Teaching skills with a purpose

This week I spent some time in direct instruction with my students on specific PowerPoint skills (Word outlines, slide master, action buttons, and animations). Teaching these skills without a real purpose for using them would have been a waste of time.

One of the things that I have come to realize during this research project is that there must be a real purposeful reason to learn the skills and then opportunities to use them. There are other skills in PowerPoint that I don't cover - such as how to convert a slideshow to a webpage. We aren't going to be posting them online and that's not really how most people use PowerPoint - so why teach it?

I am looking back at my former scope and sequence of skills and re-evaluating some of the skills I used to teach. Yes it is nice to learn how to do a pivot table in Excel, or hanging indents in Word or automatic slide advance in PowerPoint - but if there is no real reason to learn it and use it - how can I think that the students will ever really "learn" this skill and retain the information?

Wouldn't it be better to teach them how to learn than trying to cram "everything" they should know about using a piece of software - one that will eventually change anyway?

Excel Formula Quiz & Assessment

Last Thursday the class took a quiz to check for comprehension of Excel vocabulary words and understanding of how to write an Excel formula. Out of 18 students - 2 students completely bombed the test and 3 others made some critical mistakes - but the other 13 did fine.

I decided to have one-on-one conferences to go over the quizzes and their last Excel project with each student. This is giving me the opportunity to re-teach some skills and check for understanding. The two students who bombed the test will retake it tommorrow. With the others I can point out what they are doing right and also how to correct mistakes.

My students scored "giving feedback" lowest on my teacher evaluation and I am making steps to correct this and make sure that learning and understanding are the focus of my classes - not grades.

QUIZ	% passed greater 70%	% failed less 70%	Class Average
Section One: Excel vocabulary terms	83.3%	16.6%	85%
Section Two: Writing formulas	50%	50%	62%
Total			77%

After the quiz I held individual conferences with the student to review the material. I collected these comments from the students during the conferences:

• I mixed up the definitions of a formula and function.
• I knew how to write the formula; I just wasn’t sure which cell references to use.
• I don’t have any difficulty with basic functions.
• Since the summary was separate from the data, I found it challenging to write the formulas.
• I can get the formula to work on the computer with the help of the Insert Function button; I just have a harder time writing them out during a quiz.
• The AutoSum functions make it easy to calculate totals and averages.
• I chose the correct numbers for the formula – I just missed some of the punctuation on the formula and that wouldn’t happen if I was using the computer.
• I didn’t study the vocabulary before the test.

Observing independent workers

This week I have been observing which students can complete an Excel assignment either completely by themselves, with some direction from a friend, or who need extra help from the teacher. Here are the results:

Basic Functions

• Independent skill mastery: 12
• Working towards mastery: 4
  
• Below skill mastery: 2
  

Advanced Functions

• Independent skill mastery: 4
• Working towards mastery: 11
• Below skill mastery: 3

The assignment was to take the data on the Shared Google spreadsheet and analyze by using basic functions (sum and average) to calculate nutrition data (calories, fats, carbs), cost and lunch waste. Then the students needed to analyze the data according by the day of the week with advanced functions (countif, sumif). Finally, they graphed the results from one category.

I was a bit disappointed that some students were still having difficulties with basic functions. I realized one student had missed several days of class and probably is just guessing how to write formulas and the other one sits near the back of the room and I wonder how well they pay attention. Recently I have had to remove headphones from those computers to prevent "tuning out" or watching videos during class work time.

Cycle Two begins - What's For Lunch?

Today I began the second unit for my Action Research Project. The title is: What's the lunch? The idea is for the students to collect authentic data about what students at VCS eat for lunch and to use that data for further investigation with student projects.

The assignment for this week is:

• Choose four different lunches to evaluate on your assigned day.
  
• Take a photo of the lunch.
• Write down specifics about the lunch: day of the week, description of item, service size and costs (if hot lunch).
• Research the nutritional value of the lunch: calories, fats, and carbohydrates (g).
  
• We will determine costs of lunches brought from home in class.
  
• Log into Moodle or access the shared spreadsheet at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p_VM5beL2JAqn6doweazPfw to enter your data.
  

Before the students are asked to analyze the data in Excel, I will review basic formula writing with functions (sum, average, min, max, count) and then introduce 3 new functions (If, Countif, Sumif) with a skill lessons. This week I will observe students using Excel and use a rubric to determine whether the students can complete the first assignment by themselves, with assistance from a friend, or help needed from the teacher.

The lunch information will be entered into the shared spreadsheet and students will work with partners to analyze the nutritional content (calories, fat and carbohydrates), the cost of the lunch and evaluate the waste that is thrown away. Students will determine how to calculate the information in Excel and then individually make graphs that represent the data in a visual manner.

Next week, each student will design a one page poster related to the topic of nutrition, cost or waste. There will be specific formatting requirement for this project, but students can select the message and design.

Finally, students will choose one of two projects to share with the community. They have the choice to do these projects by themselves or with one partner. The first one is to write a letter to the editors of three newspapers explaining their opinion on one of the topics: nutrition, cost or waste. Students who choose this project will use “track changes” for peer evaluation and learn how to set up a mail merge for their letters.

The second option is to create a simple podcast voicing their opinion on one of the three topics: nutrition, cost or waste. The podcasts will be posted to the school Intranet website. Students who choose this project will use “track changes” for peer evaluation of their script and learn how to edit an audio recording with Audacity.

Students will continue to blog about their progress and write private journal entries to the teacher.

That's the plan!

Teaching skills and embracing a constructivist view

Today I was feeling a little uneasy about giving up my formal sequence of lessons of "how to do <insert skill here>. I am trying to embrace more of a constructivist approach in my lessons and allow the students to discover the information as needed. My tendancy to teach them everything they need to know about, for example, indents - unfortunately, this showed up in my lesson today.

I have created a wiki to list the Word skills as we use them in projects, and give students references to pages of my former textbook to access for additional help but today I found myself going back to my old ways and conducting a lesson on "the 5 different types of indents". Why was I doing this? Was there a need to learn indents or did one of the activities require the students to learn what the indent markers on the Word screen??? NO! It was me and my controlling behavior that showed up instead. Its great to point out a few things to help students to make their lists, or citations easier to read - but I taught the skill just for the sake of teaching the skill - the exact thing I didn't want to do in this Unit.

So, part of this ARP is for me - to help me change my behavior and trust that when the students have a need to learn indents, I can take that time and turn it into a "teachable moment" and the students will be more engaged because they have a need to learn that skill.