Meetings, meetings, meetings.

Yesterday was a day of many meetings. So many that I really needed to go home and process before I could post coherently. In the book some of us are reading together this summer, Curriculum 21: Essential Education in a Changing World, Jacobs strongly recommends reviewing the curriculum for relevance. I thought this was a wonderful idea when I read it and still do, but wow it is hard to actually do. Everyone has an opinion, a well thought out, based on years of experience opinion. And sometimes these opinions clash or need to be re-evaluated. Okay, enough stalling on to the meat of it.
If you have been reading this blog, you know that last week when I sat with fifth grade we discussed using Scratch, especially in the younger grades. The key question was: “Are second graders learning integers and the Cartesian plane through Scratch?” I opened myself up for this as I listed these under the skills section. We revisited this in my meeting with the second grade teachers who wanted to reevaluate whether it was developmentally appropriate, especially the use of negative numbers. This really haunted me throughout the last twenty four hours because I have been using Scratch successfully with the second grade for the last three years. I spent a long time on the Internet last night researching developmentally appropriate math and reflecting on my experiences as a classroom teacher, a technology teacher and my continued learning in this area. For me the question is, “Will my teaching Scratch and introducing integers and the Cartesian plane be detrimental to students learning in the future?”
“Fostering Children’s Mathematical Power” by Jerome Baroody speaks directly to the question of integers and young children. He cautions that students need to understand that the symbols used to show positive and negative numbers are not operations. Additionally, he feels that the introduction of negative numbers is dependent on the development of the child.
“In general, primary children can be introduced to negative numbers if done in a developmentally appropriate manner.” (p. 8-23)
“Ideally, a discussion of negative numbers would arise from a genuine need of such numbers.” (p. 8-23)

Scratch gives children an authentic environment to
begin exploring negative numbers on a visual plane. Children have a built in need to use the x axis and y axis to plan the animation of their sprites. My own experience is that Scratch is a way to differentiate learning of this concept. For some students there is the almost automatic understanding that certain planes on the grid are only positive or negative. For others, it is simply a way of defining a point and although they are using the plane they don’t further explore value. I don’t teach using negative numbers beyond the idea that they represent a place on the plane. Whenever students move their mouse the exact position of the cursor is noted in the lower right hand corner of their stage. (This is where they position the sprites.)

Can the children really work the program? As with anything else there are those that excel and those that need a lot of support, however, the critical mass can create basic animations. Here is a sampling of work done by this past year’s second graders:





What have I learned?

1. It is really important for my communication with classroom teachers to be clear. Now that I am going into their classrooms I think this will be easier as we work together to create relevant curriculum.
2. I need to be more aware of the language I am using when I introduce material to students. Anne helped me to identify better words to use to ensure that I don’t cause confusion. I will definitely be more aware of this in the future. For instance, defining negative numbers as numbers that come before zero is wrong, and instead I should use the term less than to help the students begin to understand the concept. Additionally, I want to make sure that I use the words positive and negative and not plus or minus.
3. Scratch is a valuable tool for giving students authentic practice with math concepts. It is also a great opportunity to help students learn how pervasive math is in our lives and how to problem solve.

Okay, I already knew/believed that last one but wanted to throw it out there anyway.
On a different topic that once again went back to a conversation I had last week, we discussed the value of Twitter in the classroom. Is it a worthwhile tool for students? I don’t recommend students in second grade having a Twitter account, however I think we have a wonderful opportunity to model using Twitter as a tool. I had hoped for classrooms to create Twitter connections with other schools. The idea was a low level investment of time posting relevant information we are learning and discovering what other students are learning throughout the year. The hope was that meaningfully relevant curricular collaboration would ensue. Why not use blogs? I thought this would be too time consuming for teachers to maintain on a regular basis. However, I am not opposed to creating and following other blogs around the world.
What are your thoughts on this discussion?
On to Middle School and the best place to introduce Digital Citizenship. Where and when do we introduce it? How do we continue to stoke the discussion? Do we keep it mainly in the MESSFlex (Math, English, Science, Social Studies flexible time)? Do we use advisory time? How much time will we need? The idea of using MESSFlex for issues pertaining to plagiarism and piracy was proposed as a natural fit and safety, citizenship and digital footprints in advisory. However a counter argument was made that all should take place in MESSFlex because there is more time available and the students need to have the same message brought to them from different disciplines to ensure there is real learning. This is a conversation still in progress.
Finally, I met with the first grade yesterday and began to consider what makes sense with their curriculum. What can we keep? What do we need to re-evaluate or postpone? We are beginning our year with a PowerPoint based on a book the students write about themselves. This is a rework of a project that first graders have been doing in the tech lab. The students will create the book first in the traditional way and then from the book create a PowerPoint, exploring how to use multiple ways of telling a story. We are going to continue with the story theme and students will again create movies sharing the content they learn about Day of the Dead. This will begin shortly after the unit wraps up and we will work together on a daily basis for a week or two.
Again, it was amazing to work with teachers, share what I have been doing in the lab and aligning it better with what happens in their classroom. There is some anxiety on both sides. For me there is the sense that this is what I have been doing, and everyone has an opinion on what is the best way to do it and what is developmentally appropriate. The great thing about working with teachers is I get to make my curriculum better. The hard part is my practice is under a microscope and for someone who often inhabits the world of insecurity it can be a little scary.
I appreciate all your thoughts, suggestions and challenges. It is a growing process.