Reflections On "How Things Used To Be"

By Kim Miklusak

As the school year comes to an end and we start planning for next year, I have been hearing people reflect online and in person that students in general are coming in "lower" than previous years on state standardized tests and in reading ability and that this "wasn't how it used to be."  I'm not saying I've never said this before, and I'm not saying we don't have new challenges in areas of testing, technology, etc., but I'm struck by a few thoughts on this and reflected more after following some threads on Twitter.  One in particular by @triciaebarvia pointed out that this Declinism is a bias as well as is deficit thinking about our students--both elements to consider as we plan our curriculum, content, instruction, mindset, etc...

So this led me to reflect on my own beliefs:

• What do we mean when we say "kids are coming in lower and lower" on standardized tests?  In reading?  In writing?  What does that mean as a value judgment on another person?
• Do we believe all students can succeed if we view them as "lower than" someone who came in the past?  Do we hold implicit biases about students or groups?  Further, do students internalize this in their beliefs about themselves?
• Did students actually come in "stronger" before?  How is that determined by our metrics, our assessments, and how they are used?  (i.e. do we believe students used to all read the whole book we assigned outside of class before? has the testing changed? is the testing accurate?)
• Have societal expectations changed?  Are our students, for example, taking on more responsibilities?  Are they working more hours?  Are they taking on more AP classes?  More sports and activities?
• Would we want our own children--if we have children--to be viewed as the "low kid" or one of "those kids?"  And if the answer to that question is, "My child wouldn't be the 'low kid,'" what does that mean for how we view our students?

What if we instead celebrated our students' strengths, as @triciaebarvia says in her tweet--and others have pointed out?  How can we combat deficit thinking about our students: defining them by a perceived what they are not rather than who they are and who they want to be?

As we prepare our curriculum, we set goals of wanting our students to have agency and take ownership and embrace their learning.  Let's reflect on our own beliefs and be sure our mindsets are framed in such a way to create and support those conditions in our classroom!  Another way to do this is to be sure to follow people on Twitter and read resources by others who have been explaining their experiences on this for some time.

Related: I'm currently reading Being the Change by Sara K. Ahmed and will have more to share in another post next week!

Growth Mindset with Assessments

By Mark Heintz

The AP World exam just transpired and I am in full reflection mode.  I asked my students a few questions about things they felt they needed based on the test they just took.  The students felt they needed more writing practice throughout the year.  They felt they needed more individual practice with feedback on their ability to perform on the spot.  To give some context on the test, the exam has four components. Part one is fifty-five stimulus multiple choice questions. Part two is four short responses.  Part three is one document based question (DBQ). Part four is one long essay exam.  While AP does give a course framework, the students do not know the prompts or documents ahead of time.

To adequeately gather enough assessment data for each component, it takes a lot of class time.  To prepare the students for each component and give feedback along the way so students feel success, it takes a lot of class time.  Despite the enormous use of classtime, I feel they are one of the best elements of the class because they require the students to think. Since they take a lot of class time, I have often taught small elements of the essays in the first few units, but never had hard checkpoints or summative assessments for each writing component in each unit.

Based off the student feedback and my feelings on the year, I created an assessment chart to ensure a linear progression of the skills required for each component of the exam.  I wanted to hold myself accountable to formally assessing each part in each unit with the exception of the first unit which is a very short unit.  I did not want to assess the entire essay in the beginning because it would be too difficult and too time consuming.



To give an example of the progression, in the second unit, I will give the students a two document DBQ.  The students will only be required to write a thesis, give contextualization, and connect the two documents to their argument.  This will not require fifty-five minutes like it will at the end of the year.  It only assess three skills, which I can easily provide feedback to the students to help them grow by the next assessment. Each unit I add a skill or documents to progress them towards the final product of seven documents. Unit three adds the synthesis skill.  Unit four moves to four documents.  Unit five adds source component and five documents.  Furthermore, it gives me data on what my students have mastered and need help on at a very early stage in the year.  They do not need to be able to write a DBQ until the middle of May.

I have selected the DBQ's for each unit already and tailored the documents to get at the skills being assessed.  I am hoping that this holds me accountable to ensuring that students are progressing in the skills to be successful.   Furthermore, my hope is that the students will master the skill in smaller doses so I can make them feel comfortable with the exam, hold them to a higher writing standard in the end, and not spend as much class time in the last few weeks leading up the examination.

Trusting Your Students

By Mark Heintz

I wanted to connect with the auto teacher, Jeff Zdeconvec, affectionately referred to as Z, for a long time now.  Every year I would get these great updates about how well the auto team performed at state and nation wide competitions.  I would hear great happenings down in the auto shop.  Frequently Z encourages me to stop down to visit his class.  He has always been extremely open to having people stop down.  He is immensely connected to the school and the people in it through servicing a great number of teacher's cars.

Last week, Z finally pushed me to come down to the shop. Not only was I going to get to learn about the class, but Z insisted I let students teach me how to change my oil!  Read that again. Z insisted I let students teach me how to change my oil! He trusts his student's abilities so much, he was willing to let them teach a teacher whose understanding of cars comes mainly for the Fast and the Furious series.  This is the true definition of mastery.  My experience was nothing short of amazing.

 

When I entered the class, Z started by delegating the work that needed to be finished by the end of the day.  There were six or seven cars that needed work, and Z had the class split into teams.  Three of his students were assigned to teach me how to change my oil. 

Although Z is ultimately responsible for all the work completed by the students, he trusts his students with a great deal.  Students complete almost all of the work.  He merely checks each step of the work for quality and safety.  I have some of these students in my class, and I struggle to trust them to read on their own, let alone give them the trust he does with the responsibility of changing someone brakes.  

The class is a marvel.  There are so many moving parts, pun intended, that it is hard to comprehend how he manages the class.  Students are constantly calling out Z to have him check their work.  He is being pulled in so many different directions and somehow keeping an eye on the safety of all the students.  Carquest stopped by two different times during the period to drop off parts.  Z is essentially running a business and a school at the same time.

I think about how much trust he must have in his students.  This was the first time I have visited his classroom. Not only did he welcome me into his classroom with open arms, he entrusted three students to show me the quality of their skill by teaching a novice such as myself.  The process to change one's oil is incredibly technical.  Students are required to clean up oil spills, apply the proper amount of foot pounds to an oil plug, inspect cars, properly lift a car, and change brakes.  I am still marveling that he knows his students have mastered the work enough to teach a layman.  I have been rattling my brain how to get that level of mastery in my classroom where I trust my students to teach a teacher how to write an essay or the consequences of WWI.

Orchestra Observation

By Mark Heintz

I recently observed Maura Brown and her orchestra class.  It was amazing!

Maura told me that her starting routine is common practice amongst almost all orchestras around the globe, but it was still inspiring.  The first few minutes of class were spent having students readying themselves.  Students fine-tuned their instruments as they changed their state to be ready for the lesson.  Finally, a student leader stood up and directed the entire orchestra.  It was incredible to see such student ownership over the readiness of the class. Ever since witnessing her starting routine, I have been puzzling out how to adapt my instruction to mimic hers. I wish I had the courage to begin my class the way she did.

The lesson focused on two goals.  One pertained to the introduction of learning a new scale. The second was to build background knowledge for an upcoming piece of music.

To accomplish the first goal, Maura gave the students the new scale and they practiced as a whole class. Then, the students split up into elbow partners, people right next them, to watch, listen, and provide feedback.  The feedback each student was supposed to be on the proficiency of their peers ability to perform the scale.  The students gave this feedback orally.  They took turns and after the first listened, the students provided feedback to their partner.   Maura realized they needed specific guidance in the way to provide feedback. She augmented her instruction by redirecting the class to provide a specific piece of feedback from a list of three choices.

It was great to see formative assessment in action AND actually see how changed instruction! It was great!

The second part of the lesson centered around students reading about Faust and then watching the opera music they were about to perform.  After the students read about Faust and the opera, they posted to a Schoology discussion blog.  Maura attempted and was successful in getting students to feel the emotion in the music they were about to play.  It was great to see the power of building background knoweldge in helping students play a piece of music with greater passion and emotion.  

Comprehensible input for everyone

by Kirsten Fletcher

What resources do you use in your classroom? Are they at the appropriate level for your students? If not, how can you modify your instruction so that all students can master content?  Reading Mark Heintz's blog post on ditching the textbook yesterday made me think of the principle of comprehensible input.

http://languageeducation.pbworks.com/w/page/60937285/Comprensible%20Input

In world language instruction, comprehensible input is a key concept based on the research of Stephen Krashen. It basically states that students learn best when the language they hear is just above their current level of comprehension. In other words, they are given just enough new information to challenge them to build upon their background knowledge, but not so much that they become discouraged and give up.


There is definitely more to Stephen Krashen's hypothesis, but my focus here is on how to make all learning comprehensible to students. Why do we continue to assign reading passages to students that are so far above their ability level? If the material is too easy, they gain nothing. The same is true if it is too difficult; they can not access the content and therefore can not link it to prior knowledge. Of course, we can try to bridge the gap by providing visuals, graphic organizers, examples, etc. However, it might be worth our time to re-evaluate the input itself.

http://mslizethbrown.weebly.com/tangibles.html

I recently attended the ICTFL (Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) conference where I participated in a session led by Emily Walk. She taught strategies for presenting new information through comprehensible input. While many of the tips were specific to language, here are some suggestions from that session that are universal. Many of these are not new, but they are good reminders of how to make content more comprehensible to our students. Hopefully you'll find these useful:

• Always make content meaningful and relevant.
• Always incorporate multiple learning modes in direct instruction (visual, audio, kinesthetic).
• Instead of memorizing vocab lists, have students order and/or rank concepts and justify their reasoning.
• Instead of starting with the vocab list and then giving fill-in activities, start with vocabulary embedded in reading. An easy way to do this is to fill in those blanks for students to see if they can understand terms from context before even studying them.
• Conduct class surveys about concepts and have students create graphs to explain / summarize.
• Break up sentences into two parts where students match the first half with the second half (i.e. cause - effect).
• Before fill-ins, try matching opposites, true/false or logical/illogical exercises.
• Have students illustrate concepts they have read.
• Pick a side: have students take a stand by moving to one side of the room or the other.