The Duckworth Chronicles

     This week I attended a conference at which the main presenter was Eleanor Duckworth, Harvard presenter, Piaget expert, and leader in examining how people learn. So, you can see why I had to use her name in my blog title this week. I mean, how does one become so fortunate to not only have worked closely with Jean Piaget himself, but to also have the surname Duckworth? Some folks have all the luck.

     The focus of the conference was on creative and critical thinking, and Ms. Duckworth (man, that name just keeps getting better and better!) encouraged we conference attendees to build in time on learning that promoted such thinking. 

     Her ideas are based on Piaget's insistence on self-regulation. There needs to be time and encouragement to allow our minds to think, "Why do I believe this?" The key to effective learning and to fostering critical thinking is that the individual must do this for him or herself -- not accepting information just because someone told them this is what they should believe. Duckworth asserts that not being told anything (i.e., the "answer") is what gets people interested. 

     The lesson for we teachers is to police ourselves to "get out of the way" of our students' learning. We must, as Professor Duckworth (oh, she's just been elevated to Harry Potter character status!) claims, put our learners in the position of researcher, in any content area and at any age, so that they are engaged with the materials of the topic itself, not just with the teacher. 

     I'll share some examples of all of this in action. Duckworth showed us an intriguing video from her days as an educational researcher in the classroom. The video featured two upper-elementary boys working with manipulatives on a math problem. They were given a rectangular block and were told it represented a candy bar, but that the candy bar company wanted to change the shape of the product without taking away the amount of chocolate. The boys were each given 4 small block squares they could use to determine the size of this rectangular block in order to deduce how to reshape it. Well, the boys went back and forth and back and forth, and finally came up with two different solutions to determining the size (volume, surface area, etc.) of the rectangular block. They also came up with two different answers regarding the block's size. They were then asked to explain their processes to one another, which they did, prompting another opportunity to grapple with which had been the correct method, leading to the correct answer. At no point did a teacher step in to announce who was right and who was wrong. 

     Now, you may be shuddering at the thought of this, as were many of the teachers present at the conference. We teachers often want to "jump in" to ensure that the correct answer is reached. Duckworth remained pretty insistent that it's okay to leave students with some healthy confusion, stating that once we tell them the answer is when the thinking stops. While this is a valid and, in my opinion, pretty fascinating concept, many of us are looking for more of a balancing act in our classrooms, at least as a starting point. 

     For example, although the boys were not using the terms "volume" and "surface area," it was clear this is what they were discussing. Many of us would have begun this lesson by supplying the students with these terms. But, in thinking about critical thinking and exploration, letting the students play around with the terms they are using first in the interest of building their organic experience with the concepts may be a better decision. Later, when this experience is solidified for them, the teacher can point out that there are terms for what they were discussing, and then teach them the vocabulary. Duckworth asserts, and I find myself agreeing, that only then will those terms have some true meaning for these students because they can attach the terms to an experience they have had. 

     A second video shown to us involved a class of first grade students reading a poem together. Once they had read it, the teacher simply asked them, "What do you notice?" Answers abounded, as, one by one, the first graders pointed out lines that rhymed, the rhythm and sound of certain lines, the use of colons by the poet, and repetition of certain lines and phrases. They even got into poetic structure, noticing that the beginning of each line of the poem started with a capital letter, even though there may not have been a period prior to this. Not once did the teacher jump in to clarify their "noticings:" she did not teach the term "colon," allowing the students to refer to it as "those two dots;" she did not introduce the term "rhythm" or discuss the "rules" of poetry regarding punctuation and capital letters. 

     Again, I watched as many teachers squirmed in their seats, asking, "When is she going to give them the answer?" And I guess what it comes down to is this: How do we work towards more of a balance in our classrooms so that there are times when "the answer" is less important than the opportunity to engage in some critical thinking and exploration? And, as a sub-question, how do we build up the resiliency in our students to be able to struggle through a problem without giving up?

     I think some of the answers lie in being sure that we take into consideration our students' zones of proximal development, challenging them "just enough" with a problem to explore without making it so challenging that they give up. Also, we need to build in more and more opportunities like those above for our students to critically explore a topic on their own. Imagine the critical thinking our students could experience once we build this habit with the proper scaffolding!

     

     Still intrigued?? 

     Check out this video of Eleanor Duckworth's speech -- Confusion, Play, & Postponing

     Certainty:

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6YE02B_IiU

     Or the website she founded: 

     criticalexplorers.org

     Also, you MUST check out the following two videos featuring Sir Ken Robinson if you've
     never seen his work --
     Changing Paradigms:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

     And . . . On Creativity:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSIkQwS-kcs

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?

John Dewey Throw-Back

     Hi readers. Just a quick post this week -- sorry (I'm a bit under the weather and not at my blogging-best!).
     Remember all that John Dewey you had to read as a undergrad education major? Well I stumbled upon some wise words from the father of progressive education just the other day on -- of all places! -- Facebook. I think I first saw the quote on Edutopia, a Facebook page that I "like" due to some interesting education blogs they sometimes post. Imagine my delight as I came across the following quote while scrolling through recent status updates:

"We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience."

~John Dewey

     Teachers, surely we can relate. We can have those wonderfully magic days in our classrooms where every objective is met smoothly by smiling students, every minute is well-paced. But, is it really just that 50 minute experience, the in-the-moment of teaching that lesson, that we learn from? Or does our learning truly come when we take the time to be reflective practitioners, when we sit down after teaching that lesson and reflect upon just what made it all work so well, and how can we replicate this magic in the future? The same can be said for those wonderfully horrid lessons -- if we take the time to reflect, these can also be excellent learning opportunities.

     But this doesn't stop with the teachers. Students should also learn from reflecting on experience. Of course, the first step has to be (as I wrote about in my previous post) making sure that the students are the ones doing the work and having the learning experiences in your classroom. But, as Mr. Dewey reminds us, the next step is equally -- if not more -- important. We must provide our students with opportunities to reflect on their learning experiences. Students must also engage in metacognitive practices, and, in order to do so effectively, must be taught how to be self-reflective about their work in the classroom.

     There's lots of ways to help students engage in thinking about their own thinking and about their own learning. Interested, and teach in my district? Then give me a shout and we can work together on building more opportunities for students to reflect!

Got a Bad Back? It Might Make You a Better Teacher.

     I read a blog this week that, in my opinion, really hits the nail on the head. Educators, you need to read this:

What My Bad Back Taught Me About Teaching

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Seriously. Click on the above link to the blog first, and read it. You'll need to register (which is free and super easy and quick!), which the site prompts you to do. Then we can discuss.

Thanks for doing that! Wasn't it a good post?

     What I love about Colucci's post is twofold: 1) I love that he finds himself reflecting on his life in terms of a metaphor for teaching, and 2) I love that he does something with this reflection, namely -- changes some of his practices to reflect his new understandings.

     As educators, sometimes we can forget what it may be like to be a student in our classrooms. When Colucci found himself in the position of needing help, he was able to introspectively realize what that experience is like for him. More so, he was able to think about whether or not he was providing an optimal environment and optimal strategies for his students to be able to learn and to be able to seek help.

     I've had some Colucci-like reflective experiences in my day. The more obvious ones are when I've taken a class or attended a workshop and found myself in the position of student once more. I took a course several years ago during which the instructor stepped way back and we the students were left to struggle with some pretty complicated tasks together. But as a group, we collaborated and eventually discovered some pretty insightful solutions to the problems with which we were grappling. I realized I had learned much more through this experience than I would have had my instructor simply delivered the information to us via a lecture. And I was forced to think: do I provide enough experiences like this for my students? So, I began to, more and more. Luckily, I had a great model to follow.

     But what's so great about Colucci's post is that these metacognitive opportunities need not only present themselves in a classroom. When was the last time you needed help, and what was that experience like for you? When was the last time you were really close to mastering something, and you experienced a final push in the right direction that helped you to do so? What did that push consist of? When was the last time you were in an environment that was getting in the way of your concentration or your learning or your thinking or your emotions? How can you avoid such an environment in your classroom?

     Be present. Take note when life is going to teach you a lesson about yourself as an educator. Put yourself in your students' shoes as often as possible (even -- especially -- the sweaty, grungy-looking shoes). Share your reflections with others.

     Thanks, Anthony Colucci!

Oh. And now that you've registered for free for Education Week, you can read all kinds of interesting education blogs about all kinds of interesting education-related topics.

But don't stop reading this one, please!  :)