Today is another ATF full day, with opportunities to work with others in the district.  At this point I have created my COVER board for the classroom.

 

I have included mascots for Optimism, Visualization, and Reflection (my students are working on possibilities for Collaboration and Experimentation.

 

Reflection Monkey    

 

Optimism Dory

Visualization Spider

 

Of course, I am aware that just posting the bulletin board in my classroom does not mean the students will learn the dispositions.

 

My students are beginning to move into areas where they can regularly apply the dispositions.  I have introduced Ozobots to the class in small groups.  At this point, they are just playing with the robots line-following features.  Some are attempting to draw the color codes that control movement and speed.

 

Link to Ozobot Color Codes

Ozobot Robot

 

The next step will be to introduce Ozobot challenges to student partners.  The color codes are difficult to draw in general, and very difficult for third graders.  For this reason, I created the codes on a Publisher document so that they can be printed onto Avery stickers.

 

 One challenge I am considering is to give the students a large oval drawn on white paper.  The challenge would be to use three or fewer stickers to get the fastest travel time around the oval - first one way around, then the other.  The students will soon discover that some of the stickers may greatly speed up the Ozobot when it is going one way.  However, when the Ozobot is travelling the opposite way, the color code will actually slow it down. 

This is the type of challenge I had in mind when I was first looking into dispositions.  Students need rich challenges in order to best Experiment, Visualize, and Collaborate (and optimize? 😊 - show Optimism).

I also created a reflection form for students on Google Forms.

Link to COVER Reflection on Google Forms

My hope is that by using the form regularly through the year, I can accomplish two goals.  One, I can gather data about how often and well my students are using the COVER dispositions.  Two, the very act of reflecting will reinforce the dispositions for the students and help them internalize their use.


      My district's Advanced Tech Fellows (ATF) met today for a full school day of STEAM research, discussion, and collaboration.  This time gave me the chance to think about some recent developments in my classroom. 
       We have been working with a program called Code Monkey, which presents scaffolded coding challenges.  Several of my students despair when they are not able to solve a problem right away.  They ask certain peers for "help", by which they mean they want someone to tell them the answer.
        In addition, the class worked on "Thinking Cap" problems yesterday.  In our Math in Focus curriculum, these problems require the students to solve more complicated, depthful problems.  Once again, many students were not able to maintain their efforts.  They wanted help almost right away.

This is the Thinking Cap problem I am referencing

      Obviously, the students needed more strategies for how to proceed beyond their initial efforts.  Two strategies that came up were rereading the math problem and breaking it down into smaller parts.  I believe that these strategies can be generalized into most STEAM activities.  In order to persevere, students need to know strategies they can use to address challenges or problems.
      In addition, I am questioning if I should add one more disposition to my current list of four.  The students lack a sense of what might be called "purposeful tinkering".  They try one or two things and then give up.  In activities like Makerspace challenges, Code Monkey problems, or "Thinking Caps", students need to be able to try a number of approaches.  They can then learn new information from each attempt.  To me, trial and error means that you try something and learn from the error.
       This could be defined as a disposition - the habit of playing around with a situation in differing ways.  My colleague suggested calling this Experimentation, which seems good enough at this point.  This type of thinking is critical to STEAM, although I just didn't think of it as a disposition until recently.
       It also just occurred to me that the addition of Experimentation to my list allows me to make an acronym of my dispositions: Cooperation, Optimism, Visualization, Experimentation, Reflection (COVER).

Here are the four thinking skills.

        I have introduced two of the habits in my classroom, and touched upon the two others. I began with Reflection.  We have been practicing mindfulness at morning class meetings.  We began with mindful listening, shifted to mindful feeling (of the breath through our noses), and addressed mindful walking and tasting.  We finally have ended up with mindful seeing - with which I had a lot of success last year.  The students sit in an oval around the rug and I shake up a 2-liter glitter jar that I created last year.  The glitter falls for about 3 minutes.

Glitter Jar - partially settled

Mindfulness Board

          Once I had reached this point last year, I had the students choose a focus - listening, breathing, seeing - for the class meeting.  Most of them chose to watch the glitter jar.  In addition, I stressed the need for them to keep their body still.  The class can remain largely still and silent now for the full three minutes every morning.  The trick, of course, will be getting them to extend this mindfulness to other parts of their days. (For further information, see A Still, Quite Place by Amy Saltzman and The MindUp Curriculum by the Hawn Foundation.)

The Mindful Monkey

     This all fits into Reflection - which I defined as "being mindful about yourself".  We have begun to explore Reflection as it applies to the students as readers and writers.  Most importantly (for a STEAM focus), we have discussed being mindful about how students approach problem solving situations and learning in general.  We have even setup a mascot of sorts in the Mindful Monkey.  I have used this monkey in the past to encourage my students to use common sense.  But common sense can be a form of mindfulness, so I decided to change that this year.
     I liked the idea of having a mascot for the habits of mind, so I searched around for possible mascots for the three other habits I was stressing this year.  I defined Optimism as "approaching things positively."  The perfect mascot was already hanging from my ceiling.

"Just keep swimming ..."

     Who better to exemplify perseverance and a positive attitude than Dory?  My class now knows to "just keep swimming", when they reach a difficult patch.  Of course, just knowing the mantra does not guarantee that they will persevere.  However, one of my main goals for the beginning of the year was to teach the concepts and definitions behind these Habits of Mind to my students so that they would be familiar to them for the remainder of the year.  I believe the combination of posted definitions, regular reinforcement, and the use of mascots will help them understand these Habits as we reference them throughout the year.

       

In the last post, when I listed four STEAM habits of mind (optimism, visualization, collaboration, and reflection), I left out a large amount of thought that had gone into that list.  At my summer ATF (Advanced Tech Fellows) meeting in July, I decided to focus upon habits of mind specific to STEAM and conducted some research.  Lists of these habits exist in a number of different forms, but I found the defined habits as either too complicated, too vague, or too numerous for third graders.  My initial  attempt at a third grade list ended up being:

• Problem Solving - flexibility*, experimentation, logical thinking
• Visualizing - Math in Focus (math program), planning
• Improving - Growth Mindset, questioning*
• Optimism - Perseverance, also Growth Mindset
• Collaboration - listening, communicating, flexibility, empathy
• Reflection - Ethical considerations*, metacognition 

                           (* the starred items were habits included in other lists)

Then, last week, I attended CCSD's week-long K-12 STEAM Initiative.  One focus of our work was the "Habitudes" - habits of mind or attitudes necessary for life success, especially in STEAM pursuits.  These Habitudes are curiosity, imagination, courage, perseverance, adaptability, self-awareness, and passion.  We also adopted and utilized a new district problem solving framework which easily fits STEAM projects and is based around a think-execute-reflect cycle (for STEAM tasks it could be thought of pre-production, production, and post-production).

This week made me reevaluate what habits I wanted to teach my 3rd graders.  As far as the Habitudes went, I felt they were all valuable, but were not all something I wanted to directly teach.  For example, I would want to value and encourage curiosity, passion, and imagination, but I didn't see myself teaching those habits.  However, I felt I could teach perseverance and self-awareness.

Also, I began to see problem solving as a skill, not a habit of mind.  By using the problem-solving framework in my classroom, I would be working on the skills of problem solving and improving.  Thus, I did not need them on my habits list.

A new list took shape:
    Optimism - approaching tasks with perseverance and a willingness to learn from them
      (this includes perseverance and a growth mindset)
    Visualization - making an image from given information and your imagination
      (this includes imagination and is a direct teaching point in our math and reading programs)
    Collaboration - working with others to improve thinking and grow ideas
      (this includes adaptability, and group skills like listening and empathy)
    Self-Awareness - attempting to know yourself as a learner and a collaborator
      (this includes metacognition, adaptability, and mindfulness)

I know these habits will evolve as I use them, but I am comfortable with them as a beginning.  I think they meet my criteria.  They are limited in number (only four), they are interdisciplinary, and they are habits I can teach to third graders.

 

I am planning on using this blog to record my efforts at bringing STEAM to my third grade classroom.  I will be defining the term broadly (and refining it as I go) to include problem solving, project-based learning, authentic tasks, and any skills inherent within those categories (e.g. science, math, engineering skills).  In addition, I feel it is important to develop related habits of mind, such as optimism, visualization, collaboration, and reflection.