Learning Celebration Reflections

By Dan Saken

Learning Celebrations

Two summers ago, I read an article by a Baylor Sociology professor that claimed students in his class performed better on assessments when the teacher reframed "Test Days" by instead referring to them as "Learning Celebrations."  So, always looking for ways put a positive spin on things, I decided to make the change myself starting last school year.  I told students that instead of taking "tests" where students are worried about what they didn't learn, we would instead focus on celebrating what they did learn. 

While I definitely received numerous odd looks and eye rolls from students when I first introduced the idea, "Learning Celebrations" have become an important part of the class vernacular for both myself and my students.  We even blast "Celebration" by Kool & The Gang as students arrive to class (in addition to some really bad dancing by myself) to give them an extra boost of positive vibes before we start the Learning Celebration.  And though the simple name change hasn't done away with all anxiety students may feel when taking a unit assessment or magically led to all students earning A's, I did see an increase in class averages from previous years on a majority of my assessments.

Taking Time to Reflect on Learning Celebrations

A vital part of Learning Celebrations is actually getting to celebrate how well students performed the day after.  My classes set aside the day after a Learning Celebration to give students time to reflect on how they did and give them opportunities to see what they knew and what they didn't.  Student are always anxious/excited to see the grade they received, but it is even more important (especially in a class that is cumulative like AP Psychology) that students get a chance to fill in any gaps of knowledge that may exist.

A student who scores an 85% on an assessment is seemingly in a pretty good place grade-wise, but that still means that the student did not know 15% of the content.  If students don't reflect and learn the right answer to a question they missed, that 15% could continue to get wider and wider.  This would then form a considerable gap in their knowledge, leading to them making the same mistake when faced with a similar problem later on.  I have a poster in my room that states, "An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."  That kind of thinking guides our Learning Celebration Reflection.

Team Retake of the Learning Celebration

I have various activities I use on reflection days throughout the year, but the one I like to do with the first unit is a team retake.  Students are placed in homogeneous groups of 3-4 based on their individual scores (but they don't know how they scored until after the team retake).  I also try to group students that don't normally sit by each other or work together as much as possible to get them interacting with more of their classmates and possibly reduce distractions.  They are tasked with retaking the entire multiple choice section of the Learning Celebration, with the promise of earning some extra points if they do even better on the team retake than they did individually.

The conversations, debates, and friendly disagreements are incredibly rewarding to listen to, especially when they have "Aha!" moments related to questions or answer choices they may have read or interpreted wrong the first time through.  Their ability to arrive at those moments through self-realization or guidance from classmates is a lot more meaningful with a longer-lasting impact than if I simply told them the right answers myself.  When groups finish the retake, everyone in the group gets their individual scores back, getting time to see what they got right and wrong themselves, helping peers with questions they answer incorrectly, and ensuring their errors do not become a mistakes.

Using Statistics and Modeling Content

Once all groups have finished the retake, I talk about the class average and single out the most-missed questions for further review.  Last year, I added one more thing to my reflection days as a way to further connect to the content we learn in Unit 1 of AP Psychology.  The first unit is on Research Methods, which includes a part on statistics and how data is used to interpret results of studies.  On an Excel spreadsheet, I calculated the Mean, Median, Mode, Skew and Standard Deviation of the data on an Excel spreadsheet, along with creating a Histogram (bar chart) to see if there was a Normal Curve....all terms we learned in the first unit.  I'm no Excel whiz, but YouTube is a magical place to learn how to do things!

I share all that data and the graph with the students so they can see the statistics at work, especially with a concept such as standard deviation, which can be confusing for students.  Statistics are not overly relevant in most of the other units over the rest of the course, but I continued inputting data from the Learning Celebrations to show students on reflection days and it has become a mainstay in the reflection process.

Correlation Does Not Prove Causation! (But it's still informative!)

One last way I tried to connect the content with our reflection was through a demonstration of correlation.  In the Research Methods unit, one of the most important concepts is that "Correlation does not prove causation!"  However, identifying correlations can give us valuable information on how two variables might be related.  One required assignment I have for each unit is completing a Unit Review Quiz on Schoology that takes 20 random questions from a question bank.  Students can take the Review Quiz as many times as they like, getting a different set of questions each time, and I take their highest score as their grade.  Since there is no way to reasonably gather data on the amount of reading, studying, note-taking, etc. each student does to prepare, the best accessible and objective data point I have to see if there is a correlation with success on the Learning Celebration is if students had actually taken the Review Quiz.

I calculated the average score of students who completed the Unit Review Quiz at least once vs. the average score of students who did not do the quiz at all.

• Period 1: 78% (took quiz) vs. 67% (no quiz)
• Period 2: 74% (took quiz) vs. 70% (no quiz)
• Period 3: 80% (took quiz) vs. 74% (no quiz)

I stressed the idea that "correlation does not prove causation," so I wasn't claiming that taking the Schoology Review Quiz automatically led to higher scores.  But the data did show that those that took the quiz were at least more likely to score higher than those who did not.  Not only was I able to again connect to the content we learned in the unit, I'm hoping it will inspire more students to take advantage of the review tool in preparation of future celebrations.  After all, reflecting on Learning Celebrations is a lot more enjoyable when the scores show there's something to celebrate!

Building Background: IF IT WERE MY HOME

By Mark Heintz

This post is on the power of building background knowledge through the use of the website: If It Were My Home.

I stumbled across the website if it were my home while I was creating a pre-reading activity.  In my creation of the activity, I attempted to find a map that compared the size of Taiwan to the United States.  The website allows the user to select a home country, which can be changed, and another  country to compare.  Once the countries are selected, the website overlays the second country selected over the home country.  The user can even input a zip code for more precise comparison.  here is Taiwan over Chicago.

 

The website is very easy to use and provides a great visual for easy comparison. Furthermore, the website provides comparison data as if Taiwan or whatever country were your home.

The data can be expanded by clicking the drop-down menu on the right-hand side.  Another great note about the website is all of the information is cited! Most of the information on the site is pulled from the CIA World Factbook.  It is so easy to access a lot of information about a country and relates it to the users home country, easily building background knowledge.

At the bottom of the page, there is a brief overview of the country selected and the website provides a list of books for further exploration! 

With this website, it is so easy to build students background knowledge of a less familiar country. I continue to use this because of the great visuals and plethora of statistics.  

Standards-Based Grading takeaways

By The DTC Team,

Today the DTC instructional team attended the second in a series of in-person workshops focusing on Standards-based grading as presented by Lee Ann Jung and Thomas Guskey and hosted by IL ASCD and District 214.

This is a brief summary of some of the topics covered:

• Inclusive Grading:

• We explored the differences between accommodations and modifications for assessments.  While many can be sorted into either category, ultimately the questions to ask are what are your standards and and what are you truly assessing?

• If something that you’re not measuring impacts what you do measure, you no longer have a valid measurement of student learning.

• The students who need the most feedback about their learning are frequently the ones who receive the least: Artificially inflating grading demotivates students. 

• Modifications should not be permanent--they may change at any point. 

• Can you say that a grade is based on modified expectations? Office of Civil Rights: Response Here.

• Standards and scales:

• Limit the number of standards students are expected to master.  When determining what to assess, consider what is necessary, fundamental and urgent?

• Adding a number does not necessarily make a goal measurable. For example, 80% does not necessarily equal mastery. Instead consider a skill along the lines of "student can identify all site words within 2 seconds each."

•  Intervention planning should be targeted, consistent, regular, and shared by multiple parties who are invested in the student's life.

•  Teams should identify skills, determining the setting(s), and describe how they will be measured.

More information and resources can be found at standardsbasedgrading.org.

Schoology Checklists as Formative Assessment

By Kim Miklusak

Schoology checklists are not new on this blog: you can read more on how different subjects have used them here!  This year, Matt Snow & I are using them to differentiate instruction and provide immediate feedback for students at the AP level.

The sequence goes like this: Students take a pre-reading quiz on vocabulary from the text, using context clues and roots to determine the meaning of 5 words.  They have 3 opportunities to take the quiz in order to get 100.  This will then unlock the text, which students will annotate and submit, receiving quick feedback on a 4-point scale.  They then take a 10-question comprehension quiz, participate in a discussion in which they write a sample thesis (again using a 4-point scale).  Finally they are able to unlock the AP writing/analysis assignment, which targets individual writing skills.  None of these steps is graded!  They are the foundational skills required to reach higher level understanding, so students receive self-, peer-, and teacher-provided formative feedback before moving on. 

This example is not set up as a checklist because we are modelling it for students first.
The next assignment will be a linear checklist feature.

We have multiple goals for this set-up: 1) we hope to catch each student where s/he needs the most support, 2) we hope to provide immediate feedback on targeted skills, and 3) we hope to allow students who do not need as much support the opportunity to push themselves farther than they may have been able to in a traditional classroom set-up.

In pre-1:1 years, I had students fill out an excel print out, noting what score they received on the 4-point scale for each writing skill [more information on that can be found here].  But now with Schoology, if I can mark assignments as "graded" even if they are formative, I am able to see a running tally of how each student scored on each individual writing skill.  Now not only do students get quicker, targeted feedback on individual skills, but they can see their own development over time, thus making revisions and conferencing more effective and efficient.

This screen shot is set to display our "writing" rubrics/skills.
I can also change the view to "reading" or grammar rubrics/skills

You'll see in the sample above that there are some things I need to work out: for example, how to label each assignment.  Nevertheless, I'm excited to work with these features for this upcoming year!

Having Fun with Standardized Test Practice...Kahoot!

By:  Rachel Barry

In my math courses, students complete a series of 10 multiple choice questions, based on the PLAN or ACT tests for each standard of our curriculum.  For much of the year, I have used the app Socrative because to engage students in test practice because it provides students with immediate feedback and gives the teacher helpful tools for data analysis.  You can read more about this in my previous blog post.  At this point in the year, however, I felt a need of a change for fourth quarter and also to reengage my students.  Therefore, I decided to make this 10-question activity into a Kahoot!

Kahoot is an easy and quick interactive game for students to play on their iPad or a phone.  I used the quiz feature and made them all multiple choice.   The negative here (though a positive for the kids) is that Kahoot only allows for four answer choices, while all standardized tests provide five answer choices.  The teacher projects the problems from their laptop or iPad, and the students view this screen on their phone or iPad:
                                                                  
I also provided students with a paper copy of the questions to allow them to work out the problems.  In the Kahoot quiz, I randomized the questions, so students never knew which would be next.

After each question is answered by all students, a bar graph shows up.

I use this immediate feedback to go over any question that most students did not get correct.  

After the activity is complete, I am able to download the results into a spreadsheet.  I can then use this data to determine which topics I need to spiral back into the curriculum.

If you have any questions on how to build a Kahoot, please stop on by the Collab Lab or contact me!

Video Reflection

By Mark Heintz

A few weeks ago, I posted on the creation of my first video.  You can read about it here.  I have since created about twenty videos that cover the age of imperialism, WWI, WWII, decolonization movements in India, South Africa, Ghana, and a number of other topics in the 20th century.

I commented on how making the videos made me feel like a historian.  While creating the videos, I have learned so much history. For instance, Chiquita Banana paid known terrorist groups in the 2000s to protect their interests in South America, or the history of the United Fruit Company massacre 

But the process of refining the information and providing visual examples has been challenging and really impactful in the classroom.  I have found when I make the video, I have such a clearer goal of what I want my students to know.  I have struggled with how to cover WORLD HISTORY in a year that is global.  Even if I use the AP standards, they are intentionally open ended to allow teachers to use different examples.  There is so much content, it is impossible to cover all of it in one year.   Having clear goals and information you wish your students to know, makes the class manageable for students and myself.

The students who watched the videos have a much higher retention of the content than from just reading the textbook.  They have visuals of the information.  Although there are great visuals in the textbook, they often skip over them in the reading.  When students see maps, charts, or pictures in the textbook, they are relieved because that means less reading on a page.  Having the images in the videos forces the students to see the visuals. 

Additionally, I created a quiz for each video and now have used the feedback function in Schoology. 

The feedback function on a quiz allows the user to provide instant feedback on why the answer is right or wrong.  Since I am creating these questions, I am providing a quick few words on why the answer choice is wrong. The students who have used it, found it to be a great resource if they comprehend the information.    

I still do not know how I am going to use these videos in the future. I am not sure if it will become the primary homework or just use as a supplement.  The videos take a lot of time to prepare and research, but are quick to make once I have all of the prep work finished. Also, the quizzes take time to make.  The whole process can be time consuming and I advise those wishing to start making videos that they should NOT have the goal of making all of them in one year. 

The students enjoy when I put a superhero or Star Wars character behind me.  They always seem to notice those changes depending on my location of where I film them.  

Using Data to Drive Instruction

By Rachel Barry

With all of the talk of standardized testing, I thought I would reflect on how I use data to drive my instruction in the classroom.

At the beginning of the year, the math department gives all of our math classes a benchmark exam.  This exam is multiple choice, so we are able to score it in Mastery Manager.  The data from Master Manager helps us finalize our scope and sequence of skills for the year, adjust student course placement, monitor student growth over time, and provide us with an understanding of individual students' mastery of skills.  We also use this data to determine which skills need to be spiraled throughout the year.  In this blog post, I will share some of the ways that we use this data to cycle old, not yet mastered skills into our curriculum.


Warm-ups
This Daily Review document template was created by Ami Heng a few years ago.  Over time I have adapted it to fit the needs of my classroom.  Typically, each skill in our curriculum takes five days.  I use this document for the four days prior to the quiz, hence the four rows (Review #1, Review #2, etc.).  At the beginning of every class, students open up this document and work on the four questions under the Review for the day.  The first two questions are always related to a weak skill or to pull prior knowledge to better understand the current topic.  Once we are finished with the first unit exam, I am also able to pull the data from the Unit 1 exam, and all subsequent exams, to create these questions.  Each class of mine is different, so I adjust the document accordingly.  The third question is the Problem of the Day, a question based on the prior day's work.  This question may address a common mistake that students were making or one that may expand my students' knowledge on the topic.  The fourth question is always a fun question, for me to learn more about my students and build stronger relationships with them.

Weekly Standardized Test Practice
Each week, prior to the quiz, I have my students complete an ACT10 or a PLAN10.  This is a set of ten questions from retired ACT or PLAN tests, where the first five questions are related to the current topic and the second five questions are spiraled based on unmastered skills old benchmarks and missed unit test questions.  I have students enter their answers into the Socrative app, so I can see a live feed of their work.  I am able to use this data to determine which questions to go over immediately following the activity, as well as which skills the group hasn't mastered and still needs to be spiraled in other course materials.  To better understand my use of Socrative, you can view my prior blog post here.

Unit Test - Cumulative Review
For all of the regular math teams in our department, we include approximately five review questions based on topics that our students previously struggle with on each unit exam.  Each review packet or game also contains questions on each prior topic for additional practice.  Our unit exams consist of multiple choice questions, which we also score in Mastery Manager.  We analyze course, class, and individual data from Mastery Manager.  As a PLT, we analyze the data to determine future unit exam topics and the standardized test practice.  I look at my class results to build my Daily Reviews and note any future topics that my classes may struggle with in the future.  I also am able to look at individual students to see gaps that need to be addressed for them to better understand our math content.  This is especially helpful for transfer students because of our integrated curriculum.


These are some ways to use data to spiral skills and pull from prior knowledge that I have found to be successful.  I believe that these methods reinforce to my students the importance of retaining math content.  As the school year progresses, I am also able to demonstrate how various topics in math are related.  Students are able to understand why we teach these skills and the strategy behind the order that we teach these skills, which ultimate gains more of a global understanding of math.