Scaffolding Independent Research

This year, I've been working with providing more time for independent research. This research has grown from the center explorations of early in the year, and then expanded into contracts and experiments.

I really love it. There are no grades for these explorations; students are doing them because they really like learning. Seeing what students create and listening to their conversations is a daily affirmation, a reminder to me to stay the course in the face of standardized testing.

Timing
I start each reading class with 15-20 minutes of independent reading time. On several days out of the cycle (mostly based on when I can get the mobile computer lab), this time can also be used for independent research. 

This has worked out fairly well. At first, about half of the students chose not to do any independent research, and used the time for reading. Excellent! As they have seen their classmates' presentations, many students have chosen to move into their own projects. Students who work quickly have gone through two, three, and even four contracts, sometimes taking a break for additional reading time in between projects.

Start with research notebooks

These are very simple--just large pieces of construction paper folded over about 5 sheets of notebook paper. Each page is a sub-topic within the student's research. It takes about 5 minutes to talk to students about how to set this up.

And here is the beautiful part...the students then teach each other. A student who researched golden-bellied mangabeys taught a student researching narwhals about what topics to use: "Well, you can think about where they live, and what they eat, and how they raise their young."

Technology lessons
As with the research notebooks, I don't teach each student individually! This is why it works out so wonderfully to have staggered entry into independent research. I taught the students in the first groups, and then they took on the role of teaching each other. Sometimes there is some good-natured squabbling: "You want me to show you how to get pictures again? I just showed you yesterday!" Even better, students learn multiple ways of doing the same thing, from keyboard shortcuts to using Finder.

Presentation forms
Lots of different kinds of presentations have been going on, from posters to Keynote presentations to plays. (Fourth graders love making Keynote presentations!) Some students have written out essays by hands, imitating the formal style that we are learning in writing class. Words like introduction and conclusion are finding their way into their everyday conversations.

Feedback
I use Learning Notes to provide feedback for students. Each day between 1-3 students present.
During their presentations, I write a narrative to explain what the student accomplished, interpret their accomplishments, and suggest next steps. 

"Next I'm going to..."
Kids are already planning out their ideas for their next contract, and the next. Some students are collaborating together, which is wonderful to watch. The biggest problem is that they do grumble a bit when independent work time is over and the lesson for the day begins...

...which is a pretty positive outcome.

You must have a really small class
Not at all! I have 30 students in my first class. In my second reading class, which I co-teach with the ESL teacher, I have 27. In fact, I find independent research easier to manage and use for targeting individual skills than guided reading. (But that's a post for a different day.)

Where Science and Play Meet

    This year, as I've experimented with contracts, centers, and self-directed research, I've worked to find a balance between "covering" curriculum and exploratory learning. I don't think that these two approaches are mutually exclusive--in fact, I think that they can complement each other. Consider the story I've watched unfold.

Water Bead Crystals
    We experimented with water beads in the classroom a few months ago. Like many new items, they were popular for a time and then slowly faded away. I started drying them out and putting them away, until only one bead in a plastic cup was left.
     I thought that was the end of the water beads, and I've been trying to introduce other interesting items for experimentation and observation, like mealworms.

    But the story wasn't done. The bead in the plastic cup, sitting on the windowsill, was observed by two students who were trying to purify salt water. They started to wonder--could they make a climate for a water bead?
    Over the course of their experimentation, the bead changed. It became a crystal, but didn't shrink in size as the water beads usually do. For some reason, this got some kids very excited.

Crystal Research
    The students requested to have more water beads. One student even brought in some from home. Working together at recess, a new group of students emerged--students who hadn't worked together much before, but were interested in the crystal.
    They pulled together lots of resources from the room, using a box from the "Cool Cardboard Pieces" area, various recycled plastic containers, and other science items. We already had the microscopes out for mealworm observations, so students started looking at the water beads with the microscopes. They created multiple experiments in different places in the room. To the outside observer, their work would have looked a lot like play. They were completely committed to their work. I was listening in but not interacting except to get requested materials (or look in the microscope when they wanted to show me things).
    The teacher-ly part of me was wondering--what science lessons could be learned from the water bead? Were they looking for meaning in a place where they would not find it?

Moving to a Curricular Lesson
    During arrival time, students continued with their work until it was time for our regular science class. I was teaching one of my favorite lessons (decomposers! Awesome!) in which we set up a mold experiment. This is an experiment that we do as a whole class, and I have scaffolded it so that students have to fill in the names of the experiment parts (testable question, hypothesis, procedures). We set up our mold experiment and talked about what we thought would happen.

Regular Curriculum Impacting the Experimentation
    Without any prompting from me, the science lesson changed the water bead play. In the next work session (students from two different classes, choosing to stay in at recess), suddenly words like "hypothesis" were floating around. "We didn't make a testable question!" one student said, and the talk turned to what their testable question was. At library class, several students checked out books about crystals.
    Now there are several containers of water beads in different locations, with students sharing their hypotheses and testable questions. The core group of students doing the investigations have talked with others about their work during transition times and dismissal.

Play, Science, and the Regular Curriculum
    I was so interested to see the words from the science lesson move into the water bead play. It clearly showed how standard lessons can enrich student-led experimentation. In this case, students had a rich context that worked perfectly with the words from the lesson.
    At first I thought it was lucky that this happened at the right time. But luck has nothing to do with it! Building a classroom culture of collaboration and experimentation will lead to these moments.

So the questions that I am thinking about:
-How does play impact science learning for older elementary students?
-How can I strengthen ties between play/experimentation and the regular curriculum?

 

From Centers to Contracts

This year, I've been experimenting with doing more open-ended, engaging play with my fourth graders.

It's not easy to do this in the face of increasing test pressure. Every day I wonder, "Should I put away the hands-on materials and get out the test prep?" This thought is usually accompanied by an increasing heart rate and a tightness in my chest as I think about my value-added scores for next year.

But I know that my students deserve more than the narrow band of learning the tests represent. They deserve a real place of learning and collaboration. Or--really--a place where they can play at the sink, where they can keep a stinkbug as a pet, where they can build with the Erector set--"Mrs. Kissner, we don't have a piece that we need but we'll improvise. We're good at that"--where they can start a business making bracelets and have time to write down the stories that they are thinking of and use Google maps to find where they went on that last vacation their whole family was together. They deserve to be able to use the science materials again and again, not just on one day, and to explore and immerse themselves in lots of different kinds of activities.

As you can probably guess I feel passionately about this!

I spent a great deal of time thinking about centers over the holiday break, considering where I wanted students to go. One concern that I have felt is that kids flit from activity to activity, and don't slow down to really explore a topic in depth. As 9 year olds mature into worldly 10 year olds, many of them are ready for deeper investigations.

Last week, I introduced learning contracts to students. These contracts are basically classroom agreements for an individualized activity. As you can see, there are places for the student and teacher to record when students will work, whether they will need to work on the project at home, and what specific steps they will need to complete.

...And students were very enthusiastic! Many students are writing reports about topics they have studied in the past. One student is making a periscope. Two students are writing a play together, and another went home and found an essay he had written in third grade and wants to type and revise.

The free exploration of centers is naturally settling in to some more focused, sustained exploration--just what fourth graders need developmentally.