21st Century Competencies Recap and Reflections

During the week prior to the March Break, I received an email from a teacher interested in looking into what a 21st Century learner looks like in the FDK classroom. Intrigued by the email I began doing some research and in doing so, I came across a brand new discussion document titled: "Towards Defining 21st Century Competencies for Ontario".

The document is unique in that its intention is not to dictate policy, but instead to highlight current research as means for generating discussion. From the document:

"This document will provide a focus for discussions among ministry and external education, policy and research experts about how best to shape provincial policy to help students develop 21st century competencies they need to succeed. These discussions  will build on the consultations to renew Ontario's vision for education that took place in the autumn of 2011."

The document is composed of five sections. I really enjoyed reading through it and thought that posting a recap and some reflections would make a worthy blog post.

1. Introduction: rationale for the document

• Our world is changing. We are shifting from an industrial model of production to a tech driven, rapidly changing, interconnected globalized knowledge economy. Are we keeping pace in education?
• Emerging research identifies that technology can be used to deepen and and transform learning for our students.
• Students are connected in their everyday lives. Do we support this new reality in our classrooms?

2. Defining 21st Century Competencies: overview of findings concerning 21st Century Competencies

• Skills vs. Competencies. There are many definitions of each. Some are inclusive of one another, while others make each distinct. For the purposes of this paper, skills and competencies are seen to differ in the following ways
  • Skills: the ability to perform tasks and solve problems
  • Competency: the ability to apply learning outcomes adequately, in a defined context (education, work, personal and professional)
• Cognitive competencies in critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, to no one's surprise, have been identified as key indicators of success. However, rapidly changing contexts in the 21st century are making interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies equally as important. Where do these competencies currently fit in our curriculum? Are we doing a good enough job developing these "soft" skills within our students? What measures are we using to accurately assess our student's abilities to demonstrate these skills
• Conference Board of Canada (2000), has identified three areas of employable skills:
  • Fundamental skills:(communicating, managing information, using numbers, thinking and solving problems)
  • Personal Management Skills: (demonstrating positive attitudes and behaviours, responsibility, adaptability, continuous learning, working safely)
  • Teamwork Skills: (working with others, participating in projects and tasks)
• The most prominent competencies found throughout research thus far...the 4 C's:
  • Critical Thinking: through authentic and relevant learning experiences, our students must "acquire, process, interpret, rationalize and critically analyze large volumes of often conflicting information, to the point of making an informed decision and taking action..." (Fullan and Langworthy, 2014, p.15). Digital tools support the development of these experiences for our students by providing access to information and resources that were previously inaccessible.
  • Communication: its not just about the output anymore (orally or in writing) , but now involves a growing emphasis on the input (listening skills). Digital tools and platforms have established entirely new avenues for which communication is taking place. Students are now being challenged not only to learn the tool but also to master the many new communication nuances that exist.
    • What tools/measures are we using to assist our students in developing this new form of communication?
    • How long is needed for a student to "master" a form of communication? Is this a realistic outcome?
  • Collaboration: working together in the 21st century classroom is now much more than just face-to-face interaction. Digital tools have flattened our classroom walls and have exposed our students to a world-wide audience.
    • How are we equipping our students to properly collaborate with people outside of our classroom?
    • What opportunities exist to develop these skills?

• Creativity and Innovation: while used together, creativity and innovation are defined differently. Simply put, creativity involves the pursuit of new ideas, concepts or products while innovation contains elements of creativity in the process of bringing an idea to realization. The idea of entrepreneurialism permeates the literature here and will have an impact in the 21st century classroom. Alberta's Framework for Student Achievement is a great example for how entrepreneurship is becoming incorporated into education.

• With reference to the momentum building for developing stronger intrapersonal competencies in our students, the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) based out of Boston has recently identified six essential character qualities: mindfulness, curiousity, courage, resilience, ethics and leadership. Furthermore, a growing body of research suggests that the development of a growth mindset in our students will better enable them to demonstrate these qualities on a more consistent basis.
• Do we as educators fail enough to experience the impact of a growth mindset? A recent setback on an online exam I wrote really put this into perspective for me. I failed. I was mad, upset, and confused. I needed a day to work through these emotions before I was able to reset my mindset. I couldn't help but reflect on how this may have played out in my classroom. Did I provide enough wait time for my students?

• It is stated that metacognition (paired with a growth mindset) is essential for ongoing success in the 21st century classroom. In fact, many researchers have concluded that "learning the process of learning" must become the sole purpose of education in the 21st century (Brooks & Holmes, 2014).
• As our classrooms become more connected and involved in the digital world, it is imperative that we develop a stronger sense of digital citizenship in our students.
  • How do we get our students to recognize that they belong to many communities (local, provincial, national and global) and that their actions matter in how this community evolves?
• There are many different frameworks in current practice aimed at addressing 21st century competencies. While similar in ways, each varies slightly from one another. Finding the right framework for Ontario will not be an easy task. Refer to page 22 of the document for a great chart outlining some current frameworks.

3. The Ontario Context: identifying work being done now and their alignment with 21st Century Competencies

• From the document:
  • "Despite similarities among the frameworks in the broad competencies they identify as important to success, there is considerable variation in the way different constituencies choose to represent them, and there is no single "best" framework that is applicable to all circumstances. It is important for Ontario not only to benefit from the insights of other jurisdictions but also to integrate them into a framework that addresses the specific needs and goals of Ontario educators and students." (p. 23)
• Although opportunities exist within the current curriculum for teaching and learning the knowledge and skills/attitudes commonly linked to 21st century competencies, most opportunities currently only target the cognitive domain. Through the curriculum renewal process however, it is possible to focus increased attention on the development of competencies across all 3 domains as identified above.
• School Boards are moving ahead in defining 21st century competencies. In reading this I took a deeper look at my Board's (Thames Valley District School Board) plan and was encouraged to see these competencies displayed prominently throughout. Check it out here, http://annual.tvdsb.ca/assets/bipsa-report.pdf.
• School Boards are actively participating in numerous activities and initiatives exploring aspects of 21st century competencies.

4. Implications for Practice: summary of practices identified to support the development of 21st Century Competencies

• 21st century competencies should be embedded within curriculum and not seen as separate subjects.
  • What role does inquiry play in the development of these skills?
  • How do large, multi-subject learning opportunities support the development of these skills?
• Shifting away from the covering all required content approach and more towards a focus on the learning process. In reading this section I was reminded of the Coverage Approach vs. Inquiry Approach image below, found in the awesome resource, Comprehension and Collaboration.

• The role of technology. I was excited to see this included as I have seen firsthand in my own classroom just how powerful technology can be in developing these competencies in our students.
  • Increasing student engagement and achievement: I think we all get the engagement piece. Any student gets excited about the idea of getting their hands on a new tool. But what happens when that excitement wanes? Well I would argue that it shouldn't, based on what is being done while using the tool. Too often (and too easily) technology is being used to accomplish the same things one could do without it! We need to leverage these devices and tools to introduce students to things they've never seen before (Google Street View tour of France), experiment by teaching through their consumption tendencies (Youtube tutorials on how to build...) and finding new ways for our diverse learners to demonstrate their thinking/understanding (Adobe Voice, Prezi, Animoto).
  • Assisting in the assessment of student performance: gone (for the most part) are the days of the lost or missing assignment. Tools like GAFE now offer students a virtual binder to store any completed task and/or assignment. In having access to these files throughout the year, students are now much better equipped to accurately reflect on their progression as a learner through the various samples available. Technology has also greatly enhanced our (the teachers') ability to monitor and assess our students. Online surveys, plickers and back channel websites allow for instant feedback on whether your students fully understood the concept from that day's lesson. When used in this manner, technology will greatly influence the direction of your program which should allow you the opportunity to maximize your impact as a teacher.
  • Facilitating communication and collaboration: technology has knocked down our classroom walls. Our students now have access to a worldwide audience, including other students and professionals alike. Tools like Google Classroom now allow students to communicate between one another online and even extends opportunities for collaboration outside of the classroom. For parents, technology has provided endless opportunities to remain connected with the daily ongoings of their children's classroom.
• Here is a great chart that highlights the connections between digital tools and resources, key transformational learning practices/contexts and competency development
  • http://www.edugains.ca/resources21CL/About21stCentury/21CL_21stCenturyCompetencies.pdf (p. 36)
• Assessment practices will need to be adjusted to meet the shift in pedagogical models. This becomes tricky due to the delicate balance that exists between assessments for feedback and assessments for public accountability. Some issues presented in the document include:
  • the multiplicity of competencies; how do we settle on the best competencies for our students?
  • psychometric challenges; how do we assess non-cognitive abilities in our students?
  • economic and accountability influences on the development and use of assessments; how do our current financial realities impact of the way in which we assess students? What role does accountability play in our assessment practices?
  • teacher capacity; are we developing teachers ready to teach in the 21st century? Do we offer enough professional development opportunities for current teachers? How do we nudge reluctant or resistant teachers to take that next step?
• Physical space: "where we learn affects the quality of how we learn." Having had the opportunity to attend some professional development sessions put on by our Board regarding transitioning School Libraries into Learning Commons, it was nice to see that many of the ideas from this section are already being put into practice.

5. Implications for Policy: outline of key questions/items to consider before developing policy with regards to these competencies in the Ontario Education System

• This section has a wealth of questions to be addressed as we work through this process. This includes:
  • Which competency framework best suits our needs?
  • How do these competencies fit within our current curriculum?
  • How do we foster a culture of innovation, risk-taking and continuous learning?
  • How do we build capacity within our teachers?
  • What does assessment look like?

Whats more, is that this document is packed full of references to other great resources. Here is the future/further reading list I compiled while reading through the document:

• Achieving Excellence: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/about/renewedVision.pdf
• Alberta's Framework for Student Learning (2011): http://open.alberta.ca/dataset/4c47d713-d1fc-4c94-bc97-08998d93d3ad/resource/58e18175-5681-4543-b617-c8efe5b7b0e9/download/5365951-2011-Framework-Student-Learning.pdf
• Fullan & Scott (2014): http://npdl.global/
• ATC21S: http://www.atc21s.org/
• ISTE Standards: http://www.iste.org/STANDARDS
• Partnership for 21st Century Learning: http://www.p21.org/

Picking a Path up the Mountain: Notice & Wonder

Back in January I posted a blog that briefly described a process I was using with a school to uncover trends in student data. With these trends, our goal was to develop a purposeful and meaningful math focused school goal.  It was (and still is) my hope that this series of blogs will serve as a form of documentation of the journey we are on to try and improve student learning within the building.

In the weeks following the development of our goal, I entered resource gathering mode. I read numerous articles, watched many videos and with the help of some awesome colleagues, identified a some great resources to help us begin to go to work on our goal of helping students develop a better understanding of problems prior to solving them. I was excited. I was hopeful. I was...overwhelmed. The more I gathered, the harder it got to identify a natural starting point. It felt as if I was standing at the foot of a mountain, staring at 50 different paths to the top. Just picking a path to start our journey became a daunting task in of itself.

Fast forward to the week before March break.

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed as I tend to do during some downtime. While scrolling I came across a tweet from @dr_costello looking for any examples of graphic organizers that use Polya's problem solving process. In having spent some time recently looking through all things problem solving for my Math AQ course, I knew that my Board's template was based off of this model. I shared the example and through this action, found myself engaged in a meaningful math discussion directly related to the school goal we had developed. Here are some screen shots from that conversation:

At some point during the conversation, Mark (@MarkChubb3) graciously shared the following link, Notice & Wonder. I clicked the link and started reading. The timing of the article could not have been any better. After reading through the article I felt as if our path finally revealed itself.  Well at least for our first attempt up the mountain anyway...

I spent the following day learning as much as I could about the concept. I watched videos, read blogs and even came across some new great people to follow on Twitter (@JSchwartz10a & @MFAnnie). I got comfortable with the process and assembled a brief presentation to share with the School Improvement Team.

The SI team embraced the concept and agreed that it would serve as a natural first step to share with staff as we start our work towards achieving our goal. The team also thought that it would be a great idea to try the concept out in a few classrooms prior to sharing with staff. We liked the idea of having student samples to look at and refer to when introducing the concept. 

Our plan involves working with a class from each division (Primary, Junior & Intermediate). Next week each class will be given a problem to work through and solve. The work will be collected and assessed. The following week, each class will complete a Notice and Wonder prior to being given a similar problem to solve. Student work will be collected and assessed. We will then examine both data sets to identify any trends or things of interest. 

Please note that we fully understand that the real benefits of Notice and Wonder will be seen over time through continued exposure and regular practice. In completing this brief assessment it is our hope that we can provide with a glimpse of what is possible and as a result gain their trust and professional investment in the implementation of this technique.

Until next time. The journey continues...

The Coding Continuum: Moving in the Right Direction

Currently I would consider myself a novice coder. While I feel that I have moved past the "Beginner" stage, I find I still struggle to fully grasp the ins and outs of programming. If you were to peek into my Scratch account you would see many half finished or abandoned programs but you would also see a few programs I have been able to complete (my favourite one being a "Comparing Geometric Properties" program called Battle Shapes).  In reflecting on my coding journey, I would have to say that I am happy with the progress I've made since the Spring of 2016. Important to note: collaborating with Lisa Floyd (@lisaannefloyd) has also helped IMMENSELY, haha.

While my hands-on coding skills continues to develop, one area that I feel I may have come more naturally is in seeing the connections between coding and our Ontario curriculum., specifically Mathematics. (Although a strong case can be made for other subjects areas as well.) Mathematics expectations can be met in all strands. Don't believe me? Try a simple subject search on Scratch. Here is what a simple "Integers" search returned, https://scratch.mit.edu/search/projects?q=integers.

The idea however that inspired this blog is connected to Geometry and specifically Geometric Properties of shapes. In fact it was this question from the 2016 Grade 6 EQAO test that triggered a rather large "AHA" moment for me this year. "Right Trapezoid" and "Isosceles Trapezoid". When I first read these words, I thought "Hmm strange, I wonder why they did that?".  Then it clicked. Visions of my previously taught trapezoid lessons began flooding my memory. All those lessons, all that learning...all with the SAME shape. The Isosceles Trapezoid. But wait, I was sure to refer to it as an Isosceles Trapezoid right?...right? Wrong!

In the school reports I was able to see, many students struggled with this question. In fact, only 58% of students provincially, scored at Grade level. Why? Well, I am sure there could be many reasons, but one reason that I believe contributed to the poor scoring on this question is/was the omission of language we often only reserve for triangles (right, scalene and isosceles).  My trapezoid lessons will be updated!

Equipped with this new understanding, I started to think about how I would introduce students to these "new" types of trapezoids. After bouncing around a few ideas, none of which I was overly excited about, the idea of using Scratch came to mind. To build an understanding I could provide a series of geometric properties that describe a certain shape, and through Scratch, students would have to use the criteria presented to construct the appropriate polygon (trapezoid in this case). The more I thought about it, the more value I saw in the activity. Why not have Grade 5's code a variety triangles or Grade 6's code different polygons according to certain criteria?

Here are some samples that I plan to use:

Trapezoids: "Trapezoid Challenge Cards"
Triangles: "Triangles Challenge Cards"

How do you use or plan to use coding in the classroom?

Same but Different: "Traditional" vs. Math Reading

Since the beginning of this school year, I have spent more time than I would like to admit sorting, sifting and scouring over EQAO results, specifically Mathematics. Results were coded by correct/incorrect/missing or illegible answers, Level One, Two, Three or Four responses/scores, Open Response/Multiple Choice questions and even a question by question comparison of school score from (and above) provincial average. For a few nights all I saw were blobs of red, green, yellow, orange and blue when I closed my eyes.

Colourful dreams aside, with the results colour coded, we now had a great resource for beginning our work of analyzing/trend hunting through a rather large data set. Through a quick visual scan of the data, we were able to get a general sense of how our students performed across the strands, how they fared within each question skill (knowledge, thinking or application) and even how we performed question by question in direction comparison to the provincial average.

While we gleaned many things from our initial scans of the data, not surprisingly it wasn't until we dug a little deeper into some trends that we really started to notice things. Specifically we identified questions in which we scored 10 or more points below the provincial average as an area we wanted to look more into. We went through student responses and tallied how many answered A, B, C or D. We then printed out the booklets and went question by question looking at how our students scored and tried to identify what misconceptions and/misunderstandings that may have led to the incorrect responses.

Here are a few examples of what we saw:

   

   46% of students answered C           31% of student answered B          42% of students answered ADo you notice any trends in the errors our students made?In looking a little closely at the errors, we determined that each error was actually correct math in one way or another. 
 

Question 6: 800 metres multiplied by 50 minutes, but not converted to kilometres (bolded in question),

Question 7: 28 672 divided 5 times, but not recognized as the first term (which would only require 4 divisions)
Question 15: 365 days multiplied by 60 minutes (1 hour), but not by the full 24 hours in a day.

Now this shouldn't be a surprise as those EQAO tricksters always do their best to include misconcepted (new word? haha) math errors as answer options. But what drove our inquiry was our desire to understand WHY so many of our students were making these errors? Eventually we came to the conclusion that our students struggled to fully understand the requirements of each question due to errors in READING. Not reading errors in the sense that students cannot actually read the words, but in the sense that what was read was not understood. REAL READING (see Tanny McGregor). Having had an opportunity to examine data across multiple schools, I knew that this was a common error and not just specific to one school. We briefly talked about how we could address this issue, but nothing was decided as we were to meet again in the new year. In knowing that this was a growing concern for many schools, I began searching for resources that we could turn to for support in our attempt to address this issue. Unfortunately my search was going nowhere, until a book called "Math Expressions" by Dr. Cathy Marks Krpan was mentioned during a professional learning session I attended just prior to the Christmas break. I had heard of this book a few years back from a colleague who raved about it, but never put forth any time to investigate it myself. What a mistake that was! I owe this colleague an apology...

I will start by saying that the entire book is an incredible resource. It is full of great research, assessment suggestions and strategies. For the purposes of this blog however, I would just like to focus in on a small part of Chapter 3 (Reading in Mathematics) specifically, as it targets what we feel our students are struggling with the most.

The chapter (like all chapters in the book) begins with a list called "Indicators of Success". I can't think of a better way to start a chapter. Each indicator provides an idea of what we should be looking for from our students when it comes to reading in mathematics. It then dives head first into what current research is saying about Reading in Mathematics. Some great takeaways from this section were as follows:

• reading in mathematics is a vastly different process than the reading we have our students do in other subjects. 
• often the text can include elements that students have never encountered before.
• math text often contains more concepts per paragraph than other text 
• math text is often organized in a manner that works against the traditional left to right reading we teach.
• mathematical text does not often repeat information
• when images are provided, they often only contain mathematical information
• reading in math requires an inner conversation that students may not by able to have without proper modeling

Within the "Reading Word Problems" section, some other great points are raised. For example, it states that unlike traditional reading, mathematical paragraphs typically place the main idea at the end of the text and in the form of a question. One recommendation that Krpan makes that pushed my thinking was the idea of providing students with the answer first. It is her belief that this could lessen the growing anxiety we are seeing in classrooms and can in turn place a higher emphasis on the development of strategy/strategies needed to arrive at the same solution.

This chapter really opened my eyes to just how different reading in mathematics is when we compare it to the "regular" reading we have students do. I feel a little more confident that we now have a starting point for how to go about addressing this issue for our students.  I am excited to begin this process and really hope to share our process (successes and failures) in future blog posts.

Spiraling the Curriculum with Sphero Bowling

The powerful, blue tooth controlled, tennis balled sized units called Sphero have recently rolled (get it?) their way into schools and classrooms across the Country. Controlled by an iPad (or personal handheld device) and your choice of app (ie. Tickle, SPRK Lightning Lab, etc...), these units have incredible potential to engage and transform the learning for our students. Although these units are initially met with a rush of excitement by educators, too often the excitement wanes and eventually these units fade away into the background or worse, into the darkness of a closet cupboard... 

Why does this happen?

I feel that this happens for a variety of reasons, but for the purposes of this blog, I would only like to focus in on one. The "lack of connections" these tools have to the curriculum.

With the recent surge of technology in our schools many educators are left feeling stressed, overwhelmed and even fearful when it comes to the role of technology in their program. Already strapped with the day to day pressures of teaching, implementing an extensive (and sometimes brand new) curriculum, there is very little time (and energy) left for educators to spend on learning this new tech tool. Furthermore, without investing the necessary time to explore the tool, connections to curriculum are often disregarded as the full functionality of the tool is often misunderstood or left undiscovered.

This is what prompted me to compile the following file, https://goo.gl/AlI67V. Essentially, the file consists of simple Number Sense activities from Grade One to Grade Eight. Each activity is initiated by the action of students bowling over numbered water bottles using the Sphero unit. The activity students are required to complete afterwards will depend on the expectation and Grade level. Each activity can be extended or reduced, depending on your student audience and improvisation skills!




My goal in putting this file together was to offer educators somewhere to start for how they can begin to use the Sphero in a purposeful way. In grounding these activities in Number Sense, it is my hope that these concepts can be spiraled back to throughout the school year. Furthermore, I hope that something small and simple like these activities can serve as motivation and a springboard for the development and creation of a whole host of new Sphero activities. The more we experiment and play with these tools in the classroom, the more connections we will start to see.

Students use knocked over bottles to work out Lowest Common Multiple

Tech Goal: navigate Sphero in straight line at an intended target
Math goal: determine the Lowest Common Multiple & Greatest Common Factor

Playing with Numbers: Reflection and What Next?

A little over 2 weeks ago I posted a blog where I played with some numbers to make predictions about medal totals for various countries competing in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Jsaniero, Brazil. My motivation for this blog came out of some posts and conversations regarding the avalanche of curriculum connections to the Olympic Games. In short, I wanted to play with real data, manipulate it in a way that made sense to me and from this work, make measurable predictions for an event taking place in the now. Here are how my predictions played out:

At the end of my first blog I graciously asked for a +/-5 range when looking at final totals, so if we take that into account you would see that 6 out of 10 predictions were spot on, 2 were somewhat close (Germany & Australia) and the remaining 2 not so much (USA & Great Britain).

I will fully admit that during the Games I was checking totals and comparing them to my predictions. I was engaged in both the greatness of the Olympic Games but also in my mathematical predictions. I was excited to see how it would all play out. Would students feel the same? I tend to think they would.

So what now?

Full disclosure, at this point in the activity in the past, I would say great job, wrap it up and quickly move onto the next task. Nowadays however, I feel that this is where the most crucial learning for our students may live. Now that we have all this data, let's zoom in and explore what happened, lets ask why, lets form new hypotheses for future predictions based on the new results we have in front of us.

We could ask:

What would you change if you were to make the same predictions again?
What new data might you choose to include in your predictions?
Did you use the right data?
Did you recognize any significant trends?
What sticks out to you?
What could you explore more?
What looks like it doesn't belong?

A prediction can be defined as a forecast of future events (Google Search). Knowing what we know about weather forecasts, the outcome is often unknown and the expectation to be right 100% of the time should be unrealistic (right Weather people?). The true learning however, rests in the answers we get to questions above, as they should tell us all we need to know about how well our students understand the concept.

It is my hope that an activity like this will stimulate future student driven learning. Feedback on predictions is instant, daily and REAL! Opportunities exist everyday for revision, comparison and tweaking. Conversations about each student's prediction will be that much deeper because they were the ones who chose the data, they selected how to manipulate it and it was them who fearlessly predicted the unknown outcome.

This excites me.

What will your fearless predictions of 2017 be?

Playing with Numbers: The Power of Prediction to Engage Young Learners

A few days ago I was tagged in a Tweet posted by @lisaannefloyd in which she shared a link to an article she wrote about different ideas for engaging students with the current Summer Olympic Games in Rio De Janiero, Brazil. Here is a link to the article, https://makerbloks.com/watch-the-olympics-with-your-kids/.

I really liked Lisa's ideas and in fact, her ideas kick-started some further conversation online in which even more ideas were shared. Through the conversation it became very apparent that so many items from our Ontario curriculum could be touched on through an event like the Olympics. Try it for yourself: Geography?n Yup. Descriptive Writing? Uh huh. Probability? Sure. Social justice issues? Heck yes.

I was so inspired through these conversations and ideas that I went home and immediately began working on one myself. My activity rests on the idea of playing with numbers to make some predictions. Specifically, I am going to use data from the past 5 Summer Olympics to try and predict medal totals. I have selected Countries that often appear in the top 10, as well as Canada. I have chosen to exclude Russia due to all the suspensions related to doping infractions. In simple terms, I took a look at the medal totals for each Country in relation to the number of athletes sent to the Games. I divided the number of medals earned by the number of athletes in attendance to produce a percentage. Here is a link to my data, https://goo.gl/1Abq7I.

I then took the percentages and loaded them into a table for analysis of potential trends. The 2016 column has # of athletes currently attending the 2016 Olympics:

How do I see this being used in the classroom?

I found this activity powerful. Throughout the process I was deeply engaged in the task. Why? I think for a few reasons. For one, I selected the question to explore. I do not need to go into how important this is for our students. I also was able to select the data I wanted to investigate. This may be a little more difficult for our students, but what an important skill to develop as a learner? If I want to answer a question, shouldn't I know what data to examine? Lastly, I found this to be so engaging because it's current, live and something I can follow. I can see in real-time how my predictions are faring. Would students feel the same way? I tend to think so. While we might not have the luxury of Olympics every year, we do have other annual leagues/events we could use. Currently my mind is hovering over the sports umbrella, but I do wonder what other events could provide this type of opportunity?

Fearless Medal Count Predictions...

Last but not least...fearless medal count predictions. Full disclosure, I used my own formula, a little bit of math mixed with a little bit of gut feeling. I am asking for a +/- 5 leniency w hen it comes to final totals so please be easy on me!

**I obtained all facts/figures from www.wikipedia.org & www.olympic.org.**