What is Homework?

A couple of weeks ago, I read a tweet that has really stuck with me. It said that homework wasn't about learning but about behavior. I wish I could remember who tweeted that so that we could continue that conversation and so that I could give them credit for saying it.

I have to say in my evolving journey as an educator, I have been questioning a lot of practices and wondering about their validity in truly and rigorously educating our learners. I teach in a system that requires a certain number of grades per grading period. In some cases, they go so far as to tell us which assignments must be assigned and graded and how many of those assignments we have to give each grading period. Then our school administration has each grade level break down those assignments/categories even further to turn into them. These categories are given a percent value for the final averages for each grading period. All of this is done for the sake of continuity across the district. I agree that there needs to be some continuity across the district, but are we more focused on continuity and losing sight of what's important? Doing what's best for our students.

Even within those tight restrictions, I have to say that I've moved away from creating these rigid homework assignments because, as the mystery tweeter mentioned above said, it is really measuring a behavior than actual learning. Many of my students go home with younger siblings to an empty house. They are the one in charge of caring for their siblings, helping to feed them, making sure they get baths, and they get to bed. If one of those students, slaps something down in a workbook to turn in without giving it thought, or by reinforcing the wrong thing by doing it incorrectly, what good does that homework assignment do? Is actual learning being evaluated? I have to say, "No."

To complete many of the required assignments, I've broken my class down into small group, learning centers, where I can meet with small groups of students to find out who really understands principles and concepts and who needs more help. These small groups change day to day and sometimes minute to minute based on what the learner understands and can apply to the project/assignment at hand. Once a student grasps something, he/she moves on to higher level activities that involve problem solving and critical thinking. Doing this I can accurately measure what each of my students understands and has learned even within these tight grading constraints.

Often in these small groups, we have really deep conversations and they make outstanding connections between life outside the classroom walls, their background knowledge, and their personal reading. These students often go home and do extra work to bring back and share with their peers. Sometimes, they gather up supplies and conduct an experiment with the class that they found while doing extra reading because their interest was so peaked by something we discussed in small group, they wanted to extend their learning and share more. I've also had kids create costumes and come to school as a historical figure, create presentations or games for the class, and find all kinds of interesting online resources to share. We've created a class wiki where we can house many of these activities/resources so that the students can further extend their learning beyond our classroom time constraints.

Now which one measures learning? The workbook pages that kids do, often incorrectly, or these amazing activities that they do that enhances and sparks enthusiasm in their peers often setting off a chain reaction of amazing learning events that they pursue on their own? Well, of course, anyone, including my 10 year old students, can see it's the latter. They know when they are working on something in the classroom, they are responsible for providing me with evidence of their learning and their thinking. I keep a file of all of this work, but because of our strict grading parameters, much (not all) of this extended learning is not reflected in their grades.

So how do we fix this? This is an excellent question, one that I'm still pondering and reflecting upon daily. Isn't traditional homework doing a disservice to our students? I think so, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about homework. 

Becoming "Techknowledgeable"

When my students returned after the winter break and wrote their reflections (see Focusing on the Journey), one of my students wrote that he had become "techknowledgeable" since beginning 5th grade. When I conferenced with this student, I asked him to explain what he meant by this word. He explained that before entering 5th grade, he didn't know how many things could be done on a computer. He said that he thought computers were for playing games and for grown-ups to do boring work on. As he continued, he explained that things like the wikis, podcasts, and digital stories really helped him express his thoughts and create something fun for others to enjoy too. Pretty observant for a 10-year-old, exceptional education student, huh?

We've just finished publishing our 6th Edition of The Coast to Coast Chronicles with over 300 other students (our page is the Alabama page). This digital journal's theme for this edition was investigating the habitats around us. Students focused on plants and animals in their areas and created content to share with the other students. By doing this, each student got to become an expert and teach all of the students through their writing and publishing. While working on their individual writing projects, students worked with their peers, bouncing ideas of of one another, editing, giving feedback, providing tech support, and generally being supportive.

For the student mentioned above (and many of my other students), this was a huge step in him not only learning content, but finding his voice and applying it in a meaningful way. For a student who usually struggled to gain success, technology, used with collaboration of his peers, gave him the ability to not only be successful, but also give back to our learning community. I doubt that anyone in his life went without hearing about the digital story because he was so proud of his accomplishment. His final digital story has been published in this edition. Now he's thoroughly engaged in his next writing project, demonstrating how "techknowledgeable" he has become with even more tech tools.

For many of our learners, technology provides for them the opportunity to succeed beyond traditional methods.  They are able to overcome many of their obstacles in order to create outstanding work by being able to interact, create, and apply the knowledge that they are gaining while collaborating with their peers.  He recognized the power of technology being used to support his learning in a meaningful way because the technology aided him in becoming knowledgeable. Just like this student, others can find that success that has been eluding them in previous years. I think it's time all of our students become "techknowledgeable", don't you?

Playcrafting: From "Once upon a time" to "Game Over"

Once upon a time, my new students arrived with a false sense of the purpose of technology. Their prior experience had taught them that technology was for research or drill and practice games. I wanted to change that. My goal, each year, is have them explore the world of possibilities that technology has to offer them, "professionally" and personally. As we begin the year, my students come to realize that all of these tools that they are applying to our various writing projects support the learning that they are doing.

One day, two of my students approached me with an idea. The entire class was working on creating tech-supported writing projects on the theme of friendship. This is a theme that the students had chosen for our collaborative digital journal we publish with students from across the country. As these two students were working, they told me that they had come up with a brilliant plan. They told me that they felt that their writing about the obstacles to true friendship would come alive for their audience if they could create a video game where the audience would have to overcome different obstacles (one per level) to find a true friend.

Well, I have to say that I had to agree that this was a brilliant plan.  My students weren't just wanting to create a game, they wanted it to support their writing because they were thinking about their audience. Since I didn't know any free video game creators that fifth graders could figure out and design, I headed to my trusty Twitter PLN and @jackiegerstein suggested we give Playcrafter a shot. Playcrafter has all the basic features available for video game creation; some are free and some are not.

My two authors immediately fell in love with Playcrafter and even arranged alternate nights to work at home on creating the next level. Then they would confer the next day on what they liked and give any suggestions they thought would better enhance what they had already written.  As I listened to their conversations, I realized what a deep understanding they had about the importance of collaborating, problem solving and thinking of their audience. Their enthusiasm was infectious and their peers immediately wanted in on the action to "test drive" the different levels. Once the writing and  game were  published, they received a lot of feedback. The feedback was beyond the usual comments of "it was fun," or "that level was hard." The comments reflected the ideas that had been put into the writing and had been manifested in their game. These authors had been successful reaching their audience and all of them had fun.

Several of my students have found other authentic ways to use Playcrafter to support the learning for themselves and their peers from coast to coast. Do these students now understand the importance of technology tools in supporting their learning? Absolutely!

You can find their friendship game here: True Friend

Game Over

Small Shift, Big Change

As my students are now putting the final touches on their parts of the collaborative journal that they are publishing with students from across the country, I realize how much my students have grown in the few months that we've been together. This project is 100% student-driven. For each edition of this journal, the students select a theme wherein each group, from each of the eight different classrooms, can create and publish.

The teacher's role in this project is one of a guide, a facilitator of learning. This shift from teacher-driven instruction to student-driven learning was a scary proposition the first time I decided to let go, and let the students' ideas flow. See, even though the students are selecting the type of writing, creating and publishing that they will pursue, I'm guiding them in making choices that will teach and reinforce the standards for each of the content areas, while helping each student meet his/her individual goals.

The theme that the students chose for this edition was "exploring the habitats around you." Although my students had already studied habitats a couple of months earlier, I figured that their writing would just reinforce their learning. As it turns out, these writing projects took their understanding to a whole new level of mastery.

As a class they decided that they each wanted to create a digital story from the point of view of an animal or plant that lives in our area of Alabama. Since my students had not previously done any digital storytelling and with our limited time, I was hesitant to agree. 

Of course my students, once again, showed me that this was the way for them to learn. One of the students, who completed his work, asked to go to one of our classroom computers and create a list of plants and animals that live in Alabama. The students then went to him to select their animals and started doing some basic research about their animals. Then they began composing their stories adding in a mixture of humor and facts, telling each animal's story. As we began conferencing, I was amazed at how quickly they had gotten these first draft written. The last writing project that we had done had taken two weeks to get this far.

Within a week of squeezing in time to work, over two-thirds of the students' stories were complete. There was a combination of digital stories, podcasts, comic strips, digital videos, and Choose Your Own Adventure Stories. Now they are eagerly anticipating their next project.

What caused this shift? I put the students in the charge of making decisions. I didn't assign anything; they assigned these projects. They know that an authentic audience of students from across the country is waiting to read, watch, listen, and comment upon their work as my students are anxiously awaiting for theirs. Looks like that little shift made a really big difference in our learning environment.

Here is a story about using collaborative technology to promote critical and creative thinking:

• Reading, Writing, and Wikis