It’s that time of year, again. Most teachers will find themselves coming back from break refreshed and ready to take on the second semester. For some of us, that means a new class or two. Thanks to my colleague @mikebondclegg here’s my favorite ice breaker, if you’re in the market for one;

Entourage.

How to play: It’s essentially an open, single-elimination rock-paper-scissors tournament. Have students stand up, find a partner and play a single game of rock-paper-scissors. The winner moves on and the loser follows them, cheering them on. Eventually you’ll have two people left, both with big entourages, facing off in a winner-takes-all game. Students shout, cheer and get WAYYYYYYY more into it than they should rooting for classmates they just met. This is what makes it an amazing game for middle school.

When the winner is declared, play the first 31 seconds of this video, instructing the students to put their hands up when it tells them to (right around 15 seconds). Make the winner feel special, then play again if the kids want to (they will). Here’s a poor attempt at recording the process for winning.  Repeat as necessary.

Protips:
– Establish RPS etiquette. I personally recommend “1,2,3, shoot” instead of “shooting” on 3.
– Students will try game the system and wait til the end to play their first game. Don’t let ’em.
– Participating in this yourself is important. Seeing their teacher play, lose and then cheer a kid on can have a positive, lasting impact for a 13 year old. Make sure you put your hands up when the time comes, too.

It’s Me! Maaaaaario! See here for previous versions and an explanation.

A surprising amount of students didn’t know what game this is from. RIP Mario.

Not actually on the door, but you get the idea.

My latest. The game screen reads: “PRESS START TO CONTINUE PLAYING. SEMESTERS REMAINING: 1”

Rewind. A year ago I was at Qout Market with some friends and noticed a couple eating some delicious looking pizza. As I walked by, I tried to look at the box they were eating out of, but it was blank. Eventually I found the place they had bought from, SOLO Pizza, and ordered. After enjoying their delicious pie, it struck me as odd that their takeaway boxes were empty. I filed it into the back of my mind, and walked on.

Fast Forward. My students are starting their third and final MYP Design unit this week; designing the takeaway box for SOLO Pizza. They aren’t coming up with a logo, slogan, or any other marketing for SOLO. They aren’t even designing the box from scratch. They are simply taking the existing box and the existing marketing materials for SOLO and making sure someone doesn’t walk by one of their customers and wonder what they’re eating. I’ll be sure to post some results as we finish up the unit in the coming month or two.

Achievement; unlocked. I was in Bahrain this weekend presenting at the GAFE Summit and had the honor of having Lisa Finch in my audience. Lisa takes graphic notes and was kind enough to share the notes she took on both(!) of my sessions. This is by far the coolest honor I’ve ever had as a presenter.

Final Thought. The real value here is the insight into the mind of an audience member. What were her big takeaways? What points were particularly memorable for her? As I begin dissecting these images over the next week, I’ll use them to figure out what’s getting to my audience and what might need more focus. Lisa probably didn’t intend for this, but she’s given me a form of feedback that’s unique to anything I’ve gotten before – and that’s truly valuable.

All aboard the constructivism train. I’m a big fan of constructivism, so much so that I quote Frank Noschese on my resume when he says;

“Teaching is really about creating experiences that allow students to construct meaning.”

Nevertheless, believing in something isn’t the same as practicing it and I need to admit that I’m not as good at designing learning experiences as I want to be. So I went out and did something about that.

Good teaching is theft. My first unit in MYP Design is having an 11-year old make a chair out of cardboard and duct tape. For some it’s daunting, for others it is nigh impossible. Many of my students respond to this challenge by getting a large box, stuffing it full of as much cardboard as they can, and calling it a chair. This is not learning, nor is it good design. This year I want to stop that practice, so we’re spending a bit more time on exploring how chairs support weight. My students understand that metal is stronger than cardboard, and they understand that because of this phenomenon they cannot go about designing out of cardboard that look like the chairs they’re sitting in class. But how to get them to rethink this? Enter; All For the Boys. Allison unknowingly designs a fantastic learning experience for helping students understand that different shapes have different strengths and weaknesses (Thanks, Allison). I broke students up into small groups, gave them 3 pieces of paper and some tape, and had them test the strength of each shape with empty tissue boxes stacked on top of one another. We kept track of the data in a simple table on the board, then reflected on the information when it was over. The understanding was palpable both in their faces and in their reflections.

Which shape is strongest? Doing some research on how a chair supports weight. #mypdesign #aisq8 #gr6design

A photo posted by Jeff (@mrlaymanss) on Sep 21, 2016 at 1:22am PDT

Final Word. I’m happy with how this activity went, but not satisfied with where it’s at. I get to run this with 5 more classes, so I’ll be sure to adapt it as we go on. One of my biggest takeaways today was a reminder that the more my students DO and TALK, the more they learn.

The Details. I’ve been doing the same unit in 6th grade for the last 3 years. Inspired by an activity I saw from Agency By Design, this is a pretty simple and beginner friendly Design task. I’ve refined it over the years, and I’m pretty happy where it’s at right now except for one thing; there aren’t a ton of resources out there about chairs. I mean, there are, but rarely are they age-appropriate for 11 year olds.

So instead of change my unit, I go and find resources by going to the professionals themselves. It’s amazing what the global community will do to support educators, all you need to do is ask. First, we started by connecting with Herman Miller, an award-winning furniture manufacturer. We sent them a video with our questions, and they sent us one back with answers. This year, we hooked up with an industrial designer named Jacob Ballard on Instagram to work on sketching.

Jeff (@mrlaymanss) teaches design at the American International School Kuwait. He and his students (11 years old) are starting a new "cardboard and duct tape" chair project and asked if I could take a stab at my own design. Jeff got to the words "design and students" on his email and I was on board. ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ This sketch is my take on the front end of the project. I'm a fan of modern design, so I started there, but after that the main concern was structure. Like a boat, this would need an internal "rib" system (not shown) and maybe a few more tape seams. Would need to prototype to really test! // TWS (track while sketched): RJD2 – Ghostwriter • • • • • #idsketching #sketching #idsketch #letsdesigndaily #sketchbook #industrialdesign #productdesign #sketchaday #designsketch #instasketch #designsketching #id #productdesignsketch #sketchdaily #instasketch #sketchzone #dailysketch #conceptsketch #designdaily #designprocess #furnituredesign #chairdesign #cardboard #aisq8 #gr6design #inktober #inktober2016 #sketchfresh

A photo posted by Jacob Ballard (@sketchfresh) on Oct 16, 2016 at 8:33am PDT

Jake was thrilled to help us out, and he bent over backwards answering questions, sketching, and sending us some awesome hi-res pics to unpack and work with.

Final Thought. It’s super easy to connect with people all over the place, and as an MYP educator, I feel like it’s part of my job to show my students the power of a globally connected community. If you’re looking for people or resources to work with, my advice to you is just ask. The worst thing they can say is no.

Here’s my problem. My students aren’t great at efficiency. They’re 11 and 12, so this should come as no surprise, but it still doesn’t sit well with me. This happens a lot; 

That is simultaneously a lot of unused and (now) unusable cardboard. I see this a lot, and it’s an issue I’ve been wanting to address for a while.

Here’s my plan. I wanted my students to arrive at the understanding that, when planned with purpose, you can get a lot out of a material (whether its cardboard, foam, etc.). If you cut out of the middle, you get far less. So I borrowed some math manipulatives from my sister-in-law and sketched out a quick activity;

How it works. I asked my students to pair up, then I gave them each an activity sheet and a tray of pre-sorted shapes. We talked about what a resource was and what it meant to be efficient. I showed them the piece of cardboard pictured above.  Then I worked through this slide deck, challenging the students to fit shapes into various spaces.

The results. While working together to fit the shapes into the spaces, it was as close to 100% engagement as I’ve ever had. Kids loved it, and several exclaimed that they didn’t think that many shapes could fit into such a small space. Several kids even made the connection between lining up the end of the shapes with the edge of the box to maximize efficiency. It was awesome. We reflected how we might use this in our MYP Design practice, and before we knew it class was over.

Tips, tricks, and what I’d change. First, I’d rearrange the activity sheet so that the boxes with the cutouts were on top, since we’re doing those first. Second, I’d go over everything BEFORE handing out the plastic pieces. Total noob mistake right there. Third, I don’t know how to create this digitally because I needed the exact area the shapes would take up. Here’s a picture of a possible solution for the large box. If anyone knows how to make that box using Google Draw so that it prints out to be exactly 8cmx9cm on an A4 size paper, let me know. Finally, have an example to show the kids. I’ve been keeping that piece of cardboard just in case, and I’m really glad I did. I think having that piece of evidence really solidified their understanding of our problem.

MYP Realtalk. Of all the elements in the teaching of the MYP, I’d bet a dollar that ATL skills are the most frequently overlooked. These soft skills are often assumed, and it’s easy to say we’re teaching Self Management skills when we tell kids to bring a pencil to class – but are we explicitly teaching them? If we’re being honest, probably not.

This year at AIS we’ve decided to focus on teaching one ATL per grade level, per semester. For the second semester, the Grade 6 teachers (including @miss_janelleday) are focusing on Thinking > Critical Thinking > Evaluating and Managing Risk. I am super pumped. Here’s what we have planned;

Stage 1: Propaganda Campaign. We’re going to borrow a phrase from Economics and pound it into our student’s brains; Is It Worth It? Without having told students anything, we’re begun posting “iiwi?” all around the school. We’ve hung posters and chalked up our sidewalks. It’s been going on a day, but already kids have noticed and are asking what it means.

Stage 2: Instruction and Authentic Examples. While our propaganda campaign rolls on, we (grade 6 teachers) are compiling situations we see where students clearly aren’t asking themselves if their action is worth it or not. In a few days when we return from our National/Liberation Holiday we’ll begin using the examples as tools for instruction. We’ll be challenging our kids to pause and think about potential outcomes of choices they make, and to ask themselves iiwi?

Stage 3: IDU. Our awesome Math and Individuals and Societies departments have collaborated to create an IDU on economy, the stock market and evaluating and managing risk within those frames. By the time this IDU begins, students will (hopefully) have a head start on recognizing risk in their daily lives, and now they’ll have an opportunity to apply it to their classroom learning as well. This is in stark contrast to typical learning, where students learn classroom applications before taking it into the real world. I’m hoping this strengthens understanding.

Stage 4: Profit??? Inshallah.

Department meetings can be useful. Last week in a meeting with my department our conversation drifted to explicitly teaching the skills that we are required to assess by the MYP. Are we taking enough time to ensure students know what it means to outline, annotate, identify and the myriad other terms we assume they know? Are we, as a department, scaling that instruction as the requirement spirals up from MYP 1 to MYP 5? If not, what can we do?

Steal like a teacher. I like Agency by Design. A lot. They are awesome. They have this great activity called Parts, Purposes, Complexities that challenges its participants to look closely at something, so I stole it.

Department meetings can be useful, pt. 2. This week in our department meeting I wanted to share an activity we can use to help support our students working through Criterion A, Strand II;

We first identified what, according to the MYP, it means to analyze something:

Analyze: Break down in order to bring out the essential elements or structure. (To identify parts and relationships, and to interpret information to reach conclusions.)

Then I passed out a plain ‘ole ink pen, a crisp sheet of white paper and a freshly sharpened pencil. I ran my department through the Parts, Purposes and Complexities activity, and debriefed with a great conversation about how we felt this activity helps our students achieve this strand. Here’s what some work looked like;

A post shared by Jeff (@mrlaymanss) on Oct 7, 2016 at 8:19pm PDT

Technically this is a picture from the first time I did this activity at Learning 2 with John Rinker, but I threw away my most recent work before I could snap a picture. Whoops.

I’m hoping that this leads to focusing more on explicitly teaching the skills we assume our young designers know. Sketching and annotation might go hand in hand, but if a student has never been taught how to do either one, their power is mitigated. What skills do you teach in Design?

New year, new classes! I’m teaching grade 8 and grade 10 this year – my first time teaching high school ever! I’m excited, and so far it’s been great. As you can imagine, going from grade 6 to grade 10 is quite the jump. One big change I’ll be implementing this year is using digital portfolios. I’ll be using Google Classroom for this, another thing I’ve never done before.

A Common Excuse. When I was planning for my high school class, it occurred to me that I should probably make sure they know how to use Google Classroom. As I see it, I have two choices here;
1. Take a class to teach them how to use it
2. Take small pieces of many classes to teach them how to use it

What isn’t a choice is not teaching them at all. This tool is too important to the success of my classroom not to. I can’t rely on the hope that other teachers will teach my students how to use something – I’m going to be that other teacher that teaches my students how to use something. Here’s how;

Once I had my Classroom created, I had students join it. We had some issues to troubleshoot, but we handled those. As they joined, I had students answer a quick question;

This was basically a pre-assessment. I was able to observe typing skills, sentence writing, and get a feel for what students value (and don’t!) in design class. It also served as a nice buffer for students that had a tough time logging in.

Next, I wanted them to get a feel for what assignments will be like using Classroom, and I wanted them to practice a few skills too; inserting media into a document, working with tables, justifying a stance, and searching the internet for stuff. I gave them a small assignment; show me your favorite (school appropriate!) meme or gif, and justify why it’s your favorite. Here’s an example;

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Final Thoughts. This was an engaging class for my students. They learned a few new skills, practiced a bunch of other stuff, gave me loads of information about themselves and had fun. I taught technology today because I made it a priority. You can too.