I visited one of our Toymaking classes yesterday. I got another chance to see what really engaged learning looks like, and it’s a beautiful thing.The kids had built spinning turntables, and they turned them into spinning sculptures by attaching pipe cleaner and card stock characters and objects.Some of the kids were dissatisfied with how well their turntables spun. The teacher pointed out that there must be some friction somewhere in the mechanism slowing it down. The children all debugged their own turntables, finding and fixing the source of the friction. “Look, I got rid of the friction! Look how well it spins!”A girl had the idea to make a spinning solar system that revolved around a pipe-cleaner sun. The idea spread like wildfire - another boy who had already finished his sculpture (a snake and an alien in a perpetual circular chase) asked if he could make another turntable so he could make a solar system too. He tore back to the first workstation and within ten minutes he had assembled another turntable and was hard at work on his solar system. A discussion ensued among the kids about whether Pluto should be a planet or not.What is hardest to convey was the sweetness of the scene - everyone hard at work, everyone doing something different, admiring the work of others and liking their own work too. Lovely.

At the time I was launching Big Learning’s after-school program, I had a bee in my bonnet about sequential curriculum: “C’mon kids, learn this little skill. When you’ve mastered that, we’ll let you go on to the next one. No moving on without mastery. Mastery doesn’t count unless it’s the skill we want you to master. And don’t go too quick or too slow - see that’s a problem for the grownups.”

Ooh, what an ugly way to teach - like putting blinders on.

So I got in a little tiff about this on a certain listserv I follow. I think it’s possible to create an instructional environment rich enough that kids can, if you will, self-differentiate around a combination of shared and individual activities.

Instead, what most schools have done is create a tightly sequenced instructional setting, so if teachers want to teach to more than one achievement level, they have to make a separate lesson up for each level and then figure out what to do with the rest of the class while they teach each group. No wonder differentiation is seen as difficult.

But there’s another way. We can create a really rich instructional setting and let the kids and the materials lead the way in differentiation.

So, I wanted to speak from experience about this. In designing my after-school program, I invited kids in grades 2-5 to be in one class. And I got kids from every grade except 5. I figured that if my assumptions needed to be challenged, that should do it. Then I tried to design projects for each week that they would all be able to do and learn from.

You know what? It’s been great so far. The class discussions are really rich, because the big kids know a lot. The little kids know things too, and jump right in. I try to build each week’s project so there are many ways to do it, and kids usually design something that is right for their skill levels.

Also, the there are two kids who consistently do the most elaborate and beautiful work. One is a fourth grader, and one is a second grader. Good thing I didn’t try to predict by age who’d be able to do what.

But this mixed age grouping works only because the instructional strategies support it. I have really engaging activities, rich content connections, and I work hard to set a positive and kind tone.

And, I don’t expect everyone to learn the same thing in the same order.

These are dark days in science education. Nanette Asimov of the San Francisco Chronicle reported recently that in many Bay Area schools, science education is nearly “extinct.” The article reports that according to a study from WestED, 80% of surveyed teachers teach science less than 1 hour per week. 16 percent have quit teaching science altogether.

And yet, I find it interesting that somehow, 47% of Bay Area 5th graders scored at grade level (whatever that means) on state science tests. Isn’t it stunning that almost half the kids passed a test for which the subject matter isn’t being taught? Where are they getting their science, if not in class?

Well, some are getting it in class, but it takes a creative rebel to put it there:

“..you shoehorn it in, sneaking science into reading and math lessons.

Second-grade teacher Bernadette Ison is a master at that.

Her classroom at Bessie Carmichael is filled with children who are learning English and who come from lower-income families - just the kind of challenges that policymakers say is why basic reading and math should trump science and social studies.

“So we integrate science into our literacy,” Ison said. “Our reading curriculum is called “Nature Walk,” and we have a theme called “Animals.”

On Friday, the students will take a nature walk around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. Afterward, they’ll write an essay on what they saw and learned, Ison said.”

Ok, so a few are getting some hit-or-miss science in school. That means the rest is coming from outside of school. It’s us: parents taking their kids to museums and buying them science toys, teachers teaching after school clubs, libraries stocking their science collections, summer science programs filled to bursting.

It’s heartening in a way - this unseen groundswell of public science-love. Here that, policy makers? WE CARE ABOUT SCIENCE! All across America, individuals are stepping up to do what schools have stopped doing - providing basic science education.

But, in the same way that charities can’t fix poverty, we can’t fix this alone. According to NAEP, we’re losing: only 32 percent of 4th graders scored “proficient.” And the racial achievement gap, while narrowing somewhat, is still large.

It’s time to make sure every kid gets a good science education.

I’ve been thinking about summer learning lately, and I’m not the only one. It’s been in the news lately thanks to the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins.

For many reasons, a lot of people are questioning the wisdom of the long summer break. Too many kids at loose ends. Too many parents scrambling to cobble together a summer.

The public school system does need to offer a more reliable summer program. But heaven help us if it’s just more of the same thing that happens during the school year. If we’re going to extend the public school domain into the summer season, we need to do it for the right reasons and in the right way.

So, not year-round schooling. Not mandatory summer school for all. And not onerous take-home assignments that ruin an otherwise lovely summer. And not easy-way-out summer programs that look exactly like the rest of the year. Not summer school as a punishment for kids who don’t score well enough on a single misused standardized test.

But, yes to great summer programs that offer kids all the stuff they miss during the school year - like art, music, and hands-on science and history. Yes to summer programs that offer intensive experience in one thing - contiguous weeks of instruction in drawing, basketball, theater, or guitar. Yes to summer programs rich in field trips.

In short, summer is the time to repair some of the damage done by NCLB and address the real causes of the achievement gap.

The achievement gap between rich and poor widens as kids progress through school mostly because of differential summer experiences. It turns out that rich and poor kids achieve about the same amount during the school year. The gap widens in the summer, while the rich kids are traveling and going to camps, and the poor kids are, at best, in remedial summer school.

That finding makes perfect sense. The more of the Big Wide World kids experience, the easier schoolwork becomes. The Big Wide World offers meaning, connections, vocabulary, and coherence. When Big-World-savvy kids encounter those stripped-down textbook descriptions of things they’ve actually seen and done, learning seems easy and the kids look smart. Kids without the Big Wide World have to imagine it. That’s a lot harder and they don’t do as well.

So, here’s to excellent summer programming. It’s going on right under our noses. Let’s hope the test-monsters don’t notice until it’s too late to stop it.

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Newslink notes from articles cited above

easy-way-out summer programs that look exactly like the rest of the year: Wednesday, July 18, 2007: Gazettee.net: Potomac schools host ‘learning camp’.

‘‘The idea is that students get a preview of the first semester of next [school] year. They’re looking at the reading and math curriculum and they’re getting a jump start for next year,” said Beth Brown, Beverly Farms Elementary School principal.”

punishment for kids who don’t score well enough on a single misused standardized test.: Buffalo News July 22. Mandatory summer school growing quickly in Buffalo: The classes are part of a plan to increase length of school year

Kim Laratonda said her son was assigned to summer school even though he got passing grades at Southside Elementary School and that he will not attend.

“It’s just not fair to these kids,” Laratonda said. “It’s a misuse of DIBELS. I don’t think he needs summer school.”

School officials acknowledge that DIBELS is used exclusively to determine who must attend summer school but stress that teacher and principal recommendations also play key roles in deciding which children move to the next grade.

offer kids all the stuff they miss during the school year: Leavenworth Times. July 17 2007. School Converted to Summer Camp

The answer is the Lansing Parent Teacher Association’s Music and Art Camp.

The camp, which has been a regular summer fixture for almost 20 years, encourages children to devote a week of their time to learning to sing, play instruments and create art, said Coordinator Sherri Schwanz.

hands-on science: Houston Chronicle July 17. Baylor gets students, teachers out of class, into a lab:  Summer institute offers 22 interns hands-on science experience.

Nearly two dozen Houston-area students and teachers have taken summer school to the extreme.

Rather than just logging extra time in a classroom, the group has racked up hundreds of hours in the labs at the Baylor College of Medicine, helping post-doctorate researchers study everything from prostate cancer to Fragile X Syndrome.

As paid interns in the five-year-old Houston A+ Challenge/Baylor Summer Science Institute, a record 22 students and teachers are attending lectures, conducting research in the library and job shadowing. The institute concludes Friday, when students will give presentations on their work.”

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/25/us_schools_weigh_extending_hours_year/

This doesn’t sound so bad.

Usually people who talk about extending the school day are the same people who want to take away recess, hands-on science, and literature.

In this effort in Massachusetts, though, the extended hours go to elective classes that reinforce basics without focusing on them - sounds kind of like Big Learning to me. Examples are cooking and forensics. I’m especially hopeful because these are efforts focused on low-income kids, and reform programs almost never let them have any fun at school. So if kids have to be in institutional settings all afternoon anyway (because their parents work, for example), I hope this is the direction of the future.

Leonardo’s Basement: Hands-on Learning for Kids

http://www.connectforkids.org/node/4069

How does test-driven schooling affect after-school programs? Some are falling right in line, offering more of the same test prep and drill after school. It’s good to know that there are programs like Leonardo’s Basement, which offer kids the chance for hands-on, creative activities that build skills kids don’t get in school.

I like that many of the activities are developed by kids, and that the directors are aware of the big learning (math, science, etc.) without pushing specific curricular objectives. They talk about the importance of kids learning to direct their own activity in a world where adults tend to fill every moment for them.