This week, we focused on critically reviewing and assessment genre. I chose to view an assessment that is used to guide reading instruction in my school, Fountas and Pinnell’s Benchmark Assessment system. For this critical review, I focused on briefly describing the test and its uses, assessed it using the rubric I have been developing, and provided recommendations for its use as a formative assessment. Click HERE to view the critical review.
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Rubric 2.0
This week, we worked on building up the previously written criteria for our rubric to assess to assessments by adding evidence to each criterion.
Click HERE to see my Rubric 2.0.
Rubric 1.0
For my CEP 813 class, we began our assessing assessments! While reading and learning about assessments, we began thinking about the criteria that would help use to decide what makes an effective assessment. From that exploration, I pulled out a few key ideas that will help me begin to build and assessment for assessments. Click here to view my Rubric 1.0.
Assessment Exemplar
This is a summative assessment for a third grade unit focused on geometry skills. The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the learning the students have done throughout the unit. I would assume that this test would be written in a way that students can understand and that the content is aligned closely with the learning that was done throughout the unit.
After looking at this assessment, I quickly noticed that it fell short of many of the criteria that I wrote about in my Rubric 1.0 assignment. One shortfall that this assessment had was that some of the questions were written to include three or four steps within a paragraph. While the students could do each of the expected steps, it was too difficult for them to keep track of each step and then complete it. The test itself was laid out in a way that allowed for very little workspace for the kids. It was also very distracting to have so many questions on one page.
Another issue with this test was the level of difficulty of some of the real world questions. Two of these questions required students to solve problems using strategies and skills that were barely gone over in the lessons. They would be great if they were a part of performance tasks that kids worked on in groups, but they did not align with the standards or learning objectives in the unit.
Overall, this test needed some overhauls before I gave it to my students. I will be working with my team to reorganize and potentially rewrite some of the questions so that it is a more fair assessment of the skills learned in the unit.
Passion-Curiosity-Questioning
In my classroom, we talk a lot about picking their ‘place’ on the learning mountain we created. This is a time of the day when we make a conscious decision about the type of mindset we will be bringing to the next activity. As I was reflecting on the learning I have done this semester, I kept thinking about the learning mountain and how teachers have their own “Teaching Mountains”. Every day can feel like running up a mountain. Some days you feel like the mountain just keeps getting taller and other days it feels like you are THIS close to the top. Whatever the day might bring, we are standing upon a mountain of resources and possibilities and we need to decide what mindset we will bring to the work we do. I work very hard to make my classroom a place that my kids and I enjoy being a part of. I use all of the resources that I show on my mountain featured above from collaborating with peers, technology, my creative side, Cultures of Thinking, to instilling a growth mindset in my students play a role in creating my classroom culture. I moved the writing included on this blog post below my image so that you, the reader, would first see what drives me to keep creating, questioning, exploring every single day- the heart of my work- my students.
Passion and curiosity are two of the traits that will allow us as educators to innovate and create a new way of teaching that will help our students to be successful in this ever-changing world. In the article, It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q., Thomas Friedman writes about the changing world that we are living in now and how technology has evolved in a way that created a hyperconnected society that is constantly changing. “It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime.”(Friedman, 2013) This part of his article is what I connected with most powerfully as an educator. The field of education is constantly evolving and teachers have an incredible amount of new resources being made available to them each day. Bringing our passion for our craft and addressing our constant wonderings of how we could be doing better for our students is what teaching is all about.
Berger brings up a great point in Chapter 5 of his book, A More Beautiful Question, that innovative thinkers are okay with not having the answer to the questions. The curiosity we bring to our work and passion for uncovering new solutions is what makes us innovators in our field. Shifting our mindset from needing answers to a mindset that values questioning is also critical. It will lead us to a place that allows us to take risks and stretch our thinking about our work.
References:
Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Friedman, T. (2013). It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q. The Opinion Pages. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.html
Wicked Problem Project
Throughout the semester, my classmate and I have been exploring the wicked problem “Failure as a Learning Mode”. We began our process by asking a number of questions about the topic. We used Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question, as a guiding force for this part of the process. As we narrowed our focus, we created a survey to share with our professional learning networks to find how other educators viewed our problem. This helped lead us to the conclusion that many educators felt as though failure was very important, but their students were not prepared to fail and some of their current teaching habits did not allow room for failures. Using the information we gathered, supported by research and our own experiences, we came up with a few possible solutions to this problem. Of course, this wicked problem is very complicated and every teacher will have their own ideas regarding solutions.
We chose to focus in on two manageable starting points for teachers that are interested in embracing failure: creating a Growth Mindset culture & adjusting feedback processes in the classroom. Encouraging a growth mindset in my students has been a huge focus for me this year, and I am so glad that I have put the time into it. I have seen a change in all of my students when they come upon a challenge throughout the school day. The word “Yet” has been especially valuable because it is simple enough for the kids to understand and use with one another. It is also a quick way to change the negative “I can’t do this.” statements that would typically cause the student to shut down into a “I can’t do this yet.” conversation about what are the child is going to do to get to a place of understanding. One simple word opens a lot of doors for the kids! We also discuss the importance of changing teacher and student feedback to reflect this mindset shift. My students now use “Not Yet” writing checklists that encourage them to go back and add the missing part. Teacher praise should be directed at the effort students put forth rather than praising the end result or ‘natural talent’. This shows the kids that their teacher values the learning process not just getting a good final grade. These possible solutions may not “solve” our wicked problem, but I strongly believe they are two worthwhile avenues to explore. Changing attitudes towards failure is the first step to effectively using failure as a learning mode.
We have created a website that organizes the information we have uncovered while investigating our Wicked Problem. Click the image below to visit our website! Or copy and paste http://www.embracingfailure.weebly.com into your browser.
My PLN Info Diet
As I took the time to explore my professional learning network (PLN) info diet, I found that the resources that it consisted of was mainly that of like-minded educators that value innovation and the use of technology in the classroom. It also includes very creative educators that create resources and lessons that make the classroom an engaging place to learn. The Twitter account that I use for my classroom and to network with other teachers in my school district was definitely a great example of an affinity space that I had created. An affinity space is the “bubble” that people create to reflect their own interests and ideas often, intentionally or unintentionally, excluding views that differ from their own.
When examining my Twitter account, which is one of my most used PLN spaces, I found that I had been following very few educators outside of my school district and mostly educators in the grade levels that I have taught. I work in an incredible school district surrounded by talented educators so my Twitter feed has always been a source of great inspiration and it definitely has helped me to develop a strong foundation in the areas that are important to my district including curriculum development, building a culture of thinking, and encouraging a growth mindset in the classroom. While the focused PLN I had before this week was great and had helped me to grow as an educator, after learning about affinity spaces and filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011) I can see that I may have fallen into this networking bubble that constantly confirms the work I do rather than push or challenge my thinking.
After realizing that I was limiting my PLN and my own self-directed professional development, I knew that I would have to mage some changes. I focused on three areas to expand my network: teachers in other districts, teachers in different grade levels, and education research groups. The addition of teachers in other districts allows me to see what is going on around the state and country that could be used to enhance the work I am already doing and give me new and interesting ideas that could work in my classroom. Adding a number of teachers from other grade levels to my network, I am now able to see more examples of where the students came from and where they will go after they leave my classroom. I am also able to adapt work that other teachers create to fit my students’ needs and my curriculum. Beyond Twitter accounts run by individual teachers, I also added many different connections on Twitter that highlight new trends in education and what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. These accounts include groups focused on using technology in the classroom, governmental agencies, news outlets, and educators that work outside of the classroom.This addition will help to keep me up to date on new trends and developments in the education world.
In order to find many of the new resources that I have added to my PLN, I created a Tagboard to follow tweets that include #edtech. Not only did this help me to find more resources to add to my PLN, but I also discovered that Tagboard can be a very convenient way to follow a topic of interest on Twitter! I will definitely be using this platform when looking into various hashtags! To get a peek into the #edtech Twitter network, check out my tagboard below – click the photo to visit the actual tagboard!
Pariser, Eli. “Beware online “filter bubbles” | Eli Pariser.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 2 May 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s.
Failure in the Classroom- Big Questions
This week, my partner and I narrowed down our exploration into using failure in the classroom. We started from a list of over 40 questions that explored the many facets of this wicked problem. We wanted to make sure our questions addressed some of the most important facets of the problem. The facets we focused in on are the stakeholders in our school communities, the culture in classrooms, and feedback given to students. We decided to focus on these ‘big three’ facets because they were frequently commented on in the resources that we used for our research.
Our 5 big questions are:
- Why can a growth mindset culture help stakeholders accept failure as growth?
- Why will changing the feedback process for teachers help students use their failures to further their learning?
- How do we know if we have learned something?
- Why does feedback usually come in the form of a grade?
- Why will being prepared to accept failures be a positive part of the learning process?
We also had the opportunity to survey our professional learning networks to gather information about other stakeholders’ perspectives on this topic. From this survey, we were able to get a glimpse into how other teachers approach failure in the classroom. We can see from the responses that the responders believe that failure is valuable, but that students are unprepared to handle failure in a positive way. This finding shows us that this problem we are exploring is truly wicked. I have included an infographic below that summarizes our survey findings along with our big questions.
Exploring Failure as a Learning Mode
What is success? What is failure? How can failure move our students forward rather than hold them back? These are some of the questions that we are exploring in our Wicked Problem project in CEP 812. A wicked problem is so complex and multi-faceted that it is constantly evolving and changing making finding ‘correct answers’ seemingly impossible. Instead, as we approach wicked problems, we are looking for the “best bad answer”.
The wicked problem we are currently investigating revolves around failure as a learning mode. We have grown into a society that fears failure and will go to great lengths to shield children from any type of setback. One of the most common remarks about “today’s kids” is that they are too soft and that “everybody gets a medal” whether they won a game or not. Whether one agrees with this way or thinking or not, we do owe it to ourselves to step back and think about whether or not these ideas do have some basis in truth and/or have an impact on our students’ future successes. Why are we so afraid of failure? Is it such a bad thing to lose a game or get the wrong answer? What can we learn from these times of disappointment? Are we holding our students back by sugar-coating their failures? Instead, should we work to shift our current mindset from a place where failure is the endpoint to a mindset that sees failure as a speed bump or an opportunity to shift course.
As we investigate this wicked problem, we need to research how educators, parents, and students can use failures to their advantage. We are exploring how we could embrace failures as an important part of the learning process. In order to understand this problem, we need to hear from community members to understand how the concepts of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are viewed in the school community. We also need to understand how educators currently address failures in their classroom.
Click HERE to take our anonymous survey!
A More Beautiful Question – Deborah Meier’s Five Habits of Mind
As I read through Chapter Two of Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question, I was struck by the story of educator Deborah Meier and her five habits of mind. Deborah Meier is known for her work opening schools that were question-driven. Her teaching style and educational philosophies were both effective and engaging. One statistic in the book that really stood out to me to support this claim was that while the other schools in the same city had dropout rates of 40 to 60 percent, her school only had one percent of students not finishing high school (Berger, 2014). Her philosophy was that schools should not “just push information at kids,” but instead, “teach them how to make sense of what they were being told so they would know what to make of it and what to do with it.” (Berger, 2014) Reading this jumped out at me and made me think “Yes! Absolutely! What was her plan? How did she accomplish that goal? How was she able to reach so many children?” The chapter then led into a discussion of her “habits of mind” which helped me to begin to uncover what made her successful. I have included an infographic that I created below outlining the five habits and the corresponding questions as they appeared in A More Beautiful Question.
These five habits of mind speak to many of the critically important thinking moves that are necessary for students to develop to be able to think through problems down the road. I certainly agree with the idea that educators should be shifting the focus from memorizing facts to teaching strategies that allow the students to approach big questions and develop thinking skills. It is mentioned in the chapter that Meier was faced with critics that viewed her philosophies as too unstructured, but she made the point that when the students have more freedom, they are actually easier to control. This instantly connected with me as I have experienced this same reaction from other teachers in the school when discussing instructional strategies and flexible seating options. Many teachers that I have spoken with have a hard time wrapping their head around what seems like a pretty scary release of control within their classroom. Not for a lack of caring or wanting to try it, but simply because it is something new to them and, in many case, opposite of what they are familiar with. I have had my ups and downs as I have tried out new things, like flexible seating, in my room, but I have found that giving freedom- with an established classroom culture and clear expectations- will more often than not, pay off in a big way!
As an educator, it is always nice to see philosophies and strategies connect and that is exactly what happened when I read Meier’s five habits. I am in a school district that has been working on developing a culture of thinking within our schools. With the guidance of Ron Ritchhart’s Cultures of Thinking resources, we have explored how best to change our instructional approaches in order to dig deeper into out students’ thinking. The core ideas in Deborah Meier’s are embedded in many of the thinking routines that we have learned about from Richhart’s books and trainings. For example, the thinking routine “Circle of Viewpoints” brings the habit “viewpoints” to life in the classroom. Claim-Evidence-Reasoning obviously connections with using “evidence” to support stated claims and drive investigations, but the relevance piece and making connections are also closely related. Developing thinking skills versus memorizing facts is definitely a huge goal for my district as a whole.
Another connection that stood out to me was how closely connected these five habits of mind are to the NGSS crosscutting concepts.
The poster included above is available from Illinois’ Project Neuron. Click here to download them for yourself!
Of course, it is nice to hear that many of the things that are going on in your classroom are supported by research and current trends in education, but it is just the beginning of the journey for me. I am lucky enough to work with a grade-level peer that is like-minded in regards to making big changes and she is also excited about working together to re-envision our curriculum design, instructional techniques, and incorporating technology as well. I am excited to bring the ideas that I have explored so far in this book to our planning sessions and work to use it to guide our planning and help us to develop strategies that will encourage strong questioning among my students as well as shift the focus of our teaching to developing thinking moves that will help our students grow into innovative thinkers.
References
Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Cultures of Thinking Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.ronritchhart.com/ronritchhart.com/COT_Resources.html
N. (n.d.). Crosscutting Concepts. Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://ngss.nsta.org/CrosscuttingConceptsFull.aspx
Print-It-Yourself NGSS Classroom Posters. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from https://neuron.illinois.edu/NGSS-posters
Ill-Structured Problem & Tech Solutions
This week, our learning focused on identifying ill-structured problems that we teach in the classroom and how technology can help address the many different learning needs of our students. We spend so much time in the lower grades teaching students strategies for reading, and we expect them to be using comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary strategies as they read. As they reach third grade we are expecting that they will have those strategies in their reader’s toolbox so they can use those reading skills to learn new content. This is certainly a complex set of skills all working at the same time. As I thought through the idea of ill-structured problems in the classroom, specifically reading, I decided to do more research on the specific needs that students with dyslexia have when presented with work that involves reading and responding to their reading.
A student with dyslexia by definition is one has a “learning disability that inhibits the learning process in spelling, reading and/or writing” (Badilo-Dean, 2010). Students with dyslexia are unique and can experience difficulties in many different areas which could be totally different than another student with dyslexia. Of course, each teacher will use what they know about their specific student to tailor instruction that fits their needs. For this example though we will look to the focus of the research study, The Effect of Print Size on Reading Speed in Dyslexia, done by Beth O’Brien, et. al, in 2005. This study found that students with dyslexia had a “maximum reading speed.. slower than that of non-dyslexic readers even though they were older and with control for word identification skill. Also, their critical print sizes were larger than those of the controls, indicating that they needed larger print to support maximum reading rates.” In the classroom, our textbooks and novels are not always available in digital formats and thus we are left with two options: leave the text as is and provide support as best we can to our learners with special needs or use technology to assist in making the text support the learner without the need of direct teacher assistance. While discussing the social and emotional impact dyslexia can have on students, Badilo-Dean (2010) notes that researchers (Orton, 1937) found that students, “emotional problems begin to manifest when their reading instruction does not correspond with their learning style.”
In order to avoid compounding the negative attitude toward reading that a child with dyslexia may have developed, our choice becomes very clear: adapt to support the child without creating another situation in which the child feels as though they are not smart enough to do what everyone else can do easily. Enter: Notability. Notability offers a variety of features that can assist the students with learning disabilities in your classroom while also being a valuable tool for the other students in the class. This app allows teachers to import a picture of a page from a book, magazine, website, etc. and record themselves reading the text fluently for their students and then share the file with their students that also have Notability installed on their devices. This allows the students to hear a fluent reader read the text as they follow along. This instantly reduces frustration and puts the focus back on the thinking that is desired in the assignment. The child also has the option of zooming in on the text to increase the font size and thereby increase their reading rate. Highlighting as they read can also be a helpful tool to increase contrast between the text.
When it comes time to respond to the text, the student can record their thinking with the assistance of the microphone. This allows the teacher to see beyond the written responses, which very well may have reduced the quality of their response, and get to the heart of the student’s understanding of the text. But wait there’s more! The voice-to-text feature will allow the student to transcribe their ideas quickly and the word suggestion feature on iPads will also help them with their word-finding and/or spelling issues.
The Notability app provides the student with a number of options to tailor their text to their needs and preferences. This app can help to level the playing field and shift the focus to what the student is capable of doing within the classroom rather than having to jump over language hurdles throughout the day. I gave an example of how a teacher could create this document and share it out, but a student with the app on their iPad could easily import a picture of the reading they are working on to take advantage of these features. The suggestions in this blog post are just a few of the possible ways that Notability could be used and helpful in the classroom. Of course, these features will help a student with dyslexia succeed, but they will also be valuable to every other student in the classroom as well and the ability to quickly email or AirDrop the file to students makes it a quick accommodation for all!
Click on the image below to view a quick video showing off some of Notability’s features discussed in this post!
(Oops! I forgot to mention the most important part in the video! Make sure that you share the file you created with your kiddos so they can enjoy all of the benefits! You can email the file or AirDrop it to the kiddo(s) you want to share it with.)
*Video made with the help of Reflector 2, Jing, and Screencast.com*
Click the icon below to download Notability from iTunes! Enjoy exploring this amazing classroom resource!
References
O’Brien, B. A., Mansfield, S. J., & Legge, G. E. (2005). The effect of print size on reading speed in dyslexia. Journal of Research in Reading, 28(3), 332-349. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.msu.edu.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/docview/62141786?accountid=12598
Balido-Dean, L. (2010). Dyslexia: An analysis of dyslexic students at the elementary level (Order No. 3483015). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: Social Sciences. (902033275). Retrieved from http://ezproxy.msu.edu.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/docview/902033275?accountid=12598
Tech In Lower El 