Technicolor Feedback

My school is experiencing a paper shortage. We ran out of paper last year with a few weeks left, which wasn't that big of a deal. However, this year we ran our pretty early, and the paper has been pretty low around here, despite ordering more. I'm waiting for some black market type activity to pop up... :)

This has affected how I teach and made me think about the role of paper in a classroom. Obviously, in a perfect world, everything would be electronic. We're not there (yet), so we have to adapt. When I assign projects, I pass out rubrics to each student so they can see what they're be graded on. I state the objectives and assign point values based on how well the students accomplished those objectives. Standard operating procedure for any teacher.

Well, one paper per student quickly adds up over the course of three grade levels, three trimesters, and many projects. I do double side the papers (the assignment sheet is usually on the back), but now I have stopped doing that.

I'm trying something new.

Instead, whenever a project is assigned, I'm going to have the rubric zoomed in on my Smartboard. I also will have three or four copies hanging up around the room for the students to view. These rubrics are comprehensive in nature and look like your typical rubric: set up in chart form, differing point values explained, etc. I'm not going to give each student a copy of the full rubric: we will go over it in class, and it is then their responsibility to know the rubric and consult the copies hanging up around the room if they have questions. I'll probably upload a copy to the homework calendar, too.

Now, I'm going to try something called technicolor feedback. I learned about this from the wonderful teacher who taught the course, The Skillful Teacher for my district (FYI, if you get to take this course...take it!). We had completed a paper assignment, and as we got the assignments back we noticed they were very colorful. Our teacher had used colored highlighters to highlight parts of our paper based on how well we accomplished the objectives. She gave us a reference sheet so we could decode the meanings of the colors and determine what our strengths and weaknesses were for the assignment.

The order of the color scheme could be whatever, from low to high: blue, green, orange, yellow, pink. Each color would represent how well a student completed each objective.

For example, here's how I could use it in my 8th grade health class; these objectives are currently being tweaked for a project relating to melanoma/sun exposure (which I plan to post about this week). The objectives could be:

• Identify at least seven facts about sun exposure, tanning, and/or melanoma
• Describe at least three ways a student can protect themselves from the sun
• Create an action plan utilizing the three ways described above

Or, whatever the objectives are for the project. I'd print them as written on a piece of paper (leaving space for teacher comments!), and it's incredible how much paper you save. As I'm grading the project, I'll mark each objective with the appropriate color highlighter. When the students get their grades back, they'll know how they performed for each objective/part of the rubric. The students can look at the rubric and color keys around the room, and I'll have the color code on the Smartboard as I hand back their grades, too. The rubric takes up far less paper space (I'm working to get four on one page), and it's visual. Initially, the students might be confused, but by being consistent with coloring, they can eventually catch on; e.g. yellow always being the highest score possible. Then, they can see what they did or didn't do well.

This requires multiple highlighters. I bought a box of highlighters (24 total; 12 yellow, 6 pink, and 2 each of blue, green, and orange) at Costco for less than ten dollars, even though I don't need 24! I could have the students do a peer-evaluation or self-assessment using the same method, too. Of course, a self-reflection after the assignment on what they can improve in is always a good idea!

I'll post back once I've used this a few times between now and the end of the school year, explaining how things went. As always, please feel free to e-mail me with any questions, comments, or concerns.

Student Feedback: Alcohol Simulation Stations

Last week, I was able to use the alcohol simulation stations activity with my seventh graders. I adapt the activity to fit our class length (45 minutes) as well as the attention span of seventh grade students. I included five stations, which I found to be enough to get the point of the lesson across.

Whenever I use activities like this, I ask for the students to write a brief reflection on what they experienced. The chart they filled out during class had the factual information they needed, so for the reflection I wanted to know their opinions on the activity, how they felt about their experience, and what they were going to do with the information they learned.

The lesson went really well! There were some logistical issues I could fix, but when it came time to go over the chart, I could see the light bulbs go off in their heads. I was very happy at how things went, and my initial concerns that the lesson wouldn't click with seventh grade students were false.

I e-mailed Dr. Whalen, who helped create this activity, with some student responses. Below are selected thoughts from some of those responses. A few are in their entirety, others are excerpts. I've included them with grammatical errors and all. Enjoy!

"I really enjoyed the station activity about alcohol. I enjoyed this activity because they were all very challenging, which makes me want to keep going."

"I didn't think it was going to be hard to complete all these challenges until I tried."

"Something that would be easy to do normally was very difficult during the activity when we were 'under the influence' of alcohol."

"This is the best activity we've done all year, I think."

This next one is from one of my brighter students, who also told me he used this opportunity to showcase his vocabulary: "Today in health class, we did various activities designed to simulate alcohol abuse. For instance, take the 'foggy glasses' activity. In this activity, the participant donned spectacles obstructed with a foreign substance, most likely petroleum jelly. The wearer was then required to painstakingly navigate an ordinary sewing thread through the literal 'eye of the needle.' However, since a needle could be potentially dangerous in a situation where one's vision was impaired, a small chain was implemented as a safety precaution. I personally felt extremely frustrated and frigghtfuly incompitant at simple everyday tasks while performing this staton. This station was ment to simulate how your vision could be adversely affected in a situation where alcohol was abused. One could easily crash an automobile or at the very least stumble and fall down while being influenced by alcohol. And so, in conclusion, I enjoyed these activities immensely. I believe that be demonstrating the negative affects of alcohol to students, more lives can be saved. In the time-honored words of Officer S., 'Smoking kills more people, but alcohol ruins more lives.' "

"I really enjoyed todays class we were up and moving and really experimenting. I would so much rather do class activities like that because we get to feel what it's like. I really enjoyed todays class I think we should have more classes like todays."

"I never really understood what an alcoholic went through. I thought that an alcoholic could control themselves, and I didn't know how much alcohol affects the body. In the end I now understand what an alcoholic goes through when drinking and this acitivty has taught me not to drink."

"The activities that we did in class today really helped show me what it would feel like to drink all the time. I liked the balloon juggling station because it showed how hard it is to juggle other things in your life when you're focused on alcohol."

Next up: some great, interactive diagrams of the male & female reproductive systems I'm using for puberty!

mrbartletthealth@gmail.com

HIV Transmission Activity: From the Students

EDIT: I have updated the HIV Transmission Game handout (which a number of people have downloaded!) in the original post. I tweaked something to represent condom usage that I included in my blog post while leaving it out of the PDF. You can find the updated link in the original HIV Transmission Game post.

After completing the activity in class with my 8th graders, I had them write a reflection for homework. My only requirement was that it be ten sentences minimum. Some students wrote less, and many wrote more. The first two examples below are in their entirety; the others are selected quotes.

All sentences are posted exactly as written (sic):

"Today's health class (Feb. 24) was very interesting. I could tell that the whole class pretty much liked that activity. It was different, we learned something from is without having to sit in our seats. It shows how fast and how easy it is to pass around HIV or any of that. In my opinion, that is not good at all. I don't know much about the stuff in this new unit, but I can tell that we will all learn a lot. HIV, STD's, and AIDS can be very dangerous. I hope everyone learns that so they will know. It would be fun to do another activity like this in the future."

"1. At first, I was wondering about some things in he activity.

2. When we found out at the end, I thought the activity was really messed up, but on second thought, what we learn in Health is usually messed up.

3. The activity surprised me at how fast and how much HIV can spread.

4. I got HIV from Peter, who got it from Jenna, who got it from David.

5. Even though I was surprised at how much it can spread, I doubt many people really "get together" with others that often as demonstrated in this.

6. I was partly scared too find out the only way to be 100% not to get HIV is to, not, you know, "get together."

7. If this is just the beginning, I don't think I want to know what we're doing next.

8. This sentence may be off topic, but I'm glad Mr. Bartlett said we're not going to see pictures.

9. It occurred to me that if a person has HIV and doesn't know, it could turn into a big problem.

10. One thing I want to know, though, is the difference between HIV and AIDS."

Note: I told them at the beginning of the unit that I would not show them any pictures of what STD's on the body look like.

"I liked how we were actual able to understand the material we are required to learn by doing it in a fun way, rather than out of a textbook or taking notes."

"The HIV disease never seemed very real to me...until now."

"It was fun because we go to get up and walk around but boring depending on what you got in your bag." (This student had the abstinence card)

"I thought it worked well, for after it was finished I had a lot more knowledge in the subject area. This is a little awkward to learn about, but it will be very educational."

"It's really creepy when you see the whole web of people."

Overall, the lesson was a success! Other students in the school asked me about the lesson during my lunch duty, and a teacher brought it up too. After we went over the discussion questions during the lesson, I could tell the students were thinking about what we just simulated. Hopefully it will encourage them to make good decisions in the future! I have received similar feedback from the alcohol simulation stations lesson in seventh grade.