Learning about Learning
Setting goals is not new to a fifth grader. Setting well informed, data-driven goals however, is a new experience. Because of the incredible data that the students have access to, they are able to look at their learning styles and analyze how they spent their time when using Khan Academy. As they set new goals each week, they must first look through all of their data and reflect back on the time they spent over the last week as well as analyze how successful they were in achieving their previous goals. Students are required to look at their focus graphs and progress reports, as well as their progress over time data on their dashboards. If I look at a student’s focus graph, I should be able to see what their goals were for that week. If they don’t match, then the student needs to look at why they don’t match and explain what may have happened. Perhaps they didn’t set a good goal, perhaps something got in their way, or perhaps they just didn’t put in the required time needed to make it work.
An example of a student's reflection.
Students turn in a new card once a week with their thoughts and reflections on their learning. They have had to really look at themselves as learners and think about their actions as they analyze their progress. The data is always available and continually updated as they work.
We have also discussed what makes a good goal. My students know they need to make goals that are reasonable and we’ve discussed that their goals need to have real value. It makes no sense to have all of your goals be way above your understanding without a clear plan for achieving those goals. It’s wonderful for students to challenge themselves, but they also need to find value in the challenges while not just wasting time or feeling totally frustrated.
Students are still working at setting better goals and really trying to get a clear understanding of how they learn. It’s difficult to step back and see yourself clearly and then be honest in your evaluation. I’m hoping students start to feel more comfortable with seeing themselves in this mirror and find value in the incredible information that they see reflected there.
Khan Academy is not always just about the math.
April 1st, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Setting goals is great, but these goals are so shallow. What about the setting loftier goals for attacking more context-rich problems? A colleague of mine said, “Many, many mathematics classroom spend all of their time learning the tools without actually every using them to solve rich problems. This is a flaw of curriculum which emphasizes the tools and not the richness of real world applications of the mathematical tools the kids learn.”
Do you have any evidence of students using Khan Academy to go BEYOND and are now doing deep, rich mathematics and applications as a result?
http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/khan-academy-is-an-indictment-of-education/
April 1st, 2011 at 9:10 pm
This is great! I just did some KhanAcademy goal-setting today with my 5th graders. It’s really helpful to see samples of student goals and reflections. Did you have any problems with students doing other students’ FOR them instead of teaching each other how to do it? If so, how did you ensure that students actually knew how to do what they were being proficient on in Khan?
Thanks for the post!
April 2nd, 2011 at 2:12 am
First, I would like to address the issue of “shallow” goals. You have to remember that this is a fifth grade classroom where students are just beginning to develop an appreciation for goal setting and how it relates to their learning. This is not something ten-year old students have had a lot of practice with yet. As to incorporating the richness of real world applications, Khan Academy has helped students bring higher level and more consistent math skills to our work that we do with our fifth grade curriculum. Khan Academy is not a replacement for our math program, but an addition to what we do during our math instruction. Through Khan, students are able to see how concepts build on one another as they progress to higher levels and this adds to the conversation that they are having with each other as they work on more in-depth discovery and application of the standard math curriculum. As far as evidence goes, we are in the early stages of gathering data and are still working on the best methods for utilizing Khan Academy as a tool in the classroom.
As to the issue of student mentoring, we have worked on that very issue of “coaching” vs. “doing it for someone.” We’ve had some great discussions about this and I had some students model what they thought coaching might look like. It really helped to have students practice with each other so everyone was clear about what coaching or helping someone meant, instead of just taking over their computer and doing it for them. The students are pretty sensitive to it now, although before we really spent some time on this idea there was a bit of that going on.
I don’t know that all students are truly proficient on all of the Khan material that they are attempting. Some are working way above their grade level and we are not assessing all of those skills in the classroom. Khan requires them to do a review problem every few weeks so at some point, they probably will have to show what they know. My main focus for students are the modules that I know they need to be continually proficient on in our classroom. I meet with each student each week to discuss their progress and goals and it helps me do an informal assessment of what they’re really learning.
Hope that helps!
April 2nd, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Kami,
I love peer coaching, too. Very powerful for both students!
Goal setting is difficult to do, even my HS juniors and seniors have trouble expressing their goals beyond “getting it right” or “getting an A.” Glad to hear you are helping your students with it.
Now going back to the first sentence of your post, I see that you did say they are 5th graders. I must have forgotten that when I was reading the index cards posted, because the students are writing about solving for y-intercepts, simplifying radicals, inverse trig functions, derivatives, and exponent rules. Those are Algebra, Trig, Pre-Calc, and Calculus skills, so I assumed your students were older.
So now my next question is: are your 5th graders tackling those advanced skills? What are they using them for as part of your larger math curriculum?
Thanks,
Frank
April 3rd, 2011 at 3:10 am
Kami,
My apologies for not reading your reply more carefully. I now see that your students really are attempting advanced math skills in KA like solving for y-intercepts, simplifying radicals, inverse trig functions, derivatives, and exponent rules.
Have they mastered the 5th grade math skills already? How do you structure KA usage so the kids can explore their curiosity for advanced math while also ensuring they are meeting the 5th grade standards?
Also, you said that “Khan Academy has helped students bring higher level and more consistent math skills to our work” and that “they work on more in-depth discovery and application of the standard math curriculum.” Can you give some examples of the discovery and application work your students are doing as a result of KA?
Thanks in advance,
Frank
April 3rd, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Hi Frank,
First, I wanted to thank you for taking an interest in our pilot. You ask some great questions and part of our process is thinking through those answers and looking at what we’re doing from different directions. We are constantly discussing, evaluating, and adjusting what we are doing on almost a daily basis.
So, to answer your first question regarding fifth grade math skills and standards. We are still using our fifth grade curriculum as part of our instruction. There is still daily work, informal observations, and regular assessments given at the end of each unit. We also give several benchmark assessments throughout the year that are given across our district. Looking at the data from our latest benchmark (just given in March), my class scored 87% proficient compared with the district average of 70% proficient. I also had 40% score advanced, compared to 32% district wide. While Los Altos is typically a high performing district, what’s really notable in this data is our below to far below basic percentage of 3%, compared to the district average of 18%. That’s where I see KA as having the most impact. All of my students have become stronger math students in computation and basic skills which obviously help make them more successful as they approach more difficult concepts. Using the assessment data from our standard curriculum evaluations, I can then compare that to the data I see in KA and target each student’s individual needs in a one to one conference. We have had some conversations regarding a poor test grade and how that may relate to the goals they are setting in KA, perhaps not spending the bulk of their time on wise choices.
Looking at their learning this way is requiring some very high level thinking for these students. We have only been using KA for 4 months in our classroom and I can say that it’s raised the confidence level of every student. I see this in their approach to problem solving, in their discussions with each other, and in the more confident air that invades our classroom when we’re approaching a test.
As for discovery and application work in our classroom, I feel that using KA has somewhat freed up some time to do more of this. We don’t need to spend as much time on the “paper skill and drill” work, but can offer students more collaborative assignments that require conversations and teamwork. My students have taken our fraction unit and created better math games than what were offered by our curriculum, they have created ‘integer skits’ that modeled the use of positive and negative numbers in real life, they are currently exploring geometry concepts and are measuring the angles of different polygons to see if their is a correlation or pattern in the number of angles and the total measure. Some of my higher students may already know the answer to this, but they still need to physically see it in action. I hear students using more math language such as, “You need to use the inverse of the divisor,” rather than, “You just flip it over,” when dividing fractions. Every student is participating. Every student feels like they have something to add. Every student is raising their hand at some point to volunteer answers and explain their thinking. This doesn’t happen often in a classroom of 30, especially during math class.
It is a bit frightening to see fifth graders working on derivatives, radicals, and inverse trig functions. I personally need a refresher math course to keep up, however it’s OK to tell them that I don’t have the answer and if the video or the hints aren’t making sense for them, is there someplace else that they could look for additional help or explanations. As they continue through school, knowing how best to use their resources will be invaluable. I had an interesting conversation with a student last week. He said, “I know that I don’t fully understand what I’m doing but that’s OK.” I asked him, “Why is that OK?” His response, “Because I know I will see it again and again, and every time I see it, it will make more sense.”
So, if I could time travel forward five years, assuming that their math instruction continues along in this same way, and I put them in your classroom, how would it change what you do? If they came in with a grounded foundation and solid math skills, if they knew how to problem solve and were self-motivated, if they came in seeing themselves as successful and confident math learners, if they already knew how to do most of the ‘how’, imagine what you could do with the ‘why’. It’s a little mind blowing.
I might be a little naive and using the rose colored lens, but in my teacher bones I know that this is good for kids. It’s not a fix-all and certainly has potential to be abused with bad practices, but it is currently reshaping our classroom and my instruction and overall, challenging me to be a better teacher.
Keep the questions coming!
April 10th, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Thank you for taking the time explain your uses of this tool. Although I personally do not support its use, it is interesting to read the viewpoint of those who do.
I have to wonder if these students really understand those concepts, though. Sure, at the age of ten, I could use the derivative–meaning, I could bring the exponent down, multiply, and subtract one. But that doesn’t mean that I had any idea what any of that actually meant, or how I could use it to find solutions I didn’t have a formula for. Perhaps I should admit that I’m a reader of Frank Noschese’s blog, and he’s convinced me that KA is useful for solving problems where you are given all of the data. But when you need to use observations to explain something, or you need to develop a new solution to a problem…that’s where it falls short.
And then, how do you feel that Khan Academy is “challenging [you] to be a better teacher”? Perhaps it’s simply because I’ve never been in a classroom like yours, but I can’t quite picture how that would work.
Thanks in advance!
Michael A. Rees
April 19th, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Hi Michael,
Sorry for the late reply – Spring Break last week.
Using KA every day in the classroom challenges me to be a more creative teacher when it comes to teaching math. As an elementary school teacher, in a mostly self-contained classroom, I am responsible for teaching at least five different subjects, everyday, each with their own set of teacher’s manuals and curriculum. Seriously, I could fill a wheelbarrow with teacher’s manuals and supplemental materials, maybe even a small truck. My background and my strengths lie in language arts, and it’s easier for me to step away from the textbooks, focus on standards, and create engaging lessons that focus on discovery, choice, and exploration in most content areas. Math is my challenge. I don’t see the world in numbers and mathematical concepts. I rely more heavily on the textbooks and teacher’s guides. I feel as though I am a solid math teacher, but it is the one area where I feel more fenced in and focused on a textbook. Not to say that this age group doesn’t need that structure in math and they do need very concrete examples and lots of repetitive practice.
However, KA offers much of this to my students. Again, KA is something that we use for only part of our math time (about 1/3) and the other part of our class is spent on “traditional lessons.” Here’s where the challenge arrives. Our textbook curriculum, while still offering many valuable tools as well, is not enough. The students are capable of more and want to do more. They are excited about math. They want to do cool projects and try to better understand some of the higher concepts they are working on. I’ve also read Frank’s blog and am impressed with much of what he’s doing and agree with many of the things he is advocating for. I think he is probably a fantastic teacher and I am fully supportive of the project approach and the creativity and collaboration that he is using in his science classes. It is how I teach throughout most of my day. Math is my challenge area. It is the area where it doesn’t come easy or naturally. I would love to work on a project and have high school students like Frank’s, come and work with my students, modeling concepts and mentoring my younger students. That would be awesome! I would love to collaborate with some high school teachers who “specialize” in those math and science areas and create amazing projects for my students to work on. There are so many exciting ideas that become possible when you are not fenced in by a textbook and KA gives us a little more time and therefore freedom to add in more of these elements.
KA is a great tool and has had an impact on my math instruction but it is not the only tool we are using. Adding KA into our day has challenged me to stretch beyond our traditional curriculum, creating more innovative ways to incorporate math into other areas and engage students on a different level.
Thanks for taking an interest,
Kami
April 29th, 2011 at 12:06 am
Hi Kami,
Congratulations on the outstanding work you are doing so far. It is obvious that your students and school community are lucky to have you there, thinking through how to bring innovations into your daily practice.
I am very interested in ways that other schools can learn from your experiences and incorporate new ideas and emerging best practices into their environments.
Have you thought about using Edmodo as a way to do your student reflections and share your key learnings?
I am doing Action Research on ways to build online communities of practice, and Edmodo is my favorite new tool for that. If you are interested in collaborating or learning more, I would love to connect with you.
May 2nd, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Hi Jill,
I haven’t had a chance to explore Edmodo yet. It is on my list of summer things to do. I just learned a short bit about Edmodo at the CUE conference in March and it sounds like a great tool. I would love to collaborate with you and hear some of your ideas for sharing what we are doing. Thanks again!
Kami
June 5th, 2011 at 11:38 pm
Keep working ,great job! Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking you feeds also, Thanks.