Battelle For Kids, This Students Experience

Michael Curtin G00313894

This week I conducted the second student experience survey with my
Battelle for Kids (BFK) group. Reading the subsequent report, it is evident
that by implementing BFKs formative instructional practices and
engaging in several other courses, that my BFK strategy has been a
success. However, this would not have been the case following the
baseline survey which I gave just prior to Christmas. In that initial survey,
an area which stood out as being strongly imposed was classroom
management, while instilling hope to the students was highlighted as
being an area to work on. Reflecting on this issue, I put in place strategies
which I will discuss below, that would reflect positively on BFKs four core
themes of: hope, belonging, engagement, and management.
Prior to the commencement of Teaching Practice (TP), I derived a scheme
of work based on John Biggs Constructive aligned curriculum, whereby
the teacher would first look at how they would assess a certain part of the
curriculum before choosing a strategy to teach it (Biggs, 2012). After this,
and on the suggestion of BFKs Creating and Using Clear Learning
Targets module, the curriculum content would then be deconstructed into
short term, student friendly targets. (BFK, 2016). I feel this worked
particularly well throughout my placement. For example, when a Materials
Technology Wood (MTW) class would begin a project, they would also
receive a type of marking scheme, a rubric, showing the criteria they are
being assessed on and how many marks were going for each. Each
marking criteria, such as marking out, or surface preparation would then
become a short-term goal for the student. In conjunction with this, and
following the baseline survey, I introduced the ticket out the door
strategy, which students could use daily to track their progress. This
strategy, was an attempt at creating hope and engagement in the
classroom, while also identifying to the teacher where the student may
need help.
While my initial strategy at the beginning TP was to create this strong
sense of hope and community within the classroom, reflecting now, I feel
this was not possible while attempting to set-up good classroom
management initially. It is my opinion that, in order to implement BFKs
three other themes of: belonging, hope, and engagement, good classroom
management practices must first be in place. This is something I
discussed most recently during my second tutor visit with Enda Byrt.
Following the disasters of TP1, where classroom management was
highlighted as being a major area of concern, I was adamant not to
allow this to happen to me again on TP2 (Tutor 1, 2016). Therefore, in the
initial weeks of TP2, leading up to Christmas I was particularly tedious with
my classroom management in relation to both rules and routines.
Naturally, this wasnt making the students feel particularly hopeful, and
the baseline survey highlighted exactly this. While management scored a
mean response of 4.47 from a possible 5, hope scored a mere 3.31 (BFK,
2016).
Following this survey, I put in place several strategies to increase hope in
the classroom while also maintaining the management. These strategies
included: breaking targets down into short term goals, creating the climb
to success posters, and using positive verbal responses to student work.
Blending these strategies with the ones I had put in place from the outset
of TP, such as the traffic light teaching strategy and traffic light
homework, has worked very well and this is evident in the report from the
survey I carried out this week. The students replied with a similar mean
response to classroom management with 4.31, while hope has
dramatically increased to 4.01 (BFK, 2017).
Overall, my experience with BFK has been very positive. Although in the
early stages, I did not get the feedback I had hoped for, it allowed me to
critically reflect on many aspects of my teaching. Not only has BFK
allowed me to reflect on these issues, but they have provided
courses/modules in their extensive catalogue which have allowed me to
reflect quickly, and effectively. Furthermore, I feel the research and
suggestions BFK put forward are particularly suited to active learning
environments such as the MTW and Technical Graphics classrooms.

Bibliography
BFK, 2017. The Student Experience Survey - Classroom Summary Report, Ohio:
BFK.
BFK, B. f. K., 2016. Creating and Using Clear Learning Targets. [Online]
Available at: https://apps.battelleforkids.org/BFK/Learn/CoursePlayer?
CourseModuleLearningItemId=1698a948-d996-4d0f-a66c-269cad005622
BFK, B. f. K., 2016. The Student Experience Survey - Classroom Summary Report,
Ohio: The Student Experience.
Biggs, J., 2012. Constructive Alignment. [Online]
Available at: http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/academic/constructive-alignment/
Tutor 1, 2016. TP Report Visit 1, Galway: GMIT.