Will That Be on the Test? Creating Engaging Learning Environments

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In his book 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell (2008) stated that pioneers such as the Beatles and Bill Gates were phenomenal in their craft because they had mastered it over 10,000 hours.  Our students attend school for over 10,000 hours in their K-12 careers. What educational "crafts" will they master when they graduate?

"Will that be on the test?", is a cry for help for many of our students.  They have endured many hours in classrooms where they have not been required to think. Their goal becomes to 'get it done', get the grade and survive the day. The classroom learning environment needs to encourage students to take advantage of the opportunity to become self-directed and motivated learners.  The following is a 'shift of mind' that occurred in my district.

Learning Trust

This concept works both ways, the students will learn from you and you will learn more about your practice from them.  Here is an example. In a traditional classroom, the teacher will read out all of the instructions to the students on a paper. The message that is sent to the students is that the most important thing is compliance with directions and they cannot be trusted to "get it right"  on their own. For the highly capable students, they must wait until the teacher reviews the entire assignment before they can start.  They are also told that they must follow these boundaries if they want to be successful which limits creativity.

In a classroom where there is learning trust, the teacher hands over the main concepts of the assignment for review.  The students assess what they understand and difficulties.  The teacher also asks the students for feedback on how to make the assignment more rewarding. This creates a learning partnership where students feel validated and are given an opportunity to explore further options in their learning. After the initial review, students can share their concerns and questions with their peers in groups as well as share their expertise and support others in their learning.

High Cognitive Demand

When a student knows that the end goal  is to remember a bunch of facts on the final test to get their grade, then that is often the bar that they will set. The assessment is often low cognitive demand so that basic information is remembered. This tells students that listing, describing and retrieving information is what is important. This is outdated industrial-age thinking. Today's students need to analyze, create, debate, and critique (Bloom,1956)  They need to expect to struggle as part of the learning process and to reflect on their struggles in a journal or peer conversations and then assess what the need to work on.  Assessment is too often an 'autopsy' rather than a tool for students, parents and teachers to document growth.  Imagine a Student Led Conference with a student proudly showing a parent some early reflections where they struggled and then showing evidence of how they have improved. This creates a motivated student who can see the results and is in charge of their learning.

Use of Resources: Flow of Information

My superintendent once told me, "Frustration occurs when you run out of options."  This is often the problem that students have with cognitively demanding work. The goal for a teacher should be to encourage the students to utilize the resources in the room. The best resource to tap into are the thirty other students in the classroom. In a typical middle school classroom, that would amount to over 2,000 hours of learning experience. The role of the teacher is to have the students turn to their peers and other resources and not to them. Some suggestions for teachers are:

•    Find alternative methods to the teacher delivering the content
•    When a student asks a question, throw it back to the class
•  Tell students to use their resources instead of solving the problem for them
•  Stop playing the role of the validator.  Allow the students to figure it out
•  Provide thought provoking questions that challenges student thinking and sparks debate

Think about all the life-long skills they are learning as a result of peer networking in the classroom.  The actual subject becomes the tool for students working together to problem solve which is real world application. Take advantage of the fact that kids like to communicate with each other and move around the room working with others.

"What do you want your students to be able to do after their 10,000 hours in school?"  If the goal is to complete the content and get a grade, then don't be surprised if the engagement level is low and compliance is more evident than learning.  If your students learn to trust their peers and adults and have developed a tool kit to take on the most difficult challenges then we have created learners ready to be successful in the real world. That makes for a rewarding experience for both the student and teacher.

References:

Bloom, B. and Krathwol, R. (1956), Taxonomy of educational objectives. The classification of educational goals, by a committee of college and university examiners. Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain, New York, Longmans

Gladwell, M. (2008), Outliers. New York, Hatchette Book Group

Written by:

David Cooke, Principal

La Center Middle School

What Do All Students Need from All Teachers?

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In this Educational Leadership article entitled, Teach Up for Excellence, differentiation guru Carol Ann Tomlinson (University of Virginia) and EDEquity founder Edwin Lou Javius note that until quite recently, U.S. schools were legally segregated and unequal based on race. Today, there is still significant racial and economic separation within schools. “The logic behind separating students by what educators perceive to be their ability is that it enables teachers to provide students with the kind of instruction they need,” say Tomlinson and Javius. “All too often, however, students in lower-level classrooms receive a level of education that ensures they will remain at the tail end of the learning spectrum.”

The deepest wounds that schools inflict on students, they continue, “are wounds of underestimation. We underestimate students when they come to us with skills and experiences that differ from the ones we expected and we conclude they’re incapable of complex work. We underestimate students when they fall short of expectations because they don’t understand the school game and we determine that they lack motivation. We underestimate them when we allow them to shrink silently into the background of the action in the classroom. We underestimate them, too, when we assume they’re doing well in school because they earn high grades, and we praise them for reaching a performance level that required no risk or struggle.”

This is a shame, they say, because low-achieving students flourish when they’re exposed to high-level instruction. We know the human brain is “incredibly malleable, and that individuals can nearly always outperform our expectations of them… Virtually all students would benefit from the kind of curriculum and instruction we have often reserved for advanced learners – that is, curriculum and instruction designed to engage students, with a focus on meaning making, problem solving, logical thinking, and transfer of learning.” 

These convictions bring Tomlinson and Javius to seven principles for “teaching up” – that is, creating classrooms that give all students access to high achievement:

• Accept that human differences are normal and desirable. “Each person has something of value to contribute to the group, and the group is diminished without that contribution,” say Tomlinson and Javius. “Teachers who teach up create a community of learners in which everyone works together to benefit both individuals and the group.”

• Develop a growth mindset. This means “doggedly challenging the preconception that high ability dwells largely in more privileged students,” say the authors. “The greatest barrier to learning is often not what the student knows, but what the teacher expects of the student.” Growth-mindset teachers emphasize hard work, set clear learning goals, and provide support and feedback along the way.

• Work to understand students’ cultures, interests, needs, and perspectives. “Teaching any student well means striving to understand how that student approaches learning and creating an environment that is respectful of and responsive to what each student brings to the classroom,” say Tomlinson and Javius.

• Create a base of rigorous learning opportunities. This includes discipline-specific knowledge and skill expectations, connections with students’ lives, collaboration with peers, looking at different perspectives, and having students create authentic products for real audiences.

• Understand students’ varied entry-points and curriculum speed. “Teachers who teach up understand that some students may feel racially and culturally isolated in their classes,” say Tomlinson and Javius. “Therefore, they find multiple ways for students to display their insights for the group. These teachers understand that every student needs ‘peacock’ moments of success so classmates accept them as intellectual contributors.”

• Create flexible classroom routines and procedures. The trick is to draw on classroom assessments, formal and informal, to accommodate the inevitable range of student needs. “Teachers who teach up carefully select times when the class works as a whole, when students work independently, and when students work in groups,” say Tomlinson and Javius. “They teach their students when and how to help one another as well as how to guide their own work effectively.”

• Be an analytical practitioner. Effective teachers are students of their students. “They empower students to teach them, as teachers, what makes students most successful,” say the authors.

REFERENCE

“Teach Up for Excellence” by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Edwin Lou Javius in Educational Leadership, February 2012 (Vol. 69, #5, p. 28-33), http://www.ascd.org.

Blog written by:

Kim Marshall, consultant

http://www.marshallmemo.com/

What is Social Emotional Learning for Academic Success?

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“Focusing on academics while struggling with trauma is like trying to play chess in a hurricane” (Wolpow, Johnson, Hertel, and Kincaid, 2011). Students in the classroom today are coming to school with more and more complex needs. The drop out rate continues to be a major concern in communities across the nation. One in five students are living in conditions that expose them to trauma that has a direct impact on their probability of graduating from high school. Research shows that trauma has a significant impact on brain development and it is now known that survival trumps new learning. How do we find time in our high stakes assessment focused classrooms to meet the social emotional needs of our students? We must find the time because social emotional learning is the primary marker for academic success and graduation.

Complex Trauma has a dramatic impact on the academic success of students. The definition of Complex Trauma can best be described as the experience of multiple or chronic/prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of a personal nature (sexual or physical abuse, family violence, war, community violence) and early life onset (WSU Area Health Education Center, 2007). With ever-shrinking funding for early childhood agencies, schools are faced with the challenge of meeting the increasing diverse needs of students. Only one in ten children with a diagnosed mental health disorder ever get treatment. Only 50% of CPS referrals are investigated while less than 1/3 of those referrals receive any services. Meanwhile, all of these students are coming to school each day.

Several studies have taken place over the past several years that provide some very shocking information. In a study of middle school students in Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins University (2009) found a direct correlation of the following:

If a student is:

• Failing math or reading
• Developing an attendance problem
• Developing a behavior problem

Then:

• That student has only a 25% chance of graduating from high school.

This is an alarming statistic! From this study, if we know this about our kids at an early age, we must do something different so that we can change their path in order to help them be successful. In a similar study, Washington State University Area Health Education Center did an Incidence and Prevalence Study in 2010. Classroom teachers were surveyed on a random sampling of 2100 students in ten elementary schools around Spokane County. Five schools were Title I schools while five schools were not. In this study, it was discovered that one in 5 students have been exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s). That translates to a conservative figure of 15,000 students in Spokane County. The study showed that there was a direct correlation in the number of ACE’s and the increased risk of academic failure, severe attendance problems, severe behavior problems, and frequent health problems. Nationally, there are roughly 30% of children who experience complex trauma. In poverty areas, this exceeds 50%. Interestingly, our state’s drop out rate hovers at about 30% or 309,000 students per year.

The impact of complex trauma on brain development is significant. Researchers used to believe that the brain only developed until about age three. However, new research has shown that the brain continues to develop into young adulthood and that it depends on rich relationships and mastery of emotional responses. When children experience trauma, their brain often can only function at the very basic level of fight or flight. There is often a lack of ability to get to the reasoning or emotions part of the brain. Therefore, their ability to learn becomes hindered by the trauma that has taken over their brain functions. Persistent stress is epidemic in children and places brain development at risk. This can be as high as 30% in the general population and 85% in marginalized populations. If we address this in early childhood and K-12 systems, we have a better chance of improving childhood development and system success. Many students who have survived these early experiences and become resilient, point to teachers as being the reason for their success (Blodget, Harrington, et al, 2010).

In our high-stakes academic world, schools have been pressed to show results. This pressure has often come at the expense of addressing the social emotional needs of children. It is too often stated by teachers that they don’t feel they have time to spend on relationships anymore because there are too many academic demands. Dealing with the social emotional needs of students can often be viewed as “something else on the plate”. I firmly believe that social emotional learning IS the plate on which everything else should be placed. In the absence of a firm foundation in social emotional learning and relationships, academic success becomes an unattainable goal. The role of social emotional learning has a big impact on the focus of high-stakes testing. We may not be able to control how we feel, but we can learn to choose how we act. In his book, Mark Katz (1997) states,

Looking through the trauma-sensitive lens… Not realizing that children exposed to inescapable, overwhelming stress may act out their pain, that they may misbehave, not listen to us, or seek our attention in all the wrong ways, can lead us to punish these children for their misbehavior… if only we knew what happened last night, or this morning before she got to school, we would be shielding the same child we’re now reprimanding.

Resiliency must be the goal for our many students who are functioning in a world of trauma. Resiliency buffers the effects of trauma. As educators, we must shift our thinking from “what is wrong” to “what is right” with a child. This is a shift from a deficit model to a strength model. Teachers must find ways to always empower students and never dis-empower them. We must educate our children with unconditional, positive regard in a safe and caring environment. All students deserve an environment where high expectations are coupled with high support and where consistent routines are the norm. It is our imperative that we help calm the hurricane in order to guide our students to success.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO REMEMBER

• Keep the focus on the educational mission
• Build meaningful relationships
• Foundation to support learning and mastery
• Engagement to parents
• Create safety and predictability
• Promote skill development from where students are
• Accountability as an essential survival skill
• Meaning-making (reasoning and problem-solving)
• Development of universal trauma sensitive social emotional learning standards

References:

Anda and Felitti:  Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1995 to Present)

Blodgett, Harrington, et al. (2010). ACEs and their Consequences in Spokane Elementary Schools (unpublished). WSU Area Health Education Center, Spokane, WA.

Johns Hopkins study of Middle School Children in Philadelphia  (9/09)

Katz, M. (1997), On Playing A Poor Hand Well. WW Norton and Company.

Wolpow, Johnson, Hertel, and Kincaid (2009). The Heart of Teaching and Learning: Compassion, Resiliency, and Academic Success. Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Blog written by:

Kevin Peterson, Principal

Midway Elementary School

Mead School District

kevin.peterson@mead354.org

What about Student Learning Communities?

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Professional learning communities (PLCs) are the topic of many conversations within education: the culture that is imperative for success, the goals we choose to focus on, the protocols we should follow, the structure that must be in place, and the realities that we face. There is an abundance of research I have read to support how PLCs are necessary in improving students’ learning. I myself belong to an amazing PLC (as well as many micro PLCs within my PLC). But my thoughts lately have been on how to take the characteristics of successful PLCs and apply them within the walls of the classroom for students.



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How do you create a student learning community? And by that I don’t mean by way of just classroom management, nor do I mean learning time that is strategically organized by the teacher. These are just general necessities within a learning environment. I am now in search of the next level of a learning environment; a classroom atmosphere that will support 21st century learning. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2011) advocates for a learning environment that encompasses the learning and innovation and life and career skills demonstrated in the Framework for 21st Century Learning. So I constantly ask myself, what are the essential characteristics of a student learning community that would be needed to foster these types of skills?

This Framework is frequently on my mind as my teaching partner, Ann, and I strategically implement new strategies, ideas, and content discovered through our collaborative efforts within our PLCs. As Ann and I heavily value personalized learning and individual learning goals for our students, we send the message everyday to them that “we are in this together.” Ann and I strategically plan learning endeavors that will grasp our students’ attention, establish essential questions that will provoke critical thinking, and collaborate with students to identify individual goals and continuously monitor their progress. Thus, we are finding five “must-haves” within our productive student learning community, as they seem to have a direct positive impact on student progress. These “must-haves” also seem to be facilitating an environment that allows us to naturally integrate in the 21st century skills as we discover ways to do so.

Five Components for Student Learning Communities

• Respect: Students should learn to appreciate the diversity within their learning community.

Ann’s and my overarching goal is meeting students where they are and addressing their individual needs by way of their learning styles and multiple intelligences (Gardner, 2011). Students learn to appreciate each other as learners through the discussions and celebrations of our unique abilities, characteristics, and personalities. Overall, students have the understanding that we may all be in different places with a specific target or goal, but we benefit by working together, sharing knowledge and expertise, and conversing throughout each day.

• Retention: Students should understand that true learning is when you can retrieve the information.

You should be able to pull knowledge out of long-term memory and apply it in new situations, make connections to previously learned knowledge, and continue to build upon one’s personal schema. So the mantra in our multiage classroom is “learning is remembering.” We use Marilee Sprenger’s 7 Steps of Memory—reach, reflect, recode, reinforce, rehearse, review, and retrieve—with our students so they can understand the structure of learning (2005). We now even use two of the steps (recoding and reflecting) as thinking strategies, which coexist with metacognition, visualizing, determining importance, synthesizing, etc. With the understanding of retention, students have a daily purpose which is no longer to “sit and get” but rather “go out and gather.”

• Responsibility: Students should learn to be advocates for their own learning.

Learning is a huge responsibility and requires a “Backpack of Strategies,” or various life skills. Within our classroom the teachers are not a student’s first resource. We encourage students to be problem solvers and find a solution that fits their needs. Our purpose is for students to become efficient in setting goals, monitoring progress, managing their time, and contributing to the student learning community. We want them to understand and experience that learning is an ongoing process, rather than a disjointed set of tasks.

• Resources: Students should learn what resources best fit their needs as learners.

To empower learners is to provide them access to a variety of tools and resources. Students must learn what specific tools they have at their fingertips, and they must be taught how to use the resources effectively. However, tools are meant to be utilized, not sit on a shelf or table. They need to discover how to choose a tool that will best fit them as a learner, as well as help them accomplish their task or project. Exposure to various resources allows learners the ability to dissect and devour their goals in order to obtain success.

• Reality: Students should be made aware of the skills they will need as they move forward into the 21st century.

Technological tools, media, and communication should be a part of students’ daily lives. Students should be exposed to the skills they will need in their future. Their real-world success depends heavily on their educational experience. Students also need to understand the reality of how our moment to moment choices can directly or indirectly affect ourselves and other people. When we are mindful we can approach each moment successfully, but making poor choices affects the common student learning community goals and the personal growth of the individual.

I have witnessed these components to be beneficial and aid in the success of each and every student within our classroom. Through offering one another respect we can encourage each other’s growth. Thus, supporting the overarching objective of the community to retain information, whether it is regarding content-based knowledge or the use of specific strategies, in order to build our knowledge base and collectively grow. While on the journey for retention, each individual in the classroom must recognize their personal responsibility to the learning community and themselves. They must understand that our choices can positively or negatively affect others, but the choice is always our own. As students work towards meeting their goals, they must be aware of the resources around them and take every opportunity to self-sufficiently utilize them, yet share them with others within the community. And finally, students must be mindful of the reality they are facing within the world today and feel a sense of urgency to collaborate, work, and create within a diverse community.

Overall, they need to believe in and act upon the message, “We are in this together.”

REFERENCES

Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic Book Groups.

Sprenger, M. (2005). How to teach so students remember. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Post written by Celina Brennan, a 3/4/5 multiage teacher at Salnave Elementary School in the Cheney Public Schools district and recipient of Washington State ASCD’s 2011 Outstanding Young Educator Award. She is a district leader in literacy and has opened her classroom to educators as a model of differentiated instruction that meets the social, emotional, and academic needs of all learners. Connect with Brennan on the ASCD EDge® social network and on her blog, written with her teaching partner Ann Ottmar.

How Can Secondary Schools Respond Effectively to Our Students that “Get It” and those that “Don’t Get It” During Challenging Times?

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As educational leaders we want ALL students to leave our institutions having maximized their potential to be successful in the future.  Particularly in these challenging times we must find ways to leverage our available resources to the fullest extent in order to bolster student learning.  In the current era of increasing public expectations, political uncertainty, shrinking budgets and increasing workloads that impact all stakeholders, a growing number of secondary schools are taking the proactive step to implement a new student intervention model developed specifically to meet our current challenges with courage and hope for the future without impacting educational budgets.

This emerging, systematic, customized, data-driven remediation model has shown promise for improving learning results among a wide spectrum of the student population.  The program has been launched in a number of public secondary schools under various “brand names”.  The more common identifiers are CORE/FLEX, CORE/Choice and The Choice Program.  The cornerstone of this style of intervention is the opportunity to earn access to unstructured time as a motivator for students to work toward proficient academic performance.  In most schools this segment of time is known as the “Choice Session”.  This is typically a 20 to 25 minute segment of time placed after second period, appearing on the bell schedule between three and five days per week depending on the school.

Schools implementing the Choice Program collect data on student performance at three-week intervals and use this information to support students in a variety of ways.  Students with one or more “D” or “F” grades are assigned to mandatory remediation often called “CORE”.  Students performing at or above standard (all “A”, “B” and “C” grades) have earned the privilege to decide how they will use each Choice Session.  These students are said to have “FLEX” or “Choice” Status.  At the end of each three-week period student achievement is evaluated again and students are reassigned to CORE or Choice based on their current individual academic standing.

Staff in Choice Program buildings must be assigned clearly defined roles and responsibilities in order to support the overall intervention structure and meet individual student needs.  Certificated staff members are responsible for maintaining accurate information on student progress, posting grades in a timely manner at transitions between data cycles and assisting students attending the various support and enrichment sessions.  Classified staff members manage the collection and organization of data while encouraging staff to meet various deadlines.  Administrators use student performance data to assign students to CORE classes with intentionality, monitor areas of campus open to Choice Students and balance equity of the program among certificated teachers.

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Typically, students are assigned to a CORE teacher with whom the student has earned a below standard grade (or at least a teacher that instructs the same subject).  Mandatory attendance is taken and monitored by one of several electronic information support systems used by most schools today.  CORE teachers offer targeted assistance to move students toward meeting standards.  Students have the opportunity to make up missing work, receive additional instruction, to preview upcoming lessons, to discuss recent discipline/attendance missteps, to participate in one on one counseling sessions and monitor academic progress.  The specific strategies used on a daily basis are applied at the discretion of the supervising staff member in order to better meet the needs of the group.  The directive nature of CORE helps avoid the difficulty of accessing struggling students outside the normal school day.

Students earning grades at or above 70% in all classes have earned Choice Status.  Individuals in this category have the opportunity to decide how they will use Choice Sessions to benefit their learning.  Choice Students have a variety of options available to them designed to support enrichment; such as computer labs, open library, AP seminars, content-specific learning labs, career exploration, post high school program investigation and guided study halls.  Students may also utilize common areas of the campus to study, socialize and relax.  Students must remain on campus and stay in the session they choose for the entire enrichment period.  Attendance for Choice Sessions is taken via sign in sheets in all locations with the exception of the school commons.  With significant numbers of students motivated to earn Choice Status, it allows CORE support groups to be small and manageable in size.

Many schools today struggle with assisting cohorts of students that have challenges beyond typical adolescent deficiencies in maturity, organizational skills or work ethic that result in one or two grades below standard.  When a student is experiencing limited performance across a wide range of classes, more significant intervention is required.  In the Choice Program the idea of Permanent CORE groups has evolved to facilitate improvement with these more troubled students.  In Permanent CORE groups, students are assigned to a particular teacher voluntarily.  Students served by this type of affiliation stay with their teacher regardless of changes in achievement status as the academic year unfolds.  The perception being that students experiencing significant “outside of school” challenges contributing to multiple failing grades need the one on one relationship and interpersonal consistency offered in this alternative setting.  In most cases, teachers working with a Permanent CORE group have also volunteered for the position and find meeting this type of challenge rewarding.

Most aspects of the Choice Program are tangible and measurable to all stakeholders.  Choice-Style intervention programs can be described in words.  Program goals can be articulated.  Various types of interventions can be outlined.  However, it is difficult to communicate in written form how dynamic and adaptable Choice Style response to intervention is when applied intentionally and professionally.  In each new school where it is adopted the program takes on a certain “life” as the data-driven nature of the process allows for targeted modification to be implemented to impact students at regular intervals over the entire academic year.  Institutions can review local capabilities and challenges to develop facets of Choice Intervention playing to their strengths and mitigating weaknesses.  The Choice Model is a relatively simple and elegant foundation upon which schools may find ways to weave new support structures designed to reach individual students, assist them in reaching their potential, and reduce the impact of past challenges on current learning.

In schools piloting the Choice Model significant gains have been made in reducing “D” and “F” grades.  Discipline referrals have typically trended lower.  Schools have seen improved results with regard to the number of students taking and passing AP National Board Exams and the vast majority of stakeholders seem pleased with the program conceptually, logistically and in terms of overall performance.

Choice-Style intervention is not an instant fix for the significant and varied challenges faced by public education today.  However, institutions looking for a systematic, data-driven and adaptable response to intervention that meets the needs of both the highly capable and the progressing learner without additional program costs, may find the Choice Program to be of value.  In challenging times we must not forget that our students need our support and enrichment more than ever.  We must offer hope for today in order to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Tod Witzel is a Social Studies instructor at Enumclaw High School with over 20 years of teaching experience.  Tod has recently authored a teacher field guide directed at assisting staff in working through the process of developing, implementing and refining a Choice-Style intervention model in a secondary school for the first time.  Parties interested in further information may contact the author directly via email at: studentsmaketherightchoice@comcast.net