27: Responsive Teaching: Essential Skills & Attitudes 1 of 2

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Establish clarity about curricular essentials
  • identify skills and ideas that make up enduring understandings and enabling support skills
  • curriculum based on important concepts is more likely to be relevant and engaging to learners
  • work to ensure that all learners own powerful learning goals
  • General strategies:
    • Start unit with pre-assessments of upcoming learning targets and precursor skills
    • Use ongoing formative assessments to finetune assignments
    • Provide enrichment activities to advanced students that align to learning targets
    • Use common learning targets to communicate the power of the agenda and each students’ ability to contribute to it
    • Design curriculum around powerful ideas that reveal how the discipline works
    • Use flexible entry points to enduring understandings
    • Offer options to enduring understandings for different students to explore and access learning
Accept responsibility for learner success
  • accept the reality that if a student didn’t learn something important, it wasn’t taught well enough
  • believe that all students have potential and worth
  • General strategies:
    • Promote a classroom environment with shared teacher-student responsibility for learning
    • Do not let gender, low SES, race, past achievement etc, become excuses for shoddy work or for achieving less than what students can accomplish
    • Get to know each student to learn how to teach her more effectively
    • Track progress of student against key learning targets
    • Find alternative ways of teaching to ensure wider access to content
    • Send consistent messages to students that if something didn’t work today, we’ll try something new tomorrow
    • Provide support systems that model what quality work looks like and what it takes to produce quality work
Develop Communities of Respect
  • Create safe environments where all teachers and students are respected
  • General strategies:
    • Promote behaviors that support, not undermine, positive learning environments.  Read about principles of complex instruction (i.e. good grouping learning) in this article for more ideas.
    • Do not let a small group of students dominate classroom conversations
    • Call on ALL students during classroom conversations.  See here for more creative ideas to accomplish this.
    • Design tasks that enable all students to make meaningful contributions to the group.  For ideas on how to do this in math, check out this article on Rich Mathematical Tasks.
    • Ensure that varied perspectives and backgrounds emerge in important parts of work
    • Help students reflect on the quality of their contributions to the community
    • Seek out, respond to, and use students’ ideas on how to foster more respect in the classroom
Build Awareness of What Works for Each Student:
  • Act as hunter/gatherers of many learning strategies who value what each strategy may offer to students
  • General strategies:
    • Create opportunities to meet individually with students
    • Gather information on students’ interests, preferences, dreams, etc
    • Work to understand students’ strengths and challenges
    • Learn students’ learning profiles
    • Observe students in different contexts (alone, small group, large group) to see which contexts better facilitate learning
    • Create opportunities to learn from parents, community members and other teachers about students
For more essential skills and attitudes go to: 28: Responsive Teaching: Essential Skills & Attitudes 2 of 2

 

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Knowing the skills and attitudes that support responsive teaching can help teachers evaluate their own beliefs and skill sets in order to develop better attitudes and strategies.  The idea that ALL students can succeed is not new, but is easier said than done.  The more strategies one knows, the better one can prepare to meet the challenges of facilitating learning for students with varied interests, varied learning profiles, and varied levels of non-school support.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Analyze standards in upcoming project.  Categorize them into enduring understandings and key enabling skills.
  • Conduct activities that help students identify and share their preferred learning modes and interests
  • Research and gather resources for multiple ways to teach learning targets.
  • Brainstorm flexible entry points towards key understandings and towards products.  One strategy for this is differentiated curriculum charts.
  • Research and commit to a research model for evaluating lesson plan design & implementation
  • Implement and learn from a pre-assessment at the start of a project on upcoming learning targets and prerequisite skills
Early Implementation Steps
  • Allow students to choose from flexible entry points to key understandings and products
  • Implement lesson plans that appeal to multiple learning modes
  • Observe students in order to learn what activities and contexts enhance their learning
  • Record observations of students and of lesson plan details that can teach one how to fine tune lessons and improve later lesson plan designs
  • Create opportunities for students to learn in small groups within workshops that match their learning needs
  • Use regular formative assessments to give students’ feedback to improve their understanding and products and to fine tune lesson plans
  • Call on ALL students during classroom conversations
  • Track how student learning is approaching learning targets
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Let students choose from a menu of activities and assignments to learn new content and display mastery.  See differentiated curriculum charts.
  • Have students regularly journal on the strategies they are using to learn new concepts and what factors are enhancing and hindering their learning.
  • Provide enrichment activities to advanced students.
  • Call all parents to learn about students interests and quirks related to learning.
  • Design and implement group roles that assign meaningful tasks to all group members.  See this article for tips on teaching collaborative learning skills.
  • Seek out and implement student advice on how to improve classroom culture.

 

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25: Engaging Students with Data

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Engaging Students with Data: Teach students how to gather and use data on their student work in order to set and meet goals

 

Benefits of Engaging Students with Data:
  • Builds metacognition
  • Builds confidence
  • Teaches students how to use self-knowledge to transform themselves
Data Strategies:
  • Create a safe data culture
  • Use checklists to track typical errors – students use these checklists to identify and count typical errors in their work
  • Students and teachers look for patterns in recurrent assessments to see if students are progressing towards goals
  • Align assessment, assessment analysis/reflection tools, and learning targets
  • Set feasible, clear individual and class goals
  • Alert parents to data inquiry cycle – what it is, why it’s useful and how to get involved in it
  • Promote growth mindset
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See benefits listed above.  In addition, teaching students how to analyze their own learning data will teach them a life skill that will enable them to pursue and track their own goals outside school.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Research tools that can be built into routines that help students track their data over time
  • Research activities that can be used to build trust and illustrate the usefulness of tracking data
  • Build a culture that values mistakes and progress through sustained effort
Early Implementation Steps
  • Introduces tools (e.g. checklists of common pitfalls) that help students classify mistakes so they can develop a more clear picture of how to improve
  • Model how to gather and organize data that illustrates progress of student learning “over time”
  • Help students set class and individual goals that can be tracked by data
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Implement systems of data checks that enable students to graph and visualize their progress over time
  • Design assessment practices and tools that allow students to track progress towards character learning targets

 

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24: Checks for Understanding

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Chapter 2 in Berger, Ron, Leah Rugen, and Libby Woodfin.  Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming School through Student-engaged Assessment. Print.

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Checks for Understanding Techniques:
  • oral, written, and visual techniques, implemented in variety or groupings (individually, in teams), that teachers and students use to assess content
 
Benefits of Checks for Understanding:
  • Students monitor their own progress
  • Students support reasoning with evidence
  • Students become more independent learners
  • Students build growth mindset
  • Students break large goals into smaller ones
  • Students evaluate progress while learning
  • Students build metacognitive understanding of their learning process and academic mindsets
  • Teachers learn if their scaffolding is working
Checks for Understanding: Strategies 
  • Requires culture of trust – see section below
  • Model and practice techniques with students
  • Discuss purpose of techniques with students
  • Discuss importance of honest self assessment
  • Embed in rich tasks aligned to meaningful learning targets
  • Structure such that. ALL students participate
  • Structure such that ALL students support ideas with evidence
  • Develop good questions that simulate and assess powerful thinking
  • Assign and quickly assess using “write to learn” tasks
  • Use varied discussion protocols
  • Select strategies that match depth of thinking
  • Use Quick Checks strategies
  • Strategically listen to students working in small groups and track evidence of progress towards content and character learning targets using checklists
  • Use checklists to track which students were supported, are struggling, etc
  • Use cold call strategies – like using popsicle sticks on randomly call on students to respond to a prompt
  • Use warm call strategies – use popsicle sticks to randomly call on students who will get time to review notes and then respond to a prompt
  • No opt out – all students given opportunity to either get prompt correct on first call or paraphrase a previously given response on second call
  • Give students appropriate thinking time to respond to questions
  • Cue, Clue, Probe, Rephrase
    • Cue – use pics, words, etc to help with recall
    • Clue – use overt reminders
    • Probe – look for reasoning to clarify a correct response or unpack an incorrect response
    • Rephrase – pose response in different words
  • Close lessons with Debriefs –
    • Students synthesize and reflect on lesson
    • Student gather evidence of their learning
  • Use exit tickets to modify next day’s lesson
  • Catch-release – gather students for instruction. release to practice
  • Release-catch – let students explore material and make initial meaning of material, then gather for instruction
Building a Culture of Trust & Collaboration:
  • Treat students as partners in learning process – let them co-create learning targets and norms
  • Be transparent about learning goals and their rationale
  • Get to know students
  • Differentiate instruction for individuals
  • Create norms that promote perseverance and backing up conclusions with evidence
  • Create climate of courtesy and respect, not compliance and control

3-sowhatSee benefits listed above.

Frequently using checks for understanding can help students learn how they are progressing towards learning targets.  Using a variety of checks for understanding strategies can keep feedback and reflections fresh and can encourage active participation of ALL students.  A culture of trust can help students be honest about their progress and help them to actively seek out help as needed.

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Preparation Steps
  • Research and gather assessment strategies that go well with different types of learning targets (knowledge, skill, reasoning, character)
  • Design activities that build a culture of trust in classroom
  • Develop checklists that help teachers observe students for key evidence of understanding
  • Build a culture of trust early in the year
Early implementation Steps
  • Model how to use checks for understanding and the importance of using strategy correctly
  • Students use strategies to communicate what they know and need-to-know
  • Modifies lesson pacing in response to checks for understanding
  • Structures lessons and assessments so that all students actively participate
  • Runs debrief and exit ticket activities with students to check what they learned that day and uses that info to plan for tomorrow
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Uses checklists to track observations of students during work time; uses patterns to improve instruction
  • Designs and uses checklists to track progress towards character learning targets
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23: Learning Targets

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Learning target versus objectives:
  • Both: aligned to standards, set goals for lesson plans
  • Objectives: for the teachers
  • Learning targets: written for and owned by students,  written in student friendly language, chunked (1 skill per target)
Benegits of Using Learning Targets to Communicate Goals
  • Can be used to make students main agents in self assessing and improving learning
  • Builds investment in learning because students can reference what they know and need-to-know against understandable goals
  • Helps students define what they are learning and why they are learning it
  • Builds student motivation by making goals feel accessible
  • Helps students fit goals into a larger framework
  • Discussing learning targets builds academic vocabulary
  • Build sense of ownership and accountability over learning
  • Can be tied to all school structures: daily work, grades, events, etc.
  • Reframes lesson in terms of what students will learn, not what teachers will teach
  • Character learning targets can teach student useful skills such as: risk taking, perseverance, responsibility, etc.
 
Character Learning Targets
  • specific expectation that build up positive learning culture and build soft skills needed to learn and to create products
  • based on school-wide norms for behavior
 
Design of Learning Targets & Related Materials:
  • Break down objectives into manageable, student friendly targets
  • Describe learning goal, not task goal
  • Prioritize targets
  • Use long term and supporting targets: 3 to 5 supporting targets per long term targets
  • Use rigor of targets to design appropriate learning tasks
  • KISS – limit to one verb and one topic
Implementation of Learning Targets:
  • Used to track student learning throughout the lesson
  • Match assessment type to target type
  • Give students time to discuss learning in terms of targets
  • Can allow students to revise targets to make them more understandable
  • Break down target with students
  • Use targets to conduct timely assessments and reflections on progress
  • Student read aloud target and restate in their own words to a partner
  • Can use targets to frame next steps
  • Can wait to introduce new targets after students have explored new material
  • Leave time at end of lesson to allow students to use target to debrief lesson
  • Use informal checks for understanding
School-wide Implementation
  • Create character targets per grade level
  • design professional development around learning targets
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See benefits listed above.
Learning targets can be used to communicate goals, build student confidence, and build student ownership of their own learning.  Learning targets can be used to develop routines that teach students to self-assess and reflect on their progress towards accessible learning goals.  Using supporting and long term learning targets can demonstrate to students how learning targets fit within a broader framework of ideas.  Scaffolding and assessing character learning targets can improve classroom cultures and develop students’ 21st century skills.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Develop Year at a Glance
  • Prioritize standards – high to low
  • Write learning targets that are standards-based, specific, student-friendly, assessable, and reasonable
  • Collaborate with staff to develop school-wide behavior expectations
  • Write character learning targets that go with school-wide expectations
Early Implementation Steps
  • Develop routine of discussing learning targets near the start of class with students
  • Develop routines that have students reflect on their Knows & Need-to-Knows that relate to specific learning targets
  • Use routines that involve checks for understanding and reflection debriefs
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Incorporate long term and supporting learning targets
  • Find powerful moments to reveal learning targets and reserve learning target discussions for these times
  • Engage students in creating or revising learning targets
  • Analyze rigor of learning targets into knowledge, skill and reasoning targets and use these to select correct activities and assessments
  • Scaffold and assess academic AND character learning targets
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20: Difficult Conversations

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Brittian, Heidi, and Tricia McCarthy.  “Difficult Conversations.” Region 13 Instructional Coaching Network.  Austin.  15 Dec. 2015.  Lecture.

 

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Why do we settle for unreal conversations

  • fear of vulnerability
  • ignorance – think everything is fine
  • confusion about power
  • discomfort
  • afraid to hurt feelings
  • fear of unknown
  • fear of conflict
  • job secuirty

Heavy vs Light Coaching:

  • Light coaching: builds trust, forms baseline trust needed for heavy coaching, tends to be more positive
  • Heavy coaching: data driven, pushes people out of comfort zones, can involve respectful disagreements, can lead to changes that improve student learning, involve more questions that get to the heart of issues

7 Principles for Difficult Conversations:

  1. Master the courage to interrogate reality:
    • identify issues and possible solutions
    • check for understanding and agreement
    • be aware of the similarities and differences between the official truth versus the truth-on-the-ground
  2. Come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it real
  3. Be present
  4. Tackle toughest challenge today
  5. Don’t trust your instincts, obey them
    • Listen to your internal voice for content and emotional content
    • Remember the emotional cup: bad feelings tend to settle to the bottom and positive emotion rise; bad emotions can emerge in stressful situations
  6. Take responsibility for you emotional wake
    • What do you want people to remember?
    • What leaves a wake? (What’s said and not said)
  7. Let silence do the heavy lifting
    • Allow for silent thinking time

8 Difficult Conversation Mistakes:

  1. Doing most of the talking
  2. Taking problem away from someone
  3. Not asking about feelings
  4. Being unclear
  5. Allow interruptions
  6. Canceling meeting
  7. Running out of time
  8. Assuming conversation was effective without gathering feedback

Other Tips:

  • Opening fist exercise – remember it’s human nature to resist giving up control
  • Ask yourself – is it more important to be right or to do right?
  • Script conversation – write out what’s the issue?  what are the impacts of the issue?  What feelings are connected to the issue?
  • Be compassionate
  • Acknowledge own feelings and perceived feelings

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Teachers and administrators will have opportunities to right situations by skillfully managing difficult conversations.  Managing these conversations skillfully with students can model for them how to discuss the indiscussables in ways that are productive.  Having difficult conversations is hard.  Having a game plan and principles to apply will increase the odds of skillfully participating in difficult conversations.

Students need to learn how to have difficult conversations in order to become more effective team members. The pitfalls and principles can be taught to students in order to teach them how to discuss the indiscussables.

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Preparation Steps

  • Plan/script some thoughts related to difficult conversation
  • Schedule a time for difficult conversations that will be free of interruptions

Early Implementation Steps

  • Engage in difficult conversation – be present, listen carefully, apply principles above
  • Check in with conversation partner to see if he or she thinks conversations went well and why
  • Help conversation partner think aloud and develop next steps

Advanced Implementation Steps

  • Teach students 7 principles of difficult conversations and 8 pitfalls
  • Create opportunities for students to practice difficult conversations before they occur for real – they can roleplay typical scenarios that arise in projects.  Examples include: student is too bossy, student is not contributing a lot to group, student is often off task, student is often absent and behind on work.  Have students practice conversation while others watch and take notes.  Have observers offer suggestions to improve conversation.

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12: HCD: Inspiration Phase

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Class 2 Readings in “Design Kit_The Course for Human-Centered Design.” Dropbox. Web. 14 Mar. 2016.

 

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  1. Choose a design challenge:
    • define what you know and don’t know
    • review constraints and barriers
    • brainstorm how to overcome barriers
  2. Plan research methods:
    • Learn from the people: define your audience, investigate outliers and mainstream examples, capture evidence (videos, photos, quotes), investigate environments, build trust, build recruiting tools
    • Learn from an expert: interview experts to learn about systems levels frameworks, technical advice, and new & innovative related solutions, plan/research smart interview questions, use secondary research to explore recent innovations & solutions
    • Immerse yourself in context: choose observational experiences that will yield key quantitative and qualitative data, capture many details of what’s seen, reflect on what’s observed
    • Analogous solutions: brainstorm analogous solutions and experiences, immerse oneself in experience
  3. Build Interview Guide:
    • Brainstorm questions related to objectives
    • Organize questions: start general and then go deep
    • Use open-ended questions to get more information
    • Sketch conversations – include conversation starters and interview questions
    • Assign key roles – interview, note taker
    • Establish trust with interviewee
    • Use 5 Why’s to get to root cause
    • Encourage interviewee to show as well as tell
    • Capture what you see and hear
  4. Additional Research Methods
    • Personal diaries
    • Photo essays
    • Card sort – prioritize and explain
    • Feedback on concept drawings
    • See Research & Design links at page bottom.
  5. Capture Learnings
    • Share interesting findings without interpreting them
    • Illustrate new ideas

 

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The steps in the inspiration phase of the human-centered design process can be used to investigate student experiences and needs in order to design better processes.  These steps can also be taught to students so that they can investigate the needs and experiences of project clients.  Many of the steps in this process are similar to steps in project such as: list knows and need-to-knows, gather and interpret data, and design solutions that meet constraints.  The detail in the steps in the inspiration phase can be used to deepen students’ investigations of their audiences and stakeholders prior to designing products.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • HCD Inspiration Steps applied to Designing Better Projects
    • Apply steps in Inspiration phase (see above) to develop a deeper understanding of students who are not being reached by mainstream projects (could be struggling students or bored, gifted students)
    • Design questions that gather information on student experiences, interests, and needs
    • Develop culture of trust and experimentation that helps students feel safe while you research their experiences
  • Scaffolding HCD Inspiration Steps for Students
    • Research / design activities and tools that scaffold steps (see above and articles linked below) for students
    • Design informal / formal assessments that can assess how well students are applying steps
    • Develop empathy and scaffolding ideas by trialing inspiration steps to solve a problem (example: use steps to learn more information about students that can be used to design better projects)
Early Implementation Steps
  • HCD Inspiration Steps applied to Designing Better Projects
    • Be transparent with students on how research will be used to design better learning experiences
    • Interview students to develop deeper understanding of their needs and experiences; can also get similar information by studying responses to reflection prompts
    • Observe how students act, speak, and write during project activities and take notes
    • Can do a card sort activity to identify student preferences in activity types
    • Can investigate student journals/blog entries to learn about their thinking, needs and experiences
    • Can use challenge vs. support chart to guide students to evaluate project activities
  • Scaffolding HCD Inspiration Steps for Students
    • Implement scaffolding activities related to inspiration steps
    • Use assessments to provide timely feedback to students on their implementation of inspiration steps and to refine activities
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • HCD Inspiration Steps applied to Designing Better Projects
    • Analyze student reflections and responses over time to evaluate various project activities
    • Use student data to identify strong practices and practices in need of revision
    • Use gathering / interpreting student data as a model to scaffold how students implement similar processes in their projects
  • Scaffolding HCD Inspiration Steps for Students
    • Use assessments to determine what scaffolding activities and tools are helping students effectively apply inspiration steps
    • Convert high yield tools and practices into standardized tools and routines that students use in several projects
    • Use student reflections to refine tools and practices
    • Use tools such as Ignite by DiscoverSTEAM to create more authentic contexts & to create more access to experts
 
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11: Human-Centered Design (HCD)
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  • What is Human-Centered Design? design process + empathy
  • The Design Process Phases:
    • Inspiration: How do I ask questions and stay human-centered? What key constraints can I use to set benchmarks and objectives? How can I balance concrete constraints while staying open to exploration? What research studies can I conduct to identify what my clients truly need?
    • Ideation: How to I interpret what I’ve learned in order to develop concrete ideas and prototypes? How can I keep my mind open to generate many ideas?  How can I evaluate ideas to determine best solutions?
    • Implementation: How can I develop sustainable solutions?  How can I assess whether or not solutions are working? How can I use prototypes to reveal unforeseen consequences and constraints?
  • Design Process Implementation:
    • Phases often overlap
    • Cycling between convergent and divergent thinking is normal
    • Find solutions that relate to needs of community
    • Postive deviance – use positive outliners for inspiration
    • Do not forget to consider distribution systems while designing sustainable solutions
  • Mindsets of a Human-Centered Designer:
    • Learn from failure
    • Make it – tangibility is good
    • Creative confidence – everyone has ideas and the power to implement them
    • Empathy – clients are roadmaps to innovative solutions
    • Embrace ambiguity – not knowing creates opportunities to explore
    • Be optimistic – the solution exists
    • Iterate often – use feedback to revise often

 

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Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach that can be used to develop projects that engage students AND teach content & 21st Century skills.  This approach is also a problem solving model that can be scaffolded for students to develop better products.  The HCD phases can be used to organize projects into phases – especially projects aimed at designing products for specific clients.  The mindsets of a human-centered designer can be cultivated within teachers and students in order to make them better problem solvers.

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Preparation Steps
 
  • HCD Applied to Designing & Implementing Projects:
    • Use multiple data sources to identify needs of students
    • Use needs of students to develop criteria/constraints for evaluation of project design
    • Design assessments based on student needs for assessing success of project activities
    • Develop ideas based on constraints for scaffolding content and 21st century skills
  • HCD Applied to Developing Project Scaffolding:
    • Develop scaffolding ideas and empathy by going through HCD cycle first – can apply it to designing and implementing a project
    • Research methods for teaching phases of HCD process.  See Design Process articles for ideas.
    • Develop activities and tools that scaffold student application of HCD phases.  See Design Process articles for ideas.
    • Design activities and tools that focus on HCD mindset(s) that will be honed and applied in upcoming project
    • Develop assessments for determining whether or not students are successfully learning content and applying HCD steps
Early Implementation Steps
 
  • HCD Applied to Designing & Implementing Projects:
    • Implement project and use assessments and constraints to measure success of project and make adjustments as needed
    • Use student input throughout the project to assess project effectiveness and to fine tune project
  • HCD Applied to Developing Project Scaffolding:
    • Implement scaffolding tools and activities that guide students to apply HCD processes
    • Use assessments to determine if HCD is helping students develop better understandings and better products
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • HCD Applied to Designing & Implementing Projects:
    • Uses experiences from implementing HCD to design scaffolding that helps students apply HCD
    • Reuse effective HCD practices to design other projects
  • HCD Applied to Developing Project Scaffolding:
    • Use student input to refine HCD tools and processes
    • Use programs such as Ignite by DiscoverSTEAM to connect students with corporate clients to make HCD applications more relevant
    • Develop routines that give students opportunities to deliberately practice HCD steps
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10: Grading Smarter, not Harder

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Dueck, Myron. Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Assessment Strategies That Motivate Kids and Help Them Learn. Print.

 

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  • CARE Method for Evaluating Effectiveness of Grading Strategy:
    • C: Students care about consequences
    • A: Grades assess content mastery alone
    • R: Strategies have good results
    • E: Strategies empower students to learn better
  • Instead of assigning a zero or incomplete to an assignment …
    • Assigned due time spans instead of due dates
    • Used late incomplete form that explained reason for late assignment, next steps to turn in assignment late, and signatures of student and parent/guardian
    • Assigned overall incomplete for a marking period if student was missing any major assignments. Converted that to a grade once all major assignments were turned in
    • Used homework club to help students complete assignments
    • CARE results: Students worked harder to avoid interventions because they didn’t want to lose free time to homework club. Grades more accurately measured content mastery. Interventions on late form reduced negative behavior more that homework incomplete and late points. Personalized interventions empowered students to complete assignments.
  • Instead of grading homework sets …
    • Incentivized homework sets by making them entry tickets into meaningful classroom activities
    • Graded occasional homework quizzes
    • Used individual homework completion to identify student homework profiles, i.e. how much homework student needed to complete to develop skills
    • Used homework profiles to determine appropriate interventions
    • Provided in-school support (homework club during lunch and after school) to complete homework
    • CARE results: Students did homework to gain access to more engaging activities and to perform better on quizzes.  Homework quizzes better assess content mastery than homework sets. Shifted focus from just completing homework to using homework to perform better on other tasks. In school supports empowered students to do better.
  • Instead of just grading tests …
    • Students completed test form that graded problems and related them to key skills
    • Students used test form to identify their content strengths and gaps
    • Students allowed to retest in specific topics that match their gaps only
    • Cascaded test grades to quizzes, i.e. if student demonstrated mastery on a topic in a test, quiz grade on same topic was changed to reflect current content mastery
    • CARE results: Motivated students to do better on tests to recoup quiz grades. Did not penalize students for developing content mastery slower than others.  Better assessment of content mastery over time.  More students opted to retest because they did not need to retest on all test topics.

 

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Designing and implementing projects can be very time consuming.  Developing systems that save time and also improve learning are invaluable to teachers who aim to be both effective and sane.  Dueck’s CARE criteria are a good checklist for evaluating similar grading experiments aimed at creating new grading strategies that are more effective and less time consuming.  Aiming to use grading practices to measure content mastery, not behavior, challenges the idea of scaffolding and assessing 21st Century skills.  One can resolve this conflict by converting learning outcomes to student-friendly, measurable learning targets and scaffolding and assessing these learning targets to the same levels as content-specific learning targets.

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Preparation Steps
  • Use CARE criteria to evaluate current grading practices and determine which are effective and ineffective practices
  • Brainstorm grading practices that can replace ineffective practices
  • Use a parent letter to notify parents/guardians of new grading practices and rationale for these
  • Develop resources (e.g. forms) related to new grading practices
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement new grading practices
  • Use CARE criteria to determine if new grading practices are a good fit for one’s students
  • Make adjustments to grading practices that improve their ability to demonstrate CARE criteria
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Develop grading routines and tools around CARE-tested grading strategies
  • Have students reflect on how grading routines are affecting their mindsets and achievement levels
  • Use student input to refine grading strategies
  • Refine student strategies to make students more active agents in the grading process

 

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03: Learning in the Challenge Zone

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Key Ingredients to Learning in the Challenge Zone:
  • High expectations combined with high levels of support (high challenge + great scaffolding)
  • Explicit content language scaffolding
  • Builds on prior knowledge and experiences
  • Teacher understanding of subject specific language needed to be successful
  • Positive teacher student relationships
  • Positive teacher beliefs (see below)
Key Positive Beliefs: Positive beliefs are important to teaching because they influence teacher expectations and teacher choices relating to students.  Key positive beliefs include:
  • Believe in students in terms of their potential, not in terms of current abilities
  • Focus on Uncovering as opposed to covering material
  • Reflect on teaching and learning practices
  • See culturally diverse classroom as a resource and opportunity, not as a problem

 

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Cultivating the right beliefs and skill sets to support ALL learners is important to building positive teacher-student relationships and to implementing effective scaffolding.  The idea that material is Uncovered, not covered can remind teachers to select methods for teaching that promote deeper understanding of material.  Leveraging students’ diversity, as opposed to bemoaning it, is a way to model greater appreciation of diversity for students.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Reflect on one’s beliefs towards students when things are going well and things are not going well
  • Research team building and relationship building activities
  • Research key language needed to think effectively within one’s content
Early Implementation
  • Facilitate activities and routines that build a positive culture of trust and safety
  • Use pre-planned and emergent scaffolding to teach content and language simultaneously.  See Literacy articles for ideas.
  • Reflect upon scaffolding activities in order to improve them
Advanced Implementation
  • Develop routines that celebrate student achievement of various types
  • Facilitate practices and routines that get students to reflect upon and celebrate their academic progress and achievements
  • Develop activities and routines that emphasize transfer of knowledge to novel situations
  • Find ways to incorporate diversity into content teaching
 
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