How things go down in my classroom

My First Scratch Encounter

            What struck me most about the completed game was the not the game itself but rather the inspiration it provided.  Almost immediately after putting the final piece of code into place I regretted not having started the project two weeks earlier since the game could have been so much bigger.  New stages, new girls, new colors, and all sorts of flashy mobs to attack and hinder my ability to avoid being kissed could have been added to this prototype.  It was almost next to impossible to stop adding things to the game with so much creativity bursting forth from within.  Why would this project have struck me as such?  Perhaps it was the hours and hours of entertainment it provided or the soul-sucking decoding I had to endure.  But if a source of this inspiration has to found I feel as though it isn’t the flashy women or the funny plot that makes the learning so addictive, it’s the physics. 

            At first it was just to see if I could get a character to move back and forth on the screen, but it soon evolved into a fully controllable, avatar.  I could jump, speed up, slow down, and interact with different objects.  Surely I could have recreated Mario with this type of dominion over the virtual world.  Wielding my omnipotence became an obsession as I began to make decisions that sculpted what my final project would ultimately become.  My ultimate goal in beginning this project became the use of the physics that this character had achieved in order to create an entertaining and challenging game that could be enjoyed by anyone with a computer.

            The problems I encountered were not programming problems because I have been familiar with computers for years now and have previously taken programming classes.  They were creativity problems.  Here I must give credit to my classmates and their ideas.  Even though I did all the coding myself I cannot express how much inspiration and learning came out of our brainstorming sessions during class.  During the beginning stages, when Calvin could only jump straight up and down, I received a piece of advice that changed the game entirely.  “It would be cool if he could jump over and across something!” he said.  Within five minutes my character was bounding across the screen.  “You should build platforms and see how high your character can climb!”  Several hours later there were platforms floating up and down my screen.  There were nearly more beta tests by other people than tests by me, they seemed to egg me on.

            To be honest, I’ve had professors who tell me exactly what a project needs.  Who create marking schemes based on their exact specifications.  But I don’t learn much from those professors.  When it was said that we must make a game, and that it needed to be creative, and that for our sakes they were not going to show us a game that had been previously made in this class because it had stifled creativity in the past, my heart skipped a beat.  Finally, an undisturbed nesting ground for learning!  “This program is capable of doing a lot of things.  Make it do something cool!” is how I envision summarizing this project.  As opposed to: “Make a game where you must kill three enemies before you can win.”  Not only was I inspired to create something unique, I was also invited to use all the tools at my disposal within the Scratch program regardless of my skill in programming.  I feel as though I learned more about student motivation from this project than I did about programming in Scratch.

            The only thing that another programmer might have done, that I didn’t, was to add sound effects to my game.  Simply put, sound effects would have driven me up the wall during the hours that I spent decoding my game and so I chose not to include any.  I did receive feedback from one beta tester on their inability to know when they had hit Carmen with a snowball.  Sound might have been one solution but I think my solution is better; a visual cue.  Creating more than one solution to a problem I something I think should be a part of classrooms today.  With so many resources at our disposal it is easy to find one great solution to a problem and stop there.  But the truth is that for every problem, even math problems, there is a plethora of correct solutions and we must not get stuck thinking that every single one of our students is going to think exactly the same as us.  I am reminded of the diversity of our students.  One student may understand fractions and decimals almost instantly while another needs visual and audial cues in order to really grasp what is happening in a problem.  My main point here is that the people who beta tested my game still know that they are being hit by kisses even though there is no sound in my game. 

Information

My grade 8 math class had been studying percentages, fractions, and ratios for several weeks.  Each day I would try to find some sort of real life application of fractions; my thought being that if students were familiar with real life ratios and fractions then they would be more comfortable talking about them abstractly in the classroom.

Some days I would show something extremely simple.  Such as juice:water ratios, and some days I would simply show them pictures of really cool things such as people hanging from the space needle cleaning the side of the tower.  But one day I showed them this:

How much revenue was there in the food sales industry? 

Not exactly your typical Grade 8 Math problem.  Not exactly a math problem at all... just a snipet from a newspaper somewhere on the internet.  You'll have to forgive me for stealing it.  It isn't the problem that is interesting though but the reaction from the students.  

See, I've been studying online learning communities and their seemingly addictive nature.  Places like WoW online communities, Starcraft, eduBlogs, pinterest, technology problem solving forums, and basically any other site which gives users the ability to access any information they want to access regardless of their learning ability.  These places let novices and advanced learners alike interact with each other without discrimination.

My students first reaction was "Could you maybe just tell us how to find it?" when I introduced a more advanced problem for students to ponder and told them we weren't going to solve it that day.  I could have said "We don't have the time for that." or "We might come back to it later."  But instead I asked myself what I would honestly do if I was so curious about something.  Honestly, I would probably tune out, ignore my teacher, talk to some friends about a solution, roll it around in my head for a while, and then wake up in the middle of the night with a whole "ah hah!" moment.  Well... I've only ever made it to the "ah hah in my sleep" moment twice in my life.  

So I took a minute in my classroom and appeased their curiosity for their sake and my sanity.  Seriously, access to information in a classroom is often extremely limited!  And that is not what I want in my classroom.  Students should be able to ask, explore, and even be satisfied and comfortable with an topic, or at least informed enough to access the information on their own later on.  

Solutions

I've been fooling around with an idea based on Barbara Coloroso's constructive teaching approach.  Her philosophies are based off of three basic tenants:

1. Giving them ways to care deeply, share generously, and help willingly.
2. Curb their inclinations to hoard or harm.
3. Stop in its tracks anything that fuels hatred.

By "them" she means the students.  I've still got some work to do but this seems like a good place to introduce my solutions sheets that I've designed in regard to this philosophy.






 I asked my University Facilitator to help me develop these solutions sheets since he had taken a similar approach to classroom discipline and this is what he shared with me:

"Here are the questions I have kids reflect on (in writing) on my "Responsibility Training Plan" sheets.

1)  What did I do?
2)  Why did I do it? (This can sometimes be tough as they are afraid to admit the real reason but often this can be the most valuable question on the paper.
3)  Who was affected by my behaviour? (This should be addressed in the appropriate consequences section of the form.)
4)  What is my plan to correct this behaviour?
5)  What is an appropriate consequence for my behaviour?

I then ask for student and my signature on the paper as the key to the success of this approach is the personal discussion after the form is completed. * You must be satisfied with the responses or the process continues.

Good luck with this type of approach as it isn't for everyone. Boy, was my faculty upset with me when I started this as a high school asst.principal. The immediate responses were, "What kind of punishment is this?" or "You are not being consistent, there should be a set of rules with consequences made clear t the students at the beginning." My response was that, "Every child is different and every situation is different; therefore, every misbehaviour needs to be treated with the intent of having the individual student understand and accept  the impact of their behaviour."


There is plenty of room for improvement and I fully intend to develop this into a more flexible, constructive approach to classroom management!  I would love to see students achieving a level of awareness where they can learn to discipline themselves and accept their own consequences as a result of their actions.