Rubrics: More Than Just a Post-Assessment Tool

When most of us think about rubrics, we automatically picture ourselves filling them out as we grade a summative assessment, circling and highlighting and jotting down notes. This is certainly a valid and effective use of rubrics -- they can help us provide important feedback for student growth. But they can do more, too . . .

Here's an idea from Quate and McDermott's Clock Watchers: Six Steps to Motivating and Engaging Disengaged Students Across Content Areas (2009). Consider using your rubrics as an opportunity for student self-assessment and for pre-assessment of skills. Give students the rubric nice and early -- well before the assignment is due. Ask students to read the skills listed on the rubric, and to think about whether or not they could teach someone how to do that skill (i.e., they feel they've mastered that skill). If so, students should highlight it in yellow. If they come across skills on the rubric they have no idea about and feel they cannot do at the moment, they should highlight those in a different color.

Once this fairly quick and easy self-assessment is complete, the student and the teacher have a lot of useful data. We now know what areas this student is going to need teacher support in in order to meet success and master skills. We can differentiate our instruction leading up to the final completion of the assignment, providing scaffolding for some students, meeting others in small groups. We may also learn that, for some students, the assignment really isn't offering much of a challenge. We may want to think about providing some sort of extension to these students.

You've already put all that time into creating that rubric -- might as well make as much use out of it as possible!!

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You...

Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me…No, this blog post is not a musical theatre sing-along (but how fun would that be?? Bonus points if you knew this was a King and I reference!). What I want to talk about is getting to know your students, and I figured this was a pretty good topic to devote my first post of the 2013-2014 school year to. (By the way, welcome back, readers!)

The “Why”

Just why should we take time at the beginning of the school year to get to know our students anyway? Well, there are lots of reasons  -- many of which I’m sure you can name – but the one that stands out most to me relates to differentiation. If we’re going to devote ourselves to differentiating our instruction with our students’ interests, learning styles, and readiness in mind, then we need to invest some time learning about our students’ interests, learning styles, and readiness.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, guru of differentiated instruction, adds a few more items to the “why” list in her book, Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom (2010):

·      “It sends a message to each student that the teacher sees him or her as an individual, and it also suggests that he or she is interesting enough for an adult to want to know better” (p. 78). We all want to feel like more than a number, right? It’s this kind of interest shown by a teacher that helps a student begin to trust that teacher and begin to see that teacher as a “support system in the classroom” (p.78). The student is not anonymous anymore – anonymity is not even an option in this type of classroom.

·      If a teacher shows an interest in getting to know her students, she is showing her students that she values them. And guess who students are inclined to work for? “People they value (i.e., people who value them)” (p. 79).

·      Getting to know our students helps us as teachers to invest in them; we invest most deeply in “those who are ‘three dimensional’ to us” (p. 79).

The “How”

What are some ways in which we can get to know our students? Every classroom teacher has his or her own methods of doing this, but it’s always nice to add to our repertoires. One important way to get to know our students is to use a pre-assessment at the start of a unit. We can determine a student’s existing background knowledge about the topic, as well as any misconceptions he or she may have; we can see if the student has any particular interests or questions relating to this topic. As such, we are already preparing ourselves to possibly differentiate our instruction within this unit based on readiness and/or interest. We can add learning style into the mix by asking students to complete a learning style survey or inventory at the beginning of the year (there are plenty of these available online, some of which also relate to Gardner’s multiple intelligences).

Tomlinson makes some suggestions for the “how” as well:

·      Greet your students at the door as they enter your classroom. A quick greeting (“How’d the homework go last night?,” “How’s soccer practice?,” “Are those new shoes?”) can go a long way in helping a teacher determine valuable information about a student’s daily life, mood, and attitude and can help make the student feel like a valued individual (p. 82).

·      Ask your students to bring in “All About Me” bags filled with five objects that help the teacher and the other students learn more about them (p. 82).

·      Use note-taking as a way to keep track of things you learn about students on the fly. As you circulate during a lesson, you can learn a lot about students – with whom they work well (and with whom they don’t), what their learning preferences are (do they like to work alone, with others, in silence, etc.).  Having a way to quickly jot down this type of information will help inform your instruction (p. 82).

·      Use surveys to “ask students to share their sense of themselves as learners in a particular subject, their interests, and their methods for learning effectively” (p. 82).

·      Create a number line and label it 1 to 10. Title it How do you feel about _____? The topic can change depending on the day. “For example, one day students might be asked how they feel about a book they read yesterday in class, and another day they might be asked how they feel about starting a new math unit” (p. 82). Students then place small sticky notes or stickers beneath the appropriate number that represents their feelings on that particular topic. This can be a great, quick way to take the pulse of a class.

Some Final Tips

These come from my own experiences, and the experiences of colleagues, in the classroom:

1.    Once you’ve collected this kind of “getting to know you” information from your students, use it. If the information remains in a folder that gets other paperwork piled on top of it, then it’s not going to assist you in planning for differentiation.

2.   When you do use this “getting to know you” information, go ahead and share this with students. Let them know, for example, when you have incorporated certain aspects into a lesson based on what you know about students’ preferred ways of learning. This will go a long way in building a culture of respect and trust in your classroom.

3.   Get to know your students yourself. Yes, we can often receive quite valuable information about a student from a colleague, but we have to avoid becoming “overly swayed by a student’s record from previous school years” (Tomlinson, 2010, p. 83). Recognize that students can change, and that we want to challenge them to grow, which is hard to do if we’ve got a fixed vision of who they are.

4.   “Remember that students are your best source of information” (p. 84). Use formative assessment tools such as tickets-to-leave or surveys to check in with students occasionally and ask them to “share their sense of how they’re doing” (p. 84). And use what you learn!

I hope everyone’s school year is off to a great start! My “blogging schedule” is now officially back in motion, so expect a post from me towards the end of each week.

Annotation Nation: Using Annotations as Pre-Assessments

     I've got news for you, readers. Annotating's not just for English class anymore. 

     For those of you not already as nerdily familiar with annotation as me, it's basically just a fancy term for marking up the text, scribbling down notes, thoughts, ideas, and questions in the margins. In some ways, it's like having a conversation, a little chit chat if you will, with the text and the information you're reading about.

     But, just when I thought I knew all there was to know about annotation and how it can be used to assess student comprehension of text across content areas, Cris Tovani, author of So What Do They Really Know? Assessment That Informs Teaching and Learning, thrilled me with another way to assess via annotation -- using annotations as a pre-test or pre-assessment! (I know, I know, it blew my mind, too!!)

     Here's what Tovani suggests. Ask students to annotate their thinking at the beginning of a unit to assess "what they know and what skills and information they need" (2011, p. 88). Something really cool to think about is actually giving students the unit test the very day the class starts the unit. WHAT?!?!? Be totally upfront with students about exactly what they are supposed to learn by the end of the unit and about exactly what they'll be assessed on? Craziness! It might seem crazy at first, but, readers, think about it: This isn't cheating. This is being super clear and transparent; this is helping students set learning goals and targets. But I digress...

     So, give students the unit test on day one. Ask them to do their best, explaining that this is a pre-assessment and will not be used to penalize them. Students should answer or solve the questions or problems they can, and (here's my favorite part!!), on those they can't, students should record annotations including questions or confusions they have. What great insight this can provide for the teacher! As Tovani suggests, "these annotations help the teacher figure out what is causing difficulty for the student so he or she can better target what the student needs" (p. 89).

     Boom! Now, as the teacher, you know what concepts and/or skills the entire class needs, you know whether any pieces of the unit can be skipped because all your students already know it, and you know how you might need to differentiate your instruction based on any variety of readiness you come across on the pre-tests (who will need enrichment? who will need support?). 

     So exciting, right?

     If you're starting to think more and more about how to use assessment data to inform your instruction, or about how to differentiate based on this data, then (shameless plug alert!) check out my summer workshop on practical approaches to differentiation in the classroom. It's at the very end of June, and I believe you can still sign up. Contact me if you need more information!

I'm Flipping Out: Presentation Elation!

     Do you ever find yourself running out of time in your classes? Ever wonder how on earth you'll be able to disseminate useful and helpful information to your students, model strategies and approaches for them, AND find time during that 50 minute block to differentiate your instruction so that you can meet with small groups and individual students, conduct conferences, and engage in formative assessment?

     If you answered "yes" to these questions (and if you didn't, you are an anomaly/my personal hero), then this blog post is for you. Because I am about to share something pretty exciting with you that is starting to really gain momentum in education as we all work to find ways to differentiate. It's delightfully called The Flipped Classroom (hence why I am "flipping out").

     The concept of a flipped classroom is that the teacher flips what is normally done for homework (practice, reinforcement, extensions of learning) into what is done during class time, and flips what may be traditionally done during class (direct instruction, lectures, modeling) into homework time.

     Let me give you an example of what this might look like. Let's say I am noticing some issues with sentence structure in my students' writing, and I'd like to teach them about sentence combining. Instead of using class time to provide direct instruction on this plus some modeling, I create a presentation online (more on this a little later) that my students can watch for homework. (Here's the one major drawback to flipped classrooms; you need to be sure your students all have access to the Internet outside of school.) What's great about this is that students can now watch my instruction and my modeling at their own pace, they can pause to take notes or to try out a problem, they can rewind if they missed something. The next day, in class, I begin by giving my students a quick pre-assessment on sentence combining (this could also have been part of the homework the night before). I use this information to determine which of my students really "get it" and which don't yet. The students who "get it" will be assigned some work, either individually or in pairs or small groups, that extends their use of sentence combining, while the students who still need more support will work with me for more direct instruction, modeling, and gradual release of responsibility. 

     Voila! I've saved my class time for what I really need it for: I need to have the time to informally assess where each of my students is in terms of meeting the standard. And I need to have the time to see students working in real time, to be able to give them immediate feedback, and to be able to work with them, side-by-side via small groups or individual conferencing.

     Want a really cool idea for how to prepare a lecture or presentation for the homework of a flipped classroom? Why, I thought you'd never ask! Here's why, in addition to "flipping out" over flipped classrooms, I am in "presentation elation." If you go to https://present.me/, you can create -- for free! -- a powerpoint presentation that you can enhance by including a side-by-side video of yourself delivering the presentation, or an audio of you delivering the presentation. Of course, you can always go the more traditional powerpoint route and just have students click through the slides, etc. But this way is pretty nifty in that your students get a more rounded experience of the material; they're not just reading bullet points off of a slide, but they are listening to you (and maybe even watching you) deliver the full presentation.

     

     Interested in trying this out? Want some help? If you teach in the same district as me, then give me a holler! I'd love to play around with this with you! Also (shameless plug alert), I'll be trying out some of these strategies at my workshop this summer, A Practical Approach to Differentiation in the Classroom, so register if you want to see it in action!

How Self-Assessment Can Play a Role in a Differentiated Classroom

     This school year has really been the year of differentiated instruction for me. This is not to say I never thought about DI before this year. In fact, while in my former district, I was one of the champions of DI, trying out a lot of the strategies I was reading about, discussing these strategies with colleagues, etc. But this year, as an instructional coach in a new district, I find myself working with numerous educators who really want to succeed with DI, but don't always know where to start, and have a lot of understandable concerns about how it all works. Coaching colleagues on implementing DI in their classrooms has opened my eyes to a lot of new possibilities concerning differentiation. In this post, I'll share one of my more recent thoughts and discoveries...

     It all started when I realized that the vast majority of teachers I was discussing DI with were asking the same questions: How do I group students? How can it be flexible? Shouldn't I be worried about how my students are going to react to being given different work to do than their classmates?

     I went digging around in all my books on differentiated instruction, and I found a lot of great ideas and suggestions to help answer these questions. But there was one suggestion that really hit home for me, that really aligned with how I believe DI can function in building student self-awareness and self-assessment, in turning some ownership over to the students. It's from chapter 6 of Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson by Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart, and it goes a little something like this:

     It doesn't always have to be the teacher who determines what differentiated work students do during a lesson. We can turn assessment over to the students, who, after all, are the experts on what they know and on what they don't know as of yet. Moss and Brookhart recommend using a student self-assessment sheet to do this. Here's a sample of what this might look like in a math class (2012, p. 111):

My Self Assessment

Try these problems, and then check what type of problem it was for you.

1.       Find the mean, the median, and the mode for this set of numbers: 2, 10, 4, 2, 7.

Mean _____     Median _____     Mode _____

 How is this problem for you?
__ I can already do it easily
__ I can do it, and want more practice with this kind of problem
__ I can learn it, and want to practice this kind of problem with help.
__ I am not ready for this kind of problem yet.

2.Jack sold newspapers at a newsstand. On Monday he sold 41 papers, on Tuesday he sold 58 papers, on Wednesday he sold 52 papers, on Thursday he sold 48 papers, on Friday he sold 57 papers, and on Saturday he sold 58 papers. On average, how many papers did he sell? _____ Is this number the mean, the median, or the mode? _____

 How is this problem for you?
__ I can already do it easily
__ I can do it, and want more practice with this kind of problem
__ I can learn it, and want to practice this kind of problem with help.
__ I am not ready for this kind of problem yet.

 3. Ms. Smith sold handmade jewelry at a shop. For the month of January, her sales totaled $163 the first week, $274 the second week, $873 the third week, and $842 the fourth week.

a. Which statistic makes her sales look better, the mean or the median? _____ Explain how you figured this out.

b. How many more dollars' worth of sales would Ms. Smith have to have made in January for her mean sales to equal $600? _____ Explain how you figured this out.

How is this problem for you?
__ I can already do it easily
__ I can do it, and want more practice with this kind of problem
__ I can learn it, and want to practice this kind of problem with help.
__ I am not ready for this kind of problem yet.

     I love so many things about this! It's a great example of a fairly simple pre-assessment that puts the ownership on the student to self-assess. I particularly love how this example requires the student to not only state where he or she is "at" in answering "How is this problem for you?" but also requires the student to actually do each problem before self-assessing. Sometimes, things can go wrong when we ask our students to self-assess in a differentiated classroom. They may not fully know their own current level of understanding. In having to do the problem first, they will be much more likely to self-assess accurately. There is also the worry of some teachers that, in a differentiated classroom, some students will be too easy on themselves on a self-assessment in the hopes that they'll be given an "easier" assignment as a result. I believe the above example helps to reduce this occurrence in asking the students to actually do the problems instead of simply making blanket statements about their current readiness. Of course, there may be some students who still try to "underrate" themselves on purpose. But I have to ask: does it make sense to not use these types of valuable self-assessments because a handful of students may abuse them? Besides, we teachers are not taken completely out of the equation just because there is self-assessment going on. We can always step in if we think a student has been too easy (or too hard) on himself or herself. 

     Something else I love about the above example is that it's so easy for the teacher to know what the next step is! Based on these self-assessments, the teacher can now form differentiated groups of students based on their readiness, and will know what types of problems to give each group, as well as which group he should probably work with first, second, and so on. 

     I hope this gives you some food for thought about ways you can involve your students in the differentiated learning process. Why not make them our partners in discovering what they currently know and are able to do?