Wednesday, October 26, 2022

What Roles Can Text Play In Your Classroom? 10.25.2022

 


What are your students reading this week? How did you select it? It doesn’t matter what grade level or content area you work with.  Making informed decisions about what texts, and what complexity of text, all of your students are going to engage with is the first step in closing learning gaps or stretching student thinking. The second step is asking them questions worth answering.  We ALL use text if we define “text” as  literature, informational texts, video, music, math tasks, data sets, research articles, primary sources, photographs or pieces of art. When you are selecting text, what role do you need it to play?


Text can be the” expert in the room”. In this case, a text set will make this even more powerful.    If you are choosing a text that is the “expert in the room” look for a text that builds background knowledge, uses key vocabulary in context,  or illustrates foundational skills or techniques that students will need when they access higher complexity texts on a similar topic or subject. Students will benefit from text dependent questions that point them toward key information, essential vocabulary, or foundational knowledge and skills. 


If you are choosing a text that is meant to spark inquiry, select  texts that present a novel perspective, challenge, or problem to be solved.  Let students generate the questions to drive their inquiry by starting with a statement, a picture, a data set, or bars of music from the text.  Use the Right Question Institute QFT protocol, or encourage them to wonder and ask questions. These questions become the starting point for individual or class research or problem solving.  


When the text acts as your co-teacher, you can let it reinforce the core knowledge and skills students have learned.  This frees you up to ask text dependent questions that can push students to build conceptual understanding, think analytically, synthesize information across texts, and provide scaffolds to help all students access the text. 


Finally, a text can be a role model.  A set of anchor “texts” can support students as they work toward mastery. Find texts that help students see how to read/write like a scientist or a mathematician, play jazz, or paint with perspective.  Students can build skills if they are provided with a set of text dependent questions that help them zero in on syntax, procedures, techniques, and style.  


So, back to my question, what are your students reading this week? The more opportunities we provide to our students to engage with complex texts,  the more opportunities they will have to build the knowledge and skills they need to accomplish their goals.  


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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

How Do You Define "Common" In Common Assessment? 10.18.2022

How do you interpret the “common” in common assessment? I am asking because this is an important conversation to have within a team who is developing and/or implementing a common assessment.  I have been thinking a lot about this lately because common assessment is an important tool for gathering evidence of student progress toward mastery within the context of a team or grade level. 

Without common assessments, it is more challenging, as a classroom teacher, to get a sense of where your group(s) of students fall within the context of the grade as a whole.  Working together to create a common assessment is a powerful professional learning opportunity.  Discussions around the knowledge/skills that will be included in the assessment leads to a shared understanding of what cognitive depth and complexity the team will be working toward when creating learning opportunities for students.  Having many voices at the table when texts and tasks are selected ensures that a wide range of students will be able to access the assessment, and have a common experience.  What is the necessary vocabulary that goes along with the knowledge/skills? Common assessments can build common vocabulary, both academic and content areas.  As a result, the common vocabulary is then reinforced in multiple classrooms. 

The hidden super power of a common assessment isn’t in the assessment at all.  It is the potential for identifying instructional strategies that are moving student learning forward. It is also working together to identify a common set of exemplar student work samples across the range of student mastery, and common rubrics that can be used to provide feedback to students, resulting in students monitoring their own growth toward their learning goals. 

This table is a starting point for reflecting on where your team is in their thinking about common assessments.  This is a work in progress and I hope it sparks conversations within your own teams. 


Knowledge/Skills

Items/Tasks

Scoring

Feedback To Students

Tier 1

Everyone agrees on a small number of the essential knowledge/skills to be assessed.

In the order that students would have learned them in class.

Everyone scores their own.

Students get a score and can see what knowledge/skills they have mastered.

Tier 2

And everyone works together to identify what students look like/sound like when they are at mastery of the knowledge/skills 

Clustered by related knowledge/skills. Distractors help to identify misconceptions on multiple choice tests.

Everyone scores their own then does an item analysis across the team to find strengths, gaps..

Students may be given the item analysis by cluster of knowledge/skills to see where they have strengths.

Tier 3 

And everyone works together to identify what students look like at various points on their way toward mastery of the knowledge/skills including what accommodations may be necessary so all students can show their mastery. 

Organized to provide evidence of progress toward mastery. Items/tasks written to provide evidence around Depth of Knowledge 1,2,3 

Everyone scores their own then brings sets of exemplar responses - showing a range from basic to solid mastery to the group for discussion.  The team selects a set of exemplar responses from across all the students and uses these to create a rubric and as models for students.

Students can compare their work with the exemplar sets to see what they need to do next, teacher provides actionable feedback, based on the rubric, to help students see next steps. 


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Tuesday, October 11, 2022

A Reflection on the UN International Day of the Girl 10.11.22

Today is the UN International Day of the Girl. 

"Our time is now—our rights, our future".


Before you read this, I want you to stop and think about a girl you know.  Maybe she is in your classroom, your team, your club, your neighborhood, or your family. What is her strength? What is important to her? What barriers might you be able to remove so that she can accomplish a goal or work to solve a problem?


I am going to share a story of a girl whose leadership impacted my work as an educator. I have been thinking a lot about her as I read the stories of young women across the world who are being denied an education.  The current data from UNESCO estimates close to 130 million young women are unable to attend school, especially secondary school.  I met her when she was 19, and a refugee from Baghdad who had lost a year of education in a refugee camp in Lebanon, where she wasn’t allowed to go to school because she had no transcripts. She spoke functional English, had experienced war, and faced classmates who were younger, and who had very different life experiences and cultural practices. Her goal, to graduate from high school, become an engineer, and help other refugees. The barriers in her path - the Ohio Graduation Test, American Literature, and 24 hours in a day.  She was added as a student in my environmental science class. On the first day, she got out her notebook and asked me what she needed to do to be successful.  I did a lot of research on the best strategies for supporting dual language learners in science.  She gave me feedback on what worked, suggested strategies that she found worked for her and then helped to implement those strategies in my classroom and work with teachers in the classrooms where other students who spoke various arabic dialects were struggling.  [Our favorite strategies - visual word walls, side by side text English/Arabic, sentence stems, and real time feedback in Google Docs] We developed a trust relationship which led to richer conversations, including what I could do to support other dual language learners  in our school.  She suggested we start a study team for other Arabic language speakers. This resulted in a daily lunch time discussion we co-led around culture, literature, math, science, language, and setting goals - often with her translating between 3 or 4 different dialects. She gained confidence and volunteered as a translator at the Cleveland Refugee Center.  She often stayed up until 4:00 in the morning completing assignments from her various classes, first painstakingly translating them, then writing responses in Arabic, then translating that back to English using Google translate, and eventually with her own growing English skills.  As her teacher, watching the  process she developed for learning and completing assignments, the importance of building working vocabulary and cultural experiences for dual language learners became important to me. Idioms, references to pop culture, local customs and phrases, lack of common experiences with classmates who had grown up in the community,  all posed significant challenges to her ability to actually get to the core of the learning she needed to focus on.  I was more intentional about the texts I chose for all my students to work with as a result. I looked for text with graphic support and explicit definitions of vocabulary. I spent time previewing texts to identify words or cultural phrases I would need to pre-teach, or find an alternative for.  We worked together to prepare for the OGTs. She was able to pass the math, social studies, and science OGT, and her academic grades and attendance met the requirements for a waiver request, allowing her to graduate.  Her goal, to become a chemical engineer.  She persevered through Tri-C, then Cleveland State University, and led her engineering teams as a student. I think she still stayed up until 4:00 AM and I would still receive requests to share feedback with her in a Google Doc all the way through her college career.  She is now a chemical engineer for a cosmetics company and has a daughter of her own.  


 As educators, it is easy sometimes to not really see the power that is inside the girls we teach. Deficit thinking prevents us from finding ways to build on a student’s strengths and closes doors to opportunities that we should be providing.  Girls are leaders at all ages. They bring their own experiences and perspectives to the table. They need advocates and allies who are willing to set aside time to help them find resources, network with other leaders, organize their work, build the knowledge or skills they need, and amplify their voice. They need a safe environment to do their work.  We should be careful of the messages we unintentionally send to them, “you talk too much”, “put your hand down and let someone else answer”, ‘you are too loud”,  “you are being bossy”... to a person, every young woman in leadership that I have spoken to shared that they had heard these statements or a variation, as they moved through school. To a girl who is working to find her own leadership voice, these messages can shut that down very quickly.  So, as we recognize the International Day of the Girl, let’s be intentional about celebrating the unique perspectives the girls around us bring to our work and clear the path forward for them as they accomplish their goals and find novel solutions to problems we all face. This starts with asking them what they need.    


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Thursday, October 6, 2022

How We Define Networking 10.4.2022

 


Four different speakers at four different sessions during the course of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators (BASA) fall conference today focused on networking.  Why did that stand out to me?  I have been reflecting on how to intentionally teach and reinforce networking skills for our students.  In the first session, the speaker focused on networking as a way to bring diverse voices to work on a problem, resulting in more creative and effective solutions.  To do this, students must first see the diversity in skills, in life experiences, and in opinion, as a strength and be given opportunities to seek out this diversity when they have a problem to solve. Then, students need an environment where they have the time to solve problems by building a network, while getting feedback from mentors or teachers.  Adults also benefit from this diversity of voices when faced with a problem.  When you think about building your own network, are you intentional about pulling in people from diverse experiences and backgrounds? (Thanks to Eric Gordan, Maria Carlson, and Cindy Moss for sharing their students and their innovative summer programming based on their profile of a graduate)


In the next session, the presenter posed the question, “What is your positional power and who are you networking with?” Networking in this model is like chaining batteries together.  For students who may feel their voice has not been heard or are working to make change in policy or practice, networking is a way to combine their positional power with that of other students, mentors and advocates to amplify their voice. This is the power of organizations like Voice4equity’s Policy Leadership for HS Girls Initiative.    As education leaders, we all have some level of positional power.  When you think about building your network, who can work alongside you to accomplish your goals or elevate your advocacy work?  (Thanks to Dr. Christina Kishimoto, Mia Prewitt for sharing Policy Leadership for HS Girls)


The third session looked at the idea of networking innovators and creators across districts.  For students, this is finding opportunities for students to build a network of leaders and innovators from other schools in the district and beyond the district.  With Zoom, it is now possible to create virtual events where students can work together on larger problems that are important to them. Programs like 4H, Buckeye Boys State and Buckeye Girls State, Student Senate, Key Club, Model UN, and Robotics competitions are all examples of programs that have built in opportunities for older  students to innovate or create together.  What else can we do? What opportunities are there for younger students to connect to others who have innovative ideas beyond their own classrooms?  As leaders, how can we identify the innovators within our own district and help them network across departments or across districts? What problems can we task this network with addressing? (Thanks to BIll Daggett for sharing his research)


FInally, the last session focused on networking as a way to find “wholeness”.  A network can help put a problem in contextt, offer voices of support, identify  resources, provide feedback, and strengthen collegiality.  As leaders, we know that sometimes it is hard to see beyond the 4 walls around us.  A network is that connection to the world around us.  Students need that same wholeness as they work to navigate the world of home and school.  We can model this kind of networking, sharing with students how we have used our network to help us work through a problem or find support.  We can also build time into the student day for them to connect to their own network.  It takes energy to maintain this essential network.  Take time over the next few days to take an action to strengthen or reconnect to the network that helps you to find “wholeness”  (Thanks to Superintendents Carey Buehler, Veronica Motley, Kim MIller, and Shelly Vaughn for sharing out their top 10 strategies for finding wholeness and living a full life as a leader)


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