Captain’s log: August 10th… 2018… Classroom B2… Deep Boxholm.
Today is the second day of my 1 year mission here at Stenbockskolan… the more time I spend here at this strange place, the harder it is to remember when one day ends, and the next begins…
It can be a challenge to feel like I have the… slightest clue as to what I did last year with my classes… when even curriculum and lesson plans seem artificial…But… I will do what I can to make the students believe I know what I am talking about on the first day in order to establish firm, diplomatic ties. They smell fear you know.
However, the deeper into my materials I go, the more I find myself wondering…if I have something to make students take control of their own learning, while at the same time improving classroom mangagement.The possibilities are truely… endless.
BUT
I remembered a great idea that I read in Challenging Learning Through Feedback by James and Jill Nottingham, and thought that MAYBE… just MAYBE I have found the ticket.
(10 points to those who got the Star Trek reference at the beginning of this post. 1 million points to those who read it as William Shatner.)
So – what are Learning Detectives? The idea is that it allows students to focus on the learning behaviours you want them to exhibit during class while at the same time getting them to give themselves and each other feedback.
How am I going to do this? I thought about the different learning behaviours that I wanted the students to show… seeing as this is the second day back to work, my brainstorming session was preeeeeetty brutal. Here is an exact re-enactment of the conversation I had with my brain.
Me: Alright brain. Whaddya got for me?
Brain: *Still sipping a white wine spritzer on the beach in Greece* Huh?
Me: 
Finally after what seemed like a bazillion hours of slowly getting my brain off the beach, on the ferry back to Athens and on a plane to Sweden… I met my brain outside of the school, gave it a cup of coffee and made it think.
My brain cooperated finally, and has produced the following list. Is it perfect? Nope! But. It’s a start, and something I am pretty excited to try with my younger students this year. My thought is to have different categories of Learning Detectives in the future. I’m going for kind of a CSI theme (CSI: Miami, CSI: Las Vegas) Learning Detectives: Writing, Learning Detectives: Speaking… you get the picture.
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I also thought it might be good to have something that tracks these learning behaviours, and possibly cumulates in some sort of reward after a certain amount of time. That brought me to this fantastic app called Class Dojo .
I put the video below for you to watch. Personally, I don’t like trying TOO many new things at once, so I will just use this for the “Instant Feedback” portion of the app (4:19 in video). I like it because I can edit it to the learning behaviours I want to recognize in the classroom. Here is an example below.
I would talk with the Learning Detectives, see what students they thought were showing the learning behaviours and then register it on Class Dojo.
The Learning Detective concept is something I haven’t tried before, but I am excited because it is always great when you get the children to feel more empowered and reflect on their own learning process.
If you try this, let me know how it goes for you – would love to hear what you think, or if you have any other fantastic ideas that my poor vacation brain has not thought of yet.
