tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82163014142511524142024-03-12T16:39:46.075-07:00CVU Learns: One School's Journey to Standards Based LearningEmily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-58814906023633897012021-03-31T06:45:00.006-07:002021-03-31T10:21:12.615-07:00Communication 2.0: Are we ready for a transcript overhaul?“Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection<br />The lovers, the dreamers and me<br />Da-da-da-dee-da-da dum<br />Da-da-da-da-dee-da-da-doo.”<br /><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Kermit the Frog<div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPlG5O5y-Y9CpWqXCuF8ZcavvfXMBP9G8wAUvv2f4zXo8943BMhKV3hHPU8Wb4DW3RhdS2-gZtlhiNM1kQlnhKN5t9yW5M7PMi1rry3syj3_wehSeUGhmXQ5IVx1RjxTGzv1E2hE10ZNb_/s2000/Kermit-The-Frog.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1270" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPlG5O5y-Y9CpWqXCuF8ZcavvfXMBP9G8wAUvv2f4zXo8943BMhKV3hHPU8Wb4DW3RhdS2-gZtlhiNM1kQlnhKN5t9yW5M7PMi1rry3syj3_wehSeUGhmXQ5IVx1RjxTGzv1E2hE10ZNb_/s320/Kermit-The-Frog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When I imagine what schools could look like in twenty years (five when I’m feeling optimistic, a hundred when I’m not), I never imagine grades. I imagine learning happening outside of classrooms, students collaborating with professionals to address community needs, curriculum based on transferable skills, flexible schedules for students and teachers, and learning that grows out of interests and needs. I imagine conversations that drive choices, narrative feedback, students doing action research, curriculum centered on social justice and innovation, and rich, varied, and personalized learning experiences. And when I imagine how schools will communicate these learning experiences, it is never through a traditional transcript with simply letter grades and GPAs.<br /><br /><br />Though we long for substantive improvements in how we communicate learning, we understand that rebuilding systems without grades or GPAs is not as easy as willing it to happen. Transforming schools while maintaining ways to efficiently assess and communicate learning has its challenges. Guiding a community of stakeholders--from students to families to teachers to universities--away from the damaging legacy of grades and towards a more equitable, accurate, and vivid picture of learning is daunting at best, paralyzing at worst. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizMPWkkwHAXAWQ6E_20b1MrlCqDqvW130y72w9PfWoXtSp69P3yxLEVGXbEKpYarlwKGFVwHRsgGXXAVtF7FYA1KZMotwwrpNU1ZGp9cXVwYnz7fMDKTp2sRosLCVoq7cZ8DAiIDBKbMk3/s761/IMG_4117.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="761" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizMPWkkwHAXAWQ6E_20b1MrlCqDqvW130y72w9PfWoXtSp69P3yxLEVGXbEKpYarlwKGFVwHRsgGXXAVtF7FYA1KZMotwwrpNU1ZGp9cXVwYnz7fMDKTp2sRosLCVoq7cZ8DAiIDBKbMk3/s320/IMG_4117.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Over the past fifteen years, Stan and I have become a bit obsessed with school transformation. The work is important and inspiring, and though painfully slow at times, it really does seem like the ship of education is starting to move, as more and more classrooms, schools, districts, and states are seeing the importance of change. We see examples of this daily in our own district, as learning becomes more personalized, teachers create new, more relevant experiences for students, and structural changes are made to support the growth of all students. But despite all of these successes, all of the progress that we watch happen, it seems we keep getting stuck at the end point: the traditional transcript.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk17_g13ioP36DfZtntv9Ymx7KLqvgObljhZPGQyRuauTW4gY_uyWETNhfFfhrDy5Dk0Erq5fUV_-xDf6R9RbM8TGODAg6Qz8fq_mXZ5xwxYVLv8o-cUIN2pKLC7bGwTIMjSffo1FCzKdo/s640/IMG_9917.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk17_g13ioP36DfZtntv9Ymx7KLqvgObljhZPGQyRuauTW4gY_uyWETNhfFfhrDy5Dk0Erq5fUV_-xDf6R9RbM8TGODAg6Qz8fq_mXZ5xwxYVLv8o-cUIN2pKLC7bGwTIMjSffo1FCzKdo/w150-h200/IMG_9917.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>Bill Rich, educator and consultant (and <i>Best Husband in the World</i>) wrote recently about the need for schools to upgrade their operating systems (<a href="https://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/brain-based-learning/#.YGCbh89udAd" target="_blank">read his blog here</a>). He argues that real change cannot occur in our schools if we continue to work within and build practices upon antiquated structures. Think of it like the operating systems on your computer. You get to a certain point when your computer (or phone) can no longer function without an upgrade--programs you once counted on no longer work, productivity slows down, and the most innovative apps are so incompatible with your current system that you can’t even download them. Bill writes that most educational systems are built on principles that contradict what we know about the brain, and therefore, when we try to implement new practices that are based on the science of learning, they often fail to work. Logically, the opposite would be true as well: if we upgrade our operating system but do not change all of our practices--in this case, how we communicate learning--it won’t be long before something breaks down. <br /><br />Changing from a conventional to a standards-based system of learning is (or should be) a complete overhaul of how and why we do school, a true upgrade of the operating system. Despite what we see in the media or read about in practice in many schools around the country, the SBL we’re talking about is not merely tagging what we currently do to standards, or changing what we teach to align with standards, or anything at all to do with standardization. It’s a completely new way of thinking about learning. It requires a significant shift in thinking about the purpose of education--from one that is teaching-centered, to one that is learning-centered. It requires new ways of thinking about time and schedules and curriculum and the role of every stakeholder. It requires us to clearly articulate our goals for education, understand how the brain works, and use what we know about how people learn to make decisions. And it requires us to grapple with what and how to communicate that learning to students, families, each other, and the world. <br /><br />So many schools that we have worked with and read about, including our own, make significant changes in learning in an attempt to upgrade their operating systems. And as we shift the purpose of education and build transferable, flexible, standards-based foundations, we see the incredible possibilities that are now within reach--greater personalization, flexible use of time and space, opportunities for more authentic learning and demonstration, greater depth and efficiency of learning to name a few. But when it comes to how to communicate learning, we are stuck (or stick ourselves) with the same language and templates and paradigms that have been in place for a century, transcripts with grades and GPAs. These were built for the old operating system, to quickly be able to sort and rank students based on summarized achievement; but our new operating system requires a way to communicate the rich, varied, and personalized stories that our students are building, and grades and GPAs fall short. <br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5tZd3TBpqaAovWaTvTD_iB30Bgx89ooOOtz5H734OlsXhrT1eHaRhHF47eqXCXmITV_BaCknes4K3SmbvVfmgUkeg6YgVznP2zUSC3YjELutzBuXgyLNK0-Duf4scZ4YIA1VpiLimxn7a/s808/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+8.31.10+AM.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="542" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5tZd3TBpqaAovWaTvTD_iB30Bgx89ooOOtz5H734OlsXhrT1eHaRhHF47eqXCXmITV_BaCknes4K3SmbvVfmgUkeg6YgVznP2zUSC3YjELutzBuXgyLNK0-Duf4scZ4YIA1VpiLimxn7a/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+8.31.10+AM.png" /></a></div>Are grades and GPAs inherently bad? Do we need to get rid of them completely if we want to transform the purpose of school? That’s arguable, for sure. Many educational thinkers and leaders have strong and sometimes contradictory beliefs about this. Thomas Guskey, author of <i>Practical Solutions for Serious Problems in Standards-Based Grading</i>, <i>On Your Mark</i>, and <i>What We Know about Grading</i>, believes we shouldn’t spend our energy trying to get rid of grades and GPAs, but that we should work to bring greater integrity to this form of communication. In the article “<a href="http://tguskey.com/dont-get-rid-grades-change-meaning-consequences/">Don’t Get Rid of Grades: Change their Meaning and Consequences</a>,” he writes, “Although grades should never be the only information about learning that students and parents receive, they can be a meaningful part of that information. When combined with guidance to students and parents on how improvements can be made, grades can become a valuable tool in facilitating students’ learning success.” (Important note: Guskey does say that while he doesn’t think we need to get rid of grades, we should not be using them to sort or rank students!) <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-wTsHqGa4FXEzS3hR38QzR73APhLY6NAb8njhSXJoKag_hxHqRb2qgKBCQdMq2JuyJfKdKrBky3xFOATxaYKzDZRlyXFv96esayT9p877qg667Wld7iBxf8q_xnE_bIBhMys6dLs3ptLY/s780/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+8.32.15+AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="530" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-wTsHqGa4FXEzS3hR38QzR73APhLY6NAb8njhSXJoKag_hxHqRb2qgKBCQdMq2JuyJfKdKrBky3xFOATxaYKzDZRlyXFv96esayT9p877qg667Wld7iBxf8q_xnE_bIBhMys6dLs3ptLY/w136-h200/Screen+Shot+2021-03-31+at+8.32.15+AM.png" width="136" /></a></div>Ken O’Connor, author of A Repair Kit for Grading and How to Grade for Learning, has also spent decades helping teachers cull harmful grading practices and adopt more accurate ones. In <a href="https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/O-Connor-Repair-Kit-for-Grading-A-Fifteen-Fixes-for-Broken-Grades-with-DVD-2nd-Edition/PGM197805.html">A Repair Kit for Grading</a>, he writes, “[Traditional grading practices] often not only result in ineffective communication about student achievement, but also may actually harm students and misrepresent their learning.” Rather than advocate for getting rid of grades due to this, O’Connor provides more practical, achievable ways to “fix” our grading practices and make grades more accurate and effective. Both of these authors were (and continue to be) instrumental in our own thinking about learning, grading, and reporting, and we frequently turn to them as sounding-boards as we try to figure out what’s next for schools (which may be annoying for them, but it’s so helpful to us!).<br /><br />Alfie Kohn, one of the most well-known critics of grades, argues that grades are so unreliable, inequitable, and entrenched in the old purpose of school that keeping them as forms of communication is incompatible with progress. He calls for an overhaul that requires bravery and faith in our communities’ capacity for change. In his article “<a href="https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/getting-rid-grades-case-studies/">Getting Rid of Grades</a>,” he writes, “The question, then, is how we can summon the courage to get rid of letter and number grades, replace them with reports of students’ progress that are more informative and less destructive, and help parents and students to recognize the value of doing so.” <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwBt97A7eHFg7i2y70C7VgbZQppMNPHTJwvuIrfsv2MntDGKtMWwBycyEZ6BIcOYCOG34w5qBsiG7U50GloNqFunTG902GEb0oc8i8V2phOZnM4Q93W3eBJBFcaxwzJbjMb4M9jHzes4uK/s560/mick.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="447" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwBt97A7eHFg7i2y70C7VgbZQppMNPHTJwvuIrfsv2MntDGKtMWwBycyEZ6BIcOYCOG34w5qBsiG7U50GloNqFunTG902GEb0oc8i8V2phOZnM4Q93W3eBJBFcaxwzJbjMb4M9jHzes4uK/w159-h200/mick.jpg" width="159" /></a></div><br />(Though not on par with the thinkers above, thought-leader Mick Jagger believes, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”)<br /><br /><br />So what are schools to do? Once we have committed to changing our underlying systems of learning from conventional to standards-based, how do we decide what to do about transcripts, about grades and GPAs? Is keeping these communicators compromising the ideal in order to avoid confrontation? If we change what they mean but keep the symbols or numbers the same, is that truly transforming our practice? Are we giving into the pressure of corporations and universities by giving them the transcripts they want, even if those transcripts no longer communicate what we care about or believe to be accurate indicators of achievement? And most importantly, perhaps, does maintaining the status quo with our transcripts limit the full upgrade to a new operating system, thus preventing the most innovative and brain-based changes from happening?<br /><br /><br />While it may seem like an easy decision philosophically for many of us, the practical implications of getting rid of course-level letter grades and a GPA cannot be ignored. So much great change can occur within our systems when we keep the end point the same. Colleges, communities, families, students, and even teachers may be much more willing to take risks and make changes in how we learn when they can be guaranteed that the end point will look the same as it always has. Grades and GPAs don’t have to prevent us from providing better and more varied experiences for students--just look at some of the amazing work coming out of almost any school in your area; it’s easy to find programs and courses and innovative educational experiences even in the most traditional of schools. And the risk is so great--we have all read about schools or districts that moved too fast for their communities, who got rid of grades or GPAs before fully shifting practices, who tried to do the “right” thing, and became cautionary tales because of it. <br /><br />But.</div><div><br /></div><div>If some schools don’t commit to the unknown; if some districts don’t take the risk; if some state agencies of education don’t say, yeah, we get that this is going to be tough, but our students are worth it--all of our students--then our operating systems will never fully change. Someone has to be willing to be the first in their district, their county, their state, to say it’s time to completely overhaul how we communicate learning, to say, we can and must do better for our students. (What could this look like? Check out <a href="https://mastery.org/what-we-do/mastery-transcript/">Mastery Transcript Consortium</a>).<br /><br />Yeah, we know. Overhaul is not always possible, or advisable, or even the right thing to do. True change is hard and takes time. Compromises have to be made in order to build or maintain trust, honor community voice, and to keep inching forward towards a better way. Particularly in large, public schools, there aren’t enough resources or time to even consider the implications of such significant change in communication, so the only possibility for progress is often incremental. And yes, incremental change is better than status quo and will eventually get us where we want to go.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWLYkx-eBsJd17opTODBnUxEC1bwjzioamgkPytfLS1j9hvSiUjiQMk7MiCsNhrCLO9Asf6SoqXM6sxd4mAq-SzBF35_yUhRAVOUe0W8uHCWS6k3sXjkyIe011ENb1VBJIU55JCmJCBOIO/s1600/kermit+tea.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWLYkx-eBsJd17opTODBnUxEC1bwjzioamgkPytfLS1j9hvSiUjiQMk7MiCsNhrCLO9Asf6SoqXM6sxd4mAq-SzBF35_yUhRAVOUe0W8uHCWS6k3sXjkyIe011ENb1VBJIU55JCmJCBOIO/w320-h181/kermit+tea.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>But hats off to the schools who are just going for it, who are going all in on something new, who are saying we are done providing colleges easy ways to sort and rank our learners, we are done compromising our beliefs about learning, we are done playing it safe. We’re rooting for you, learning from you, and counting on your continued bravery to show us how it’s done. (And if it doesn't work...well, as Kermit said for all us lovers and dreamers, Da-da-da-dee-da-da dum, Da-da-da-da-dee-da-da-doo.)</div><div><br /><br />Works Cited<br /><br />The Frog, Kermit. “Rainbow Connection.” My lost childhood, circa 1979.<br /><br />Guskey, Thomas R. “Don't Get Rid of Grades: Change Their Meaning & Consequences.” Thomas R. Guskey & Associates, 26 Mar. 2019, tguskey.com/dont-get-rid-grades-change-meaning-consequences/.<br /><br />Kohn, Alfie. “Getting Rid of Grades: Case Studies.” 1 Dec. 2014, <a href="http://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/getting-rid-grades-case-studies/">www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/getting-rid-grades-case-studies/</a>.<br /><br />O'Connor, Ken. A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades. Pearson, 2011. <br /><br />Rich , Bill. “Https://Tiie.w3.Uvm.edu/Blog/Brain-Based-Learning/#.YGEmykhKjUq.” Innovative Education in VT, Tarrant Institute, 2020, tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/brain-based-learning/#.YGEmykhKjUq.<br /><br />“Welcome to Mastery Transcript Consortium® (MTC).” Mastery Transcript Consortium® (MTC) | Join the Effort to Create a High School Transcript to Transform High School., 3 Feb. 2021, mastery.org/. <br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-87278799052078387362020-05-04T03:48:00.001-07:002020-05-04T03:48:06.553-07:00Finding the Right Direction: How Measuring Engagement Changed Everything<br /><b>This post is written by CVU Principal Adam Bunting:</b><br /><br />My mother spent her career as a family systems psychologist. I always admired her work, particularly the deep respect she held for her clients. Just as great educators know about their students, she understood that her clients needed to be the sense makers. She would say things like, “Ultimately, they are the ones who do the work, not me.” I remember asking her once if she ever got frustrated with people who repeatedly made the same mistakes, and she had this to say, “You know...people work really hard...it’s just sometimes they work hard in the wrong direction.”<br /><br />As a principal, I return to her phrase now and again--especially when the work feels personal and complex. I ask myself, <b>How am I working hard in the wrong direction? </b>I held my mother’s words especially close in 2018 when two events dominated the educational landscape: the Parkland shootings and an increased focus on the devastation of opioid addiction in Vermont families. Our work was well intentioned, but much of it--focused on deficit models--pulled us in the wrong direction of reinforcing walls and policies instead of the relationships that undergird health, connection, and engagement. Current events demand a similar frame as we boil away the superfluous and distill the healthiest educational experience we can for our young people. At CVU, we have landed on this mantra to guide us through this pandemic: <b>connection first, engagement second, and academic learning third.</b><br /><br />Connection is more readily described, but defining engagement is no small feat. Like many educators, my understanding of engagement evolved as my respect for my students deepened. I began my career seeing engagement as an individual choice a student makes in our classrooms. Later, I saw engagement as an emotional state where our learners find themselves as receptive, open, and curious. Then I saw engagement more as a product of the systems around us and the conditions of our lives and learning spaces.<b> </b><div>
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<b>Our school has chosen to define engagement just as we might define happiness or flow--a state of being when humans are both more receptive to and more motivated to seek new learning. </b>We cannot force engagement, but we can ensure the soil from which it grows has the proper nutrients: physical and emotional safety, meaningful adult relationships, meaningful peer relationships, balanced amounts of stress, connection to a purpose larger than self, small successes and appropriate challenges, and rich and relevant content. More pragmatically, engagement may be a school’s most important indicator for wellness and successful learning, and it is something we can measure by examining the conditions that create it.<br /><br />So it was two years ago we launched the Engagement Survey at CVU--an attempt to map the engagement of all our students. For those who were disconnected, we wanted to build connections, and for those who were thriving, we wanted to understand and grow those conditions. We created simple likert scales asking students to strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree to prompts like…<br /><ul>
<li>I have friends at school.</li>
<li>The adults at school care about me.</li>
<li> I believe school is preparing me well for the future. </li>
<li>Life outside of school feels calm and manageable. </li>
<li>There is at least one adult I could talk to if I needed help.</li>
<li> I feel like my input is valued and voice is heard at school.</li>
<li>I experience the right amount of challenge.</li>
</ul>
Unlike any survey we had ever given, this one was non-anonymous, and it needed to be. In fact, the more times we administered these questions, the more we came to view anonymous surveys with a certain derision. What does it mean when we ask students highly personal questions and never follow up? With some serious sweat on the part of our technology integrationist and IT staff, we administered the survey through our advisory system. In addition, we sent the survey to parents and advisors--asking them to predict what their student might say to a given prompt. <br /><br />What we got back changed the way I saw our school--a place where I’ve been a student, teacher, and administrator since 1990. <br /><br />The immediate responses to the survey were powerfully positive and underscored a belief that has been long held at CVU: <b>authentic relationships are the backbone of a learning organization</b>. The subtext was poignant unto itself. Giving the survey alone says we care about your real feelings, experiences, and thoughts enough to ask and act upon them. We determined our approach would be one of curiosity and an assets orientation, knowing the data was only as good as the dialogue it inspired. <br /><br />One of the best things we did was ask students to list at least one of their “go-to” adults by name. Within a few hours of viewing the responses, our advisors began sending emails to one another and to our staff. I got one that read, “You may not know this, but you are [student name’s] trusted adult.” Our staff were often the ones who had the most mentions of being the trusted adults. Anyone who doesn’t value administrative assistants, campus supervisors, or tutors needs only to see the data! I will admit it - I used the control-find function to see who indicated I was their go-to. I was surprised about how good it felt to know kids really counted on me. As one teacher said to me in the hall: “I had no idea I was that important to [student name]. It’s changing how I interact with him.” <br /><br />Of course, as happy as I was that the survey fostered relationships between faculty and students (and helped teachers see the holistic student--not just the science or English learner), I was equally disturbed by the group of students who indicated they didn’t have any trusted adult. The percentage was less than 1%. Normally, I would have pointed to that statistic and exclaimed, ”Look at what a great job we’re doing!” Now, however, the percentages were connected to names. I can overlook the significance of numbers--but not the names of individual students. We implemented a few interventions, but my favorite was also the most basic: a group of our faculty members took it upon themselves to smile and say hello to our kids who expressed disconnection. As someone said to me recently, the biggest problems don’t always require big solutions; sometimes simple solutions work best.<br /><br />Another problem was the reams of data created by our modest survey--about which I need to make a guilty admission. Because I was busy and because we simply had too much information on spreadsheets, it took me nearly a month to crudely sort the responses. When I did I was struck by a cascade of questions: What if the students who didn’t have an adult connection also didn’t have a supportive friend group? Wait...what if those same students also didn’t find their classes interesting? It’s not difficult to see where this line of questioning led me, and by the time I sorted the “strongly disagree” responses, a pattern emerged: the data had become predictive of the symptoms of disengagement and disconnection. In the month since we had given the survey, the students who expressed the most disconnection had suffered: one student was failing all of his classes; one student had been suspended for substance use issues; one student had been evaluated for self harm. It hurt to see, but what hurt worse was the surprise I felt when I saw one name on the list: a student who had dropped out prior to us administering the survey. Like most schools we aren’t exactly fast at pulling students or retired faculty from our email system. Despite no longer being enrolled, the young man had gotten the link and responded to the entire survey. Did he just want to be known? Did he just want someone to see him?<br /><br />As with any important learning I’ve earned in my career, I was faced with a few uncomfortable questions: Why haven’t I been mapping this my entire career? How could I have been leading without this information? What could a proactive approach have meant to my past students? Why don’t all schools do this? And...of course...now what?<br /><br />The “now what” was obvious. We needed help, and we needed help with something that should be a staple before they let English teachers like me become principals. I reached out to my brother, Matt Bunting, and to Brian Lloyd Newberry, a friend who has the coolest job title ever--Data Architect. In addition to being very systems-smart, both are of the most caring and socially conscious people I know. Brian invested hundreds of hours to build software to ensure we could get the data and correlations we needed instantaneously, and a company, Engage, was created to support these efforts. He crafted a heatmap (pictured below) of the school so we could see the macro data, and he asked me some really tough questions. I won’t forget the phone call when he said, “I thought you said this was for all students.” I responded, “Yeah...of course it is.” His reply: “Not if you think 87% means all.” In sorting through 1100 responses I had missed the most obvious data point: the 200 students who didn’t respond! Who were they? Why hadn’t they taken the survey? What was their experience like?<br /><br /><img height="425" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Z1zq7S2lWKVu8-By88O--BxOxcrYtnFsTV9k809DcTxiFCgN9h2096BqBeT4FMHh1lb4rME_hpB-PmhGYIlPm1F7gUWyXn5-pceCwoJZ61K1UbvIDuZFuVI_mlS-HJrCyTdwrq2C" width="640" /><br /><br />Stan Williams, co author of this blog, often reminds me that the questions we ask are more important than the answers we seek, and the heatmap above sparked many questions. In particular, it appeared the data skewed to the left (more negative) in questions that drive at personalization, student voice, and choice. Stan and Emily Rinkema tossed the question to their students in their Think Tank class who had this to say: people ask us our opinions...it’s just we never see the outcome of our thoughts. Student voice led us to student agency, and the same student who made the observation recommended we start a student congress instead of a student council to engage a much higher rate of community involvement. <br /><br />We noticed other correlations supporting what can only be described as educational truisms, especially when triangulating grades and standardized tests with the survey:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Rigor is a vital factor in student engagement.<br />Intrinsic motivation influences outcomes.<br />Socio-economics matter.<br />A match between a student’s vision of the future and the schools influences engagement.</blockquote>
We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the implications of our Engagement data, and like everyone else, our most recent survey was interrupted by Covid-19. As we have with so much of our curricula in the past few weeks, we scrambled, pulled together a team of caring faculty members, and ditched many of our normal questions in favor of understanding wellness in a new context. Here are a few...<br /><ul>
<li>I would like it if an adult from school would reach out to me directly to check in.</li>
<li>I am aware of mental health support services that are available.</li>
<li>I know how to ask for and access mental health support if I need/want it. </li>
<li>I am able to get some fresh air and/or exercise regularly.</li>
<li>I feel good about my sleep patterns.</li>
<li>My home environment allows me to engage in my work. </li>
<li>When this is all over, what are you looking forward to?</li>
<li>I am worried about my own health and wellbeing related to Covid-19.</li>
<li>I am worried about the health and wellbeing of close friends and family related to Covid-19.</li>
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We sent the restructured questions to our community and have received 57% of the responses thus far. As usual, I am both inspired and burdened by the data, and I am reminded of another of my mother’s sayings: we are all expressions of the systems from which we grow. And while I have more questions than answers, one data point juts out above the rest: students are much more worried about their loved ones than they are for themselves. My mother probably had a more clinical term, but I am choosing to see that selflessness as goodness and the connectedness as strength. <br /><br /><i>*For those who would like to run the Engage tool for free at their school during this time period, contact Matt Bunting (matt@engaged.school) and Brian Lloyd Newberry at bln@engaged.school. </i></div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-76599335387305457752020-04-17T05:55:00.003-07:002020-04-17T07:02:37.283-07:00Nothing Normal about this New: One School’s Approach to Connecting, Engaging, and Learning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are so many things we took for granted during what we are now calling “regular school.” We were so comfortable that we didn’t stop to question things--not only tangible things like photocopiers and hallway fist-bumps, but things like our definitions of engagement and learning. That’s all changed now.<br />
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Schools all over the world are scrambling to piece together plans and systems and structures to maintain or replicate or recreate a school experience for our students. We are all doing the best we can with the resources we have in the contexts we woke up in a few weeks or months ago (is that all it’s been?!). But one thing I think we’ve all discovered is that there is no way that what we’re doing (or trying to do) now is anything like school as we knew it. <br />
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In Vermont, we had two stages to this new normal: Maintenance of Learning and Remote Learning. These were dictated and defined by the state. The Maintenance stage could not include new learning, assessments, or mandatory work. It was put in place to provide families and schools time to develop systems to maximize equity, including ways to provide essential services and access to education for all students. During this stage, which was three weeks long, schools worked to create systems, structures, and strategies for stage two (while still providing food and essential services to all of their students). When we entered stage two, which started officially this week, the goal was to add accountability and learning to the mix. Schools were required to create learning plans and send these to the state, and our goals had to include how we were going to deliver and assess learning for all of our students.<br />
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In an effort to document this experience more than anything else (but maybe to provide something that someone else can take and revise and improve), we thought we would share what our school system is doing and what we are doing as teachers within our system. <br />
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<b>Defining a Purpose: </b>Our principal, Adam Bunting, declared within the first week of the first stage that the driving values of our school throughout the entire remote experience would be <b>Connection, Engagement, and Learning, in that order.</b> All systems designs and all decisions made were filtered through these lenses--and if the plans didn’t work to maximize these values in this order, then it was back to the drawing board. The clarity and conviction behind this statement gave all of us--school leaders, teachers, students, and community members--a solid foundation and shared purpose.<br />
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<b>The Student Schedule:</b> Once we had a shared purpose, we could begin to develop systems and structures. Our student schedule for Maintenance Learning (stage one) provided a balance of synchronous and asynchronous opportunities, all optional. We asked for feedback from teachers, families, and students after two weeks, and then designed our Remote Learning (stage two) schedule to better support connection, engagement, and learning. See the explanations in italics beneath the schedule for details about each part. (<i>Note: The teacher schedule includes optional PD from 9-10 each morning (specific topics posted weekly with links to hangouts), and optional faculty meetings two afternoons a week.</i>)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2fJ3ZYy1yXhNxTXv0oqvzJwT2Ao0_TtlHtVZIB09dGiprWrgLHBbCp3nWwfijDi8jHsqoikkyeqK_ncEntOjsOda_yPAkV7MlQeBKj879HOQsb5Mgndh79UD93e2v9_ZCFg-C3Nm7IoqG/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-04-17+at+8.53.59+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="748" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2fJ3ZYy1yXhNxTXv0oqvzJwT2Ao0_TtlHtVZIB09dGiprWrgLHBbCp3nWwfijDi8jHsqoikkyeqK_ncEntOjsOda_yPAkV7MlQeBKj879HOQsb5Mgndh79UD93e2v9_ZCFg-C3Nm7IoqG/s640/Screen+Shot+2020-04-17+at+8.53.59+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="color: purple;">Agenda, Task, and Materials:</span> Teachers will post agendas, tasks, and materials for the day’s learning by 9 a.m. Students should plan for approximately 90 minutes of work per week for each class; this includes class meeting times as well as the time it takes to make sense of the task, access input, think, and demonstrate learning through output. Teaches will use the scheduling function in Google Classroom so that these are posted at the correct time and day and that students are not overwhelmed by posts at all times of the day/week. *AP courses will follow this expectation as well, unless the class has not completed the abbreviated curriculum published by the College Board.</i><br />
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<i><span style="color: purple;">Class Meeting Times:</span> To maintain our strong classroom communities, all class meetings should ideally begin with a live Hangout for the class during which the teacher explains the week’s assignments and provides some direct instruction. If this is not possible, teachers should post a short video/screencast to meet this purpose. Following the live Hangout, the remainder of class meeting time could be used for quick check in for small groups or individual students, discussion, or work time. </i><br />
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<i><span style="color: purple;">Connect Time:</span> Teachers will be available every day to answer questions from any of their students, through email or Hangout from 2:30-3:00. We understand that there may be days when this is not possible, but having a consistent time when students can access teachers is important. </i><br />
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<i><span style="color: purple;">Exploration Menu:</span> Each week, a menu of options categorized by Think, Feel, Act are posted. Students who want to do any of these activities can document them and send photos to Seth, Jamie, and Tim (This is not mandatory; it’s a way to build community and share with each other). </i><br />
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<b>Grading and Reporting: </b>One of the most complicated decisions our school had to make was what to do about grades and transcripts. We are a standards-based school that provides end of course letter grades, and these grades inform the student GPAs on the transcript. When physical school closed for us, we had just wrapped up quarter 3, so all students had what we call Grade Snapshots that represented their current achievement of the course learning targets. Our quarters are cumulative, not averaged together, so the Q3 snapshot was an accurate communication of evidence students had provided up to that point; however, in most classes, had we continued as normal, students would have had many more opportunities to relearn, improve skills, and ultimately increase their target scores by the end of the year. This was particularly true in many of our semester courses, where the snapshot grades represented a small (and potentially misleading) sample size of evidence.<br />
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We spent a lot of time researching what other schools and colleges were doing, what states were recommending, and what leading experts on grading, equity, and assessment were suggesting. While there is no perfect model, we finally decided on the following, which was presented to faculty first, and after some revision, to students and families:<br />
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<b>For year-long courses:</b><br />
<ul>
<li><b>End of year letter grade: </b>Because students had the opportunity to provide a significant body of evidence of learning throughout the year, teachers can provide accurate scores for the course learning targets that were instructed, practiced, and assessed. Students will receive a letter grade on their transcripts based on these targets. In order to maximize equity and opportunity, the letter grade that students had at the last snapshot cannot go down during this new phase of learning, but can be raised through work they do the rest of the year. In order to receive a grade on the transcript, students must participate in Remote Learning; students who do not participate will get an Incomplete on their transcript. </li>
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<b>For semester courses:</b><br />
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<li><b>Pass with Distinction or Incomplete:</b> Students may not have had the opportunity to provide a sufficient body of evidence of learning for second semester courses. Teachers may not be able to provide accurate scores for learning targets in second semester courses at this time, so students will receive one of the following scores on their transcript: Incomplete or Pass with Distinction. </li>
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<li><b>Incomplete (Inc)</b>: The following situations will result in an Inc on the student’s transcript, and students will have an opportunity to change this after the school year. Students who had a composite score below a 2 at the Q3 Snapshot and do not participate during Remote Learning to improve these scores, OR students who showed sufficient evidence of achievement at the Q3 Snapshot and did not participate during Remote Learning.</li>
<li><b>Pass with Distinction (PD)</b>: Students who show sufficient evidence of achievement (either at the time of the Q3 snapshot or by the end of the year) and continue to participate during Remote Learning will receive a PD on their transcript.</li>
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<i><b>Note about Grading and Transcripts:</b> There may be individual circumstances where the above will need to be amended. For students with specific situations that may require other options, please contact your House Counselor and we will work together to ensure that no harm is done.</i><br />
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Originally, we had gone with 3 levels for semester courses: Inc, Pass, and Pass with Distinction. After many days of intense conversations about equity, access, and the extraordinary circumstances that a global pandemic brings, the decision was to simplify to 2 levels. Our leadership team felt strongly that keeping Pass with Distinction (rather than Pass) was an important symbolic recognition of how challenging these times are for so many in our community.<br />
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<b>Assessment, Tracking, and Feedback</b><br />
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Once we had decided how to grade and report, we needed to develop some guidelines for assessment, tracking, and feedback that supported the purpose (connect, engage, and learn) as well as the new grading and reporting decisions. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bhS1HhOz76QihNT1gb2d4geFMbqKKEh7-6QgZjWWR8E/edit?usp=sharing">Here is the document we developed to help guide teacher choices.</a><br />
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<b>Classes</b><br />
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We use KUDs as our curriculum documents at CVU, simple backwards-design templates that outline what students will Know, Understand, and be able to Do at the end of a learning experience. Teachers were asked to revise their existing KUDs or develop new ones for this remote period of learning. Our leadership team gave us all the option to either significantly pare down and modify what we had planned to do, or to completely veer from the existing KUD and develop a plan that we felt might be more engaging, relevant, or accessible. Because we needed to document curricular plans for the state, these KUDs provided us a way to be accountable to Vermont while also using what we know about learning design to prioritize our outcomes. As an example, here’s the KUD and revised plan for the course we teach: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UGsAjbw6yQCqqdvl0_N44vqO9_SuK75tHEHgSp31_Pg/edit?ts=5e970f34" target="_blank">Think Tank: Remote Learning 2020</a>.<br />
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<b>Next Steps?</b><br />
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Our district is about to go on our spring vacation, which seems really strange. CVU created a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/104pzxjkjla1Yrh8lluZU6gqTCOlZyA2N0MNtrTxPeA4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">menu of opportunities </a>for students, faculty, staff, and families to stay connected and engaged over this coming week of break, as we know that cutting off contact may not be the best thing for some members of our community. As for what happens when we get back...who knows. There are so many things that change from day to day--for all of us collectively and for each of us individually. Planning seems virtually impossible, whether at the class level or the school level. What we do know is that we will continue to get feedback from all members of the community and revise and iterate as much as we can. We will continue to design opportunities that maximize and support connection, engagement, and learning (in that order!). And we will continue to do what CVU does best: take care of ourselves, take care of each other, and take care of the place. </div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-45406265486219422502020-03-10T10:03:00.000-07:002020-03-10T10:12:09.119-07:00Setting Clear Destinations: What Teachers Say<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
We’re doing a book study with a group of educators from around our district who chose to read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Standards-Based-Classroom-Make-Learning-Goal-dp-1544324200/dp/1544324200/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d85c6;">The Standards-Based Classroom: Make Learning the Goal</span></a>, written by us a few years ago. Some of these teachers were in the original pilot program in our district, so have almost a decade of experience in a standards-based system; others are newer to our district and to the practices central to SBL. What they all have in common is a desire to continue their learning and reflect on their practices, For each of the four sections of the book, participating teachers will share their experiences, their reflections, and their questions with each other and with us, and they have given us permission to share excerpts publicly. </div>
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The first section of the book is all about setting clear destinations for learning. Our district uses the <b>K-U-D</b> to help with curriculum planning and communication. This is a backwards design template that articulates what students will Know, Understand, and be able to Do at the end of a period of learning. We use skill-based <b>Learning Targets</b>, which are the Ds in our K-U-Ds, and these targets are the level 3 in our <b>Learning Scales</b>. Thanks to Carol Tomlinson, Grant Wiggins, and Jay McTighe for all of their work in this area that inspired our systems and structures.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglx_iIhMGquavIrE93aWf4ZDbNJStW2bKe17GXaiudUl_kfExr69WgbWhMX6Qo6bUpIqyi28-SSXrW9MnG3XqTM0BTiRRKNIJCTomK66k-hjs3wU7QURCW6xbQg1WMr2A5NeShboZ6b9I5/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-03-10+at+1.10.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="735" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglx_iIhMGquavIrE93aWf4ZDbNJStW2bKe17GXaiudUl_kfExr69WgbWhMX6Qo6bUpIqyi28-SSXrW9MnG3XqTM0BTiRRKNIJCTomK66k-hjs3wU7QURCW6xbQg1WMr2A5NeShboZ6b9I5/s400/Screen+Shot+2020-03-10+at+1.10.03+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Humanities K-U-D</td></tr>
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All of the courses at our high school have K-U-Ds that are common for common courses and made public each year. Here is the most recent version of the public document that links to all <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o0V4RNr4zm4PNpgQKye5TQijJ3pgxOYg_3mBMuDK-Kg/edit"><span style="color: blue;">High School K-U-Ds</span></a>. We have four middle schools (grades 5-8), and all disciplines across the district share common learning targets and scales. Here are the links to <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s6rAs1QouN2KBx0YF_nvBZ5OAcKVZO_xUyDgdKIzyPM/edit"><span style="color: blue;">Grades 5-6 Targets & Scales</span></a> and <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eS67qPuAvgiVw8tDsnEcmPAihd95QX73_ZJ8OCKgl2k/edit"><span style="color: blue;">Grades 7-8 Targets & Scales</span></a>.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAmYI_w0pbohiT3i0noLHwrxwFKTjGVlVnc5w4zNd5kxRNpCeUg9XxZjDY36PrD6cVExuIGCk7W6oHZVfDzrUO1imnmen-bh_6Q6dcJ4vG3dd0NlJP3CDospNmX6V_PLw8QrqscmJrrJ75/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-03-10+at+12.54.51+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="941" height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAmYI_w0pbohiT3i0noLHwrxwFKTjGVlVnc5w4zNd5kxRNpCeUg9XxZjDY36PrD6cVExuIGCk7W6oHZVfDzrUO1imnmen-bh_6Q6dcJ4vG3dd0NlJP3CDospNmX6V_PLw8QrqscmJrrJ75/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-03-10+at+12.54.51+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Target and Scale</td></tr>
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In our own experiences teaching in standards-based classrooms over the past decade, we have found that clear destinations defined and articulated through K-U-Ds, Learning Targets, and Scales have changed our focus from what we teach to what students learn. Our planning, instruction, and assessment practices have become so much more intentional and responsive, and as a result, learning and engagement have increased. Over time, we have developed some strategies and structures that help improve effectiveness. The teachers in the book study tried a few of these strategies, and here is their thinking:<br />
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<b>Geoff Glaspie: High School Math Teacher</b><br />
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One of the [strategies] from the first section (chapter 3 specifically) that resonated with me was the idea of “lose the numbers” on the Learning Scale, because I can see how it has the potential for students to treat a formative more as communication rather than compensation or judgment. Up until now, I have used learning scales with numbers on them and circled or written what the student’s level was — both for formative and summative assessments. This followed from what I observed with my mentor teacher and from other teachers with whom I have taught collaboratively or in parallel. The most common reaction I see when returning formatives is that they absolutely narrow their focus to the # on the paper. They share out loud with others what their level is, ask questions about the score, e.g. “if I had done [x], would I have gotten a 3?”...I see them laser-focused on the number and more often than not, quickly file the returned quiz in their folder or in some cases, throw them out. While I take the time to give very specific feedback on the student’s work within the body of the assessment, my feeling is that they do not absorb the information and insight from my comments or feedback because they are stuck on the number they achieved.<br />
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I decided to give [replacing numbers with an arrow] a try on my next formative in Geometry. Instead of circling one of the boxes or writing a number on the scale, I underlined the words in green that the student was secure in, red what they did not show evidence of, and both red and green if they were starting to show proficiency, but were not yet consistent. Before I handed them back, I told them what they would see, why I was doing it, and what their next steps were. Below is an example of a marked scale on a quiz.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_cAstg5eaS3_0z9oET6QjdhRyoahiM99t5d4GKBK3yES4sl5tzrFBNPvDnqIhHXNDRWEJsbL1mp3Zz1lWAJT_EJcR69ZRTERh3VQIQJ6YL80AnO8kgSrlaIF7oBYFcGDkQ_C_JNa0qJpC/s1600/Screen+Shot+2020-03-10+at+12.57.04+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="797" height="93" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_cAstg5eaS3_0z9oET6QjdhRyoahiM99t5d4GKBK3yES4sl5tzrFBNPvDnqIhHXNDRWEJsbL1mp3Zz1lWAJT_EJcR69ZRTERh3VQIQJ6YL80AnO8kgSrlaIF7oBYFcGDkQ_C_JNa0qJpC/s320/Screen+Shot+2020-03-10+at+12.57.04+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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What I observed right away was that students were more focused on looking at what they did, my comments, and some immediately asked, “can we go over adding radicals today?” This type of question is not something that I have typically seen in reaction to getting a quiz returned. I was also asked “do you have some practice sheets for solving special right triangles I can have to work on?” This was enough for me to say this is a practice I need to continue. <br />
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<b>Leanne Morton: High School Latin Teacher</b><br />
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The simple strategy of removing numbers from scales during the practice and learning process struck me as we reach the end of a marking period where numbers matter. Too often I think students worry about the grade, but with the transition to standards-based classroom, I have noticed a shift. By providing the language in the “I can” statements, students now know how to articulate what they might need to do in order to reach the next step. I have seen my conversations shift and powerfully so because there is actual language to use in helping students understand what they need to do in order to meet the next part of the scale. I have never thought about removing the numbers from the top of my scales on formatives/practice. Sometimes depending on how my copying and pasting goes, they do not appear, but I love the idea of encouraging the continuum of learning by adding a simple arrow. I have seen the arrow used in all the work Emily and Stan have produced for us at CVU, but never once thought about adding it to my work. I too have been trained by the grade/number machine and it is liberating to think about focusing our practice/learning time around the process. I like thinking about how we go from the first part of the scale to the last and what learning do we need to do rather than focusing on “how do I get the four?” I just started a unit on conjugating and translating verbs in the imperfect and perfect tenses. I am moving students from the present tense into the imperfect and decided to remind them about the targets involved. I changed the table to include the arrow and like the next part of my reflection, am employing part of the unit KUD into the work. You can see the slide show <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Pklww8JoJMMWYsxdBLpCbdqy86CDG2_VMtWho7yN4nU/edit?usp=sharing"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>. <br />
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<b>Katie Kuntz: High School Humanities Teacher</b><br />
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Using KUDs and targets make so much sense to both teachers and students. When we were first asked to use KUD’s at CVU so many teachers said this was just another fad… that “the pendulum would swing another direction in a few short years.” To be honest, I can’t imagine teaching any other way. <br />
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Our basic format is at the very beginning of each unit we give students a packet and the very first page of that packet has the KUD, learning targets, formative and summatives, as well as a tentative calendar. When we hand it out we go over any new targets, explain the formatives and summatives and then ask students to look at the “Understands”. This section usually takes me the longest to write up as I tend not to be a “big picture” kind of gal but I have come to realize that this may be one of the most important parts. It allows students to see the connections and what learning they will do to make these connections. I have to say that I hate writing this section but feel amazing about them once I go through the process. It’s kind of like eating a salad. I don’t really want one for lunch, I’d rather eat a burger and fries, and I’m kind of grumpy during lunch, but then feel much happier in the afternoon about my food choice! Here’s an example of our <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/17rivdlA-PgQFWpRresFgyf6Cb8ByXBlluiR9rVLf9Zg/edit?usp=sharing">KUD/scales/calendar format.</a><br />
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<b>Tim Buckingham:</b> <b>Middle School Music</b>: K-U-D's can be a template for all learning episodes -- bigger units, smaller lessons, even daily class agendas, etc...in order to intentionally tap knowledge, have a performance goal, and understand all of it within the context of learning over time. Could it be that easy?! Much like Understanding by Design (UbD), K-U-D's increase not only our organization as teachers but continue to have us focus on performance tasks at the heart of the education -- this keeps intention of designing learning based on the skill, incorporating content knowledge and the understanding of "why" we do it all.<br />
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<b>Abby Granoff: Middle School Para-educator and Licensed Teacher:</b> KUDs are the cornerstone of teaching. They help us to plan instruction, design assessments, and let students know what we want them to get out of it. If we don't know where we want our students to end up, we will be much less successful in getting them there. Once we have a KUD developed, we can share it with our students at the beginning of a unit, and ideally hang it up somewhere in the classroom and reference it every day. Also, when designing instruction, we can write what part of the KUD the lesson relates to on the board, so that students know where we're trying to go. KUDs give us a really clear destination, and allows us to be more intentional about the instruction we plan. If we think of the KUD as the destination, and planning is the road to get there, we can refer back to our KUD when planning to make sure that our instruction or lesson will actually get us to our destination and not take us on a scenic route or down a dead end.<br />
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<b>Peg Rosenau: Middle School Para-educator and Licensed Teacher:</b> The various standards that guide instruction in different disciplines provide a framework for instruction but also a huge amount of autonomy. Content in the digital age is ubiquitous, if not overwhelming. These combined can create a “drinking from a firehose” situation when determining what is most important to present to students, especially for a prescribed scope of time. K-U-Ds can bring some intentionality to this process by focusing ultimately on the desired skills that one wants students to get out of a unit- as it is the skills that ultimately demonstrate the knowledge and understanding of the experience.<br />
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If you have any thoughts or examples you would like to share, please feel free to comment. The more we share with each other, the better it will be for students.</div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-15197183154505604122019-12-08T02:50:00.001-08:002019-12-08T02:52:37.131-08:00An Argument for Proficiency-Based Learning<i><b>Thank you to our principal, Adam Bunting, for this blog post:</b></i><br />
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After a five year hiatus from the classroom, I recently had the opportunity to long-term sub for one of our teachers. I can’t say I felt like a first-timer again, but my sleep was punctuated by those teacher dreams usually reserved for mid-August and Sunday nights. You know the ones... you’re standing in front of a few hundred teenagers with no lesson plan or curriculum. You peek to the back of the coliseum-sized classroom only to note your principal furiously scribbling performance notes on a Danielson rubric. <br />
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Despite the interrupted sleep, returning to the classroom felt like a homecoming following an extended absence; the places and patterns reassuring but strangely foreign seen from a new distance. Of course, the central questions I needed to ask were utterly familiar: What am I teaching? What have the students learned thus far? Who is in my room? How do I help each student grow? And while I had changed since my first years as a teacher, the system had changed even more thanks to PBL.<br />
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In the summer of 1999, I prepared to teach my first ninth graders. I was handed Gilgamesh, Night, Romeo and Juliet, and The Odyssey. Nothing was mentioned about the skills, nor the important understandings we hoped to grow within our students. There was no explicit discussion on how to measure progress or how to prepare to meet the needs of heterogeneous learners. Instead, the system assumed I had learned this in my college preparatory program--as if there was a standardized curriculum across the multitude of universities and colleges in the US. <br />
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Of course, that autonomy wasn’t all bad. I had almost complete say over what and how I taught my kids. I took ownership of my classes, and my growth as a teacher was prolific and organic. It’s just that organic growth, like a garden gone feral, results in widely varying outcomes for students and young professionals. And as a new teacher I internalized two dangerous implicit messages: first, I saw the students as mine, not whole individuals in a larger collaborative system; second, when simply handed texts, I was led to believe that a student’s understanding of the material was pinnacle. Trust me, I can give a hell of a lecture on Gilgamesh or The Odyssey. Telling stories is fun, and as a youngest sibling, I don’t mind being the center of attention. And while storytelling is a great tool for a teacher, over-reliance on it grows some funky habits in our students. What exactly are they practicing? Listening? Passivity?<br />
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Those first experiences as a teacher were firmly in mind over a month ago when I began subbing. With only a day or two of notice, I had to get up to speed quickly while figuring out how to balance my normal responsibilities as a principal. So, twenty years later, I asked the same question I had in the summer of 1999. I reached out to the teacher and an instructional coach and asked, “What am I teaching?”<br />
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What a difference twenty years makes!<br />
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Within a few minutes of asking the question, one of our coaches was able to provide a shared Google doc featuring the learning targets and scales associated with the class. The targets had been pre-entered into our tracking and reporting software, so I could see previous formative assessments. Not only did I know how students were progressing on the standards of the course, but I also had a vision of how those scales fed school-wide graduation goals. The implicit message? I’m part of a larger team pulling in the same direction; these kids are our kids, not just my kids. I knew where they had been and where they needed to go next.<br />
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Of course, I did need to calibrate my understanding of the scales with the original teacher’s understanding, so I gave an assessment on the first day to see how well they established purpose in their writing. To allay students' fears that the assessment would impact an overarching grade, I simply told them it was formative. They immediately knew the assessment was practice for them (and for me). Guess what I discovered? The students were in varying places with their ability to craft a thesis, but there were patterns to their strengths and challenges. So I didn’t put a mark on their papers (Papers is a bit of a misnomer here as I was using Google classroom...which, for a guy who used to always lose paper, is an awesome tool!), knowing their learning process would be impacted the second they saw my evaluation. Instead, I grouped them by pattern and asked, Can you figure out why you’re together? I also gave them a variety of examples a fellow teacher provided for me. Each group was able to correctly identify problem areas and how to improve.<br />
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While only one small lesson in the scope of the course, it provides evidence of how far we’ve come since 1999 when our system only asked us to communicate through aggregate grades. I don’t think I ever realized just how powerful the outcomes are in defining how we see ourselves as teachers. If I am only asked to communicate results as an ABCD or F, I am unlikely to provide the information that matters to students, to colleagues, and to parents. Another surprise was where I was able to focus my creative energy and exercise my autonomy: finding rich and complex content that would inspire students to engage with the course--and more importantly--each other. <br />
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We have a long way to go as a profession, but as I reflect on the students I first taught, and for whom I principaled (yes, it’s a verb), I wish I could have provided as cohesive a learning experience as our kids now have. How many times did I watch a kid walk across the stage at graduation knowing they had achieved all the necessary credits but still lacked some skills to ensure success in their next endeavor? Why? Lots of reasons to be sure, but some of the answers reside in what PBL attempts to address: namely our inability to effectively communicate with one another... to redefine teacher from independent contractor to systems thinker. <br />
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I never appreciated that there might be small gifts in taking a break from teaching. The hiatus allowed me to skip past the cognitive dissonance that surely would have had me resisting PBL. I didn’t have to wrestle with the odd guilt that new paradigms can inspire as we contemplate our past practices. We know that our own dissonance is our profession’s worst enemy and the discomfort that may inspire the greatest change. <br />
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Adam Bunting (@abuntcvu)</div>
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Principal of Champlain Valley Union HS</div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-4335914759751059822019-10-24T08:38:00.002-07:002019-10-24T09:24:18.422-07:00Standards-Based Learning: Time to embrace our flawed realities.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So, by 2020, according to state legislation, all high schools in our state of Vermont are supposed to use proficiencies--rather than seat time and carnegie units--to graduate our students. Some schools cheered this legislation (<a href="https://education.vermont.gov/student-learning/proficiency-based-learning"><span style="color: blue;">Act 77</span></a><span style="color: blue;">)</span> when it was passed in 2013, along with the ensuing Education Quality Standards that provided guidelines about Proficiency-Based Learning (PBL), as an acknowledgment of what we had already been doing; some schools embraced the challenges and the collaboration that would surely ensue; and some schools dragged their feet and hoped it would all go away before the end of the decade. Well, it didn’t go away. And now we are in the 2019/2020 school year, which means “stuff” just got real for a lot of schools and communities. </div>
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As Proficiency-Based Learning Coordinators, we spend much of our time living in the ideal and guiding teachers and schools towards an aspirational version of SBL. But the reality is that this aspirational version is not currently within reach for most teachers and schools--for very legitimate reasons. We can read all the great books, go to inspirational conferences, and join social media professional learning communities that show us what it could look like, that explain ideal versions of SBL, that support these ideals with indisputable research about the brain and learning; but in our actual classrooms, our actual schools, our actual communities, this ideal may not only be out of reach, but leaping for it may do more damage than good. An ideal exists to provide a destination to move towards, to drive progress--if we try to leap over that progress to grab hold of perfection, do we risk losing it all? Maybe it’s time to embrace the process and be honest about the compromises that might be necessary to keep moving forward.<br />
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For a long time now, we’ve been embarrassed by compromise. We so strongly believe in what could be real for Standards-Based Learning (SBL) that we saw anything less than the ideal as failure. That has led to a lot of sugar-coating, rationalizing, and frustration over the past five years, rather than what we should have been doing. We should have been singing our compromises loudly and proudly. We should have been owning each step towards the ideal. We should have been more open about sharing the flawed realities as well as the aspirations. <br />
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So here we go...the naked truth:<br />
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<b>We convert scores to letter grades.</b> We tell students that learning is about taking risks and making mistakes and not about judgement. We tell them that their learning can’t be summed up in a single symbol, that averaging learning is wrong. But we calculate an ongoing composite score--which is an average of the most recent summative scores for each learning target--and every 9 weeks, we convert this composite score to a letter grade. Yup. We do that. We know it’s not ideal. We know that communicating learning with a single summary score or grade is misleading at best and inaccurate at worst. But years ago, we chose not to fight that fight. A series of very wise leaders knew that the only way we were going to have the space to shift how we teach and learn in our classrooms was to leave the letter grades alone. If we could tell students and parents that all of the changes we were making were still going to result in letter grades and GPAs, then they would give us the freedom to make those changes. We were able to promise them that we would not mess with their transcripts, and by doing this, we bought the time to earn their trust. And even though we still have letter grades, we now have a much better idea of where those letter grades come from and how to help students improve them. We had to <b>compromise the ideal in order to get closer to it</b>, and in doing so, our grades have more integrity than they used to have.<br />
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<b>We have learning targets and scales that don’t support what we say about learning targets and scales.</b> CVU’s approach is to use transferable <a href="http://cvulearnsblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/whats-point-of-content.html"><span style="color: blue;">skill learning targets</span></a> (rather than content-based) and to use complexity scales (rather than frequency or effectiveness scales). We have clear <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nrHaVKentlrs_4Gq5Ot01Xn8mR5Jtcw42vR3_99VwiQ/edit"><span style="color: blue;">faculty scales</span></a> that describe these, and we widely share our targets and scales outside of our school. But if you were to search our target bank and were to ask teachers to see their course scales, you would see quite a few targets that don’t seem to fit our model and some scales that have nothing to do with increasing complexity. But the reality is that those same teachers who still have one or two content targets have worked ridiculously hard over the past 5 years to develop incredibly effective skill targets as well. And the teachers who still have frequency scales (sometimes, mostly, always), are starting to ask incredible questions about differentiation and how they might revise their scales to be more effective for instruction. Had we policed these more strictly (as we wanted to do!), we may have lost some really excellent teachers who just needed to follow their own path and experience success through changes they chose to make. We had to <b>compromise the ideal in order to get closer to it,</b> and by doing so, teachers felt ownership in the changes they made.<br />
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<b>We’re not determining student graduation based on proficiencies. </b>That’s right. We still have credits. We still have course requirements. Students still have to pass their classes, and they are eligible for graduation in a very similar way as they always have been. What’s different--what’s better--is that now their course grades, which determine their credits, are based on our learning scales; they are based on students showing proficiency in clear, agreed-upon targets that provide evidence of our graduation standards. So now when a student gets credit for a class, they also have evidence of proficiency in multiple skills, using the content of the course. Is this what the state had in mind when they said that students will graduate based on proficiencies? Maybe not ideally. Are they okay with it? Absolutely. Is this what we believe is the ideal way to graduate students? Probably not. But we’re not ready to completely toss out existing systems until we have something better. We’re getting closer and closer. Within five years, school at CVU may look significantly different, and graduation will be likely be determined based on evidence that students demonstrate in the standards we believe are essential for success. But for now, <b>we had to compromise the ideal in order to get closer to it.</b><br />
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Despite all these compromises and all of this messiness, there is no doubt that we are doing better for our students than we were before we started this transition. None. Our implementation was rocky and <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh61UWLML98k8S7rr4MkitKDTDQjF6UA6uvmB9xXlxnTIr-sWBOo43y0Li2D2_N_Q7k5K0uLilsyH7Tb426RJqEfQRPtam1vzxtL7GK8MoqsTBiZWmWhNjRBm8vzLf_C0MuGlZhpoQEmN0p/s1600/IMG_7807.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="640" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh61UWLML98k8S7rr4MkitKDTDQjF6UA6uvmB9xXlxnTIr-sWBOo43y0Li2D2_N_Q7k5K0uLilsyH7Tb426RJqEfQRPtam1vzxtL7GK8MoqsTBiZWmWhNjRBm8vzLf_C0MuGlZhpoQEmN0p/s320/IMG_7807.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
scary and messy and spectacularly difficult (And honestly, even though we are now officially standards-based, things are still rocky and scary and messy and spectacularly difficult.), but each decision we made and each revision we made to a previous decision led us closer to where we are now, which is better than where we were before. Students understand their strengths and challenges better than they ever have; in most classes, they say they know how they are going to do on their summatives before they take them, which has reduced test anxiety. Teachers are so much clearer about their goals for students and more intentional about their instructional choices; most say that they understand their students’ strengths and challenges so much better and know how to respond to these. Families have a much better understanding of their children as learners; most say that they can have richer conversations with their kids about learning, not just about grades. For the first time ever, we have agreed upon course curriculum documents for every class, common learning targets for courses, and common grading agreements. These practices continue to improve the integrity and rigor of our academic program, and allow a solid foundation for our ongoing efforts to personalize learning. We have shared understandings about learning, shared visions for the future of the school, and shared language to talk about both the successes and challenges of the work we’re doing to get things right for students. In other words, there are some pretty amazing things happening to learning in our district, even though we are far from the ideal.<br />
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Maybe part of the implementation problem we are having in our state right now is an honorable, but misguided attempt to get SBL right, to leap for the ideal. We all want what’s best for students, best for learning; and when we understand how the brain learns and take into account the world we’re now preparing our students to live in, it’s tough to argue that our conventional teaching and grading systems are effective. So when the state said, “Let’s do it!” schools said okay, because it’s the right thing to do. But the trouble is, in our attempt to get the right thing right, we may have forgotten two huge truths:<br />
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First, there is no one “right” way to do SBL. There is no prescribed recipe for success or set of guidelines that will work in every school. What will be easy in one community could be a deal-breaker in another. And what an effective proficiency-based system looks like will vary from school to school and county to county as well. While there are some foundational elements that will be the same, the systems and structures that need to be in place to ensure the success of these elements may be as different as the communities they are in. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all share our ways; in fact, I think that’s something we need to do a lot more of, not only here in Vermont, but everywhere. The more we each share our successes, our choices, our pitfalls, and our compromises, the more likely we all are to be able to not only survive the implementation, but to come out feeling strong and supported.<br />
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Second, we aren’t going to get it right. And this is a tough one to admit, even though it should be obvious. We’ve never gotten it right in education. Sure, school has always worked for some students, but it has always not worked for a lot of students as well. From the classroom level to the school level to the state level to the national level, we have never had an educational system that has gotten it right, so why do we all of a sudden hold ourselves to a completely new standard? <br />
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Maybe our goal shouldn’t be to get SBL right. It should be to get it right-er. And sometimes getting it right-er means compromising the ideal. That doesn’t mean, however, that the ideal is ridiculous and out of touch and a big fat lie that researchers or authors or politicians or administrators came up with to make us all feel bad about our practices. The ideal is built on what we know about learning and the brain and development and pedagogy--it’s built on science that’s been around for longer than we have. It’s what we would create if we were given the gift of starting over from scratch. It’s what we feel every once in a while, in that magical moment in that magical class in that magical school, that reminds us that it is possible and keeps us reaching for more. That’s why we need the ideal, the aspirational. It’s why we need to read the books and go to the conferences and get inspired by stories of teachers, classrooms, schools that are doing it (in some form), that are close, or closer to getting it right than we are. But that’s also why we need to embrace our compromises, to not be ashamed of sometimes doing a right-er thing if it will get us closer to achieving an even right-er thing. Maybe that’s what the ideal actually is...it’s the constant push to get it right-er for our students. Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-18902949127075032252019-06-02T07:24:00.000-07:002019-06-02T07:24:45.793-07:00The Scare of Self-Compare<b>Guest Blog:</b> This post was written by senior <b>Elizah Jacobs</b> at the end of our <a href="http://cvuthinktank.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Think Tank course</a>. We asked students what advice they had for educational leaders.<br />
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I want educational leaders to remember that as adolescents, we crave the small victories in terms of grades. We have been taught to base our feelings of success on other's success or lack of. This has created an ultra-competitive school environment that is continuing to become even more competitive year after year. <b>In my years of schooling, I have never felt true personal success without comparing myself to others.</b><br />
<br /> I experience self comparison at least once a day. Whether it be a track meet where I limit my success because even though I won, I was running against slow people, or a math test where I get a perfect score but so did everyone else; I let my comparing to other people get in the way of feeling proud of my accomplishments. I may be speaking from past and personal experience, but I know that I am not alone; I am part of the majority. The talk among friends in the hall is not about plans for the weekend or how our families are doing, but about "did you hear "Rachel" applied to Cornell? She'll never get in," or "Daniel's SAT scores rose 200 points with his tutor." Internally students are not happy for the success of others because they are comparing how their tutors didn't help them that much. This just leads to a constant sense of anxiety, even during free time.<br /><br /> One of my main motivators in school is to beat someone else or not be looked down upon for a grade in a class or an assignment. This can be a way for me and other people to end up learning more, but at what expense? A Pew survey found that “70 percent of teens say anxiety and depression is a major problem among their peers, an additional 26 percent say it’s a minor problem”. This percentage has steadily risen in the last 25 years and shows no signs of slowing down. The reality is that more and more students are going to college. This adds more competition within high school because they feel like their grades and test scores really matter. Grade point averages and standardized test scores are compared among students as they are applying to schools to try and self determine who will get in over them and who won’t. College is more normalized so students feel that just getting into a school is not any type of success, but the real success is getting into the label of a prestigious one. Buying into the belief that grades are the sole factor that determines success and happiness in life promotes anxiety. <br /><br /> In the future, this can be extremely detrimental when we realize that we won't always have grades to determine our happiness and success. At this time in our life, we may already be struggling with crippling anxiety and depression that hinders any future opportunity of getting over the barrier of self comparison.<br /><br /> I really want educational leaders to genuinely realize this as a huge issue. They could help this destruction to mind and self by continuing to make schools test optional, changing the standards of learning and the grading system to not be so completely outdated, and eliminating the pressure that teachers and parents place on students. State by state, school by school, and teacher by teacher the efforts could lead to a better future. Who knows, that student who just dropped out of college because of their anxiety could have cured cancer. <b>In the world of rising problems, we need bright and excited minds to want to fix it. What good will we be able to contribute to society when we are already damaged from the first 13-17+ years of our education? </b>I want school to be an exciting place for young minds in the future, with the help of students, educators, and the government, we can absolutely make school a place where creativity and happiness can shine.Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-45300092254870174952019-05-19T06:12:00.000-07:002019-05-19T06:13:26.500-07:00What's the Point of Content?Last week I was talking with a humanities teacher, Josh, as we got coffee in the faculty room. He was lamenting the pace of class in May, as he tries to get through all of the content for his course. It reminded me of a conversation with a student we had years ago in our team-taught humanities class. We had just delivered a speed-lesson on the Middle Ages in Europe, covering in 80 minutes what historians have spent careers thinking and writing about. A student stopped us at the end of class, panicked, and said it was too fast, that there was no way she could remember it all. We told her that was okay, that the point wasn’t to remember it all. <br />
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“Then what’s the point?” She had asked.<br />
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I don’t remember how we answered at the time, but as Josh and I walked down the hall with our coffee, we laughed about the absurdity of thinking students will truly learn all that we cover. If we define learning as being able to not only remember content for the short term, but to build knowledge and be able to use that knowledge at some indeterminate time in the future, then I imagine we would all be surprised (and a little bit depressed) by the tiny fraction of our teaching that leads to actual learning. <br />
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Most students (and some teachers) believe that all of the content in a course is of equal importance. We have trained our students to think this--sometimes implicitly (through our assessment practices), and sometimes explicitly (by saying they have to know it all). <br />
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Picture a traditional content test in a course with conventional grading practices, a test that most of us have taken (or given) in the last half century. There may be multiple choice questions, all worth the same number of points, and maybe some short answer or fill in the blank questions, also all worth the same amount of points. When we get a grade on that test (let’s say an 80%), that’s because we got a certain number of questions wrong (doesn’t matter which questions). This assessment is implicitly telling our students that all of the content being tested is of the same importance--two students could get the exact same grade for knowing (remembering) completely different content.<br />
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But all content is not of equal importance, right? We all make choices and prioritize based on internal and/or external factors. Regardless of our discipline, we all have content that we think (or we’re told) is most important or that we are most passionate about. This is where many of the conflicts come from in our departments and communities. Who decides which content--out of the vast and ever-growing pool available--is essential? What biases exist in choosing which content we select (or are told to use) for our courses? Content for science classes in Vermont and Mississippi is not the same; what students are taught in Texas about history, may be different than what they are taught in Oregon; the required reading in 8th grade in DC is likely different than the required reading in the same grade in New Hampshire. And within each of these disparate classrooms, what we each choose to spend more or less time on (and what our students ultimately take away with them) is likely part biased and part arbitrary. We are kidding ourselves if we try to argue that all of our course content is of equal importance.<br />
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So what if we were honest with our students about this? What if we were completely transparent about our content and our expectations? <br />
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<b>Super important sidebar: </b>Our district is standards-based, and our learning targets are skills, not specific content. It’s easy to hear this and think that we don’t value content, or as some have even said, that we don’t teach content anymore. But the opposite is true. <b>We value content so much that we decided to use what we know about the brain and learning to instruct and assess in a way that maximizes knowledge.</b> Here’s an excerpt from chapter 2 of <span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Standards-Based-Classroom-Make-Learning-Goal/dp/1544324200" target="_blank">The Standards-Based Classroom: Make Learning the Goal </a></span>(Corwin 2018) that discusses the difference between content and knowledge, an important distinction in this discussion: “It’s important to understand the difference between content and knowledge. Content is what’s available, the pool of rich, engaging, relevant information, texts, examples, and events we have to choose from when determining how to best help students demonstrate understanding and skill; knowledge is what students know at the end of the learning, the content that they have made their own and will be able to use. Knowledge takes time to build. It takes activating prior knowledge, determining relationships and relevance, practicing with ideas individually and collaboratively, and deep understanding.” Skills cannot be taught and practiced without content. Skills cannot be assessed without content. So the idea that it’s one or the other is ridiculous. <b>Schools that choose to have skill-based learning targets are not doing so at the expense of content; they are doing so in order to improve the content acquisition that leads to knowledge and fluency.<br /> </b></blockquote>
Okay, back to content and transparency. What if we talked to students about how content is chosen in our classes? What if we talked to them about bias in content selection? And what if we told them that not all content in our courses is created equal? In thinking about our own teaching, we came up with three distinct purposes for our content instruction or delivery. These are rough at this point, but they show what we’re thinking:<br />
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<li><b>Content Exposure: </b>the goal is not to learn the content, but to be exposed to it so that you get an overall sense of the content and have the opportunity to determine specific interests that you may decide to return to on your own. </li>
<li><b>Contextual/Conceptual Understanding:</b> the goal is to understand and remember the larger concepts of the content; you may need to look up the details later, but you will remember how this content fits into the larger picture or systems. </li>
<li><b>Depth of Learning:</b> the goal is deep and sustained learning--you will learn, remember, and be able to use both concepts and details about this content</li>
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Imagine being able to talk with students about your course using these levels. You could assign a reading that is meant to <b>Expose </b>the student to a variety of content--and ask them to select a few specifics that are of interest to them for further independent exploration. You could develop an activity that has students determine the major <b>Concepts</b> in a set of content, or ask them to place the content in <b>Context </b>of previous learning. Then you could dive deeply into the content that you, as the expert, determine is most important for <b>Depth of Learning</b> (or that you, the person, is most passionate about); or, you could ask the students to choose content that they want to learn deeply about based on earlier <b>Exposure</b>). By naming the purpose for the content we are using to practice and demonstrate our skills, we may be able to target our instruction and maximize learning. This would also, of course, force us to examine our assessments to ensure that we are asking students to demonstrate their learning in a way that matches our purpose.<br />
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We’re not proud of covering the European Age of Exploration in 80 minutes. But when we think about why we made that decision years ago, it was so that we could spend almost an entire quarter on the complexity of the Mongols and the historical, moral, and contemporary implications of their civilization. Because we made choices about where we would skim across the surface and where we would dive deep, we were able to slow down and fully explore one area--using vast amounts of rich, engaging content to learn and practice important transferable skills <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y4FzW2talL9yLLFfnfBiRQR6Vjv-qygSBeIsbfmUl6k/edit?usp=sharing">(see this link for our Mongol unit scales and benchmark sheets)</a>. If we can be more transparent with students (and ourselves) about the why and how of our content selection, coverage, and use, maybe we will have a better chance of ensuring that our teaching leads to learning. <br />
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So happy May everyone, and Josh, good luck with World War II in a Day!Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-86911978088914327642019-05-12T09:15:00.002-07:002019-05-12T09:19:10.446-07:00Let’s talk about Juul...in Biology class. <span id="docs-internal-guid-01c3023f-7fff-1024-23b7-82b18b7cc4ce" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span><br />
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by guest bloggers Jess Lemieux and Mike Abbott, science teachers at CVUHS.</div>
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“I used to Juul for about a year, nonstop. Sometimes I would feel super sick but I never had a problem with it until we started this unit. At first, I was really upset and kinda mad (because of the withdrawal symptoms). But I’ve been six weeks clean and I honestly have never felt better.” Student, 16</blockquote>
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Type “vape” into your Google search bar and your screen will flood with recent headlines about the teen vaping epidemic. The first article that popped up today, “Teens don’t vape, they Juul, Making E-Cigarette Use Hard to Track,” highlights the fact that teens are speaking a different language (as they have since the beginning of time). If we are afraid to learn their language, we risk miscommunication. This is fine if we’re talking about fashion, but dangerous when talking about health. <br />
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In December of this school year, we decided to talk about Juuling in our Integrated Biology course, a tenth grade, heterogeneous class. We had noticed high levels of compliance in our classes, but wondered how to spark true engagement. While they clearly enjoyed class and respected us as teachers, we realized we were not allowing them to apply science to their lives. To tackle this we looked for a way to teach our required content (e.g. circulatory system, respiratory system, etc.) through a more relevant and engaging lens. Enter juuling. We quickly realized that as science educators we could facilitate an investigation of teen nicotine use from a scientific lens, free of judgment, but in order to do this effectively, students would need a safe place to talk. <br />
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Many approaches to teen issues employ scare tactics that extensively highlight the negative aspects associated with the topic in hopes that it will deter kids from making unhealthy choices. (Some of us are old enough to remember <i>Reefer Madness</i>). These scare tactics may work if teens are weighing their options in a safe place with adults they care about. Most teenagers are capable of the same mature, logical thought as adults when they are acting in a state of “cold cognition,” which means they are in the absence of peer interactions or pressure. Ask a kid if they want to Juul in these moments and they will likely say, “No, it’s so bad for you.” However, in the state of “hot cognition,” when the adolescent is in the middle of the social pressure, stress, and anxiety of high school, their answer may be very different. In these situations, the limbic system of the adolescent brain overrides the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, which leads teens to make quick and irrational decisions. One student wrote, <i>“In sophomore year, as school was getting more difficult I was just kind of fed up so the next time I was with a friend and they told me about how de-stressing Juul is, I tried it. I also simply do it to fit in.” </i><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-9397453c-7fff-d8fa-3e7f-9700581f5ebb"></span>Failing to recognize, understand and talk about the reasons that lead teenagers to use nicotine is a general trend across the country, and knowing this is eventually what led us to our “Science of Teenage Vaping” unit. When we began to design, we decided to go big right out of the gate and host a 200-student kick-off. The sole purpose was for students to answer two questions: How do you talk about it, and why do you do it? We asked students to break into small groups and come up with a list of words/phrases that they use to talk about vaping. The world cloud below is the product generated via that work. Look very closely, right between the words “vape” and “Juul” and you will see the word “addiction” in very small print. For the adults in the room, this was eye-opening. Not only did we recognize that there is an entire language surrounding teen nicotine use that we are completely <span id="docs-internal-guid-9397453c-7fff-d8fa-3e7f-9700581f5ebb"></span>unaware of (e.g. nick, stick, rip, juice), but teens are oblivious to the consequences of their actions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkkxa82wjFg-w9HE3gNgJazK2ZNCl_907NFDYZBAGU-u5V6CBpkyeQo2uBOssr-t96qGHuIyvFO3aS6siCvy-IWAbg1XSXzbi4_CRpJm73takXTBYvaao3qQsCyBQSzuoPwgS2uCA5IOmh/s1600/juul.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkkxa82wjFg-w9HE3gNgJazK2ZNCl_907NFDYZBAGU-u5V6CBpkyeQo2uBOssr-t96qGHuIyvFO3aS6siCvy-IWAbg1XSXzbi4_CRpJm73takXTBYvaao3qQsCyBQSzuoPwgS2uCA5IOmh/s1600/juul.png" /></a></div>
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The next question students answered was, why do you do it? After some time consolidating their thoughts they came up with the following reasons: peer pressure, marketing, family modeling, coping strategy, and addiction. These reasons and the science behind them became the foundational knowledge of our unit curriculum, along with the skills of Making Scientific Claims, Using Evidence and Scientific Reasoning.<br />
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We spent the next six weeks guiding students through investigations and analyses of the factors that lead to nicotine use through the lens of the teenage brain. We designed target-based practice activities and assessments that focused on immediate and long term physiological effects of nicotine use (at the molecular, cellular and system level), the factors that contribute to addiction and its development (tolerance, withdrawal, conditioning) and the specific marketing of Juul to teens. In doing this, students used rigorous, engaging, student-driven content to develop transferable skills. <br />
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At the end of the unit, students wrote an essay (using Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning) to respond to one of the following prompts: <br />
<ul>
<li>Are the risks of Juuling worth the rewards? </li>
<li>Is adolescent nicotine use really something we should be concerned about? </li>
<li>Do personal freedoms trump public health?</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAbPFChQBtaZvHknikRve0YYImi0C0kJQ-RO5wVnhWUoO_a_rzo1_nF2BcYdXKPhwVJw9F5as4vZOo-xhMXUiSW_QWekuuLiqBN_UPTVWVFQGxO0BRsvGRBgKERGRhKUYcSgACLTQNKu5n/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-12+at+12.02.29+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="682" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAbPFChQBtaZvHknikRve0YYImi0C0kJQ-RO5wVnhWUoO_a_rzo1_nF2BcYdXKPhwVJw9F5as4vZOo-xhMXUiSW_QWekuuLiqBN_UPTVWVFQGxO0BRsvGRBgKERGRhKUYcSgACLTQNKu5n/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-05-12+at+12.02.29+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Students had already developed the skill of Making Scientific Claims independently throughout the first part of the year so we felt we had solid data regarding each student’s level of mastery. Because of this we encouraged them to work together to write claims. The<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AhE5qLG0PBHXrK5-zMcKZ7HG-f_Kb6sS/view"> </a><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AhE5qLG0PBHXrK5-zMcKZ7HG-f_Kb6sS/view">video</a><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AhE5qLG0PBHXrK5-zMcKZ7HG-f_Kb6sS/view"> </a>shows two groups engaging in this process. <br /><br />We also had a handful of students choose to rewrite our school Juuling policy as an alternative. Regardless of the format, the skill assessment was the same. Students needed to choose a claim, support all parts of their claim with reliable and specific evidence from a provided resource document, and use their content knowledge to provide scientific reasoning. The results were fantastic! Students who had previously struggled with engagement found themselves “in the zone,” writing multiple pages and reaching the target or going beyond on the class scales. However, it was the student reflections that confirmed our choice to take this risk in curriculum redesign for our students.<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I think it is extremely important for me to understand how the teenage brain makes decisions because now I can have a different view on my peers who choose to Juul. Obviously, I never thought they were “bad people” but I know that the environment they are in (inside and outside of school) impacts their decisions. I will know to be thoughtful of the issues people may be facing in their daily lives that will make them want to Juul.”<br /> <br />“I realize why people act differently when they are surrounded by different types of people, which is cool!” </blockquote>
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“Thanks for breaking the walls and the stigma regarding this hard issue!” </blockquote>
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“One aspect that made learning about the negative impacts of Juuling especially hard was knowing that many people I am close with have this addiction. By learning about negative impacts I am learning about bad things that are happening to them.<br /> <br />“Learning about Juuling has made me more nervous for my younger siblings and the choices the will have to make. Have I prepared/equipped them with enough information? According to this unit, no. I need to talk to them more.”<br /> <br />“This information was important to me to understand because both of my parents smoked and my grandma smoked up until she died. Her death was an effect of smoking almost her entire life.”<br /> <br />“My older sister said “I just don’t understand why people would inhale nicotine. It’s so bad for you.” I had a thing or two to say in response to that. I told her all of these complex scientific processes that lead to nicotine addiction and in the brain that I didn’t even realize I knew! She was impressed!”<br /> <br />“I think it was better than learning about the systems and what the do, which would be pretty boring, even though I don’t Juul.”</blockquote>
<br />So, where do we go from here? One thing is certain, we will definitely be teaching this unit again next year, but we hope to broaden the scope to focus on other addictions. As one student wrote, “I think we should do more with weed and booze because that will help a lot of kids with choices in the future.” I guess some language hasn’t changed!<div style="text-align: left;">
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Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-35360445731639798672019-02-21T08:02:00.000-08:002019-02-21T08:02:20.424-08:00Working Together to Solve the "Homework Problem"<span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><b>Guest Blog: This post is written by 11th grade student, Beckett Pintair</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">As a student, homework is a daunting task, with all our </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">countless responsibilities, </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">sometimes, homework can seem like a trivial formality. However, if you think about homework from the teacher perspective, it's a whole different story. Teachers assign homework for various reasons, for practice on subjects taught in class, to read more content for the class, or projects to get kids to do new learning. Whatever the reason, teachers usually have a plan for class that somewhat relies on the completion of the previously assigned work.</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"> If students constantly come into class without their homework done, how do you move forward? </b><br />
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In the past, to solve this problem, teachers were able to grade homework. Students would have to complete their work or their grade would drop. However, in the new age of standards-based grading, where Habits of Learning and homework are ungraded, teachers don't have this power. So the question is: </div>
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How do you get students to complete their homework?</h3>
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The easy answer is to go back to forcing kids to do their work by dangling a grade over their head. But we have learned through research, by Daniel Pink and other leading motivation experts, that "Carrot and Stick" motivation is a short term fix that leads to disengagement. <b>"Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement."</b> This quote by Daniel Pink is about the concept of intrinsic motivation. When students are given the freedom to explore and learn with the sole goal of learning, their engagement levels actually exceed any engagement from grades. With all of this research about intrinsic motivation (I encourage you to read Daniel Pink's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805" style="background: transparent; color: #2196f3; text-decoration-line: none;">Drive</a>), we know that grading homework will only lead to stress, not engagement. </div>
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Now all of this knowledge is great background information for overall education reform, but, none of it helps with the short term problem of homework completion. Here are a few tips from a student to help you improve homework completion without sacrificing long term engagement. </div>
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1) Give students time in class to work on homework.</h4>
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Now I know that this idea might seem like a time suck. However, I have seen first hand how well this strategy works. In classes I have taken where the teacher gives us time in class to work, it ends up saving them time in the long run and increases the quality of the work. When you think about it, a lot of teachers end up having to go over homework, line by line, during class because no students did it in the first place (or they rushed through). A student's schedule is very busy, with sports, SAT practice, college prep, and countless other things; we sometimes don't have time outside of school to do anything, let alone time-draining homework. By giving students time in class, it gives us a designated block that lets us work with no distractions from outside responsibilities. </div>
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<a href="http://www.ejinsight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1474553_97134acb6717a35571f4a705fac90669-692x360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background: transparent; clear: left; color: #2196f3; display: inline-block; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="Image result for homework" border="0" class="irc_mi" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEizlozgR6tjqVH2YcCwJSaD6H_aU9x7Yet7Z2ve1LVQAYJ0e20geOvUrtiSll0ixmEl7-IFZENQYQstORjPrPOMLuk37s-SKZMU4SdmrQm_bxbA1_BHLdJhsxo4lMXVlhc0J8Wdvej-aJaLLbu6LUNJKyvTrqM-fMewTLFCliUPi0_wJTiW-9XRVAdygE4kLaRrPDmk6qFul_MCWsMefV7Gz5-kxtYQJao=s0-d" style="border: 0px; height: inherit; margin-top: 96px; max-width: 100%;" width="320" /></a>2) Give students a time limit for working on their homework.</h4>
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This may seem like a small insignificant detail that won't change anything about students' motivation for homework. However, <b>this small parameter often lets students plan accordingly and give themselves time to complete their work.</b> Students work things up in our heads. A simple 10-minute task can seem like a five-hour project if we don't know how long it is supposed to take. By telling students, "Don't work on this longer than 15 minutes," it takes almost all the pressure away and helps us plan our schedule more effectively. </div>
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<b>It's easy to overthink homework, for both the students and teachers. </b>By giving students these tools and focusing on what is most important, we can decrease student stress and increase class productivity. </div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-17357575220328904932019-01-14T14:17:00.000-08:002019-01-14T14:53:10.660-08:00The Big Edu-Bang: Expanding Ideas Through CollisionWe’ve been thinking a lot lately about how good ideas develop and spread. As we continue diving deeper into innovative educational thinking, we keep coming across ridiculously good ideas being implemented all over the place. If you read Ted Dintersmith’s hopeful book <i>What Schools Could Be</i>, you’ll find hundreds of examples of districts, schools, or individual teachers doing really cool things. If you spend an hour on Google with searches like “Innovative Education,” you’ll find thousands of examples of individual programs and buildings that are breaking out of the conventional to improve learning and engagement in really cool ways. But these cool things and cool ways don’t seem to be spreading much. <br />
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The is true even within our state of Vermont. Visit almost any school and you’ll find a really cool program or system or structure that is unique to that school. We’re a tiny state, no more than about three hours from end to end, so why aren’t these ideas crossing town lines? What hope do we have of scaling innovation in a way that significantly affects student learning nationally if we can’t even walk a great idea next door?<br />
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In his book <i>Where Good Ideas Come From</i>, Steven Johnson writes about nine key ideas that drive innovation. As we think about spreading what works, we have been drawn to three of these ideas in particular:<br />
<ul>
<li>Innovation and evolution thrive in large networks.</li>
<li>Lucky connections between ideas drive innovation.</li>
<li>Serendipitous discoveries can be facilitated by a shared intellectual or physical space.</li>
</ul>
What all of these ideas have in common is an expectation of <b>collaboration and connection</b>. Good ideas rarely come out of individuals or out of offices with closed doors. Whether you are looking at Google or Microsoft or Apple or Burton Snowboards or any number of other innovative companies, all have an open, collaborative environments with time and opportunity for their employees to interact and share and question and imagine. Some have completely open floor plans, some have collaborative workspaces, some have flexible schedules, and some have free drinks on Fridays--but all encourage connection by setting up environments that lead to the collision of ideas.<br />
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We have had two educational experiences recently that exemplify Johnson’s ideas about good ideas, experiences that have shown us the power and potential of thought collisions. <br />
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<b>Experience #1: The Think Tank Summit</b><br />
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We teach a class this year called Think Tank, which is proficiency-based, personalized course that brings high school students to the center of educational change (we're going to invite you all to start your own at the end of this post). Students in grades 10-12 spent the first few months of school learning about the brain, about how people learn, about national and international innovations in education, and about our own local educational strengths and needs. They chose areas of individual interest, researched, blogged, and ultimately developed specific problem statements that they hoped to address. Thanks to a grant from the Nellie Mae Foundation, we organized an opportunity for our students to bring their thinking about the future of education together with experts, stakeholders, and thinkers from their own district (our superintendent, curriculum director, and principal), from around the state (president of Burton Snowboards, local therapists, members of the Agency of Education, college admissions directors), from New England (representatives from Nellie Mae and the Center for Collaborative Education), and from as far as Toronto (assessment expert and author), We had 45 thinkers--half students, half adults--who spent the day talking, listening, and thinking about education. Students shared their concerns and their ideas for how to address them, and the adults asked questions, took notes, made suggestions, challenged ideas, and added complexity. Adults shared their concerns and their hopes and listened as the students pushed back, offered opinions, asked questions, and revised their ideas.<br />
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It was amazing. There was so much passion and hope in that room, and each adult left feeling inspired by how thoughtful adolescents can be when provided agency, time to think, and honest conversation. Each student left feeling heard, empowered, and ready to work with adults to make powerful and difficult change. (visit <a href="http://www.cvuthinktank.weebly.com/">www.cvuthinktank.weebly.com</a> to see the proposed projects that we will work to craft, revise, and implement next semester). <br />
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By bringing together all of these amazing thinkers and providing the space and time for their ideas to collide, seeds of change were planted (mixed metaphor noted). The clinical psychologists listened to the students share the causes and effects of stress, then connected with school leaders about ways to address it. The CEO of Burton listened to a student talk about not being connected to school because the environment made it so difficult for him to learn, then offered him the opportunity to intern at the factory and receive credit. The representative from the Agency of Education asked students to present to the legislature, sharing their experiences and ideas. The author from Toronto talked about the summit with teachers the following week at a conference and they reached out to us via Twitter to learn about starting a Think Tank in their school. Two adult participants from different states have started conversations about how to collaborate across organizations in order to share ideas. These are just a few of the many collisions that have the potential to lead to incredible change, and they were made possible because of lucky connections between ideas, shared intellectual and physical space, and a large network of diverse thinkers with common goals. <br />
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<b>Experience #2: The Interstate Collaboration on Proficiency-Based Learning</b><br />
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Just a month after the Think Tank Summit, 12 teacher leaders and three administrators from our district went to a conference outside of Dallas, Texas and met with a similar number of teacher leaders and administrators from two other schools (Adlai Stevenson outside of Chicago and Mount Vernon in Iowa). This opportunity was a year in the making and was brought about by a large network and by a lucky connection. Ken O’Connor is an active member of the Standards-Based Learning networks on both Twitter and Facebook. He is an avid reader and thinker, and is always working to bring ideas together. Over a year ago he made the connection between Adlai Stevenson and our school, Champlain Valley in Vermont. He noticed that both of our schools were taking a similar approach to Proficiency-Based Learning (PBL), one focused on skill-based targets rather than content-based targets. Soon we were chatting via email, and a few months later, a large group of educators from Adlai Stevenson came to visit CVU. During that visit we came up with an idea to meet at a conference and spend time collaborating and sharing challenges and successes.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoNy2JpBwKrBTYHTZhc2724_cBwh3tFCeeu7iixMQfnbga7Wa9Xh7iYoLXIcTMEsJC-4ILghtujCBfy75nxrKVClgVmLCEIPeDypWS2DU3h4vxJ94Mh883lUHMGICoUwITJjkxo0CIA2C5/s1600/IMG_6632.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoNy2JpBwKrBTYHTZhc2724_cBwh3tFCeeu7iixMQfnbga7Wa9Xh7iYoLXIcTMEsJC-4ILghtujCBfy75nxrKVClgVmLCEIPeDypWS2DU3h4vxJ94Mh883lUHMGICoUwITJjkxo0CIA2C5/s200/IMG_6632.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
Thanks to Tony Reibel (Director of Assessment, Research, and Evaluation at Adlai Stevenson HS), that meeting happened when we were all in Dallas. Tony had connected with leaders from Mount Vernon who were about to take on the transition to PBL with the same skill-based philosophy, so all three schools met for four hours after the first day of the conference to talk, listen, eat, drink, and build relationships. The shared space encouraged us to talk honestly and exchange contact information with like teachers. Since that evening, individual teachers have reached out to share assessments, scales, questions, and exemplars, and our schools have committed to starting a more formal relationship that will involve school visits as soon as this spring.<br />
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Schools are set up to be competitive. In sports, these rivalries are obvious and usually good-natured, but the competition for good press or funds or people is less friendly. Schools compete for excellent teachers, for dedicated staff, and with school choice, they even now compete for students. Local newspapers publish comparisons of test scores, not taking the time to explain the purpose of standardized testing or reasons for variance, and national organizations rate schools based on often absurd criteria. Within schools, the competition can be even more fierce. Teachers compete for student attention, for resources, for time, and for access to opportunities. There is little time or incentive to share ideas or take risks or collaborate. All of those conditions that Steven Johnson writes about take time and demand risk taking. They require sharing and connecting and traveling (physically or digitally) and making the space for collisions and serendipitous discoveries. </div>
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Even though the structure of schools makes it difficult, maybe we can do more to set up the conditions that allow for shared innovation. We can be intentional and creative about how we use time in school. We can establish networks (or join ones that currently exist). We can develop connections between and among educators and business people and students. We can create shared spaces--physical and digital--where ideas can collide and grow. <br />
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This work is too hard to do alone and too important not to do, so let’s start by intentionally encouraging collisions. How about starting a Think Tank course at your school? We’d love to collide...email us if you are interested. <a href="mailto:erinkema@cvsdvt.org">erinkema@cvsdvt.org</a> (Emily) and <a href="mailto:slwilliams@cvsdvt.org">slwilliams@cvsdvt.org</a> (Stan)</div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-87633622357295064582018-10-29T06:03:00.003-07:002018-10-31T03:53:37.711-07:00Assessing to Develop Skill, Not Identify It<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Thomas Guskey said that a teacher’s job should be to <a href="http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov11/vol69/num03/Five-Obstacles-to-Grading-Reform.aspx">“develop talent, not select talent.”</a> This statement is easy to agree with on the surface--of course we are developing talent, we’re teachers! Students come to us, we teach them, and they leave knowing, understanding, or being able to do more, right? But the true test of whether we are actually developing or selecting is to examine our assessment systems. Does the way we assess ensure growth, or does it just happen to capture growth when it happens? Is the system we set up designed to intentionally improve all students’ skills, or to identify those who can or cannot? </div>
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<b>Here’s an example:</b><br />
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Yesterday in class, we asked our students to use what they had learned about brain-friendly and brain-hostile practices (From Thomas Armstrong’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Power-Adolescent-Brain-Strategies-Teaching/dp/1416621873">Power of the Adolescent Brain</a>) to evaluate a half-dozen models of education. They had spent a previous class learning about the models (i.e. Montessori, KIPP, place-based, language immersion schools, etc) and taking notes on each, and they had read and talked about the neuroscience; ultimately, we wanted them to use their evaluation of the models to determine which model (or combination of models) would be most effective in our community.<br />
Simple, right? <br />
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Out of 20 students, here’s what we got:<br />
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<li>Three students nailed it. They applied their knowledge of neuroscience to the provided models and then used that application to evaluate the potential effectiveness of the models in our own community. </li>
<li>Eight students were close, but they jumped right to the evaluation, so their findings, while occasionally referencing the neuroscience, lacked the weight of the first set. </li>
<li>Six students were close in a different way. They had very thorough application of the neuroscience, color-coding and using symbols to critically read and apply a variety of elements of the brain research, but they forgot about the overall goal, which was to evaluate effectiveness of a model in our community. </li>
<li>Three students gave very detailed explanations of their own opinions about the models, using the lens of their experience to highlight pros and cons. </li>
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In the (not-too-distant) past, we would have scored these (using our general critical thinking scale, which includes evaluation), written comments to 17 of them about what they were missing, recorded a few 4s, lots of 3s, and a few 2s or 1s in the grade book, and then moved on to the next set of content. <i>In other words, we would have “selected talent,” identifying those that could do what we asked and those that could not.</i><br />
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Even though we thought we had been clear in our expectations, we fell short in our instruction of the central skill we wanted--evaluation. We assumed that because we had taught the content--the neuroscience--that students would be able to successfully apply it to a skill we had explained. The results of our assessment showed otherwise.<br />
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Instead of recording scores and moving on, we discovered that we had do the hard work of determining and articulating what exactly it means <i>to evaluate an idea or a model</i>. It’s not enough for us to know what we want, we also have to be able to communicate the increasing levels of skill complexity that will lead to what we want--and then we have to design incremental instruction and practice to ensure that all of our students improve on the skill. <b>In other words, we have to intentionally develop the talent.</b> (And after our next assessment that uses this skill, we will likely need to differentiate in order to continue that development.)<br />
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After yesterday’s class, we determined we needed a separate learning scale for Evaluating a Claim, Model, or Idea, as it’s a skill we will continue to instruct and apply throughout the year. Our general critical thinking scale would have allowed us to assess, but not to instruct what we really intended to instruct. The student work we collected yesterday has helped us figure out what this might look like, and we will continue to test and revise this scale until it becomes an effective tool for <b>development of the skill, not just for assessment of the skill</b>.<br />
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Evaluating a Claim, Model, or Idea (Working Draft!)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9TX23hYZw3lRjmS6IA9KlKGOUcr6cZpcwCnV8P05LG7NCjZgblwJHZhcgCjHjMzqiwKI92jT3Tw3htH6CDPEKbyVgiFWiW5ZwX8oiYggyZYkfYIQTGrnLIpURFpxpLjzKgEjzh6UXIB2B/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-10-29+at+9.08.42+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="844" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9TX23hYZw3lRjmS6IA9KlKGOUcr6cZpcwCnV8P05LG7NCjZgblwJHZhcgCjHjMzqiwKI92jT3Tw3htH6CDPEKbyVgiFWiW5ZwX8oiYggyZYkfYIQTGrnLIpURFpxpLjzKgEjzh6UXIB2B/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-10-29+at+9.08.42+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
There used to be an element of assessment for us that involved closing our eyes and crossing our fingers and hoping students nailed it. And honestly (and with a bit of embarrassment), there was often an element that included rationalizing poor performance by blaming the learners (they didn’t try, they didn’t listen, they didn’t focus, etc…). We used rubrics to assess--and maybe to explain requirements--but didn't see their value as instructional tools--in other words, we used them to select, not to develop.<br />
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When we accept that our job as teachers must be to<b> develop learning, not merely to identify it when it happens,</b> then everything changes. Our assessments become diagnostic and the results are as much (or more) about us and for us than they are about or for our students. We become compelled to use the results of those assessments to shift (or completely change) direction in order to improve student success. <b>And when our success as teachers becomes inextricably tied to our students’ success, we become better teachers. </b><br />
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Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-19291855469205041072018-05-14T08:22:00.001-07:002018-05-15T03:21:43.397-07:00Stop Judging and Start Trusting: We are ready to change the world<br />
<b>Guest Post: Written by 10th grade student Sabine Foerg</b><br />
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<span style="color: #858585; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 15px;">There are so many factors in life that tell us we can't do things.</span><br />
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From a young age, it is the societal norm to teach kids not to take risks. Don't jump off the swing set. You aren't tall enough to go on the slide. Don't talk to strangers, don't cross the street alone.</div>
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This is protection, the teaching of survival. At some point in every child's life, they need to take risks, for risks are what define who they are. I am not referring to risks like jumping off the swing set (although some kids just have to learn that one the hard way) . I am referring to larger, scarier risks, where the jump feels much further than the drop from a swing. They start small, with the raise of one's hand in class when they aren't sure of the answer. The risk of the unknown, the risk of being judged. Soon those risks turn to standing up for oneself, one's beliefs, or a peer: the risk of speaking one's mind, no matter the cost. </div>
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There are people in this world who tell youth that we can't do things. We are too busy being on our phones, we don't care about the world around us, we don't know how to interact. They say we have lost the ability to think for ourselves for the sake of the comfort of avoiding risks. This unfair stereotype brings us down as we are told we are stupid. It brings us down as we are told our ideas are invalid. In my own school, I have been told that my generation's collective mind is hollowed out with our lack of ideas. I have been told that we need information spoon fed to us like we are small children in need of constant care. As this opinion of my incompetence was drilled into my brain, a constant stream of busywork and worksheets piles onto my desk. My hand cramps at the end of a long classes of notes, and my brain is filled to maximum capacity with facts and dates and formulas.</div>
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Contradiction? I think yes. </div>
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When the worksheets are shoved aside and conversation is finally allowed, conversations filled with ideas and opinions begin. My generation marched for our rights and our beliefs. We have raised thousands upon thousands of dollars for causes we deem important. We debate current issues and share solutions with one another. We talk to and write to and email our representatives and government. We take risks because of who we are, not because our textbooks taught us to. Those risks can and have changed the world. </div>
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So, no, maybe I don't have an opinion on the effects of an obscure war that happened hundreds of years ago and has since been forgotten. I don't care about the chemical makeup of the stalk of a plant, but this does not make me or my generation mindless. We want to know how to make the world a peaceful place now. We want to help solve global warming, we want our opinions valued. The things that we care about don't come from a textbook. We are not shallow, and we do take risks. We can prove society's opinion of us wrong over and over again, and we will continue to prove them wrong for the rest of our lives. Our current education system only prevents us from taking these risks. We should be learning about how TO change the world, not only about how it has changed in the past. We should be out in the world sharing our ideas and opinions, because they ARE valid. Education is stuck in a parked car on the highway while the rest of the world speeds past us. All they have to do is give us the keys. </div>
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<section class="comments embed" data-num-comments="0" id="comments" style="border: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px 20px 20px;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="comments" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3854f4; font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, FreeSerif, serif; font-size: 15px;"></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #858585; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 15px;"></span></section>Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-12593552775611483282018-05-10T12:01:00.002-07:002018-05-11T03:32:27.770-07:00Proficiency, Personalization, and a Cocktail Napkin: or, how PBL became PPBL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Adam (our principal) had these two sentences written on the whiteboard in his office last summer when we came in for a meeting:</div>
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<b><br />Personalization creates ownership without the certainty of integrity.</b></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Proficiency creates integrity without the certainty of ownership.</span><br />
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He had been playing around with the relationship between the two “initiatives” that have taken over the state of Vermont and that had been at the center of our school’s thinking and planning and implementation for years. We all created a mind map around the two sentences that day, listing programs, structures, and systems we had in place to support both proficiency and personalization, and how we would need to balance ongoing professional development to ensure equal focus on each. <br />
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But it wasn’t until last week at Lake Morey that we truly understood the implications of those claims and how we needed to make a single, simple shift in our thinking. More about that in a minute. <br />
Our 6 member Curriculum Instruction Team was at Lake Morey for a 2-day conference with personalization expert and researcher Allison Zmuda. Allison is a bit of a legend among our CIT at CVU because of some direction she gave us years ago at a conference in San Antonio Texas. We had been struggling with some heavy thinking and she pulled us out in the hallway, listened to our rambling, abstract, unpolished ideas, asked a few questions, and then cut right to the heart of our intent, providing the direction we had been seeking. That evening we finally figured it out...on a cocktail napkin. We drank to Allison at that moment, and since then she has taken on symbolic status among our group. <br />
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The conference focused on personalization and habits of mind, and Allison had done her homework about Vermont. She had met with the Vermont Agency of Education, read extensively about the direction Vermont is headed, and had been on the websites of the schools of the participants. She had name-tags for us all with our first names printed large enough to read from across the room, and by the end of the two days, just about all of us in the room were on a first-name basis. She asked us all about our questions, our concerns, and our interests on the first morning, and then shifted her focus throughout to address them all in some form. She set clear outcomes, provided lots of structure early on, helped us design our own guiding questions a bit later, and then supported us as we broke out on our own towards the end. In other words, she personalized the experience for each of us while remaining true to the integrity of her desired outcomes; through a gradual release model, she gave us voice, co-created goals for our work together, provided opportunities for social construction of meaning, and ultimately set us up for self-discovery.<br />
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<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgLav3ynGMqJupTBSa8Axv8hO4qnnc2GV8R91aWW_gjOvQj2KCuLxTYXABChklej3Roha8VYFYQnvDxjscKtZBz0nKMj-bGoQdzpQumFxItnS2mS0-O9rsyCSrTrxoQKT_WwWZEPIELy_t/s1600/IMG_5823.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgLav3ynGMqJupTBSa8Axv8hO4qnnc2GV8R91aWW_gjOvQj2KCuLxTYXABChklej3Roha8VYFYQnvDxjscKtZBz0nKMj-bGoQdzpQumFxItnS2mS0-O9rsyCSrTrxoQKT_WwWZEPIELy_t/s200/IMG_5823.JPG" width="200" /></a>And just like in San Antonio, our self-discovery happened in the hallway where Allison sent us to push through our stuck points. We had brought tiles (small pieces of paper with words and concepts printed on them) so that we could be flexible in our thinking (we had each sat at the hotel the evening before trying to make sense of the ideas with our own sets of tiles), and we spread them out on the table and spent an hour moving them, challenging each other, revising our thinking, and trying to figure out how to represent the relationship between personalization and proficiency and the way all of our systems, structures, and programs supported this relationship. It was hard. It was unpleasant at times. There was tension, frustration, misunderstanding, disagreement, and awkward silence. But we knew our task (to represent relationships), we knew our purpose (to develop a common understanding in order to drive professional development), and we believed so strongly in the need for clarity that we kept going. And then we got it. And by “got it” we mean we finally came to common understanding of the interaction between and among complex elements driving our work. By no means was this the endpoint...in fact, it finally gave us a solid starting point. <br />
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So what did we figure out about the two sentences on the whiteboard from last summer? We figured out that we cannot move forward at CVU thinking that proficiency and personalization are separate components of or pathways to learning. We cannot plan for each separately, divvying up time between them like cake to siblings. We need to shift our thinking to see these as inseparable parts of the same system, not only relying on each other for integrity and purpose, but demanding each other in order to have any chance of transformational learning. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7pKm3oauWYIWU3VVGYsxs-KuinrO7-TjujMr8zkmDAYK63HrSqOTsq6TmwIC8OrV3EklaTRrS0NyeTSdUV6vVnQqR2_vKAxxdBR4xpvxQIFN_cH-wgbP6btqi6nINBlCXA1ieJtAJYjZw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-05-11+at+6.31.01+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="512" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7pKm3oauWYIWU3VVGYsxs-KuinrO7-TjujMr8zkmDAYK63HrSqOTsq6TmwIC8OrV3EklaTRrS0NyeTSdUV6vVnQqR2_vKAxxdBR4xpvxQIFN_cH-wgbP6btqi6nINBlCXA1ieJtAJYjZw/s200/Screen+Shot+2018-05-11+at+6.31.01+AM.png" width="200" /></a>Transformational learning results in engagement, direction, purpose, and skills that transfer to the world outside of school. That is such a great goal for our students--so much better than a high GPA or polished transcript or a certain number of credits. And the way to encourage that type of learning for ALL students is right in front of us. We are in the middle of real transformation, not just for student learning, but for our entire school system (and state!), and it’s PPBL (Personalized, Proficiency-Based Learning) that will allow us to get there. <span id="docs-internal-guid-b9533ef9-4b69-b343-40a1-24df4262073d"></span></div>
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Personalization and proficiency are not the goals; they are the means to the greater goal of transformational learning. Many of us have experienced personalization without clarity of goals and intentional design, and while some students may have positive experiences, we cannot ensure learning or challenge for all. As Allison Zmuda said at the conference, “Creativity appreciates constraints--it thrives on constraints.” Clear goals, constant and timely feedback based on those goals, and intentionally designed opportunities for instruction, practice, and reflection allow students to find their voices, discover their strengths, interests, and challenges, and collaboratively construct meaning. When combined, the elements of both Proficiency-Based Learning and Personalized Learning provide the constraints, the creativity, and the freedom that transformational learning requires.<br />
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Now, on our whiteboard we have written:<br />
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<b>Proficiency and personalization provide the integrity and ownership necessary for transformational learning experiences.</b></div>
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We have so much work to do as a school, a district, and a state as we all try to improve learning for students. One of the great reminders we took from the conference was that our profession is not about getting it right--it’s about constantly getting it better. Educators need to think of work the way artists, engineers, and entrepreneurs do using the design, prototype, iterate process of thinking. So our school will now move forward with this next iteration knowing that it too will need to be revisited, revised, and reimagined as we continue to work towards transformational learning for all.</div>
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Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-33781920241779326132017-11-24T08:54:00.000-08:002017-11-26T06:29:00.881-08:00How to Argue with Standards-Based Learning<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">So you are a parent or student or teacher or community member who is currently facing the prospect of significant changes to education. You have heard the talk about standards-based learning and grading, maybe read articles or opinion pieces in the newspaper, maybe listened to a family member get upset or a neighbor or a colleague. And now you are ready to a) make a phone call, b) show up at an informational night, or c) write a letter to the editor. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to help you with this next step in the change process, here are some suggestions about how to argue with standards-based grading and learning.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t challenge the intent, question the implementation.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are upset with the coming changes, do your homework and find out how your school and district is planning to implement them. The more you understand standards-based learning and grading, the more you will realize that it is not only logical, but will more readily prepare our young people for the learning they will face throughout their lives. Most professions have standards-based evaluation systems, most jobs require clear goals and proficiency in core skills, and most of our futures will require the ability to transfer skills and understanding to varied and challenging settings. One of the major purposes of school is to prepare our young people for the world they will inherit and influence, and the best way to do that it is provide them lots of instruction and practice with innovation, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills. That’s what standards-based learning and grading is meant to enable.</span><br />
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<span style="color: purple;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal;">“With well-designed pedagogy, we can empower kids with critical skills and help them turn passions into decisive life advantages. The role of education is no longer to teach content, but to help our children learn—in a world that rewards the innovative and punishes the formulaic.” </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal;">― </span><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/445624.Tony_Wagner" style="background-color: white; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: normal;">Tony Wagner</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal;">, </span><span id="quote_book_link_25719691" style="background-color: white; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal;"><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/45554459" style="font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era</a></span></span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">So question the implementation, not the intent. Making significant changes in how we teach, instruct, assess, and report learning will not be easy, and your school and district should have a plan to allow for these changes while providing safety nets for our students. Here are some questions you might want to ask:</span><br />
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What type of ongoing training will the teachers have to ensure they understand the purpose behind the changes? </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What type of support will the teachers have along the way? Who are the people in the building the teachers can go to when they have questions, run into obstacles, or aren’t sure what to do?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do the school leaders have a deep understanding of the why and the how of standards-based learning? Does the school board understand and support the changes?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What supports are available for students while they are learning a new set of rules about learning? Who is available to answer their questions if their teachers cannot? Who will listen to them when they are frustrated? </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What supports are available for parents as they navigate these changes? Who do they talk to when things don’t make sense or their children are upset or they have questions about systems and structures that may look nothing like they are used to?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will the report cards and transcripts look like? Will they be different? Will our students still have a GPA? If not, what additional communication will the school be doing to ensure our students are not at a disadvantage?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t attack the research, request resources.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Research is tricky when it comes to education. Because there are so many factors that influence success (and so many ways to measure success), there is little accurate or transferable research about any pedagogical methods. For example, while many opponents to standards-based learning will say there is “no research” to show that it’s better, they forget that there is also no research to show that it’s not. The research we need to rely on in education is the most recent understanding of how humans learn combined with what we know about the future. When we look at what we now know about the brain and learning, there is no way we can continue to practice education as we have for the last one hundred years; we must adapt our practices--as we do in every other profession--based on the latest understanding in the field. When we combine that research with what we are coming to understand about our present and our future, it’s even clearer that we need to be preparing students differently. Students used to come to school to learn from those who knew more than they did. The goal was for experts (teachers) to impart their wisdom to a new set of young people and then celebrate when those young people could repeat back what they learned. We felt successful when students mastered a set of knowledge, understanding, and skills that we determined they would need. Now, that is not enough. We have no idea what our students will need in 20 years. Their world will look nothing like ours in many ways, and so we need to prepare them to adapt, transfer skills and understanding to new situations, and solve problems that we haven’t even realized yet. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; white-space: normal;"><i>"We hear from employers regularly about how ill prepared graduates are, even graduates from elite colleges, to take on workplace responsibilities. How creativity and imagination have been schooled out of them. How they seem allergic to unstructured problems. How they seek constant micromanagement and the workplace equivalent of a daily, or even hourly grade." Wagner and Dintersmith</i></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />So request resources from the school. Ask them to bring in local business leaders to talk to the community about changing needs and skills. Read </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most Likely to Succeed </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith--ask your school to purchase copies of this and run a book club. Get them to show the movie for the community. Email experts and researchers with your specific questions--so many of them are willing and excited to engage with the community and assist schools. Ask the school librarian to start a page on the website with resources, and request that they share titles that the school and teachers are reading to stay up to date on the latest research about learning and the latest best practices in pedagogy.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t give in or give up, join in.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, if you really want to write a letter, make phone calls, or show up at a meeting with something to say, let that something be in the name of improving education. Arguing that schools should stay the same or even return to the way they were for us is like arguing that we should bring back leeches in surgery, that we should revisit horse-drawn carriages in transportation, or be satisfied with the overpriced and clunky renewable energy sources. In all other areas of our lives we expect (and demand) progress and innovation. We want our tech people to be up to date on the latest bugs and fixes; we want our doctors to have access to the most recent studies; and we want our contractors using the most energy-efficient materials in our homes. In no other profession do we value the past and fear the future as heavily as we do in education. We want faster internet, we want more effective cancer drugs, and we want safer cars. So why don't we want the same for our schools? Why don't we expect our teachers and administrators to act on the latest research about learning? Why aren’t we demanding that that our local and national education leaders understand how the brain works? Why aren’t we furious at colleges and universities for holding fast to antiquated admissions and pedagogical practices (and charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so)? Why aren’t we holding our schools to the same standards of progress and innovation we demand in the rest of our lives? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<i><span style="color: purple;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; white-space: normal;">"Even the most elite schools do no prepare students for the reality of work as it is today, let alone what it will become in the future. Most large organizations are undergoing a massive transformation as they move from industrial to innovation-economy business models. The students that thrive within today's education system are achievement driven, rule oriented, compliant, linear, singular in focus (i.e., a business or engineering major). The world of work today requires future leaders to be relationship or collaborative driven, rule-defining, creative and innovative, lateral and polymathic in focus. The gap is huge and sadly, I see only a few progressive school really stepping up to the transformation required to match that of our businesses." </span></span>Annmarie Neal - author of Leading From the Edge</span></i></blockquote>
<i><span style="color: purple; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></i><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standards-based learning and grading is not going to change the world today or even tomorrow. And by no means is it the end game for the educational transformation that needs to occur. But based on what we now know about the brain, about learning, and about the future (and arguably, about the present), it is a a first step, a difficult, but achievable way forward. It has the potential to provide the foundation our schools and communities need to make real change, not for the sake of change, but for the sake of our future and our students' futures.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are really fired up, that’s great. Education needs more parents, teachers, students, and community members fired up. We need people willing to read, to listen, to question, to challenge, and to engage in the difficult but necessary transformation that is coming. Our schools are so intertwined with everything in our community, so steeped in tradition and weighed down by communal experience, and so intensely personal to each and every one of us that the only way we are going to make substantive, meaningful, and essential change is to join together and demand it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So make that phone call, write that letter, and show up at that meeting fired up. But please consider fighting to make things better, not keep them the same. </span></div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-43452359676231653512017-08-10T08:06:00.001-07:002017-09-12T10:30:27.236-07:00Communicating with Families in a Standards-Based Class<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the mistakes we made early on in our transition to standards-based grading and reporting was our communication with parents. Because we understood our students’ learning so much better than we had in the past, we assumed that reporting that learning to parents would not only help them understand the benefits of a standards-based system, but also see that we were intentionally addressing both strengths and struggles. So after a quarter of great learning and tracking and assessing, we sent detailed standards-based reports home with a key and a brief explanation. We waited for the praise to roll in.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-b2371672-cca8-6f21-dce9-bc04d071fc0b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What we forgot, however, was that most parents really want one thing above all else. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>They want to know we like their kids.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Yes, most also want to know if they are being decent human beings, if they are getting their work done, where they are struggling, and where they are excelling, but if we know their kids well enough to appreciate the quirks, understand the contradictions, and ultimately enjoy the people they have raised, then parents are happy. Our mistake was showing that we knew their students academically, without taking the time to show we knew--and liked--them as people as well.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having a comprehensive communication plan is vital in all classrooms, but maybe even more so as we transition to standards-based learning. The shift to a completely new method of teaching and grading can be a difficult change for students and parents, and forgetting to communicate what we often do best--which is getting to know our students--can make the transition even harder. Initially, tracking and reporting learning can take a lot of time for teachers, particularly if they are learning a new grade book tool or using technology differently for the first time; the idea of communicating in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">addition</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to standards-based reporting can cause stress and force teachers to steal time from other important tasks such as planning or assessing. Even so, it’s an essential part of the transition that can make the difference between class- and school-wide implementation success or failure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Plan: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A comprehensive classroom communication plan has multiple purposes, which at times overlap. We have separated them here, but you’ll notice that some of the strategies cross parts, making the communication more efficient. Depending on your teaching situation and the number of students, you may need to adjust ideas to fit your context, and you and your colleagues may have other tried and true strategies to add to these lists. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Personal Connections: </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parents want to know you care about their kid. This means occasional communications about specific, personal interactions, needs, successes, or other relevant updates. </span></div>
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<li><b>Personal emails:</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One teacher takes 20 minutes every Friday afternoon to send personal emails. She keeps a list of students and checks off when she emails their families. The emails are short and positive--one nice thing that the student did that week. She can usually get through 10 students each week, though says she tries to send one positive email to each family within the first month.</span></li>
<li><b>Postcards or notes home</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>:</b> Like the emails, this is a great way to quickly connect. One teacher gets a set of mailing labels printed at the beginning of the year and pre-labels postcards (generic ones that the school prints). She keeps these next to her computer and tries to send one a day. </span></li>
<li><b>Parent conferences:</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This is a common way to make personal connections, and teachers we talked to recommended always starting and ending the conferences with positive, personal stories or observations. </span></li>
<li><b>Individual comments on standards-based reports</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (at end of unit, in the portal, or at reporting time): Most standards-based grading and reporting tools allow teachers to enter individual comments. While this can take extra time, a few positive and personal words can go a long way to showing parents you know their kids and care about their success. </span></li>
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<b>Curriculum:</b> <span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parents want to know what you’re doing in class. Letting them know the content you are using to practice important skills can help them feel connected to their kids, and can also give them ideas for conversations at home. If your standards are mostly skill-based, then communicating about content becomes even more important, as your reporting system may not include the rich, engaging choices you and the students are making about content. Some parents are really interested in the curriculum, while others just want to know that there is one, so it’s important to find a balance--consider a system that provides layers of detail that parents can access if they choose.</span><br />
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<li><b>Class and/or team blogs or websites:</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> </b>While it can be time-consuming to keep up a blog or website, many teachers are turning to their students to help, providing a relevant anchor task and another way to work on skills and collaboration. One teacher assigns small writing teams to the task each week, providing guidelines for updates, a chance to include photos, and practice at asking and responding to questions. Another updates his website each unit, providing detailed descriptions of what they will be studying, links to additional videos and related TED talks, and a calendar of summative assessments. In order to ensure the parents see these updates, he sends a group email to the parents.</span></li>
<li><b>Google classroom or other LMS</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (learning management system): Many teachers use an LMS to organize tasks and assignments for students, and these can be used with parents as well. Parents can have access to their students’ sites, and some teachers set up views for parents within the system as well. </span></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TisPoeXBWq6NK-ysz8o69EbnrTK4cuc1_cTtF07PsBc/edit" target="_blank"><b>Common blurb on top of standards-based reports</b>:</a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TisPoeXBWq6NK-ysz8o69EbnrTK4cuc1_cTtF07PsBc/edit" target="_blank"> </a>Most reporting tools allow teachers to write and post a common message for parents and families. This is an efficient way to provide an overview of the curriculum, but should not take the place of more detailed communication for parents who want it.</span></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKOaDbL5XjGc_mLfSsr8O20j276vv3kk3-LJEf2lYqI/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank"><b>Weekly emails from students to parents:</b> </a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is one of our favorites, and can be used for a variety of purposes. One team of teachers has their students write to their families every Friday. They carve out 30 minutes to reflect on the week in a variety of categories, including content, habits, skills, and questions. The students cc their home-room teachers, and the teachers have set up the emails to go directly into a folder (so they don’t fill up their inboxes!). The expectation is that this is communication between student and family, but the teachers can monitor what’s being communicated if necessary. Parents have loved this, and often reply to their kids (parents are told that teachers will not reply to these emails!).</span></li>
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<b>Habits and Behaviors</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>: </b>Parents want to know their kid is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and what to do (or what you’re doing) if they’re not. So many parents get in the habit of checking online portals for completion, which can cause misunderstandings and stress when they are not accurate or updated regularly. Constant checking like this can lead to a much greater focus on compliance than on learning, so it’s important to develop a system that allows accountability and provides necessary information without distracting from what is most important. </span><br />
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<li><b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKOaDbL5XjGc_mLfSsr8O20j276vv3kk3-LJEf2lYqI/edit" target="_blank">Weekly emails from students to parents:</a></b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Getting students to keep track of their own work completion can help them practice positive executive functioning skills. Having students include a to-do list in their weekly email keeps parents informed and prevents having to communicate this in other ways. Early in the year, this may require more organization on the teacher’s part (ensuring the lists are accurate!), but as time goes on, there will only be a handful of students who need continued guidance (and this is ok--students’ executive functioning skills develop at different rates through adolescence). These emails are also a great place to ask students to reflect on their behaviors or habits for the week--providing guiding questions can be helpful. One teacher we know also has a few email templates for students who need more structure, with questions already entered.</span></li>
<li><b>Weekly contact from core teachers:</b> <span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teachers who work on a team can collaborate on this type of communication. One team we work with has 4 teachers and 80 middle school students. They meet once a week to formally talk about students anyway, and during this time they create a google doc list of any significant habits/behaviors or missing work issues that need to be communicated to parents. The core teacher (homeroom teacher) then writes emails home to the students on their list that need communication. They found this system to be effective, and quickly realized that they did not need to email home every time a student missed an assignment--they were able to coordinate with each other to use school time to address most issues, and those that couldn’t be resolved could then be communicated.</span></li>
<li><b>Summary habits scores in standards-based reports: </b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the teacher’s job to improve problem habits and behaviors, not just to report them, so we strongly suggest using the formal reporting system for summative habit scores only--and combining this with personal comments and follow up communication as necessary. </span></li>
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<b>Learning</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>:</b> Finally, parents do also want to know how their kid is progressing in skills--where they excel and where they struggle. Some want to know this so they can help at home, some want to know what questions to ask, and others want to make sure their children are progressing as expected. Teachers in standards-based classrooms have LOTS of information about learning to share, and we caution you to work with families to determine the level of information that is most useful and desired. The level of detail we need as teachers is not always what parents need or want, and can lead to overload, frustration, and disconnection.</span><br />
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<li><b>Unit and/or marking period reports</b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>:</b> During these formal reporting periods, teachers will have the most accurate, summative data about the learning targets to report. It’s important to let parents and students know that while summative, these current levels of achievement are just that, current. They can change as the learning changes. Make sure there is a simple key with explanations of what they will see, as well as any other contextual information that is relevant to the report. If sending a standards-based report home for the first time, we highly recommend an email or letter prior to receiving it, and an opportunity for questions or feedback after receiving it.</span></li>
<li><b>Portal: </b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many standards-based grading tools offer a portal, where parents and students can check their progress and achievement whenever they want. This can be confusing to parents new to standards-based grading, particularly if you previously had a portal based on completion and points. Be sure to clearly communicate to parents and students about what will be updated and when, how it’s different than an assignment-based portal, and all of the other ways they have to see how their students are doing in your class.</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no single tool that can quickly and comprehensively communicate all of the above purposes at the same time, and wishing that the standards-based grade book tool could take care of it all will just lead to frustration for everyone. Developing new and effective ways to </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">communicate with our families during the transition to a standards-based system may be a bit more time consuming initially, but making sure that families feel included during the changes will provide the safety and trust we all need to improve learning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/19IfVg-j8CbXf6Mn_rs72mWUUOOzPzWrgK_lgJJ9S_yM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Here is a template with an example of a full communication plan for a team.</a> Feel free to use as is or adapt for your needs!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have other strategies you use to build relationships and communicate for a variety of purposes? Let us know!</span></div>
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Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-90330828618577369132017-05-29T12:30:00.000-07:002017-05-31T08:48:26.608-07:00Imagine the Possibilities: Romancing SBL<br />
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Hz5qbplVFkB8ou68-axiPAmm07y0T9i-U3J99fYr_wp3bIz1cqOeEfai6kTu9OAIRdxN5ImKM4nPwN-TZFLVkOw-Azuo_t60pPN8CtbJ7zqjUBWZXk5pd1msudKkLIvXcYzr3C1A" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Hz5qbplVFkB8ou68-axiPAmm07y0T9i-U3J99fYr_wp3bIz1cqOeEfai6kTu9OAIRdxN5ImKM4nPwN-TZFLVkOw-Azuo_t60pPN8CtbJ7zqjUBWZXk5pd1msudKkLIvXcYzr3C1A" style="border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="183" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">We’ve been thinking a lot lately about why SBL is so important. For the past 8 years, this has been almost our sole focus, first as classroom teachers trying to make it work, and then as instructional leaders, helping others make it work. And after almost a decade, we are not yet burnt out; in fact, despite frustrations and obstacles and curveballs and exhaustion, we are more energized than ever. Why? <b>Because SBL has the potential to transform education in really cool ways.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you haven’t yet watched </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODfUcc-0YLY" target="_blank">Dr. Robert Duke’s amazing lecture</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at Cornell University, clear your schedule for the next hour and do so. It’s called “Why Students Don’t Learn What We Think We Teach,” and centered within 50 minutes of insight and humor, he talks about the balance between romance and precision. So often, Duke says, we think learners need to master the details--precision--before they can truly experience the romance of a discipline or a subject or a topic. But the problem is that the precision is hard. It requires patience and perseverance and reflection. It requires sweat and failure and doubt. All of that is important--vital, actually--but why on earth would anyone struggle through all of that precision? Why take the time to sweat and fail and doubt and practice and reflect and repeat? Because of the romance. Because of the possibilities that precision open up.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same is true of SBL. It’s so easy to get caught up in the precision of the transformation and forget the romance. We spend so much time on targets and scales and assessments and reporting; we dive into the measuring and the calibrating and the tracking so we can more accurately communicate about learning. This is all vital. And it’s hard. So hard (See: <a href="http://cvulearnsblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/this-sbl-thing-is-freakin-hard.html" target="_blank">This SBL Thing is Freakin’ Hard</a>). We want teachers to be patient, to be reflective, to persevere, to fail, to sweat, and to keep trying. We say it’s better for learning (true), and that it will improve engagement (true), and that we will have much more honest and clear communication (true). But if we don’t balance that precision with the romance of possibility, then we risk getting lost in the details and losing sight of what can be.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, set aside your targets and scales and grade-books and KUDs and common assessments for a few minutes, and let yourself be romanced. Imagine the possibilities that SBL allows!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine if we had no bells. </span></div>
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/S-EGpn6b2R1YeH2XUZ6xNnzxGYc_BmwoHhwh_tCt8iYvRN752H4KMlBDf0YCUH5RjQWflZv9PMp60Q1oYEgXZAP6GP94bIXjvHmqDoQvMnEcL0lZuPh5tZE_DB246VeiQqPSJfMU" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/S-EGpn6b2R1YeH2XUZ6xNnzxGYc_BmwoHhwh_tCt8iYvRN752H4KMlBDf0YCUH5RjQWflZv9PMp60Q1oYEgXZAP6GP94bIXjvHmqDoQvMnEcL0lZuPh5tZE_DB246VeiQqPSJfMU" style="border: none; font-size: 11pt; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if the schedule was driven by interest and need rather than by bells? Bells were instituted in schools to efficiently move large numbers of students in and out of classrooms. They are a system of control that signify the start and/or end of usually equal blocks of time someone has determined is necessary. Google “Bell Schedules” and poke around at the first few you find. Here are some interesting things we found:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; clear: left; color: black; float: left; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In some schools bells ring every 28 minutes (to accommodate middle and high school needs with a single bell system), some ring every 53 minutes, and some every 90 minutes. In some schools there is a bell to signify the start of class, a bell to signify the end of class, and a warning bell to signify that the bell that will signify the start of the <span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">next </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">class is about to ring. When you stop to think about it, it’s nuts. When was the last time you met a friend for lunch at 12:13? When was the last time you had a meeting with your financial planner at 9:36? How can any learner, particularly adolescent learners, be expected to reach any understanding or depth when switching activities every 28 or 42 or 53 or even 87 minutes? </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We could overhaul the schedule.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Imagine what it could look like (and sound like!) if students moved when we and they determined it was time based on learning needs and interest. Students might build their own weekly or monthly schedules (with help from an advisor), and may spend 28 minutes on certain tasks and 3 hours on others. If we have a way to track and monitor learning--and if students understand their own strengths and challenges more than they ever have--then we no longer have to live by the bell. If we are working together as a school on transferable skills, then we will no longer need to chunk the day into equal-size blocks, and can instead flex our time to meet the needs of our learners. What would it look like? How would it be organized? What are the obstacles? No idea. But imagine if we could figure it out.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine if we had no disciplines.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; clear: left; color: black; float: left; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/6O3Bgxs5foWLRn-wcauIZmUIsQz9Ccz8BPlMXXD0HocmmwnhkbX4Fcvlc2bFNmyus50HMAJ5058YvIritjWaAcRHxr7_PlQFMmRRZMlotebj6rlzmLWdDq3UgTyO8XkbP30lff3U" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/6O3Bgxs5foWLRn-wcauIZmUIsQz9Ccz8BPlMXXD0HocmmwnhkbX4Fcvlc2bFNmyus50HMAJ5058YvIritjWaAcRHxr7_PlQFMmRRZMlotebj6rlzmLWdDq3UgTyO8XkbP30lff3U" style="border: none; font-size: 11pt; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="200" /></a>What if we didn’t sort learning into content areas? Content or discipline areas allow us to organize sets of knowledge, skills, and understandings into manageable silos. Students talk about having “history work,” or doing “English” or going to “science class.” But we all know that’s not real. None of us break our days into disciplines. Sure, we focus on different types of tasks throughout the day, but could you actually label your tasks based on discipline? Scientists do science, but aren’t they also communicating through writing (English) and calculating (math) and looking at historical precedence (history) and graphically expressing findings (art)? Writers are writing, but aren’t they also pitching their ideas (public speaking), researching background (science or history) and depending on the topic of the writing, incorporating all sorts of other content areas? Life is not sorted by discipline.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We could reorganize learning</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Imagine what it would feel like to be in a building organized by topics or themes rather than disciplines. Students might be based in a sustainability hub, working to solve problems and make the community a better place. To do so, they would need to learn relevant math and history and science and art and language, but these would all now be in service to the central theme or topic. Teachers with expertise in a certain areas would do deep dives with students, acting as mentors and facilitators and even at times, lecturers. Hubs would need to be grounded in transferable skills, and together we would work to create learning targets that help students push their current abilities and challenge existing understandings. Students could track their own learning (with lots of guidance and help from the teachers), set goals, and reflect constantly; we could graduate students who are curious, self-directed, and who are not only prepared to change the world, but have already been doing so. What would it look like? How would it be organized? What are the obstacles? No idea. But imagine if we could figure it out.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine if we had no locks on the doors.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/gNWmzYNYY6o1UaKqKHSpGRj88QG_z_Dv3UgPQwd9pgTPBGYoF6NXyl33iK6dI2GOul9s8heTTR0qQV5fpHe6ULuAz9x8JT6Aiv7s9sw6sIefnEfpfXHhmDc9vk6fnVavaAuVBGl6" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="153" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/gNWmzYNYY6o1UaKqKHSpGRj88QG_z_Dv3UgPQwd9pgTPBGYoF6NXyl33iK6dI2GOul9s8heTTR0qQV5fpHe6ULuAz9x8JT6Aiv7s9sw6sIefnEfpfXHhmDc9vk6fnVavaAuVBGl6" style="border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if school never closed? When I was in college in New Hampshire, we made a yearly middle-of-the-night trek to Freeport, Maine to visit LL Bean. While we could have made the two hour drive in the morning or afternoon, knowing that we could show up at 2:00 in the morning was just novel enough that it made it irresistible. If you aren’t from New England, you may not know that the store in Maine doesn’t have locks on the doors. They are always open--weekends, nights, holidays. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most schools open their doors around 7:00 am and close around 4:00 pm, with exceptions for some club or sporting events. This is true 5 days a week, 181 days a year. There may be a few summer school classes, or an innovative evening class for students, but for the most part, school runs at predictable and regular times for limited hours, days, and weeks. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We could reimagine the days. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine what it would be like to come into the building on a Saturday morning and see dozens of students and a handful of teachers working on a project together. Students might decide they need access to the stage, so they sign up and show up. A teacher might decide to run a three hour workshop on a Tuesday night for anyone who wants to attend--students or community members. The school might decide to offer night classes for juniors and seniors who need their sleep during the day, or who want to be part of internships. Families could learn together in the summer, community organizations could take advantage of the facilities, teachers could pursue their own learning, and students could offer to teach courses to students. While many of these activities are allowed at schools now--often with special permission and lots of planning and money to pay someone to show up with a key--they could become the norm. If we are focused on transferable skills and have ways to document and track learning, then that learning can truly become the constant and how and when students learn can be so much more creative and flexible. What would it look like? How would it be organized? What are the obstacles? No idea. But imagine if we could figure it out.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Romance and Precision</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s amazing to imagine the possibilities for the future of public education. There are so many cool, innovative ideas out there, and even more that no one has thought of yet. Each year we learn more and more about the brain and learning, and each year our world changes faster than we ever imagined it could. SBL is a result of those understandings, and each year we struggle to make changes to our systems that align with what we currently know while anticipating needs for the future.</span></div>
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/M_jQwrr5OpiqnZrD9rH24Lk0s1rgoP8Way02ZwoNXRKxtmR_5DFw4gsYNTQk4OEM4rnWp3Ip5_Uw34fMg9fhgvlLDmOtkZlgqARJSTRzrvzN06zseA-8SmVYBnzB4xVOsiPCaT8q" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/M_jQwrr5OpiqnZrD9rH24Lk0s1rgoP8Way02ZwoNXRKxtmR_5DFw4gsYNTQk4OEM4rnWp3Ip5_Uw34fMg9fhgvlLDmOtkZlgqARJSTRzrvzN06zseA-8SmVYBnzB4xVOsiPCaT8q" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">We must dive deep into the precision of the work, learning how to write effective targets and scales, learning how to assess transferable skills rather than content knowledge, learning how to instruct students at all different readiness levels, and figuring out how to track, report, and respond to the learning. We must dig in and determine the best way to communicate about learning with students, with parents, with colleges, with careers, and with each other. We need to challenge our own experiences and understandings in order to challenge our students. And all the while, we need to keep doing the daily work of building relationships with our learners and maintaining enough sanity and energy to do this effectively (and sustainably). That’s not easy. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The precision required for SBL will take time and sweat and failure and perseverance and reflection, and we may even want to give up. That’s why we must continue to imagine the possibilities...<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tvhmq6_IKs" target="_blank">and keep the romance alive</a>. </span></span></div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-20704749469082622232017-05-16T10:31:00.000-07:002017-05-16T10:36:37.305-07:00Grain Size Matters: Determining the Scope of Learning Targets<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There have been many questions lately in the schools where we work about the scope of our learning targets. How big or small should they be? How general and how specific? Are they meant to show student achievement for the whole year, or for a shorter period of learning? How do we track and report different types of targets? </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-28cea966-124d-724d-9167-f89bf9eb3ec9" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After years of working with learning targets in our own classroom and in classrooms throughout our district, we have some answers (many of which will lead to more questions). Please note that our answers are based on our particular context around targets and grading here in our district, and might vary in other contexts. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When writing targets, we must consider grain size, meaning the scope of the targets and how much time we expect it to take for students to meet or surpass them (knowing that time is the variable and the learning of the target is the constant). Here are the three most common grain sizes we are seeing in our district and when and how we might use each.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yearlong Target</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: A yearlong target is a target that you anticipate will take the entire year for students to become proficient in. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yearlong targets must be broken into unit (or specific learning period) targets before you track and report them.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Students (actually, all humans) need to see incremental growth in order to stick with learning, so when writing targets, we must determine the appropriate level of achievement in the skill over a smaller period of time. If we are scoring using a 1-4 scale, we cannot report 1s and 2s all year and expect students and parents to understand that learning is happening; in addition, these scores are too broad to be useful to us as teachers when we are trying to respond to our data in order to differentiate. </span><a href="http://cvulearnsblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/standards-vs-learning-targets-training.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is a blog we wrote about this very issue using a marathon metaphor</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For the first 6 weeks of training (of an 18 week program), the runner cannot be expected to run the full 26.2 miles; her 6 week target might be 10 miles, so her distance achievement at that time should be based on the appropriate expectation. Thus, she would be scored on her achievement of the week six goal at that time, not week 18. This is the same for learning. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It may be easier to think of yearlong targets as “standards” that need to be broken into parts or shifted into incremental chunks, or interim targets. Interim targets (see below: repeating or unit) are precise and specific, and provide smaller destinations--where students should be along the way in order to be prepared to meet the yearlong standard. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tracking and Reporting: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We suggest that you track and report the interim targets only, as these are the ones that will provide data that allows you to be responsive with your instruction, and will provide appropriate level feedback about progress to students and parents. The goal of reporting is to be accurate and clear, so our scores must tie directly to the language of the target.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example of Yearlong Target:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Note the number of parts in this standard; it may not be realistic to expect students to be proficient in all parts of this standard early in the year, so breaking it into achievable parts and then writing scales will help us instruct and provide feedback.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a clear thesis with organizer; my purpose is appropriate to my audience and to the assignment; my leads support my thesis and organizer, and introduce subtopics; my purpose stays consistent throughout my paper.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Repeating Target</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: A repeating target is a target you will repeat in multiple units or over multiple reporting periods, and you anticipate students will reach proficiency each time with different content. This is the most common type of transferable target, often being introduced and heavily instructed in an early unit, and then brought back throughout the year. For example, targets that ask students to show cause and effect, that ask students to make claims, or that ask students to create models would all be targets that could repeat over and over with new (and perhaps more complex) content.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tracking and Reporting</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: If you have set up your standards-based gradebook by unit, then you will include this target in each unit, entering scores that show achievement of that target with the specific content of the unit. When you do this, the “most recent” score calculation will be within the unit only, so a score of a 4 in your final unit will not replace a score of a 3 in an earlier unit. The scores live within the unit. If you have set up your gradebook by year, however, then you will enter the target only once, and each new score will replace the one before, regardless of unit content. </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MaNnSN9K8lFYNMrd0orX4CfsMZfvGTVOekr9krIob5I/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See this document to help you decide which set-up works best for your course. </span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example of Repeating Target: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note that this target</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will be instructed, practiced, and assessed in multiple units with different content; in later units, more time can be put on the practice, as instruction will be much more targeted based on need. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="90"></col><col width="126"></col><col width="137"></col><col width="174"></col><col width="167"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 14pt;"><td colspan="5" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-left: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-right: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-top: solid #000000 0.75pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 9pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="20" src="https://docs.google.com/drawings/u/0/d/s1cqYLvPketv1jaosC1e-gA/image?w=664&h=20&rev=1&ac=1" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="664" /></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 14pt;"><td style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-left: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-right: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-top: solid #000000 0.75pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Output: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Purpose: </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span></div>
</td><td style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-left: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-right: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-top: solid #000000 0.75pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a clear thesis/claim with a single idea; the claim requires simple evidence and no analysis to prove.</span></div>
</td><td style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-left: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-right: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-top: solid #000000 0.75pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a clear thesis/claim with more than one idea; the claim requires a single type of evidence and limited analysis to prove. </span></div>
</td><td style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-left: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-right: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-top: solid #000000 0.75pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a clear thesis/claim with multiple relational ideas; the claim requires multiple types of evidence and substantive analysis to prove. </span></div>
</td><td style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-left: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-right: solid #000000 0.75pt; border-top: solid #000000 0.75pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W40Gs3PlXTV0ppPAuRbs-KeZnNNRjwvcmzQtsWxg7E4/edit#" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a clear, complex thesis/claim that includes multiple arguments; the claim requires an organized evidence strategy and analysis that includes inference. </span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 8pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unit Target</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: A unit target is a target that appears in only one unit or trimester, and is not be repeated for the full class once that unit/trimester is complete. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These targets should still be transferable within the unit, meaning that they cannot be single-score targets. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Students should be able to practice these throughout the unit with a variety of content in order to improve over time. In addition, just because the target will not formally repeat, students who did not meet proficiency should still have opportunity to show new learning later in the year. Our job is to ensure students learn, not just to teach, which means that unit targets may need to be readdressed for some or all of our students.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tracking and Reporting: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These targets are entered at the beginning of the unit, and tracked and reported throughout. Once the unit is complete, the final score will stand throughout the rest of the year and will appear on all reports and in the portal. If there is new learning later in the year, you will need to go back to that unit, add an assessment, and enter new scores for any students who have shown new learning (this new assessment will not have any effect on the other students, as no new data will be entered for them).</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example of Unit Target: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="73"></col><col width="120"></col><col width="163"></col><col width="175"></col><col width="172"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 12pt;"><td colspan="5" style="background-color: white; border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 0pt 6pt 0pt 6pt; vertical-align: top;"><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 9pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="20" src="https://docs.google.com/drawings/u/0/d/s1-8e3sNbk5QW5asu3e0xJA/image?w=664&h=20&rev=1&ac=1" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="664" /></span></div>
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<tr style="height: 0pt;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 0pt 5.4pt 0pt 5.4pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading: Rhetorical Analysis</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 0pt 5.4pt 0pt 5.4pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am currently working towards the next level.</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 0pt 5.4pt 0pt 5.4pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can locate/observe rhetorical devices in a text and can explain what they are.</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 0pt 5.4pt 0pt 5.4pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance a specific POV or purpose in a text.</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1pt; border-left: solid #000000 1pt; border-right: solid #000000 1pt; border-top: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 0pt 5.4pt 0pt 5.4pt; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can analyze the effect of multiple rhetorical devices on the text as a whole, considering context and audience. </span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember that the goal of reporting is always clear, accurate communication of achievement, and our targets and scales should assist in that communication. The grain size can help make these targets clear, provide instructional specificity, and communicate incremental (and effective) progress to our learners. </span>Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-66466515415701776792017-03-29T07:27:00.001-07:002017-03-29T07:27:11.793-07:00Standards-Based Learning and Special Education<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Guest Blogger: Sarah Crum, Special Educator at CVUHS</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scrum@cssu.org</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The thing about working in a standards based teaching environment is that it invokes </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> questions. I don’t believe that I have any more questions about my teaching than I did before, but I am certain that my questions are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">different</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> than they used to be. One of the most genuine questions that I have and that I hear from teachers who are shifting to standards based learning and assessing is “what do I do when I can’t get a kid to the target?” Here at CVU, teachers develop classroom targets that articulate the skills being taught and assessed in the class. Accompanying that target is a </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1275HpZlYEoFnydtm1Ps5BOABG7ZZGaxiMeNe42CvkPo/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">four point scale</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that defines the foundational skills (a 1 and a 2 on the scale) leading up to the target (a 3 on the scale) as well as beyond the target (a 4 on the scale). Teachers develop intentional instructional activities to meet students at their current skill level and help to move them forward on scale. This scale is also used for assessment purposes and gives students feedback about what they are able to do and what they need to do next. Teachers are currently able to give feedback in increments of .5, when evidence indicates achievement in both levels. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="259" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ekkQB2CQ5ZM2dHQQ1ZHQ-daYyYoo2vmZKXKlgnOUIZqmHMNgXhHpiM4HUPtX7wuZAMTOytuPeBoIup0qGPYD5y0A8iIsYDzD8GwkkQx41O6eqzKevKmCircDW0LQQ-Nm0hlIgb5U" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="610" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gone are the days when we could just give fewer problems on the math sheet or give more points for perseverance. It is no longer adequate to alter the rubric to account for student effort or to reflect our compassion for a student’s individual struggles. In a true standards based system, I, as the teacher, have to be able to define, and report out, on what a student can do. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This requires that I actually know what the student can do, not which areas of the rubric the student could not achieve nor what habits of learning or achievement deficits are preventing the student from succeeding.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have to actually be able to clearly articulate what each student is able to do. This is an ambitious task.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-6bf35a61-1a6c-5d4b-239f-e210c0aba840" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To support teachers in this endeavor, it is helpful to begin to categorize the types of accommodations, modifications, and differentiation one might use. </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8TJIjvvZd3KcEwyOVZQVFFuTm1DREQxc1F2MnBLQk5JQnFn/view" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jung & Guskey</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in their article </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standards-based grading and reporting: A model for special education, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2007, publish a flow chart and explanation that gives guidance to teachers in distinguishing between accommodations and modifications for students who are struggling. Using that model, we have developed a more detailed </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8TJIjvvZd3KY0JVczFIVWl2Ymc/view" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">flow chart</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that articulates specific scenarios for modification and the implications for reporting that are specific to our school’s approach to SBL.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieBVxRhCaILh8YtINltnYJGAkn5htvHzoB1hZZt_PwFrAvXgZ1CPfrpIeFGiLoKskh4jN70Uu8UiTTbjOlWPhBk87aPBVMP8VtzPn2mK1_dmzogeCm-uNDTsJeBfjAaxmRGfdUY3mCdmik/s1600/Assessing+Struggling+Learners.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieBVxRhCaILh8YtINltnYJGAkn5htvHzoB1hZZt_PwFrAvXgZ1CPfrpIeFGiLoKskh4jN70Uu8UiTTbjOlWPhBk87aPBVMP8VtzPn2mK1_dmzogeCm-uNDTsJeBfjAaxmRGfdUY3mCdmik/s400/Assessing+Struggling+Learners.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click on flow chart link above to see as a PDF</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Accommodation vs Modification</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For any classroom task or activity, the first step is to ask oneself if the task at hand is an appropriate expectation without being adapted. Many classroom activities will fall into this category as intentional groupings or purpose of the task reveal that adaptation is not needed. However, there will also be many instances when a teacher will know that there needs to be some sort of adaptation of the task to render it accessible to a student or group of students. This often looks like planning one lesson but thinking about the types of adjustments that are made for different levels of reading or students who may struggle to maintain attention. This is still one lesson, but includes accommodations or differing approaches that allow students to access the learning. At this point, the teacher asks whether these adaptations allow the student to demonstrate the given standard or whether the adaptation fundamentally changes the standard. For instance, if the standard is a critical thinking target, then adjusting for different reading levels does not impact the standard itself, and the adaptation is an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accommodation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. However, if the standard being assessed is a reading comprehension target, then a student who needs an adapted reading level may also need a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">modified</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> standard.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Types of Modifications</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have found that the students who require modified standards generally fall into three categories: needing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> temporarily shifted scales</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, needing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> shifted scales</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or needing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new scales</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. However, it is important to note that students may fluctuate between categories. It is also important to note that in our experience, the percentage of students who require shifted scales or new scales is quite low: about 5% of students, five out of a grade level of 100 students, or perhaps one student in your class of twenty.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Temporary </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1275HpZlYEoFnydtm1Ps5BOABG7ZZGaxiMeNe42CvkPo/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shifted Scale</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Backing Out Targets Primarily for Instruction</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This type of modification requires taking the classroom target and spending quality time articulating the two and the one as well as a couple of steps below. It helps the teacher plan for instruction, maybe breaking the learning down into smaller steps. These students may need classroom activities & tasks designed at the two, one, or even below to make incremental steps towards the three. But by the end of the unit, these students can perform consistently on the typical classroom targets (may be receiving 1.5, 2, 2.5), but have clearly made significant progress in learning throughout the unit because they started at the 1 or below. These students typically feel good about their progress and their grade is an accurate reflection of their mastery of those targets. This modification can be, and should be used, for any student who is struggling to show progress on the classroom scale. However, adding an accommodation to an IEP, 504, or EST is an important step for those students who have a plan so that communication is clear. An example accommodation is as follows: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Use shifted targets to clearly define small, incremental steps in learning.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This level of modification applies to the majority of mainstreamed students with disabilities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="225" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/2hc7jYGLl-TxblBJvtv4XNBLAYR9y_B0qt2J4oi5UtK7HACpCEpYggwNo7Hg6U9ZB3cLrjX8sJqBjeIEcCzkn7HSZJSNEryUNhg_EcNGYu_zEFPe-uO-riAA2Rs8Ylzy15M7gY6M" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="726" /></span></div>
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1275HpZlYEoFnydtm1Ps5BOABG7ZZGaxiMeNe42CvkPo/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shifted Scale</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Backing Out Targets for Instruction & Assessment</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again, this type of modification requires taking the classroom target and backing it out by articulating the two, the one and below. Then, like using a ruler, the teacher assesses the student on a different set of 1-4, but using the same targets and skills so that the ultimate goal is to get back on the classroom targets. This is a student who may start the unit two or three steps below the one and work towards making the one on the regular classroom target. This student now has a new scale: the original course target of a one has become this student’s three. The expected growth for the student is the same as peers in that we would hope a student would jump maybe two slots on a scale and should receive a grade that reflects that achievement (this prevents a student who has jumped from a negative 2, so to speak, to the 1 from receiving a D in the class when the amount of growth is the same as peers). The number of targets that are backed out may vary, and depending on the student and the team, can decide the appropriate credit reported; the class name can be changed on a high school transcript if appropriate. This is the type of scenario where it may be appropriate to share the whole scale with the student and/or family (depending on the situation), so that they are clear about their child's skills in comparison to peers. This can be really delicate and would be done on a case by case basis. The Shifted Scale may be incorporated into the IEP goals, but an accommodation agreed upon by the team is also included. This type of modification typically applies to students with more significant disabilities. However, it is important that the school district is willing to make this level of modification available to any student.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="209" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/EmJitUJh0RHh-u5KAfmuTde5LD25nae3thwZuxD5sjESPyGprA2qMZJmzmZxizXXm3UE2EUnI0yd0VrmEMaeoaOh-xzksN4DW6nc0umF00baKHRaCjAUk8kcRD6GtSd9IPps-T9_" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="720" /></span></div>
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1275HpZlYEoFnydtm1Ps5BOABG7ZZGaxiMeNe42CvkPo/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Scale</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Developing Learning Goals for an Individual Student</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This student is significantly below the targets in most areas and needs separate learning goals for class: New Scales, that may relate to the classroom targets, but aren't necessarily in perfect alignment with the classroom targets. In this case, they aren't really backed out targets. The classroom teachers and special educator take data on what the student can do and develop learning goals that make sense for that student in the mainstream classroom. Because the scale is different, the course name on the transcript in high school can be different. Showing the typical classroom targets may not be appropriate here; the family may already be aware of the need for an alternate curriculum. However, it is important to communicate with the IEP team that this student needs a New Scale and that this decision is made as an IEP team. This level of accommodation typically applies to more intensive needs students and the New Scale may become some of the IEP goals for the student. It should also be listed as an accommodation for those students with a formal plan.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="207" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/vcebfgTy8OcSa_9uGns4r693AT00ZQuj54xhUnOUXyasNHSMah4j2GgJgPtCoqMRHhON41MSfZWiQnyjoCsnn3UwYJ1ViAuAf5QrYJLcZeUmfEz8kM-zROWrCqI4qhZK5UkEfWOL" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="720" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Source:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Flowchart has been adapted from Jung, L. A., & Guskey, T. R. (2007). Standards-based grading and reporting: A model for special education. Teaching Exceptional Children, 40(2), 48-53. Copyright 2007 by the Council for Exceptional Children.</span></div>
<br />Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-33299285622522547682017-03-14T10:28:00.003-07:002017-03-15T07:28:21.179-07:00Differentiating in a Standards-Based Class<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps the single greatest instructional benefit of standards-based learning is how effectively it sets us up to differentiate by readiness. When tracking achievement based on tasks (as we did in the traditional teaching model), it’s easy to gloss over differences and complicate our assessment and communication; we can add or subtract points for everything from lateness to neatness to skill demonstration to content knowledge. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When planning, instructing, and assessing using learning targets and scales, however, it’s nearly impossible to ignore student differences. In a standards-based classroom</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> we track specific skills, not general tasks, and so we can no longer confuse a student’s neatness with her ability to develop a thesis statement. Once we have isolated this skill achievement, we cannot ignore our role (and responsibility) in each student’s progress, and so <b>we must differentiate.</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are many ways to differentiate and many reasons to do so. The focus of this blog is on differentiating by readiness based on formative assessment data. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Differentiating by readiness is not tracking.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One main difference is the flexibility that comes from determining needs based on precise learning targets; students in the top group for one skill will not be in that same group for another skill, and students who struggle with a particular skill one week will find themselves in a different group (and with different peers) when focusing on a new skill the following week. Another main difference between readiness grouping and tracking is the timing; tracking is long-term, while grouping is often no more than 30 minutes in a class. Tracking assumes a broad skill strength or deficit (often incorrectly or unfairly), and readiness grouping is based on specific evidence of a precise skill, and is therefore much more likely to change and vary in time. We should </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">group students based on broad categories of skill (i.e. Reading, Writing, Speaking), but rather on specific skills that we have assessed (i.e. inference in reading, purpose in writing, or projection in speaking). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After years of differentiating in our humanities class (sometimes successfully, and sometimes not so well), we developed a system that helped make the planning and organization much more effective. Since becoming coaches and working with classrooms at all levels and in all disciplines, we have seen this system help teachers new to and experienced with differentiation become more intentional and efficient in their attempts to help all students progress.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-5f526c68-cd6d-2b66-1a5c-d4e9a5a9a226"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">The Readiness-Differentiation Planning Model</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target and Scale:</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Start with a target you are currently working with in class. You will need a scale for the target, preferably a transferable skill scale. As we discovered years ago, trying to differentiate content targets is nearly impossible without just throwing more work at some students and less at others. This usually does little to improve skills and may lead to frustration from all involved. But if you have a scale that defines multiple levels of skill progression (increasing in complexity), designing multiple tasks becomes much more manageable. Our example is a speaking scale with a specific focus on voice and presence. Our summative was a persuasive speech, so we needed to work on multiple elements of speaking; we isolated this skill as it seemed to have the most variation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Formatively Assess and Sort: </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Carefully and intentionally design a formative assessment that will provide data of student achievement at all levels of the scale. For the sample below, we had already introduced the scale to the class and practiced at all levels as a group. Once we had played with the skill for a few classes, we designed a formative (a practice speech) asking them to demonstrate what they could do. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Sort your student formatives into 4 piles, each corresponding with a level on the scale. This is a great time to revise the language of your scale if necessary, as often seeing student work can help define the levels of the scale more accurately and clearly. If you do revise the language, remember to let students know you did! Once you have your student work sorted, enter the student names (names below have been changed!) in the second row of the template.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Determining Needs</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">: Now that you have work sorted, take a look at each pile or evidence of work (in the case of the speaking scale, we had filled out rubrics with notes on achievement) and look for common misconceptions, patterns, missing ideas, and clear areas of need. Based on your analysis, what does each group need to move “plus one”? Think about the difference between instructional needs and practice needs. Consider which groups would benefit from individual work, and which need group instruction or work. This is where you plan for the ideal, meaning you write what each group needs regardless of logistical difficulties. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Organize and Manage</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">: Finally, it’s time to determine the best way to organize the differentiated lesson. You may need to compromise a bit based on realities of your experience, your particular students, your environment, or your time constraints. But try to get as close to the ideal as possible, as that is what you (the professional) has determined will provide the greatest learning. You may decide to combine a few groups, to split the lesson into multiple days, or to ask a colleague to help for the lesson. Note that we chose to run 3 groups only for this lesson, as the needs of the two middle groups were similar (and we were worried about the management of 4 groups in a small space!). Here is a link to the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aSGtZjId78044YjkS_4065iggP2STIUV3v0Hj_9Nek4/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">3 task sheets</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> that we used to keep students focused and organized.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Here are some questions to consider when planning:</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How many groups do you think you can manage? Is there another person who can help you?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can you minimize transitions? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How will you explain the differentiation to the class? (if this is not the culture of the class)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What kind of task sheets will you need to ensure clarity?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which groups need you first, last? </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within groups, do you want them working together or individually?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How will you physically organize the space to meet the above needs?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you have specific students you need to consider when grouping?</span></li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQ8oMUC7rRf1mRMillkDg_Nu_2Q4iNTJ-4CMFLsHVE6BnRlx18SoBpIxxW552n634OpXfwX0jf2hL5O9m-Vk8l0_UkhmLJUFWDXJCHOXoU5Y-R119VSm2izbqZfaT_TbEW4-MDp25gG8P/s1600/template+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkQ8oMUC7rRf1mRMillkDg_Nu_2Q4iNTJ-4CMFLsHVE6BnRlx18SoBpIxxW552n634OpXfwX0jf2hL5O9m-Vk8l0_UkhmLJUFWDXJCHOXoU5Y-R119VSm2izbqZfaT_TbEW4-MDp25gG8P/s640/template+5.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is a link to a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/16JmCTWYwqkCkKbsbnEOH3vfKBTUwpD6f8vxK5TAKW84/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">google doc of the full template filled out</a> (better quality than images above!).</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-5f526c68-cd71-7b4c-05c7-1d8645d084e2"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-5f526c68-cd71-7b4c-05c7-1d8645d084e2"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Differentiating by readiness is the most efficient and effective way to ensure student progression on a particular skill. When we meet students where they are and provide appropriate challenge to get them to the next, clear target, they are much more likely to get there. Experiencing success is vital to learning, and when students see that the work they did in differentiated groups led to immediate growth, they will be much more willing to persevere when struggling. The outcome for the most advanced students is equally as rewarding; we all want to be challenged, and when our achievement is recognized and honored by added complexity rather than additional work, we feel respected as learners. Our role as teachers is to challenge each one of our students, and differentiating by readiness not only allows us to do this, but demands that we do.</span></span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are many ways to differentiate by readiness, but this model has been successful for us and for the teachers and learners we work with. </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/14dWGDfs3cuBfUy9w-j3lqGElSvJJ-qs8PD1-jjkGVdo/edit?usp=sharing" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is a blank template.</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Feel free to make a copy and turn it into something that works for you and your students. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-53869094631817322702016-10-06T11:59:00.002-07:002016-10-06T12:01:49.139-07:00Common Sense and Homework<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing gets teachers, parents, and students fired up more than homework. One of the reasons for this is the contradictory research findings that seem to suggest that homework both supports and prevents learning, both encourages and discourages effective habits, and is both emotionally healthy and emotionally destructive. As intelligent people who all want the best for our kids, what are we to believe?</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ_ES8F4_3LdW573qTfES9HvHXy6E8bLwDRRc7vCQMdhtYMVBrCtNV6L4XyWmfr2YxFPqST6OHKc70rX_Syjcic7bDUqEer5dzKZ20DWdFdtKvZB4hez6S_EgQnslpc_-u8ChRLq3jJIZN/s1600/armstrong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ_ES8F4_3LdW573qTfES9HvHXy6E8bLwDRRc7vCQMdhtYMVBrCtNV6L4XyWmfr2YxFPqST6OHKc70rX_Syjcic7bDUqEer5dzKZ20DWdFdtKvZB4hez6S_EgQnslpc_-u8ChRLq3jJIZN/s200/armstrong.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great book!</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We believe decisions about homework should consider these three things:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research about the brain and learning.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research about child and adolescent development.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good old fashioned common sense. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The research about the first two can be found fairly easily (we suggest James Zull’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Art of Changing the Brain</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Eric Jensen’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching with the Brain in Mind</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and Thomas Armstrong’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Power of the Adolescent Brain</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">), so in this blog, we are going to focus on the third.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Common Sense and Homework: </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quality:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Common sense tells us that at certain levels or ages, homework could very well have a positive impact on learning. However, we also know that for learning to be positively affected by homework, it needs to be high quality homework. All homework is not created equal. And let’s be honest...we all think </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">our</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> work isn’t busy-work. But if our homework isn’t created or assigned based on what we know about learning, and if it isn’t directly used to inform instruction, then there’s a pretty good chance it is, in fact, busy-work. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rigor:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> More is not better. The classes that give the most homework are not the most rigorous. This is a huge misunderstanding, one it’s time we stop perpetuating. More does not equal harder; difficulty is not the same thing as complexity. (</span><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7f8HVrLeaRcZG9qNkZBSzZRakU/view" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Critical Difference Between Complexity and Difficulty</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standards-based and Differentiated</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: If we are in a standards-based class, then homework needs to be standards-based. And if we are in a standards-based class, then we know precisely what each student needs, and therefore, we know that homework needs to be differentiated. Yes, this is difficult. Here’s a link to a handout about </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FeX1neUC62lcPubJTu174AGUL-Yop9e6gGkklfDTtOY/edit?usp=sharing" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Homework in a Standards-Based Class</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For years, we have heard that students should have 10 min of homework per grade. So a first grader should have 10 minutes, a 7th grader 70 minutes, and a 12th grader 120 minutes. While the simplicity of this rule is seductive, does it make sense?</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We know that learning is not time-dependent.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> For some students, a task that we intend to take 30 minutes will actually take three times that. For others, less time. So if we are going to play by the 10 minute rule, we need to be assigning tasks that are not time-dependent. In other words, we need to tell students that finishing a task is not the goal (and then we need to stand by that, not punishing or rewarding students based on what they have finished--not taking away recess or free time because a task we assigned for homework is incomplete). For example, asking students to read for 25 minutes is okay; asking them to read 4 chapters may not be. Also, this rule does not mean 10 min per class, per grade. It’s total. That means if a student in 9th grade has 8 classes a day, then each teacher should be expecting just over 10 minutes for their individual class; in a 4 block day, that means about 20 minutes of work per class. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b8uvrdBrdR4/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b8uvrdBrdR4?feature=player_embedded" style="clear: right; float: right;" width="320"></iframe><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We know students are busy outside of the traditional school day.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Kids have family responsibilities, jobs, chores, sports, music, clubs, and after-school programs. All of these things enrich our students’ lives, and provide avenues for them to learn incredibly valuable life skills; we want to encourage these activities, not have students opt out because they’re too busy. But a typical 6th grade child may attend school from 7:30 to 3:00, go to an afterschool activity until 5:00, get home and settled by 5:30, then be in bed by 8:00. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That leaves a possible 2 and a half hours of awake time </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the entire day</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that is not school controlled.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That’s absurd. Add dinner, chores, and 60 minutes of homework...and those hours are gone. As teachers we often lament the lack of creativity and imagination in our students, and yet we allow so little time for them to be imaginative outside of our classrooms. Kids need time to be kids. They need time to play and imagine and be bored. And brains need time to consolidate—which means time to play and SLEEP! </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (</span><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_a_good_night_s_sleep?language=en" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TED Talk on the relationship between the brain and sleep</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "cambria"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Habits</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Despite pockets of research that say homework teaches students to have effective habits, common sense says this is probably just not true. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching v. Evaluating:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Homework more often rewards or punishes existing habits, and sometimes speaks more to the habits of the parents than of the students. If our goal is to help students learn time management and organizational skills, there are many ways to do that that are way more effective, measurable, and equitable than homework. In addition, what we know about child and adolescent learning tells us that humans do not fully develop their executive functioning skills until their early 20s (Armstrong)...so asking students to be good at these at age 8 or 12 or even 17 may be developmentally inappropriate. Here’s a blog that discusses these issues and makes suggestions about how to instruct habits: </span><a href="http://cvulearnsblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/habits-of-learning-whose-responsibility.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Habits of Learning: Whose responsibility are they?</span></a></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Preparing students for the “next level”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: In the middle schools, we say we need to assign homework to prepare students for high school, and in high school we say we need even more to prepare them for college.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The best way to prepare students for the rigorous work and complex thinking they will encounter in the future is to teach them how to ask questions, how to think critically...how to learn. We don’t need tons of homework to do this. In fact, we can do this much more effectively within our classrooms. Side note: The average college student spends 15 hours a week in class, and 15 hours outside of class doing homework (<a href="https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/its-about-time-what-make-reported-declines-how-much-college">citation</a>). The average high school student spends 35-40 hours in school each week, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> including homework. Hmmmm…..seems to us we could use this time more effectively, rather than just adding on to it. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can find research to back up your opinion about homework, regardless of your beliefs (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unless you teach K4, in which case there is growing consensus that homework is not beneficial)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. While all this contradictory information could be viewed as frustrating, why not view it as liberating? Let’s use what we know as professionals--not what was done to us or what we’ve always done--combined with our common sense to develop a homework policy or belief system that we (and our families) feel good about. We need to make sure it supports what we know about learning, respects our students as young people, and maybe most importantly, makes common sense. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still want to see research about homework? Okay. We get it. We have spent hours reading it all as well. Here’s a great resource from Brandon Blom called </span><a href="http://www.brandonkblom.com/2016_08_01_archive.html?m=1" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If We’re Going to Do Homework, Let’s Do It Better”</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: there is a really comprehensive list of resources at the end!</span>Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-54263065649498009892016-09-27T09:37:00.000-07:002016-09-27T09:37:23.628-07:00Habits of Learning: Whose responsibility are they?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Habits of Learning: Whose responsibility are they?</span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-c6ea6e8d-6c7d-7a0a-4411-6c69d91bfefa" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Habits of learning are important. We know that students are more successful as learners when their habits are effective. But what makes habits effective? Why do some students seem to be more successful than others? Why do we keep fighting the same battles over and over and over? Why can’t they just be more responsible?!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In all of our time teaching and working in schools, there seem to be two types of habits of learning that most concern teachers: those that focus on compliance or behavior, and those that require executive functioning skills. Yes, these overlap at times, but it’s helpful to look at them through this simple lens in order to allow us to focus on what’s most important: learning. </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Habits of Compliance or Behavior:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Often, when we talk about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">responsibility</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">preparation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">participation</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">self-direction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, we are really talking about compliance or behavior. We want students to do X because, frankly, it will make our lives easier (and yes, with large classes and little time to plan during the school day, our lives being easier often leads to us being better, more efficient teachers). Here are some examples of habits of compliance or behavior:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coming to class with a pen or pencil.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe09S4tPHbFwLMp7PD3AzeQm4rqeq2RgJXUARfg7r0cGgno6KtrxwpcuveHRlK5wCboPs0z0p-1IHQ4oU9-Ue0gVLDhuqD5sbD72xVSi-lhasY64aO0H43Mn1iSHHnBFF8wm2q4OPGdJ7i/s1600/compliance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe09S4tPHbFwLMp7PD3AzeQm4rqeq2RgJXUARfg7r0cGgno6KtrxwpcuveHRlK5wCboPs0z0p-1IHQ4oU9-Ue0gVLDhuqD5sbD72xVSi-lhasY64aO0H43Mn1iSHHnBFF8wm2q4OPGdJ7i/s200/compliance.jpg" width="186" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turning the homework in on time.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Walking in the hallways.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being on time to class.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not having phones out in class.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raising hands to talk, or not talking out of turn.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Staying on task.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While these behaviors may help students be ready to learn, they really have very little to do with learning directly. To be clear: we are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">saying these are not important behaviors, and we are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> saying we don’t want to encourage these in every way possible. But they are not really habits of learning. </span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to improve these behaviors, we need to determine what’s most important to us, come to terms with ourselves about why it’s important, and then develop structures and systems that help students comply or behave, and minimize the environments and situations that encourage behaviors we don’t want. A few years ago, we wrote a blog post about this called </span><a href="http://cvulearnsblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/cleaning-counters-changing-our-habits.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cleaning the Counters: Changing our Habits to Improve Theirs</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which focuses on problems such as turning work in and timeliness. These are student behaviors we can improve by changing our own behaviors, systems, and structures. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c6ea6e8d-6c7d-c088-1535-fd64e9583dab"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">One side note about these habits. Next time you are at a faculty meeting or at an inservice, note how many adults tick off the above list. Note the number of adults who are late, those who have their phones out, those grading papers, those having side conversations; and ask your administrators how many of the adults in the building turn in their paperwork on time, or their reflections, or even their grades. And if you ask these adults why they are late or why they are checking their phones or why they are grading papers instead of focusing on the task, they will almost all say that what they are doing is important. They will cite trouble at home for the phone use, an important meeting with a student for why they are late, and not enough hours in the day for why they have the stack of papers on their lap. All good reasons. All legitimate, perhaps. But no more legitimate than our students’ reasons for the same behaviors. Saying “kids these days” lack responsibility is usually not true, and allows us all off the hook.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS3JmskyELYOntrVBywXRFz-6ffqTCI_FVA326Wdqqxqlcdu1nou9fYBRgB-gFWbaVzFWbVF6H1o83-ayaVpSwHJx107Vwhm_83qar6UPzjVmH3ZaFUyRcA_FQ1APtThZjeh41qOa5cute/s1600/adolescent+brain.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS3JmskyELYOntrVBywXRFz-6ffqTCI_FVA326Wdqqxqlcdu1nou9fYBRgB-gFWbaVzFWbVF6H1o83-ayaVpSwHJx107Vwhm_83qar6UPzjVmH3ZaFUyRcA_FQ1APtThZjeh41qOa5cute/s320/adolescent+brain.png" width="320" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Executive Functioning Habits: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">True habits of learning are often related to executive functioning skills. These are actual skills (as opposed to behaviors). And here’s a shocking, horrible, and unbelievably important fact: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">executive functioning skills don’t fully develop until humans are in their early 20s.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Yup. In mid adolescence, age 15-16, most students can function fully in what’s called “cold cognition” environments...in other words, in a vacuum. In “hot cognition” environments, or any times there are other teens around, the functioning is compromised. In middle school, there’s not even full functioning in that vacuum (Jensen). What does this mean? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It means we can’t expect students to be good at things that their brains are not developmentally able to be good at! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-c6ea6e8d-6c7e-259a-54ff-a9c182462138" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this also means that we should be instructing executive functioning, modeling it, and allowing students to practice it in a safe, supportive environment. We should NOT be taking points off, punishing or rewarding students, or expecting the improbable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here are a few common examples of executive functioning skills:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organization</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time management (planning and prioritizing)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Self-monitoring</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Task-initiation</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perseverance</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are all things we often expect students to be good at, but developmentally, most of them are not there yet. Because of this, it’s easy to spend crazy amounts of time and emotional energy focusing on these as problems, when we should be looking at them as opportunities to develop and practice these skills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What can we do to help students develop these skills? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Model effective habits of learning and be intentional about instruction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: the more students see what these habits look like, the more models they have to imitate. Letting students see a variety of strategies can help them choose one that will work for them. Here are some examples:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For time management:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When you are giving directions, model how you break down a task and keep track of the steps. In addition, provide time estimations and periodically stop tasks in order to have students check these estimations and set individual time goals. If we want students to become self-aware and effective time managers, we need to teach and monitor these skills in class, where we have the ability to control and adjust as necessary. </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Svg22EQtYmit0N4QQqgz8J1HZjzPmzGg5z6Y1VrRgEM/edit" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Task sheets can be really helpful for this.</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Side note: Homework does not teach time management.)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For organization:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If using Google Classroom, take 15 minutes once a week to model how you organize your inbox; with all of those emails coming in, students need to learn to prioritize, organize, and occasionally purge technologically. If students keep binders, spend time each week in school (not for homework!) showing them different ways to organize these.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: lower-alpha; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For perseverance and self-monitoring</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: teach students about zones of proximal development, and provide them with a system to self-identify their challenge level. Recognizing levels of challenge is the first step to being able to self-regulate, and it encourages perseverance. Here’s a video of 2 students explaining how to use </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Y-ikwbS2UqM0Z3ZVJtbG52UXc/view?usp=sharing" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Red, Yellow, and Green cards to self-monitor.</span></a></div>
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/a7iXhsp6wT8/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a7iXhsp6wT8?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intentionally articulating, modeling, instructing, and providing feedback on habits will help students improve. But too often we stop at articulating, telling students what we want them to do or how we want them to behave without using what we know about their brains and development to help them get better. If we are going to report about student habits, we have the responsibility to do more than just reward or punish. Putting these habits and behaviors on students--expecting them to take the responsibility to improve--may not only be developmentally inappropriate, but may distract us and them from the learning that is most important. There’s only so much time in our day...let’s use it responsibly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Helpful resources about child and adolescent brain development:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Books/Overview/The-Power-of-the-Adolescent-Brain.aspx" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Power of the Adolescent Brain</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Thomas Armstrong</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Brain-Mind-Revised-2nd/dp/1416600302" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching with the Brain in Mind</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Eric Jensen</span></div>
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Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-56720535924938356542016-03-21T10:32:00.002-07:002016-03-21T15:17:52.036-07:00Just Tell Me How to Get an A: One Teacher's Journey to SBL<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;"><b>Written by Guest Blogger Justin Chapman, English Teacher at CVUHS</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;"> I
move around the room handing back a batch of “summative” assessments, as we’ve
now learned to call them. Each of
these has a cover sheet that lists the skills we’ve targeted for this
particular unit – and since I teach English, these skills are always centered
on communication, critical thinking, and creative problem solving. I give the usual schpiel: <i>these are
individual assessments... please focus on your own... we all have our strengths
and weaknesses</i>… Each student is invited to revise her work, so these
scores are malleable, a snapshot of the process, not something etched in
marble. Each skill is measured on a four point scale, and each level
comes with a brief descriptor, what that skill should look like when executed.
A “3” is the grade-level “target” – the level at which we expect
sophomores to perform. Still, when I hand back these assessments, some of
these students are busily converting their 3s into percentages: 75%, a C.
I can feel the collective angst. Seems we can’t shake the old 100
point scale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">And
it’s no wonder. We’ve been working with essentially the same educational
system since the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, our school has begun
the shift to standards-based learning (SBL) and standards based grading (SBG) –
different sides of the same coin. SBG means a lot of things, not least
that we don’t average numbers. Rather, we take the latest performance as
the measure of a student’s progress on a skill. One of the biggest
differences between SBG and traditional system is that we don’t count homework,
we don’t give (or average) zeroes, and we don’t factor students’ “habits” into
a grade. This means that no matter how much I like a kid, and no matter
how hard she works, I measure the skill, not the student’s ebullient
personality. There is no easy way to institute systemic and institutional
change – but after almost two years of standards-based education, I am
convinced that we have to try. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">Change
is hard for any human. I’ve been teaching high school for almost twenty
years, the first seventeen in the traditional sense, with the traditional
grading system. For most of my educational life, I’ve been subject to and
subjected kids to the currency system that is the 100 point scale, where grades
are dispensed like cash in return for effort. I am convinced, however,
that SBL is more humane, more accurate, and ultimately better for students’
(and teachers’) souls. But there’s a certain type of student particularly
ill-adapted to this system. This type needs constant external validation
in the form of A’s. I’ve started calling this the “A-fix” – and the A,
for a certain type of kid, is as strong a drug as heroin. They need to be
told, in very clear terms, how exactly to get an A. And if you don’t tell
them, they can get pretty surly about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">I
understand where this pressure comes from. Students, particularly in our
affluent district, are driven to succeed. They have successful parents,
aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings. They equate placement at an elite
college (whatever that means) with future success. They are often
intelligent and affable – yet quite uncomfortable with 3s, especially the kids
who’ve been able to game the system up until now. Worse, they are
uncomfortable with collaboration and open-ended assignments which require
creative problem-solving. Rather, they
tend to like black and white assignments with right and wrong answers. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">The
biggest problem with that attitude is that college is no longer a guarantee of
future success, like it was for decades, right up until I went in the early
90s. Worse perhaps, we don’t really know what students will need to know
in the future. While the factory model
has served us well (enough) to this point, technology has changed the game
immensely. These issues are outlined clearly and succinctly in the new
film </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">Most Likely to Succeed</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;"> by Greg Whiteley (mltsfilm.org), which
should be required viewing for any educator at just about any level – and maybe
any American who pays taxes for education. The movie confirms what many
of us in secondary education, and particularly the humanities, have been
working toward for years: an emphasis on critical thinking, collaboration, and
creative problem solving. The film reinforces the idea that depth is more
important than breadth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">The antithesis of this idea are AP (Advanced Placement) courses, and its purveyor The College Board -- two of the most negative forces in education today. I see the College Board as that creepy guy in the van trying to get the kids to try candy– except that they peddle success. Success for
the College Board still means competing for seemingly rare spaces at elite
colleges. Competition, to my mind, has no place in a good education
system. Education should not run like a
business, and A’s are not some precious treasure to sit on and guard. Along with manufacturing a sense of
competition, AP courses, by design, emphasize rote memorization and breadth of
“knowledge” rather than depth. Not surprisingly retention of the “facts”,
even just 30 days after AP tests is dismal.
Kids often take AP courses just to pad their resumes, because it looks
good on their transcripts – and that transcript is the ticket to the next level
of the game. This suggests that the only selling point for AP courses is
that they’re a rung on the ladder to success. And students and parents
have bought the snake oil for decades. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG-DqFZOmDhPqaKu8A00HirWeKGGCCtVE5nhdCX2mSjsSM7PknfdVYQnC0J7iWEC8TKviSBS_cMnVccIjKisyscujfe7MFuoFX3j5m5WX6a_qgJc3vw2PQZTa6gedcGKt0SVTFyhbJXisV/s1600/will-graphic.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG-DqFZOmDhPqaKu8A00HirWeKGGCCtVE5nhdCX2mSjsSM7PknfdVYQnC0J7iWEC8TKviSBS_cMnVccIjKisyscujfe7MFuoFX3j5m5WX6a_qgJc3vw2PQZTa6gedcGKt0SVTFyhbJXisV/s320/will-graphic.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Are we emphasizing the right things in schools?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 7.5pt;">For
me, the biggest issue with this type of student is </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">their</span><span style="font-size: 7.5pt;"> abject fear of
failure. They need the A-fix, and they need it often to be validated as
people. Consequently, they are often unwilling to take risks or to be
creative. Matthew Syed outlines this idea in an op/ed piece for the BBC
called “How Creativity is Helped by Failure.” He examines several
successful organizations and how each cultivates a community where failure is a
part of the process on the way to success. “Organisations [sic] like
Google… and Pixar have developed cultures that, in their different ways create
the conditions for empowering failure. They have become living ecosystems
of the imagination.” Without testing ideas and examining their flaws, he
argues, we cannot develop innovative solutions to problems. When we don’t
allow students to struggle through a difficult problem-solving task, we stifle
creativity. While we don’t know what the
workplace will look like in ten or twenty years, we do know that critical
thinking and creativity will be essential skills to develop.</span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">Last year, one of my students wrote on his final reflection, “SBL
is OK once I figured out how to get the A.” While this is annoying, it’s
also understandable. At present, our system is a hybrid of old and
new. We still convert SBG assessments to
traditional grades. Colleges still want the old ACT/SAT scores. No
cultural shift takes place overnight, but I am excited about the possibilities.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s not the kids’
fault that they want As – it’s the system and the culture around it. The
more we envision a system where students and teachers collaborate for success
and mastery of particular skills, where content doesn’t necessarily drive the
course but skills do, where we seek to make interdisciplinary connections and
to foster collaboration – and the more we see that college is not the single
determinant of one’s success in life, the more we have to conceive of our
educational systems, not as a factory, but as a functioning ecosystem of the
imagination.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7.5pt;">Images from: </span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 10px;">Most Likely to Succeed Trailer: mltsfilm.com</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 10px;">Schleicher, Andreas. "Building a High Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from Around the World" </span></span></li>
</ul>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-88322193747226628282016-01-06T11:10:00.002-08:002016-01-06T11:10:59.802-08:00It's exam time...do you know where your students are?<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Over the past month we have met with many teachers to talk about midterm/final assessments. With the move to standards-based learning, the purpose and design of these assessments often shifts, and teachers are working to develop experiences that reflect that shift. In a standards-based class, exams and other final assessments are designed to confirm or determine where our students are on our course targets. Determining student location not only allows us to communicate learning to students and parents, but helps us reflect on our own teaching.</i></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what are teachers at CVU doing? Here are some examples from this year and last:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target-based exams: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some teachers want to confirm what their students know and understand through a test. By organizing each page (or section) of the test beneath the actual target scale, teachers are able to look at the evidence of learning in a way that is efficient and “targeted.” By organizing and formatting the test in this way, the expectations are more clear to students and more efficient for teachers to assess. Re-organizing tests by target also force us as teachers to be precise and intentional in our questioning. We need to think about the types of questions that will provide evidence of learning at all levels.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target-based exams with individual targeted reassessment options: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Along with the above option, many teachers are adding an individual reassessment option to this exam. Teachers have made the choice that ALL students will be assessed on certain targets during the exam, but once done with those, students can choose 2-3 more targets to reassess. Prior to this exam, teachers have made sure that students are aware of where they stand with each target so that individuals can make informed choices on what they want to reassess during this time. This has been a very effective way for teachers to make sure to get evidence on a select number of targets, while allowing students to show improvement in areas of need and choice. Figuring out how to manage and organize is the biggest challenge here, but teachers have come up with some great options including color coding and personalized packets.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target-based Reflection:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Some teachers are using the time to have students reflect on their achievement from the first semester. One team has students going through summative portfolios (kept on a blog) that are organized by learning target. Students are thinking about strengths, areas of growth, challenges, and ultimately, setting targeted goals for the second semester. This allows students to be more aware of their learning, and ultimately to be more in control, while at the same time allowing teachers to gather important information about students’ differences and needs. Another teacher has students write letters to their parents about targets of greatest strength and need, as well as habits of learning; this letter serves as a reflection, a form of parent communication, and a writing assessment. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Target-based Conferences: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an effort to have a one on one discussion with students, many teachers are holding target-based conferences with individuals during the two hour block. During these conferences, the students/teachers are looking at evidence of achievement of the course learning targets, and collectively setting learning goals for the upcoming semester. While similar to Reflection (above), these conferences allow dialogue about the learning. Teachers have a variety of ways to use the time for the other students, including starting work for semester two, reflecting on work from semester one, or completing an independent project or exam. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of the unique exam week schedule, many teachers are also looking at alternative ways to use the two hour blocks. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While we are required to have our students, we are not required to hold cumulative exams or assessments, and often there are activities or experiences or formative assessments that would benefit from the longer period of time, such as guest speakers, simulations, performances, galleries, or discussions. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>One of the things we keep hearing from teachers who have transitioned to standards-based learning and grading in their classrooms is that student anxiety around midterm assessments has gone way down. And this is not because assessments have gotten easier. It’s because students and teachers know prior to the assessments where they are on the targets, so the assessments become a confirmation of learning rather than something to get stressed about. There shouldn’t be any surprises on midterms/finals. We, the teachers, have evidence of learning; we know what our students know, understand, and can do prior to the assessment. They, the students, have evidence of learning; they know what they know, understand, and can do prior to the assessment. That clarity of understanding makes exams feel less intimidating, and more inviting.</i></span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>One teacher told us last week that her class asked her to give her exam early because they were ready for it--they knew where they were because their learning had been so transparent leading up to this point. How cool is that? And it came as no surprise to the teacher that her students were right: they nailed the exam. </i></span></div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8216301414251152414.post-74271139906223762252015-12-11T11:45:00.001-08:002015-12-11T11:56:46.541-08:00Rigor and Standards-Based Learning<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week a teacher from another school told us she philosophically agreed with SBL for regular kids, but that for the “high-flyers,” it just doesn’t work. She said that SBL means you have to cover less content, so those upper level kids can’t be challenged like they are in the traditional system. She went on to say that it was her responsibility to prepare students for competitive colleges, and she just couldn’t be rigorous if she had to teach to the same standards for all kids. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ok. So there are clearly some real misunderstandings here about SBL. Let’s be clear right off the bat: standards-based instruction and assessment does not guarantee rigor, just as traditional instruction and assessment does not guarantee rigor. Rigor comes from our expectations and our ability as teachers to know our students well enough to determine appropriate challenge levels. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ensuring rigor requires understanding learning and the brain, knowing our content well enough to be able to add or subtract complexity, and recognizing the difference between difficulty and complexity.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Understanding Learning and the Brain:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiHHuKCt4LqwIzMWOB750DqptwN8qJi-J02WqT9SlO1bV3IaLzEkAegH_G8883SGCY1YE3Kd8RmPFtIej_X62Qa7ukI_06qELmsthZ_XllPbMq-q02NAtWB3Zvshi83QBhyAY2wclnHEX/s1600/zpd+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPiHHuKCt4LqwIzMWOB750DqptwN8qJi-J02WqT9SlO1bV3IaLzEkAegH_G8883SGCY1YE3Kd8RmPFtIej_X62Qa7ukI_06qELmsthZ_XllPbMq-q02NAtWB3Zvshi83QBhyAY2wclnHEX/s1600/zpd+1.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rigor requires understanding about learning.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> New learning occurs when learners work within their </span><a href="http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zones of Proximal Development</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is that area between “I got this” and “This is too hard,” the Yellow Zone as we refer to it in our school. Learning is challenging in this zone, but possible; students can feel their brains engaging and neither coast through nor give up. It should come as no surprise to teachers that student ZPDs are not all the same. Even within tracked classes (from remedial to AP) there are incredible variations based on the precise skills being addressed. Because of the variation in our learners (which, though inconvenient, is a fact), we have to have a way of figuring out each student’s ZPD for each skill. Yes. We know there are a lot of students. But if our goal is to provide rigor for all, then we need to determine what is rigorous for each.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Knowing our Content:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rigor requires deep content knowledge. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you think of learning as a road trip, with our goals (targets, standards, outcomes) as the destination, then our content is the actual map. We use the content to get to the destination. The more we know about our content, the more detailed the map can be. The more detailed the map, the more options we have to shift the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complexity of the trip itself. Some of our students will get stuck partway to the destination, some will get lost, some will struggle leaving the garage in the first place, and some will be well on the way to the destination before we even begin. The better we know our maps, the better able we are to raise or lower the complexity of the journey for individuals so that all students can be both successful and challenged. From a student perspective, the more content they learn along the way, the more interesting and meaningful (and ultimately memorable) the trip to the destination will be. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(And here’s another note on content, since one of the biggest misconceptions about SBL is that content isn’t important. Content is vital. Without content, there’s no map. There’s no scenery. There are no roads or bridges or signs or rest stops or World’s Biggest Balls of String. Without content, the cars won’t leave the driveways.)</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recognizing the Difference between Difficulty and Complexity: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rigor is about complexity, not difficulty.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Here are some examples to illustrate. A student has a 3 page reading to do. To make this more difficult, we could do a variety of things, including adding more pages, leaving out every 5th word, making the font tiny, or requiring that the student do the reading while upside down. These are silly, yes, but they all would make the task harder to do, right? But do they add complexity? No. Years ago in our team taught humanities class, we attempted to challenge some of our stronger readers by asking them to read two novels instead of one; we asked them to write eight pages instead of six; we gave more homework. All of these increased the difficulty without increasing complexity.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihB5RGNzIZ1eh_z6HAHa3S5j40gvlZCcjZyi17OaBPPVGhZOUtWIk0r6Wnwg7c_L2WCB_vb87VOgg5qJaPa8nr5FbG4FZ6L4GhflR20r6-vgwd_1JmRwfArJW5NLz1vOv5S9Ym-pe5N1a1/s1600/rigor.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihB5RGNzIZ1eh_z6HAHa3S5j40gvlZCcjZyi17OaBPPVGhZOUtWIk0r6Wnwg7c_L2WCB_vb87VOgg5qJaPa8nr5FbG4FZ6L4GhflR20r6-vgwd_1JmRwfArJW5NLz1vOv5S9Ym-pe5N1a1/s200/rigor.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we are trying to judge rigor, we should be looking at the quality of the thinking demonstrated by students in that class, not at the amount of work assigned or the hours of homework. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are students regularly expected (and taught to) think at Bloom’s highest levels (ALL students)? During the class itself, what type of activities are the students engaged in? Are they thinking? Grappling? Struggling? Or are they sitting and listening? Are they working with the content, using it, testing it, questioning it? Or are they passively receiving it? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rigor is about </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complexity</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not difficulty. We should be attempting to raise the former for all students, not settling for the easier task of increasing difficulty.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Article you may be interested in:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://ncbtp.org/docs/critical_difference.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0363ab; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Critical Difference between Complexity and Difficulty</span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So is an SBL class more rigorous? Not on its own. But, the conditions above are much more easily met within a standards-based system than they are in a traditional system. In a standards-based class, students and teachers know the destinations. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And when those destinations are skill-based rather than content-based (reminder: see above note on how important content is!), teachers and students have much more flexibility to ratchet complexity up or down throughout the learning experience.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Does this ensure rigor? Of course not. We, the teachers, are ultimately in control of that, and if we don’t know our learners well or hold them to high enough standards, that’s on us, not on a system of learning. </span></div>
Emily Rinkemahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12686428292925272514noreply@blogger.com3