X & Moonshot Thinking

X?  What's that?

During a conversation with a colleague today, I was reintroduced to 'Moonshot Thinking' - something that I remember sharing with some of my students in a previous school to illustrate how people  around the world are exploring ways to solve big problems.  

Link to video:  https://youtu.be/pEr4j8kgwOk

Moonshot Thinking is an important element to have in today's learning environments.  At OrmPS it is evident during our iExplore time.  This is a time at the beginning of the day where the learners are encouraged to identify a problem - either in their own community, nation-wide or global.  Once the learner (or group of learners) have identify a problem, they then follow a set of steps to empathise with the user, question (5 whys) and through an activity called 'Crazy 8s', explore possible solutions from the basic to abstract.   This is where the OrmPS version of 'Moonshot Thinking' comes into fruition.  Astro Teller (the head of X, formerly Google X), mentions in the video below that they have a mantra at X and it is,

Sometimes shifting your perspective is more powerful than being smart. 

I hope X doesn't mind if I 'steal' this manta and use it within our learning environment.  I feel that it is an important consideration while planning a prototype, or following testing and feedback of a prototype.  At times it can be difficult for a learner to admit that their idea is just not going to work, and that a tweak and adjustment will result in a much better product.   

The above mantra could also be applied to other areas of learning, e.g. writing.  When writing, I've seen many learners intent on making their first draft the final copy - reluctant to make changes, or even show changes and/or additions to their original idea.  As an educator, it is heartbreaking (exaggeration of an emotion here) to not be able to see what a learner has changed because the original idea has been rubbed out, twinked or scribbled into oblivion by pen.

I want to see all the thinking that has taken place and be able to celebrate all Moonshot Thinking - whether it is to make a change in the world or on a smaller scale within the covers of an exercise book.

P.S.  Just added 'visit X' to my bucket list.

Expeditionary Learning

It's nearly the end of 2017 and I have retreated to the coolness of our temporary living room (currently in the midst of a major house renovation), to escape the insanely hot afternoon sun.  The current dry spell that we are experiencing provides me with the perfect opportunity to catch up on Jo Bolar's Mathematical Mindset online course.  The latter half of Term 4 was filled to the brim with assessment, report writing, reflections and meetings - leaving little time to squeeze in anything else.  So now I am on a mission to complete as many parts of this course as I can.  Hopefully, I may even manage to finish it before the start of the Term 1 next year!

Catching Up

I am currently watching an interesting interview that Jo Bolar had with Carol Dweck, and Jo asked Carol if she had examples of schools that implemented her work successfully.  Carol replied that many are - giving the work of Stephanie Fryberg and Ron Berger as two exceptional examples.  Fryberg's work was on a Native American reservation in the state of Washington and Berger was the founder of Expeditionary Learning that embed growth mindset around students' projects.  I felt an urge to explore this further and subsequently lost a few hours of study time, but gathered a few gems along the way.

Ron Berger is the same guy that travelled across the states to share 'Austin's butterfly' - the movie that illustrated the importance of constructive feedback.

Gems for my treasure box

The Expeditionary Learning education model refers to all students and educators as being part of a 'crew'.  Everyone is responsible for pitching in and supporting each other achieve their personal best.  Their moto is, "We are are crew, not passengers".  Expeditionary Learning (EL) schools embed growth mindset around students' projects - many of which are in the community.  At the completion of the project, the students give presentations to the community, highlighting their struggles and the obstacles that they've had to overcome.  While watching a video on the EL school site, I heard that the students in EL schools are "on a mission to contribute as scholars and citizens to a better world".  This got me thinking...

Giving Feedback

The learners use models and rubrics (see below) to 'enhance their ability' through critique and feedback which is guided by the norms, "Be kind, be specific, be helpful."

Here's a link to the approach that EL school's .  I know that I'll be returning to this site frequently over the next few months to gather ideas and identify best practice for supporting my learners to give (and receive) constructive feedback.

Standards

With the change in government, New Zealand schools have now been able to wash their hands of the National Standards.  This is wonderful news, but it also brings about a sense of uncertainty.  Since 2010, we have used the language of National Standards for reporting and assessment.  It has driven, (but also narrowed), our learning pathway.  Will it be difficult to shift away from this mindset?

EL education identified that the US core standards made it difficult for teachers to consider high standards because they were more concerned about covering the content.  As a result, Berger found that: 

One consequence of this is students feel more and more like there isn’t time for mistakes or revisions, or editing.  They are often in a rush to complete assignments and they are missing the value of the work. And when one doesn’t understand the value of the work, maintaining true pride in successes and a growth mindset in failures are difficult to own.    (Source)

So, my takeaway from this is to look at slowing down the pace so that the learners are able to have time to work through the challenges, identify their mistakes - and have the time to recraft, redesign, redo.  As Carol Dweck suggests, growth mindset is not about the final outcome, but it's about what happened in the learning journey.

This delightful distraction from my online learning has now completed it's circle.  Now, let's get back to Jo Bolar and her interview with Carol Dweck.

Resources to check out:

• Grades 3-8 English Language Arts Curriculum
• Beautiful Work - Project based learning
• EL - Our Approach

Encouraging Curiosity

Creating Questioning Learners

While I sit here in the warmth of the winter sun, writing report comments about the learners in my collaborative whanau, my mind drifts towards what possible learning opportunities we (my #oresome team of learning coaches in LH6) can design for Term 3.  The OrmPS focus will be Curious.  A word that I quickly associate with curiosity is questioning and this links to a problem that has been discussed with my fellow LCs several times over the course of Terms 1 and 2.   We have noticed that many of our learners are either asking low level questions, or unfortunately, no questions at all - unless specifically encouraged by a learning coach!   I'm finding this situation very concerning.   Is this a result of having a large number of English Language Learners (ELLs) who are not confident in asking a question in english?  Or, after five and six years of schooling, have we (educators) snuffed out the wonder and curiosity that existed in the pre-schooler?

CORE Education's Trevor Bond provides some disappointing statistics and informative suggestions

on how to transform our current learners into active learners who ask questions.

Building Question Askers, Not Question Answerers

The following data from Bond's video illustrates how questioning decreases over the time that children attend an educational environment:

• 50% prior to going into any form of schooling
• 10% once they are at preschool
• 0.08% when at high school 

This means that within the learning environment, a question answerer will only be "sharing what's in their head" whereas a 'question asker' will be "somebody who can think, find information, get the things that they need to solve problems, to think deeper and wider, to see new perspectives".

"If we go on doing what we have always done, we will go on getting what we have always got". (Bond)

In other words, we're not content with what we currently have, then we need to redesign what we are currently doing in order to raise the number and quality of questions that our learners are asking.

Provocations

Bond suggests that we should be providing experiences to create stimuli.  He says that as result of responding to that stimuli, we will create that moment of cognitive dissonance.  This new information can't link to their current schema and questions should start to form in their head.

Provocations during iExplore would be an excellent place to start a change.   In LH6 we currently enable our learners to create and design their own iExplore, but I have noticed that many, even after being involved in an iExplore 2-3 times, are still not delving deep in the question phase of their iExplore planning.  I've also noticed that it's often the same handful of learners who are asking the questions - when either in small, larger or whole habitat groups.

With some additional time given to our weekly design for learning, we could plan for several provocations each week.  Rather than 'biting off more than we can chew' and trying to provide provocations to suit 100 learners, I feel that it would would be best to identify a group of learners and 'know' where their current knowledge and interests lie, then design a provocation to 'hook' them in.  This might help to ensure that our provocations are linking with their prior knowledge and schema.

Creating Questioners

Bond's research suggests that 80-90% of the children are asking questions that are irrelevant or missing vocab that's needed to make the question work.  Question needs to be taught.   With this in mind, further development of how to ask questions needs further development.  I've requested Bond's 'waka graphic' and I'll also take a closer look at his questioning wiki.

Points to Consider

• What negative signals am I giving to the learners?
• What is my reaction and body language to the questions that learners are asking?
• Make time - don't be so busy that questions are ignored 
• Provide a space (Wonder Wall) to 'store' those questions that are not relevant to the current conversation
• Make time to explore and answer questions from the 'Wonder Wall'
• Create an environment where the learners do not have to put their hand up to 'negotiate a right' to ask a question 

Further reading:

Neil Postman - Teaching as a subversive activity - question being our most important intellectual tool.