How to Make Your Classroom as Addictive as a Video Game with Learning Intentions & Success Criteria: Level 1

By Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Video games—love them or loathe them, we can all agree that they’re great at their ultimate purpose: getting you to play them. But...how do they do it? Why, as a sleep-deprived mother of young children who needs all the sleep I can get, do I occasionally willingly sacrifice sleep to reach the next level on the video game dujour? I’m an adult! I should be immune!

Nope--because video games use some pretty potent psychological principles to capture and keep your attention. The good news? You can use the same principles in your classroom.

Why We Love Video Games

It turns out that one of the major strategies used by video games is that they communicate very clear learning intentions and success criteria, which are two fancy words from John Hattie’s book Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. The words can trip up teachers trying to differentiate the two, but the definitions boil down to this:

• Learning Intention: What you’re trying to do (or in the classroom: What students are learning)
• Success Criteria: How you’ll know you’ve been successful (or in the classroom: What task students are completing the degree of proficiency required to consider learning a “success”)

It turns out that our brains loooooove learning intentions and success criteria. Human brains are set-up like little “to-do” lists. When given a task that we find interesting (the learning intention), we actually get a little dopamine hit when we complete it (check off the success criteria). Dopamine, of course, is that amazing neurotransmitter that plays a major role in motivation and rewards.

How to Write Learning Intentions & Success Criteria

So, let’s say that you’re playing a game where you need to is to Stop the Dragon from Terrorizing the Town. That’s your overall goal—your learning intention.

Sometimes, there’s only one way to achieve that goal—or one success criteria (i.e., kill the Dragon). But sometimes, maybe there are multiple ways to achieve the goal, such as:

• Kill the dragon
• Talk to the dragon, find out he's just lonely, and set up a weekly Dragon Cribbage party
• Sell the dragon on the virtues of a condo in a nearby beach city and wave goodbye as he hits the skies in retirement

Similarly, in our classrooms, often we have a basic learning intention, such as: “Understand the importance of the Bill of Rights.” But, depending on your students’ ages and readiness levels, your success criteria might look different. For instance, here are some possible success criteria at different levels:

• Elementary: Fill in the graphic organizer by providing three basic rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and one way that each right impacts your everyday life
• Middle: Write a five paragraph essay that introduces what you feel are the three most important rights outlined in the Bill of Rights and include at least three details supporting why you think each right is important.
• High School: Create a documentary on the Bill of Rights in which you choose three of what you feel are the most important rights, interview at least two people about each right and how it impacts them on a daily basis, and provide at least three historically significant facts about each right.

Tips to Making Your Learning Intentions and Success Criteria More Addictive (as learned from video games)

• Learning Intentions and Success Criteria can’t be so broad that the tasks seem never-ending or else your students WILL lose interest. That’s why video games break things up into levels or quests. A good rule of thumb is that a Learning Intention/Success Criteria should usually last 1-5 days.
• With success criteria, there’s a sweet spot between allowing for productive struggle and giving students enough specificity that the task is clear, and the amount of specificity that you give might depend on how independent your students are with the content. In video game speak, it’s like the difference between the tutorial and the actual gameplay. “I can count to 20” might be too vague; “I can count to 20 by saying 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc..” is probably too specific. “I can out loud to 20 by myself with no help from my teacher and no more than one mistake” might be just right, depending on your students.
• In order to work, learning intentions and success criteria MUST be shared with students and easily accessible at ALL TIMES! Imagine a video game in which you wander around without any idea of what you’re trying to accomplish or how you’ll know when you’ve done it. Would you even bother to play? (Okay, okay, I know that there are some video games built entirely on this premise, but it’s not a common format because many people find it frustrating.)
• The way that you word your learning intentions and success criteria is less important than whether or not they contain enough information to empower students to want to “play” the task, and whether they are communicated to students.

Example Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

Most of the following come from our talented curriculum writers in Hampton City Schools, Virginia, and are featured in our online curriculum.

English/Language Arts

• Learning Intention: I can summarize a story.
• Success Criteria: I can choose a fairy tale and write a story in the Flow Map that includes a picture and sentence for each of the following: the beginning, the middle, and the end.

CTE/Family and Consumer Sciences:

• Learning Intention: I will observe safe ways to use the internet.
• Success Criteria: I will list five ways to be in danger on the internet and five solutions to avoid those dangers.

Health

• Learning Intention: I can explain how violence, bullying, and harassment affect health and safety.
• Success Criteria: I will create a campaign to prevent bullying in school and online according to the rubric (note: rubric shared with students as part of the success criteria)

Library

• Learning Intention: I will check out an appropriate book.
• Success Criteria: I will choose a book that interests me and is at a comfortable reading level by using the “just right” book strategy

Mathematics

• Learning Intention: I will know and be able to apply the rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying & dividing using numbers with decimals.
• Success Criteria: I will be able to successfully set up and solve four single-step and multistep practical problems involving operations with decimals by using the problem-solving process.

Music

• Learning Intention: I will understand how to care for an instrument.
• Success Criteria: I will be able to explain all of the parts of my instrument and demonstrate the proper posture and procedures for playing and caring for my instrument.

Science

• Learning Intention: I will be able to distinguish between a hypothesis, a theory and a law
• Success Criteria: I will be able to define and give one example of a biological hypothesis, theory and a law

Social Studies

• Learning Intention: I will know the locations and names of Virginia’s important water features.
• Success Criteria: I will be able to successfully locate and name the bodies of water important in Virginia’s early history on a blank map.

Spanish

• Learning Intention: I can describe and identify daily routines.
• Success Criteria: I will be successful when I can orally describe a typical day at school or home with at least 5 details.

Visual Arts

• Learning Intention: I will be able to identify basic shapes that make up complex objects
• Success Criteria:I will be able to draw the basic shapes (circles, triangles, squares, etc) that make up a complex object when given four printouts of complex objects.
  

Next Time

Check back next Tuesday for Part 2, in which we’ll discuss how to choose what type of learning intention and success criteria to write in order to best empower your students to take ownership of their own learning.

(By the way, if you want to “gamify” your classroom with even more ideas, I highly suggest that you check out the You Are Not So Smart Podcast on The Psychology of Video Games.)

Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Professional Learning Coordinator for Hampton City Schools, Virginia. You can contact her at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.

Let G Suite Turn Your Students in Digital Karate Kids

by Paul Lawrence

Remember that 1984 movie The Karate Kid? I love that movie. (Wait, there’s a point to this!) When young Daniel LaRusso moves from New Jersey to California, he has no idea that he will soon become a martial arts master.  Like Daniel-San, our students enter our G Suite dojos not knowing that they will soon be capable of digital crane kicks...and more.

“Wax On, Wax Off”

The maintenance man from Daniel’s building, Mr. Miyagi, starts to train Daniel in an effort to help him thwart the bullies from Cobra Kai.  At first it isn’t clear what sanding the deck, waxing the car, or painting the fence have to do with learning to fight.  Many of our students feel the same way when we ask them create a Google Doc and share it with another student or submit their work to a folder on the Drive.  It just seems like extra work with no special purpose.

But the payoff comes when Daniel really needs it and he realizes that these repetitive motion activities actually trained his muscles to perform the exact movements he will need to excel at Crane style karate and win the Under-18 All Valley Karate Tournament (go, Daniel-San!).

Getting Ready for the Real World

Using the the G Suite in your classroom everyday is the digital equivalent of “wax on, wax off.”  Students are immersed in routines of behavior that begin to build a mental muscle memory that will pay dividends when the time comes for them to organize the team project or create a portfolio. Even if G Suite goes the way of the first Karate Kid and is replaced by some new, Jaden Smith-style platform, the simple act of learning to collaborate and communicate in an online environment will teach our students the skills they need to be successful beyond PreK-12 education.

Jump Into G Suite

So, even though it may be easier to give your students that same old worksheet or to have that same old class discussion, make the effort and do it G Suite style.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Share a Doc using Classroom and have students comment through a Form.
• Have students work collaboratively on that classroom presentation using Slides.
• Have students track their progress or reading in class through a Google sheet.
• Let students create a Google site to showcase their ideas to the world.

In the end, your students may not get to go to prom with Elizabeth Shue, but before you know it, they’ll be able to fend off the even the trickiest challenges with their ingrained G Suite skills.

Are you a Hampton City Schools employee?  If so, earn PD points just for trying out G Suite in your classroom.  Visit the HCS Cyber Tech Cafe for more information.

Paul Lawrence is the Director of the Information Literacy Department for Hampton City Schools, Virginia. You can reach him at plawrence@hampton.k12.va.us

Homework That Students Actually WANT To Do: How to Make Homework Relevant & Engaging in the Digital Age

by Becca LeCompte

Admit it. You hate bringing your day job home. The idea of sitting on the couch each night grading papers is awful. You want, no, need the time to unwind and not think about the grind of the classroom. Why, then, do we send work home with students each day? What if we focused less on work and more on helping students transfer their learning beyond the classroom walls?

If you’ve been an educator in the past few years, you’ve seen plenty of blog posts and articles advocating for doing away with homework. Districts all over the country have been experimenting with no homework policies in their elementary schools citing studies that show the limited benefits of traditional homework. This is always met with mixed reviews. While parents are thrilled to reclaim their evenings, educators like us worry: “How can I ensure the my students are going to retain what they are learning without the repetition and reinforcement of traditional homework?” The reality is that there are lots of ways to reinforce what you are teaching without sending home packets or worksheets.

Time in Text

“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”

-Dr. Seuss

We all know that reading has countless benefits for our students. Kids who read more achieve better scores on standardized tests in reading and math and they have larger vocabularies. When we eliminate homework and ask kids to read for, say, 20 minutes each night it’s more likely to become an activity they enjoy rather than a chore. If you then have your students engage in discussion about what they are reading at home, you can help promote a rich variety of reading materials in the classroom. With our wealth of digital and print resources, students will be able to delve into their own interests and find what makes them excited and gets them interested in their world.

Discussion Starters

Talk amongst yourselves - I’ll give you a topic…

Parents overwhelmingly love no homework policies, and, hey, I get it. Many nights have I struggled to get my son to finish the worksheet du jour when he is tired and ready to have some leisure time of his own. Since many parents are  already engaged in enforcing and helping with homework, why not assign a different kind of engagement by sending home topics of conversation? Say you’re teaching your third graders about simple machines. Each night that week send home a picture of a different simple machine like the lever. Ask the kids to bring the picture to their parents and spend some time together looking for examples of levers or wedges around the house. Parents will welcome the relaxed nature of the assignment and kids will love the one-on-one time with mom or dad.

Of course, some moms and dads aren’t home in the evening. A caregiver at an after school program, a babysitter or an older sibling, any trusted adult can participate in this kind of activity. In fact, the more diverse the group of students the more variety kids will hear when you follow-up in class.

Educational Games

“Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock and roll.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (Representative Director at Nintendo)

Math homework is the one that really sends people over the edge. As a former classroom math teacher, I often get sheepish, late-night text messages asking for help with the math homework when everyone is at their wit’s end. When the child is lost and the parent is racking her brain to remember how to multiply fractions, it often ends in frustration and any value that homework may have had is gone.

Take that pressure off of the everyone by sending home a game instead. Print out a simple file folder game or post a link to an online math game reviewing multiplication facts that students can access with their Chromebooks. A few rounds of a game won’t take long but will provide a little bit of reinforcement for your math instruction. Choose games that can be played by 2 or 3 players, but that are just as fun to play alone, remembering that some kids won’t have playmates at home. Any caregiver can participate in these activities with a child, and the conversation in class is more interesting with a greater variety of people participating.

Instructional Videos

Our fifth graders do not remember a world without viral videos. YouTube and Khan Academy  were created before most of them were born! Some of our students spend a regrettable amount of time online every night watching videos about anything and everything they choose. Why not take advantage of that and send home a video link related to what you’re teaching in the classroom? The internet is full of educational videos that can be assigned via Google Classroom. Choose videos that are brief, engaging, and easy to follow from resources like YouTube, Khan Academy, TeacherTube, or Virtual Nerd.  If you’re in for a slightly bigger challenge, you could create your own instructional videos and assign those to your students.

Bring it all back around…

All of these ideas have a common thread:  in-class discussion. If you send home activities, make sure you follow up. Make the time in the classroom to allow kids to share what they learned from that video, game, discussion, or book. Encourage kids to type their responses into the Google Classroom in class. Take the opportunity to make the rounds and talk to your students. You were going to spend the time collecting those homework worksheets anyway...

Sources for More Ideas

Facts about Children’s Literacy: This piece provides us with specific data about the student population that helps support the assertion that “children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school”.

The Enduring Importance of Parental Involvement: Ongoing research cited in this piece “shows that family engagement in schools improves student achievement, reduces absenteeism, and restores parents’ confidence in their children’s education”.

Harnessing the Power of YouTube in the Classroom: This article provides some ideas for using YouTube for a variety of things in the classroom, including sharing student work and accessing virtual reality.  

Becca LeCompte is a CITT (Curriculum Integration Technology Teacher) for Hampton City Schools. Before taking this role, she taught middle and high school math at Jones, Bethel, Jones again, and then the Spratley Gifted Center in Hampton City Schools. In her spare time she helps run a unique family business with her husband and son and talks about herself in the third person. Follow her on Twitter @BeccaLCITT.

How to Write a Blog People Want to Read

By Kate Wolfe Maxlow

So, you have something you want to tell the world. Whether it’s an idea that you’re sure will set the world on fire, or just something you think might help make people’s lives a little easier, the first step to making an impact is getting folks to actually read what you write. And it turns out that the writing style you used in grad school isn’t the same one that’s going to get you clicks.

To that end, here are some easy tips and tricks to get you thinking about WHAT you want to write and HOW you're going to write it.

Content Tips

1. Come up with a snazzy title that either 1) Introduces a common problem and hints at your solutions:

• How to Write a Blog Post that People Want to Read
• Four Fast Hacks for Conquering Your Inbox
• Three Things I Wish We’d Known Before We Went to Online Grading

OR 2) Takes a unique stand against a popularly held belief:

• Homework in the Digital Age Teaches Students All the Wrong Lessons
• It’s the Teachers, Not the Technology
• You’re Better At Your Job When You Don’t Do It As Much

2. Start with a story or situation that is immediately relatable to the reader. Examples: “When was the last time you actually read your district’s AUP agreement?” “I’m finally ready to admit it: I sometimes copied off my friend Diana’s homework in Chemistry.”

3. People love lists and easily scannable headings. It’s the way our brains are organized. After you come up with your title that’s either solving a common problem or breaking down a commonly held belief, find 3-5 solutions/reasons why you’re right. This will be the organizational framework of your blog. Then you just have to write 1-2 paragraphs that explain each heading, and you’re done!

Style Tips

1. Write in first person like you’re having a conversation with someone. Sure, it needs to be a structured conversation with complete sentences and proper punctuation, but using first person helps draw in your reader. You can also lightly sprinkle in some colloquialisms (like “Sure, it needs to be…”) for extra flavor.

2. Be humble. Admit your mistakes. Show your fallibility. Readers like to have a sympathetic narrator...but you have to have learned something, too. Tell everyone a story about how you learned and grew as an educator.

3. Use fewer and smaller words. See, I could have written, “Brevity is the soul of wit; ensure that your prose is sparse and accessible to a multitude of reading abilities,” but people are busy! Say what you want to say with just enough detail to make it meaningful, and get out.

4. Keep your paragraphs short. A large portion of your readers will be checking out your post on their phones; thick paragraphs are hard to read on mobile devices. Try to keep it to 1-4 sentences per paragraph, but make sure to vary the lengths of your paragraphs, too.

Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Professional Learning Coordinator for Hampton City Schools, Virginia. You can contact her at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.