Category: Assessment

Feedback: The Teacher Kind

Feedback: The Teacher Kind

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I can’t help but chuckle when I walk into the library and see this engraved nameplate with the message Every day I’m hustling on our librarian’s desk.He Said She Said - Everyday I'm Hustlin It’s so true, each of us is busy, doing our best, in the ways we know how to eke out “a’ learning“ in our schools.

One of my colleagues told me recently, “I think you have very high expectations.” I’m still trying to figure out if this was a compliment or a suggestion to ease up a bit. (If you knew me, you’d be laughing out loud). But at least 5 days out of 7,  I wake up and the first thing on my mind is learning. It’s not what I might eat for breakfast or what I may do on the weekend, it’s usually about a provocation or a concern I have about a student or something “Google” since I’ve been working on my Google Trainer Certification. When school is in session, I’m definitely hustling. But does it have to feel like a “hustle”? Like I’m tricking someone into learning?

Every morning, one of the first things I do is take my dog outside and I walk around my garden, listening to a podcast. I feel like I got a partial answer to my queries.

We tend to think of feedback in schools as what teachers say to kids. Traditionally as a kid, I got feedback through what teachers wrote in notes on my papers, or grades that I got. But feedback, the more important kind of feedback, is student to teacher feedback. And John Hattie writes about this in his work, the classrooms where there is student to teacher feedback it correlates well with student achievement.

Carl Anderson, from a Teacher’s Guide to Writing Conference, Heinemann Podcast

As I reflect on his words, I recognize that we are 6 weeks into school already and there hasn’t been a whiff of student-to-teacher feedback. But today that changes.  I sincerely want to know How am I doing as your teacher?

When experiencing failure, remember: This is a Start

I put up an Activity Post on Seesaw to provide our 1st Grade students to tell us their “2 Stars and a Wish”. We told them that this is a secret teacher message and it won’t go up on their journals so they could say whatever they like. The most important thing was they were honest and helpful. (“Helpful” is a loaded term, I know, but it’s a message that we are sending about feedback in general)

Here’s what I learned:

  • “I like playing games with you.”
  • “I like sounding out letters with you”
  • “I like Maths”.
  • “If I work hard, I will be great.”
  • “I want to do more math because it’s fun.”
  • ” I want my friends to be happy.”
  • “I want to use Chinese to count (to 50)”
  • “I want to be a good writer”.
  • “I like it when we play games but I don’t like it when we get dirty outside.”
  • “I want more time writing and making books”
  • “I want more learning choice time”.
  • “I want more literacy time to play Teach Your Monster to Read“.
  • “I want to go for a walk to collect some small moments for writing”.
  • “I wish I can speak better in English”
  • “I wish I could write better.”
  • “I love learning choices.”
  • “I like to draw when I am doing my ‘small moments’.”
  • “I like it when we do maths because it makes me calm.”
  • “I really like the teachers.”
  • “I want to use playdoh and I wish I could read eBooks.”
  • “I want to do more maths with numbers and patterns.”

Although these comments warmed my heart and intrigued me, they didn’t provide the insight into “how I’m doing as your teacher” per se. When I look at this, it tells me a lot about what they are connecting to in our learning community: words, numbers, nature, language, technology, pictures, sensory play, intrapersonal learning, and interpersonal learning. Indeed, this helps to shape a picture of who they are and provides us with more data as teachers to know how to communicate with them but the intent seemed lost on the openness of this question, which I reckon may not be the best approach with children this age (6-7-year-olds), at least for this time of the year.  So I ended up walking away, feeling that I failed to get the desired feedback. But because I believe that all learning–even when we make mistakes–is helpful, I reminded myself that this is a start.

The Struggle Continues: Peer Feedback

Since our staff has been inquiring into student engagement as a part of developing greater student agency with the PYP Enhancements, our professional goals this year are rooted in it. We are taking a very systematic approach to it, using peer coaching to explore where we are in our mission to “challenge, inspire and empower”, using the work of Jim Knight and his Impact Cycle.

Peer to peer feedback is highly valuable, and when done in the spirit of non-judgment, care, and positive intention, then an authentic critical friendship can ensue. I whole-heartedly believe in it. C’mon-Who doesn’t want a true loving fan, sitting on the sidelines, applauding our growth and challenging us to bring our best self into the “game”?? I personally delight in having someone who can discern the subtleties of a lesson and provide me with something that I can reflect upon to improve my practice. Bring it on!

So now I ponder this quote:

If we don’t design lessons and units that will earn students’ commitment to learn, then we can’t expect them to take an active or in-depth approach to learning. In other words, if we fail to take student engagement seriously, then the best we can hope for from our students is superficial learning.

The Eight Cs of Engagement by by Harvey F. Silver & Matthew J. Perini

Before I sit down and watch a recorded video of a lesson, I want to ensure I had clarity of what I am reflecting on. I picked out some of the attributes of engagement, creating a “rubric” that I can score where I saw my students during the learning period captured. It’s my “baseline” if you will, and I want to make sure it is objective and telling. Also, this is my first thinking about how I might assess myself, so I am bound to make amendments to it along the way.  But at least I can examine the video and pick out evidence of where the level of engagement might generally rank on this scale/rubric to give more direction for my goals.  Also, I feel this might be a talking tool for our peer-to-peer dialogue about what they saw, heard and felt was happening in the lesson.

engagement rubric

Next Steps: Fail Again

So I think we need to go back to the drawing board on mining for feedback from students, refining questions so we can penetrate deeper into their perceptions of our teaching and their learning community.

I feel like student feedback is an opportunity to reflect on where we are with respect to developing agency as well. So now I wonder if taking the “temperature” might be a better first approach to gaining an understanding of how students feel about their learning.

I was thinking that I could use Plickers as a tool to take a “snap-shot” of the children’s perspective during a morning meeting. I don’t want to bombard them with a heap of questions, so these are the student questions that might establish a general idea about our learning environment:

  1. Do you usually understand what is expected of you in our classroom?
  2. Do you usually understand the directions given?
  3. Do you think the teacher gives you enough time to think?
  4. Do you think the teacher gives you enough time to write?
  5. Do you think you have a voice in our classroom and that your ideas are valued when you share them?

Of course, I would need to follow up with the No’s, as well as examine recorded videos to see who may be lingering in the far end of the engagement scale, digging a bit deeper with more thoughtful questions for them such as:

  • How do you show your teacher that you are enjoying learning?
  • *Which teacher do you find most helpful?
  • What does this teacher do to help you learn best?
  • What specific advice would you give to help your teacher improve?

(*We are a teaching team, with 6 of us working at any given time with our Grade 1 students. I wanted to add this question to help us think about why and how certain teachers resonate with learners. Maybe we can capitalize on the rapport and connection they feel with us.)

What if…..

Also, I was thinking that if we looked at a videotaped lesson alongside them, a teacher could ask them directly if they were engaged; and why or why not they were engaged-what influenced their interest and concentration during the lesson? Could there have been a missed opportunity to move them into a more active stance in their learning?

I’m a scientist at heart and I LOVE dissecting things, but let’s be honest, this would be a luxurious survey given how limited our time can be. Yet, I reckon that it would be really helpful for those students who don’t generally demonstrate “active compliance”.

Final Thoughts……for Now

So I don’t think I’m going to bring an end to the hustle any time soon, but I feel that an honest and hard look at my practice and the dynamics I have with learners would be a good place to start.

Start.

Yep, that’s where I really am in this process. Perhaps you are too.

But I think if I keep walking in the direction of my original question, Does it have to feel like a “hustle”? Like I’m tricking someone into learning?, then I think I may arrive at some conclusion. It may not be the end, but it could be a step in a new direction.

I think, ultimately, that is where feedback lands us: in a new territory of growth and learning.

 

The PYP Planner: A Shift in Our Approach to Planning Inquiry (#enhancedPYP )

The PYP Planner: A Shift in Our Approach to Planning Inquiry (#enhancedPYP )

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Quick Quiz: What is the first “box” in the PYP planner? Did these things come to mind?:

What is our purpose?   To inquire into the following:

  • Transdisciplinary theme:    
  • Central idea :  

summative assessment task(s):

What are the possible ways of assessing students’ understanding of the central idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?

Now with the enhancements in the Primary Years Programme (PYP), we can redesign our planner which has to lead to an overhaul of our collaborative planning. If you notice in the Box #1, aside from clarifying our theme and central idea, we would start planning our summative. However, we haven’t done any assessment of student’s prior knowledge, and I often found that determining the summative assessment before we have even launched a unit of inquiry (UOI) has always led to more teacher direction in our units, as if we are nudging and, sometimes pushing the students toward our end goal–The Summative Task. Think about it, when we plan in this way, we are already dictating the terms of what we want the students to Know, Understand, and Do (aka: KUD) before we have even gotten them to SHOW US what they already know, understand and do. A bit presumptive of us, really, eh?

Needless to say, since the reigns are off, and schools get to design PYP planners in the Enhanced PYP, there’s been a shift in how we approach planning. And the new “Box 1” (figuratively) is about planning our provocation FIRST so we can let the students reveal to us what they know and lead the direction of the UOI, rather then us marching them towards the summative. It may seem trivial, but when you consider how AGENCY is the new core of our curriculum, we need to be approaching our units in different ways.

Let me provide a context, looking at our Math Stand Alone:

Patterns and sequences occur in everyday situations.
-Patterns can be found in numbers.
-Types of number patterns
-Patterns can be created and extended.

Key concepts: Connection, Form, Reflection

Related concepts: pattern, sequences, collections/groups

As a team, including our Math Leader of Learning (Olwen Millgate), we sat down and discussed the many different ways that we could plan a provocation around this central idea. At the end of the day, we determined that the most open-ended, the better, so that students could exercise as much creativity and skills as possible. We would just be the “researchers” in the classroom, observing and noting what the students came up with when given the challenge–Create as many patterns using one or more of the materials provided. 

As teacher researchers, we divided up the students so that we could take notes, making sure that all students were given the time and attention to “show what they know” about patterns. Here is the simple observational sheet that was created for this provocation: (Free to use)

We gave the students a variety of math tools to work with:

  1. counters
  2. ten frames
  3. unifix cubes
  4. Cuisenaire Rods
  5. beads
  6. pattern blocks
  7. peg boards
  8. tanagrams
  9. popsickle sticks
  10. white board and markers
  11. stampers and paper
  12. dominos
  13. magnetic letters and boards

As you can see, they had a plethora of options, and the students engaged freely, making their own choices and creations. Some students preferred to work by themselves while other collaborated–another aspect that we noted along with capturing their conversations. Here are just a few of those creations:

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There was a very loud and animated group at the Unifix cube station–which surprised us all by how excited they got about building “tall patterns”, with a lot of debate about whether they were just snapping cubes together or generating a true pattern. Although to outsiders, it may have felt chaotic, there were fantastic conjectures going on, which we saved a few examples to use for future provocations. (The Guiding Question: Is this a pattern? Why or Why Not?)

Later, our team met to discuss what we observed and we were able to sift through our documentation. We unpacked the provocation, and shared our photos and notes, describing some of the interactions that we had with them. Then we went to our curriculum and examined the phase the students might be achieving at in their conceptual understandings. Our central idea comes from the PYP Maths Scope and Sequence in Phase 1, so we needed to challenge it —is this the phase they are actually in or are we seeing evidence of Phase 2 understanding? We decided to stick with our central idea and lines of inquiry because we felt like we saw and heard evidence that most of our learners were on the tail end of this phase, applying their understanding of pattern.

After this conversation, we went on to determine what our next steps could be. Most of the patterns were ABABAB–do we encourage them to make ABCABCABC or other more sophisticated patterns? At the end of our deliberations, we decided that rushing them might create conceptual gaps so we wanted to stick with their ABABAB, but create a series of opportunities to look at how we could manipulate only 2 variables to generate a variety of patterns. What can we do with only 2 attributes?–This became the guiding question for our upcoming provocations.

So here we are, in Week 2 of this unit and we still haven’t nailed down our summative task. Gasp, right? But, on Friday, after this week’s follow up provocations, we can safely appreciate our learners, where they are and where we can take them during the remaining weeks of the unit. I find that thrilling. We will create our conceptual math rubric, using this generic one as our guide:

math standalone 2

Hopefully, you can see that we are thinking about planning not as boxes but phases in our inquiry. We are using this “tuning in” period to dictate the terms of our how we will ultimately assess students. And we are spending more time researching and planning our provocations so that they can make the children’s thinking visible and expose their understanding of the math concepts. I believe that as this approach to planning evolves, our attitudes toward our students also evolve when we are observing how they are competent and creative when expressing their ideas.

I’m wondering how other schools have begun to consider the impact of planning on agency and how it will look in the Enhanced PYP. The planner has always been a tool for us to shape our collaboration and thinking about how best to meet our students’ needs in the inquiry. I think it will be fun to see how schools begin to shift as they reflect deeply on the importance of it–it’s more than just an exercise in paperwork, it is an artifact of learning.

So what’s your “Box #1”?

#PYP Déjà vu or Jamais Vu? Approaching Familiar Units of Inquiry in Unfamiliar Ways

#PYP Déjà vu or Jamais Vu? Approaching Familiar Units of Inquiry in Unfamiliar Ways

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Picking up the strand of LED lights, I felt overwhelmed at the Chinese Hardware Market, I had this disorienting feeling that I’ve been here before, discussing the color of lights in broken Mandarin. As I walked out with 2 meters of lights, I felt like I was in a dream world, realizing that this whole experience was a  déjà vu.

But having the luxury of teaching a unit of inquiry year after year creates the same experience.  You read over last year’s planner, reliving the experience and ready to proceed in the same way. Easy, right?  Then you can tick that off your To-Do list and move onto other things like setting up your classroom or having meetings. But this year, I can’t do that. I’ve promised myself to take myself and the students “where the streets have no name” and that means that I have to approach units of inquiry from a stance of jamais vu, selectively having amnesia about what provocations and activities we used in this unit.

So why on Earth would I toss aside all the thoughtful planning of the past? Because it’s the past. And we’ve grown professionally a whole year since our team originally designed that unit. Yes, we may be re-inventing the wheel a bit, but our experience and knowledge require us to develop more dynamic and empowering units of inquiry. We know more pedagogically. Moreover, we have a whole new group of students, with new interests and questions. We need to readjust our sails because we are going on a whole new adventure.

So when we examined our current Who We Are unit (Our choices and actions define who we become as a community), we decided to use “the end”, with a water-downed version of our summative task, a “learning fair”, to begin our current unit. It made sense that they needed more practice making learning choices so they could cultivate their self-identity and self-management skills. Now we can use this data to reflect and refine how we might use this jumping off point to have them become leaders in their own learning.

5_album_photo_image
Making choices helps us to appreciate how they see themselves as learners.

I think using the end as the beginning is an approach that we may use again in future units because it provides the context for all the skills and knowledge that we would have “front-loaded” on the students in past units. For example, last year we did several lessons on Kelso’s choices and How Full is Your Bucket?  before we gave them the agency to make learning choices. How silly, right? It’ll be so much better having the context of conflict as a provocation to really engage in deeper conversations. If we bring these resources into the unit, it would because the students needed it, not because we wanted it, because it was on LAST year’s planner.  In fact, coming from this angle has really helped us to see how capable and eager our students are to be in control of their learning. Maybe we don’t have to waste time on the previous year “staple activities”.

As we embark on another year of learning, I intend to embrace the jamais vu, putting old planning aside and coming at familiar units from unfamiliar approaches. And I wonder what insight the children we give me about how I can amplify learning and empower them. This is what I look forward to so much: I grow as they grow. How fun is that?
#ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP

#ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP

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I hate report cards. Hate is a strong word, but I think they are an outdated form of educational technology and we need to set a match to it. 31479586_199389720679114_1677575111550435328_nI can’t believe they haven’t gone by the waste side yet, like horse-drawn carriages or 8-tracks. It doesn’t serve where we are in education and what we know about learning and teaching. And, as a parent, the letter A (approaching), M( meets) and E (exceeds) next to a subject area with a couple of sentences that explains the justification of those letters really doesn’t help me figure out how I can support my child. And, as a writer of those comments, knowing that parents are intended audience for these report cards, you end up summarizing the skills gained vs. the conceptual understandings–because at the end of the day, parents just want to know if their kids can read and do math up to the “standard” of their peers. So really, the report cards provide late feedback that schools may feel “report” the learning but ultimately doesn’t serve any of the stakeholders involved, students included.

Let me elaborate a bit more. I am risking embarrassment here for the sake of all of us to reflect and consider how messy and difficult it is to create “reports”.

Here is an example from our school of how we are to create continuums of learning of our conceptual understandings.

vis template continuum

This is a template, an exemplar, if you wish, so how does THIS match our report cards? Well, I have to comment on the subject areas and the learning outcomes of the unit and this model really haven’t helped me decide how to grade them in Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, let alone Transdisciplinary Maths, Social Studies or Science. So in our current How We Express Ourselves, we changed the headings a bit and tried to offer more specifics into assessing their conceptual understandings.  I still feel like this is an epic fail.

express oursleves

So now that I shared with you the pseudo-continuum for students,  would you like to see what a typical report card is on this unit?

Here are the outcomes that I have to grade:

manageBac
Parents don’t actually see the learning outcomes that we are grading against. They just see those letters next to the strands.

Now here is a comment, written for the parent’s interest, as it related to the Strands that they will see. (Math comments were made in the Math Stand Alone section of the report)

Strengths

Student X is a wonderful communicator so this has been great unit for him to expand and improve his skills. In particular, he has learned how he can interact and provide constructive feedback on other’s work, as well as reflecting on the comments other’s have made on his.

Learning Target

Although Student X has grown a lot with recognizing and writing words, he has a challenge with staying focused on longer texts. This impacts his ability to read fluently at higher levels.  As a writer, he is developing his ability to expand upon and give details in his writing so that a reader can “see” the setting and conflict within a story.

Now I warned you that this is an epic fail!–Can you see my point??? What would you do if you were in my situation, short of writing pages of commentary?

My school encourages us to come up with conceptual continuums but then want us to write concise and helpful comments that provide suggestions for next steps that parents could use for supporting learning at home. Total mismatch. And this isn’t a bad reflection on my school–this discrepancy is in nearly EVERY school! I believe this isn’t a one-off derelict example–this is a normal challenge that I reckon PYP schools have. We use a concept-based curriculum and yet we have these report cards focused on skills and knowledge. What are we to do?

I’d really like to challenge our schools to think a bit more deeply about how this communication tool, the report card, could look as we think about how our PYP schools share this philosophy around life-long learning.

What would it mean if we were to think about this through the lens of constructing meaning over time?

Do we need to have “reporting” due dates? What if our communication with parents was more detailed and frequent? Would this thing called the “report card” even be relevant?

And another question that pops into my head, as I think more about this is:

How might we co-construct meaning when we include The Learning Community?

So instead of report cards talking about the student, what if they included student voice, choice, and ownership? And what if families could chime in with evidence of learning? Again, would report cards even be relevant?

I just keep thinking about how assessment is going to look with our transition in thinking of data to inform learning and teaching with a collection of evidence vs summative tasks that help us mark those boxes in our report cards. Jan Mills refers to this as creating a “tapestry” of the children’s learning.

I have strong feelings about this–if you couldn’t tell. And I’d like to set a challenge for myself to really push my thinking about what could and SHOULD replace the report card. Yes, digital portfolios like SeeSaw help to bridge our next steps, but this institutional tool needs to evolve. Badly! I really want to do some deep thinking around this. Anyone else with me on this quest?

 

#PYP: Are We More than Data? Units of Inquiry that Develop the Digital Lives of Students

#PYP: Are We More than Data? Units of Inquiry that Develop the Digital Lives of Students

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Have you stopped to consider what this might mean for ourselves and students?

“Cambridge Analytica is just the tip of the iceberg, and this problem doesn’t begin and end with Facebook,” Evan Greer, the campaign director for the Internet activism group Fight for the Future, told me when I asked about last week’s media circus. “It’s not even just big tech companies; retail chains, hospitals, and government agencies are vacuuming up massive amounts of sensitive personal information about all of us. We’re seeing now how that data can be used not just to invade our privacy, but to manipulate how we think.”

Vanity Fair: Why the Privacy Crisis is Bigger Than Facebook

I’ve been thinking about how people and governments are responding to the Facebook privacy scandal, wondering how I, as a digital citizen should respond and how schools, as citizen developers, are considering what might need to shift or change in curriculum.  Of course, this seems obtuse of me to think that schools are holding staff meetings and having conversations about this. Probably most of us haven’t even changed our privacy settings on our personal accounts, either due to ignorance or indifference–what’s the point?–they got our data anyhow! That may or may not be true. But what I do know if that we have a chance to change the trajectory of our student’s digital’s lives, as educators, we should be reflecting and responding to this opportunity.

In the past, I promoted the launch of a BYOiPad initiative starting at Grade 3. I wanted to further expand this initiative to Grade 2 because of its success. When first discussing this idea, we consciously decided to do a BYOD initiative instead of investing in a 1:1 program because of the unique opportunities that this would create in shifting attitudes; students and families would come to see that technology is not a toy, instead it is a tool because these were personal devices, and so they had to consider their responsible use of it. Needless to say, this created real and purposeful contexts for developing digital citizenship.

In the beginning, however, we went for tech and digital citizenship lessons that weren’t embedded into our units of inquiry. These were one-off lessons and usually in response to concerns we had in the learning. But into our second year, there were so many challenges and misconceptions that cropped up, we decided that we would have to write a digital citizenship unit into our Programme Of Inquiry (POI)  in the year group that launched the BYOD (3rd grade) so that they could create a deeper understanding of the tool (iPad) that they were using. This was the Where We Are In Place and Time unit.

The use of mobile devices has changed the way we work and play.

  • How digital technology works (function)
  • Changes in society and culture (change)
  • Our responsibility as digital citizens (responsibility)

And what ensued? Self-initiated and authentic student action.  Why? Because it ticked all the boxes for a well-written unit of inquiry:

Engaging:  Of interest to the students, and involving them actively in their own learning.

Relevant:  Linked to the students’ prior knowledge and experience, and current circumstances, and therefore placing learning in a context connected to the lives of the students.

Challenging: Extending the prior knowledge and experience of the students to increase their competencies and understanding.

Significant: Contributing to an understanding of the transdisciplinary nature of the theme, and therefore to an understanding of commonality of human experiences.

Making the PYP Happen

In that unit, students not only developed knowledge of how the internet works and what a “digital footprint” is but more importantly a critical understanding of questions that mattered to them like “What is cyberbullying” and “Do I have technology addiction?”  So this is where the conversation began within our curriculum but now I have to wonder where it has gone next. hmm…..

Naturally, this experience has shaped me and my attitudes toward technology. And I feel strongly that schools shouldn’t squander the chance to include it into their curriculum.

So as I think about the learning opportunities that can arise in our upcoming How We Express Ourselves unit, I get excited about how we can incorporate more robust digital experiences as a meaningful context for students. Here’s the unit:

The language we use can communicate messages and develop relationships.

  • Different forms of media (form)
  • The way we choose to communicate will affect relationships. (reflection)
  • How we can interpret and respond  (causation)

scopesequencedigital citizenI’ve been examining standards and curriculum sources like Common Sense Media that address the concepts and skills that need to either be embedded or explicitly taught.  Obviously, those lines of inquiry are perfect for developing our digital behavior and we have access to a wonderful resource called NearPod to help support the learning. Also, using our SeeSaw classroom account creates a safe haven to test out concepts around social media and Flip-Grid provides another layer of online interaction for our 1st graders. I think these sorts of platforms give us a “digital playground” for our students to experience the ups and downs of life online.  They also get to develop their awareness and maturity around its use, while applying the critical thinking skills and skepticism of information that we get online.

As we begin to launch this unit, I am wondering about what other educators’ experience has been–I’d love to learn from the observations and struggles that you have encountered.  Please share! Because our humanity far exceeds the borders of our data, and we need to be thinking about how we can educate, not only ourselves but most importantly the Mark Zuckerbergs of tomorrow.

 

 

 

Kick in the Pants: Slice of Life Challenge

Kick in the Pants: Slice of Life Challenge

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Everyone needs a kick in the pants sometimes. Recently I went on a Writer’s Workshop professional development training in Yangon, Myanmar. Since I’ve been in the Early Years for such a long time, it was fantastic to get a refresher course on this unique philosophy and approach to teaching writing and reading. I love it because it really has a lovely inquiry-based approach to examining texts and using those craft moves in our writing.  But honestly, I took for granted the cornerstone piece of being an effective writing teacher is to be a writer yourself–to read materials from that perspective of a writer (whether for professional or personal reasons)  and dedicate yourself to a life of writing.

slice-of-life_individual.jpgIt was during this time that I was reminded of the blog, Two Writing Teachers, and I immediately fell back in love with all the helpful and insightful posts in there. I noticed that they have a Slice of Life challenge coming up, which is another wonderful nudge to write consistently, if not daily. Being an authentic Writer’s Workshop teacher is probably less about the method and more about a lifestyle of close reading and practicing the craft of writing; so if I am to take this on seriously, then I need to stay committed to developing habits around writing.

So with that in mind, I am accepting this kick in the pants and publicly announcing that I am going to take this challenge personally.  However, since this is my professional blog, I reckon that I will make my “slices of life” come from my classroom.

writing quote.jpg

The truth is that I have been a writer all my life, from the moment I could form my ABCs until this very moment here with you. Now in my 44th year of life, I am finally acknowledging this fact. It’s quite liberating and invigorating really.

And I hope you will join me in this quest to turn what may seem like a mundane task into an exciting turning point in your career, moreover your life. We can hold each other’s hands as we enter into the writing life together.

writing quote.jpg

 

writing quote.jpg

Post Mortem Reflection: Autopsy of a Failed PYP Unit (Sharing the Planet)

Post Mortem Reflection: Autopsy of a Failed PYP Unit (Sharing the Planet)

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It doesn’t matter if you have been teaching for 8 months or 18 years, you will experience a bombed lesson from time to time. But a bombed unit-well, that I have yet to experience until now. And it has been the most frustrating 6 weeks of my life, as I have worked relentlessly to cultivate their conceptual understanding. Most teachers don’t share their failures, they only blog or tweet about all the “cool learning” that’s going on but I think it’s equally important to reveal and reflect on our failings. So in an effort to be vulnerable, I humbly submit that this unit has yet to meet its central idea and only narrowly developed its lines of inquiry. And I can’t stop asking why.

Our actions can make a difference to the environment we share.

  • how we use resources (function)
  • the impact of people’s actions on the environment (causation)
  • choices we make to care for our environment (responsibility)

I hold some very strong beliefs when it comes to creating curriculum in the PYP, one of which is having a solid central idea that a teacher can anchor the learning in.  If you pulled out the keywords–what would they be? I chose to focus on “actions”, “environment” and “share”. Other key ideas were from the lines of inquiry: resources, impact, and choices. The assessment is really quite simple–we document student action that has occurred over the unit. And herein lies the problem: student action. Students are not taking action because they don’t have enough conceptual understanding to appreciate a need to act. They literally do not see pollution-even if a coke bottle flew out of the sky and bonked them on the head, they wouldn’t notice. Oh, and if that same coke bottle then got buried in the ground, one of the students said it would sprout a Coke Tree. No, I’m not lying–this was an actual prediction during one of our engagements.

At first, this put me in a panic and I went in the wrong direction. I thought, oh my gosh, this future generation, they are either absolutely oblivious or litter and pollution (particularly in Asia) are so endemic that it’s like wallpaper and thus hardly take notice. So we began inquiring into endangered animals and the impact on habitats. We worked through key vocabulary and food chains. The kids put together wonderful ChatterPix presentations which summarized their library research on the animals. But during another provocation when I showed a picture of a turtle that had been deformed due to garbage in the water, I had 3 kids tell me that it looked like that because it was farting, clearly articulating (with a straight face) that gas can make you bloated and you feel bubbles are in your belly. I could see his thinking but I felt deeply concerned and it was at this point that our unit started to take a turn for the worse.

One of the Segel pictures that the students examined. They thought they were just “having a picnic at the beach.”

So then, to make a stronger link about humans and how we use resources, we explored the work of Gregg Segal,  which started as a provocation but since the students made no connection between the garbage and the people who were lying in it, we examined our “home” garbage and collected our classroom garbage, including snacks, for a week to analyze. I had also gotten one of our Secondary Art and Design teachers who is an avid photographer on board to help us orchestrate an attempt to do a photoshoot with our students in this garbage. It was going to be awesome, right?! –They were finally going to “get it” so we can move into learning about the 3 R’s–Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Nope–the day before the photoshoot, our cleaners emptied our bins. Deflated, we decided that we would “follow the garbage”, trying to pull together this idea of how individual and collective choices can add up to make a difference in the burden that ecosystems might have to shoulder. So we went down to our school’s dump area and examined our rubbish. Next, we made a day of it and went down to the Vientiane Landfill.  Although they were absolutely disgusted by it, they had seemed unchanged.  This week we are going to meet people whose “choices” to care for our environment are having a  positive impact on our Vientiane community. We are still hopeful that a handful of them will be moved into action but I know now that it’s a foolhardy job to try to assess them on this central idea. We will have to create unit grades based on their academic skills in language and math that have been developed alongside these conceptual understandings.  

The moral of the learning debacle boils down to these things:

  • Doing a bunch of “cool stuff” is not as important to properly pre-assessing basic knowledge and skills. Sometimes we get so preoccupied with launching a unit with instant student engagement, that we forgo necessary assessment which can be documented and examined. I think in heavy science-based units, it’s important to probe into common misconceptions and vocabulary that may be misunderstood. I did some of it, but I missed some big ideas–simple stuff like living vs. non-living because I had assumed it had been “covered” in previous years.
  • Furthermore, provocations that reveal severe inadequacies in student knowledge means that the unit probably needed to be scrubbed and rewritten immediately instead of trudging through the painful experience of trying to get students to arrive at mastery and develop knowledge that is beyond their experience or developmental appropriateness is asinine.
  • And the third thing is that the sequence of units matters A LOT. In our case, we were asking that students take their knowledge and apply it by taking action. We should have had a How The World Works Unit beforehand that developed the key information and scientific principles to really appreciate the need to act. Our unit implied that kids should “reduce, reuse, recycle” without understanding why it’s important to do so.
  • Also, a unit whose central idea demands that students assimilate knowledge and then adapt it to behaviors needs to reconcile with the developmental stage that they are at. Most of the students are at the cognitive stage in which they are transitioning from concrete to abstract thinking and operational thought. This unit would have been better served when most, if not all the kids, were 7 years old because cognitively they would have understood the concept of conservation. This was a second term unit. It was too early in the school year to introduce these ideas.
  • And of course, the old PYP coordinator in me wondered why I didn’t go back into last year’s POI to see what scientific ideas that they had been exploring when I first saw warning signs. Although I had interviewed past teachers who did the unit, I should have dug deeper into the curriculum that my current classes had been working on in the past years. I needed to research my learners more. I would have seen the gaps and been able to re-route the unit sooner instead of “following the garbage”.

So, I would suggest that educators ask themselves a couple of important questions before embarking on units of inquiry in which student action should be the hallmark of successful learning outcomes:

  1. What previous knowledge and skills should we look for? What was their most recent learning (last grade level’s POI)? What conceptual understandings will students need to understand in order to really apply knowledge? (Go deep on Box #3 on the PYP planner)
  2. What misconceptions do you predict students may come with? How will we know if they have them?
  3. What is the age of the majority of the students? Will they have access cognitively to the concepts and related concepts in the units?
  4. What action is already taking place? What can we expect young children to be doing, feeling and thinking?

 

I can see now that words like “action” and “choices” are too subjective to be put into a central idea for this Sharing the Planet Theme. They are great in the lines of inquiry, but if you take the stance that you assess the central idea in your summative and formative assessments, then you are setting students up for failure. Although student action is the proof that real learning has occurred, this unit would have been better served with related concepts in the central idea. (Here is a great blog that demonstrates how units can be analyzed in this way.) With that in mind, I would suggest rewriting the unit to look like this, with the related concepts in bold:

Human interaction with living things can have consequences on the environment.

 

Although this unit is going to be seared into my mind and will haunt me all year, I will remember the lessons learned here when it comes to analyzing my grade level’s units of inquiry. Perhaps this will also help you to reflect and consider how your units are structured and be more critical in your understanding of your learners.

So I ask you, dear reader, what other suggestions would you make regarding this failure? What takeaways did you get from this? Please comment below.

Leveled Reading Vs. Love of Reading–The Struggle is Real!

Leveled Reading Vs. Love of Reading–The Struggle is Real!

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Since I’ve taught in a variety of school settings, both in America and overseas, what is “best practice” when it comes to reading can be a bone of contention for educators. I’ve worked in some settings whose leaders think guided reading has become blasé and we should do more conferencing with student selected texts, others who feel that “independent” reading is not really reading at all and we should give them leveled texts so that students understand what is a “just right” book for them. It’s hard to argue with either side because each have their points. Although student selected texts show real agency, student chosen texts don’t often expose them to new ideas and challenges which make it difficult to develop strategies to conquer increased demands in an instructional level text. On the other hand, there aren’t too many leveled readers that win book awards and really engage readers to the point that they can’t put the book down. So trying to both instill a love of reading and yet have learning intentions that encourage the growth of skills is a balancing act.

Lately, I’ve been reading Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris’ book, Who’s Doing the Work? : How to Say Less So Your Readers Can Do More,  and they tell a story of an enthusiastic reader who gets deflated by leveled reading, citing the kind of message it sends our learners:

Accompanying these instructional choices are subtle and obvious messages to students. Think about what …book selection communicates..

• I think of you as a reader almost exclusively in terms of your reading level.

• I trust reading levels absolutely and generally don’t consider the nuances of your reading process, the text, or your motivation to read.

• Although you think you know how to select a book for yourself, you really don’t.

• You are not as good at selecting books for yourself as the others.

• The confidence you have in yourself is misguided.

• Don’t get excited about the books you want to read until you check with me.

• I’m in charge of your “independent” reading.

Burkins, Jan, and Kim Yaris. Who’s Doing the Work? : How to Say Less So Your Readers Can Do More, Stenhouse Publishers, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, .
Created from vientiane on 2017-09-08 20:11:57.

 

Ouch!-Right?  As I ponder the hidden message that leveled texts send, it’s driven my head into a frenzy. How can I do both?–help cultivate the identity of a learner, seeing themselves as “readers” while at the same time, pushing them out of their comfort zone and into the “learning zone”, where their skills are enhanced and extended. Knowing that my school is committed to guided reading, I am thinking about how this concept of “best practice” can be developed in the classroom. Here are 5 ways that I intend to merge what is great about these approaches to teaching in a guided reading group:

  1. Pick texts that reflect the reading interests of the students in the guided reading group.  In the beginning, when we are developing trust in our teacher-student relationship, I think it’s important to honor their interests. I have started off with a reading interest inventory and had a discussion about what their favorite genres might be. It doesn’t always have to be the next book in the DRA or PM reader series (or other level texts series), instead, I can draw from other sources like online magazines or online reading sources like  ReadWorks,  RAZ Kids, and Epic.
  2. Their ability “level” is none of their business. It’s not that I don’t want students to make good informed choices about selecting texts, but all they are not a letter, a number a color or a name. They are a reader. That’s all they need to know. Those levels are for me, the teacher, to ensure that they grow into more challenging and sophisticated texts.
  3. Tool and strategies over pre-reading and post-reading “activities”. When I first read Edgar Allen Poe, I had to sit there with a dictionary. I struggled with all the “big words” but I loved his ideas so I dug in and did the work. I had to go back and reread, but at the end of the story, I felt fulfilled. So during guided reading, I want to expose them to a strategy or introduce them to a tool that can help them solve problems with meaning and print that they encounter in the text.
  4. Encourage them to get a life– a reading life- beyond the group! As an end of week reflection, I want to spend some time discussing some great books that they might have read independently. I don’t want students to choose books because they think they are easy but instead, I want them to really want to find books that excite and interest them. Taking the time to talk about books why we like a book not only gives me data but also shows that I value their choices.
  5. Value questions over answers. A sign of a good book is that it lingers in your mind a while. It leaves you thinking and asking questions about the concepts and ideas in it. I want my readers to apply critical thinking skills when encountering texts and having them evaluating the characters and the information in the book/article closely.  This develops the mindset of a true reader, which I am sure will show up on their running records later.

For any of you who teach reading in the primary/elementary grades, the struggle is real, as we grapple with what is really “best practice” for our unique group of learners. Hopefully, my 5 ideas will give you some pause for reflection as you consider what it is that you believe is paramount to developing your readers. Please share any ideas or take aways, as it helps all of us grow as professionals.

Do You Ask These 3 Questions to Improve Students’ Self-Reflection?

Do You Ask These 3 Questions to Improve Students’ Self-Reflection?

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Many educators recognize the value of increasing students’ motivation in order to improve student engagement and decrease behavioral issues in the classroom. Earlier in the year, I introduced staff to the ideas in Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by watching his Ted Talk. His seminal work on motivation explains that the “carrot and stick” method of extrinsic motivation creates compliance, but not creativity nor engagement. He shares his “secret sauce” from his research which includes 3 main areas that develop intrinsic motivation and the individual’s internal desire to put in their best effort: purpose, mastery, and autonomy.

Drive_Motivation3.0

If we want students to shift into higher gears of learning, then we have to create a classroom culture that develops agency, competence and a love of learning.  Lev Vygotsky reminds us that “children grow into the intellectual life around us. ” It’s the day to day mundane stuff that shapes our learning environment like our routines and strategies, but most importantly it’s the language we use in our interactions.  Developing a culture of self-reflection is a quintessential aspect of today’s classroom. In a world of immediate gratification and distraction, we have to provide tools to students to help them cultivate their focus and develop their independence. Reflection is a habit that every classroom should have because it enhances the meaning of the learning.  It teases out key ideas and insights, and complexities of the process of learning.  We foster students’ growth when we give them tools to control their own learning, and a reflective question does just that.

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. – Mark Van Doren

So today I want to share with you 3 questions that Daniel Pink suggests in order to get a resistant person to start the process of introspection and develop the motivation to start regulating their own behavior. When I heard these 3 questions, I knew it could extend beyond the boardroom (he spoke about management teams) and could easily fit into our classrooms. The order of asking the questions are really important because it frames how one might move beyond mediocre.

Opening question: On a scale from 1-10, 1 being the least and 10 the best, how would you rate fill in the blank? 

Second Question: Why didn’t you rate it lower?

Follow-Up Question (or go to question if they rate themselves as a 1) What would make it a next rating number up on the scale? 

Example:

Teacher: On a scale from 1-10, 1 being the least and 10 the best, how would you rate your collaboration in the group. 

Student: I think I am a 3.

Teacher: Why didn’t you rate it a 2?

Student: Because I did draw a picture on the poster.

Teacher: What could you do next time to make it a 4?

Student: I could also share what I know about polar bears for the project.

(What if my student rates themselves as a 1?  Then you skip question 3: What could you do to make it a 2?)

Do not underestimate the power of this questioning strategy. It has can be impactful, especially over time–practice makes perfect, right?!  And, for younger students, you could easily do a smaller scale of numbers, like 1-5. I know my little 4-year-olds might like to exaggerate their efforts so I would need to start with something very concrete and tangible to redirect them towards, something with specific steps or actions that they would know very well. As I write this, I am thinking that I would use a well-known routine, like our morning routine, to demonstrate how to use a rating scale.

No matter what the age range, listening to their answers with empathy, flexibility, and curiosity will help elucidate deeper responses. We can’t judge their ratings–how they rate themselves is data for us, but it’s not necessarily a time to correct them or give advice. If the objective of this strategy is to develop metacognition and motivation then we have to trust the process and not micro-manage it with what we feel the student should have rated themselves. We have to listen openly to their answers because we know that change comes from within–we cannot impose our opinions on them.

In Learning and Leading with Habits of the Mind by Arthur DeCosta talks about the “voices” we hear in our classroom: internal and external voices of reflection. The internal voice of reflection is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is a mixture of both what and how we are thinking. Self-knowledge includes ways of thinking that may not be visible to us consciously. Using a simple tool like this rating scale by Daniel Pink gives students a window into their own mind and the motivations behind the choices they have made and the choice they can make in the future.  If we give them the space to create this self-knowledge, then the tool becomes the catalyst for change and self-improvement.

How do you develop self-awareness in your students?  What stimulus do you give them to cultivate the impulsion to make greater efforts on their own?

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Using "5 Stars" for Emergent Writing

Using "5 Stars" for Emergent Writing

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5starpicsAs many of us know, writing begins with pictures for little ones. Furthermore,research has shown that more elaborate drawings translate into better writing for the long-term.  The theory goes that more details in drawings will produce more details in their actual writing later on, when the students have the skills to be proficient.

So I found this rubric years ago and really loved it.  I believe that when children know of what is expected, they rise to the occasion. That is especially true of little children who are eager to show how “big” they are. Rubrics and checklists are vital for providing feedback and I strive to use them in everything, from behavior to literacy. Since children love stickers, I find that using “5 Stars” to indicate high quality work is an effective way to get them to consider their effort. However, this sheet just really wasn’t enough to stimulate quality pictures.

So I made a display with pictures that would be indicative of each level of effort. As a result of having these examples, students are often going up to the display and comparing their work, as well as providing feedback to each other at the tables. It’s great to hear their conversations, and of course to see them develop as “writers”.

IMG_1034

Of course, one of the dangers of using rubrics like this is that once they meet expectations, how to more them beyond and into real writing. The transition between getting them to start writing “words” or captions into sentences seems like such a big jump sometimes for 4-5 year olds. But it’s the next step in my quest for encouraging the development of writing.

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