Changing the Game 3: The Leap

In a period of three years, I have become aware of and begun to incorporate three key practices. Obviously, gamification, which adds such a sense of fun to my room that I will likely use elements of it for the rest of my career. The second is mastery learning, in which we work with students, provide feedback and grow toward mastering a concept. This past year, I attempted the use of the Grid Method from the Teach Better Team (@teachbetterteam on Twitter) in math. All students showed good growth and some made gains were mind boggling. 

The third is the one that has challenged me the most: personalized learning. As someone who started his career as my students favorite cartoon character, I was the quintessential sage on the stage. We did groups and stations but I was most comfortable with command of the whole class. One, two, three, eyes on me. However, over the last 12 years I have shifted more and more away from that. 

So, we now have the Sci-Fighters Academy. Where students enter a science fiction world where they have a tight schedule, but anything can happen.

• Students will engage in Vocabulary Sparing (more here).
• Have short but active mini-lessons that deliver need to know content.
• Then they have time to choose a pathway and complete, what I dubbed, the scientific process. 
• We end each lesson with a quick reflection.

Things can of course, shift a bit if we are doing something major. Most days will be very much like this. Through thematic elements like messages for Earth Base 1 and the Danger Deck, students will know that they are training to save the world.

The Scientific Process is the piece that is stretching me, as it is where students have the most control. We have broken up our key information into groups of questions that students must find the answers to. They start by creating a hypothesis about how it relates to our essential question. This serves as a bit of a pre assessment to show what they know. 

A big goal of mine this year is to teach students that the internet is more than games, YouTube and Wikipedia. I want to show them how to find answers, learn new information and how to judge what is true and what is made up. So students have a research component where they need to find multiple sources for key information and decide the strength of the different sources.

Then, they will choose one of three pathways to share and apply their learning. This is where I am entering personalized voice and choice. I want students to consider how they want to display what they are learning, so these will be very vague directions that leave a lot of room for interpretation. While I realize I could go further, and I am still limiting them more than full personified learning, this is a big step for me and I need to shift slowly here.

Once their pathway is complete, students need to relate the learning back to the essential question and try to share how what they have learned relates in the big picture. Then, and finally, students will ask what other questions might they have about the topic. The questions are key to this process, as it is completely student paced and for the ones who move quickly they will come back to these questions to go BEYOND! 

There is much more to share. How students are sharing their learning, how we intend to grade this, and what is a Danger Deck? I will share more of this soon, but this was a lot for a blog post. 

You Are Not An Impostor

I did something amazing this year. I stepped out of my comfort zone of teaching high energy math lessons and following it up with standard practice and I went all in with mastery learning. Out of the six major units I did two using the grid method, two using a modified version using the student paced mode of Peardeck, half of one using completely standard practices (the three weeks before Christmas) and the last unit, which is small, we had some fun with new ideas because May is for beta testing.

This transition was brought on by my diverse group of students needing to be met where they are. You see in that room, our beginning of the year testing showed that my highest student was in the 93rd percentile and my lowest student was in the 2nd percentile. Yay, diversity. I was tired of not reaching the two ends.

So, prompted by my amazing learning design specialist (read coach) and having sat in on the grid method session twice this summer, I took the leap and I really liked it. In class, I condensed my high energy lessons and did my best to give my students protected time to work. There were moments of great triumph. A small group who worked together almost every day rose from average to being labeled well above average according to two separate assessments. Another student worked their way into our gifted program because I did not force them to do what everyone else was doing. All of my students showed growth and I know it was successful, but it wasn’t 100 percent. Not all of my students crossed the finish line and passed the state assessment. Nearly two weeks later, it still hurts.

The feeling of failure
Photo by Tomas Williams

Yesterday, I heard a new term: Impostor Syndrome. It is the feeling educators (and maybe others) get when they feel like they don’t belong. Like everything that they are doing, no matter how many people tell them otherwise, is garbage. Like any minute someone is going to walk through the door, look around and say, “You have no idea what you are doing. You may leave. We will find someone else who will teach this all the right way.” And those results put me there, y’all.

What did I do wrong, says the voice in my head.

You let everyone down.

If you can’t get this to work, what is wrong with doing it the traditional way?

You told them you’d love them for 180 days, how could you let those fail?

If you feel this way, know that you are not alone. We can hurt. It is the power we have given testing, and evaluations, and caring for the people who walk in our doors every day. It is why we need a break and makes us cry from the stresses of this job. Don’t give up. Don’t quit doing what you feel is right for the 15 to 130 kids you teach. I won’t. I saw the good, I am already planning bonkers stuff for next year that is gamified, and personalized, and mastery based, and anything else I feel is going to benefit the next group that I will love for 180 days. If there is a name for that feeling that I heard on a Podcast it also means I am not alone. So I wanted you to know, you aren’t either.

The sun will rise over those rocky waters.
Photo by Sebastian Voortman

Changing the Game Part 2: Maintaining the Players

Looking back at the last two years in Gamification, there is one big issue that I need to deal with; keeping ALL of my learners engaged. In 2017, my district adopted a new science curriculum. The goal of our first year was to be faithful to the program and put mechanics over the top of the the lessons, like power up cards, secret missions and a leaderboard. The game and the curriculum went hand in hand, making this very successful.

This year, new initiatives really kept Tom (@tank2023 on twitter) and I from fine tuning the game. The things we did last year still worked, but an abundance of new focuses kept us from fully capitalizing on early excitement. A big one was that we tried to split time with social studies and science which ended up being too much of a balancing act. This loss of focus for us led to a number of students disengaging from the experience.

All was not lost, as many students still loved to check out our headquarters site regularly, keep watch on the leaderboards and use power up cards when possible.Those experiences were still worth while and students enjoyed great moments. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for with our second group to complete the year. I suppose that there is a lesson here about quality over quantity and not extending yourself too far (a lesson I feel reminded of every so often), but there is a more learner focused question that I want to set my sights on. How do I keep more students engaged with the game to grow the excitement?

Step 1: All students moving forward all the time

One thing that caused drop off for some students was a lack of progress. Most of the experience points earned by students was based on secret missions, which were project completed in extra time or outside of class. I am proud that most students would complete one or two missions in a year, a few (20ish) went really far and did multiple missions per unit. However, the larger number would complete a few and lose interest. I want all players to gain points every week and keep their adventure in space going all year round.

Being a testing year, there are a lot of vocabulary words for my students to learn. So every week we will have a vocabulary game to play so that students can get these words down. Challenges will vary from a Kahoot to building representations out of various materials. They will be designed to be quick and decisive. This is dual purposed. One, I want it to be something students can be excited about each week. Two, I do not want to give this particular activity a lot of time out of class or afterwards for me. I want to be able to see the points quickly and pop them in. Quicker feedback and faster impact to the game.

To score, I am going to use a Mario Kart system of points. Top players will receive 25 points. Then one less for each place all the way down to 12, which all students will receive after 14th place. This weekly rewarding of XP based on a fun game is one hook to keep students involved. As an additional piece, a few weeks in I plan to introduce Michael Matera’s (@mrmatera on twitter) concept of the Wall of the Fallen. Students can challenge one another for extra points. The catch, of course, being that if you lose, you are unable to be part of a challenge again. There will be ways to avoid the wall or to get off the wall based on a characters powers (more on that in a later update).  This should add a level of excitement to the weekly game.

We will also have in class events that will reward XP. Whether it be an activity that students will complete or an encounter with something in space, students will have regular opportunities to grow. I am looking at a couple different inspirations for this. Mostly how different role playing games add experience points. Then, as I get into planning out the units more, those encounters will start to take shape. So, I guess more on this over the summer and into fall. Except for the crisis deck, I can not wait to tell you about the crisis deck.

Changing the Game Part 1: What Lies Ahead

Over the past 2 years, my science class has been gamified. Our superhero themed class sparked some great stories and unforgettable moments. Some things have worked like a charm, others, not so much. However, if there is anything that I am proud of it is keeping it going for two years. Working with my teaching partner, Tom, to build it was awesome and we put a lot of ideas out there for our kids to enjoy. That said we have had our fair share of obstacles and distractions. This year, a year where I had hoped to implement a real narrative was run over by a push for mastery learning (which was super great), the sudden inclusion of a science/social studies split (something that we asked for, but wasn’t as great) and me participating in the Nintendo Labo classroom program (something that was awesome but time consuming). These things split our focus this year and kind of took away from the 4th Grade Heroes experience.

Then, just before Spring Break, I got the news that I would be looping with my class and without my best teaching friend, Tom. Admittedly, I was disappointed to be separated from someone who has grown to be one of my best friends. Then something funny happened as I realized looping meant starting over with my game. A fresh slate. A chance to look at everything in the last two years and start over. And suddenly, my mind just started to run...or better yet fly in a different direction. We have not even reached the end of the year and I am knee deep into where I am going for next year. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty to be done to send these kids off right. They have worked hard and they deserve the best ending I can give them. That said, I am growing more excited about next year all the time.

I have a new teammate, with emphasis on NEW. Ms. Hagemeier is wrapping up her first year and her energy is exciting. I have never gotten to be the older teacher in a group where I am working directly with them, so my mission with her is to help her find herself as she grows and incorporate as much of her style into this as we can. I also need to not overwhelm her. I have a tendency to do that when I get excited, and as I said, I am really excited.

My other major goal is to tear down everything that did not work in 4th Grade Heroes and build on the lessons and failures. It is my intention to document this process. More for my own self reflection, but if others can read it and grow then we all gain. Whatever I create during the process I intend to share freely. I hope that you enjoy this trip to the stars with me.

If you hadn’t picked up on it yet, the new theme will be space sci-fi. Here is a look at our new logo. I am really proud of it.