New Year Resolutions

As winter break approached, I noticed that I had become complacent with some areas of my practice.  I don't think that this is the complacency that comes with too many years of experience¹.  I think this is the complacency that comes with figuring out how to be both a good parent and a good teacher simultaneously.

At the same time, I came across this post by Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris via my undergrad education professor, @CindyOA.  I walked away thinking about this:

If you were to draw your inner teacher, what would he/she look like? How does he/she feel? Excited? Nervous? Overwhelmed? In reading the work of Martha Beck–which encourages us to pay close attention to our emotions because they are our inner compass–we’ve discovered that our inner teacher’s emotions can serve as our teaching compass. After teaching, thinking, feeling, writing, reflecting–lather, rinse, repeat–we’ve learned to trust our inner teacher, and to understand that, when she is lethargic or angry we need to adjust something in our practice or our thinking, or even both. As we have explored the connection between our energy, our effectiveness, and our teaching, we have arrived at a four big principles that help our teaching compass stay on true north. We call these four guiding tenets “The Four Intentions” and, if we are mindful of them, our inner teacher feels like this:

We use these intentions to plan lessons, purposefully considering each tenet as we design instruction. We also use them to reflect on lessons we teach. These intentions have become the framework for all our thinking about instruction, even about education in general. Here is an explanation for each intention, and questions you can ask yourself to reflect on how well a particular lesson or some other work addresses “The Four Intentions.”

Intention 1: Alignment (with our inner teacher)

In these days of aligning curricula, instruction, and language with performance standards, we offer, instead, as our primary teaching intention alignment with our highest purpose for teaching–that is, a focus on lifelong learning. This includes a reconnection with our original visions for our teaching selves and a reawakening of our loftiest visions for students as learners [emphasis added].  Staying true to the alignment intention means keeping our sights set on our long-term outcomes and the ways in which our instructional decisions can affect who children will grow up to become. The alignment intention is all about recognizing and action on our agency as teachers, and using this agency to empower students. To evaluate your work against the alignment intention, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does my inner teacher, my highest teaching self, feel safe (even happy) with this instructional choice? How do I know?
• How does this work/decision/lesson  show students their power as learners?
• Am I excited about this work/lesson? Why?

While flying through all parts of life by the seat of my pants for the last two years, I've lost some of the practices that make my inner teacher happy.  He isn't "lethargic or angry," but he is . . . uncomfortable.  Unsatisfied with his current performance.  I've let some things slide, and he doesn't like watching them slide.

So.  Here's what I'm going to do about it.

Build Better Relationships

Back when I was a second year teacher and struggling with classroom management, I began using conversation calendars (Tovani, 2004, p. 106-110) with my students - exit slips that allow me 15 to 30 second one-on-one conversations with each of my students.

In 2009, when I was only working half-time, it was no problem to go through 90 of these each afternoon.  With six classes, however, I need to set up a rotation through my classes, hitting two per week.  Logistically, this has been a little bit more than my toddler-fried brain could handle.  But I'm recommitting myself, setting reminder alarms on my phone if I need to, because the written conversations I have with students make a huge difference in my student-teacher relationships.

When I was a fourth-year teacher, I wrote and responded to student letters quarterly, asking students how the units of study went for them and what I could do as a teacher to help their learning.  Every year, I try to respond to letters my students write at the beginning of the school year where they tell me a little bit about themselves.  Lately, I've been getting through five in one class, maybe 20 in another, but in a majority of classes, zero.

I'm going to end first semester (February here in the Pacific Northwest) with teacher evaluations for my students to provide me feedback on how I can improve, and start second semester with letters from my students that I'll write one group letter back in response that explain my rationale for any disliked activities and address student suggestions.

Emphasize Proceedures

When I was a younger teacher, I was much more of a control freak.  Things had to be done a certain way.  If one student spoke out of turn, it felt chaotic to me.

Thankfully, I've mellowed², but I'm a little too far in the other direction.  It takes my juniors five minutes of reminders at the beginning of class to start their sustained silent reading.  Often, I have to threaten lunch detention in order to get everyone quietly reading.  That's silly.

I listed proceedures in my syllabus - the same ones I've had since my second year of teaching.  I just need to refresh my students on them, and start enforcing them.  (I haven't been.  At all.)

When entering the classroom: Get your materials from the filing cabinet in the room. Be in your seat with all your materials when the bell rings. When the bell rings, immediately and quietly begin the warm-up exercise.	When reading: Reading is thinking.  It is easier to think when it is silent and there are few distractions.  Do not talk when reading. When you do need to talk to the teacher or a partner, whisper. Fully focus on reading during silent reading time.
When writing: Writing is thinking.  It is easier to think when it is silent and there are few distractions.  Do not talk when writing. When you do need to talk to the teacher or a partner, whisper. Use the entire writing time working on writing.	When leaving the classroom: The teacher dismisses, not the bell. Leave your workspace cleaner than you found it and return all materials to the right place. When your workspace is clean, sit in your chair and wait to be dismissed. When dismissed, push your chair in if necessary. Turn in calendars and any other assignments on your way out the door.

Grade During Block Prep

This is my seventh year teaching, and I'm back at the school where I started my teaching career.  I work with a fantastic department and have a great administrator.  So this year I felt comfortable playing a role as a small, unnoticeable agent of change.  Most of them have to do with reading - posting student book reviews on a Twitter account other students can follow, creating and distributing book review index cards that sit in the back pocket of library books.

These small crusades³ are fun.  And often take place during my prep time.  And then I have a toddler at home.  Which means I've gotten behind on grading.  I even got a holiday card from a great student that encouraged me to have a nice break and enjoy the time off but also to grade her writing.

Thus my 88 minutes of Thursday prep⁴ shall find me at my desk, grading the papers that are so much less fun than crusades for changing school culture.  But feedback is important too, so I'll do it.  (And during my Monday prep, I'll make stickers with qr codes that lead to book trailers for the library TAs to put on books.  Bwahahaha!)


Footnotes
1. If it is, then I need to find a new job.  Go back.
2. It's all about the yoga.  Go back.
3. That only I am noticing and pretending is worthwhile, I'm sure.  Go back.
4. And weekend naps.  And evenings.  Go back.

Giving Essay Feedback

Six years ago, as a student teacher, I used Audacity to record feedback for students on their portfolios by reading their essays aloud and giving them feedback as I went.  Students each received an audio CD with their feedback.

This was great.  Students were way more engaged in the feedback I gave them, because it was clearer, or it involved technology, or for some other reason I haven't thought of.  Students could also hear someone reading their paper aloud and pick up on my enjoyment of beautifully crafted sentences or my confusion when they forgot to proof read.  No more did students turn to the last page of their essay and look for the grade - they went through their feedback first.

But the method had it's downsides.  It was time consuming, even more so when burning the audio to discs.  Also, once I'd burned one piece of feedback, that CD was toast - I couldn't go back and add more tracks unless it was a CD-RW.  And for the student, they really had to follow along in their paper word for word; as the reader, I had to be very specific in describing what I was talking about in the paper - they only had my voice to guide them.

This year, however, I started using VoiceThread to give feedback on major papers, and as you can see below, it has some specific advantages that neutralize these issues.

VoiceThreads can be private, shared so that only those with a link can view it (for my students), or made public (like this one).

Individualized Formative Assessment with Graphs Galore

I've blogged about this before, but recently I made some essential tweaks and stumbled upon the scientific basis for it from . . . wait for it . . . Marzano.  Bam!  That's right!  Oh yes, I most certainly did!  Get ready, as Tom Fuller would say, to pick up what I'm about to throw down¹:

First, credit to Tonya for showing me this originally for use on OAKS, Oregon's state test.

Your students take a test.  In this case, it's a multiple choice test on identifying figurative language in Romeo & Juliet.  You spent a day or two going over the many different types of figurative language Shakespeare employs, using 2.2.1-30, where we first meet Friar Laurence (O'Brien, 1993, p. 156).  Then, you give them a short test on identifying some examples of simile, metaphor, personification, classical allusion, and soliloquy from Romeo & Juliet.

Now, if you're like me, you give your answer key to your student TA and ask her to mark wrong ones and put the total out of 13 at the top.  You just happen to check out Marzano's Classroom Assessment and Grading that Work from the professional development library on the same day.  You get home and sit down with a cup of tea for some easy reading, and get this:

(2006, p. 5)

And you're like "woah, -3% gain in student achievement!  That's not good!"

So the next day, you give your TA the tests again and ask her nicely to write the correct answer next to the ones she crossed off, explaining that it's not her fault, while she rolls her eyes.  Then you pop open Excel, because you want that .70 effect size.

So yeah, a class wide graph of their results.  That's cool.  You know what's cooler?  When every student gets a personalized copy of one of these²:

You know you need to hit simile through classical allusion on your reteach.  This student knows they need to study up on personification first, with a little bit of simile and classical allusion2.  You reteach, grade, graph.  The student gets a new chart that looks like this:

You get a new graph that looks like this:

A 24% improvement on similes, 30% on classical allusion, and 13% on soliloquies.  It feels awesome to know that your students can identify a simile or classical allusion written by the Bard over 80% of the time.  Not bad, but for the third test you know to prepare them by hitting metaphors and personification over the head since you're grading by proficiency, and your student is just a couple points below your required 10 out of 13.

One could use this on more than just multiple choice tests.  Rubrics that were used multiple times throughout the year, like 6-traits, could be charted to show student's growth in writing and areas to improve.

To give you a jump start, here's the blank Excel file - I've left the formulas in so you can see how they work.  I'm also including all the materials I used for this lesson, just in case you want to use it for Romeo & Juliet.

Excel results graph
Figurative Language Study Guide
Figurative Language Test #1
Figurative Language Test #2
Figurative Language Test #3

Works Cited

Marzano, R.  (2006).  Classroom Assessment and Grading that Work.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

O'Brien, P., Roberts, J. A., Tolaydo, M., Goodwin, N.  (1993).  Shakespeare set free: Teaching Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Macbeth.  New York: Washington Square Press.

1. My here intention is unbridled enthusiasm rather than any sort of pretentious arrogance.  Hopefully that's what's coming across. Go back.

2. The first time you make this in Excel, it does take some time - up to an hour depending on how savvy you are.  But once you have that chart created, you can just adapt it for every test afterwards.  Maybe 30 minutes for data entry, depending on how many sections you have.  I know time is precious, but try it once and go over the results in class with the graphs, and I think you'll see that it's worth it. Go back.

Chappuis, Chapter 3: Effective Feedback

In Chapter 2, Chappuis writes on how to help students get a clear picture of what they should be learning and how that learning should be demonstrated.  In Chapter 3, Chappuis offers five characteristics of effective feedback to keep students on the right path .

1. Effective feedback directs attention to the intended learning


There are two types of feedback for Chappuis: success and intervention.  These are straightforward.  Success feedback points out what a student has done well while intervention feedback tells them what needs to be corrected or improved.

There are common comments that do not accomplish the goal of effective feedback however.  Writing "incomplete" or "re-do" or really any grade does not encourage a student to succeed or give them a clear direction to go in.  As Chappuis (2009) states, "Providing feedback can be a labor-intensive proposition.  If we put all that time in we want to make sure that (1) we're doing it right, and (2) students will use it."  How many more students would have corrected an assignment if I had given them one-on-one feedback instead of writing "incomplete" at the top of their paper?  Even "see me," I would argue, has such a negative connotation, it is ineffective.  How many of your students actually do see you afterwards?

Often it is easy to praise students.  "You're so smart!"  However, Chappuis notes, this puts the feedback towards the learner rather than towards the work, and what does that make the student who receives the intervention feedback?  A study found that "look how hard you tried" is a much more effective comment because students see effort as something within their control, while "look how smart you are" is seen as a personal attribute and unchangeable (Blackwell, Trzensniewski, and Dweck, 2007, as cited in Chappuis, 2009).

Giving grades as part of feedback can be damaging as well.  Louann Reed taught at CSU that there are three terms used for assessment that shouldn't be interchangeable.  There's "assessment," the broad term; "feeback," which is written or verbal suggestions given to a student to help them improve their work or let them know their on the right track; then there are "grades," which contain a value judgement of the work.  The reason many students probably go to the last page of their essays for the grade and ignore the comments is because they see the feedback as unhelpful - why take the extra effort to make revisions when the grade's already been given.  Even if we say "you can make edits and turn this in for a better grade," how often does that actually happen?  Better to give the feedback, have them make changes, then assign a grade.

2. Feedback occurs during learning


Chappuis points out that we teachers often tell students "it's okay to make mistakes," because that's often how we learn.  By making a mistake, we know what not to do.  But sometimes our grading policies encourage the opposite viewpoint.  When quizzes and participation points are given leading up to the big test, how fair is it to grade them both.  It's double jeopardy.

Louann's continuum also should go in order.  Feedback should always come before grading.  Feedback should happen during learning.

3. Feedback addresses partial understanding


Feedback should be given when it can help a student move forward.  To give a student who needs further instruction feedback would be more frustrating to both student and teacher than helpful.  Only when there is partial understanding is feedback helpful.

4. Effective feedback does not do the thinking for the student


The best example I have for this is correcting conventions in an essay.  If one has taught sentence fragments, comma splices, and the use of semi-colons, rather than correcting each fragment in completed essays, mark the line where the error occurs and have the student correct it.  Students have a task and incentive to use the teacher's comments/feedback to move their learning forward.

5. Effective feedback limits corrective to what students can act on


Differentiate feedback to what an individual student can handle at one point in time.

Methods to offer feedback

Chappuis (2000) suggests using picture and symbol clues (p. 75) like stars and stairs to make comments on student work.  Students could also offer their own stars and stairs - what they think they do well and what they need to improve - before the teacher adds their comments.  Two-color highlighting (p. 82) is another way for students to self assess.  They highlight the sections of the rubric they believe they meet before the teacher, using a different color highlights their own assessment.  By using two primary colors, this could easily identify for the student where they and the teacher are in agreement.