Lesson planning at String Theory Schools is a collaborative process which sometimes moves at warp speed (depending upon the time we have between the “day of creation” and the “day of implementation”). We often achieve great successes with our curriculum and content at a high velocity. It’s an exciting place to teach and plan.
In this same vein, failing (and failing fast) is also a common byproduct. But since we at String Theory follow the mantra that a daily “failure bow” is a good thing, these failures are embraced and viewed as valuable learning experiences. These failures are fixable ones, ones that Scrum author Jeff Sutherland would view as potentially beneficial for optimizing productivity and results. Changes are necessary, and the best changes often come after inspecting those aforementioned failures.
One example of a “failure” occurred as a result of moving quickly to compose our ninth grade literature circle unit. In order for our literature circle members to take note of their important discussion details effectively, we rapidly created a graphic organizer that allowed space for students to jot down those notes in a PDF editor like UPAD and Notability. When the students began submitting their notes, a realization, however, dawned on us that this aspect of a collaborative assessment wasn’t exactly collaborative. We realized collectively that an adaptation was needed. Since we were already advocating the use of Google Apps for Education, we figured out a way to change the requirements of the literature circles so that the students’ interest levels wouldn’t wane or “die”. Soon the graphic organizer found its way to Docs in the form of a table and every student now owned access such that they could easily add their notes to a shared form.
Our initial planning was not perfect. But we also did not blindly follow our plans. Since we were willing to fix our early mistakes, we truly found a better way to make the assessments more collaborative and more rewarding.
Scrum for Schools: An Educator's Scrum Experience 