Well, it's official. The first trimester of the academic year is over, and I'm going to count my foray into Minecraft: Education Edition as a success. It's remarkable to me how much work it was to design a fully gamified classroom experience. Not that the work didn't pay off - it absolutely did! Perhaps the greatest indicator of success is the fact that my students covered even more content than usual for this time of year, and achieved more in terms of their Social Studies grades. I believe in maintaining consistently high expectations for my students, for my kids in Honors and for my students in grade level or strategic classes. So imagine my surprise when I realized that most of my students earned A's for the trimester - seriously. Eight of my seventy-five students received anything less than an A, and all students passed the course.
Every. Single. One. Was this massive boost in achievement due to my transition to quest-based learning in Social Studies? Was it due to the motivation they experienced in response to the gamified elements of the 3D Game Lab MLS I switched to for content delivery, or the epic meaning of the narrative adventure I wrote? Or, was it the introduction of Minecraft: Education Edition that made them so excited to come to class each day? I don't know. But, I am awfully happy to see my students so happy. At some point in public education, the system tends to kill the joy of learning. At a time when sixth graders generally start settling into the middle school shuffle, deciding to be a little too cool and to hide their smarts, my kiddos are still joyfully bounding into the room in the morning, twenty or thirty minutes before the bell, just so they can finish their Minecraft build, or knock out one more quest. I think that says a lot about student morale, and I can't tell you how much my heart has responded to their positive attitudes. By far, the most labor intensive task I had this trimester was the intentional planning and structuring of Minecraft quests. Because I believe in the power of sharing, and because there might be another 6th or 7th grade Social Studies teacher out there wanting to dive in, but afraid of the waters... here is my entire Trimester 1 Unit Plan for Ancient Civilizations. If you use it, let me know. Maybe we can compare notes and strengthen any weaknesses. I'd love to collaborate!
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There is a feeling I get when a lesson is going well - you know the one, because you've felt it, too. It's similar to the way my stomach drops whenever I hear the opening strains of "Phantom of the Opera," or that moment just before I hurtle over the edge of the waterfall on Splash Mountain at Disneyland. What is that feeling? Excitement. Enthusiastic anticipation of a good thing. An excellent experience in the making. The act of teaching is the art of bringing many components together and orchestrating them into a meaningful whole: the student, engagement strategies, pedagogy, relevance, and authentic experiences. Teaching is like conducting; it's knowing when to let a single instrument play and when to let the whole symphony soar. Maybe that's how some teachers know when it's time to make a change - when the song becomes just another song and the notes are no longer special. There are so many moving parts to a good lesson, it can be difficult to harmonize them all. As teachers, we have to foster in ourselves a keen sense of timing and what it means to facilitate, as opposed to direct. While effective direct instruction is not a bad thing, the lessons that I (and my students) enjoy the most are those which allow autonomy and encourage investigation. No matter what we do, technology is almost always a main component. At my school site, I am responsible for training others about Common Core State Standards as California transitions to the CCSS over the next several years. I've begun piloting Common Core ELA lessons in my classroom and last week I decided to test drive a Common Core lesson plan that I wrote for Social Studies. In the end, the week long lesson proved to be a veritable symphony of project-based learning, iTunes U, and collaboration. The standards I decided to address were a blend of my content area standards and the CCSS Literacy Standards for Social Studies, History, Science, and Technical Subjects. Here's a breakdown: Social Studies Standard 6.5.4: Outline the social structure of the caste system. Inquiry based learning lends itself very well to Common Core, so I decided to take a PBL approach to this lesson. To provide structure, iTunes U seemed perfect. It only took me several hours to construct a course on Ancient India's Caste System. (Go ahead - subscribe to it!) The most difficult part was compiling a list of resources for students to use during the inquiry process. Here's a screen cap of the materials in the course (click to enlarge): Because my students are piloting a student-centered BYOD program, I asked them to download the free iTunes Uapp ahead of time. In class, I showed them how to search for my course in the catalog and subscribe to access content. Since students are already used to working in collaborative groups, I was able to quickly walk them through the interface of the iTunes U course I made and then set them free. Students did an incredible job utilizing the course to help walk them through the PBL process: developing an inquiry plan, creating a reasonable schedule, conducting research, compiling notes, and creating a product to demonstrate their learning. The duration of the project was an hour per day for five consecutive days, and the essential question under investigation was, "How was ancient Indian society organized and how does it compare to our society here in the United States?" Check out this video clip of my students. This is around the time that I started getting that insanely wonderful feeling of a successful lesson in progress: During the final stage of the lesson, kids were able to choose how they wanted to showcase their learning. I gave them several app suggestions, but students were free to use other apps if they felt they could accomplish the task given (click to enlarge): And these are a few of the fantastic products that students were able to create: ecause having an authentic audience is important, student projects were uploaded to our classroom website and shared via QR Codes in our school's main hallway, as well as on a bulletin board in our classroom. At the end of the week, my students felt proud of themselves, the choices they made, and the work they accomplished.
There's a feeling I get, when a lesson went well - you know the one, because you've felt it, too. Success. If you have questions about the process I used or any aspect of this post, please feel free to leave a comment. |
Author: Jessica PackCalifornia Teacher of the Year. CUE Outstanding Educator 2015. DIGICOM Learning Teacher Consultant. 6th Grade Teacher. Passionate about gamification, Minecraft, digital story-telling, and fostering student voices. Download:Archives
June 2020
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