There's More Than One Way to Participate in Class

As a student, I loved class discussions. I was in my comfort zone. Asking questions, offering up evidence-based opinions, thinking through something while talking, understanding and making meaning through dialogue -- these were all skills perfectly suited to my learning styles and preferences.

As a teacher, however, I began to notice that class discussions (both formal and informal) were primarily beneficial to the same kinds of student I was (and still am), students with the same types of learning styles I had. Other students struggled with participation in class discussions not because they didn't care or because they were lazy, but mostly because this was not how they learned best. Some of them couldn't keep up with the learning that happens in a fast-paced discussion because this was not the optimal way for them to process and think about information; making meaning through on-the-spot dialogue didn't work for their learning styles.

Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't all have to stretch at times and work outside of our comfort zones; being asked to learn in a way that doesn't match up with your own learning preferences is not only fine, it's a great way to improve and grow as a learner. However, with that said, it is also a good idea to not rely too heavily on types of activities that all fall under the same learning style.

One way to do this is to re-think what participation can look like in a class discussion. There are a myriad of ways to do so, but I'll offer one up to you this week: take it virtual!

There are lots of benefits to having your students participate in an online discussion. It can provide students with more time to process what their peers are sharing, more time to come up with a response that's really phrased effectively. The discussion is "recorded," so you can revisit it anytime. Students can share links to websites and videos and other online resources that help them illustrate their points. And often, the students who shine in an online discussion are those who may be more reluctant to speak up during class -- online discussions can be real confidence-builders for these students, leading to them opening up during class more often.

Edline has an online discussion forum that teachers can set up for their classes to have online discussions. And there are other (free!) sites that offer online discussion forums as well. Two popular, user-friendly sites are Edmodo and Collaborize Classroom -- check them out! 

A CAGE to Set You Free

Did you know there's a cage out there that you can keep your students in? AND it will give them more freedom?

Last night I attended the first of four sessions of a Primary Source workshop, Teaching for Global Understanding. The presenters introduced us to -- yet another! -- educational acronym (because who doesn't need another? I mean, I personally love them!). This one is CAGE, and here's how it breaks down:

Choice

Authentic

Globally connected

Exhibit to authentic audiences

CAGE is a lens through which to view your assessments. The idea is to think about assessments you already give, and apply the CAGE acronym to them. Does the assessment provide choice to students (can they choose their own topic, or product)? Is the assignment authentic -- is it something that people in the real world actually do? (For example, I don't know anyone in the real world who writes book reports. But people do other types of writing in "real life." And people do other types of things to share their ideas about a book in "real life.") Is the assessment globally connected -- does it provide students with an opportunity to explore or investigate global perspectives? Finally, can there be an authentic audience for the student's work -- is the audience more than just the student's teacher and classmates?

These factors -- choice, authenticity, connectivity -- can be real motivators for students. Don't pressure yourself too much, though. Not every assessment you give can (or potentially even should) meet all the requirements of CAGE. But it's excellent food for thought -- can all, or at least almost all, of your assessments meet at least half of CAGE? Can some of them meet all of CAGE? 

If you're interested in designing some assessments (or updating assessments you've given before) so that they motivate students, engaging them as global citizens and empowering their ownership over the assignment, please let me know! I'd love to provide you any support you need or want in freeing your students -- and yourself -- through the use of a CAGE.

A Mile in Their Shoes

Hello readers!
I just stumbled across a decently cool video that really got me thinking. The video is from Burr and Burton Academy, a high school in Vermont, and it documents the reflections of several staff members who took on the life of a student at their school for one day. Walking a mile in their students' shoes was primarily conducted as part of an ongoing study by the staff on the effectiveness of their school day schedule, but I think this kind of social experiment offers endless possibilities for what we as educators can learn about the experience of school.

Check out the video here, and then I'll share with you my own take-aways:

• I thought it was a great touch to have the students-for-a-day actually do the assigned homework for all the classes they'd be attending. The teachers in the video don't discuss this in depth, but I think it would be fascinating to really experience what this is like: how difficult is it, how much time does it take, how do you balance it with other after-school activities and responsibilities, etc.
• The teachers mostly seemed to agree that, as the school day went on, it became more and more difficult for them to remain focused. I think this is something we all inherently understand, but perhaps actually experiencing it the way a student does would illuminate it even further . . . maybe it would help us think of what would work well for a student towards the latter half of the school day.
• Something I found really interesting was that one of the teachers said he had had a great day and had found himself fascinated by all the subjects. But some of the other teachers admitted to not connecting well with some of the subjects, which made those classes feel very long to them. I think this is pretty reflective of what our students experience. Sure, there are some kids who love every subject. But there are many others who, for many reasons, don't. How do we engage those students?
• A huge take-away for me as a former ELA high school teacher was the reflection shared by several of the teachers that it was an intense experience bouncing from one subject to the next. One of the teachers said it was difficult because he was processing "what I had done in science class and just a few minutes later -- Boom! -- you're into this totally different, new, intense" subject area. Another teacher commented that "there was no unwinding . . . it was stay wound and go from this to that." My work over the past year and a half in a K-12 position has helped me to learn a lot from elementary teachers about this sort of thing. Because they teach numerous subject areas, I've observed lots of elementary teachers who really get the need to transition from one "intense" area to the next. I know that when I taught high school, it was sometimes easy for me to forget that my students had already had 3 or 4 classes before they walked into mine and that their brains weren't necessarily already primed for ELA like mine was (because ELA was the only subject area I had to focus on).

I don't have all the answers to some of the questions I began to pose in these take-aways. But I do think this social experiment is a very valid one that the staff at any grade level could really learn from. The key is to really try and do something with what people learn from the experience. Are there some new instructional moves teachers can make with the student perspective in mind? Is there a need to try something different? What's working? What's not?


And finally, readers, Happy Holidays! My blogging will resume with the new year, so I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a lovely and well-deserved break. Enjoy!

A Cool Tech Tip

I'm usually not the go-to person for cool tech tips, but -- surprise! -- I've got one for you this week.

I just finished reading a teacher's blog that you can access here. In it, she shares a great idea for making rubrics more interactive. (Okay, okay, so it's not really my tech tip . . . I'm borrowing it from this blogger. But I still get some credit, right?)

The idea is to include QR codes on a rubric. QR codes, if you don't know, are those little things popping up everywhere that look like this:

You can scan a QR code with your smart phone and -- voila! -- it will bring you right to a particular website. It's technology magic!

It's pretty easy to do, too -- just visit any of the number of available sites that allow you to create a QR code for free, like this one.

Once you've got the knack for creating a QR code, you can paste it onto any document. For an interactive rubric (such as the one from the blog I referred you to above), simply paste the QR code alongside one of your rubric's items. This particular teacher knew her students were struggling with correctly integrating quotes into their essays. So, she placed a QR code on her rubric in the "Quotation Integration" column to help them out -- once this QR code was scanned, it would take students to a video this teacher found on YouTube all about properly integrating quotations. 

QR codes can be a helpful way to flip your classroom a bit. And we don't have to stop at rubrics. QR codes could be placed on a homework assignment sheet or even on something students might be working on during class (if you allow them to use devices like smart phones for learning purposes in your classroom). QR codes could be used to take your students to a tutorial video as described above, or to online quizzes, websites, articles, surveys you wish your students to complete, images . . . the possibilities are endless!

Ensuring Equity with Differentiated Assessments

So, you're coming up on the end of a unit and you've decided to mix it up a bit with your final assessment. You'd like to give your students some choices in order to differentiate based on their interests and possibly also their learning styles.

The only problem is, you're concerned about equity. How can you provide a variety of choices while still being fair? How can you ensure certain options aren't perceived as "easier" or "harder" than others?

Here's my suggestion. It all comes down to the objective -- what's the purpose of the assessment? What is the skill and/or knowledge mastery it's supposed to be assessing?

You need to answer these questions first. If you're having difficulty, revisit your essential questions for the unit. What's the big picture? What are the big take-aways for students?

Once you've decided upon what you want to assess  -- what do students know and/or are able to do? -- you need to commit to this for each option you provide to students. In this way, what varies is not the objective of the assessment, but the product -- the way the student demonstrates their mastery of this objective.

For example, you may decide that what you really want to assess is the student's ability to answer a particular essential question of the unit and to include evidence to support his or her points. With this in mind, you can provide all kinds of choices to your student: an essay, a powerpoint, a poster, a formal debate, a RAFT, a video, a newspaper article, etc., etc., etc. The key is to establish the common criteria for any of these options -- regardless of what the student chooses, he or she must provide an acceptable answer to the essential question and must include evidence to support his or her points (with some of the more visually-based options, you can always require the student to include a separate written explanation of their piece that meets this criteria). What students come up with is going to look different, but it is still going to allow you to assess everyone based on universal criteria. It's only when you don't establish this kind of common criteria, when you don't ensure that you're measuring the mastery of the same objective, that inequity can creep in -- you might end up with lots of cool projects, but you run the risk of this collection of cool projects actually measuring all sorts of different objectives. That's not overly "fair," and, more importantly, it doesn't give you data on how all of your students are performing within a particular standard or objective.

A Thankful Educator

What's the week of Thanksgiving if not an opportunity to think about what we're thankful for? As educators, there's lots that can bring stress to our lives: a new educator evaluation system that feels overwhelming at times, standardized tests, frustrations about how to best teach each student. It's important to make ourselves stop, breathe, shake off the things we can't control, and focus on what can be so wonderful about this field.

Here are some things I am thankful for as an educator:

• The curiosity and drive of first graders, striving passionately to become the best readers and writers they can be
• The wonderful blend of serious and goofy that is a 7th grade classroom
• The inquisitiveness of high school chemistry students, bravely asking questions, determined to master the subject's demands
• The teachers I coach, who are dedicated to learning, growing, and reflecting
• The opportunity to continue learning through professional development, through my interactions with colleagues, through my own research
• The moment I am privileged to witness -- when a lightbulb goes off above a learner's head, when everything suddenly clicks
• The gift of working in a profession that allows me time off during holidays to spend with my family and friends, relaxing and recharging
• The beauty of knowing I work in a field that has a tremendous impact on people's lives

Happy Thanksgiving, readers! Enjoy the break, and take some time to reflect on what you're thankful for as an educator.
See you in December!

Multiple Choice Doesn't Have to be Boring

Interested in providing your students with an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings and misconceptions, to collaborate with their peers, and to develop critical thinking skills? (And who isn't?) Then this is the post for you!

I'm not a huge fan of multiple choice assessments; I just never felt like they told me the whole story of what my students understood and didn't understand. But, I often had multiple choice assessments lying around, whether they were sample AP, SAT, or MCAS exams or standardized multiple-choice exams that came with the published study guides accompanying a novel or a textbook. And these assessments did come in handy for the following task for my students.

Placing my students into heterogeneous groups of 3 or 4 students (usually chosen at random), I'd give each group a copy of the same multiple choice assessment (sometimes with the aim of reviewing at the end of a lesson or unit, sometimes with the aim of targeting the use of a particular skill, etc.). First, I'd require all students to complete the multiple choice questions independently. Their next step was to share their answers within just their small group and not stop until they had reached consensus on each answer. This requires a lot of collaborative skill and higher-order thinking, as students would engage in some debate with one another, and would delve back into their notes or their text in order to provide support for which answer they felt was correct. They really had to get good at justifying their claims with evidence. (This doesn't happen overnight -- I was sure to teach and discuss collaborative skills with my students, and also teach and discuss how best to debate, to justify your answers, etc.)

The final step, once each small group had reached consensus, was to open the debate up to the entire class. Now, their job was for each group to share their answers and to eventually reach consensus as a whole class. Once again, those skills of being able to justify their claims with evidence started to come in handy.

[Often, I'd stipulate that they could not stop until the entire class had reached consensus on every single answer -- this is the only way they'd earn a grade on the assignment. Sometimes, though, certain answers would be debated seemingly endlessly, and I'd have to table the discussion on those items and accept individual answers.]

What was great about this exercise was the development of collaborative skills and critical thinking skills. But, as a teacher, it was also a fantastic opportunity for me to assess students' current understandings and skill levels, leading to my own informed instruction. (Plus, it's a nice way to jazz up the use of multiple choice questions -- they really don't have to be boring!)