One Year in AP: Getting Back to Writing (Week Twenty-two)

By Mark Heintz

Context

I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions.  They are:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it.   I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is to see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey.  You can read how last week went here.

Week Twenty-two: Answer the Question

This week the content focus was primarily on the Industrial Revolution from 1750-1900. Here were the standards for this week:

1. Students will understand the political, economic, and social changes brought upon by the Industrial Revolution. 

This week's skill focus was still centered on analyzing charts, maps, and texts and pulling evidence from documents to support a claim.

1. Write one cause/effect, and one comparative short response that reflects an understanding of essential content.
2. Analyze charts, maps, graphs, and texts.
3. Write a thesis statement, contextualize a prompt, and draw evidence from two documents to support the thesis.  

Cite Specific Evidence

First, how do I know that the students know the content and how to do the skills?

This semester, I am including, or trying to include student's perspective on the week.  For this week's post, I asked two students to document their learning on the standards.  It was a great week to do this, for I missed two days this week due to a family emergency.  I shared a Google Doc to document their progress.  Each day,  I looked at the shared document to view their understandings of what took place during the day.

Nicole and John volunteered to document their learning and reflect this week.

Here is what Nicole had to say.

Evidence

Nicole: The first day of the week, we were asked to write 7 reasons why the revolution occurred. At the beginning of the week, I was skeptical and confused about the topic even after the checklists. I was working with a partner on this activity, and I came up with a couple of reasons. 

Linda Ashida came in and filmed part of the week.  She pulled two students aside to reflect on the learning process, and Nicole was one of those students. The video clip offers a great snapshot of her point of view on the writing process.

Reasoning

Nicole: With background evidence from checklists, we were able to list these reasons off. Additionally, with the prompt that was given to us, we were able to shave down these reasons to why it started in specifically Britain. Personally, I found this very helpful and it cleared some things over the weekend. It was a good refresher on the causes of the revolutions.

The second day, we were introduced to The Urban Game.

Evidence

Nicole: I'm pretty sure most kids believed that this was a very fun way of interactively learning the urban ways of a small town. It was a bit of a long process but I enjoyed it a lot, so did my partner and most of the people in the class. It also came with a cause and effect chart that we filled out along with filling in a sheet that ended with about 90 houses, factories, roads, and bridges. It was a fun project but maybe about 8 students out of our class didn't see the point of doing it. They didn't see how it connected to the lesson of the week. Overall, we did enjoy it.

John

Evidence

John: We were asked to write 7 reasons as to why the Industrial Revolution occurred in England from a document provided.

Reasoning

John: Mr. Heintz actually had this printed on a piece of paper and cut the paper into each of the stages.  I was able to successfully provide an example for Stage 1.  Stage 2 happened to be a little tricky for me.  It could have been because the activity wasn’t explained correctly but also from my part.  I tend to overthink simple tasks sometimes which does get in the way of things.  I felt the idea of the activity was good but I don’t think it was presented in the most effective way.

Evidence

John: Read the stations, draw the changes on the paper provided and list the causes and effects which was in a separate document.

Reasoning


John: There was a substitute today.  We were told to work on an “Urban Game” activity.  The game consisted of twenty rounds and a cause and effect chart for each round. This activity was a bit longer than the preceding activities but it showed how England was able to industrialize.  By the end of the game, the entire sheet of paper was filled with houses, factories, railroad tracks etc.  There were a change and effect for each round.  Herra and I both worked this, I had the change and effect chart opened while she had rounds opened on her iPad.  Aside from the game being a bit lengthy, the activity itself helped show how England industrialized and the effects of it. By Mark Heintz

Evidence

John: We started class today with answering the following short answer question.  

Reasoning

John: Mr. Heintz was absent today as well.  The goal for today was to answer the following short answer question and to post it in a discussion post on Schoology.  I felt strong with writing the short answer question because the responses to these types of questions are only three sentences long as opposed to DBQs where we write paragraph long responses.  I feel like we don't do enough practice with short answer questions.  These questions could even be a warm-up because of the time it takes to do the questions.

John: This was the checklist that is supposed to be worked on throughout the week.  

Reasoning

John: This week’s folder focused on Industrialization and Imperialism.  The assignment to me about thirty minutes to compete.  The checklist asked for at least 95 percent on the quizzes but I would like to get a hundred on each.  Getting one wrong signifies that missed 3-5 percent of the skill.  By doing some of the quizzes over really helps me solidify the information.  Sometimes the questions are repetitive.  I feel that if stimulus question were integrated into these quizzes then it would help us prepare for the AP test in May.

Reflection

John: The Industrial Revolution in England, the causes, and its effect were easy to grasp considering that the Industrial Revolution was covered in previous years.  The effects are self-explanatory in many cases.  The checklists for the week really help me understand the material better.  I’ve learned that doing the checklist ahead benefits me because all the material in the checklist folder is covered during class. I remember that with England, abundance was the driving force of their revolution and from there I’m able to give effect E.g, the abundance of coal lead the way for better machines to be constructed.  The large population of people was able to work these machines, especially the educated ones.

My Reflection and Impact 

There is a lot to reflect on this week.  After reading the student reflection, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the content checklists they do on their own.  Nicole's commented, "At the beginning of the week, I was skeptical and confused about the topic even after the checklists."  Ideally, I would like the checklists to serve as a foundational point of the content.  I have recently been contemplating getting rid of the mandatory checklist.  Even though she later articulates that the checklist enabled her to recall some basic facts, I still question the mandated curriculum.  The outside-of-class work is teacher-driven and not focused on student exploration.  This topic is more likely a full blog post at a later date.  

Nicole makes a statement about how the Urban Game was fun and interactive.  However, she highlights that the class did not have agency behind it. Student agency is becoming a central theme running through my head and one of the reasons for debating the nature of the checklists. She stated that some students did not do it.  I was not present in their class that day and that could have been a reason for them not completing the task.  

I am happy that Linda came in to film because Nicole did not document her understanding of the writing and reading understanding.  Despite having analyzed a number of documents and writing about each of them, there was a little reflection.  John did concern himself with some of the writing, but not to the extent that I would have liked.  He did highlight a concern over the lack of time spent on the Short Answer.  That is/was a conscious choice because it is a skill they work on throughout writing the DBQ.  

Overall, I would like the students to focus on the writing more.  That is something I need to express to the new students who document their learning each week. I need to be intentional about how their feedback impacts instruction and my message to the class.  

Read week twenty-three here.

Push and Pull: Playing Devil's Advocate

by Quinn Loch

Every day in class my students read a short (about half a page) article on a current event that relates to our content. The goal, which I outlined in this previous blogpost, was to have my students read and write more often, but also to teach the content in a more interconnected and relevant way.

What I have found challenging has been how to initiate and facilitate discussions on the topics that we explore - and there are several. Having meaningful and deep discussions can be a powerful tool in any classroom.

AP environmental science (APES) lends itself well to controversial issues and discussions since there are many different perspectives (economic, social, political, ethical, etc.) that can be taken. This multidisciplinary nature is reflected on the writing portion of the AP test. Students often have to list economic or environmental costs or benefits to topics outlined in the free response section. The better the students can see these topics as a complex issues with many moving parts, the more possible answers they will have to pull from when writing.

To help facilitate more discussion and engage students with the readings, we have been using what I call the "APES-inion" board. At the beginning of the unit, we introduce an environmental issue and have students place a unique and anonymous foam piece somewhere on the spectrum that reflects their current standpoint.

Our first topic was on human population control. One side of the spectrum said that governments should have policies or rules that limit population growth, while the other side said that they shouldn't.

Student opinions on population control measures before the unit.

Throughout the unit, students move their piece based on any new information that we have been learning in class. Here is where my students fell after a couple weeks.

Student opinions on population control measures after the unit.

I have found that having understanding of the collective thoughts of the class has been a great to tool to help me ask tough questions or propose scenarios that challenge students' thinking. I can also tailor the articles that I use from day to day to push and pull students from different perspectives and make them really think deeply. I have grown to love playing devil's advocate.

Natural discussions have become more frequent in my class and sometimes a 5-minute warm up has turned into 15 minutes of good back-and-forth discussion. Students have also been more likely to share stories or anecdotes and ask questions than they were before. Their scores on our most recent writing test showed a significant improvement from previous attempts as well.

I'm excited to continue this routine as we move though the rest of the year and I hope to encourage students to bring in their own article as well.

One Year in AP: Do Grades Represent Mastery? (Week Twenty-One)

By Mark Heintz

Context

I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions.  They are:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it.   I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is to see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey.  You can read how last week went here.

Week Twenty-one: Answer the Question

This week the content focus was primarily on Atlantic Revolution from 1750-1900. Here were the standards for this week:

1. List three causes of the enlightenment and four enlightenment thinkers and their ideas.
2. List two causes, methods, and outcomes to the French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions. 

This week's skill focus was still centered on analyzing charts, maps, and texts and pulling evidence from documents to support a claim.

1. Write one cause/effect, and one comparative short response that reflects an understanding of essential content.
2. Analyze charts, maps, graphs, and texts.
3. Write a thesis statement, contextualize a prompt, and draw evidence from two documents to support the thesis.  

Cite Specific Evidence

First, how do I know that the students know the content and how to do the skills?

This semester, I am including, or trying to include student's perspective on the week.  For this week's post, I asked two students to document their learning on the standards.  It was a great week to do this, for I missed two days this week due to a family emergency.  I shared a Google Doc to document their progress.  Each day,  I looked at the shared document to view their understandings of what took place during the day.

Max and Devin volunteered to document their learning and reflect this week.

Here is what Max had to say.

Evidence

A perfect score on the quiz we took in class on the given topics.

This is one of the documents we studied about the Latin American Revolution.

Reasoning- This demonstrates mastery of the given topics. A perfect score means that everything was right, which clearly demonstrates mastery. The second image is of a thesis and contextualization paragraph for a DBQ we did in class. This helped me understand the French Revolution, which I did not know much about prior to the class as we mostly learn about America in lower grades. The third image is of a document from a DBQ about the Latin American Revolution. As with the French Revolution, I did not know much about the history of Latin America, but I do now.

Here is what Devin had to say.

Evidence

We used new vocab words to write sentences about the Haitian Revolution. (Picture 2)

We wrote a DBQ based on documents about the Haitian Revolution. (Picture 3)

Reasoning

My current grade in this class is an 80.55%. This is because at the beginning of the week I was not understanding the material fully, this is shown in picture 1. Throughout the week though, we talked more about the French, Haitian and Latin Revolutions. Because of this, I know I fully understand the material represented by picture 2. We also practiced writing while using the topics represented by picture 3. These helped me understand by just reviewing the topics more and using interactive activities. I didn’t know too much about the Haitian Revolution until we learned about it and wrote with the topic. Every activity helped some of them were more fun than others, but I now have a full understanding. The third image used documents to help you write the DBQ. In this, you have to contextualize about before and during the topic. Learning more about the French revolution helped me write more context and also get me an A currently in AP World History.

Reflection and Impact

Typically the week goes by in a blur and I love seeing the visuals the students picked for evidence as and a rich source of reflection. Each student has his or her own personal narrative and experience.  Reading their work is a small glimpse into that experience. Since I do not write this blog until the following week, the pictures and their narrative have been enlightening into their point of view.   For instance, Max used different documents and different writing components than Devin.

I love how each student included the primary and secondary documents beside their writing.  I don't always include the actual source information in the blog.  Seeing that pairing it increases my understanding of their understanding of the skill.  As I read their reasoning, I think I need to be clearer in my expectations.  I want them to analyze each component of their writing.  I wish they knew what mastery looked like, to the point they can compare their own to that of mastery.  I will be asking next week's students to do that.


Each of them selected the more formal assessment for evidence on their content knowledge. I really like Devin's evolution of his understanding.  It took a while to get to mastery, and that is something I value.  I want them to master it, and the timeline of mastery is flexible.

A concern of mine is their use of a grade as a metric of their mastery.  I keep seeing that students equate mastery with grades.  I hate putting grades in the grade book early on in the semester because it can really influence how they view the course.   However, it is hard to communicate to students and parents that students are making progress on something that will not be formally assessed for weeks. Like last semester when a student thought things were going well and then got a grade they thought was inferior.  It forever changed their point of view on the course.  I need to work on getting students to understand mastery and how to communicate that better to them.

"I've Grown Very Strong Love For This Country": S1E9 WeAreEG Podcast

Ryan Selig and Jeremy Readdy are seniors at Elk Grove High School pursuing futures in the military.  Ryan is currently enrolled in a Recruit Sustainment Program with the Army National Guard, and Jeremy will graduate EGHS to become an active duty army soldier.

In this podcast, Ryan and Jeremy share their reasonings for joining the military, their hopes and fears of their role in the army, and provide advice for those who may be interested in pursuing this future career.  

These young men also touch on the importance of U.S. citizens being aware of what veterans have going through, including PTSD and high suicide rates.  If you would like more information regarding veterans and PTSD, you can find it from the United States Department of Veteran's Affairs website.

If you'd like to support veterans through Elk Grove High School's Veteran's Day Assembly, please contact Stephanie Kezios or through Elk Grove Village's Packages for Patriots.

Student Moments: Christian Paeng

By Mark Heintz

Most moments each day are forgotten. Even though there are great, little moments each day, they affect us, then pass us by.  They are not impactful enough to hold on to; therefore, we as humans tend to forget these great, little moments.  Life is made up of these moments and I want to capture some of them to change my perspective as an educator to the daily moments with students, instead of just the few momentous ones.  To accomplish this goal, I asked my students if I could write and share one moment of each of them. My hope is if I stop to record a brief moment about them, I would reflect on those great, little moments each day.  I want to build a recorded history of my students and my time with them.  Here is one student and one moment.

Christian Paeng: January 2018

Christian Paeng is an affable, funny student.  I always enjoy his presence, even when his humor is not completely directly related to the task at hand.  He is lively and engaging. He ensures that class will never be dull.  Last week, he took a content knowledge quiz on the Atlantic Revolutions.  It was a basic, do you know your stuff quiz.  Christian memorized, for it was just a memorization quiz, all of the content questions except for one.  I marked it wrong on his quiz and handed it back to him.   He quickly came up and said I made a mistake and quickly reasoned with me why his answer was correct.  I was so proud of him and his growth as a student and his ability to advocate for his intellectual expertise.  It was a nice moment and I wanted to capture it.

One Year in AP: Student Perspective (Week Twenty)

By Mark Heintz

Context

I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions.  They are:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it.   I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is down right hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along in the journey.  You can read how last week went here.

Week Twenty: Answer the Question

This week the content focus was primarily on Atlantic Revolution from 1750-1900. Here were the standards for this week:

1. List three causes to the enlightenment and four enlightenment thinkers and their ideas.
2. List two causes, methods, and outcomes to the French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions. 

This week's skill focus was still centered on analyzing charts, maps, and texts and pulling evidence from documents to support a claim.

1. Write one cause/effect, and one comparative short response that reflects understanding of essential content.
2. Analyze charts, maps, graphs, and texts.
3. Write a thesis statement, contextualize a prompt, and draw evidence from two documents to support the thesis.  

Cite Specific Evidence

First, how do I know that the students know the content and how to do the skills?

This semester, I am including, or trying to include student's perspective on the week.  For this week's post, I asked two students to document their learning on the standards.  It was a great week to do this, for I missed two days this week due to a family emergency.  I shared a Google Doc to document their progress.  Each day,  I looked at the shared document to view their understandings of what took place during the day.

Grace and Michelle volunteered to document their learning and reflect this week.

Here is what Grace had to say.

Evidence

We had to pull evidence from two readings about how it affected the Atlantic revolutions.



Reasoning- The topic was enlightenment. I didn’t fully understand why we were learning about it but I assumed it was because these people were the first to question [governments rule over] humanity. I haven’t started the checklist, so when I start tonight I will probably understand more of how it affected society. This topic is somewhat easy to comprehend because it relates to topics in American history, like the freedom of speech in the constitution and how many people question government which led to conflicts. So when Voltaire talks about the freedom of speech and religion and Montesquieu talks about government, it is something we can relate to rather than a random empire in Africa that had certain traditions.




DBQ
Evidence

Reasoning- We had a sub today and we were slightly off task from what were were supposed to do (matching terms and definitions) but hey it was educational! If anyone has heard of the game headbanz then you’ll understand what we were doing. We had an impromptu game of headbanz with the terms we were supposed to match to the definition. We picked a term for Katia which in the video was nationalism. She had to ask yes or no questions to try and guess which term she held on her head. It was challenging especially when David and I had to determine whether each term fit what question she asked. We also had to write a paragraph of the DBQ that we contextualized the previous day. We kind of forgot about it until the last 10 minutes since we were preoccupied and scrambled to write it. Needless to say, it wasn’t our best DBQ but we understood the topics since we played our fun game. Since we’ve been doing DBQs most of the year, DBQs aren’t that much of a struggle. However, for me personally, I have a hard time with contextualization, even though it seems like it would be the easiest. I honestly don’t know why, but remembering what happened in the previous time period that relates to the topic is challenging for me. However, pulling evidence from a document and analyzing it is pretty easy for me. That’s why I’m in debate haha.

Revolutions

Reflection-The Haitian, French and Latin American Revolutions were easy enough to understand. The outcomes were slightly difficult to remember, mainly because they were pretty different. They all had to do with rebelling against a single person or idea, like the government or slavery. The three revolutions all had charismatic leaders, just like we learned in other empires or religions. To master the revolutions, I think it is important to memorize specific events for each, so when you see a certain phrase or persons name, you automatically connect it with the revolution. For example, when I hear Reign of Terror, I know automatically it was during the French Revolution and it was used as a method of control.

Here is what Michelle had to say.

Evidence

This is the revolutions activity that helps with the contextualization in the DBQ. Alliteration and the sources helps remember about crucial thinkers.

Beginning to write the DBQ was not too challenging because we had the information on other documents and simply had to piece it together.

Reasoning

During the week, we learned about the causes of enlightenment and revolutions. Revolutions were taught first during class, and I think it was a little rushed only because we didn't have enough time to talk it over at the end. However, the content on the checklist really helped clarify any questions or confusions I had on the causes of the revolutions. It's now easier to comprehend why the revolutions happened and the results they had, so I know this subject pretty well. Next came the idea of enlightenment and I was initially confused on what it was a response to, but the document activity provided further helpful information along with the checklist. Using words like “vocal” and “many branches” helps the information stick and me understand and remember what the thinkers believed in. I'm pretty confident with the subject of enlightenment and I think it was taught well. With the information we learned, I think it'll be fairly easy to write a strong DBQ about the revolutions and enlightenment, so I also think that we mastered all the goals for this week.

Reflection and Impact

First of all, I love their honesty.  In the first paragraph of Grace's stated, "I didn’t fully understand why we were learning about it but I assumed it was because these people were the first to question things about humanity. I haven’t started the checklist, so when I start tonight I will probably understand more of how it affected society." I love this! It was the first lesson of the semester and they did not have a lot of background knowledge on the subject as they had not learning been taught anything directly about the Enlightenment.  Because there was no stage set for them, the Enlightenment was confusing to the students, and I need to set the stage for students better in the future.

Grace had another powerful insight, without realizing it.  She stated, "However, for me personally, I have a hard time with contextualization, even though it seems like it would be the easiest. I honestly don’t know why, but remembering what happened in the previous time period that relates to the topic is challenging for me." Her inability to recall content from a previous time period is the major reason  I have focused on the contextualization skill for so long.  It is hard.  Seemingly easy, but categorizing information by time period is incredibly difficult.

When I was absent, they were not fully on task.  I knew that would happen, but at the same time, their reflection was amazing.  It was a great insight to their comprehension of the task. Their pictures were priceless.  I appreciate their honesty in posting the pictures, yet still describing that they know what they are doing.

I already have made modifications to my lessons because of their reflection.  The more I write this blog, the more I realize that is for them.  As I hope to continue this weekly reflection, I want to get more students to document their learning, so they can reflect and impact changes that will directly help them.

Read week twenty-one here.

Back to Basics: Connecting with Parents/Guardians in the New Semester

By Kim Miklusak 

For many schools the new semester is upon us or rapidly approaching.  For some this means all new classes; for others it means possibly some new students.  Either way it makes me think about the importance of connecting with parents and guardians throughout the year--not just during the opening days.

It's easy to get bogged down with the hustle of the new semester.  At the beginning of the year, we make our agendas and materials available to students through our LMS or by other means.  We may hand out syllabi or send home welcome letters.  But what do we do mid-year?  Do we make regular contact with parents/guardians just to keep everyone up-to-date?

One parent's perspective: 
Although we may not always hear back from parents, or we may be frustrated if we receive "Undeliverable" emails, many parents do receive the message and are grateful for it!  One parent, who has a current senior student and one graduated student from our school, responded:

"I truly appreciate communication from the teachers through Infinite Campus.  Even though my daughter was very organized and very few assignments were completed last minute, I felt it was beneficial for us knowing about the big projects or reports coming due so we had an idea of the stresses she would be under and to encourage her to make the right choice when other social opportunities arose that would take time away from working on her assignments.   I realize she should be responsible for her work, but it helps parent encourage and teach their children how to time manage."

One teacher's perspective: 
In order to reach out to parents and guardians of students who are missing assignments--and to reach out again to remind students of their own work--Psychology teacher Melissa Curtis uses the "Message Center" screen on Infinite Campus to send form emails to students, parents, and guardians two weeks before the end of the quarter to fill everyone in on missing work!

Once she has the template saved, it is easy for her to send out messages to students who have any assignments that are marked as missing in the grade book.  The automated email fills in the blanks below with the students' names, the names of missing assignments, and directs them to the portal for more information!

If any teachers would like more information on sending out templated emails like this one, be sure to contact us, and we can show you how and connect you with other teachers who are doing the same!   Or if you have other ways you reach out to parents and guardians throughout the year, leave us a comment below!

Reading Essays in Math...What?!

By: Rachel Barry

A Math Teacher's Jealousy
I admit it, I'm jealous of English teachers.  All of the time.  I hear about the moving essays that students write in their English classes, sharing insight into the students' pasts.  There is a different, deeper relationship that can be built when you have read someone's words and heard details of their life experiences.  When I talk to English teachers, I am amazed by the openness that students are willing to share their personal stories, of which I am then jealous that I am not privy to seeing this side of my students.  Also, at a school with students from many different backgrounds, including numerous students who do not call English their first language, these teachers are better able to understand the student's level of English proficiency.  

If I ask my students to write an essay outside of class, would they do it?  Am I adding to their plate when this is not a skill assessed in either of the courses that I teach?  Will they do this if it is not for a grade?  After much brainstorming, I came to what I believed was a solid solution.  What if I asked students to submit an essay that they have already written?  I finally decided that I just needed to find a platform to be able to read my students' writing. 

As students were finishing up their finals before Winter Break, I asked them to submit any essay that they have written.  For some of my seniors, this could be a college admissions essay, while for my other students, I offered that they submit an essay in which they share insight into who they are as an individual or an essay that they are proud to have written.

This. Was. Awesome.  
I learned soooo much.  I learned about a student navigating life with immigrant parents, a student who had a parent suffer a life-threatening accident and the journey towards recovery, a student who had been diagnosed at a young age with epilepsy, a student who skipped a grade in elementary school, a student who is a DREAMer, and many students shared their passions for various sports/activities/technologies.

This exercise has not only opened my eyes to future possibilities, but it has also opened the dialogue with other teachers.  

Call To Action
Now that I have a much better understanding of students' writing abilities, I want to build more writing in math.  I want to focus on building opportunities in my math courses to have students write more in class, to express their mathematical understandings.  In a future blog post, I will reflect on the writing about the current mathematical content.

If you have other ideas for interdisciplinary activities that can gain insight into students' writing and/or details of their life, please share by stopping down in the Collab Lab or in the comments section on this blog!

One Year in AP: End of the Semester (Week Nineteen)

By Mark Heintz

Context

I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions.  They are:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it.   I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is to see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey.  You can read how last week went here.

Week Nineteen: Answer the Question

What is the impact of reflecting on student learning for an entire semester?

In short, weekly reflections focused my teaching on the students' learning of the intended curriculum.  I know that seems like a common sense statement, but I feel a lot of instruction can focus on the teaching instead of the learning. Because of this weekly blog, I am focusing on the outcome rather than the delivery system.  Since the purpose of the weekly blog was on student learning, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the students' learning increased.  As the first semester concludes, I am taken aback by how much my students grew.   I want to reiterate that it has been the students who made the gains and it is them I am praising.  They are the ones who are being applauded for their growth and continued ability to demonstrate mastery of the content and the skills.  This blog merely has been a way for me to document their growth and prompt more intentional and deep reflection on my part to guide their future learning.

I thought I would share a positive moment.  Over break, the girls in the picture above sent me this picture of them getting together.  They were in a group for a large portion of the semester and continued to get together over break.  The picture made me happy.  Just a happy moment.

To get back to the normal flow of the blog, what was the goal of the week? To give context to the as to what the week before winter break looked like, the students took finals this week.  I only saw my particular students two days.  Over the course of that two-day period, I administered a three-part final.  The final was cumulative, therefore I will forgo the usual listing of all the content standards, because I have documented the many standards throughout the previous eighteen posts and there are too many to list in this particular blog. If you are so inclined, you can go back and find all of the content goals.

Despite a large number of content standards, this week's skill focus was still centered on analyzing charts, maps, and texts and pulling evidence from documents to support a claim.

1. Write one cause/effect, and one comparative short response that reflects an understanding of essential content.
2. Analyze charts, maps, graphs, and texts.
3. Write a thesis statement, contextualize a prompt, and draw evidence from two documents to support the thesis.  

Cite Specific Evidence

First, how do I know that the students know the content and how to do the skills?

I do not want to get too much into the data. I love data, as it is one way to determine if progress is being made; however, as the purpose of this week's post, I merely want to point out that the students excelled in all three portions of the test.

1. An eighty question multiple-choice content exam.  These are just basic fact recall on all content that has been covered in the year.  The class averaged two points higher than the previous unit exam.

2. A document based question writing portion on the Columbian Exchange.

The students were assessed using the following rubric:

The final examination increased requirements over the previous unit exam.  The document-based question included two more documents than the previous unit exam.  Despite the increase in the number of documents, the students maintained their proficiencies.

3. A twenty question multiple-choice stimulus exam.

Here was the biggest student increase: the class averaged one and a half points higher than the previous unit exam.

Explain the Reasoning 

What do all of those numbers mean and tell me?

At the beginning of this week's blog, I stated that reflecting each week increased student learning.  This cohort of students entered the school year behind last year's students.  There were more students who had never taken an AP course and the group who had taken an AP course prior to this year were not as successful as previous cohorts of students in that class.  By focusing on student learning, the students rose to the same ability level as last year's students in one semester!  Basically, this cohort of students has excelled beyond expectations.  They have become better writers.  They have become better readers.  They have more understandings of human history.  They have a better comprehension of global processes and agents of change.

Reflection and Impact

While documenting student learning each week consumed a significant portion of my time, the process was incredibly worthwhile because I know the students are getting better. Not only do I know they are getting better, the blog has increased relationships with the students.  About six weeks ago, I started sharing the blog with the students. I post the link in Schoology for them to access.  Since this blog has served as a tool to increase my focus on them, I want them to read my thoughts each week about what we did.  I care deeply about their progress and I feel the blog helps convey that students.

As powerful as this blog has been, I am shifting the focus for second semester.  I am hoping to get more student voice in the posts.  Each week I hope to have a few students document how they know if they know it or don't know it when reflecting on the learning targets each week.  Since the purpose of this blog, and the weekly reflections, is to impact student learning, I feel I need to get more of their input and allow their voice to be a driving force in the blog. So, as I continue to hopefully post each week, you will read more of their input.  I cannot wait to see what will be documented!

Read week twenty here. 

"I Just Keep Myself Positive." S1E8 We Are EG Podcast

By Linda Ashida

I had the great fortune to meet EG student Ben Jasutis on the day he stopped by the Collab Lab to sit down with Bruce Janu to record his story for our We Are EG podcast. I'm so glad I did!

We introduced ourselves and chatted briefly before Mr. Janu arrived. I was struck immediately by Ben's outgoing personality and sense of humor. Within minutes I enjoyed hearing one of his jokes and learning that we were both Packers fans! It made me smile to hear him share how he came to be a Packers fan, and the bonds and rivalries over sports that he enjoys with his brothers.

When Bruce arrived, I coudn't help but stay for the interview learn more about Ben and the story of the significant medical challenges he faced early in life, the radical surgery he had to remove a part of his brain, and how he keeps himself positive no matter the challenge.

Take a listen. His story will inspire, and it is bound to make you laugh and smile, too!