Ustani Sahiba

Designed this Field Trip Process Journal for my MYP1 (6th grade) students before taking them to Takht-i-Bahi, as part of their unit on Ancient Civilizations, back in 2021.

I'm all for fun field trips, where there is no studious agenda. However, moments like these, when one is visiting historical sites, are opportunities for experiential learning.

There are certainly some improvements that need to be made to this, however, this product acts as a stepping stone for further such ideas.

You can access the Process Journal for Takht-i-Bahi here:
https://lnkd.in/d6qNW8e3

You can access the Process Journal for Rohtas Fort (for MYP2 students) here:
https://lnkd.in/dCcH4WWf

We kicked off our unit with a scavenger hunt,
Exploring the school to find goods that bore a grunt,
From the wheel to the computer chip,
We searched high and low for each historical trip.

Electricity was found anywhere around,
While coal in the kitchen was surely abound,
Metal equipment was scattered all about,
And oil in cars made the students shout.

The printing press was hidden in the basement,
And antibiotics in the nurse's office had placement,
Sugar in the cafe was easy to discover,
While the computer chip required a little more effort.

The hunt was a fun and exciting start,
To our unit on goods that changed the world with heart,
Now we'll delve deeper and explore their impact,
With inquiry and curiosity, we'll unpack.

Discussions about why it's important to praise and/or congratulate colleagues and other people in general is outdated, because if as a team leader or a team member you're not doing it already you're basically failing to create a team to begin with.

Susan Sparks lists this technique at #7 of what effective collaborative teams have in common. I must admit, in a team meeting, praising and congratulating one another rarely crosses anyone's minds because everyone wants to accomplish the purpose of the meeting. However, 5-minutes of a ritual that begins meetings with appreciation is sure to go a long way for the wellbeing of the team - and it can even simply include appreciating and congratulating your own self for achieving something in a given week. 💁🏼‍♀️

To check out more collaboration tools or techniques, click here: https://linktr.ee/ustanisahiba

How many times do you listen simply to respond?

How understanding are you as a listener?

How many times do you quiet your agenda to actually *listen* to what is being said?

I've mentioned earlier that the essence of collaboration is to gather information, but that cannot happen unless all team members are actively listening to diverse viewpoints.

Naturally, listening comes in varying forms. There's listening simply to respond. There's listening without acknowledging what is being said. And then there's active listening, which is exercised in a manner that the speaker feels acknowledged, understood, and a part of the team.

I don't know about you, but I feel by the end of this series, I'll be turning these points into a poster for not only my students but also myself and my fellow teachers.

After a brief (but much needed) hiatus, I'm here with the fifth characteristic of collaboration. Despite the banality of this characteristic, there's more to it than meets the eye. All the points that the fifth characteristic mentions can be trimmed down to one - namely, the gathering of information. However, if you ask anyone around you, they are most likely going to come up with just the rudimentary processes of doing that.

It mustn't be so. When teaching skills to students, we try to engage them by making the process of learning and interacting engaging. Question is - why don't we replicate this in meetings with adults? Why must meetings of all kinds confine themselves to pen, paper, notes, and talk? Exactly this got me thinking (read: researching) on ways to gather information. And it wasn't long before that I came across this gem of a resource - Butler's 19 techniques on gathering information.

An organizational development consultant, Butler not only identifies these 19 techniques (and much more on her website), she also charts out how one can use the techniques. What I particularly love about these techniques is how easily I can replicate them in my classroom as well. For access to Butler's techniques, please visit: https://linktr.ee/ustanisahiba

Would also love to get feedback from you. 😌🌻

Team meetings shouldn't feel polarizing. One side of the table should not be bombarding the team with ideas, while the other remains stagnantly quite. One side of the table should also not be acquiring all the major responsibilities, while the other "gets off easy".

I'll be honest, I'm one of those who will have a thing to add to every single point on the agenda because a) either no one's speaking up or b) I genuinely have something to add to it. It's classic classroom behavior, where for convenience, the teacher will choose the student who voluntarily has something to add to the discussion, thereby foregoing all those who aren't adding anything. This is why I make a conscious effort to keep myself in check whenever possible.

This all can be easily avoided if the structure of the meeting inherently gives responsibilities that require all participants to partake in some way or the other, while ensuring that these responsibilities rotate on a regular basis, so that everyone in the group gets to be the Facilitator, the Recorder, the Most Responsible Member, and the Group Member at least once in the lifetime of meeting.

Check out the Team Meeting Organizer to put this strategy to use by following this link: https://linktr.ee/ustanisahiba

Agendas - they sound boring, they sound monotonous, but they give meetings a structure. Agendas are lesson plans, just for your teams. Structured agendas enable your team members to see exactly what will be happening in a given meeting and what will not be happening, so they know what to expect out of a collaboration.

Susan K. Sparks provides an interesting Team Meeting Organizer that has now been digitized by yours truly. This organizer consists of roles and responsibilities that each group member will acquire, a specific goal that the team will work towards, a purpose, a non-purpose, and a linking task which allows the group to look at results with, with a past-present-future snapshot.

Because I have recently been quite dainty with the graphics I create, I couldn't let this organizer remain monotoned, so you'll get access to this Team Meeting Organizer, and can choose from 6 different themes to use (or create your own). Furthermore, instructions on how to use it and basic info about the terminology have also been added.

You may access the organizer here: https://linktr.ee/ustanisahiba

Number 2 on the list of effective collaborative behaviors is facilitating and recording. Several times you’ll have to fill up both or one of these roles without anyone having designated them to you. This is where a responsible collaborator and/or colleague comes into play. As much as you’d constantly like to contribute your ideas to the group (something I’m exceptionally guilty of), you will need to take a backseat and have your fellow collaborators contribute equally or fairly. For this to happen, you or someone else may need to fill in the shoes of a facilitator.

A facilitator’s role is to provide the resources, encouragement, and the necessary scaffolding for the fellow collaborators to jump off. Questions that facilitators will often find themselves asking in a collaboration include:

1. What are some ideas you have about said topic?

2. Here is a proposal, what do you think about it?

3. I really like your idea, but how can we make it better to fit our assessment needs, etc.?

4. Here are some helpful resources, how do you think we can use these to better our methodology?

I’m a sucker for facilitation – even though I LOVE sharing ideas (hence this blog) but I love equipping my students and fellow colleagues with the necessary skills and ideas to reach a conclusion on their own. And naturally, I also love being part of collaborations where I am facilitated rather than simply dictated on what to do and how to do it.

Lastly, but briefly, always ALWAYS record your collaborations in whichever way you deem necessary. Not only is it evidence of your collaboration, it also enables you to reflect on what you may have missed, what you may have improved on, or what you would like to omit.

As schools around the world are looking to reopen (whether virtually or physically), collaborative meetings are one thing that are definitely going to decorate everyone's agenda. Whether to discuss reopening, following SOPs, pedagogy, or interdisciplinary strategies, collaborative meetings form an imperative factor because some ideas just cannot prosper in singularity. Furthermore, these ideas can equally act to teach students how to collaborate well.

This week we're going to look at the 11 initial factors as highlighted by Susan K. Sparks — an educational consultant at the Front Range Board of Cooperative Educational Services for Teacher Leadership. Sparks signifies these as team behaviors that are "truly collaborative and focused on student learning". Naturally, Sparks' ideas can be applied to other sectors of the workforce as well.

The first of these is: clarifying both purpose and goal at the start of the meeting. Although this goes without saying but meetings that clarify the purpose of collaboration help you think and brainstorm a certain way. Having been part of a week of collaboration myself at our school, I noticed that meetings that specified exactly what teachers needed to do in that time proved to be a lot more fruitful. The subsequent discussions that then emerged were not only more focused, but because we were working in smaller groups, they also allowed more group members to collaborate more effectively — all while staying true to the task at hand.

Student engagement – if I were to describe my everyday teaching goals, this would be it. It is exactly this goal that has pushed me to step out of my comfort zone and try unusual things. One of the unusual things I had in mind was a way for students to scribble through a Maze/Labyrinth online to reach a level. There was no academic reason behind it per say, just a desire to have my students immersed in the process of learning and for them to look forward to the academic task that lies ahead.

In my class, while teaching my students about sequence as a form of organizational writing, I thought of setting pictures of mazes and labyrinths as the background, for students to scribble on and reach the level for the day.

– before deciding which maze/labyrinth is the easiest or the hardest, I scribbled through them myself to find out 😅

Follow this link to a drive folder to get a copy of this activity: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IRO_OxW18_R9KI0F1mhfo_d40to0ZPVV?usp=sharing

You will also be able to find the Canva presentation template that I used for this task.

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The usual questions/comments I come across by non-teachers when planning lessons:

- Are you still not done?

- Can't you just use material from last year?

- Just make it really quick, don't put in so much effort.

- Just give them a comprehensive reading to do with questions.

The reasons why these questions/comments irk me:

1. We can't always use material from last year. Not only does some material become outdated, but so does our pedagogical approach. If, as a teacher, you're not leaving room for improvement for yourself, how can you expect your students to exercise a growth mindset?

2. Lesson plans that are being made from scratch can't be completed "quickly". Teachers are constantly learning and re-learning concepts and strategies to better their approach. Furthermore, every year we come across students with varying needs. Not only are we then planning lessons around the child who may be facing the most difficulties, but we're also trying to plan a lesson to challenge those who are fast-paced and independent learners. Note that these aren't two different lessons in one class — these are multiple levels incorporated in one lesson.

3. When you were a child, do you remember classrooms or activities that only revolved around readings, comprehension, Q&A? Or do you remember that one (or more) teacher that enabled you to understand better through experiments, unusual activities, humor? The point is not just to make learning memorable or the content rich, but to also make learning fun, so that the child looks forward to attending school and most of all, looks forward to approaching learning.

4. And the above-stated reasons are exactly why I'm still not done with lesson planning for the week 🤷🏼‍♀️

Part Two:

After dividing the students up into 8 groups of 4-5 students, I made 8 copies of the same document on Google Classroom, which only those students could edit who were part of that group – this means you will need to assign it to students in that group only. I then proceeded to make 8 individual Google Meets as clickable links on those 8 documents. I let the students know that I will be a part of each of those Google Meets but on mute (my Panopticon moment). In case they had a question, they needed to say their group number and then type their question in the chatbox. Although the chatter did become incomprehensible at times, but I wasn’t there to direct chatter really. I was there to “see” – in this case implying supervision and facilitation without becoming intrusive or trying to navigate their conversations in a certain direction.

The resulting discussions from this activity truly impressed me. Not only were the students engaging in active conversations in smaller, meaningful groups (as they do in real life), they were encouraging group members to contribute and probing them on why they believe a certain map would be oldest or newest.

If you would like to access the digitized version of this activity, please visit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yHjNh6gb3xuNZp9iRYTvi9DQ1ckTISwn?usp=sharing
To access the original activity by Mr. Roughton, please visit: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Maps-and-the-Age-of-Exploration-Middle-School-Social-Studies-1041616
To access more resources from Mr. Roughton on TPT, please visit: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrroughton
Image of Panopticon from: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7121.html