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!

The Exit Ticket of the 21st Century

I love exit tickets. I think they are a simple, quick way to check for student understanding during or at the end of a lesson, and, through some simple, quick analysis, can inform further instruction. So, please know that in no way I am advocating we say good-bye to the exit ticket.

Instead, I'd like to offer up a new way of thinking about exit tickets, in case you want to tap into some technology and mix it up a bit. I often recommend teachers vary their ways of checking for understanding and their activators and summarizers, because I think variety can keep students engaged and invested. So, "modernizing" the exit ticket is just one more tool to add to the ol' toolkit. 

I can't take any credit for this idea -- I stumbled across it via the following blog from Edutopia. Check it out by clicking here. Heads-up: you may or may not agree with everything this blogger states (check out some of the post's comments for some interesting debate and extensions to the ideas). But, the ideas included about using some digital exit tickets are worth some thought. If you've got the digital means and access, why not try some out and see how it goes? I'd love to hear from anyone who's either interested in doing this OR who tries it out and can report back on how it went.

Time on Task

As educators, we all want our students' time-on-task to be as high as possible. We don't want our students to waste precious learning time! Sometimes our students have other ideas about this, though, and can spend time off-task for a whole boatload of reasons (boredom, anxiety about an issue outside of class, daydreaming, lack of understanding. . . . . ).

While teachers conduct a lesson, check for student understanding, make on-the-spot decisions about objectives and behavioral management, handle interruptions, give directions, etc., etc., etc., however, it can be tricky to factor in a way to document how much time on task (or off!) students are spending.That's where I come in!

As an instructional coach, this is just one of many areas I can help teachers out with by being a second pair of eyes in the classroom. If a teacher has a goal of increasing student time-on-task, it's good to first establish a base-line. How much time, on average, are students already spending on task? As coach, I can come in to observe a lesson and narrow my focus to just recording on- and off-task behavior. Since this is my main focus, I can even narrow my observations further, recording behavior that is on-task, passively off-task, verbally off-task, and actively off-task (all three of these off-task behaviors can benefit from different intervention strategies, so it's important to distinguish among them). Later, I can share my findings with the teacher, presenting him or her with the percentage of time students, on the whole, are off-task during class, and even the percentage of time students are off-task passively, verbally, and/or actively. We can then work together to plan some interventions with the hope of reducing the amount of time off-task. What's great is that I can continue to come in to collect the same data at different intervals, which means the teacher can have very specific data to inform her about how she's doing with her goal, or about how his interventions are working.

Having another set of eyes to collect student data in the classroom can be helpful in a multitude of ways -- this is just one example of the benefits of instructional coaching!

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.