Visual Aides

I have found that the use of visual aides in instruction has benefited all students.  Derived from SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol), this practice is meant to provide scaffolding to students and  help them focus on the process of learning.  Having cards that represent materials and places in the room, I can provide the visual cues along with my written and verbal.  This practice helps many types of students, from emerging bilinguals to students of various learning styles, by lowering the stress and difficulty of understanding procedures .

Some of my visual input cards.

Every morning I write on the board what is expected of them that morning.  I try to always pair the writing with a picture referring to their task.  I have found this effective with struggling readers, since blocks of text can sometimes act as a deterrent for them.  This way the picture cues them into the subject of the sentence and helps them decode the rest.

Table Specific Supplies & Materials

The use of a supplies and materials have always had their inherent issues.  Individual materials leads to arguments and need of space just as much as the use of communal resources (when they are kept on a supply shelf).  I personally prefer the use of communal supplies, it helps establish a sense of student community and reduces the battles over ownership.  

One major issue with how communal resources are often handled is the built in loss of instructional time during transitions.  No matter how practiced transitions and procedures are, there is just that inherent time loss.

What I like about the table specific materials is that the necessary materials are easily at hand (the one pictured has markers, scissors, rulers, pencils, lined paper, and hand sanitizer) .  While having the materials close has the potential for fiddling and misbehaving, I believe the benefit of easy access is worth the investment.  I saw these used in a 3rd grade class, and there was no observable misuse while I was in the classroom.

Projector Setup

How to set up one's project often poses a large logistical problem.  Between the quality of the tech-cart to the amount of space (you have to fit a document-camera, a projector, and have space for your documents), typical setups are less than efficient.

When in my friend's classroom, I was able to see a clever solution to the tech-cart/projector problem.  He had a table (my favorite style of classroom table, the six-top) positioned perpendicular to the classroom screen.  He had commandeered roughly a third of the table, about one student deep on each side (allowing for 4-5 more students, depending on if you place someone at the end).  He then had a instructional command center that allowed for ease of student access, reduced obstruction of student visibility, and an increase in space during teaching (and space is a valuable commodity).

I was so impressed by this layout that I will hopefully be rolling it out in my own classroom and will have pictures to document its completion.  

Special Spots

This classroom visual creates a quick go to for distributing students throughout the classroom.  Each student has a clothespin, and the pins correspond to a different spot in the room.  This enables teachers to quickly disperse students, allowing for a change of pace while minimizing the chaos of complete choice.

The Writing Process

This classroom visual allows for students to self assess and keep track of their own writing.  This leads to a form of ownership of the process that facilitates student work.  I also love the ability to the teacher to quickly assess (formative) where the class is at any given Writer's Workshop

Steven Johnson on Commonplace Books

Sticking with the themes of my initial posts, I will continue redefining the mission of this site through the lens of Steven Johnson (the author I focused upon in my last post).

From the transcript of Johnson's lecture entitled The Glass Box and the Commonplace Book 
"Each rereading of the commonplace book becomes a new kind of revelation. You see the evolutionary paths of all your past hunches: the ones that turned out to be red herrings; the ones that turned out to be too obvious to write; even the ones that turned into entire books. But each encounter holds the promise that some long-forgotten hunch will connect in a new way with some emerging obsession."

To just add on to this trajectory, below is an additional talk by Steven Johnson (again, derived from concepts covered in his book: Where Good Ideas Come From).  This TED talk focuses on his concept of liquid networks.  By isolating the reason why 'coffee houses' were such hotbeds of innovation during the Enlightenment as his launch (fun fact: its not the coffee), this video presents an idea that mirrors social constructivism.

Fostering Innovation In Our Students

Classrooms are like collections of innovators.  Each student brings with them their own unique background and come together to join in on a community of thinkers and collaborators.  

Over the recent years there has been a surge of research and writings on the concept of collaborative groups and innovation.  Whenever I read about them, the possible parallels within education always jumped out at me.  As a teacher, it is my duty to work toward facilitating individual and group growth within the microcosm of the classroom.

Why not model a learning community after an environment geared towards collaborative innovation?

I have recently been reading a lot of nonfiction works that revolve around the topic of innovation, collaboration, and design.  One particularly gripping work by the author Steven Johnson.  A few years ago I took a class titled Biology: Technology of the Future.  The class used Steven Johnson's book Where Good Ideas Come From as its foundational text.  The concepts in the book resonated with me on not only a personal level, but on a professional one.   

Amazon's Book Description:

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery—these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out applicable approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality. Where Good Ideas Come From gives us both an important new understanding of the history of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthroughs.

make space

As made evidenced by the banner of this website (and the title of my classroom website), I hold the book Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration in high regard.  I even have it along side the physical copy of my commonplace book. 

Make Space is a book put out by the d.school [design school] at Stanford.  It was created to help people create spaces that foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration (all three ideas build a foundation from which classrooms should be build). 

This book is has multiple types of entries interwoven to maintain engagement and provide multiple entry points throughout the text.  The different sections are: 

• "Tools--tips on how to build everything from furniture, to wall treatments, and rigging
• Situations--scenarios, and layouts for sparking creative activities
• Insights--bite-sized lessons designed to shortcut your learning curve
• Space Studies--candid stories with lessons on creating spaces for making, learning, imagining, and connecting
• Design Template--a framework for understanding, planning, and building collaborative environments"

I use this book to give me ideas for things to build in my classroom, how I should structure the space to optimize flow, and just as a source to spark classroom design ideas.  I will have many posts taken directly from my journal [which in turn was inspired by this book].  I regularly use it as a reference to help me synthesize my image of a perfect classroom [one that is always changing].

Contemporary design is a passion of mine, and this book only fans the flames.

Amazon Description: 

"If you are determined to encourage creativity and provide a collaborative environment that will bring out the best in people, you will want this book by your side at all times." --Bill Moggridge, Director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

"Make Space is an articulate account about the importance of space; how we think about it, build it and thrive in it." --James P. Hackett, President and CEO, Steelcase

An inspiring guidebook filled with ways to alter space to fuel creative work and foster collaboration.

Based on the work at the Stanford University d.school and its Environments Collaborative Initiative, Make Space is a tool that shows how space can be intentionally manipulated to ignite creativity. Appropriate for designers charged with creating new spaces or anyone interested in revamping an existing space, this guide offers novel and non-obvious strategies for changing surroundings specifically to enhance the ways in which teams and individuals communicate, work, play--and innovate.

Make Space is a new and dynamic resource for activating creativity, communication and innovation across institutions, corporations, teams, and schools alike. Filled with tips and instructions that can be approached from a wide variety of angles, Make Space is a ready resource for empowering anyone to take control of an environment.