evidence – The Captain of Class

The East Penn School District recently held its traditional, educators’ welcome back assembly, August 22, 2018. On the way into the auditorium greeters handed out fliers and small sticky notepads. The flier advertised $15,052 that the EPSD Education Foundation was rewarding in grant money for teachers this coming year.

“What I want to know, is what is this $52, here.” — A hoarse whisper from a gentleman right in front of me, while pointing out the last two digits of the total grant money amount to his neighbor. Good teachers and authors know the power of questioning. Causing kids to question turns teaching on its head. The educator is no longer force-feeding information to students, but providing what the students are wondering about. Personally, I figured the $52 was some monetary necessity born out of the intricacies of finance and taxes, something complicated from a world I know next to nothing about. Boy, was I wrong!

Heather Slatoff, Vice President, tells teachers about grants available through EPSD Education Foundation

Almost before my neighboring questioner sat back in his chair, Heather Slatoff was mentioning the amounts of the grants EPSD Educational Foundation was making available this year. The very last one was $52! What? Now, I was questioning!

Heather explained that one of last year’s winners, Paula Fehlinger, had her class auction artwork. When Mrs. Fehlinger asked her class what they wanted to do with the $52 that they had earned, the kids told her that they wanted to donate it to the foundation that had provided them the means to make the artwork in the first place. This was one of the classiest little stories I had heard in a long time, but it was about to get even better…

The EPSD Education Foundation took that $52 and made it its own grant! The kids from that class should feel like kings and queens. The foundation credited the class with class. It is honoring the classy decision/action that those kids made, with the help and direction of their classy teacher, Mrs. Fehlinger.

Thank you @EPSDEdFound for providing the opportunity for @EastPennSD teachers and students to be innovators and creators in their classrooms! We can’t wait to see who is awarded the special $52 grant! #payitforward #STEAM #coding #foreverthankful #EastPennProud pic.twitter.com/K3hXKE3umc

— Mrs Fehlinger (@MrsFehlinger) August 22, 2018

Later in the third grade year, I enjoy teaching multiple-meaning words. I usually couple this topic with teaching the use of context clues. Here is a word that I haven’t used in the past, but will definitely begin including in this lesson: Credit.

Surprisingly, Merriam Webster’s very first definition of the entry “Credit” has to do with

woman holding card while operating silver laptop — Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

truth. The “reliance on the truth or reality of something” is the dictionary website’s initial meaning for “Credit”. The use of the EPSD Education Foundation’s donation to Mrs. Fehlinger’s class gave credit to the purpose of the grants that are meant to promote science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (Education Closet).

As I am only hours away from greeting my brand new third graders to Room 207 of Willow Lane, the first lesson of the year is consuming my thoughts. I am excited to begin the year with a lesson about “Evidence”. Here is a new concept to connect to that lesson: Proof is credit. And, the more credit you have, the more credible your fact. When your statement lacks proof, it is incredible–unbelievable–not worthy of belief or credit.

I think of a bank ledger, where on the one side you have the income (credit) and on the other you have expenses. When you make a statement, you are putting information out there for people to believe. They will believe what you say if you have proof. Sometimes it is difficult to provide concrete proof to credit a statement. In these instances, the more credible the source, the easier it is for people to believe the statement. In other words, the more credit (previously truthful statements that have been proven) a person has in his factual bank account, the more easily a statement made by said person will be accepted (believed). With each false statement a person promotes, he withdraws credibility from his factual bank account. When funds dip, people withdraw trust.

The fabulous fifty dollar grant story lends credit to the funds of these grants not only being used in creative educational ways, but inspiring some of the classiest behavior I have ever heard. It gave me goosebumps to learn about the origin of the last two digits of the total grant allotment for the 2018-19 school year. Although teachers could obviously do more with the larger grants, I, personally, am inspired to apply to win the smallest, but classiest one… $52. This one deserves the biggest “check”.

My class — Mrs. Dweck, myself, and some other Willow Lane teachers received a substantial grant from EPSD Education Foundation last year to fund the purchase of Thymio Robots and use of Techykids.com

Sources:

Credit. (n.d.). Retrieved August 25, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/credit

East Penn School District Education Foundation Announces 2017/2018 Innovator STEAM Grant Winners. (2017, October 26). Retrieved August 25, 2018, from https://www.eastpennsd.org/article/east-penn-school-district-education-foundation-announces-20172018-innovator-steam-grant-winners/

Education Closet. (n.d.). What is STEAM? Retrieved August 25, 2018, from https://educationcloset.com/steam/what-is-steam/ [The “art” of STEaM is the driving force pushing the mechanics of teaching: Innovation, creativity, taking STEM to the next level.]

Worms make better pets — Worms are AWESOME! Fact or Opinion?

Most people have heard of the ice-breaking game, “Two Truths/One Lie.” I enjoy this little game so much that I have incorporated it in my first week of school for several years. I changed the name to “Fact vs. Falsehood” because I am a fiend for alliteration and I don’t like the idea of teaching kids to lie. Additionally, it affords me a teaching opportunity on day one: I break out the vocabulary word, EVIDENCE.

In the past, I would teach the difference between fact and false, and inevitably get things muddled with the concept of opinions. I recently saw a tweet by @tomascmurray, who will be keynoting the East Penn Back to School Assembly for teachers on Aug. 22, that gave me an awesome idea for changing my game. He suggested having interactive, thinking-oriented items on desks when students arrive on the first day of school, rather than a pile of books and papers. I loved this idea!

This year I plan to marry two games, and let kids work on figuring out the rules on their own. In addition to “Fact vs. Falsehood”, the second game is “Classmate Scavenger Hunt”. Traditionally, kids would have a piece of paper with a list on it. They would work on finding other kids who share the same experiences, opinions, and criteria from the list. They write the names of peers next to statements as they find students who fit the descriptions.

This year, however, I plan to break up the Classmate Scavenger Hunt paper list. I will make cards that contain one statement each. They will be placed in a bowl that I’ll put in the middle of each group of desks. Some example statements include:

I don’t have any pets.
I have more than one favorite color.
I have written a book. (Some kids love writing stories into mini booklets.)
I took the bus to school today.
I have never been to Disney World.
I love to swim.
My birthday is in the spring.
Summer is my favorite season.

Because there won’t be anything else on the desks, and kids can’t help but touch stuff, I expect that they will begin digging into the bowls and looking at the cards. I hope that they communicate with each other about the statements, finding out which ones they have in common. (Later on we can use the cards to make Venn diagrams, displaying similarities and differences between students.)

In the past, I taught the students in a whole group setting the difference between “facts” and “opinions”. This year, I am going to see if kids can figure out the difference by separating their cards into two different groups. I won’t tell them what the criteria is. They may decide to make a pile of things the classmates all share in common, leaving the rejected statements to their own pile. That would make sense. I’ll simply have them try to find another difference or criteria to categorize the two piles, until they realize that some statements contain phrases that make them opinions.

Eventually, I’ll bring the thinking around to noticing that some of the statements can be proven, while some are impossible to prove, even though you might feel like they are true. The ones that are “prove-able” — able to be proven — are facts. And, how can you prove their accuracy? With… drum-role… EVIDENCE.

Roaches make cool pets — Roaches make the best classroom pets.

My birthday is in the summer. This is a fact. What proof do I have to support this? The evidence can be found in a few places: Driver’s license, birth certificate, social security card, passport, etc.

“Summer is the best season” is an opinion. No matter how much you love it, or how many people agree with you, this is NOT a fact. You simply cannot prove that summer is better than other seasons. It might seem that way, but there isn’t any evidence to back up the statement.

Opinions are not bad or wrong to use. In “5 Classy Elements of ‘The Story of Mankind’ (1921)” I praised the author, Hendrik Van Loon, for providing his personal opinion within a history book. I enjoyed reading some of the ideas that he gleaned from his study of world history. It is helpful to let people know your likes and dislikes. Those are opinions.

baby chickens are cute — Baby chicks are soooooo cute!

baby chickens are noisy — Baby chicks are noisy and distracting.

Trouble arises when opinions are made to seem like facts. “I have a lot of homework” might seem like a fact, but in actuality, this is an opinion. When the phrase “a lot” is used, a statement that might otherwise be a fact turns into an opinion. “A lot,” compared to what? Comparing your amount of homework to what a kindergartener brings home would make it seem like a ton. But, compare your homework to what an eleventh grader might receive, and your task is minuscule! You DO have homework. That is a fact. You can prove that. Your evidence is written on your assignment book page, and you may even have physical papers that are not yet complete. So, saying “I feel like my homework will take a long time to complete” may be a more accurate statement than the one above, but until you actually complete it, there isn’t any evidence to prove just how much homework there really is.

“My homework took twenty minutes to complete, last night.” This is a fact, as long as it is true. There are parts of this statement that can be proven. Did you do it last night? Did it take twenty minutes?

Falsehood (untruth)	Opinion (feelings)	Fact (prove-able)	Classy Fact (dressed up)
“My homework took me two hours to do!”	“It felt like I would never finish my homework last night.”	“It took me twenty minutes to complete my homework last night.”	“I was surprised to find out that it only took me twenty minutes to do my homework last night, because it felt like it was taking forever.”

Facts can be dry and boring. That’s why we season them with opinions. “My birthday is in the best season, summer.” Your birthday may very well fall within the calendar days that land it in the season of summer, but who is to say that summer is the “best season”? That is your opinion.

Also, opinions are increasingly useful, the more they are explained. While you can’t actually prove an opinion, you CAN support it. A classy person may say, “I love summer because you can swim, there isn’t any homework, and my birthday is in August.” Now, we understand several reasons that cause you to like summer more than other seasons.

For “Fact vs. Falsehood” to work, students should write down two facts that can be proven with evidence, along with one untruth that also can be proven inaccurate with evidence (i.e. “I have three sisters” could be a falsehood if a student only has one.) After students compose their sentences, we go around the room sharing and guessing which of the three statements is false. In this way we learn a little about one another, hear each other speak, practice good listening habits, and appreciate some classroom rules.

That's a big hat — That 24″ diameter hat is rather large.

To close the entire lesson, I might display the following table, reiterating the differences.

Falsehood (hyperbole)	Opinion (feelings)	Fact (prove-able)	Opinion/Fact (classy compound sentence)
“There were one hundred people at my house last night.”	“There were too many people visiting last night.”	“I had five extra people in my house last night.”	“Five people probably doesn’t sound like a lot, but that more than doubled the normal number of people using the bathroom, showering, and making messes.”

Every year, just before school begins, family visits my house. It is the end of the summer for them, which is a perfect way to wrap it all up. But, it is the beginning of my preparing to start the school year! I’m happy to host, but it is not the best timing. Is that an opinion or fact?

Tag: evidence

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