As I wrote in my last post in January (seriously, has it really been that long)? I am not teaching Chinese in school as part of the students' curriculum. What I am doing is incredibly cool and I have been super excited about it. I teach what our school calls Think Tank, a critical thinking class that focuses on having the students learn to problem-solve, exercise their creativity and critical thinking, while building teamwork skills.
I am so incredibly grateful to my school and for all the support that I have been given to explore and build this class and allowing me the freedom to experiment, change gears, and try different things in class. Initially, I would approach my administrators with a little trepidation, as I wanted to bounce another new idea or concept past them. The truth is, there are so many cool things we can do, but not enough time to do them all. I have received so much encouragement, affirmation, and support, that I am now excited to present new ideas for Think Tank to our administrators. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realize that this is actually real. In the parlance of musicians, I have a "sweet gig." I get to experiment with cool stuff, have fun trying new things and watch my students learn while exploring...all with the blessing of our administration. Gotta love that!
The original vision for Think Tank was based on the Odyssey of the Mind (OOTM) program, which is usually an after-school program, with teams that work together in both short challenges (spontaneous), and a long-term problem that the team works on and takes to competition. I had no previous experience with OOTM, so I was fortunate to be in an region where OOTM is very strong and active, and was able to attend many different training workshops, both for coaches and for teams.
As I attended each training, I picked up ideas for activities I could use in my classes. I also realized that there was a great deal of emphasis in OOTM placed on competitions. After all, the training and team practice was at least as intense as the practice expected of people who do sports. However, as I was developing the curriculum for Think Tank, I was not comfortable with promoting the competitive aspect of OOTM. I wanted Think Tank to be a place where my students felt safe taking risks, trying new things, and not be afraid to make mistakes. I also knew that many students would feel anxiety when faced with a competitive situation. I wanted students to be comfortable coming to Think Tank without having the pressure of competion looming over them, even in the spontaneous challenges.
In my class, we had as many as 17 students at a time, so they usually worked in teams of 3 or 4. Each team was given the same challenge to solve. I did not pit the teams against each other. The challenges were meant to be short, but I did not strictly time them. I wanted the students to be able to arrive at a solution, and all solutions were celebrated. I felt the process of arriving at a solution in their own was more important than staying within an arbitrary time limit.
I found that I wa gravitating toward more of the building/constructing related challenges. Because I saw most of my students only once per week, I wanted to maximize what they were getting out of the class. I began to weave specific STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) skills into activities that would not only employ critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork, but would also provide the students with a rudimentary foundation in science, engineering, and technology.
So far in class, we used the Engineering Design Process as part of our "Caine's Arcade" #CardboardChallenge. All of the students worked in teams to design, build, and operate their own arcade games constructed out of cardboard.
We worked with Kapla Blocks, index cards, and even paper to discover construction principles. We also spent some time learning from famous inventors by studying some of their quotes, and how we could apply their words to our own experiences. These were skills that I was hoping they would not just learn for Think Tank, but that they would be able to apply to all aspects of their lives, whether it be in school or sports, or even at home.
Then, as part of Computer Science Education Week, all of our students took part in the Hour of Code. #HourofCode. We continued learning more about coding using a great curriculum developed by Code.org, which combined hands-on (offline) activities with online coding puzzles to solve.
We just finished designing Doodles for Google in our classes. This year's theme fit in beautifully with what we had accomplished in Think Tank so far: "If I could invent one thing to make the world a better place..." This activity included brainstorming, group idea development as well as arts. We looked at the design aspects of GoogleDoodle submitted by students in pat years, and then my students created their own Doodles based on this year's theme.
We will be launching into our final unit as we begin our final quarter of school next week, and I am both excited and nervous...we will be learning about Simple Machines. Time for me to go and do some planning before Soring Break is over! Until next time...