Year: 2020 (Page 2 of 2)

Teaching and the Pandemic (1)

April 3, 2020 / Trent / 2 Comments

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

It’s six in the morning, and I’ve been working at the computer for the last two hours. Covid-19 has changed our lives. Even for those who aren’t sick, or don’t know anyone who is. Some of this change is very difficult–people’s jobs and businesses are at risk.

My life is not changed so drastically. But I wanted to write about how the coronavirus changed my teaching, and that story started this week.

Spring Break was extended a week in order to give teachers time to plan for remote teaching and learning. It wasn’t until Monday morning, in the swirls of ever-changing edicts from the Ministry of Education, that we received our marching orders.

Our principal said that we are not going to turn into a school where isolated students perform fill-in-the-blank tasks to earn a grade; we will remain Abbotsford Christian School, we will just do that differently. This means “engaging hearts, nurturing minds and shaping God’s world.”

So now we have to figure out how to do that with our students. We need to have full class instruction, meaningful one-to-one conversations, and small group discussions. We need to create opportunities for them to do as well as think. This involves teachers learning new technologies with enough proficiency that we can teach students how to use them.

It involves a lot of clear communication with both parents and students. Today I will send out an email to the students, and their parents, in each of my four classes, informing them of the plan for next week. To write that letter, I need to know exactly what I am doing and how I am doing it. A tall order. I worked till 10 last night and woke up at 4 this morning to finish these letters.

Now that I know what I am doing, I will create the resources. For me, this will be making instructional videos, documents, and assignments. Thankfully, these don’t need to be done until Monday. So that’s the plan for the weekend.

In the middle of all this, I received an email from a student who had turned in an assignment that was 3 weeks overdue. They said, “I handed in my assignment yesterday and I was wondering why my mark still indicates it’s missing.”

I would have been able to get all this work done without getting up so early, but today is grocery day. I used to go to the grocery store almost daily. Now we don’t even go every week. Shopping also now includes parents who are isolating themselves in their homes. Two weeks ago, this took half the day.

The rest of this school year will be a lot different than we expected–for me, it will mean a lot of time in front of the computer. For my students too, I expect. I am excited by this challenge. And I am confident that, although my student’s social lives might take a bit of a beating, their education, and I use that term in a broad sense, will not.

Lysol Wipes and Moral Retardation

March 27, 2020 / Trent / 0 Comments

Hoarding Lysol

What got me about the Vancouver pair who were buying all the Lysol wipes from Costco and selling them for inflated prices on Amazon, was not just that they were doing it. It was the attitude–they were proud of it.

They had no idea that they were doing was morally reprehensible. I have previously written about this issue regarding cutting in line at the border. It’s the same garbage, different pile. It has to do with moral development; some people get stalled out, morally speaking.

Moral Retardation

I did some research to figure out what was going on with cutting in border line ups. According to a guy named Lawrence Kohlberg, there are six levels of morality. If everything goes well, as you grow up, you will move up the ladder, hopefully, to the highest level, but for one reason or another, people can get stuck.

The first level is called “Obedience and Punishment” where people will simply obey the rules because you could be punished if you don’t.
The second stage is called “Individualism.” At this stage, people make moral judgments based on self-interest.
The next level of morality is based on “Interpersonal Relationships.” Here one is concerned with living up to social expectations and roles.
Some face moral choices based on a perceived duty to “maintain social order.” This fourth level begins to consider society as a whole in moral decisions but sees the rules and laws as coming from an authority.
The fifth level is “Social Contract and Individual Rights.” At this stage moral questions are less black and white because there is an understanding of differing moral values and opinions. And rules and laws ought to be negotiated with others in society.
The last level approaches moral judgments with ” Universal Principles” in mind. These abstract principles are arrived at through moral reasoning. Then they are internalized and followed even if they come into conflict with society’s rules and laws.

When our Vancouver pair was grabbing up all the Lysol, there was no rule against it, so they have achieved level one. Yay!

What about level two? Their plan was clearly based on self-interest, 100% as far as I can tell, so I think we can congratulate our couple for clearly having advanced to stage two.

Everyone wishes, out of self-interest, that they had thousands of $20 items that people would be willing to pay $80 for. I do that all the time, but these conditions are rare. These occasions will pop up occasionally when there is a big change. Like a global pandemic for instance. We all see the opportunity, some people grab at it, others resist it. At level three, our subjects would be considering what other people are thinking. This appears to have no effect on their behaviour because there were a lot of people who were looking askance at their truck full of product. But perhaps they have achieved this level; I don’t know if they would charge their parents $80 for the wipes. But clearly they’d do it to their neighbours, so I am going to say they have not achieved level 3.

They certainlly haven’t gotten to level four, because there is a blatant disrespect for the “authority” of society. If everyone behaved as they did, the effects of the pandemic would be far worse than they would be otherwise. Because their behaviour can only work if there are a few who do it, it is, in principle, a behaviour that is immoral at the fourth level.

The last two levels actually allow for some flexibility in one’s approach to rules and laws, but neither would accept their behaviour under our current circumstances.

My diagnosis is that people who attempt to buy up all the necessary supplies from Costco in a pandemic (and those who sell candy at exorbitant rates on the elementary school playground) are stuck in the second stage of moral development.

And that’s probably fine if you are six years old.

That Doesn’t Count as a Hymn

January 26, 2020 / Trent / 0 Comments

Photo by Michael Maasen on Unsplash

We usually sing at least one hymn in church every week.

I don’t know, but there might be a hymn quota. A requirement of some sort that we sing a hymn every week to appease the hymn lovers.

I am one of these, a hymn lover.

But sometimes I am unappeased.

If there is a hymn quota, certain conditions must be met and a specific standard must be achieved in order for a song to meet the hymn requirement.

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When the Hymn Doesn’t Count

When you change the harmonies. One of the reasons we like to sing the hymns, is we like to sing the harmonies. We know our parts. Something special happens when we are able to contribute something musically beautiful to the praise and worship of our Lord. If we sing one of our favourite hymns, say “Holy, Holy Holy,” but I can’t find my part, the discrepancy between the joyful worship I might have experienced and the frustration I actually experienced . . . Well, it would be better if we didn’t sing it at all.
When you add a flakey chorus or bridge. Perhaps the fad is over, but for a while there we were always singing hymns with new choruses added. A few of these were quite good, most added nothing to the song, and some are downright bad. If we are going to sing hymns with added choruses, they should be only those in the first category. Otherwise, just toss it.
When it’s not a hymn. There are songs that sound like hymns, but they aren’t really hymns. Let’s sing these songs, but they can’t be counted as having sung a hymn. “In Christ Alone” is one such song. “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” is another. These are wonderful, but they don’t count.
When you change the lyrics. The song has already been written. If you want another song with a different theological emphasis, write it, but you can’t rewrite this one. It does us no harm to sing in words that are not contemporary–it might do us some good.
If it’s a Sunday School song from decades ago. Hymns are old Christian songs, but not all old Christian songs are hymns. It is a condition for many under 30 to lump together anything that happened before their birth into the category ‘old.’ Consequently, a young worship leader can easily conclude that “Pass It On” is a good old hymn. It is not.
When you change the musical style of the hymn, it’s awesome.

Different Musical Styles

Perhaps you expected me to rail against changing the way a hymn sounds. That’d be a silly thing to complain about.

How to Rock the Literacy 10 Assessment

January 10, 2020 / Trent / 0 Comments

Wokandapix / Pixabay

I just finished a weekend of marking the brand new Literacy 10 Assessment–brought to you by the Ministry of Education in British Columbia.

As I read through hundreds and hundreds of student compositions, I wanted to talk to the students that wrote them, or their teachers and tell them if only they did this or that little thing, they’d get a far better score. There are some pretty simple ways you can get better results on this assessment.

Why do well?

But before I get into how to do well, perhaps we’d better talk about why. This is not one of those “high stakes exams” we hear about. One of those that determine if you get into university or how much funding your school gets. This doesn’t have that kind of baggage–that’s a good thing. The response of the narrow minded is “then it doesn’t matter.” This is absolutely correct if having an accurate assessment of one’s reading, writing and thinking does not matter.

If students do their best on this assessment, the results will provide them with some valuable information about what they are good at and what they can work on over the next few years to improve important competencies. Competencies that, once developed, will certainly be personally relevant. This is not an English test, it is about literacy–the skills it assesses transcend English class, and reach beyond high school graduation.

The Structure of the Literacy 10 Assessment

Part A

Students are given a selection of texts. These include graphs and diagrams as well as as various passages including narrative and expository. Students will answer a variety of questions on these texts–these are not typical multiple choice, but a variety of forms that break the mold of traditional assessments.

There are two writing tasks in Part A. A Graphic Organizer and a Critical Response.

This section is called “What They Say” in that students write about what other people say about a topic.

Part B

This section is called “What I Say” because here students are invited to enter into the conversation. Students can chose between Literacy for Information and Literacy for Expression. Each of these have readings and a prompt for an essay.

How to do well.

Tip #1 — Understand the task.

There are three writing tasks on this assessment. The Graphic Organizer, a Critical Response and Writing for Information/Expression. The expectations for each task are very different, so students must understand which task they working on.

Graphic Organizer — Here the student is expected to organize ideas found in texts. They will organize ideas one a graphic organizer–a table, a pyramid, a Venn Diagram, etc. Here they show an understanding of cause/effect, coordinate and subordinate ideas, explanation/example, etc. Students are asked to make assertions and briefly explain.
Critical Response — This section is nicknamed “What They Say.” This is a multi-paragraph response. For clarity’s sake, let’s call it an essay. Students must have more than 1 paragraph. Technically 2 is fine, but I suggest a minimum of 3. Write an intro that ends with a thesis statement–be explicit. A minimum of a one-paragraph body that starts with a topic sentence. And a conclusion. Most students should try for two or three body paragraphs. Again, this is “What They Say”; The instructions say, “With reference to one or more of the texts.” Students should show they’ve read the texts. This is important: students don’t offer their thoughts or ideas here–their task in this section is to clearly communicate what others are saying. Students should write about the texts–not about what they think or know. This is not a personal response, that comes later.
Literacy for Information or Literacy for Expression — This section is nicknamed, “What I Say,” and it offers students more freedom in what they say and how they say it–they may write an essay, or a story, or even a poem. In this section, students are given a prompt to which they respond in writing. Readings accompany the prompt. Students may use these as inspiration for their own writing, but there is no requirement that students refer to them. It is important that students answer the prompt and not allow the readings to pull you off of this task. Tell students to dare to be different–write a story, use dialogue (but know how to format it). Show their insight and creativity from the first line!

Tip #2 — Be Specific

For all of these tasks, be specific, not general. Clear, not vague. Make sure the support is relevant and specific. Back up all of your assertions with specific evidence or examples.

Tip #3 — Give Students a Word Count

For some reason, the creators of the assessment are very reluctant to give students a word count. I don’t know what the reason is. Anyone who has taught grade 10 students knows that most will write a one-sentence answer to any question unless specifically told to write more. Then most a quite willing to comply. This will also the case on the Literacy 10 Assessment–if they write a 50-word response to any of the essays, they will do poorly, and there is no need for this.

For the Graphic Organizer, don’t over-write. The exception is the Graphic organizer. Two sentences per box will be fine. A quote doesn’t hurt, but it is not necessary.

For the essays tell students that they should write a minimum of 300 words. A 600 word response is completely appropriate.

Tip #3 — Exceed Minimums

When then instructions say, “With reference to one or more of the texts,” refer to at least two. When the instructions say multi-paragraph, write at least 3. Exceed minimums, but don’t get carried away–don’t refer to all the texts multiple times and don’t write a seven paragraph essay. Good writers know when their point has been made and don’t need to compensate with volume.

Tip #4 — Read for Main Ideas

Most of the tasks in the assessment revolve around picking up on the main ideas for each text. Students should practice this in their classes, and they should focus on this as they read the passages on the assessment.

Tip #5 — Capitals and Periods

I’ve marked provincial exams for more than two decades, and have always been baffled as to why so many students consider the caps and periods optional, as if they were some sort of stylistic device that only pretentious professionals employed.

If you know what a sentence is. Show that you know.

If you don’t know what a sentence is, toss a few periods and capitals into your writing. It can’t hurt. At least the assessor would get the idea that you’re trying.

Tip #6 Refer to Texts by Name

And put this name in the proper format.

Tip #7 — Read It Over

Typos and spelling mistakes don’t leave a very good impression. Ideally, every spelling and grammatical error that remains in each composition should only be the ones the student is not aware of. If they know how to spell “environment” they should not allow “emviromint” remain uncorrected in their essay.

Tip #8 — Paragraphing

Reinforce the importance of paragraphing to your students. It shows the students understanding of structuring writing, and it makes their writing easier to understand.

So, topic sentences, specific evidence with explanations, and transitions will really boost those marks. It’s fine if students don’t write in paragraphs, but only if they legitimately don’t understand paragraphing. That’s one of the things we are assessing.

Tip #9 — Answer the questions even if it’s not relevant to you.

Sometimes students will be asked to give a personal opinion or reflection to an issue or an idea. They need to put some effort into this, even if they honestly don’t have an opinion, reaction or to describe something they learned or how their opinion has shifted. They should explain why they don’t have an opinion, or talk about an opinion that a student might have. A specific response in these cases can bump students up a mark.