A Delicate and Moment by Moment Balancing Act I remember when I was a new teacher and so much of my lesson planning was making sure I was solid in my knowledge of the content I was teaching. My degree is in biology and my first teaching job included a lot of earth science. I was definitely doing that beginning teacher trick of staying one chapter ahead of them. I had some excellent mentor teachers so I was immersed in pedagogy options. One thing I love/hate about teaching is that it never gets old or boring because there is this ongoing cycle, a yin and yang of content and pedagogy. Just when you think you have it really figured out, the content (standards) change or new research reveals that there is a better pedagogy model on the horizon. As teachers we are always growing , evolving, and sharpening our skills. When the lens of technology is added into this mix it does begin to feel like a three-ring circus. There is a lot going on and I sometimes feel like that clown on the unicycle trying to balance what to teach, how to teach it, and how to infuse technology into all of this. The technology has been a big learning curve for me since the start of the pandemic. I wasn’t even using Google Classroom consistently until we started Distance Learning. Now everyday, all day, is using tech to teach. I was teaching a lesson recently that I had created a Hyperdoc for. The content and tech were in a nice balance but I realized as I was teaching it that something wasn’t clicking. The kids just didn’t seem engaged. I made a quick tweak in my pedagogy to pull in a very simple, hands on demo that each student could perform individually at their desk or at home. Instantly things were back in balance. What I realized in that moment is how important it is to be in tune with your learners, to sense when they are not connecting. Just like the clown on the unicycle, we have to read the crowd and work for the “laugh”, the engagement and most of all not be afraid to change direction til we get it right. The power of TPACK is that it gives you those 3 lenses to look at your craft through and reflect on what you are doing. The Schoology Exchange website states, “If nothing else, TPACK can be a helpful mantra urging you to step back and look at your whole strategy and the nuanced connections between all of its moving parts.” You’re picturing those clowns juggling on that unicycle right? Exactly!
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BLOG 702 Let’s Play! Gamification & Game Based Learning
There are two types of game related learning we explored this week. Gamification is used a lot in classrooms and means taking content knowledge like vocabulary and key concepts and putting them into a game format. In the past when all of my students were in my classroom we played college bowl, a buzzer style game with teams. This was a fun and intense way to review for tests. When I run into kids I had 10 years ago they still talk about College Bowl. I really love games so we also played Pictionary and Back to the Board with vocabulary words. Now with online learning, I have switched to playing Kahoot!, Quizizz, and Gimkit in place of College Bowl. Each of these games has a slightly different feel. Kahoot fits best for a College Bowl replacement, with winners that get to the podium getting extra credit points for the unit assessment. Quizizz and Gimkit I use more for quick review and formative assessments. Quizlet has a decent matching game and it works well for review and homework. All of these are a fancy gamified way to do drill and kill style review of key concepts and vocabulary. It is effective for this purpose. It does bring a fun feeling of playing together to class. I especially like Gimkit for the playfulness it brings out in my students. Game-based learning is playing a game to actually learn the concepts. Before online learning, I used a lot of game based activities from Project Wild and Project Aquatics. They actually have some really fun role playing chase & tag style games to teach about ecosystems, food webs, and water cycles. I have a great card game called “What Eats What?” that teaches food chains & webs. For physics we have played a giant game of “Minute to Win It” (popular game show style activity about 10 years ago) and kids do the timed event challenges and then analyze the physics of each event. For online learning I am really struggling to find free games to play with my students that teach science concepts. What I have been using that is similar to games is simulations. There are two websites that have excellent simulations for most of the science concepts I teach and are for middle school and high school level students. One is Phet Simulations from the University of Colorado, Boulder. The simulations are colorful, intuitive to use, and provide great data. The only problem is that about half of them require Java so I have to select carefully. The newest simulation website I have been using is called Gizmos. Gizmos is for math and science simulations and you can get a trial account for 30 days. The cost after that is something crazy like $800, but they do have about 15 Gizmos that you can use for free every semester without the subscription price. It is designed for middle school and high school. Each simulation has a Google document that comes with it for students to record their results. My 8th graders liked it better than my 7th graders but that was probably also partly because of the topic. I checked out Legends of Learning also and felt like some of their games were really just a digital lesson with a little Quizlet style matching tossed in. I found a few lessons that were more game based but probably not anything my kids are going to spend their weekends playing. So what are my kids playing? I asked recently. Fortnite and Minecraft are still popular. One of my kids was playing in a live streamed Fornite tournament this last weekend. Dota 2 is the game my own boys play with their friends. Genshin Impact is a game some of the girls in my classes are playing. The graphics look beautiful. I haven’t started any video game playing yet, but I am going to give it a try over Christmas break. My family still plays a lot of board games. We love Blockus, Pictionary, Codenames, King of Tokyo, Pandemic, and a new one we just got called Bang. We also still play card games like Cribbage and Rummy. Play is such a natural way for us to learn things and it is so enjoyable. I especially like how connected kids feel as they play a game together. I have this poster on the wall in my classroom that says, “We do FUN here” and I am trying very hard to still make that poster true. Virtual teaching makes this more challenging but as I learn about more games that connect to my science content I will keep adding as much play as I can. There is so much powerful learning that happens as kids collaborate in a team, play a role on a team, become an expert on some part of the game, and seek out knowledge to improve their skills to win the game. |
AuthorHello! Welcome to my blog! This will be a fun place to share thoughts about teaching and learning. I am a middle school science teacher at Redwood. When I'm not teaching, I'm hanging out at home with my family or enjoying nature somewhere in the valley. Archives
March 2021
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