For the majority of the afternoon, we spent our time down on the floor of the large exhibition hall traveling around the the different quadrants with large groups of students. It was so neat to see what all the employers and businesses had to share about their companies and fields and how they adapted what they do to appeal to a predominately middle-school aged audience. The Construction area was definitely the one where I took many ideas away, followed closely by the Advanced Manufacturing. Don't get me wrong, the Information Technology and Health Sciences were pretty cool, the others appealed to some of the design things I would like to try with students.
This week I had the opportunity of attending the MiCareerQuestin Grand Rapids, MI. As part of the event, West Michigan Tech Talent and Kent ISD teamed up to provided a special learning opportunity for teachers during the career event that was being held for students. As an educator, this was a great way to connect with professionals and have conversations about what they are looking for in potential employees (our students) and how we can help prepare them for jobs. Although the focus of our educator event was centered around technology, so many of the concepts can be carried over into most other career fields. I created the sketchnote above based on my learning for the day and the one thing that really stuck with me was that of "Digital Disruption." We need to disrupt our way of thinking in order to move forward - especially in regards to technology as it is hard to find a job that does not utilize technology in some way. It really made me think deeper about our learning in general as we often need to disrupt our way of thinking to meet the needs our students - there is no one size fits all learning method. As part of the educator event, we had the AMAZING opportunity to learn more about coding with Arduino and building circuits with TinkerCad. I have not explored using Arduino or any of the tutorials in TinkerCad so it was pretty fun learning something new. I always love when I am put in the seat of the student and learning something new. I partnered up with someone and we definitely experienced some successes as well as some fails. It was great learning about it though and having people in the room who have used it before to help us along the way and think about uses in the classroom. For the majority of the afternoon, we spent our time down on the floor of the large exhibition hall traveling around the the different quadrants with large groups of students. It was so neat to see what all the employers and businesses had to share about their companies and fields and how they adapted what they do to appeal to a predominately middle-school aged audience. The Construction area was definitely the one where I took many ideas away, followed closely by the Advanced Manufacturing. Don't get me wrong, the Information Technology and Health Sciences were pretty cool, the others appealed to some of the design things I would like to try with students. It was definitely a great day of learning and I can't wait to see what they do next year!
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One thing I have been wanting to do for a while with the 4th grade classes I regularly work with is a Breakout EDU game. I was a bit hesitant to introduce a game with the boxes and locks as I anticipated there being a lot of playing around with them and not a whole lot of clue solving taking place. I know there are many ways to manage this, but at the end of the day, we know our students best and need to adapt lessons and activities to their needs. As I really wanted to focus on the content, I thought I would try something that I had seen some teachers on Instagram do and try the "Crack the Code" approach. With this, it is very similar to a Breakout EDU game (and pretty much any Breakout EDU game could be adapted to this style), but does not actually use any physical boxes or locks. I created a game for introducing basic Earth Day concepts, basic math review, as well as my love for sloths. I really wanted the students to focus on the critical thinking and problem solving aspect as they persevered through difficult tasks. Each of the six groups started on Task 1 and as they completed a task, they moved their group sloth from the bottom of the tree to the top. This allowed me to easily see where each group was with a quick glance at the board and check in with groups who might be struggling a little. I also intentionally did not incorporate technology into this game as I wanted to eliminate as many potential distractions as I introduced this type of game. After starting with this approach, feel confident that the students would be successful in participating in a regular Breakout EDU game. I felt it was necessary to scaffold the game structure, so that I was not setting groups up for frustration and confusion. Also, to be honest, this was less work (short of writing an original game) on the setup end of things for a teacher. I simply had to make sure there were enough copies of each clue for the number of groups that I had as well as the necessary materials for solving (scrap paper, dry erase markers, black lights, etc.). This was the "Learner Profile" that I created for this activity. My district is working towards making the 5Cs outside of content part of how we assess our students, so I am trying to make sure I have ways of measuring the activities I am doing with students. In full disclosure, I made this after I had done the game with students because I wanted to do some observation of the students as they were working. I have done Breakout EDU games countless times before, but I hadn't sat down and put into words how I would show a growth progression for their participation in the game. These Learner Profile rubrics were created based on the book, Becoming Brilliant and the EdLeader21 4C Rubrics. I tried to make them so that they could be applied to any Breakout EDU/Crack the Code games for any grade level (as I do games for many grade levels). I also made a student self-assessment version. These are both works in progress (and let's be honest, are probably about 20 revisions away from calling it "done"!), but help me when I am watching students complete the games to see how they are growing or developing in some of the other "C" skills outside of the content. NOTE: I do not always do a reward for students with Breakout EDU games (I am a firm believer in high-fives as rewards!), but I saw the Trolli sour sloths when I was at the store and I just couldn't resist!
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