April is National Formative Assessment Month!

Okay, I lied. April is not officially National Formative Assessment Month. But you can't blame a girl for dreaming.

How about we make it happen anyway? If you'd like to focus more on formative assessment, make it your April goal (could help pass the time until school vacation, at any rate).

Want to increase how often you check for student understanding? Want to think about and try out some ways to quickly analyze some student data? How often do you find yourself using student data to inform your teaching, either that same day or for the next lesson? Want to increase how often you're able to do this?


Trust me -- there are ways to do this without adding an enormous amount of work to your already busy plates. It's amazing the information you can get from flipping through a stack of tickets-to-leave. Assessing a longer piece of student work? Try out an error analysis. Or you can use student self-assessments in formative ways. You could even try out on-the-spot formative assessment -- talk about quick and easy!!

Once you've done your pain-free analysis, you may or may not see the need for differentiated instruction. If you do, your options are many: you could split the class in half, you could decide on small groups, a tiered lesson, partner work, etc., etc., etc.

If you're interested, let me know. Let's make this National Formative Assessment Month thing happen -- maybe we'll be responsible for the start of a movement!  :)

Happy Spring (again, a girl can dream)!

Think Pair Share

I know this is an oldie-but-a-goodie. Think Pair Share, also popularly known as Turn & Talk. But, do you ever find, like me, that, though this is a "tried and true" task, it works better in some classes than others? Here's why (at least according to me!):

There are some students who don't need a lot of structure to Turn & Talk. We ask them to do it, and they just swivel right around and start sharing ideas with a partner, while also listening to and remembering their partner's ideas. But there are other students who don't share much of anything with their partner, and tune out while their partner shares with them. We ask these students later to share with the class, and are met with blank stares. Have a class with a lot of students who fall under the latter category, and Turn & Talk is suddenly not so "tried and true" anymore. Want a solution?

Don't hate me for this, but consider ceasing with the Turn & Talk lingo. This implies that students can just immediately jump into a conversation about a topic or a question. Rather, I'd go with Think Pair Share. This task requires students to do some independent thinking before sharing with a partner and later with the whole class. Let's go one step further . . . I hate to add more photocopying and prep to your lives, but I really think students who struggle with Turn & Talk (or who simply do not participate in it) could benefit from having a template that scaffolds their work on this kind of task.

Below, I've included a template I have used in the past -- it's yielded great results from students who are reluctant or non-participatory with Turn & Talk. They are first required to independently jot down three ideas in response to a question or prompt of some sort you pose. Only then do they share with a partner. Then, they are asked to note which ideas of theirs were the same or similar to ideas shared by their partner AND they are also asked to jot down ideas their partner shared that were different than their own. This really scaffolds the partner work for students who may otherwise zone out during this task. Finally, students are asked to jot down some ideas from other classmates during the whole class share. This kind of structure provides students with some very clear expectations for what turning and talking should entail. Perhaps eventually this scaffold could even be removed once students have mastered it and are ready to participate without it.

If you'd like a copy of this template, just let me know -- I'm happy to share! (After I've thought and paired, naturally.  Sorry -- couldn't resist!)



[I should mention this particular template comes from Thinkquiry Toolkit I: Strategies to Improve Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Development Across the Content Areas (2011), edited by Julie Meltzer and Dennis Jackson and published by Public Consulting Group. There are others like it out there, but this one has worked well for me!]

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!!

Differentiating for Readiness

Sometimes when we differentiate for readiness, we do so based on data analysis of tickets-to-leave, or quiz or test results. We bring this data home with us, conduct error analyses, and allow the data to inform our instruction.

That's great, and works well. But, you can mix it up, too. Sometimes you can differentiate for readiness based on a more "on-the-spot" assessment, or check-for-understanding. This will allow your instruction to be informed right then and there -- you don't have to wait until the next day (or, let's be honest, sometimes it can be a few days to a week before you've had a chance to grade those quizzes and analyze the data).

One way to do this is to give your students a task at the very beginning of class, one that will allow you to quickly assess whether the student "gets it" or not. If you're interested in this, you have got to check out this video!!! (It's only about 3-4 minutes long . . . go ahead -- check it out!)


Here's what I love so much about what this teacher does:

• He quickly circulates as students complete the opening task, simply marking an E or an S on each student's paper. Simple, do-able.
• He uses some great language when getting ready to differentiate. If students have an E on their paper, then they are "ready for the extension." If students have an S, then they are "ready for support" or "ready for a session." Students are not told what they "need," which can sound sort of demeaning to those who "need help." Rather, they're informed about what they're "ready" for. Semantics can be so simple and powerful.
• There's some student self-assessment and choice built in. He marks some students' papers with an E/S, acknowledging that they are a bit "on the fence" with that task, and allows them to decide what they will do -- seek out the extension, or the support. Maybe they'll try out the extension and run with it. Or maybe they'll try it out and decide they'd like more support. 

Want to start trying out this kind of stuff in your classroom? Give me a holler -- I'd love to help!

Thinking about Vocabulary

When I was a classroom teacher, vocabulary instruction and assessment was always a challenge. What was the best way to teach content-area vocabulary? What was the best way to assess it? Were my students really learning new words to the point that they were owning them, or were they just learning them enough to pass a vocab quiz, never to think about them again?

After much research and thinking about this, I must confess -- I'm not sure I have all the answers. (Sorry! It would be sooooo much easier if I did, I know!) But I have learned some tried and true lessons when it comes to vocabulary instruction and assessment.

Here are my "biggies," my vocabulary non-negotiables:

• Focus on vocabulary depth versus vocabulary breadth. A more meaningful approach to learning certain key words well can have much more impact than "covering" a list of 20-30 terms at once.
• Focus on building a conceptual vocabulary with your students. This means choosing to teach vocabulary that is content-specific and is essential in understanding major concepts (in a literature course, this might also mean teaching a conceptual vocabulary within a literature theme). 
• According to Janet Allen (amazing author of Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12), the best impact on learning (and owning) vocabulary is repeated exposure to 5-10 useful words per week. This exposure must, however, be meaningful -- words need to be used in a meaningful context 10-15 times in order for students to master them (this does not include writing definitions over and over again, something I remember doing throughout my own education).
• Give students a vocabulary pre-test for a unit (if the unit has a large number of vocabulary words, think about breaking up the unit in terms of vocabulary -- take a smaller chunk at a time, including for pre- and post-tests). Let this pre-test inform your instruction (this might cause you to differentiate vocabulary studies for students with varying vocabulary knowledge).
• Create and actively use a word wall in your classroom per unit. (I could write an entire post on how best to actively use word walls so that they don't get forgotten about!)
• Be sure to deliberately teach the vocabulary words throughout the unit. Also, be sure these words are used by both yourself and your students multiple times throughout the unit (there are lots of ways to do this I am happy to share with you!).
• Finally, give students the vocabulary post-test. Let's see how they did!

I get pretty excited about vocabulary instruction and assessment these days. If you'd like to try out some new methods with your students, just let me know -- I'm here to help!

Food for Thought

I hate to "pass the buck" on my own blog, but thanks to numerous snow days of late, I have limited time this week to share with you my thoughts/reflections/ponderings/ideas.

Instead, I'm sharing with you something I came across recently on Edutopia (a great online resource that always gets me thinking!). It's a presentation on effective elements of a lesson. If you click here, scroll down to Professional-Development Resources, then click on the first one listed -- Interactive Learning -- you can check it out.

You might have the same reaction to this presentation that I first did: Yeah. No kidding. I already know all this stuff.
But after a little while, I started thinking about how easy it is to list all of these non-negotiable lesson elements, and how simple they all sound. But putting some of them into practice, especially if it's not an established habit of yours, can be easier said than done.

So, if you've checked out the presentation, and you'd like to explore some of the lesson elements discussed, please let me know -- I'd love to explore with you!

Have a great February vacation!

Instructional Coaching: A Success Story

Each week as I contemplate the topic of my blog post, I usually get so overcome by what instructional strategies I'm currently over-the-moon excited about trying out in the present or future that I forget to stop and reflect about past work with the teachers I collaborate with. This week, I'd like to share a success story (don't worry -- I won't be naming names -- confidentiality is important with instructional coaching!).

This story involves a teacher I've worked with for a bit of time now. He and I have gotten to know each other well and have developed a routine and a rapport that works for both of us.

Like many of the ambitious and dedicated teachers I work with, when I first began working with this teacher, he had a dozen goals, all kinds of areas of his teaching he wanted to work on. Upon my observing him teach and having structured conversations about his classes and his students, we were able to narrow his focus by prioritizing a few goals at a time. This was a key first step. Just like we wouldn't give our students too many areas to focus on improving at once, we can't bog ourselves down with too many goals, either! Through our time together, this teacher has developed mastery in several of his goal areas, allowing us to add in other goals to work on. Even though we had placed those goals aside for awhile to focus on our top picks, we hadn't forgotten them.

One area this teacher expressed a lot of interest in working on -- an area that would have high impact on his students' learning -- was his questioning techniques. He was struggling (as many of us have and continue to) with adjusting his questioning strategies so that he wasn't always calling on the same students. He knew he wasn't checking for the understanding of all his students. That's where I came in. As a second set of eyes in his classroom, I was able to make suggestions he could incorporate fairly smoothly into his teaching style. We worked together on his comfort level with "cold-calling" on students. I acknowledged his concern (a concern many teachers share) that he'd be putting students on the spot, and we worked on ways to scaffold a student toward a correct answer if he or she were struggling. We also worked on turning a student's question over to the rest of the class as another way to check for understanding, instead of it always being the teacher's job to answer questions. Eventually, when this teacher had vastly changed the way he asked questions in class (over 90% of the questions he asks now are "cold-calls" and his students are really rising to the occasion!), we were able to analyze when and why he sometimes falls into his old habits (typically when he was feeling rushed, nervous about getting to all of his lesson) and we worked on ways to prevent that from happening.

Nothing I've written about above is ground-breaking. These are effective, but simple, ways to change one's questioning techniques for the better. But the beauty of instructional coaching is the on-going, job-embedded professional development. If this teacher had merely read an article or attended a one-shot workshop about questioning strategies, he may have tried some new ideas out for awhile. But, as we all know, he may have eventually lapsed with this goal, becoming distracted by all the other aspects of one's day as a teacher. Instructional coaching can help, as I've been told by the teachers I've worked with, because it's more consistent, it involves conversations and observations and goal-setting, even because the teacher knows she's got an appointment with me coming up so she needs to get going on some of the things we discussed during our last conversation. It's a judgment-free, "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again," pleasant method of professional development that I think can help teachers to make big and small changes in their classrooms.

If you're interested in exploring your own questioning techniques (or any of the other myriad of instructional strategies out there!), just let me know!