Phenomenon-Based Learning with Donna Fields PhD

hi how are you all doing you're holding in there lots of information right well now we're gonna do a little bit more hopefully you can take it in I'm going to try to make it easy and digestible for you digestible is the interesting word here I'm from New York originally I've been living in Valencia Spain for almost 20 years now and for all of that time everyone in Spain tells me we have the best food the best food is right here and then I come to Italy and I can't say they're wrong but we have been having a very nice time eating in Italy I'm gonna have to sew together two skirts before I leave and it's all worth it so I'm really enjoying Italy love being here I know a lot about the American school system I know a lot about the Spanish school system what I really need to know is more about the Italian school system so that's what I'm gonna ask you to help me with I'm here to talk a little bit about applying phenomena based learning and just saying that is a mouthful isn't it so I'm gonna help you feel a little better about it but I need some information how many of you are vocational teachers could you raise your hand one two just a few of you the rest of you you can relax a little bit because from what I understand about Italy is first the vocational teachers are going to be asked to apply this in their classes and then later you are so right now everyone can relax a little bit and sort of explore what elements of phenomenon based learning you like and you feel comfortable with and then later when they put a little more pressure on you you can try more but today is just exploring some ideas now we heard from Michael before that just saying some words make you feel more confident so how about if we try saying phenomenon based learning all right first you're just going to mouth it say it with your lips but without any sound can we try that it's not so bad right alright so now let's try to say it all together I'm going to say 1 2 3 phenomenon based learning can you do it 1 2 3 phenomenon based learning feel much more powerful already right okay so as I was saying I live in Valencia but not in the city I live ten minutes north as the beach and the beach is beautiful I have a dog who's big dog and who's a water dog and she loves swimming and every day she wants to go swimming in the winter I'm not crazy I'm not going to go swimming with her but she won't go in without me and she's always looking at me trying to get me in and the water looks beautiful I know that it would be wonderful once I get in but I'm cautious so when we're getting into March April I will take my shoes off and put my toes in and I sort of explore the temperature of the water and I know she's looking at me saying it's time it's time I'm a little cautious so I take my toe out I feel as it hasn't fallen off I'm not I'm still alive everything's okay so the next day I'll put my feet in and wade around a little and she's still behind me looking and saying it is time we have to go in but I need a little more time I don't want to be pushed too hard so if I feel comfortable I'll the next day I'll go into my knees and then every day a little higher right until I finally dive in but at my time went in my comfort zone and then she's really happy she loves it we both loved it but little by little now phenomenon based learning is the same thing it is a big bite to chew off so all we have to do is go slowly stay in our comfort zone find out how much we're willing to do every day and not more even if the government is pushing us from behind we need to be comfortable correct because when we get nervous the class doesn't work really well does it we have less patience for our students all right so having said that let's explore a little bit and just so you know I have been a primary teacher I've been a secondary teacher and I've been at the University so I'm speaking from experience and the really nice thing is with Oxford and with some other organizations I'm going into the classroom and working with the teachers so it's not as if I've been just thinking just researching and learning theory I'm still in the classroom again not in your classrooms so you correct me if I'm assuming something that's not the reality deal excellent okay now one of the secrets of phenomenon based learning are these two words what if why because these two words open up a whole possibility of creativity of conversation of collaboration I'm going to give you an idea most of these talks Carla and Michael and myself is about your students this question is for you let's just say we go to a party and we the usual conversation I'm saying for the American point of view and Americans we're very curious we'll ask anything there really no limits and I've been told by the people in Spain Donna you asked way too many questions a little too personal what's your name where do you live what do you do do you have children are you married maybe in the reverse order but what if what if I asked and this is true because it's been opening up a whole bunch of conversations what if I proposed this question now there's more you ready for this and I'm gonna we're going to talk about this at the end what object could you bring has to be packed so start thinking about this because at the end I'm gonna ask you for what would be a relationship breaker not just the weekend that's it no more okay but just using what if opens up the whole subject it's kind of fun isn't it so the other thing we want to do in these conferences is we want you to leave with resources but also use each other as resources we want you to feel as though you've gotten to know someone new now you probably know the person next to you because you sat down to with them we'd also like you to get to know the people in front and behind you so I'm going to ask you even though this is the last one you're gonna leave having a new best friend you're gonna believe me I'm gonna ask you to turn out and shake the hand of the person behind you or in front of you tell them your name and ask them a very personal question don't worry Dori I'm gonna give you the personal question okay so you're gonna turn around exchanged names and ask them what their favorite ice cream is okay can you all do that [Applause] it's great great what kind of ice cream nice choice all right whatever and has a new ice-cream buddy you know what you're doing afterwards before lunch all right now that you might have a little comfort zone because you're gonna use these new best ice cream friends to answer a couple of questions but beforehand I know this is a big subject I know it sometimes gets people not sometimes most of the time gets teachers nervous because we feel as though we're being pressured to do something we are not ready for so I'm going to give you something an inspirational saying they're very inspiring right now it makes more sense what does it mean nothing to be scared of we are teachers we are human we are teaching humans things work really well some days things work really badly other days it's okay we teach our students that failure that being making mistakes is not failure it's just a mistake we need to remember that also it's just we reflect we figure out how we can make the next day better and we go on all right so can we remember that with these elements of phenomenon based learning now you all have the a and B sheets so what we want to do is fold it in half so we can either see a or B alright and I'm gonna give you two options now I want you to commit to one even if you think both of them I want you to commit to one and holdup either A or B if you think that's phenomenon based learning bless you let's see a or B which you think of phenomenon is a topic event or fact or geographical feature I see ASAC bees again just commit to one of them don't worry there's no failure here okay so what I'd like you to do is turn around and find someone who does not have your letter and I want you to spend fifteen seconds convincing them that you are right okay go ahead and find someone with the opposite letter [Applause] all right have you convinced the other people yes No alright there's a reason why yes or no you've convinced them should I show you the answer it's both of them [Applause] now why did I do that why did I give the same different answers but they're both correct what was the most important thing here there is no wrong to discuss to use so what I've given is the if you go back to the slide you can see is is that I've given you the academic language I've given you the concept and now you can use that to talk a little bit and that's what you can use with your students it's a nice way to introduce the subject it could simply be a scaffold if you know the term for scaffolding which is introducing so the fact is it's both you both feel justified and validated correct all right we're gonna use these again so don't put them away but encourage you to use them so the difference between a phenomenon based learning project and a project well all I can tell you is a project it's a project with sparkles it has a lot of different elements so I know I go into the classroom and teachers tell me but I'm already doing projects I don't need you here go I go in because the directors asked me to go in so one of the hardest things for me especially since I am from New York and we don't have a lot of patience is patience so I tell them I understand do you think this is a project let's see if we can add one element in here and give it a little more sparkle and sometimes they'll say yes I'm going to give you some examples but this is really it I'm gonna show you what a phenomenon based learning project has included now just breathe please don't get nervous or I would say remain calm these are all the elements we're going to go to the very basics we're just going to talk about five of them so remember that this is all included but you don't have to deal with it yet and a lot of these you are already doing we're gonna go through the structure here and you're gonna recognize some of this you're saying I already do this perfect if you already do some of these maybe you could introduce one more if you don't maybe you couldn't choose one feel capable I bet you can so again objectives I'm going to show you I'm going to tell you three objectives that I've come up with how many of you share objectives with your students every day wonderful that's really positive how many of you share objectives with your students before every unit nice that's really positive all right they say that if we share objectives with students it's the same as if if I'm sharing objectives with you right now we feel more in control we know where we're going it helps us feel a little more involved so I didn't have the chance to co-create these objectives with you which is what we can do with our students but hopefully you'll be interested the first one we're going to just briefly talk about language acquisition and why that's part of the phenomenon based learning structure the second objective is outlining the big broad phenomena based learning the one that probably makes you the most nervous because it's a big chunk of time and it involves a lot of people however what we're going to really focus on today is this adapting that big structure just to maybe a week two weeks that's it okay so as you're listening just saying hmm I don't like that but that one I could adapt tomorrow next week should we start with language acquisition thank you because we are all right biologically there's some biological functions that we're going to develop no matter where we are language on the other hand has to do with Society it's a skill it's something we learn when we're with other people when we teach subjects and even in our language classes we're always teaching subjects correct to make it interesting we're talking about things probably most of you have moved past just exercises and grammar but what we're doing here is we're building on knowledge we're just helping our students know more about each subject with language language is an Express language is very personal language makes us nervous when we're expected to express ourselves in another language in a second and a third and a fourth right we feel like we're fairly intelligent in our home language but if someone asks us to express the same thing and another one we feel like we're being judged we feel like we're not our best we don't really feel out of control and out of our comfort zone correct so we need to remember we need to remember that's true for us that's true for our students and especially what Carla was saying the teenage brain it's it's always feeling judged it's always feeling a little nervous so we need to be a little compassionate so a lot of you may already know this but we're just going to go through the stages of human language acquisition at one month babies can distinguish between sounds at 6 months they begin to make their own sounds and if you teach some sign language which some of you may have done some of you may have seen my brother did this you can communicate a little more easily with your young children at 12 to 18 months they use holla phrases which are one-word sentences and those of you with children either remember or know that that one word can be very powerful all right and at three to five years their sentences resemble more of an adult structure grammatically so by the time a child is 6 months 6 years 6 years and 4 months old they have a very solid grammatical structure of their home language 13700 97 hours why do I put that up there it's very important for all of us to remember these children we go to Finland and think oh my god that's incredible they're speaking Finnish or they speak Hungarian or they speak German or they speak Italian they have been studying the language and for these many hours they're eliminating a little bit of sleep and they're learning in organic ways they're learning when they eat they're learning when they take a bath they're learning when they play when they talk to their parents and then we expect them in school and we expect our cell to learn another language three hours a week if we can remind ourselves and reminder students all the anxiety may go down a little bit and this is where phenomenon based learning comes in if we can remember this and maybe make some of our lessons a bit more organic a bit more meaningful a bit more critical then maybe our students will be a little more engaged and feel a little better this is our reality this is what I grew up with this is what you probably grew up with this is what we did maybe this is what we do this is what we were taught so now if this is what you still do you could consider changing consider it nobody is telling you to change what I'm suggesting is to think about it how many of you have this structure in your classroom all the students sitting in rows and they're all looking at us all day long yeah that's nice we have to make sure that we look fairly good every day right so nobody is asking you to change this either but this is aria if this is our reality I've seen teachers just ask the students to turn around so they can work in pairs sometimes you can change the desk most teachers say I'm not changing the desk they won't let me okay let's just work with this structure and so let's go back to a formative evaluation if you believe that I've told you enough about language acquisition and why that has to do with organic learning and phenomena based learning hold up a if you think you need to know more hold up B all right so I see a lot of bees I see some A's I see some A's and B's this is very important information for me we don't have time to do more but that's good for me to know if you're the teacher and you ask a question like this or you can simply ask grammatical structure or a mathematical problem or anything and see a lot of your students are saying no I don't know it enough then teach them more the next day go back to the unit if most of the students say yes I understand you don't need to repeat the next day so it's a very important function of formative assessment all right so that's it that's all we're going to do about language acquisition for the moment we've talked about this you feel like you're ready to go on to the big structure phenomena based learning you're just gonna breathe through this we're all gonna support each other all right so I'm going to give you six final projects of phenomenon based learning and these are projects I've worked on with different groups with teachers who all work together in different countries in Mexico and Finland and Spain and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about each one and what I'd like you to do is just write down the common denominators you hear about them all right so the first one for instance this is called the two-sided identity mask and these student made masks then on one side they wrote down which periodical element best defines them and why on the other side of the mask they wrote down how society defines them how their family is social media their friends they put the masks up in the school invited their classmates the younger students and people from the community in and they explained their masks now this was a combination of the English teacher working with the chemistry teacher and put an art and Technology the second one how are we different from other animals here we had students who had to figure out how humans are different what are the distinctions between them they studied cave paintings they reproduced those cave paintings in their classroom they answered in research they researched and answered the question about the differences they had experts come in and then they asked their families and people from the the other parts of the school they gave them a tour through the cave paintings and they shared their conclusions so again this is a combination of the English that the art teachers and social sciences here we have an economics class the English teacher worked with the economy teacher and these students each group produced two pages the first page was introducing explaining an economic concept in their own words the second page was explaining how or applying that concept to real-world issues so for instance natural disasters the economic consequences aids in developing countries things like that they put the book together they published it they sold it in their school and in the local libraries this was a combination of using experts from the publishing companies English teacher the economics teacher NIT two more this one is how does the work of this mathematician affect my life they had expert mathematicians come in explain how different mathematicians had developed concepts that affect them they made a panel and talked about how if that mathematician hadn't lived how their lives would have been different they worked with the public speech teacher with the English teacher IT and social sciences and then the last one is what if I had to emigrate to another country how would my life change something very relevant so the research the history of emigration the consequences of it they did a public broadcast in their school and in the local radio station this was IT again the English teacher public speaking and social sciences so you've heard about six projects I've gone over very quickly but who can tell me can you shout out anyone that come under the common denominators sorry different subjects into curricular cross-curricular what else student-centered something the students produce real-life what else they did research okay you're catching it so I'm gonna give you some more you may have already written this down cross-curricular multicultural global perspective collaborative student-centered critical thinking and something personal this is what a phenomenon based learning project usually includes now you probably are already doing this you just may not realizing you are so what we're asking for a phenomena based learning is just to switch a few things around so this is more obvious and we're gonna go through those five elements one by one this is the one we're gonna spend more time on though because this is the easiest one to implement and apply in your classrooms and before we talk about the inquiry question we're gonna take a little pronunciation break because I always forget this but you may notice that I sound much different than Carla and Michael right there's no better or worse there is a difference in accent and that's important we need to get used to each other the same ways you need to get used to the both of us so the British would say it's really just this lot of times the stress on the accent the British will say inquiry or inquiry I'll say inquiry or inquiry it's the same word and it means the same so really these two you're gonna see them interchangeably it just depends on what you like more I happen to like the e more okay everyone we're set great so what do inquiry questions involved they help involve our students a little more there's no one correct answer it's thought-provoking we want our students to reflect and we want it to be connected to the real world that's not so bad right okay it also includes the three most powerful words to begin an inquiry question are how why and what if and you saw in the beginning that using what if opens up a whole different worlds I'm going to show you why these three words are so powerful and a lot of you familiar with Bloom's taxonomy the pyramid nice colorful pyramid right lower order and higher-order thinking this is very similar lower order and higher order thinking questions now the test showed that most teachers and I am guilty of this as well most teachers we stay in the lower order thinking questions it's much easier to grade what we need to do is make sure students can answer these but help push them up to the higher-order thinking questions and I understand the minute we do this it makes us nervous because there is no one right answer we need to do a little more work to validate their work right but let's just see what these words do the power in our classroom let's start with a yes-or-no question and we're gonna take cyberbullying as the topic right now have you ever been a victim of a cyber bully you don't have to answer but I'm sorry if you have okay one person saying yes if yes or no that's the end of it is that research not really let's try who who are usually victims of cyber bullying well once they research there's a profile the studies have already been done that's it so let's try what what's a cyber bully well there's one definition doesn't require research there's one answer they need to answer those three questions to be able to answer something a little more sophisticated so should we try how now it's getting a little more interesting right it requires research they're gonna have to talk about it there's no one right answer they need to know the information from the lower order thinking questions and included in this answer and now we're going to go to what if now we're using proactive information right so to me this is really fun it's a lot more work so if you can't handle this don't worry maybe in a week maybe in a month maybe starting next year you could introduce something like this but why haven't I used why and why does it have an asterisk there I'll show you we need to be careful with enquiry questions because sometimes they're not what we think they are we could say why did the cyber bully turn on the computer well why they wanted to bully someone right or we could ask this question now I'm telling you already this is it's not the appropriate question why why is this not well-written she's saying because I'm assuming or I'm asking the students to assume that it's harmful so I've made the judgment I'm telling him it's harmful I've given them the answer already so can you take two second I'm gonna give you ten seconds with your new ice-cream buddy or the person next to you could you change this using the word why to make it less a leading question can you try that Michael their answer can you find someone to give an answer and yeah alright do you have something you have an idea anyone want to share one this is not easy is it now michael has a microphone if someone back there wants to share a question answer all right I don't want sure if the mic is working so we'll see why your social networks are supposed to be a harmful why do we have social networks as opposed to to be harmful to being harmful that were supposed to be no they are why might if we use might it's also powerful word right what why are they supposed to be harmful why are they supposed to be harmful so we're assuming they're supposed to be harmful right thank you very much anyone have another option why your social networks harmful isn't that oh you need to speak louder I'm sorry Shh okay great thanks Andrew why why can the improper use of social networks be harmful why can the improper use of social networks be harmful all right thank you all right so maybe what we need to do is take the word harmful out because I think that's where the judgment comes in but you're thinking correct all right now I'm gonna show you my option you have another one why do some people think that social networks can be or might be harmful it's that last word we need to get rid of right I hear changing I hear changing it's a little painful still right all right but thank you go ahead Andrew I know right behind you right next yeah and then I'm gonna do bullies use social networks ah why do bullies use social network that's a new one thank you that can be harmful I'd leave the last part this is the answer I mean they have to find your no stop stop you're doing really well okay thank you why does the tiger bullies use the network beautiful what I put and this doesn't mean is correct it's just one option you tell me if this is better is that any better some people say the word controversial is still a bit judgmental but it's a little better okay thank you so inquiry questions are not easy once you get them the students get involved and you feel powerful I'm gonna give you one more opportunity to try one but let's go on for a little bit first and thank you so I'm gonna show you what using an inquiry question can do to a classroom and not using one and again this is not a judgement if you like the idea use it if you don't like the idea just think about it for a while all right most of us if we have this either in our English books or the natural science teacher will ask the students to learn this way it sounds familiar this is how we learn this is how we usually ask our students now what if we introduced an inquiry question like this and I love this one it's kind of fun known they need to know exactly the same information as before but it's fun now let me give you another example again if you're an English teacher and you have to teach something about social science or if your social science teacher the normal way we learned and the way our teachers and we as teachers ask our students to learn is like this now as I said I've worked with teachers and these are actual questions that we have introduced in the classroom and I just have to tell you that this is from one particular teacher who was very resistant she's in a school where the directors are adamant about all the students about all the teachers working with projects and she knew the end of the year was coming and she hadn't used to any project and she sees me coming down the hall almost every day and she's thinking oh my god I know I'm gonna have to work with Donna but I don't want to so finally towards the end of the year she said okay all right fine this is what I have to do I have this whole unit where there's a long timeline I have to teach it every year every year the students don't like it but they learn I give them the exam and that's the end of it how can you change this it was a challenge to me and she was thinking there is no way you're gonna do this so I went home thinking I better do this well so this is what we both came up with and you tell me what you think of it what we did is we found this template for these balls that had six sides of them and they drew each of the students worked in groups and for I think for centuries they had to write draw the images first of each century the most important things using their books so this all has to do with using the books you already use they had to look in their books and find the images that they felt would represent that century and then they hung it from the ceiling and they put down five key words five key words that would help them recall though all the paragraphs and all the information and then at the end what they did is in sort of a relay race all of them would run up to one of the balls and then this happened to be in Valenciano and in Valencia just so you know most kids don't speak Valencian but they have to take it as a subject so these are students who were not comfortable speaking Valenciano didn't know how to do it well but they prepared they had to go up figure out which century was used the academic language those five words hanging down and speak fluently for about two or three minutes and they did it afterwards they would tap their partner another one would go up and talk about another century and the teacher was standing here the whole time going it's not gonna work it's not going to work she was wonderful she let them do it but she was not convinced I have a video showing that they did it beautifully and at the end of it she said to me okay fine so each of them knows one century how am I going to find out if all of them know all the information so I said you're absolutely right how we gonna know and what she did is in the end she gave the same test she always gave and all of them passed she actually called me on the phone and told me this she was there's the first time the next day she looked me in the eye and she said okay I'm convinced but not only was she convinced she said you know what I'm going to talk to my husband and her husband is another English teacher in the school and he is one of the most traditional teachers I've ever worked with and I've worked with traditional teachers and he was for two years I've been going after him asking him to reduce a topic and he always finds a way to avoid me in the hallways not look at me and he doesn't want to do it but his wife said I'm gonna convince him in the next day and this is a reflection of how sad my social life is he came up to me and asked me to help him it was the most exciting moment of my life up at that point so I did and I'm gonna show you the project that he and I worked on so I'm saying I understand how nervous be you all can get we just go a little slowly with it this is another one where without an inquiry question we're all familiar with this right with an inquiry question and they did it and they were wonderful so they did the puppet show and they also had to hand in an essay explaining what they did it's another teacher who was resistant to it who was forced by the directors to do the project afterwards he was convinced now obviously the inquiry question is not everything what we do is create a rubric and a rubric in English is different than a rubric in Italian and hopefully I'm gonna say this correctly she's Carla's gonna correct it correct me if I don't I believe that what I when I say a rubric you would say goodie yeah sound good all right and I'm gonna give you an example of that now this is one another English teacher who said to me this is the unit coming up all the pages were the traditional textbooks which are wonderful they were well planned but he wanted to use an inquiry question so I'm gonna ask you to do it now this is not the minute to say I'm out of here I'm gonna go and leave because I don't want to do an inquiry question this is your opportunity to try and you have support here so I'm just gonna give you one minute see if it can use this the unit was the key words were about success about happiness having goals and they had to use the past in the future sense so can use the person next to you and just try to formulate an inquiry question that would cover this go ahead try one minute try how wire what if it's not that easy is it but it's fun it's a challenge all right now ideally in a workshop you'd have a lot more time to do this we have lunch we have children to pick up we have things to do so I'm gonna show you what I did with him this does not mean it's the correct answer there are a lot of correct answers I'm just gonna show you what we did and you tell me what you think so what the students had to do and again we used a rubric to make sure all the criteria was there Green yeah um great yeah thank you they had to explain they had to think about what they wanted to accomplish in ten years from there and then figure out what they needed to do to get there one was a podcast themselves interviewing themselves in ten years and the other was a message and email to a future employer saying why they were the perfect person for that job so we're giving the students and I opportunity to think about themselves and what they wanted to accomplish and for a lot of times these students who don't think they have a future can figure out what they want and actually start thinking about getting that future the the messages that we read were pretty and sprit inspirational so this is one way we can change just a little bit of what we're already using not so bad is it all right so let's go back to the structure and we're just gonna go into a couple more of them the mini lesson teachers say to me then when do I teach when do I get up in front of them we're used to being in front of the students all the time aren't we if the students are working in groups what am i doing our work is before we walk into the classroom but yes sometimes we need to teach and make sure everyone has the same knowledge base so we talked about mini lessons and say we want to introduce a video before the video we need to remember that we've seen the video at least once before maybe 10 or 15 times before this will be the first times our students see the video so what I always recommend is that you scaffold first and scaffolding again is just a dynamic activity to introduce the academic language the concept or the images of what they're going to do or see so I took this video and did some print screens of different definitions of cyberbullying made it into a puzzle we gave different groups the puzzle smaller pieces so it's more diff and challenging and they'd to put it together now of course the frame is easy but then they had to start reading the definitions to make the pieces fit once they've done this then we show the video and they realize that once they're watching they're seeing the same images and the same definitions that they've already interacted with so the tension the anxiety goes down they've already learned a lot of the academic language and they can assimilate more information once we show the video then we need to give them formative assessment and again most teachers ask me how can I incorporate writing well we can incorporate writing as formative assessments simple questions for them we need to know that what we think they learn from that video they actually learned a lot of times we assume a lot of things that that are incorrect so this was the mini lesson now we can go a little faster because research and collaboration we just need to give the students time to research and collaborate and they do now these were older students these were 16 year olds and they have learned all of their life until now to sit and listen to the teacher take the test and forget it much at the end they did not want to think they did not want to do the project at first this was different for them as it was for the teacher so I understand that and the teacher recognizes that and the end however the students did say it was more interesting it was more fun we did learn at the end we didn't want to do it at first and then they did it won't work the first time it won't work really well the second time the third time you're more confident your students are a little more comfortable and it begins flowing so when teachers get nervous the first time it's normal just have patience with yourself and your students the last part of the structure so they're two more public presentation and normally and I've understood in Italy this is the same where we ask the students to get up in front of the class and just speak about the research about a project or something like this it's very it's it's a high anxiety for them hangs ID for us to if we have to memorize and talk about it in front of other people with phenomena based learning they go up with their peers and they have the support from the rest of their group and public if we ask anyone else to come into the classroom the minute students know that someone outside of their class is going to see their work the quality goes way up so even asking people from they're not who aren't in their class to come in or the families or whatever again you might be already doing this if you are yeah if not maybe you could think of inviting someone else in and then the last one is reflection on learning again this is an easy part but important one of the most powerful tools we have as teachers is to reflect on our teaching and we can help our students figure out how they best learn by reflecting on their learning so reflecting on learning can be as simple as asking them different questions and these are seem simple and yet they're powerful questions so a lot of times what have we done comes at the end but a lot of times I will encourage a teacher to say after she's given the instructions or after he's given the instructions to each group I'll say could you ask him a simple question have them answer what are we going to do and they say well why do I need to do that the truth is we assume they know exactly what to do but when they say answer this question what are we going to do most of the time the students look at each other I think so then we have to decide do we put them together and share information do we try to give the instructions ourselves again we need to address it so there is a real and I'm happy to give this make this available Andrew to the teachers there's a we love these type of questions before during and after a project that are very powerful and help the students move ahead and now this is the this is a point where I'm going to help you understand a little more how you can adapt this yourselves to the material that you were already using this is the husband of the teacher who is resistant this is a very traditional teacher lovely man lovely very resistant to new to ideas as we all are if someone's telling us to do something we don't want to do so far you don't have that problem he showed me his worksheets and what he does every day is give the students worksheets they do them they take the tests and for him that works they do have a fairly high level of English but it's monotonous and he wanted he was willing to try a change so we went back to the cyberbullying I took this and I said all the cyberbullying questions we had before were from this project and this was the inquiry question you're familiar with this already right and what I'm going to show you is the rubric we created because a lot of times in our mind we know exactly what we're expecting from our students and when they turn it in and is really different well we don't make it clear we have no right to say I'm sorry this is unacceptable so the rubric is our chance to become crystal clear about what we're expecting and make our swish our students are clear as well so this when I say a rubric this is what I mean and we worked on this together and I'll just go through a little bit of it first we have the enquiry question you're a school counselor and need to give students advice on cyberbullying how can you help victims confront their abusers and then take back their power well some of you are acknowledging the fact that you have been bullied by cyber bullies this would be interesting right we need to take back our power and our teenagers do as well in the rubric we have language objectives and content objectives so you as English teachers are key crucial to this if we don't address language objectives the studies have shown that we don't help our students move forward we also need to include content objectives you see that it's from the textbooks that you're already using you say in unit 2 that's what you're going to work on here the main topics of work of unit 2 you're not changing any material you're just looking at it from a different perspective the next part of the rubric is giving it being very specific give me five examples of an abusive text message so teachers will say to me okay so I'll put in some examples great to us we may be thinking four or five six our students are gonna think of how many maybe three at the most so if we're expecting five we need to put the number five in there ten whatever we're giving them links that they can find we're telling them what pages of the teachers book or the student book to look at a lot of times I see teachers and I know I've done this too it's a temptation go get your computers and now start to research so they find pages that are way too sophisticated for them or they're not appropriate we're saving a lot of time if we give them the links there's nothing wrong with it these are all the criterias we're expecting at the end and then we need to put in the formative and summative assessments if the principal comes in if the director comes in if the parents come in we need to know how to explain what they've learned up into that point so maybe something as simple as sharing a Google Drive maybe giving them quizzes if that's your comfort zone and then the thinking frameworks was which was oh it's telling you about I'm happy to pass this on to you asking them questions before during and after what's the task what do we understand during where can we find resources that best help us answer this what have we done what can we improve next time we're making them responsible for their own learning and the process itself we're not their parents we don't need to be on top of them all the time but we are their facilitators we need to help them move forward and we also need to focus on team building we assume because we're adults and we've been spending years learning how to get along with each other some of us are much more successful than others so we need to make sure students learn how the best skills of getting doing collaborative work and reflection next time we can improve by the grade I deserve is the studies show and teachers always say the studies show that if we let our students give themselves a grade the learning goes way up now this does not mean we have to give them the grade they say they deserve but they need to be able to justify it so even if the only thing you take away from today is that that's a big jump but they have the rubric in front of them and they'll say I deserve a 10 you use 1 to 10 here in Italy yeah ok and you can say alright you've done everything I see that you're right if they say we deserve a 10 and you say but there's a lot missing here this element this element in this element they have to say I understand you're right so we make sure that we've gone over this rubric carefully because this is what we can decide later we make sure we do scaffolding to help them in assimilate new information we give them time to do research and collaborative work we give them the opportunity for public presentation so that they know that their message their personal work is being seen outside of the classroom and we give them time for reflection so that's the basic structure and the last thing we're going to talk about is this what-if question now what I'd really love is wing gets and the answers because this actually happened to us we have spent the past four days talking about this this is something Michael shared with us and for four days we've been talking about it and trust me we are going to continue talking about it because it's a fascinating question and this happened to a friend of his where she was invited on a romantic weekend and her partner brought one thing that not only ended the weekend she said I'm going home and I ain't gonna see you again what was it so what I'd love to know is what would break your relationship what would end your relationship what would your partner pack they would say you know what this doesn't work for me can we androids over there we have some microphones with anyone like to share what would be the end of a relationship for you a fishing rod a fishing rod yeah that's not that's not good what else sorry a football are we talking about American football or Italian football it doesn't matter because it doesn't involve you right right okay what else a games console yep not very romantic and not very interactive what else I would say he's mother's picture that would be a relationship breaker a former partners picture a former partners picture yeah okay anyone else time to tell us okay so in this real these are perfect and you might keep thinking about this and the whole idea is it does make us think and reflect and share ideas this is what this person's partner brought on the trip now it's funny because my reaction in Carla's first reaction our first reaction was excellent he's gonna iron him perfect so the key word here she wanted a romantic weekend romantic is not ironing your shirt so that they're really cutting it off straight every day so just think about it it's very funny the point here is that the what-if question so again what I'd love you to take home for today is if you can just add one of the elements into your classes you can have the little sparks a little fireworks in your classroom I encourage you to be brave and thank you so much for considering these ideas [Applause]

Channel: Oxford University Press ELT

Views: 6,425

Rating: 4.8928571 out of 5

Keywords: Oxford, University, Press, English, Language, Teaching, ONC19, Oxford National Conference, Donna Fields, OUP Italy

Id: n0exDZ5g-cc

Length: 57min 12sec (3432 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019