I’m a huge proponent of #EduProtocols. I love every single one of them and have completed several with multiple age groups, including 3rd graders, 6th graders, high schoolers, 1st and 2nd year college students, and doctoral students. Of these #EduProtocols, my favorite is Iron Chef, due to its quick, down, and dirty approach to get students involved with information. Read my previous Iron Chef post. I was really excited to have middle school students this year and to integrate the awesomeness of Iron Chef, not to mention, lighten the preparation on my end and save my voice, too.
As always, we practiced 2 light, non-academic ICs during the first and second week of school. During those two trials I learned:
- Despite assigning slides, 35 students on one slidedeck = havoc and a lot of lag
- Some students did not have the tech savoir-faire to edit a slide or add in an image
- Some students didn’t want to talk at all in front of a group, even if it was for 10 seconds – to present their name and hobby
- Some periods handled it better than others, in terms of needing guidance through the process
After each IC, we debriefed about the experience and talked about aspects to making a good, presentable slide. A student deleted a bunch of slides “on accident” to which I attributed to the major lag time with everyone on the deck. So, we also talked about netiquette and collaboration spirit. Everything was peachy. Those who wanted to speak, spoke; those who were not so techy with slides, learned to use the basic functions of slides – inserting text box, changing font, size, and color, adding an image, etc.
On Friday, I introduced the science behind parachutes to my middle schoolers. (I teach a STEM project-based learning elective course to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.) With two practice Iron Chef experiences under their belt, I figured we could go into content this time. To resolve the earlier issues, I made a slide deck with only 8 slides. The website with information I wanted them to read was divided into 8 parts, each with approximately one paragraph of information on parachutes. As I read each paragraph in my preparation, I saw that there were at least 4 facts that they could extract. They could even find at least one science word in the paragraph. So, those were the things I asked them to put on their slide. Each student in the group of 8 was responsible for one slide.
To start the session, I did the following things:
- Reviewed the process of Iron Chef;
- Showed them the mise en place on the slidedeck;
- Pointed out the sections on the website;
- Connected the title of the slide to the section they would read;
- Ensured they were in a group of at most 8;
- Appointed a techy leader who “made a copy” of the original deck and shared with everyone in the group and me; and
- Made sure every person knew which slide he/she were working on before I started the timer.
I thought this time, things were going to be smooth sailing, contrary to the slight hiccups we had during the first and second non-serious trials. For the most part, it was. Most groups were successful.
The Good:
- More than half of the students were able to handle this and enjoyed the process of reading only one small paragraph and presenting for 20 seconds.
- A few students felt the paragraph they read did not contain enough information, so they searched for more information and added outside information to their slide.
The Bad – Things I Didn’t Know They Didn’t Know:
- Since one person had to “Make a copy” and share the slides with their group members and me, many students did not know where to find the shared slide deck.
- Multiple students did not know how to access the website because I did not think to hyperlink the address. They were honestly stuck. They were clicking on the address and seriously confused that it was not bringing them to a website. I taught them to press “enter” after the last letter to create a hyperlink and/or to copy-paste the address into their browser.
- I have a lot of students who read at an early elementary level. So, they were not able to read and understand the paragraph to extract 4 bullet points. I’ll be teaching them to use the “Read Aloud” function.
- One student had an anxiety attack because he could not finish his work in the given 15 minutes.
The Ugly:
- One student promptly deleted everyone’s work when I gave the one-minute warning. His response was along the lines of, “If I can’t do my part and am not ready to present it, I don’t want anyone else in the group to present, either.”
- Students purposely working on another person’s slides, just to “mess with them” because they were in the slide deck and could “write on other people’s slides”.
- Two groups of students in one period did absolutely nothing. They chatted and blamed each other for not having access to the slides.
The Bad are things that I can easily fix in my classroom. I’m glad that they’re here with me and that I can teach them the technology skills they have not yet learned. I hope that they will leave my class proficient in using Google and Microsoft Suite. As for the student with anxiety, I will speak to him in advance to give him a heads up and give him more time to complete his slide either in class or at home.
The Ugly. For the student who deleted everyone’s work, I will need to have a more serious conversation with him to know the root of the issue. Was it meant to be malicious? Why did he feel that it was OK to take away other students’ hard work? For the students messing with other students’ slides, was it due to boredom because they couldn’t read the article due to low reading ability? For the two groups of students who did absolutely nothing – even though I was on them – literally standing behind the leader – in sharing the deck and making sure they were on the appropriate website – I’ll need to be sure that they’re not in the same group anymore.
This experience was truly enlightening. Since I had never encountered these types of “Ugly” in the other grade levels, I wonder what it was about this age group that this occurred. Could it have been just this particular group of students in these 2 periods? Since the other 2 periods were more or less successful with the process and academic content? I am certainly glad that I have multiple periods to compare so that I didn’t feel like I tanked this lesson completely or that my Iron Chef instruction for them was completely misleading.
Hmm… thinking thinking. K12 teachers using #EduProtocol Iron Chef, have y’all come across these types of “ugly” issues before? How did you deal with it? I’d love to know your ideas!
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