Seeing a Scientist

“The NVIV (Next Vista Inspiring Video) series of posts are written by Rushton Hurley and designed to provide students and teachers with fascinating discussion prompts.”

In Seeing a Scientist, Rushton features Gitanjali Rao, the 12-year-old who invented “Tethys,” a portable device that detects lead in water.

He gives the following prompts to accompany this video:

“Do you think a 12-year-old can really be a scientist? Why or why not?

Does your definition make it easier to imagine being something that usually only an adult can be? What would be another career that it would be cool to do at your age? What makes it possible for you?”

This video shows that age does not matter when trying to find a solution to something. It seems that no one told this girl that she was too young to try. As teachers, we should encourage students to look at real-world problems and see what they might be able to do to help be the solution. It should not matter how old they are. Too many times society dismisses people because they are too young or too old. This proves that age shouldn’t matter.

Please check out the video and think of other prompts you might come up with. Please share.

Pi Day

I like March 14 every year because it is known as Pi Day. It is also a great day to eat pie!

This is a great day to do Pi activities with students. Here are some resources for the classroom:

A Brief History of Pi

Pi: The Most Important Number in the Universe?

Happy Pi Day: 5 Ways NASA Uses Pi

Real Life Application of Pi

Life is Weird – Ten Real Life Applications of the Most Famous Number in the World, Pi

Do you do any special activities on Pi Day? Please share.

Photo by Levi Guzman on Unsplash

Relate to the Real World

There are so many lessons that I think students need to learn. Yes, they need to learn the basics of reading and math, and writing but how we teach these skills is also important.

Just learning facts and memorizing things won’t help students retain the information.

It is important that all learning is related to how the skills will be used in the real world.

There are tools that my grandparents may have used in school that are no longer relevant to skills needed today. There are also tools that are important to learn how to use today that were not even invented during my grandparents’ time.

I like to think about the skill that I’m wanting to teach and then list all the ways that I use that skill currently. I also like to think about what occupations may use these skills on a daily basis. That is a great way to introduce a lesson. It is important for students to learn why they are having to learn something because this helps keep them engaged. By knowing the purpose helps students know that it isn’t just busywork. At the end of the lesson or unit, I might invite a speaker in that specific career who could tell about their occupation and how they use these skills in the workplace.

Reading is a skill that everyone uses every day whether it is reading a newspaper, road signs, or directions on how to do something. The better a person can read, the more opportunities that are available to them.

Many math skills are needed in everyday living skills. Counting money, Budgeting, paying bills, savings, paying for recreational activities all involve math skills. Cooking and measurement go hand in hand.

Writing is necessary for communication. Many forms require personal information and signatures. People leave notes for others when face-to-face communication is not available. Texting on phones or sending emails are commonplace activities now.

As long as I can show my students how they will use a certain skill in their life right now, students are more engaged and willing to learn. If I can’t show a purpose for learning that skill, I need to rethink what I’m teaching. Am I just doing this for busywork? If so, I should be teaching something that they need to learn.

How do you relate your teaching to real life? Please share.

Photo by Carl Jorgensen on Unsplash

Busy Work

In The trap of busy in Seth Godin's Blog, Seth Godin states,

“Busy is simply a series of choices about how to spend the next minute.

Productive requires skill, persistence, and good judgment. Productive means that you have created something of value.”

Too many times, students are given busy work. This keeps them busy so that they are not sitting idle.

Unfortunately, students are aware when they are given busy work.

When I was a beginner teacher, I tended to give busy work. I felt so overwhelmed with planning and paperwork, I just needed time to do some of this while the students were busy doing something else. As long as they were busy, they were not usually having behavior issues. The ones who did have behavior issues did not want to do the busywork.

Once I realized that I needed to rethink “busy work,” it made all the difference in the world.

I needed to think about my lesson and the purpose and relevance of the lesson. If I couldn’t figure out the purpose, besides busy work, then it would not be relevant to my students. If it wasn’t relevant to them, then I shouldn’t expect the students to invest time and effort into doing the work.

Once I had a real purpose, I needed to make sure that my students understood the purpose which makes the lesson relevant to them. If they realize that the lesson is relevant to their future, whether immediate or long term, it can start to mean something to them. If they feel that they could benefit from the learning, they will be more willing to put effort into the work.

When students feel that they have time and effort invested in their own learning, they will be more engaged. Sometimes I also learn that when the students are engaged, I’m more engaged with them. I realize that this is what makes teaching fun and worthwhile.

When my students are fully engaged in a lesson that they know is not busy work, I realize that the lesson is successful.

How do you avoid busy work for your students? Please share.

Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash

Make It Meaningful

In F.A.I.L.W. from Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott McLeod states,

“But maybe the reason our students are ‘failing’ is because they rightfully see that so much of the work that we ask them to do is pretty meaningless and so they simply try to opt out.”

I feel this is vital to any successful lesson! If you can’t make the students believe there is a really good reason for learning the lesson, they will not give their best effort. Students are smarter than we give them credit for and when they feel that all they are doing is wasting their time, they will tune a teacher out. Many times, people will assume they are having trouble with the lesson or they don’t understand the concepts, but they may only be choosing not to put effort into the lesson.

When I look back at my years of schooling, I remember many lessons that I have never used. I also try to remember lessons that I wish I had paid more attention to and how relevant they are to my life.

When I was going through the national certification process, I had to really look at my lessons and give rationales for why I was teaching the lesson and why I was using the strategies in the lesson. This really changed the way that I taught. I was making my lessons more meaningful because if I felt my rationale wasn’t strong enough, I knew that my students wouldn’t find it meaningful enough. I had to think about why I was teaching that lesson. Was it because others had influenced me to teach it and I really didn’t need to do it? Was it just busy work and was I just wasting learning time?

I noticed that when I spent the time making sure that the lesson was meaningful to my students, it was easier to plan the lesson. Also, when I explained to my students why this lesson was important, the students were more engaged in the lesson and it usually had a successful outcome.

How do you make sure your lessons are meaningful? Please share.

Photo by Manasvita S on Unsplash

When the Time is Right

I remember when I was young, my mother tried to teach me to sew, knit and crochet, but it just didn’t stick. I’m not even sure at that age that I even wanted to learn it. But she felt that I needed to learn it. At the time, I never really understood why I needed to learn these skills and my parents never

Now that I’m retired, I find myself knitting, crocheting and I’m just learning to sew. I wish I had paid attention to my mother when I was a child because she is no longer here to help me. I love knitting and crocheting things I can wear or give as gifts. I want to sew and make some things I’d like to have. In my earlier years, I didn’t have a need or a desire for these things.

When the time was right, it all came back to me. I’ve heard people talk about “It’s like riding a bike. It will come back to you.” They are right! I may not be great at the skill but some of it comes back into my memory. I might need to refresh my memory and sharpen my skills, but the basics are still in the back of my mind. I found out that I had muscle memory from learning to knit and crochet as a child.

I feel like teaching my students basic skills that they might find boring or not motivating is still necessary. They need to know the basics in order to learn more complex skills. They may not find it useful at this point in their life but later in life, the time may be right for these skills to resurface.

I also need to do a better job of explaining to my students why they need to know these basic skills. I need to have concrete examples of why and when they may use these skills when they get out in the real world.

I need to show students that the math skills they learn will be used in the lives in many different ways. Some of the situations may include finances like budgeting, saving, spending situations, cooking, gas mileage, landscape design, home décor, fashion, building construction, and travel.

Learning to read will help them gain information for learning or for fun. Reading instructions will be helpful to them for their who life. They may read newspapers or magazines to learn new information. They will read websites or even information with interactive games. Reading road signs will be important when they drive. Reading is a survival skill that will improve the quality of life.

History is important because if we learn from the past, we learn not to make the same mistakes. We can learn how to improve on the foundations laid by people before us. We can learn to make connections with others by knowing our history.

Science is important to learn why and how things work. We can also learn why and how things work together. We can use science to create new things.

These are just a few real-life explanations of how we use the skills we learn in school. Each topic can be broken down into more specific skills and explained in more detail.

How do you explain why you teach certain skills? Please share.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Relevance

In Stop Pretending and Make School Relevant from A Teacher's Life for Me,  Michael Soskil  shares, 

“The content we teach has real applications to make the world a better place. It's our job as teachers to help children see the connections.”

I believe the biggest problem teachers make is to not show students the connections they have to the new learning that is being taught.

We get so brainwashed by the powers that be about timelines and standards that we forget about the students we teach.

We know that we have to teach certain concepts and skills and we have a limited time to do it. Usually, a curriculum specialist or a department chairperson will have a suggested time frame to teach specific things. All of these things need to be completed so that students are given the information they need in order to do well on the standardized tests that they are given.

By being so wrapped in all of the rules, regulations, and standardized teaching that we forget that students are not robots. They all are not “programmed” to learn at the same speed and retain all the same information.

Students learn differently and at different speeds. I don’t care how many days, months, years, and even decades that they try to make all students fit the same mold, it is never going to happen!

Until we recognize and embrace the individualness of all of our students, we are doing them a great disservice.

We need to show students why they are learning specific skills and how they will apply this learning to their lives. They need to know why it is important that they learn this information.

We need to remember that we teach students, not subjects, not standards, not rules and regulations.

How do you teach these connections? Please share.

Photo by israel palacio on Unsplash

R is for Relevant

During this holiday season, I thought it would be fun to use the word Christmas and apply it to education.

Today’s letter is R and R stands for relevant.

I have had to attend professional development meetings where nothing shared was relevant to my teaching situation. I felt it was a waste of my time and resented having to sit there through these things. Sometimes I brought work to do so that I felt I was using my time more wisely but it can also look rude to the speaker. Sometimes I even brought some crochet or knitting in order to help me pay attention.

The worst thing I can do when teaching a lesson to my students is to not explain how this new learning will be relevant to them. I need to show a connection to their current situation. Maybe what I’m teaching is a skill that will help them be successful in the future. Maybe this new skill is a foundation for something we are going to learn next. Maybe this skill is something that will make their life easier right now. If I can’t find some connection and show how it is relevant, then I need to scrap this lesson. I will be wasting their time and my time.

I would not give lessons to my students on how to drive a horse and buggy if they will never need this information. I would not teach a student how to write in calligraphy style if they will never use this skill. It is different if they show an interest and want to learn these things because this interest makes the learning relevant. But if they have no interest and there is no need, then I don’t need to teach it.

Maybe a lesson at the beginning of the year is not relevant at that time but later in the year, it might be. That will be an appropriate time for me to teach this lesson.

Teaching students that their tastes and interests may change over time and that this is okay is a valuable lesson. I’ve learned many new things over the past few years that I never thought I’d have an interest in learning. Years ago, it was not relevant to me but when I was interested in learning this specific thing, then it became relevant.

How do you decide what is relevant to your students? Please share.

Photo by Evelyn on Unsplash