Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Why Modeling Co-Regulation Can Lower Stress As The School Year Comes To An End

Do you have enough water left in your pitcher to continue to fill the cups of others as we approach the end of this school year? I hope the answer is yes, and that you have conserved enough water to fill your own cup over the next few weeks. If not, what are the quiet spaces, the activities, the people, the music, the books that you can dip into to refill your pitcher?  The end of the school year is a time that requires the ability to model co-regulation skills. 


Everyone feels the stress that comes with end of year -- relationship shifts, as colleagues announce retirements,  administrators make moves to new buildings and districts, students graduate, younger students begin to look toward the next year, the next school, and new opportunities while finishing their projects and lessons in their current classes, and collaborative time with colleagues feels rushed or finite.  It is time to reflect on how you are feeling about the end of the year. Check in with yourself.  Then check in with your colleagues and students. 


According to Cathy Papp from the Lorain County ESC, one component of co-regulation is creating warm, responsive relationships. After spending a year learning alongside one another, in the safe environment of your classrooms, some students may be looking at a summer of adventure while others may be facing a summer of uncertainty. As a school or district, what safety nets are in place to maintain positive relationships with the students over the summer?  So many educators refer to their colleagues as their school families, and talk about the importance of the friends they work with. What can you do to maintain those friendships over the summer? Are there colleagues who may need your support?  


Another co-regulation component is to structure the environment.  How can you think about intentional end of the year routines to help students celebrate their successes and recognize their learning, while beginning to think about goals for next year? How can leading with empathy help us plan inclusive end of year activities that take into account student voice, and the impact of living with chronic trauma has had on our students, and our colleagues? What formal and informal summer learning opportunities can be put in place for students, and educators, to explore their own interests, and build expertise?


Finally, Cathy Papp shared that teaching and coaching self-regulation is important.  The end of the year is emotional. It is a good time to remind students about the self-regulation skills they learned and practiced throughout the year and identify situations at the end of the year, and through the summer, when applying those skills will help them to avoid frustration, and achieve a positive outcome. Many of the pictures/symbols/reminders of self-regulation strategies that we have posted in our classrooms and buildings are not going to be on the walls of student rooms at home (or on our walls at home either).  A good end of year activity might be having students create their own system for reminding themselves of the strategies that work for them.  As I was looking for resources to spark your thinking around this week’s topic, I found a number of resources that point to the power of positive self-talk.  It was interesting that one article included research that showed the effectiveness of self-talk in the second person - as in “You’ve got this” vs “I can do it”.  How will you talk to yourself in a positive way as you navigate the end of the school year?  You can do it, take a breath, focus on really listening to your friends and students and what they have to share with you as the year wraps up.  



Resources To Spark Your Thinking

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Wednesday, May 3, 2023

How To Take Depth of Knowledge (DOK) From Aspirational To Actionable

How many of you have used Dr. Karin Hess’s Cognitive Rigor Matrices at some point in the last few years? They are one of my go to tools when discussing rigor, DOK and how to think about designing lessons that get at the full range of DOK levels.  Depth of Knowledge becomes more actionable and less aspirational when teachers can work with the specific content area matrices that Karin has created. These tools help to create learning opportunities that lead to deeper learning.  We are in the middle of state testing season…and this is a really good time to revisit these matrices, the learning standards, your own common assessments, and the state’s released item scoring guides, to get a feel for how to  continue to create learning tasks and assessments that help students engage in deeper learning across all DOK levels..  


I had the chance at ASCD 2023 to attend  Dr. Karin Hess’s session on her new work, Assessing deeper learning.  I loved her opening quote, “In order to teach for deeper learning, you have to experience it yourself. When do we have opportunities to continue to be learners? How do professional learning plans incorporate DOK 1-3?  


Here are my key takeaways from her session:

One goal of deeper learning is the transfer of knowledge.  Near transfer is the ability to do something the way that you were taught = DOK 1, DOK 2.   Far transfer is how you can apply what you learned to anything - real world projects that have an impact = DOK 3,4.    As a student, you can think about it in this way: What am I learning? How is it impacting me? What am I going to do with it? How do I want to show you what I can do with it? What problems do I want to solve?


Assessment is actionable.  This statement fits right into my thinking on Evidence Centered Design that I have shared with you a lot!  Assessment is about uncovering thinking, identifying where students are in the learning journey and planning next steps, or providing feedback to understand themselves as learners, thinkers or strategizes, or ourselves as educators. 


Stop Random Acts Of Rigor: Hess has identified 5 teacher moves that lead to consistent, intentionally planned deep learning opportunities.

  1. Use essential questions to lead to probing questions

  2. Build schema in each content area

  3. Use strategic scaffolding for different purposes

  4. Design complex tasks - with emphasis on student voice/choice and evidenced based solutions

  5. Allow time for students to engage in metacognition and reflection throughout their learning.


Student engagement can be negatively active, negatively passive, positively passive, and positively active.  This was a different way to think about this.  Terms on this engagement line start with disruptive, avoidance, withdrawn <<--->> participate, invested, drive    How does this change the way you see students in your classroom? Students who are disruptive are actively engaged in a non-productive way.  What’s the difference in how they are experiencing the learning compared to a student who is driving the learning and is actively engaged in a very productive way? 


Finally, she suggested some engagement activities that involve the most students. The two I found most interesting were using Scrum Boards to help student teams monitor their own work and seek input from peers. And, doing gallery walks of work, converting rubrics into feedback sentence stems and look-fors.  


I appreciate Dr. Hess’s research, and her willingness to make so many of her resources freely available for educators to use.  

  

And, because I want to continue to model how to use ChatGPT in an ethical, efficient way - You can ask ChatGPT to become a DOK bot and create sample problems/tasks/activities for you.  Try using this prompt: I need you to be a DOK bot.  When I give you a standard, I need you to create a set of tasks or activities at a DOK 1, DOK 2, DOK 3 and DOK 4 level.  You can follow that up with this prompt: Create a set of lesson plans using the 5 E model based on this standard, incorporating DOK 1, DOK 2, DOK 3 and DOK 4.  And then, use this prompt: Create a reflection sheet to help students focus on their own learning at each DOK level. Make it in a chart form. Refine these prompts to meet your needs and to produce the response that will be most useful for you.



Resources To Spark Your Thinking


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