Kidzban Around the Web #3

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Around the web people are sharing their experiences with Kidzban.  This is the third post in the series – Kidzban Around the Web.Maritza van den Heuvel writes from her Becoming an Agile Family Blog. She has written many posts on her experiences with both kidzban and Personal Kanban.  In her All Aboard post she describes "that there is no 'one size fits all' approach."She has used a kidzban right from her dining table.  She states "The most visible item in our open plan living area is the dining table."She has also used the fridge.  Maritza mentioned in her post "By the next weekend, I’d realised that the object which is most central to our lives is in fact the kitchen fridge. It’s the first thing you see as you walk into the kitchen, and all of us open it at least once in the morning, afternoon and evening. It also came with a ready-made metal surface and a myriad of magnets we could use for our cards."Maritza loves the fridge because "The further beauty of the fridge, is that it has natural boundaries that separate the Backlog (below the line) and Work In Progress (above the line). Work again moves across from the left (Next Up) to the middle (Doing) and eventually to the right (Done)."She even has a portable Kanban that she made out of a folder and pasted a poster board to. "So far, the mobile board has been my biggest breakthrough in personal productivity using Personal Kanban."Maritza has created truly innovative kidzbans with her family.  Her Teaching Kids Timekeeping with Kanban is one example.  She states "I had been toying with the idea of a non-linear kanban for over a year."  Her kids loved Harry Potter and "were already familiar with the concept of a clock that 'shows where you are' made the format of the clock a no-brainer."

Weasley Kidzban Clock

Maritza mentions how easy it was to involve her children in creating the kidzban while making it fun. "All you have to do is look around at what you have and use it creatively while involving the kids throughout. We made the clock in an afternoon, with an extra day for the choosing and printing of the photos."  The face was created by using the previous year's cardboard calendar.  Her kids colored the segments, and she wrote the activity names on poster board and her kids cut them out.  They are removable so that they can change easily if activities change or the time changes for activities and her kids chose their own photos to use on the arms of the clock.After using the clock for around a month Maritza concluded, "The kids are certainly having a lot of fun with it so far."  They placed the kanban "strategically" in a highly visual place - at the bottom of their stairs.  "....they have to pass it every time they go up or down. We now also have a new mantra to Check and Change....(the Weasley Clock)."  She also stated her kids are starting to form the habit of changing positions of their avatars and they are enjoying comparing each other's status.Be sure to stop by Maritza's Becoming an Agile Family Blog to read the All Aboard post and Teaching Kids Timekeeping with Kanban post in their entirety. Maritza is also one of the authors of the book Beyond Agile: Tales of Continuous Improvement.Photo 1: CreditPhoto 2: CreditThis is the third post in the series - Kidzban Around the Web. You can read the first post here and the second post here.

Completing Projects and Building Confidence with Kidzban

When I first started using Personal Kanban the one thing that excited me immediately was how much I wanted to use it with my daughter and at home with my family.And so my journey began.  At the time my daughter was 11 and continuing her religious education preparing to become confirmed.  There was so much she needed to get done before being able to complete the process and become confirmed that anytime we even mentioned the subject she became clearly overwhelmed.  That's when I decided to introduce her to Personal Kanban.  We set up a Confirmation kidzban.

kidzban to complete religious education projects

She was so excited to be able to visualize all her work that immediately she felt a sense of relief.  Once we got the tasks all up on the board she realized most of the tasks were actually waiting for actions from others.  "Oh that's not so much work." she said.  While it appears to be a lot of WIP, some of those tasks were actually waiting on action from a parent.  Her first use of a Kanban was a complete success. She has completed her religious education and did receive her confirmation.

When my daughter was a little older she was a competitive swimmer.  When you swim for a long time you hit many peaks and valleys.  One season my daughter was feeling incredibly defeated in the water.  Although practicing very hard day in and day out she was not seeing the results she wanted in the water.  She was losing confidence FAST!  So I thought about it and at the time I was experimenting with using Kanban for many projects so I thought why not? Let's see if a kanban can gain her some confidence back in the pool.   We sat down and talked about the times she wanted to achieve in the water, what her times were at that point, and what times she needed in order to qualify for the Junior Olympics.  We wrote her goal times on post-it's, and set up the Confidence kidzban.

Using Personal Kanban to build confidence

The Personal Kanban consisted of 3 major swim lanes, a BACKLOG of times, those being the times she was going into the meet with, her seed times.  The WIP lane was the goal times she set for each event.  The COMPLETED lane was called Goal Times Completed. When she had achieved the goals she set in the WIP lane they would be moved over. Having the times visualized on a board before we left for the meet was huge for her.  When she posted the times up on the board she began to see the differences and began to believe yes this is totally something I can achieve.   Not only because she hit some of her goals, but also because when we looked at the board after moving the first two events of the meet over to the completed swim lane, it felt tangible to her.  She could actually look at the board and see her goals being met.

moving goals over on the confidence kanban

After the second day of swimming we still had success, and even though she only completed one goal on her Personal Kanban board she was extremely proud of her work in the pool on this afternoon. The board has caused her to realize that confidence isn’t only about achieving those goals, it’s about seeing her work in progress. Along the way her confidence will get stronger and stronger with each goal that is met.  The main goal of this Personal Kanban was not just about achieving all new times, a very difficult task for any level competitive swimmer. It was also about giving a 12-year-old athlete her confidence back. According to her, even though all goals were not met and moved into the completed lane YET, they will be. Can you apply Personal Kanban to help confidence?  Ask my 12 year old and she will tell you, yes you can.

This is an updated post that originally appeared on the Nothing is Out of Reach blog.

Personal Kanban at NYC's Agile Learning Center

The Agile Learning Center at Manhattan Free School is designed to put young people in the driver’s seat of their learning and living – giving them the same opportunity and responsibility that we have as adults – to create their own lives.Each morning, we begin with a standup meeting. Everyone takes a turn stating their intentions for the day and making requests for any support they may need. At the end of the day, we come back for another standup meeting to reflect. Did we fulfill our intentions? If so, how? If not – why? What might we do differently tomorrow based on our awareness of today?This daily cycle of creation and reflection produces a powerful feedback loop, providing us clear information about the choices we make and the results of those choices. Between the bookends of this daily cycle, kanban boards are used to support mindfulness in our decision-making process.After morning standup, we use kanban boards to make our intentions visible. Speaking intentions is a start, but making them visible in physical space takes our awareness and commitment to the next level. Now we have a self-created roadmap for what’s possible.

A student kanban

From there, students practice prioritizing by surveying the possibilities for their day and moving things into READY or “Get Set”. What do I really want to do today? Who could I work or play with? What will nurture my body, mind, and spirit? A nine year-old may not be using these words or asking these specific questions, but the kanban process has them considering all of these factors in their own way.Next, we get to experience the power of making what’s possible a reality by pulling the selected intention into DOING or “Go”. ACTION! Deep engagement ensues. When we take the time to make conscious choices, we tend to be more focused, present, and committed to our actions, because we are taking ownership over the whole process.

Finish line on the student Kanban

When an intention is fulfilled, a task completed, or a curiosity explored, we come back to move the story across the finish line. Crossing the finish line does not mean that the story is over and done with. However, it does mark what we have created, and gives us the opportunity to reflect, assess, and constantly improve.

Wall of student kanbans

The kanban board is an extremely effective tool for breaking through our automatic thinking – informing ourselves of the past, visualizing the future, and bringing our attention to the present.Agile Learning Centers is an open-sourced education model for the 21st Century. Learn more about the very first Agile Learning Center at AgileLearn.org

Preschool + Personal Kanban = Kidzban Success

After teaching in the 4 & 5-year-old student preschool class for many years, the last year I taught I became a teacher in the 3-year-old student classroom.  While excited, I knew it would be a challenge when setting up my classroom because many of these students would not know how to read or would have a very limited sight word knowledge.  The classroom would have to be highly visual. I knew I wanted to use Kanban in the classroom, my challenge was how I was going to use it.

Classroom kanban

The first month of school I wanted to teach my students about being aware of the world around them and the rules of safety when outside playing.  So we focused a bit on stoplight safety.  They knew what a stoplight was but had no idea about its function and what it meant for them when crossing a street with a caregiver.  We first learned about the three colors and what each color stood for.  Then to re-enforce what those colors meant they were each given a colored circle and asked to place them in the correct place on the stoplight  and then tell the other students what that color meant- green safe to go, yellow slow down, proceed with caution, and red, stop.  When we were sure they were confident and  knew all three they then were asked to move their circles to the completed lane.  They had fun watching each other move their circles and if a student was struggling the other students would collaborate with that particular student to help them put their circle in the correct spot.  I heard from quite a few parents, that their child let them know when they went through a yellow light too fast or even through a red light! This safety stoplight kidzban was a big success.

Preschool classroom helper kanban

One thing that I have found after 10+ years of teaching preschoolers is that they absolutely love to help you out in the classroom.  So I knew from the point when I was assigned this class one of the Personal Kanbans I would design would involve classroom tasks.  I wanted to design something that represented fun, so I decided on ‘flying a kite.’Here’s how this works: each student has a bow on the tail of the kite.  Every day we chose the next name on the tail and that person gets to ‘fly the kite’ and essentially is the classroom leader for that particular day.  The kite is divided into four sections, each section has a classroom task: flag holder, dressing the classroom weather bear, being the line leader, and ringing the clean-up bell.  The student’s bow moves around to all four tasks as they need to be completed. The student who is the kite flyer for the day also wears a badge, that goes home with them at the end of the day.

• Upon entering the room most students will walk over to check out the kite to see who is going to be the leader each day in our class.  They are learning not only to recognize their name but the names of their classmates.

• They have learned their tasks, if I happen to get sidetracked in the classroom doing another task students will come up and ask me, “Is it time for Judy to dress the weather bear yet?”  A lot of times the student who asks me that question isn’t even the one to be the student leader for that particular day.

• Group participation, when the student is dressing the weather bear, many other students come over to participate and offer help.  This aids in learning to get along in group situations.

• This is not a traditional kanban board, however it works just like a traditional kanban, there is a ready lane-the tail with the bows, a work in progress lane-the kite sectioned into four tasks, and completed lane-the bows placed under the words I flew the kite today.

• This is giving my students the visual of their tasks, the ability to see themselves move around the classroom completing these tasks and the huge confidence of seeing their tasks completed.

• The badge that they get to wear when they are the kite flyer-class leader for the day makes them feel important. Upon wearing it home it breeds conversations about what tasks they had to complete.

• Every student knows they will get a turn, and they are excited when they see where their bow is placed on the tail and when their turn will be coming up.

• It helped to get the students into the ‘groove’ of our classroom and what would be happening during their day. This is many of my students first experience in a structured classroom, and it can be very scary and intimidating the first few weeks. This helped greatly ease their minds and make the experience a positive one.

I found that my students were having a difficult time grasping the Thanksgiving holiday, so I decided that we would design a Thanksgiving Personal Kanban together in class during our circle time.

Teaching Thanksgiving Kanban

We set up the pilgrims traveling to the United States first, talked about how they would arrive then we talked about what they would need to learn to survive with the Native Americans, how they would grow food, prepare the food, etc.  Then we discussed how their working together made them successful and happy, which brought us to celebrating Thanksgiving.  By doing this kidzban together they learned more from the visual then by me just talking or reading from a book.  They got to place the pictures on the board, and we all collaborated on why and how and what we thought they did next.  The students loved working on this board together.  Now they know that Thanksgiving is about more than just eating turkey.

My biggest hope is that I begin to see more and more teachers and educators using Personal Kanban in the their classroom.  I firmly believe from pre-k through college this can be a class game changer and great collaboration tool across the board in every subject.This is an updated post that originally appeared on the Nothing is Out of Reach Blog.

Kidzban Around the Web #2

Around the web people are sharing their experiences with Kidzban.  This is the second post in the series – Kidzban Around the Web.Joseph Flahiff introduced Kanban to his daughters on a Saturday morning when they had guests arriving at 2pm, and they needed to get chores done before their guests arrived. Joseph states in his Saturday Chores with Kanban Part I  "Normally the girls choose all their chores before they start."  They were previously using a chores list set up in an excel program.  On this particular Saturday he decided on introducing a Kanban board.

KIdzban Saturday Chores

Take a look at this wonderful video below where Joseph interviews his daughters - JoHanna and Jillian. They discuss the few bumps in the road they encountered and how they tackled their challenges together and why they'd like to use the process again. Joseph's daughter JoHanna mentioned "There will still be some bumps but not the same ones because we've learned from our mistakes.""Working with a list we never really felt like we were working together.  We felt like competitors instead of teammates." - JoHannaThe next Saturday, Joseph's entire family got into the action even his 3 year old daughter Joy completed tasks on their Kanban.  The Saturday Chores with Kanban Part II highlights another wonderful video below where the girls discuss how they worked together and broke up the chores into smaller tasks so they weren't so overwhelming. Team work is personified when you hear how all three daughters managed the task of vacuuming the master bedroom together.When asked what her favorite part of using the Kanban was Jillian stated "The achievement of finishing a chore."You can read and view Joseph's Saturday Chores with Kanban Part I and Saturday Chores with Kanban Part II in their entirety by heading over to his WhiteWater Projects blog.Videos and photo credit: WhiteWater Projects Blog.This is the second post in the series - Kidzban Around the Web.  You can read the first post in the series here.