Students and Social Media

This is why I use social media with my students: a research essay is due at midnight tonight.  I just spent 20 minutes in a direct message helping a student organize her main points so she could work past some writer's block.

Grading the Writing Process

My department team was planning our standard alignment plans - basically figuring out what standards from the Common Core we'd cover each year and each semester a student is in high school.  The rest of my department (which is filled with brilliant educators who are ten times better at their job than I am, so this isn't a jab at them, just a disagreement) felt that the writing process (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.5) isn't a standard that should be graded, but discussed frequently with students.

And I'm all for discussing.  And showing them examples of my own writing that went through 10 drafts.  And showing them examples of great published writers who went through 20 drafts.  And probably doing some other stuff that showcases the awesomeness of the writing process.

But I'm also for grading it.  And I don't think it's a hard thing to do.

As it stands now (as this isn't refined or anything), a student who turns in an essay needs to do four things when they turn in their final paper in order to get a passing grade:

1. Turn in their prewriting, in whatever form it was, with their final draft.
2. Turn in their "zero draft," their initial attempt at starting/outlining their rough draft, with their final draft.
3. Turn in their rough draft with the final draft.  The rough draft must be a complete draft - no first-half-of-the-paper rough draft.
4. On their final draft, highlight all the changes between their rough and final.  (I stole this idea from Linda Christensen.)  Revisions must be significant - this isn't editing for spelling and grammar, it's revising.

On number four I "help" them out some (they would say "make them do extra work") - I make them write three different kinds of hooks and three different types of conclusions, then choose the best one.  Next year, I imagine I could do it with all sorts of different things.  Rewrite your thesis.  Reorder your introductory paragraph, trying the thesis statement at the beginning and the end.  Reorder your paragraphs in another logical way.

To exceed on this standard, students have to schedule a meeting with one of our peer writing tutors and show the changes they made after meeting with them.

I also let student revise their essays, often multiple times, which could be a grading nightmare, except for two things students need to do before I will grade their revisions:

1. Turn in your original graded rubric returned to you (I scan my stack of graded rubrics and save the final, because about half of the students will lose their graded one).
2. Highlight all the changes you've made between your final and the revised paper to be graded.  Turn in everything you turned in before.

Then I just look at what they added and determine if it addresses the concerns recorded on the original rubric.

But maybe this is foolish and silly.  Please correct me in the comments.

A Case for Balancing the High School Literature Curriculum - Part I

I went into college with grandiose plans of taking a separate class each for Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare.  I was going to be a English major and then become a teacher.  Because, after all, "Teaching is just presenting information enthusiastically," my pompous, arrogant, college freshmen self thought.  So I plugged along, taking not one but two classes on Shakespeare (fun!), two very bad Survey of American Literature courses (ugh), American Novels 1945-Present (okay) where I struggled to read a novel a week, and immediately dropped some course on early English novels that were written as a series of letters to avoid being scandalous (barf).

My first semester as a junior, I realized that in addition to presenting information enthusiastically, I would also need a teaching license, and apparently my enthusiasm alone wouldn't get me one of those.  So I reluctantly began taking education courses.  Schooling in the United States.  Boring.  Literacy and the Learner.  Could be interesting, but the adjunct professor just preached about multiple intelligence theory most of the time.  Really, both classes could have been better if they weren't one evening a week for three hours.

And then there was Adolescent Literature.

That is where I learned what teaching really is.  That there is a science to it.  That there were strategies that taught students best.  It was in this class that I fell in love with book clubs.  And where I read all the literature that I had never read as an adolescent.  Monster.  Son of the Mob.  Feed.  Speak.  The House on Mango Street.  Out of the Dust.  My middle and high school years would have been so much brighter with books that I could relate to.

The only book that qualified as young adult literature I read in middle or high school for a language arts class was Are You There God, It's Me, Margret.  Never read it?  Go read the synopsis.  Right now.  Really.  I'll wait.

What adolescent boy would want to read that book¹?

I finished my English degree with a double concentration in education and literature.  It seemed silly not to finish the literature concentration after spending two years in literature courses.  But taking those classes in conjunction with Adolescent Literature and my own personal life experience embedded in me a dislike of the canon, especially teaching it.  Why teach that when there was so much good literature that spoke to my adolescent self?  What great books I missed out on.  What great books my students would be missing out on.

I started this post because I'm in the second week of my Action Research Proposal class, working to finish up my masters.  I thought I was going to do my research on using young adult literature in book clubs to connect with the canon.  And as I was freewriting on that I found myself asking again, why is it so important to teach the canon?  How will I explain to my students why they should care?

The next day, I asked my colleagues at school.  And they had some pretty good answers, which I'll paraphrase below as I understand them, because it's Sunday and I want to ask before quoting their e-mails:

• The canon, better than anything else, addresses the issues that are at the heart of the human condition.  What other text on the same themes can equal To Kill a Mockingbird?  None that I know of. 
• Cultural relevancy and the ability to understand allusions to greater works isn't just good for cocktail parties.  It actually makes you smarter because you're able to understand so much more.
• Without reading enough of the canon, you cannot understand most of Western Civilization and how those in power remain in power.  Instead of being an agent of change against the status quo, you are a cog in their machine.  The Republic by Plato was used as an example text.

I realize now, after writing this, that "Why teach the canon?" isn't the question.  And it isn't "How do I use multiple forms of media to help students engage with the canon," though I'll be working on that this next semester as well.

The purpose of my action research is to determine ways to integrate young adult literature into the high school language arts classroom.  

Adolescents need stories about characters like them.  It increases the chances that they will become lifelong readers and increases chances they will continue to read other works, including the canon, after they are done with school.  Reading the canon is important.  Reading the canon in school is important.  But not to the point of excluding other texts that can change students' lives.

Footnotes:
1. But I did read it, and liked the parts about struggling to choose a religion.  In fact, that's all my book report focused on.  Props to Judy Blume for publishing a book on the topic in the 1970s - it was banned all over the place.  Go back.

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.

How to Use Your Summer for Lesson Planning

The National Writing Project is putting on a Connected Learning MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) this summer.

I first learned about Connected Learning through an #engchat on Twitter led by Seecantrill.  So far, as I understand it, Connected Learning uses digital tools to break down classroom walls - learning takes place in the classroom, but continues outside the classroom, thanks, in part, to social media and other tools that can be used to share ideas.  I don't know if that's completely right.  In fact, just now looking up what NWP calls it, it's much more than that: "Connected Learning is a model of learning that holds out the possibility of reimagining the experience of education in the information age.  It draws on the power of today's technology to fuse young people's interests, friendships, and academic achievement through experiences laced with hands-on production, shared purpose, and open networks."  Here's their infographic that explains it so much better than I do.  [UPDATE: I forgot to mention my one concern with this - around 25% of my students don't have cell phones/text/data plans or computer access outside of school.  So all of their out-of-classroom learning needs to take place face to face?]

So week one was to make a "How To . . ."  This was a good "get to know you" activity - some made "makes" that were "How to be so-and-so."  Others taught a skill they knew something about.  Here's mine (better late than never):


This week is learning through the use of memes.  I believe mine is academic, and should appeal to the students I had last year:

It appeals to my interests, but I don't think I can ask my students to make a meme on the sentence of the week and call it connected learning.

Look out for more memes here and whatever makes I'm assigned in coming weeks.

QR Code Scavenger Hunt

I first got the idea for this from a conference session presented by Myron Dueck in December.  His example was with history content knowledge.  I adapted it for content knowledge on The Crucible.

We read the first three acts of The Crucible before winter break and were coming back in January to read the fourth act (in Oregon, the semester ends at the end of January).  I wanted a review of the plot before we tackled the final act.

So I created 18 multiple choice questions on the major plot points of the first three acts and grouped them in pairs as nine Google forms that wouldn't let them go on to the second question until they answered the first correctly.

Then I set it all up as a scavenger hunt using QR Codes to link to the Google forms.  Students who had smart phones and a data plan formed groups with those who didn't.  Then groups used their phones to scan the codes and answer the review questions.

Answer both questions correctly, and you'd get your next clue.

Most of the codes were posted in the school building, but my personal favorite was the one I posted across school grounds by the football stadium.

The students loved walking all the way over there.

American Literature Units Chosen by Students

This year I decided to ask my students to vote on the units they would study in American Literature.  A big thank you to all those who helped refine my list of topics and corresponding texts.

For those who are interested, here is the final list I gave my students to choose from.  Here's the raw data from voting results.

And here are the units I'm teaching this year:

• Classroom and School Community (my unit to start off the year)
• Witch Hunts (The Crucible as an anchor text with literature circles on books about Salem witch trials, modern adaptations, and 1950s McCarthyism)
• Horror Stories (Edgar Allen Poe, I Am Legend, and possibly In Cold Blood)
• Terrorism (Not sure yet; maybe literature circles with some YA texts like Ghosts of War, Sunrise Over Fallujah¹, but also some non-YA texts like Manhunt)
• Dark Times in America (Snow Falling on Cedars?  All the President's Men?  Other texts about times America was on the wrong side of history)
• In my district, in 11th grade they write a pretty extensive research paper.  I may do this with the horror stories unit because I have a number of students who are really interested in serial killers², or I may do this as a separate unit.

I'm still finishing up the school community unit, but from what I saw the first days, the unit selection earned me some street cred³, and in some ways it made my job easier - I wouldn't be able to cover all of American Literature in a year.  One of my colleagues says he rarely gets past transcendentalism.  This way I cover a wider breadth historically and have greater engagement from my students.

Next time, I think I may just give students a list of units.  I gravitated towards those results since I already had an idea of what I could do with them, and I think they are more engaging to the students as well rather than a list of historical eras.

1. Those these are more related to the War in Iraq than terrorism directly . . . Go back.

2. Yeah, it's a little creepy.  Go back.

3. Not street cred.  Some other type of cred.  But more than just regular ol' credibility.  Cred.  Go back.

American Literature Units

Next year I'm teaching American Literature to juniors.  The last time I taught the course was my first year teaching, so there are quite a few things I'd like to do differently.

This will also be the first summer I've had a solid job set up for next year.  I won't be spending my time completing applications for dozens of districts or signing up for licensure tests to add endorsements that are contingent for my employment.

So, because I'm a little sick¹, I already started putting together a basic year-long plan aligned with standards.

I was feeling good and wanted to nail down some overarching questions for the full year, because that would be cool.  Overarching questions are like essential questions that cover the whole year - the "so what?"  I had one, but I wanted some other ideas and decided to consult some literature from my undergrad to make sure I remembered how to select overarching questions.

So I pulled out Teaching English Through Principled Practice by Peter Smagorinsky and found the section on overarching questions, which gave me some ideas, and looked through the chapter on year long units².

Smagorinsky (2002) states there are three ways to set up a years worth of units.  There are all out teacher selected or where students craft all the units.  Then, there is the middle ground:

In this approach to choosing a curriculum, the teacher sets up a menu of possible topics, allowing the students to select eight or so for their year's study . . . This approach has the advantage of giving the students choices in their learning while operating in a framework of topics that the teacher considers culturally and educationally important (p. 36).

I had considered doing this my first year teaching, but Smagorinsky (2002) warns against it:

It is often a good idea to wait a few years before taking this approach so that you will have several units prepared, rather than having to write many new units from scratch in your first or second year on the job (p. 36).

After teaching for five years in three different districts, I'm ready to skin this chicken.  Peel this potato.  Gut this fish.  I am all over this like ham on cheese.  And apparently in need of a snack.

Here's where you, my dear readers, come in.  Having taught American Literature only once, and for just a semester, as a first year teacher, I need a list of American Literature units.  I've got 26 ideas right now on this Google doc.  Some are bad, some are better.  I also need texts I could teach with them.  No idea is too questionable.  From this I can put together a final list and say to my students in September⁴, "Choose your top ten."

Works Cited
Smagorinsky, P. (2002). Teaching English through principled practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

1. You can use the common interpretation or the student vernacular. Go back.
2. My current favorite quote from this book: "You'll probably end up teaching the selections in an order quite different from their order in the anthology.  Such is the life of the maverick" (p. 87).³ Go back.
3. I teach mostly with mavericks . . . wait, doesn't that go against the definition?
4. Yeah, that's right, suckas!  I don't start school until after Labor Day!⁵ Go back.
5. Makes working until mid-June worth it.

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.

First Draft Excerpt

Thought I'd share this student's rough draft of his introductory paragraph.  He takes the whole idea of topic choices to task:

Did Romeo and Juliet really kill themselves?  I think three different groups may have killed them.  In this school forced essay I will explain my reasoning.  I first think the parents of them forced them to make the bad decision, the Friar Lawrence could have done it also, and the Apothecary.

I hope that third sentence makes it into the final draft.

Chappuis, Chapter 1

Last year I had the opportunity to attend a conference for teachers in their first three years. One of the breakout sessions focused on teaching students to self-assess and set learning goals.

The session was led by Jan Chappuis, who wrote Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning. Self-assessment and goal setting is one of seven strategies Chappuis presents for helping students take ownership of the formative assessment process. Attending the session greatly affected how I taught during the second semester, particularly by providing students with clear learning goals in their own language and offering examples of strong and weak work, Chappuis' first two strategies. As a result, Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning made my summer reading list.

In the first chapter, Chappuis takes time to emphasize the difference between formative and summative assessment. For her, formative assessment must involve feedback, while the product of summative assessment is a grade in the grade book. She also points out that these two type of assessment are not exclusive of each other. This is probably not news to many readers, but what seems innovative to me is that Chappuis places greater importance on student use of the formative information than the teacher's use. A teacher can provide remedial instruction, change differentiation grouping, provide individual tutoring, or any number of other adjustments in response to formative results. Yet often these changes are met with resistance from students: “we already learned this,” “why are you putting me in the 'dumb group' now?” or “why do I have to work back here with you when everyone else is reading?”  Students who are aware of their formative results and understand what the results say about their understanding of classroom material are more likely not only to readily accept reteaching and remediation, but are also more likely to meet benchmark. Two instances stand out to me from my previous semester teaching that reinforce this belief.

Tonya Arnold taught me this first trick that completely changed the way I examine test results and what information I share with my students. When I did administer a test, which was rare, the process was very summative: write test questions based on what I think students should know after a unit; review possible test questions in class; administer test; grade test; record grades; return tests and ask if students have any questions; when met with silence, begin the next unit.

Now, every summative test I give is also formative. Every test question I write is individually linked with a specific learning goal from the unit, and there are multiple questions that address each learning goal. The next change comes after I grade the tests, when I use an excel spreadsheet to tie each and every test question to it's learning goal and tally it up to give students and me an individual and class percentage of their performance on each learning goal addressed in that unit. In class, we compare this to the same learning goals students were presented on the pre-test. Bam! Student immediately see, “wow, I scored 12% on such and such learning goal before this unit, but now I'm at 86%! I'm awesome” or “geez, I got the same percentage on such and such learning goal before and after this unit while the class average increased by 60%. Maybe I should actually do all those [not-so] stupid assignments Mr. B gave us . . .”

Admittedly, we still moved on to the next unit after students saw these results, but students had an open invitation to work with me outside of class and retake the test to bring up their scores. No one took me up on it. So I need to be more proactive in getting students to remediate on their own time and provide this feedback throughout the unit. There is room to grow, but this is a great starting place.

Here's a sample excel spreadsheet in excel and open office format if you'd like to adapt it for your own students. It completely blew my mind as well as the minds of my students – hopefully it will do the same for you.

The second instance of worthwhile feedback that came to mind was our second round of state testing.  I presented students with data from their test results, which is automatically broken down by strands.  I placed the students in differentiated groups by the strand they scored the lowest on.  Each group worked on different tasks for the week - those who had low vocabulary scores received explicit instruction in context clues; students who scored poorly on literary text got to make flash cards of different literary terms.  When we took the test, all but nine students improved their overall score, and 15 more students passed the exam, meaning they have one less hurdle to jump in order to graduate.

But the real proof is in the strand scores.  Students in differentiated groups averaged a 6 to 10 point increase on their target strand, compared to a 0 to 4 point increase in non-targeted strands.  Not only were the activities helpful, but I would argue students saw how those activities would help them pass the test - the activities were directly related to areas they struggled with.  As a result, students were more invested in the process.

Next year, I want to do this more than twice.  There is an added bonus when giving students formative assessment.  Chappuis (2009) quotes Sadler (1989):

The indispensable conditions for improvement are that the student comes to hold a concept of quality roughly similar to that held by the teacher, is able to monitor continuously the quality of what is being produced during the act of production itself, and has a repertoire of alternative moves or strategies from which to draw at any given point.

Students understand why the teacher is reteaching and how it will help them, and while learning are monitoring the quality of their work - whether it is a strong or weak example, demonstrates proficiency of the learning goal, and helps them make progress.  Sounds like a pretty good deal.  

Chappuis offers seven strategies to make this happen.  I mentioned these earlier this year.  As these strategies are the topic of the remainder of Chappuis's book, I'll be posting about them in greater depth in the following weeks:

Where Am I Going?
1. Clear learning targets
2. Models of strong & weak work
Where Am I Now?
3. Offer regular, descriptive feedback
4. Teach students to self-assess & set goals
How Can I Close the Gap?
5. Design lessons that focus on one learning target at a time
6. Revision is focused
7. Students track their progress and self assess

Chappuis, J.  (2009).  Seven strategies of assessment for learning.  Portland, OR: Educational Testing Service.

Two of My Colleagues for Your PLN

Please welcome my colleague and mentor Tonya Arnold to the blogosphere.  It sounds like while she won't be writing exclusively about education, readers will luckily find it in the mix.  From having worked with her, I can recommend those posts unreservedly.  (I'm sure the others will make for good reading too.)

I also have yet to mention Dusty Humphrey, who teaches across the hall from me.  Daily he invites students into lively, spirited, and enlightening discussion and debates on the literature they read.  Be forewarned: if you work for The Man, reading his posts could result in your head exploding.