Deep Work: How to Find Focused Success

By Rita Thompson

If you feel distracted in your professional life, you are not alone. 

Book Cover

Deep Work by Cal Newport was the subject of a recent book study sponsored by our EG Collab Lab.  When we approached teachers and introduced the topic–how to combat the rising sense of distraction in your professional life–we found plenty of people who wanted to talk.  Using Zoom, we were able to join with staff across our building and from other schools for a discussion over several weeks.

One point of lively discussion was whether we found ourselves “busy” or “productive,” and how email–certainly a necessity in our profession–can overtake more vital functions.  All of us admitted we could probably spend an entire school day on email, yet none of us would feel a sense of satisfaction at the end.  Our abundant new technology may offer opportunities for richer connections in some instances or perhaps push us toward shallow personal connections. Should we re-evaluate the quality of communication and ideas pouring through these new portals? 

Newport passionately argues that the most satisfying work is craft, a point when we use the full force of our intelligence, attention, focus, and creativity to solve problems.  This is where we humans often find deep meaning.  We cannot develop our craft without “deep work,” a term coined by Newport.

Newport also challenges us as professionals with stark advice to become more productive.  Newport argues that the will power to work deeply is not a momentary whim, but a routine investment in ourselves.  Newport gives a plethora of examples of how to eliminate shallow work and re-focus our energy on deep work.  His advice to embrace boredom rather than constantly filling an empty moment with a swipe of the phone resonated with all of us.  He challenges the reader to re-evaluate the use of social media by examining the value of random connections versus the high value connections we have in our personal and professional lives. 

Our discussion ended with an important challenge – how can we teach and encourage deep work in our students?  We certainly need to make changes in our own lives first.  Newport’s argument has clear implications for our classrooms and students.  Although he does not address the educational setting specifically, we certainly felt pulled to apply these ideas to our own students. 

“Deep work,” Newport concludes, “is a life well-lived.” We all agreed that we hungered for more of that in our lives.

Many thanks to Kim Miklusak, Quinn Loch, Mark Heintz, and Linda Ashida in our Collab Lab for facilitating the Zoom technology and helping us make this happen.

Looking to embed social comprehension in your classroom? Book Rec: Being the Change

By Kim Miklusak

This year and last I have been helping to facilitate formal and informal conversations between teachers, with students--and LED by students--about how we can work to embed social comprehension in our classrooms.  That wasn't what we called it at the time, but we discussed how in the classroom teachers and students can...

• honor people's identities
• respect and/or discuss differences of belief and experiences
• have difficult conversations in the classroom
• build community in the classroom and broader school

I just finished reading Being the Change by Sara K. Ahmed, and I wish I had had this resource earlier!  I highly recommend it for anyone looking to embed socio-emotional/affective processing in their classroom in addition to doing any identity and community mindset and practices.

Each chapter covers topics such as "Placing Ourselves in the World," "Listening with Love," "Seeing Our Bias," and "Moving Beyond Our Initial Thinking" among others.  Ahmed sets the context for the book in the preface and at the start of each chapter.  She discusses her own personal experiences but then also makes connections to the broader world and current events.

Inside each chapter she provides clear steps--including a script if one were interested in it!  She provides a list of links and resources to partner texts to help push students' thinking.  Additionally, she provides images of models of work from her class as well as conversations with students and their experiences.

Ideally, each one of these chapters and lessons build on the previous.  However, it is possible to gain insight through individual chapters.  For example, if you've done identity map work in your class before, she speaks in the book (and if you get a chance to see her at a conference!) about how to layer this activity into your lessons all year in order to enhance learning for individuals and the class as a whole instead of having stand-alone activities.

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!

Using Metacognitive Strategies to Increase Student Reading Engagement

By Jackie Figliulo 

Whether asking students to engage with class-assigned texts or books of their choosing during independent reading, I’ve always struggled to get students interested in being readers.  And why should they be interested?  Because-the-teacher-said-so works for very few students.  Then when a text challenges students, its subject matter is “boring,” or their cell phones are mere inches from their itching finger tips, because-the-teacher-said-so just simply won’t cut it.  

Enter metacognitive strategies.

Telling students to think about their thinking piques their interest as we start our class each year.  Showing them that we all approach and experience a variety of texts in our own way allows them to understand there is no one way to be a reader and a thinker. Showing students it’s ok to not know everything and to ask questions is a valuable part of being a reader.  Promoting metacognitive strategies in class also tells students that their individual experiences matter and are valuable.  
     

In my English classes, I most intentionally employ metacognitive strategies during independent reading.  Students bring a book of their choosing to class on Fridays and are instructed to read for a given amount of time (25 minutes in quarter one, 30 minutes in quarter two, etc).  Once they’ve read, they complete a metacognitive reflection, answering five out of seven questions that applied to their reading experience that day.  Each quarter we make improvements to the reflection sheets so that students can use them in ways that make most sense to them as critical thinkers.

Now, how can I assess students’ thinking and reflections in a meaningful way? The metacognitive conversation.  

Each quarter, I return the students’ reading reflections all at once.  They get to look through their reading experiences from the last ten weeks and reflect on their progress, problems, and evolving thinking.  Using their own reflections as evidence, students prepare for our summative assessment:  the metacognitive conversation.  

Students must prepare for the metacognitive conversation by answering six to seven questions about their reading for the quarter.  They must reflect on what they did throughout the quarter and then set goals or propose solutions to their reading road blocks for the following quarter.  The day before our formal conversation, we review the procedure, expectations, and evaluation [see assignment sheet], then choose two student facilitators to guide the discussion the next day.  In order to participate, students must have their reflections and admittance slip (completed questions).  During the conversation, students discuss their thinking, approaches to the text, problems they encountered, and make recommendations to each other about text choices or methods.  At the close of the conversation, students complete a self assessment of their performance during the discussion.  Their reading reflections, admittance slips, self assessments, and my notes make up their final grades.  
The metacognitive conversation is a valuable, focused evaluation of one of my overarching quarter learning targets: students will be critical thinkers of texts and their own thinking.  It allows students of all reading levels to show growth and be measured on their own personal progress.

Another benefit of using metacognitive strategies and this method of assessment is the community it builds in our classroom.  I come to know how my students think as individuals and can use that to inform and differentiate my instruction.  Additionally, students get the chance to relate to one another as academics, not just as peers sharing the same space each day.  

I continue to struggle with intentionally embedding metacognitive strategies in all parts of our curriculum.  I hope to create a classroom where individual, critical thinking becomes the class norm, not just something we do on certain days.  However, the metacognitive conversation days give me hope that my students and I are at least on our way!

Please feel free to come observe a metacognitive conversation at the end of May (exact date, TBD) periods 2, 3, 6, 7, 8! :)

A New Angle to an Old Problem: work ethic & motivation

By Kim Miklusak

Motivation and work ethic are two common phrases uttered by teachers at times, usually in a negative way: Why don't students care about this?  Why do they wait until the last minute?  Why won't they get off their phones?  And there are definitely so many reasons to discuss and improve intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, learning targets, assessment practices for us as educators, and so on.

But one thing I've also been trying lately in my classes is to re-frame how I speak with students who aren't "on task."  Instead of walking around and saying "get to work" and "why aren't you working," I'm asking them, "What can I do to help you be successful?" or sometimes "Under what conditions can I help you demonstrate what you are able to do?"  I remember our principal using a similar question once in terms of working with staff, and I thought, this may work with students as well--not all the time, of course.  Sometimes students just need to get to work. 

However, sometimes we need to change the conditions under which they are working to make them more successful.  That could mean letting them sit outside the classroom door or on the floor.  That could mean letting them put headphones in to take away distractions--or whatever best fits your students, your environment, and your subject.  Additionally, this re-phrasing makes the conversation less antagonistic, which can help to alleviate any tension or frustration.  Students may be more willing to say they don't understand something or need a handout they are missing if we aren't coming off as aggressive and frustrated.  I have found this with my group of seniors and our most recent essay.

In the end the outcome may be the same no matter how we phrase it, but I've found some more unwilling students actually open up and say what they need to work on--again, not always, and not all students--but perhaps more than I would have in the past.

Sharing Learning Targets with Students

By Melissa Curtis

We’ve been hearing a lot about clear learning targets and meaningful feedback the last couple of years.  Many teachers I know have been using learning targets in their curriculum for years, but maybe not explicitly sharing them with their students or getting any feedback.  I have been using a simple yet effective way to use daily goals or learning targets in my classes that might be helpful to other teachers.

First, I have created a document called Daily Goals that I post in Schoology.

Students open this document in Notability every week.  They can reuse the same one from week to week and just erase last week’s info.  Some choose to upload it from Schoology each week and “add to existing note” so they have one long note instead of 36 different ones throughout the school year.  Each day when they come into class, I have the daily goal projected on the screen for them to write down in the left-hand column.  I post these in my calendar in Schoology so even when students are absent, they can see the daily goal and any handouts/links we used that day.  Here is an example:

At the end of class, I ask students to write a response to the daily goal.  This should be a thoughtful comment about what we learned that day in class.  It guides students and myself to focus on the clear purpose of the lesson.  By Friday, their daily goals document should look like this:

Every Monday, or first day of the week, I walk around the room and check their goals from the prior week.  I give students a small homework grade of 5 points for this.  The real value though is in getting a snapshot of what students learned that week.  In their own words, they are narrowing down my curriculum into the simplest forms.  I usually spot check one or two days for each student and I can comment on any mistakes they have made.  I can also get a sense of the whole class and clear up any misconceptions as a group.  

In my experience, students like the structure and routine of a class.  They know when they come in to take out their iPads and start writing down the daily goal.  At the end of class, it provides closure for the lesson and I can call on random students to help answer it for the whole class.  When students are absent, it provides a quick answer to “What did I miss yesterday?”.  It has become an expectation that most students buy into pretty quickly.  Yes, there are some who don’t do it or copy it from a friend, but you can monitor those individual cases pretty easily.  I have been doing this for years and like the simplicity and accountability of the daily goals.  Now, I will start calling them Learning Targets :)

Feel free to use or modify anything you see here!  

Restorative Justice Practices in the Classroom

By Steve Lesniak

Restorative justice is a relatively new term being used in school settings across the country.  Call it what you want, but simply put, it is good practice.  Before I touch on how I use restorative justice in my classroom, it is important to understand how it connects to Senate Bill 100, passed by the Illinois General Assembly in 2015 and put into place for the 2016-17 school year.  SB 100 essentially prevents schools from issuing discipline to students without documentation of interventions along the way.  While this may not be much of a change for many school districts, there is another component of SB 100 that has had a more visible impact on schools.  Unless students put themselves or others in harms way, it is extremely difficult to issue an out-of-school suspension to a student.  As I take time to reflect on SB 100, I see how restorative justice complements its goals very well.  Ultimately, if a student is cutting class, the idea is not to issue an out-of-school suspension.  The logic just doesn’t make sense.  “You’ve been cutting class, so we are going to punish you by not allowing you to go to class.”  Doesn’t this just give the student what they want anyway?  Restorative justice forces that student to stay in school and make up the work he or she missed in class.  More importantly, if utilized correctly, restorative justice will change student behavior.  

In my classroom, like many classrooms, there are students who are lacking motivation or can be a distraction to themselves and their peers.  In the past, many teachers, including myself, would have simply dismissed the student and sent them to the dean.  While this might seem like a quick fix, it really creates more headaches for teachers.  Now, that student has missed the lesson for the day and certainly won’t master any objectives set forth.  How can we utilize restorative justice in the classroom?  First, it is important to build a relationship with students.  Many students who act out have often been met with scolding and ridicule by adults.  While it is sometimes necessary to discipline students, it is also imperative that students know that teachers care about them.  Many of our most troubled students have been beaten down by the education system, and they might have bigger issues going on at home.  Establishing a relationship and showing students that they are in a safe and caring environment will help them to trust that we have their best intentions at heart.   Once that relationship is established, I like to redirect students’ disruptive behavior to questions pertaining to our lesson.  When a student acts out in my World History class, I immediately ask that student, or the entire class, how the people living during the time period we are studying would have handled the situation.  For example, right now we are discussing Absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings.  A student in my class was talking while we were going over a quiz.  I asked the class to share how an absolute ruler might handle the situation of a student showing flagrant disrespect.  It sparked great discussion and was a great segue into our discussion on the Enlightenment.  

While many classes do not have a way to relate their content to disruptive behavior, there are still ways to talk to students and have them assess their own behavior.  Kicking students out of class without following up shows them that we don’t care about their education.  Problem solving and taking time to talk with students is a better way to establish that positive relationship. Equally as important, it teaches students how to improve their behavior and performance in school.  Some may call this restorative justice, while others may just call it good practice.  

Positivity on Twitter

By Mark Heintz

As part of the new year, I made a resolution to share my classroom on Twitter this year. I feel one of the roles of a teacher is to communicate with the community that they serve. Over the past two weeks, I have tried to tweet at least once every day about the nature of the lesson or progress towards a goal.

The first positive result of my efforts to tweet has been connecting with other teachers and getting new ideas.  A few weeks ago, our school Periscoped a few classrooms to share a live feed of daily classroom learning.  You can read about that here.   I received some feedback on the lesson and changed my plan the next day to incorporate their ideas about including argument towers to improve student writing.  I thanked them for the suggestion on Twitter. It was great to get new ideas and share the results!

Another positive result has been feedback from parents and guardians. I have a few parents/guardians who actively follow me on Twitter and one tweeted at me:

It was a positive affirmation of my efforts to share what was happening in the classroom.

Finally, the first few days of the new year, the pictures in my tweets largely came from my first period class. A student in my second hour said I was unfairly biased towards my first period. He was right, so I now engage with all of my classes throughout the day. The students are interested in what I share and how I share it. They are turning into historians!

It has been a great start, and I can't wait to see future outcomes!

Effective Communication in the Gradebook - Part 2 (Science)

By Quinn Loch

Seventh post in a series from our staff-led Institute Day.  This is part II of a two-part blog post, with the first post reflecting on the math component, while this second post focuses on the science component.

Rachel Barry (Math) and Quinn Loch (Science) presented this session, which focused on these two questions:
     1.  How can I show formative feedback in the gradebook?
     2.  How can I communicate progress in the gradebook?

SCIENCE

One of my biggest struggles has been how to record and report progress to students efficiently in the gradebook. I want to have formative feedback that doesn't "hurt" their grade and I also want to show student progress - all without cluttering up the gradebook with countless grades and having to need two separate gradebooks. Below are my current working solutions to these hurdles.

Question: How can I include formative data in the gradebook?

My solution: A "zero-weight" category allows me to communicate understanding during the learning process without penalizing the student. I call this category the "in-progress" category. This is where I post standard-based scores on what I call "progress quizzes." These progress quizzes are closely aligned to our learning targets and act as checkpoints along the way to our summative.

Snapshot of a progress quiz that gets scored 0-4.

Sample Learning Targets

Question: How can I show progress in the gradebook?

My solution: Entering multiple scores within one standard. I report feedback to students from a standards based scale of 0-4. If a student demonstrates an understanding level of "1" and then later demonstrates an understanding of "3", then I'll enter it as 3.1 in the gradebook.

Using decimals to enter multiple scores for the same standard

Question: How can I get students to use this information to close gaps and how can I hold them accountable for their learning?

My solution: Pre-Test Reflections. Here in an example of one that I use in class.

Pre-Test Reflection. Students do not take the summative if they have a 0 on any standard.

I try to do this reflection a couple days before a test so students have time to dedicate practice to, or remediate on, the specific things that they may be struggling with. I have yet to get the question "What should I study?" this year.

Effective Communication in the Gradebook - Part 1 (Math)

Seventh post in a series from our staff-led Institute Day.  This will be a two-part blog post, with the first post reflecting on the math component, while the second post focuses on the science component and the teacher take-aways from the session.

Rachel Barry (Math) and Quinn Loch (Science) presented this session, which focused on these two questions:
     1.  How can I show formative feedback in the gradebook?
     2.  How can I communicate progress in the gradebook?

MATH

To begin, it is important to note that these ideas and implementations are constantly evolving.  I am constantly discussing alternatives with my colleagues to determine what is the best way of giving feedback and communicating a student's progress.  I am in my seventh year of teaching, and I have yet to maintain the same grading system and gradebook set-up in two consecutive years.

- Formative Feedback is reported in the gradebook using a 0% Category.
All grades not on a summative quiz or unit test go in the 0% category. This helps students and parents see progress, without affecting a students grade.

- Use comments in Infinite Campus to display student progress on a math standard.
Shows multiple attempts on same math standard.

Teacher View:

Student View:

- Students reflect at the end of a unit on their effort and performance.
At the end of each unit, students reflect on their effort and performance using the Reflection document below.  The Checklist grades are in the formative category of the gradebook, while the quizzes and unit tests are both summative categories.  They log in to Infinite Campus to fill this out themselves.  Then, they answer the following two questions on the back:

1.  What are you most proud of from this unit?

2.  What are you going to change to improve in the next unit?

The purpose of this document is for students to realize that if they complete the work in class (through a Schoology Checklist), they will be successful on the quiz.  Also, if they go through the reassessment process, they better their performance on topic.  Most of the time, when they have completed a retake, they also score better later on the unit test.  

Check in tomorrow for Part 2, focusing in Science!

Collaborating to Learn! Our webinar for the Illinois Principals Association and EdLeaders Network

By The CollabLab Team

Today the CollabLab team had the opportunity to present a webinar to the Illinois Principals Association / Ed Leaders Network: The Collab Lab at Elk Grove High School: Responsive and Sustained Teacher-Led Professional Learning.

Our purpose was to share with the participants how they can support sustained and responsive teacher-led professional learning in their buildings.  We did this by sharing how we started in peer observation groups and how we continue to evolve in the CollabLab today, centering our conversation around our motto of "Connect, Learn, Share."

Alongside us, our principal, Paul Kelly, supported us and collaborated with us on this presentation.  His focus was to help participants reflect upon professional learning in their own building and help guide them in creating possible action plans.  You can access a copy of this document here.

Throughout the webinar we connected with participants through the hashtag #elnpln.  Check out our conversations and connect with others.  You can access our PowerPoint here.  It contains links to all of the resources supported by the CollabLab.  Please let us know if you'd like to share your ideas or talk to us about professional learning in your school or ours!

Matching Assessment Methods: Lead Learners #6

By The CollabLab Team

Yesterday's focus in Lead Learners was based on these two essential questions:

1.  How do we create conditions that maximize mastery of learning?

2.  How do we maximize student learning through sound assessment design?

The majority of our time was spent discussing the concept that assessment methods are not interchangeable.  Thus, we talked about the most relevant assessment method to be used for the type of learning target being assessed.  This helps to ensure accurate assessment results.  The four assessment methods are 1) selected response, 2) written response, 3) performance assessment, and 4) personal communication.

In groups, we did an activity where we were to match the strength of each of these assessment methods for the four types of learning targets.  See the grid below:

Many of us were surprised with the research-based results (provided below).  This spurred very interesting dialogue, especially when looking at different content areas!

Following this dynamic discussion, we had four groups of teachers share lesson demos. The first was our Bio team of Quinn Loch and Krista Glosson who discussed how they restructured their standards to increase a focus on key domains.  They also shared how they report grades both formatively and summatively in a non-standards-based online gradebook to communicate the most accurate information on achievement to students and parents.

Our second lesson demo was by Kim Miklusak, discussing the evolution of changes in the AP English Language grading rubrics from 4-degrees to 3 in order to clarify definitions of mastery and proficiency.  This rubric also mirrors the biology rubric to help increase cohesiveness of skills between content areas. 

Next, Bonnie Kale shared the idea of having one essential question in Honors Written and Oral Communications for a unit.  This unifying element allows for students and teachers to synthesize information and skills in order to maintain a focus throughout an entire novel.  This also allows the team to reloop through writing and reading skills all centered around one theme.

 

Finally, Sandra Lee and Katie Winstead shared how they differentiate formative feedback in Prep World Literature.  They build in elements of a pre- and post-test as well as clear learning targets in order to allow them to modify instruction to meet the needs of a wide range of student ability levels.  Regardless of grammar ability, all students learn the same materials at a different pace and with targeted teacher support.

Thank you to everyone who presented and participated yesterday!  We are looking forward to more conversations in upcoming PLTs and at next month's presentation!  To learn more, follow the #EGLLT hashtag on Twitter or stop into the CollabLab for more conversations!