Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Connections. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when I’m able to solve the puzzles. I like having a streak of wins, and I feel like it’s an important part of my routine. And it’s fun.

So I decided to bring that element of fun into my classroom this year. I’ve used games before, but I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted the whole class experience to be part of the game. Over the summer, I read Edrenaline Rush: Game-Changing Student Engagement Inspired by Theme Parks, Mud Runs, and Escape Rooms by John Meehan, and a light bulb went on. I realized that I desired a more immersive game experience in my room. I wanted class to BE the game, not just for students to play games.

So I began to plan this experience in earnest. I designed some vocabulary games, some stem words games, and started devising a system so that students could earn experience points (XP) and level up as the year went along. I designed badges to give students when they leveled up, and decided to put together swag bags for each level. Each successive level had a little more swag in the bag. Level 2 swag bags contained a couple of Life Savers, a piece of caramel candy, the Level 2 badge sticker, and one each of music passes and brain break passes. The music passes let students listen to music during independent work time. The brain break passes allow students to choose an activity from the brain break bin, and work on that activity for 10 minutes. The brain break bin contains activities such as sudoku, origami, sign language, coloring pages, yoga, and code puzzles.

Reaching Level 3 required more XP, and the swag bags contained more goodies. This time, along with the Life Savers, I included a package of animal crackers. There were two music passes, and two brain break passes, and of course the Level 3 badge sticker. Level 4 brought three each of music passes and brain break passes, along with a bag of Chex Mix or Gardetto’s snacks, and a Croc charm. No one has reached Level 5 yet, so I’m not entirely certain what those swag bags will contain. Definitely food, because there’s nothing a middle schooler likes more than food!

Not all students were thrilled about earning XP. Until, that is, other students began to level up, and they saw the swag bags. I keep a Google Sheets leaderboard posted on Schoology, so students can see how many XP they have, and I update it every afternoon. Students earn XP for coming to class on time, performing their class jobs without me having to remind them, scoring well on unit tests and standardized assessments, participating in spirit week, and other activities as well. Next year, I want to add even more ways for students to gain XP, and make sure some of them are not strictly academic. The leaderboard is color-coded based on the level the student has reached. Everyone started out white–when a student reaches Level 2, their row is changed to yellow. Level 3 is orange, and Level 4 is red. This makes it easy for everyone to see what level they’re on. One mistake I made this year was setting Level 2 at 20 XP. I should have set it lower, at probably 10 XP. Then, students would start leveling up sooner, and the game would be more exciting. That’s definitely something I will do next year.

Aside from the XP, there were lots of games in my class this year. There are some great platforms that teachers can use to make games for students to play: Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizalize, Blooket, and Gimkit, to name a few. It’s easy to take what would normally be a worksheet activity, and turn it into an online game. Most of these platforms now have an AI feature that makes creating games easier than ever. I even have students use these platforms to make their own games–when they get a new list of stem words, they choose the platform they like best and make a study game. Then, they can play the game to study, share the game with their friends if they choose to, and compete to see who can win. I have found this a much better way to have students study than just looking at the list for five minutes before the test. Scores are definitely better than in previous years.

One of my T-TESS goals this year was to increase student engagement through the use of gamification, and I would say I met that goal. No system is perfect, and I still have students who are not as engaged as they should be and as I would like them to be. But overall, gamifying the way I have has been a success.

So, next year, it’s still–game on.

Teaching in the Time of Corona

This is a strange thing to be writing about. It’s a strange thing to even be contemplating. Because of the COVID 19 pandemic, teachers all around the world are teaching remotely, connecting with students only through a webcam, and spending their days in front of a computer for the most part. When you’re used to being in a middle school with over a thousand teenagers all day, this is a huge shift.

And not just for us teachers. Students are having to adjust, parents are having to adjust. Whether they are navigating Google Classroom for the first time, trying to share one device with siblings who also have schoolwork to do, or communicating with teachers only electronically, students have been thrust into scary territory. Some are reacting by jumping in and doing the work the best that they can. Others have found that online learning really works for them. And some–well, they find themselves overwhelmed, and unable to function in this environment. So, they’re not doing anything.

Parents now find themselves as teachers, mentors, and cheerleaders, in addition to their usual parental duties. Many parents I’ve spoken to are teaching multiple students in various grades, with different levels of support from the teachers. And, most of them are still working outside the home as well. They are experiencing frustration trying to help their children with work they may not always know how to do. They are overwhelmed, just as their children are.

My colleagues and I have discussed feeling useless as educators right now. We are working, using Google Classroom, Zoom, Google Meet, Loom, every technology tool and app we can get our hands on. We experiment with tools and strategies we are not entirely familiar with, or especially comfortable using. We’ve experienced the same sort of frustrations students must feel when they feel like they don’t know what to do. We post lessons, create videos, hold virtual meetings. But it’s not the same. The underwhelmingness is overwhelming.

As I sit here in my perfectly silent home office (silence is not something I normally encounter during my workday as a middle school teacher), I wonder how we will all move forward when the curve flattens and we find ourselves back in our regular lives. Will we return to all our old ways? Will we continue to use the tools and strategies we found during the pandemic? Will we settle on an almagam of those possibilities?

I don’t know. I hope, though, that we maintain an appreciation of the journey that all of us have been on. We’ve all walked a mile in each others’ shoes. That has to count for something.

And Then There Were Butterflies…

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, you will know that I decided to use self-paced learning in my classroom last year. I really liked the idea, and I was so excited that my students would be able to learn this way. But alas. The reality is, I had mixed results. Many of the students struggled, in fact floundered. I wanted to give them an opportunity to wrestle with their learning, figure some things out on their own, because all the research says that this is the way our learning will be more powerful. I believed that, given the chance to have choice in their learning, students would be more eager to learn and would consequently be more successful. For some kids, this is just what they needed. For others, it was not–or, at least, they didn’t think so.

I remember one particular conversation. A student in my first period called me over. When I arrived at her seat, she held up the vocabulary menu (which has 12 different activities on it), and proclaimed, “I don’t get this.” So I asked her what activity she was having trouble with, so I could help her understand. Her answer was, “All of it.” I proceeded to tell her that if she could give me an idea of which activity was the problem, I could help her figure it out. She just kept waving the paper around and saying, “I don’t get this.” Keep in mind that we had done all these activities together already, so that students would understand how each one was to be done. Also, I had examples of each one hanging up in the classroom, in case anyone needed a refresher. I knew, without having to say it, that what she really wanted was for me to give her the answer, the one thing that was going to get her a passing grade on the assignment.

For years, I have believed that this is one of the biggest problems facing educators today. Instead of encouraging students to work out problems, and show their teachers what they have learned in ways other than a multiple choice test, school has taught them that there is only one right answer, and if they feign helplessness long enough, the teacher, in an act of self-preservation, will tell them what it is. This is the brick wall I kept crashing into, until I was battered and bloody.

I had students ask me why I didn’t just do what all the other teachers did–have them copy notes from a PowerPoint, then give a multiple choice quiz. When I asked them if this was an interesting way to learn, I got this answer every time: No, but it’s easy.

This is the stumbling block to what I was trying to do. I wanted them to think, to struggle with new concepts, and to present their learning in unique and interesting ways, but their idea of school is to regurgitate what the teacher gives them. This realization was very frustrating and disheartening to me.

But I’m stubborn. I refused to give in to the status quo. So I persisted. Some students never got on board with what I wanted to do, others stuck a toe in and only began to appreciate the process toward the end of the year, and a few trusted me enough to cannonball right in to the deep end. That’s the ones I want to focus on in this post. As for the rest…I’m working on that!

I had a project in mind for poetry that involved the life cycle of butterflies. I knew it was something that could really be powerful–if kids would buy in. My hope was that they would.

My campus curriculum facilitator ordered me six butterfly habitats. They came from a company called Insect Lore, which specializes in educational products for children. They have butterfly kits, ladybug kits, ant farms, and other products that bring science into the classroom. Since I wanted to focus on poetry, I felt that butterflies would be my best bet. With each habitat comes a voucher that can be redeemed for a cup of caterpillars whenever you are ready for them. Be warned, though–the company will not ship the caterpillars in weather that’s too cold. I ordered the caterpillars in April, and they were delivered to my house on April 19. It was a long weekend, with no school until the following Tuesday. I wanted to make sure that students were able to view the entire metamorphosis, so I made sure to take pictures each day of the caterpillars. I made a shared folder in Google Drive, so that students could see how the caterpillars changed over the course of time.

Caterpillars on the day they arrived at my house

When we all got to school on Tuesday, I showed the cups of caterpillars to the students in my PreAP classes. I explained that they would observe one particular cup each day, then post their observations in the shared folder. I would take pictures and post them as well. They oohed and aahed, watching the caterpillars creep around the cups. Then, I asked them to research what was happening to the caterpillars, and what they would become. Simultaneously, I had them partner up with another student, and they were given one type of poetry that they had to research–then, they would teach a lesson on that type of poetry to the rest of the class. So, they had two research projects going on at the same time.

Students engaged in observation daily at the beginning of class.

Every day, they observed, wrote, and researched. Poetry lessons were taught by the partner groups, and the examples they wrote of each type for their lessons were added to the shared folder. We started talking about metamorphosis–of the caterpillars, and of people, situations, relationships, etc. We discussed how the caterpillars were physically changing, but that didn’t mean everyone had to write only about those changes. I asked them to write four rough drafts of poems, so they would have something to work with. Then, they peer-reviewed each other’s work, and offered a suggestion to their partner about which poem they felt was the best. This is the one that moved forward in the writing process, so they began revising and editing, polishing their best poem.

I saw a lot of collaboration in this project, which is what I had been hoping for all year. I’ll be honest–this restored some of the faith I had lost during the year with students not buying in to what I was trying to do. It was a shot in the arm, convincing me that I’m on the right track and to keep pressing forward. So, I’ve spent all summer working out the details of the new plan, which I will share in another post. But, it made me feel better to know that students can be more in control of their own learning. And so I persevere.

Release day
Release day
Release day
Release day
Release day
Release day
Release day
Release day
Release day
Observation
Observation
Observation
Observation
Observation
Observation and research
Observation and research
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight
Day Nine
Day Ten
Day Eleven
Day Twelve
Day Thirteen
Day Fourteen
Day Fifteen
Our first butterfly!

There’s No Tired Like Teacher Tired!

It’s been a while…

This has been an interesting year, with some ups and downs–mostly ups, though, so that is a good thing. I honestly can’t complain about my students, because mostly they are a great group of kids, a bit too talkative at times, but that’s their biggest flaw. They’re smart, and funny, and goofy, and fun to be around.

Things are not perfect, though. My district is short about 200 teachers at this time, and my department alone is short four. And subs are a rare commodity in an economy where working virtually any job in the oilfield guarantees someone a truckload of money, and working as a teacher (or worse, a substitute teacher!) most definitely does not. What does this mean on a daily basis? It means that someone has to teach the kids who are in a class without a permanent teacher, and with no sub on the horizon. Fifteen teachers, myself included, have found ourselves with an extra class added to our schedules. We adopted those kids three weeks in to the school year, and have been playing catch up ever since.

What else can we do, though? It’s not the fault of the students that there aren’t enough teachers to go around. We can’t leave them in the lurch. We have to step up and make it work. And all of us are doing our best to make that happen.

I hear the same story from all around the district, and all around the state. And it spreads beyond the borders of Texas. A Facebook group I’m in that consists of secondary ELA teachers echoes the same issues from all over the country. But how did we get here?

Teaching is an honorable profession. Teaching is an incredibly difficult undertaking. Teachers are tasked with impossible responsibilities, and held accountable for everything that happens, even things completely beyond their control. They are overworked. They are underpaid. They spend their own money on classroom decorations and supplies, because they want their students to have the materials they need. They carry an emotional burden because they truly care about each and every one of their students, and want them to succeed. They work long hours outside of school because there is just not enough time during the day.

And teachers are vilified every day. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t hear or read a criticism of teachers. We are constantly under a microscope. We’ve all been lectured by parents, or even people in line at the grocery store, on how we should do our jobs, how we need to keep kids in line, how things should be handled in our classrooms–it goes on and on. But those people aren’t the ones standing in front of a class, knowing the enormity of what needs to be taught so the kids can pass a standardized test, knowing that some kids have so much going on in their outside lives that the last thing they care about is a standardized test, and knowing that their ability to do their job will be judged based on the results of a standardized test. Sometimes, it seems like an impossible challenge. Yet, every day, those teachers are back in front of the class again. This doesn’t even include the comments about how teachers get the whole summer off (every teacher knows that is just not true–there’s training, and planning, and again, never enough time). If you’re an English teacher like me, you’ve no doubt heard how easy your job must be, just sitting around reading books all day. If only, right?

So, teachers should be treated like the passionate, devoted professionals that they are. If they were, maybe there wouldn’t be a teacher shortage. Maybe teachers wouldn’t be leaving the profession in droves. Maybe, people would have the desire to take on the hardest job they’ll ever have, and the most satisfying they’ll ever know.

Tick, Tock

Tomorrow marks the day that teachers report back to school in my district. We will have two weeks of professional development, going over school policies, lesson planning with our colleagues, and scurrying to get our classrooms ready, before students have their first day. This can be a big adjustment for a lot of teachers, and I’ve found myself making lists upon lists upon lists of things I need to do in order to make the transition from summer to school year a kinder, gentler, one.

About a year and a half ago, I started bullet journaling. In case you don’t know what that is, there are about four zillion blogs and videos that can explain it, and show you many wonderful visuals as well. The original bullet journal can be read about here: http://bulletjournal.com. In short, a bullet journal is an organizational tool. Different people use bullet journals in different ways–some are very creative and artistic, with page after page of beautifully drawn pictures and outstanding handwriting, some are more practical, with to-do lists and habit trackers and calendars. My bullet journal contains calendars, my to-do list for the day, a tracker that I use to make sure I take my vitamins and drink enough water, my weekly meal plans, and anything else that I need to remember or monitor. I can say without a doubt that this journal has helped me become extremely organized. I spend a few minutes in the morning, and a few minutes at night, looking at the pages of my journal, adding new tasks, marking off completed tasks, migrating uncompleted tasks to later days, and updating my calendar. Just these few minutes each day help me stay aware of the tasks that need to be done, and I find that things don’t slip my mind very often. It’s not perfect, but then again, nothing is. I know, though, that even as my days become more hectic, that my bullet journal will help me stay organized.

Another habit that has helped me tremendously is meal-planning. We’ve all been there–a long day at school, no idea what to cook for dinner, and the intoxicating allure of the drive-through. And while there’s nothing wrong with succumbing to fast food on occasion, I try to eat healthy most of the time. I have found that it helps me sleep better, I have more energy for my students, and in general, I just feel better. By planning my meals ahead of time, I know what to expect when I get home from school, and I know that I can have a healthy meal on the table in a short amount of time. I tend to stick to a lean protein with lots of vegetables and usually a salad, and I have a list of dishes that I can prepare in about half an hour. This, to me, is a great comfort, and one less thing for me to stress about. We all know that teacher stress is very real, and anything I can do to reduce mine is something I should definitely do!

I would love to hear how other teachers reduce their stress. Comment with anything you do to make your life easier.

The New Year is Just Around the Corner

So…like most teacher nerds, I have spent a good deal of time this summer planning the upcoming school year. I knew I needed to do some things differently–I didn’t have a great year, and I want to change things.

For years, I have felt that many students were just going through the motions–they knew how to play school, how to do just enough to get by. But they weren’t really invested in their learning. I’ve wanted to change that. Not that easy. Students, obsessed with the magical 70 that meant they were passing the class, didn’t try their hardest. Parents, not always willing to embrace anything new, anything that was too different, didn’t always know how to push students to work harder. Me, knowing things could be different, but not always confident that I could make it work, didn’t fully immerse myself into what was possible.

This year, my goal is to change all that. I’ve decided to try to attain this goal in a couple of different ways. One thing is project-based learning. I’ve done Genius Hour a couple of times, and most students really enjoy being able to learn about whatever it is that they’re interested in. So, I made the decision to turn the big units in my class into project-based learning units. I teach ELA, which is more specifically about writing, so there wasn’t much out there that I could pilfer from. But, after weeks of research, I feel pretty good about the ideas I’ve come up with. All summer, I’ve read books, and watched webinars, and listened to podcasts, and read blogs, and after all that, I’ve been able to come up with some ideas I think will work pretty well, and that I think students will enjoy. I haven’t planned them out completely, because I want students to be a part of that, but I’ve made a starting point.

The first unit will be a recap of grammar. I’ve checked the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills), and I know that students should enter the 7th grade with a pretty good grasp of the parts of speech, and basic grammar. But, that is not the case. Far too many students can tell me that a noun is a person, place, or thing, but not pick one out in a sentence. Some of the 7th grade standards are pretty specific about things–one of them talks about the subjunctive mood of a verb, which is fine unless students don’t really understand verbs. Another mentions appositives and appositive phrases–simple unless students don’t understand nouns. So I decided our first PBL unit will reinforce grammar. It will be more teacher-led than our subsequent units. To my knowledge, there are no PBL elementary schools in my district, so kids will not be used to this type of learning. That’s why I want the first unit to be more teacher-led. I can show them how it works, and then let them take the reins more on the following units.

I hope to tie the fiction unit into The Outsiders, which all the students will read in their reading classes. We can discuss the social issues in the book, and the students can decide on the ones they want to focus on for the unit.

For the nonfiction unit, I thought we would observe ant farms, research the habits and characteristics of ants, and that would be the focus of the unit.

I’d like to get some butterfly larvae for the poetry unit, and have students observe them during their metamorphoses. In my mind, metamorphosis is a great topic for poetry.

A month ago, I really had no idea how to make all of this work. I just knew that something had to change, because I didn’t feel that all kids were learning. Then, I started reading, and things started coming together. One of the best books I read was LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, by John Spencer and A. J. Juliani. This book is really incredible. I’ve told everyone I know about it! If you want to get kids thinking, and learning, and being excited about it, read this book, and do what it says.

I also read Project Based Learning Starter Kit. This book is from the Buck Institute, and they definitely know what they are talking about. Reading this book gave me the confidence to go forward with what I knew was the right thing. Right after that, I read Hacking Project Based Learning, and like all the Hack Learning books, it was full of great advice. I would absolutely recommend both of these books if you’ve toyed with the idea of PBL.

I love podcasts, because I can listen to them while I’m driving, while I’m getting ready for work in the morning, while I’m washing dishes, pretty much any time. There are lots of great educational podcasts, but lately I’ve become addicted to Jennifer Gonzalez’ Cult of Pedagogy. This podcast is where I first heard about the idea of self-paced learning (check out episode 30!). Once I heard it, I couldn’t think about anything else. It was an idea that wormed its way into my brain, and it was not going away. I did more internet research, and I ran across The Grid Method. This is a way of teaching for mastery, which is what we should all be striving for, and I knew I had found something that I had been searching for. The basic premise of the method is that students learn at their own pace, working from a “grid,” which is a list that starts with low-level tasks, and works its way to increasingly more difficult assignments for each standard that students need to learn. As ELA teachers will know, every unit we teach has about a million standards attached to it, and many of them are repeated in every unit. So it was clear that I would have to adapt everything I had learned to fit my curriculum. But, as I realized, it is doable, and the more I work on it, the more confident I feel. I combined everything I had learned into a hybrid of the grid and the playlist, and that’s what I will give my students this year.

I’ll keep you posted on how things go, but at the moment, I’m jazzed about the upcoming year.

Let’s Start Things Off

For years, I’ve been reading so many amazing teacher blogs, and I toyed with the idea of starting my own. But something always held me back–the idea that I didn’t have anything to say that would be interesting or useful to anyone else. And maybe I still don’t. But I want to document the journey that I’m taking with my students–the good, the bad, and the everything else.

I began teaching after a 20-year career in the television business. I walked into my first classroom (as an 8th grade English teacher) in the middle of February, after a long string of substitute teachers. So, the kids weren’t exactly receptive, and honestly, I had no idea what I was doing, and virtually no guidance. But we all survived, and the next year I moved up to 9th grade, and that’s where I spent the bulk of my teaching career thus far. Three years ago, my district made the decision to adopt the middle school model, and freshmen would now be at the high schools. I had a choice to make as well–move to a high school and continue to teach freshmen, or stay in middle school, and teach younger students. I decided to stay, took my 4-8 certification test, and just finished my third year teaching 7th grade ELA. I like 7th graders, but they are a different animal, that’s for sure.

My first group really spoiled me–they were funny, and smart, and I think they learned a lot, plus we had a lot of fun. I’ve caught myself wishing I could have a do-over with them, because I feel like they would really love some of the things I’ve done since they were in my class.

For years, I’ve been interested in inquiry learning. I have always believed that kids (and parents–and administrators, and pretty much everyone in education) was too caught up in testing, and scores, and grades, and had forgotten that it should be about learning, and how fun that is. I would bring things into my lessons that would push kids to becoming better thinkers, and allow them to learn in a different way than just I talk, they listen, they take a test, repeat. I have continued to look for new ways to teach, ways that don’t rely on me being a talking head while students sit silently.

With this blog, I will document the methods I bring into my class. I will explain the rationale behind them. I will describe how I implement them. I will observe and report on how the students react, how they utilize the tools I give them, and whether or not these methods are working. I will do my best to be honest, even in reporting any colossal mistakes I make. So, it will be the good (lots of that, I hope), the bad (there’s bound to be some), and the ugly (hopefully I’ll keep that to a minimum!). At any rate, it should be an adventure.