Rigor. The Good Kind

Kindergarteners problem solving
with Kodable.

When students are engaged in a deep-think activity, I notice the faces. Slightly scrunched with squinted, blinking eyes that signal disbelief as in "That doesn't make sense." But it's not a face that shows quit. It's a look that's about to roll up its sleeves and hunker down for serious mano a mano combat. For me, this is what rigor looks like in the classroom.

I see this expression in students of all elementary grades. Even in kindergarten as students absorb complex programming concepts through challenging activities in the Kodable app, they'll stop, stare, gaze in disbelief, but push forward to success, often with a little help from their friends and classmates.

These days rigor is considered a desired learning trait. A trendy question among parents and educators asks what rigor looks like in the classroom. It's initially a strange question to consider since the word is typically defined with words such as strictness, severity, harsh, unyielding, inflexible, and my favorite (not really) -- cruelty.

Perhaps, as parents and educators, we have come to manipulate the definition of rigor into something virtuous as a proactive response. We see a cruel world outside the protective nurturing biodomes of the home and classroom and we want children to be prepared for life's hardships, to have the savvy and Hamburger Hill-type grit to overcome the unexpected and enduring challenges in their lives. Or maybe we just want them to put down their Snapchat videos and mow the lawn. Anyone's lawn.

2nd Graders join forces.

When I see second graders, such as those in Ms. Martin's room, warming up their brains with Kodable programming challenges, coming together to share solutions, trying them each, and learning from their mistakes in Design Thinking manner, and ultimately exalting in a shared success, I'm reminded that the look of rigor does not have a standard definition. Yi Cheng and Julian say it best.

"It's fun. Is it easy? Not really. It's easy then it gets harder harder harder. We like challenges," assures Yi Cheng. "It works your brain," says Julian with the gratified look of someone's who's put in a hard day's work.
This is how you define rigor. The good kind.

Piece by Piece: Best Summer Vacation without WIFI Ever!

Design challenges with Plus Plus

For an entire week, my children indulged in activities that didn't rely on electricity or WIFI. It wasn't a form of punishment or an organized "family values" challenge (see Screen Free week). It was a week in the Adirondacks. When they weren't discovering new ways to jump in a lake or capture little frogs, they played card games (Crazy 8s, Go Fish, etc), Pixie Sticks, Jenga, but there was something new to me that was just so mind-blowing in its intellectual absorption and simplicity.

Nothing more mesmerizing than
watching your kids being mesmerized.

They are called Plus Plus puzzle pieces made by a company in Denmark. Each piece is small enough to sit comfortably on your fingertip and is made of flexible plastic. Since the sets do not come with directions, the blueprint is truly in the hands of builder. But they have the same allure of Lego bricks, begging to be pieced together. Try connecting two pieces. And I defy you to not attach a third, fourth, and so on.

The activity easily promotes fine motor development, hand eye coordination, pattern recognition, interpersonal skills since builders often ask for feedback, and spatial reasoning. Research has indicated that children who play puzzles are more likely to develop an interest in the STEM fields.

My kids would sit for lengthy sessions, manipulating the Plus Plus pieces into place in their best efforts to match the design they envisioned. There's nothing more mesmerizing than watching your children being mesmerized. I'm not sure if I could've stopped them if I waved a WIFI enabled iPad in front of them. Oh sure, now that we're back from the Adirondacks, they do have their WIFI devices again, but they're still building with Plus Plus keeping their fingers dexterous and persistent and their imaginations lively.

From Wondering to Researching to Teaching

Wondering topics ranged from
supernovas, to sustainable energy, to
Sesame Street.

     Children come to school each day with that built-in sense of wonder. Classroom teachers are challenged to find ways to sharpen their skills for finding answers to the things they wonder about. These essential research skills, whether asking targeted questions, synthesizing ideas, or educating an audience, will serve them well in school and life. Mrs. Blackley challenged her 5th grade students to wonder about anything and write a short narrative that incorporated their findings. And while their writings were fascinating reads in themselves, the impact is in the videos they produced and then published to the Internet, which will allow them to reach and teach a broader and, potentially, global audience.
     So as a class, we discussed the video medium and how the spoken words, or script, provide information, often research findings, that support the visuals. The video script is a different style of writing compared with their expository pieces. Once we had a rough script, we developed a visual storyboard using Google Slides.
     The storyboard is our pre-production plan for editing in iMovie. Students recorded their narration using Vocaroo, a web based tool, downloaded mp3, picture, and video files into iMovie, and after one or two editing lessons, were on their way. The results were impressive. But as I always tell students, the most informative and engaging videos begin with an informative and engaging script. The foundation of the video has to be a great story. Otherwise, the video becomes Grandpa's slideshow of Yellowstone Park and your audience will yawn and lean towards the door. As I often tell my students, when it comes to making videos, the easiest thing to do is make a bad one. Our goal was to make videos that engaged and informed an audience and left them begging to see it again and again. I believe we accomplished that. Check out Manami's fantastic video production as well as her storyboard. It's unfathomable that when the year began, she hardly spoke English :)

Media Literacy Through the PSA

     More than ever, young people need to be equipped with media literacy skills. To be able to dissect and analyze abundant digital information for meaning and credibility. To recognize fact from fiction. To understand when a message is angled towards a single perspective. One way to develop these media literacy skills is to have students produce their own digital stories. In Mr. DelMonaco's 5th grade class, we produced video Public Service Announcements. These videos were inspired by their own persuasive writing stories. We first examined production techniques used in other PSAs. We noticed the tone. Some were funny, some serious. We noticed how some conveyed information visually, some with a narrator. We discussed the possible reasons for the pacing of nvideo cuts. And we paid attention to how music influenced the message the viewers received. Then we created storyboards to convey the main idea of our persuasive writing pieces. Once the storyboards were completed and approved, the students formed small production teams and launched into the Edgewood hallways, the back yard, the front yard, and into classroom nooks with iPads recording each storyboarded scene. These scenes were then assembled in the iMovie app to put the final edits on their :30-:60 video PSAs. They were all put on display outside Mr. DelMonaco's room using the Aurasma app, but you can take a look at one of them here. This one's on school locker searches. https://goo.gl/a8Hg6p

Girls Who Engineer Their Future

Girls design 3D models in Tinkercad.

About 20 girls took part in our first lunchtime Coding & Design club of the year. These girls will engage in coding with Scratch and/or Tynker, but we began our lunch sessions in design. In Mr. Fitzpatrick's art studio (STEAM Lab), the girls used Tinkercad, an online 3D modeling program, to create artifacts that represent Edgewood history. Our school just turned 97 years old on January 5 and with our Centennial seemingly just around the corner and with the upcoming launch of the Edgewood History Club, the 3D design work seemed timely. This club is available to both girls and boys, but as the old saying goes...girls first. It's well-known that while girls are drawn towards the creative problem-solving and "making" aspect of the STEM fields, keeping them in these fields as they get older is a challenge. But educators and corporate experts believe it's possible to attract girls for the long haul. We agree. - Paul Tomizawa

Sculpting an Act of Faith and Charity

   

4th grade donated over 700 cans of food with this sculpture.

     At the holiday assembly, the 4th grade unveiled an impressive sculpture of the American Flag. It was a work of art consisting of 373 cans of Campbell's Tomato Soup and 174 cans of Starkist tuna cans. But like any collaborative project or novel approach to learning, there were doubts. Would it work? Would it be appreciated? And considering the many needs of building a classroom community, teaching/learning the curriculum, and meeting the diverse needs and interests of an energetic student body, would it be a worth the time invested in this learning experience? So the teachers, Mrs. Aberman, Mrs. Mraz, Mrs. Nedwick, and myself and our students, slogged through the doubts, looking for reasons to believe and persevere.     Students and teachers discussed construction strategies, engineering and mathematics, elements of design, and we experimented in the computer lab by building short towers of cans and wondered how high we could build, before they toppled. We had begun collecting cans in early November. Parents quickly responded to our requests for donations. And while we had ambitious designs on completing the sculpture in time for the Thanksgiving assembly, things...you know... happen. Still we persisted and took advantage of the extra time to sort through questions across the grade level and experiment with ideas that were sprouting across the grade level. We debated whether we should build a single layer construction or a double layer.     The original Canstruction sculpture from which we drew our inspiration, used a double layer. But a double layer meant asking parents for nearly 100 additional soup cans, to match our original goal. A single layer could be built against a backboard, but would probably mean that we'd lose the bend in our sculpture that would make our flag look like it was waving in the breeze. It was clear that students wanted to keep the flag-wave, but acknowledged that we didn't have time to collect more cans. Fortunately, in visiting the rules for creating Canstruction sculptures, we learned we could use tape. YES! So teams of students began binding the cans that we had and later stacked them in columns on stage.     Today, this sculpture only lives in memories and photos. Shortly after we unveiled this beautiful work of art, we deconstructed it, and donated over 700 cans of food to the Soup Kitchen at St. Peter's Church in Portchester, NY. Looking back, it was clear that this project was not just about collaboration, engineering, and design. It was an act of conscience shared by parents, students, and their teachers.  - Paul Tomizawa