Module 4 Unit 3 Activity 2: Creating High Performance Learning Environments

Rollercoaster Physics: What a wonderful lesson - cleverly crafted with a lot of care and attention. I wish my physics lessons had been more like this at school! The teacher has asked the students to design and build a simple roller-coaster that will allow a marble to run as far as possible without falling off the end of the tubing. This project-based lesson is designed to enhance the children’s understanding of kinetic and potential energy and Newton’s laws of motion.

• Academic Expectations The teacher clearly has high academic expectations for her students. She has pre-taught them the concepts of kinetic and potential energy and she expects them to apply these concepts to the activity to produce a coaster that will allow the marble to run for as long as possible within a strict set of limitations. The teacher also expects the students to work collaboratively and allocate responsibility for certain tasks to each other. Each team member is expected to pull their weight in order to produce a successful experimental design.

• Behavior Expectations The teacher makes it perfectly clear that she expects the students to use the correct vocabulary to explain their designs. Lemov (2010) recommended using this strategy to set high expectations in the classroom. The teacher also spends time with each group asking about their designs and prodding them to think more deeply about the effect that an extra loop or twist will have on the kinetic or potential energy. This approach was also recommended by Lemov (2010) when he encouraged teachers to ‘stretch’ their students.

• Norms and Procedures The first procedure that struck me as being very useful was the ‘chime’ method that the teacher employed. She asked the students to work on their designs independently and then come together to share their ideas. One student would lead the conversation, but all the other students were free to chime in with ideas of their own. This was a great way to work collaboratively and it gave the stronger students a chance to tutor the weaker students in some of the concepts. By limiting the materials that the students were able to use the teacher is forcing her class to think laterally and develop their problem-solving skills. A good deal of research has shown that this is a much more effective method of learning than simply lecture and rote memorization (Snyder, 2008). As the teacher says herself, if you can get students to welcome problems then you are teaching them valuable tools for success in life.

3rd Grade Chinese Math: This appears to be a Chinese immersion school in the US, or it could be a Chinese government funded school in Africa. The brevity of the clip and the lack of information in the video summary make it difficult to tell. The students are responding to multiplication questions from the teacher by chanting their answers in unison.

• Academic Expectations It’s quite difficult to say what academic expectations the teacher has for her students. I’m sure that she expects the students to get the answers right, but beyond that it is difficult to draw any conclusions. Teaching to the class in this manner doesn’t lend itself to focusing on the individual needs of the students and it is hard to see how she would be able to pinpoint a single student who is struggling. The article describing math instruction certainly suggests that Chinese teachers have very high academic expectations for their students. Multiplication begins in second grade and students spend at least fifteen hours a week on mathematics. The vast majority of Chinese teachers are single subject teachers, which suggests that they would be very comfortable with the subject matter. This would probably lead to them having higher expectations for their students.

• Behavior Expectations The teacher in the video clearly expects her students to participate fully in the class, but again it is difficult to draw too many conclusions from this short clip. The article sheds a little more light on what is expected. Students are expected to learn by rote, using rhymes etc. There is a lot of debate over the effectiveness of rote learning, but the preponderance of research suggests that this is not the most effective way to acquire advanced math skills. Parker (2015) found that students learn best when they work on problems they enjoy, rather than exercises and drills they fear. Chinese students are also expected to prove their solutions on the board in front of the whole class which could lend an element of fear to proceedings.

• Norms and Procedures Chanting in this manner has been shown to be a valuable learning tool, but this may be limited to young learners who are speaking in their second language (Forster, 2006). The article states that teachers use a variety of problems with the students, and they are continually prompted for logical reasoning. Precise math vocabulary must also be used. These strategies are consistent with Lemov’s (2010) recommendations for ensuring high expectations in the classroom.

Whole Brain Teaching: The teacher is outlining the concepts of longitude and latitude to pinpoint a precise location on the surface of the earth. She is using a variety of hand movements and chants to which the students copy and repeat. This is known as whole brain teaching. It appears to draw on the idea of kinesthetic teaching, which involves using body movements to teach concepts. One study of middle school students indicates that significant growth is possible for students using kinesthetic learning who were previously identified as underachieving (Lister & Ansalone, 2006).

• Academic Expectations I think that the teacher definitely holds high expectations for the students. Although her methods might seem a touch unorthodox she seems to be using the hand gestures and repetition of key phrases as anchor points to lodge the information in the minds of the students. The teacher also gets the students to teach each other in the ‘Crazy Professor’ section of the class, so it’s clear that she trusts them to do their best in this section.

• Behavior Expectations The teacher expects the students to mimic her actions and repeat her voice prompts. She has clearly drilled them well and part of the video shows the students reciting the rules for the class complete with hand gestures, which suggests that the teacher has invested a considerable amount of time and effort in ensuring that the students understand the standards of behavior that are expected of them.

• Norms and Procedures The hand movements and chants should support high student performance. There is a significant amount of research that indicates a positive relationship between movement and learning, as well as movement and retention. Movement can be an effective strategy to strengthen learning, improve memory and retrieval, and improve learner motivation and morale (Jensen, 2009).


Setting High Performance Expectations Among My Students:
I teach social studies to 11th and 12th grade students. I focus on preparing them for the AP Macro/Microeconomics and AP Comparative Government and Politics exams in May. I think I can see the most similarities between my class and the roller-coaster physics lesson. I tend to use a lot of project-based lessons to try and challenge the students and get them to engage their critical thinking skills. For example in my economics class I asked the students to design advertising for a restaurant that would separate customers based on their willingness to pay. In economics this is known as price discrimination and many companies use this technique to part customers from their money. A good example would be airlines charging customers to choose their seats or hardback and paperback books in publishing. In the process of designing their advertising the students are forced to think of real world applications for the textbook material and they have to work collaboratively to complete the project.

 The AP Politics class can be a little dry as there are lots of details to learn for the test, so I use a Model United Nations style format or a G8 style summit meeting format to get the students to research and debate issues linked to the comparative government course. Students have to study the speaking style of the leaders of these nations and mimic their mannerisms whilst participating in the summit meetings. For example last month we looked at the opioid epidemic in the US, as the drugs are produced in China before being shipped to Mexico and making their way over the border into the US. The summit meeting was very entertaining as a very flamboyant Donald Trump accused an impassive Xi Jinping of flooding the US with cheap and very powerful synthetic opiates in order to destabilize its economy. Trump then threatened to sever trade with China, which Xi Jinping pointed out would really destabilize the American economy! These summit meetings use some of the elements of whole brain teaching in that the students have to approach a podium to speak, so they are constantly on the move and they must use the hand gestures and speech mannerisms of the leader of their assigned country. While the summit meetings are fun I insist that the students must accurately use vocabulary that we have covered in class, and they must incorporate their knowledge of the political systems of each country into their arguments. This ensures that the students are learning by applying their knowledge whilst still having fun.


References:
Forster, E. (2006). The value of songs and chants for young learners. Journal of Research and Innovation in the Language Classroom, 63-68. Retrieved November 24, 2017, from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.611.7951&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind: What being poor does to kids' brains and what schools can do about it. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Lister, D., & Ansalone, G. (2006). Utilizing Modality Theory to Achieve Academic Success. Educational Research Quarterly, 30(2), 19-29.

Parker, C. (2015). Research shows the best ways to learn math. Retrieved November 27, 2017, from https://ed.stanford.edu/news/learning-math-without-fear

Snyder, L. (2008). Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills. Retrieved November 24, 2017, from http://reforma.fen.uchile.cl/Papers/Teaching%20Critical%20Thinking%20Skills%20and%20problem%20solving%20skills%20-%20Gueldenzoph,%20Snyder.pdf