Monthly Archives: March 2010

Mar 17 2010

Homework

On the subject of homework, like all the rest, I am still learning.  What I have read suggests that homework loads and educational outcomes are uncorrelated.  Unfortunately, I have also read that homework performance is the single largest factor explaining why “boys receive 70 percent of the D’s and F’s on report cards” (Kauchak & Eggen, 2005, p. 97).  On the other hand, I can see why homework is valuable for reinforcing concepts taught in the classroom and broadening those concepts.  Homework is also the only viable opportunity for reading.

My theory is that I will use homework for these later purposes.  There’s no doubt that learned concepts must be practiced to be retained and that reading is an essential part of education.  However, the distinction I intend to hold inviolable is that any homework must be for a clear and important purpose and that purpose must be made known to all concerned.  It is also my intention to keep the burden of homework within acceptable levels.  There is much more to being a child than homework and that understanding is part of the environment of mutual respect I intend to maintain.

Reference

Kauchak, P., & Eggen, P. (2005). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Mar 17 2010

Being a “Charismatic Adult”

Brooks & Goldstein (2001) talk about the need for a “charismatic adult” in each child’s life.  They quote Julius Segal, defining a charismatic adult as “a person with whom children ‘could identify and from whom they gather strength'” (Brooks & Goldstein, 2001, p. 88).  They later quote Segal again, saying that “in a ‘surprising number of cases that person turns out to be a teacher'” (Brooks & Goldstein, 2001). This charismatic individual can be the difference between a resilient child who succeeds in spite of difficult circumstances and a non-resilient child who does not.

I think it’s easy to forget that the classroom just might be the best, safest part of a child’s day.  It’s easy to forget that many students are struggling in school because they’re not getting the right kind of support at home.  Going that extra step and the one after that might just make all the difference in a child’s future.  Teachers cannot save every child that passes through but they will not save any if they do not try.

Reference

Brooks, R. B., & Goldstein, S. (2001). Raising resilient children : fostering strength, hope, and optimism in your child. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Sullivan, R. (2001). What Makes a Child Resilient?. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999479,00.html

Mar 15 2010

Task Analysis

What are the advantages of being able to task analyze your objectives?

Task analysis is an essential part of planning the achievement of any objectives, educational or otherwise. 

Task analysis identifies the steps necessary to achieving an objective.  In doing so, it highlights all the alternative routes to achieving that objective.  By identifying the steps, it also identifies the physical and temporal resources required.  Each of the different routes have different implications for student readiness and capability and place different demands on students’ learning abilities.  Each route requires different resources.  Task analysis highlights the executional details and, by doing so, allows the thoughtful, informed choice of learning path. In short, task analysis makes the choice of lesson plan easy. 

Having chosen a lesson plan, task analysis allows that plan to progress seamlessly and successfully.  It identifies materials and other resources needed.  It identifies time required.  It identifies areas of particular challenge, where special care must be taken.  It provides a roadmap that facilitates mental (and, perhaps, actual) rehearsal.  Perhaps most importantly, it is a confidence builder.  With a solid task analysis, the teacher can be confident of the steps to be taken and confident that the resources are in place to support those steps.

It also allows the teacher more confidence in dealing with any unanticipated issues that might crop up in the execution of the plan.  Having run through a variety of scenarios of how the lesson plan might have progressed, the teacher already has alternative strategies in mind. In addition, having rehearsed the clearly delineated plan, deviations from that plan can be done with more confidence. At very least, the teacher will be clear on where the ‘baseline’ lesson is. There is always a clear path through the material, no matter how far off that path the teacher has to go in the moment.

Task analysis is a basic skill required of effective planning. It is especially useful in the volatile world of teaching.

Mar 15 2010

Connecting with History

I think watching movies as an introduction to an area of study is very, very powerful. I went with my family and my brother-in-law’s family to Normandy last summer. This was a peak experience for me. I have studied the invasion quite a bit and had never been there before. On the other hand, none of the other people I was with knew or much cared about Omaha Beach or Pegasus Bridge. They had no reference to put what they saw into human terms. About halfway through the week, I had them all watch The Longest Day (a wonderful, very factual movie about the invasion that was filmed on the actual sites). Suddenly, everyone was very engaged by our visits and even more excited to visit a site they knew from the movie. Our last stop was the American Cemetery. That would have been attention getting under any circumstances. However, in the context of the movie and the actual sites we’d seen, it was incredibly moving, and culminating, for everyone. Creating a human or personal context for learning changes everything. That will be one of my main instructional tools moving forward.

It doesn’t have to be movies and TV shows. History and art (visual or musical) go together very well, given some human context for both. Likewise, games can really put the students into the shoes of the historical or literary figures they study. There is a game, out of print but on eBay, called Origins of World War II. I can think of no better way to illustrate not only how the calamity of WWII happened but also how good people, acting in enlightened self-interest can create disastrous outcomes. Somebody said, “Everyone has a reason.” That’s such an important concept, and so central to the study of history. Helping the student find those reasons is where the study of the past lives.

Mar 14 2010

Testing as a Team Sport

Having the school declare a test score goal is a way to ensure students understand the emphasis on doing well on standardized tests.  Ideas like posting test results publicly and having students make and display “green” handprints and/or giving them out green colored t-shirts when they score proficient or better all reinforce the goal of raising test scores.  The high visibility of students who score proficient or better is great positive reinforcement and incentive.

However, all the students who are not proficient or better not only get left out but also are to some extent at risk of pressure or stigma.  This would be true normally, kids being the occasionally schoolyard meanies they can be.  But it might be particularly true when there is a stated school goal.  Kids who aren’t scoring proficient are, in one way of looking at it, pulling down the rest of the team.  I’m not saying it’s the right way, but the school I am involved with takes great care to treat as private individual results.  I do wonder at the difference in philosophies and which might be used to get students to learn more effectively and successfully. 

Clearly, posting results gives more urgency (and transparency) to success.  It also puts more demands on the school culture to support every child in their educational journey.  Also, it seems pretty logical that if a school was going this way (“green team,” et al), it might also set up study teams and remediation (perhaps students tutored by other students, as well as more conventional means) to support the effort.  Likewise, one could imagine the school being divided into teams (possibly multiage) to compete internally for best performance.  This would fit naturally and do more to achieve the goals than simply posting school goals.

I’d like to know more about the pros and cons of making results public but, in general, I like the idea of making test solid performance a school goal and supporting that goal with student-friendly learning solutions.

Mar 12 2010

Test Scores

I’ve tried to liken testing in the students’ minds to a performance or a sporting event. I want them “up” and focused on outcomes but I also want them positive and aggressive, not scared. I want to create it in their minds like other things in their lives that are challenging and where success is the goal. However, I want to stay well clear of the “this determines your whole life” vibe that’s around (and not entirely inaccurate).

On that note, I wonder if test results are really that important for most students? Does plus/minus one standard deviation of the mean make any difference in a life at all? Nearly 7 in 10 kids will fall into that range, if I recall my stats class correctly. Sure, test scores are important for kids who want to get into elite and top-100 schools, but that’s probably only the top 16% of kids (to pick a number). And they’re probably important for the bottom 16%, but I’d imagine that test scores for those kids are only confirming issues already readily apparent. If this logic is right, most kids can be pretty calm about testing. Sure, it’s a big deal like a little league playoff game or whatever, but it’s just a game, just a test.

It seems like where the pressure really lies is on the schools, teachers, and administrators rather than on the kids. For those adults, every point counts. At a basic level, they’re fighting to make AYP. But even at my daughter’s school (which is ok w/ AYP), the API  is still carefully monitored. Did it go up? How does it compare to sister schools in the area? How did a particular teacher do? Maybe it’s the adults who are truly under the microscope.

Mar 11 2010

Standardized Tests

Standardized tests are blunt weapons, but not an ineffective ones. The three real issues with them are 1) we have to be prepared to sacrifice every bit of learning that isn’t on the test and 2) the tests need to reflect the standards perfectly and 3) the standards have to reflect all the essential knowledge that the students need to learn.

It really is that simple. If we’re prepared to accept that the kids will mostly only learn the standards and we trust the people who write the standards to write the right ones, then testing will steadily drive the results (and therefore the learning of the standards) in the right direction.

We can see that in California. Since NCLB came into effect, the aggregate test scores have steadily improved. From 2003 to 2009, 17% more students are testing proficient or better on Math and 15% more are testing proficient or better on English Language Arts (ELA) (California Department of Education, 2010).

Of course, the aggregate numbers are still horrible: only 57% are proficient or better in math and 50% test proficient or better in ELA, up from 41% and 35% respectively in 2003. Maybe that’s a good reason to accept the blunt weapon of standardized testing, the historical alternative was apparently far less effective.

Reference

California Department of Education. (2010). Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Results. Retrieved March 11, 2010, from http://star.cde.ca.gov/

Mar 11 2010

Teaching to the Test, Part Two

I think bucking the standards/testing paradigm is not viable. I do think 1st grade is a more important time to build a broad base of knowledge and to learn that learning is fun than to ace some standardized test. But I don’t want to be the one trying to argue that point to parents and administrators.

It seems to me that most people think there are only two choices: ignore testing or build the year around testing. I don’t like either of those options. My idea is to embrace essentialism as surgically as possible and teach exactly to the test as a subset of the daily activity. Hopefully, by defining this part of the annual learning obligation so narrowly and deliberately, time is freed up in the day to do much of the ‘yummy stuff’ that might get pushed aside in a more classic, full time essentialist curriculum.

I’ve been trying to teach the kids that testing is like football or performing on stage, it’s a fun challenge and it’s something where practice improves outcomes. It’s something that can be embraced.

I hope and intend that this strategy ends up with great test results and kids who think education is more than the black and white of No. 2 pencils and answer sheets. I hope that they’ll do great on the tests, have a broad education, and believe that education is as joyful as life.

I can’t take credit for the idea, although it is exactly my style. I first encountered it in the books of Rafe Esquith. He’s pretty much my role model.

References

Esquith, R. (2003). There are no shortcuts. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.

Esquith, R. (2007). Teach like your hair’s on fire: The methods and madness inside room 56. New York, NY: Viking.

Esquith, R. (2009). Lighting their fires: Raising extraordinary children in a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world. New York, NY: Viking Adult.

Mar 10 2010

Teaching to the Test

How do you relate the development of measurable goals and objectives to effective teaching?

The answer to this question entirely depends on how one defines effective teaching.  If one is a NCLB essentialist, the measurable goals and objectives are whatever the essential body of knowledge is deemed to be.  However, I am not an essentialist.

With apologies to Yeats, I believe that education is the filling of the pail and the lighting of the fire[1].  I believe the most important objective of teaching is to kindle the love of learning in each student.  This requires teaching to their souls, their passions, their interests.  That usually means finding that relevance in the required body of knowledge, but it also includes finding extra material that meets the needs of the curriculum and the students interests.

On the other hand, I know that we live in an essentialist world and to ignore the press of standards and standardized tests is of service to no one.  My intended solution is to “teach to the test” as a creative act. I will teach and drill both the test’s contents and the skill of how to take tests as a subset of the year’s learning.  Hopefully, simultaneously embracing the need for such teaching while rigorously narrowing focus of this teaching to succeeding on the tests will free considerable classroom time for lighting the students’ imaginations with learning of a more nourishing kind. 

Reference

Famous quotes by William Butler Yeats. (1998-2010). Retrieved January 26, 2010, from http://www.famous-quotes.com/author.php?aid=7889

[1] “Education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of the fire” (“Famous Quotes”, 1998-2010).

Mar 7 2010

Discipline, Part Five

There was a fantastic article in the New York Times last week. The subject of the article was current initiatives in improving teacher effectiveness. It cites some interesting statistics including “a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher” and “while the top 5 percent of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a year of material each year” (Green, 2010, para. 4).

In discussing what makes an effective teacher effective, the article says, “what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise” (Green, 2010, para. 12). But what are these techniques? It turns out, one of them is ”Positive Framing, by which teachers correct misbehavior not by chiding students for what they’re doing wrong but by offering…’a vision of a positive outcome’” (Green, 2010, para. 29).

This ties nicely to the conversation of how to celebrating students’ success to encourage continuing improvements. While the article doesn’t discuss specific techniques, it does say the “techniques depend on his close reading of the students’ point of view” (Green, 2010, para. 32). It also gives a description of the kind of positive framing it suggests, which are of the “catching students doing it right” variety.  Across the literature, this positivity seems to be preferable to the more conventional “correct what they are doing wrong”  and “do what I say because I am the teacher” approaches so familiar to all of us.

Ultimately the goal is for the children to operate from Kohlberg’s sixth stage of moral development (Bee & Boyd, 2007, p. 351). They need to learn to do the right thing because it is right, not because they get a reward. The best structure I’ve seen to positively reinforce desired behaviors without tangible incentives is to base the classroom around mutual respect. Students want to behave according to standards because it feels good, they earn respect in their classroom community, and  it is the right thing to do. They behave well to honor themselves and their community. This is my vision for my classroom. 

References 

Bee, H., & Boyd, B. (2007). The developing child (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Green, E. (2010, March 2). Building a better teacher . New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html