Establish (Some) Rules and Expectations

Establish (Some) Rules and Expectations

We are about to embark on a journey that can involve a lot of mess, confusion, and disagreement. Before starting off, you must have a candid conversation with your class. Talk about mess. Talk about supplies, structures, and routines. Talk about all the things you need to make your class run smoothly or to find your way back to smooth when things go awry. The chaos must function, and function safely.

During the build phase, you can and should control the following ten things. All of these come from experience, and the list is always changing because students are infinitely creative, but the basic guidelines that follow should prove helpful for your classroom. Lay these out as rules and expectations for students.

1. Put safety first. You must be mindful that the materials and the tools you give students to use are age and skill appropriate for them. Consider the following. • Demonstrate how to move around a classroom holding scissors. Don’t assume. Students forget. Demonstrate it. Demonstrate it again. Walk with blade down, gripped in your hand, point not sticking out. • Cut slowly. Say to students, “Cut away from your body. Do not cut down toward where your leg is.” (Yes, you have to say that.) Explain and model for students how to cut up materials on a stable desk and not to use their laps. • Have students cut cardboard with scissors first, and then introduce cardboard knives. Cardboard knives are small cutting tools with lightly serrated blades you can find at any craft store or on your favorite online megacorporation’s website. Schools don’t like the word knife, and some administrators will get nervous if you use it, so call them cardboardcutting implements or single-blade scissors. But really, they’re knives. They cut cardboard better than even the best pair of scissors. Do not buy these if your school regulations forbid them. (In chapter 9, page 153, we get into relationships with administrators. It sounds small and silly, but talking about scissors is an essential part of those relationships.) Students can get cut with cardboard knives, and even if the resulting cut is no worse than a paper cut, answering for that falls on the teacher. I am very deliberate with my students when I demonstrate the proper ways to use these tools. The word tool is also key; they are not toys but tools. • Let students work with scissors first so they know the struggle. Then introduce cardboard knives so students know how good life can be. Afterward, remind them that misuse of the cardboard knives sends them back to scissor time for x long. No one wants to go back to scissor time. Scissor time hurts your hands.

2. Be cool. • This is the prime directive (right after “be safe”): be cool. Communicate to students, “Before you make a choice, before you say a thing, decide if you’re being cool (as in calm, collected, and kind) or not. It’s the easiest rule in the world to remember. Be cool to your partners even when you disagree. Be cool to those around you. Be like Fonzie. Be cool.” • When working in groups, everyone does not need to be best friends, but they need to get along. Everyone needs to be cool with one another. Listen with an open mind and an open heart. Communicate like you know the people listening are also smart humans who want what is best for the project. (It’s also worth revisiting that teachers, like all people, contain multitudes and don’t slot perfectly into a single teacher identity. If you’re interested in setting up an equity-minded classroom, Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education by Alex Shevrin Venet [2021] is a great resource.) • Students should be cool to the other groups. The build phase is never a contest. It’s never a race. It’s a community. We share ideas. No one is “copying” anyone else, but sometimes, ideas find their way into other builds. That happens. It’s better if the groups ask and communicate, but overall, students are cool with each other and proud their idea inspired someone else. (Yes, you do have to specify the difference between this and plagiarism later. But in their final reflections, students can still give credit: “We added this kind of sail because we saw that group do it and it looked like a good idea.”) 3. Measure twice, cut once. • Students will use all the cardboard in a room in a day and a half if the teacher lets them. Rulers are their friend. Blueprints have measurements for a reason. Students should measure, draw a straight line with the ruler, measure the line, and cut on the line. Thou shalt not eyeball it. Thou shalt use a straight edge. 4. Respect the space and materials. • The classroom is a shared space, and the materials are shared materials. Treat everything like you will need it next time. Treat it all with respect. No one can use broken scissors, and we don’t have enough scissors as it is. Cranking on scissors to get them through thick cardboard will break them. If a pair does break, use it as a teachable moment for the whole class to show how it can happen to anyone if they’re not careful. • Be careful as you move through the room. Groups will be working on the floor, so be careful of someone else’s project. Do not assume a pile of stuff is garbage and throw it away without first asking around to be sure you’re not throwing away small pieces of a larger build.

• Clean up. The room must look nice at the end of every session because other kinds of learning must also take place in the classroom. (“Look nice” is a relative measure. My nice is messier than that of many teachers I know. The students should know what nice means to you.) The students can clean. Budget more time than you think you’ll need for this at first. Remind the students the custodian can shut down a build project even faster than the principal can. 5. Follow. Your. Plans. • Remind students to look at their plans. You do not need to make them follow every step, but you can ask questions and nudge them. Point at something on the build, and then point at the blueprint and ask where it is on the plans. I like to ask why. Why is this there? Why did you cut this like this? Why are you googling pictures of kittens when you asked me if you could search for trebuchets? 6. Consider timing. • A project is like a gas; it will expand to fill the space it is given. If you give students a week to finish, they’ll be done in a week, and some will be rushing to finish on Friday. If you give students three days to finish, they’ll be done in three days, and more students will be rushing to finish on the third day. It takes time to figure out how long is right for each build. • Projects finish when they finish, just like anything else. I wish I could tell you every student will build at a certain pace. But alas, I cannot. What’s important is to communicate clearly with students and be present with them while they work. Shulman (2004) gets into this idea in his writing about the thinking that teachers do. In effect, his foundational work on teacher mindset offers that actively listening, thoughtfully honoring students’ thinking and work, and setting aside preconceived notions about what’s supposed to happen are key classroom teacher skills. • All things must end. Teachers experience an internal struggle between wanting to give students enough time to do great and not wanting the project to drag on forever. Are students really using all the think time to think, or are they spacing out? Doing well and dragging out a project look different with every group. If students have naturally moved on to the test phase, they’re done. If they’re cutting out pictures of sloths and gluing them to their build (true story), they’re probably done. If they’re tinkering and don’t want you to stop them, they’re also probably done, even if they don’t think they are. If they’re fighting, they should be done, at least for a while. If they’re panicked, use your teacher judgment. Will ten more minutes really make much of a difference?

• In the beginning, students will come ask you, “Is this done?” You can respond, “Is it? It’s not my project.” Eventually, they learn designers decide the end point. 7. Build quality. • You cannot control the final quality of a build, especially not if the build is truly student centered and student driven—not if the student is the one thinking like a designer. The designer decides when something is done. The designer decides when something is the best it can be. This is a struggle. We teachers influence this not in the moment but later, during the reflection process. As students build, all we can do is nudge, encourage, and provide explicit instruction when students’ formative assessment data call for it. • Make sure builds are “close enough for theater work.” In college, I had a job working in the theater department building sets. I quoted the man who ran the department, Jack Spratt, at the start of this chapter (page 53). He kept things in perspective. He knew we were building for theater, which meant the sets needed to look good, work, and then come apart. When a detail wasn’t perfect, he’d always say, “Eh, close enough for theater work.” I say that in class too (and yes, I have to tell the whole story for it to make sense). The takeaway here is we’re not looking for perfection. Perfect wastes time. We’re looking for close enough for fourth grade—high expectations for fourth grade, granted, but still only fourth grade. 8. Keep in mind group dynamics. • Decide how you’ll determine groups in your classroom. I believe specific jobs don’t keep everyone busy, and they don’t instill a sense students are all in this together. Many teachers develop group jobs: artist, planner, timekeeper, scribe, whatever. If assigning jobs works for you, great. Elizabeth G. Cohen and Rachel A. Lotan’s (2014) book Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom is a useful resource for elementary teachers thinking about how to manage large and small groups. Personally, I prefer groups to be more dynamic and flexible because students will often divide and conquer jobs on their own: “You build that, and I’ll build this.” • Students’ saying, “That’s not my part,” is unacceptable. “It’s all your part,” I tell them. Projects are not judged in pieces. Projects are judged as a whole. Students cannot step away from something as if it wasn’t their responsibility because, at the end of the day, there is no group leader, and there are no specific jobs; there are only the goal, the problem, and hopefully, the solution. You can explain this to the students, but it’s up to them to find their way through it. There must be differentiation within this, as teachers each know their class and their students. In a class with

strong relationships, the students understand they are all different, but the overriding expectation, “We’re all in this together to do the best,” remains. • It will occasionally become clear one student is not pulling their weight. Judge the project as a whole, but also give students an opportunity during the reflect phase to explain their individual additions to the whole. If a student is holding their group back on purpose through lack of effort or even sabotage somehow, have a conversation in the hall. Ask the student why. Try to come from a place of understanding. Talk to the student; then give them a choice: “The project must be done, and we must solve the problem. Return to your group, and contribute or work alone. If you work alone, you can make your own project, with no extra time, or you can answer the problem a different way while still showing the same amount of work and following my design process.” Most students will return to their groups. Issues arise when too many students try to take control and communication breaks down, and we forget everyone is doing their best. 9. Modify and iterate as necessary. • As students are building something, they’re discovering things about their blueprints, their problems, and their solutions. This is the best learning of the build phase. Things are changing. Students can find improvements and modifications as they build. Blueprints are guidelines, not directives. As Captain Barbossa says in Pirates of the Caribbean, “The code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules” (Verbinski, 2003). Students should change and modify their blueprints. That’s learning. Occasionally, students will have to throw out and completely rewrite their blueprints. That’s also learning. Whether it works is completely up to how much time students have. 10. Don’t forget to teach. • To take our extended analogy from the water to the air for a second, consider that every new pilot learns this simple rule: “Don’t forget to fly the plane.” Pilots are usually told to remember this when they’re troubleshooting a problem, but it’s a helpful point for the build phase. It acts as a good reminder to keep an eye on what’s happening, to document what students are doing, and to step in when needed with direct teaching. Think of it as “just in time” teaching or coaching. • Be aware of the distance between students and the curriculum learning targets (more on this in chapter 9, page 153). If the learning gap starts to widen or shows no sign of closing, it might be time for a minilesson or content refresher.

Figure 4.2 offers a student-facing version of the rules to keep in the classroom.

Class Rules

1. Put safety first. • Be careful with the materials and tools you are using. • Hold scissors the correct and safe way. • Cut slowly. Cut away from your body. • Respect the implement, or work without it. 2. Be cool. • Before you make a choice, decide if you’re being calm, collected, and kind. • Be cool to those around you. • You don't have to be best friends with everyone. You do have to listen, collaborate, and get along. • Be cool to the other groups. 3. Measure t wice, c ut o nce. • Rulers are your friend. • Blueprints have measurements for a reason. • Thou shalt not eyeball it. • Thou shalt use a straight edge. 4. Respect the space and materials. • The classroom is a shared space, and the materials are shared materials. • Be careful as you move through the room. • Clean up as you go and after you’re done. 5. Follow. Your. Plans . • Look at your plans frequently. • Check them before any major cuts or decisions. 6. Consider timing. • A project is like a gas; it will expand to fill the space it is given. Use your time wisely. • All things must end. Be mindful that you’ll eventually be out of time for a project. Plan. • Only you decide when the project is finished. 7. Build quality. • The teacher cannot control the quality of the build. You must do that. 8. Keep in mind group dynamics. • All parts of the project are your part. You are all equally responsible for making sure the project gets done. • Pull your weight. 9. Modify and iterate as necessary. • Don’t be afraid to change your blueprint if you find something that works better. 10. Don’t forget to learn. • All your projects tie in with subjects you are learning. This isn’t just fun build time!

Take care to learn the lesson here.

FIGURE 4.2: Build phase class rules. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.