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Well, welcome everybody to episode two of season three of the Poggle podcast.
Our topic today has something to do with ice bakers and best practices.
Sounds like something that I need to pay attention to maybe in preparation for a party or something
like that.
But I think it goes a lot deeper from there.
So we have as our guest host today is Siobhan Julian, and I'm going to turn it over to Siobhan.
Thank you, Wayne.
Welcome everyone.
It is my pleasure to introduce Andrew Toda-McCarty today.
Andrew is a physics instructor at San Jose State University in California.
At San Jose State, he is the co-coordinator of the physics 2A course, which is an algebra
based mechanics course that is taught by a team of instructors that meet for each class
to maintain alignment across the different sections.
Before he was at San Jose State, Andrew worked for Summit Public Schools as a high school
physics teacher, go high school teacher, science teachers using Poggle, and teacher professional
development manager.
He also wrote a project based physics curriculum for Summit Public Schools.
Andrew is part of the Leadership Institute at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and
coaches new and mid-career teachers through that program.
So welcome, Andrew.
Thank you.
Happy to be here.
Yes.
We are very excited to have you here today because I think you're going to bring, you're
bringing a very new voice and some new information to the Poggle community.
So this is obviously a Poggle podcast.
Andrew, tell us a little bit about how you came across Poggle and how you came to use
it in your own classroom.
Yeah.
So I learned about Poggle when I first started teaching, but I really only knew about it
secondhand.
I was fortunate to be a fellow in the Knowles Teacher Initiative and there were poster sessions
and different teachers coming together sharing practices.
So I learned about Poggle through them, through other people, but I didn't ever attend any
official workshops.
It seemed at the time it was mostly for chemistry teachers and I was a physics teacher.
But then later in my career, I attempted to offer some kind of Poggle inspired activities
for my physics classes.
And I worked with a chemistry teacher at my school to do that.
My first real contact with the Poggle project involved submitting these activities for review
to get feedback.
And then after doing that a few times, I joined the Poggle activity clearinghouse to submit
and author and continue to author activities.
And then I started signing up for some official workshops as well to learn more.
So I've written about 20 activities, published five of them with the pack and I'm just continuing
to use and develop Poggle for my classroom.
Awesome.
That is wonderful, Andrew.
I love hearing about how the Poggle activity clearinghouse or the pack has gotten people
involved and writing new activities is always such a crucial part of building and expanding
the Poggle community.
You're here today to share with us some strategies that you've been using in your class, specifically
icebreaker numbers and the five practices.
Now, I'm sure that everyone has heard of icebreakers, but you are using it in a very different way.
So please tell us what are icebreaker numbers and how do you use them in your class?
So I first started using daily icebreakers when I was teaching online on Zoom as a way
to get students to just unmute and start talking when they join breakout rooms for group work.
The goal is to help them build community and get to know each other and their different
groups, but also just to say something in those first few minutes of class and really
get the class going.
Many of them were questions asking about favorites, such as what is your favorite spice?
And after sharing, I would have students alphabetize their responses to record them on a numbered
list.
So this gives each student a number for the day.
That's kind of random.
It's not exactly random, but it mixes it up.
I often have group roles in class, but I always like having students take turns reporting
out rather than establish that as a particular role for one student in each group.
And so once each student has a number, I can easily rotate through those numbers and say,
the ones are reporting out for this discussion and then the next time the twos are reporting
out.
And so the icebreaker numbers allow everyone to have a chance to speak up for the group,
but it's also predictable.
They know ahead of time they'll be the ones sharing and so they can get ready and feel
comfortable and the rest of the group can help them prepare.
I also use them sometimes when I'm interacting with the group.
So if I am trying to ask the group questions, I can spread the questions out over multiple
students, pushing them to build off of each other rather than one single student share.
So I'll just use the numbers and refer to just go through them in order.
One, two, three, four, and kind of pepper the questions around the group.
Sometimes also if I see that many groups are getting stuck somewhere, I'll call out a number
and all of those students will come up to me and we'll do a quick huddle.
I can give them some instruction or check in and then they can spread that knowledge
back to all of their groups.
So it's a way to have sort of flexible roles that in the moment, if I need a role that
I didn't assign, I can quickly assign it for that moment in class and just get different
students to do different things in the classroom.
That's really interesting.
We get, I know for me, I actually ask those favorite questions already.
I have them on my paper, like instead of a date.
So I've never really thought of utilizing that when I'm having students like working
teams.
That's really interesting.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
And the other strategy that you use is the five practices.
So tell us about that.
There's a book, The Five Practices for Orchestrating Test-Based Discourse in Science by Jennifer
Cartier and others that identifies five practices teachers can use to promote rigorous discourse.
There's also a math version of this book for math teachers with the same practices.
The practices are anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting.
Interesting.
And I know for Pogal, I think a lot of Pogal practitioners are very familiar with monitoring.
That's something that will definitely happen any time I do a Pogal activity.
But the other ones are not something I'm actively aware of in my classroom.
So share, what is anticipating?
I think that's the first one.
Yeah.
So first, teachers need to anticipate how students will respond to different parts of
the activity and what resources they might identify as they work with their group.
Based on what the teacher anticipates, they can then create a monitoring chart to help
identify these productive resources and keep track of who in the classroom has them.
I create these monitoring sheets for each class and use them to track ideas as well
as student participation across each activity.
The monitoring chart gives me a focus as I listen into the group conversations.
That's interesting.
Is this monitoring chart something that your students see?
Are they aware of that or is it just you?
Yeah, they're definitely aware of it.
They see I have a clipboard in my hand and they see me making marks as I'm looking over
their shoulders and listening.
And they'll see me look at it as I reference their work and their ideas, but they don't
see the exact chart exactly.
And so they don't see the marks that I make on it, but they know that I'm doing something.
That is very interesting.
Do they get a little self-conscious when you do that?
I think maybe at first they might've been curious, what is he doing while he's listening
in, not necessarily saying anything, just making marks.
But I think they've gotten used to it and they ignore it now.
I don't think anyone seems to pay attention as they see me walking around.
Awesome.
And then the next ones we have are, you said selecting and sequencing.
So how do you use that?
Yeah.
So just before reporting out, I take a minute to step back and look at all of the notes
that I took on the monitoring sheet while I was monitoring.
And then I select and sequence the ideas and resources in a way to help build a cohesive
narrative.
So these really are those next two practices.
I start by selecting simpler ideas before moving on to more complex ones.
That's one way to sequence.
I also try to start with students who are maybe less certain of their responses or students
that have a mix of resources that are productive and maybe unproductive or less productive
so that we can directly work through those preconceptions as a class.
And you mentioned this is before reporting out.
So does this inform who you choose to report out and what questions you're asking or what
you're having them share when they're reporting out?
Exactly.
Instead of having each group share where there's just a bunch of presentations that maybe aren't
connected together, I identify who I want to share.
And sometimes I'll lead them in a little bit and I'll say, I heard you talking about such
and such.
Can you tell me more about that?
So I want them to know what part of their conversation I want them to share.
And it also is a way that I can let everyone contribute and not just have one person share
all the ideas.
Sometimes then the discussion falls flat after that.
If someone gives a clear cohesive description, no one really wants to follow that.
So I do a little bit more orchestrating by kind of picking and choosing in a way that
I think will allow everyone to contribute and build off of each other.
Yeah, I really like that, especially for the reporting out strategy.
That way, like you said, it's not just one group sharing one thing.
It's ensuring that again, that selecting and sequencing as a way to ensure that everyone
is participating, everyone has something to contribute in a meaningful way that builds
that conversation.
And it sounds like it's definitely more of a discussion than just a blanket sort of sharing
of ideas.
All right.
And then connecting.
So the last practice is connecting and it's happening as different folks are sharing out.
The idea is that if we're building something together, we need to connect the ideas from
one group to the next.
And so that everything is kind of coming together.
Ideally students are making those connections and they're referencing each other.
They're saying something like similar to the previous group we found or maybe we thought
about this differently.
But I see the similarities and really trying to draw them to each other's ideas so that
it really is this discussion.
It's this back and forth of ideas.
It can take a lot of work at first.
Students often need support from the teacher to connect to the other groups rather than
just prepare and share their ideas.
Sometimes you need to lead them in a little bit or model that.
You can also ask direct questions.
How is this similar to what the previous group just shared to get them in the practice of
connecting themselves?
Yeah.
And how would you model that?
Because I think the direct questions I was thinking of, what are things that you do to
help your students, like specific questions and things that you say to help model that
connecting practice?
Yeah.
One thing I think is always great, you can always ask them to start by sharing what's
similar or different from what the previous group shared.
That directs their contribution a little bit and automatically forces them to connect to
one of the previous groups.
And it can just build a habit of always trying to notice similarities and differences, which
can be really instructive.
You can also just have some sentence starter lead-ins, similar to blank or we found something
different contrasting to what the previous groups shared or building off of what so and
so said.
You can have those sentence starters up around the room, projected during the discussion
on their tables.
A variety of resources can help them use the language of connecting to other people so
that their shareouts when they're reporting out, really focus around what everyone is
saying, not just what they were preparing to share.
Yeah.
So, Andrew, just so you know, this is the first season that I am co-hosting the POGO
podcast.
And one of the things I said at the beginning of the season is I'm looking forward to learning
new things.
And I already feel that I've learned so much that I can't wait to take it back to my own
classroom and utilize these things.
So specifically, this is all fantastic.
How do you connect these strategies, like specifically when you're doing POGO activities?
I think these practices best connect to the concept invention questions within a POGO
activity so teachers can really anticipate how students will phrase their responses,
what connections they might make between the models and the key concepts that teachers
are hoping that they discover and invent.
When students are at that point in the activity, that's when teachers can really carefully
monitor their responses, see what ideas, examples, resources students bring in each of the different
groups and then focus on selecting and sequencing those ideas.
So then the reporting out is more of a discussion to invent the concept a second time now as
a whole class.
I like that so much.
And in thinking about just what you've said so far, I realized that I was doing a little
bit of this already, but I think your language makes it so much clearer and gives much more
of a purpose to that.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
What else?
Anything else for POGO practice?
Yeah, I think when you're doing these discussions, these reporting out, sometimes it can be really
helpful to have a student record this class discussion.
It's a lot to facilitate and focus on who I'm going to call on next and how I'm going
to lead them in and how I'm going to help them connect to the other students.
So it really helps take that off of the teacher.
You can get that moment of pause and planning while someone's recording what another student
just said.
And to do this, you can cycle through groups and pick an icebreaker number to call on different
students to come up and fill that role.
And so if you haven't selected someone already, you can kind of bring the two practices together.
That's something that I often do when I'm using these strategies.
Yeah, and when you say record, are they monitoring on a whiteboard?
Are they taking bullet points?
How are they recording the discussion?
Yeah, I'm a big fan of whiteboards.
I have a lot of them in different sizes.
Whiteboards on the walls, whiteboards that are about table-sized, individual whiteboards.
So I'll usually then have someone come up to the front and record on a big whiteboard
on the wall while we're doing this.
And then individual groups might record some of those notes later on to capture them.
Sometimes I'll have them type.
I might project an empty slideshow slide and they'll type there.
And then I have a resource I can bring out later and I can share with students easily
that way.
You can also, if you have a document camera, they can be writing on paper and that can
be projected so everyone can see.
So it's pretty adaptable to whatever resources you have and your style of recording information
and what the tools that you use.
I'm also a really big whiteboard fan.
They're a great simple tool in the classroom.
Anything else about using these with the POGO practice?
I think it's just something that it makes your time really intentional when students
are working.
Sometimes in a good POGO activity, it's working well and the students are all working along
and moving productively.
And the teacher then doesn't seem to have a clear role.
Sometimes you're not sure because you don't want to interrupt when they're having really
good conversations.
So the five practices can really help clarify the teacher's role and how to use your time
while you're listening and what you're specifically listening for to make sure those reporting
out sessions are especially productive.
I love this all so much.
So as this is very clear, I'm completely new to the icebreaker numbers and the five practices.
So what are your tips for listeners who, like me, haven't used these before?
How do we get started in implementing this in our classroom?
Yeah, so you can start icebreakers with icebreaker numbers right away.
It's really easy to find lists of icebreakers online and it might be a practice that you
already have or at least do sometimes in your class.
And then you just need a way for students to rank their responses.
So I usually just have them alphabetize them.
It's an easy thing that I don't have to plan something specific each time.
If it's a question that's numerical, they can just rank them that way.
Otherwise you can just find some way to get them to have a semi-random way of putting
themselves in order.
And then just cycle through the numbers to use them in any way that's convenient.
You can maybe start with when you're doing small group stuff and you're checking in a
group, just the questions you're going to ask, ask them in the order of those numbers
and then maybe start with a different number first next time.
That can be an easy way to get started and then just explore.
And whenever you need a volunteer, just call out a number and you can use them that way
to not have that pause of waiting for someone to volunteer when you're in class.
Love it.
And what about the five practices?
Where do we start with that?
For the five practices, I recommend getting the book and reading it with colleagues.
It's a lot.
There are a lot of great examples in the book, but it's a lot to all add into your practice
at once.
It helps having a learning community as you get started.
I learned about them, but didn't start using them for a while until I had other colleagues
that were also interested and we could plan together.
And I'm not an expert at all of the five practices.
I've just read the book and have worked really hard to use them and use them regularly.
And so I'd say, don't be afraid of them.
Just try to get started.
Each practice is really, really helpful and altogether they're really, really powerful.
It definitely sounds like that.
Well, speaking of which, how did you come to start using these strategies?
Because you kind of mentioned that when you got started, it took a little while.
And when you had a community of other teachers to talk with about that, it helped you out.
But how did you really start to use this in the first place?
How did you find it?
Yeah.
I started using icebreakers when I started teaching on Zoom because I noticed a lot of
students were hesitant to come off mute and talk with their group.
Sometimes they'd be sharing in the chat, but you really don't get the back and forth discussion
that way.
And so the icebreakers was a way to just get them talking, get them to unmute, get them
to start to get to know each other, start to build community each day.
It's just something that's so important.
And it's important in a physical classroom as well, but it became so apparent how important
it was when I was teaching online.
And then the numbers came in a little bit later.
I noticed I was hearing a lot of the same voices when groups were reporting out.
And it gave me a way to push other students to speak without cold calling them.
And once I got it started, I just kept using them in different ways.
And so it's something that's really built up kind of organically once I started using
them.
And so I try to get a larger range of participation in my class.
Yeah, that sounds fantastic.
Like I said, I asked a little icebreaker.
I ask similar sort of questions.
I have them on my paper, but I never thought of utilizing it with anything else.
And my students already, they like to talk about it.
They'll ask like favorite Halloween candy.
And it does engender that discussion.
But I love doing that purposefully like you're doing.
And what about the five practices?
How did you start with that?
How do you define it out about that?
Yeah, so I first learned about it through the NOLS Teacher Initiative.
They gave us the book and we had some professional development sessions on it.
And so I had a bit of a community to start with, which was great.
But these were teachers from all around the country and they weren't at the school that
I was at.
So I started using them a little bit at first and found them to be useful, but they didn't
show up into regular practice.
It wasn't an everyday thing.
Later, when I was working on a course with a colleague and we were co-planning together,
we both used them.
And so we built that into our planning and we're able to use them more regularly.
I also found it a lot easier on Zoom.
You have a different space, you have fewer distractions.
And so it was very easy for me to monitor when students were interacting on Zoom and
I could look at their work, I could hear them as they're responding.
I could more easily look down and plan who I'm going to call on next while one person
is sharing out.
And so that helped me really find success and get a lot better at it.
In a way, it was just a bit easier.
And so I'm back in person now for all of my classes and I'm kind of re-figuring it out.
It's harder and I need to do things a little bit differently.
So I'm still working through that and trying to figure out what does it look like now in
my classroom.
I love hearing that good teaching techniques came out of Zoom, out of Zoom classes.
There's a benefit to everything.
I will also add that during our weird hybrid year for me, I came up with a new way of presenting
my course, which I think was a huge improvement.
So it's sometimes funny how the pandemic forces us to actually improve and get better and
develop good solid practices.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Andrew.
This is incredible.
I have learned so much over the course of this and I'm looking forward to taking this
back to my own classroom.
I'm going to get that book and read it and see if I can get my colleagues to read it
too.
Thank you everyone for listening and I'll hand it back to Wayne.
Thank you, Siobhan.
And thank you, Andrew, for those great tips on how to encourage meaningful student discussion
in the Poggle classroom.
At this point, we want to hear from you, our listeners.
How do you encourage student conversation?
Do you have similar methods to what Andrew has described or do you have other ways to
get your students talking?
Let us know by commenting on Facebook using hashtag the Poggle podcast to find this episode
on the site and join the conversation.
We will return in a couple of weeks with another episode of the Poggle podcast.
Thanks for listening.