Swimming Pigs & Middle School Engagement
Over the last couple of weeks, I have begun the “launch” phase of my SET Lab research. If you’re just joining along now, you can check out my previous posts on classroom design and engagement in my middle school classroom.
Just this week, we spent time looking at flexible seating and 21st century learning spaces. The students were in awe. We then went through some guided thinking activities where the students brainstormed what they liked about my classroom (or other classrooms), what could be improved, how they should feel in a classroom environment, and finally ending with internet searches of comfy, cool, and creative furniture.
Here are just a few of my initial observations (and some pictures) regarding data collection as well as the classroom design lessons:
My awesome SET Lab consultant, Allison Furton, has been pushing into my classroom to take field notes and collect behavior data through retrieval maps. In this process, Allison records engagement for 10 seconds per student in the classroom every two minutes for a period of 10 minutes total by tallying on and off-task behaviors. At first, the students were very intrigued as to why another adult was taking notes quietly in the back of my classroom. In the last few weeks, however, the students are not even phased as to why Allison is continuing to come in.
In my second classroom design lesson, the students were tasked with creating a blueprint using some of the ideas and concepts we talked about the previous day. In the previous lesson, I talked to them about how redesigning the classroom was actually going to happen. It wasn’t until the second day when it hit the students that they ACTUALLY had the executive decision as to what my classroom will look like in the coming weeks. After quickly reviewing the blueprints they made on Google Drawings, it became very clear that we would need to vote on one design based on several ideas from students.
The best (and most entertaining) part of the data collection has been with the student engagement surveys. Please see below for just one example of the many delightful responses:
I’ll be updating you soon with more thoughts and analysis. As I continue through the “launch” phase of the design process, I will be posting my progress here on Medium as well as on Twitter. To follow my progress as well as the other SET Lab delegates in their action research, follow the hashtags #educationalscientist and #SETlab.
