Pollinate Great Learning Ideas Through Social Media

As administrators walk around and see examples of higher level learning,
they can capture the learning through pictures or videos. They will make sure that the pictures or videos clearly show the specific learning goal and the higher level learning as opposed to some “cute”
picture of students.  For example, an administrator takes a picture of a student made Social Studies concept map that contrasts the causes of the American Revolution and the American Civil War.  The administrator  posts it to the school website,  the school facebook page, or a flickr school page. Likewise,  the administrators can tweet  “English 8 students works in groups of three to help each other have more evidence and details in  their essay paragraphs.”  In addition, the building leader can record students talking about what they learned during a certain unit and then post this as part of the school podcasts. Through using technology, the administrators shares these great learning ideas with their buildings teachers so that these classroom  teachers can learn about  and implement new strategies for improving student learning.  Furthermore, the administrators will find that teachers will soon be contacting them about the higher level learning taking place in their classrooms so that their students can be featured in the next social media blast.

Tuttle’s Formative Assessment books

Backward/inverted Teaching and Formative Assessment

The Journal Recently ran an article on backward or inverted teaching where the instructor has the students watch a teaching video as homework and then in class they go over problems and the teacher does more one-on-one work with students.

As the students watch the 30 minute  instructional video, who is checking to see if they are comprehending  the video? Are there self-checks built into the video? What happens if a student gets lost at the beginning?  What happens if a student does not understand a major concept?  The students  have to wait until the class for which they will have to do homework.

Such backward teaching seems to go against the current formative assessment approach of constantly monitoring students and helping them to overcome the learning gaps that appear as the lesson develops.  According to formative assessment, students should be helped with their  learning gap as soon as it appears; the students are immediately diagnosed and given appropriate feedback to overcome the gap. The longer the time between the gap and the feedback, the less effective the feedback.

I think that backward teaching can be done well  if appropriate formative assessments are built in just after new concepts or ways of thinking are introduced in the video. Probably a video teacher does not want to go more than ten minutes without doing a check-in on the students.  The teacher might want to go over commonly made mistakes as he/she presents the lesson.  When students know they are “right”, they feel more confident about their learning. When they begin to have doubts, they learn less.

How do you use teaching videos/clips in your class?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Also, my  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

No Real Destination No Real Learning

I enjoy “talking” with other teachers.  However, I am often amazed at how  they  describe the final learning destination.

A writing teacher may say, “We are doing contrast essays”, a modern language teacher says, “I want my students to speak the language”, a social studies teacher says “My students will be citizens of the world.”  What does each of these mean in a practical sense? How will these teachers know if their  students have reached the final destination  and how well they have done it?  Would another educator be able to identify the  same success?

I have been working in developing some foreign language assessments so that I can quantify the various types of speaking and how well students do on each.  I do not want to say “My students speak the language”  which is a vague concept but to specify what type speaking they do  and how well they do each. Once I can identify what the end learning looks like/sounds like, I can work backward to provide scaffolded  steps to help the students get there at a high level. In addition, I can build in formative assessment to monitor their upward process.

In order for athletes to win, they visualize exactly what they will do; they visualize their success.  Our students need to visualize exactly what they are to do.

How do you identify the end learning for the students so they can become successful at it?  How do they climb the ladder of success in that learning goal?

My  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book,  Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Do We Know the Students’ Exact Progress in the Learning Standards At Any Moment?

Every teacher should know at any given moment where their students stand in regard to state standards, state assessments, or even the “final”. We need to focus on our students’ learning progress and how we can help the students to improve from where they are to where we expect them to be. Waiting until the end of the year for students to take a pre-state assessment and then cramming down not-learned concepts make no sense.

When we start with the end in mind (Covey and Understanding by Design), we identify the precise learning we expect of the students and we create assessments that measure not only the end product but the many steps in their progress toward the learning. These mini-formative assessments help us to know at any moment where our students stand in terms of the end assessment. By using a technology as simple as a spreadsheet, teachers can keep track of their students’ formative assessments, give students new strategies to use to be successful, and, after much practice, re-assess the students to see growth.  Student learning is about continual growth toward the end learning.  If we want students to achieve the end learning goal, we need to constantly assess their progress and provide new strategies for success.

Do you know where your students’ exact progress right now in your course toward the state standard or assessment?

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Fixed or Flexible Learning

I recently talked to someone who teaches an online course.  She says that the college has supplied the lectures for each class.  I questioned how a college could think that the fixed lectures would fit the needs of the class. Then the person reminded me that high school textbooks,  textbook websites, textbook DVDs,  textbook PowerPointsand content websites present the material  in a fixed manner.  I think it is good for a teacher to see an exemplary lesson and then to modify the lesson for the class or  for the teacher to use the fixed  lesson as a jumping off point  but I do feel that teachers should not follow a book lesson blindly. Based on our students’  intellectual, physical and emotional needs, we, as instructional leaders, need to decide how to teach the selected goal.  We need to modify the lesson to meet various learning styles and learning levels in our class. We need to know when to abandon a lesson to teach a missing skill or a complimentary skill. We are the ones to show the students the connections between what they are learning and the big picture, to bring in our life experiences in that learning.

How do you teach your course?  Do you strictly follow the textbook (fixed) or do you modify the learning in a flexible manner based on your students’ needs?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.

School Awards For Teachers

I recently  attended a college’s award ceremony for faculty and staff.  I was impressed with all the categories of awards.

I’ve made up some awards that I would like schools to give. These awards will not be given to just one teacher but to any teacher who does any of the following:

Focus their students’ learning on the standards

Spend more working with students than lecturing

Diagnose students’  learning problems instead of just giving grades

Give specific feedback that actually help the students to move forward in their learning

Keep cumulative records of students’ strengths and learning gaps in a specific learning goal

Celebrate their students’ standards-based learning successes

Transform academic learning  into real world learning

Invite parents and other experts in the classroom (physically or virtually)  to share their wisdom about a learning goal

Involve the students in meaningful community or global projects that truly make a difference in other students’ lives.

Empower students to feel that they are capable of being successful

Share the learning goal, assessments, and success strategies with other teachers

What other awards would you like to schools to give?

Making the learning stick

When I was putting the insulation on my windows, I had two different products. One had the instruction of waiting fifteen minutes before I removed the backing to the two sided tape. The other did not have that instruction. The fifteen minute wait tape was far superior to the other.

I wonder how much time we give our students to stick to their new learning before we ask them to use it. Fisher and Fry suggest in Better Learning Through Structured Teaching that when we give our initial modeling of the new learning, we do not ask students to actively participate but, instead they are to think about this new learning. If they do not firmly understand the modeling before we ask them to practice it, then there is a high likely hood that they will do it incorrectly. Their first steps of doing it wrong will be cemented into their brains. Instead, we can model the learning for them and go over an exemplar of it. We can let them think about the new learning and then scaffold them through it.

Let’s organizing our teaching so that we allow students plenty of time to think about the new learning before they are asked to do it. Let’s let them get firmly stuck to the new learning before they use it.

For any one who is interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

Two Observations, Two Different Approaches

I was talking to two teachers from the same school. Both teachers were going to be observed. One supervisor not only did a pre-conference a week before the observation but also gave the teacher the evaluation rubric. This supervisor asked about any special conditions in the class or if the classroom teacher wanted the supervisor to look for anything in particular. As soon as the class observation was over, the supervisor gave some positives and some suggestions for change. Then within a week, the supervisor sent out the formal evaluation.

The other supervisor showed up two minutes before the class for the pre-conference. He looked over the lesson plan. After about two weeks after the class, the teacher received the formal evaluation.

I’m wondering which technique we use when we observe our students?

For any one who is interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

Big Things (Learning) First

As I was packing the car yesterday, I realized that I was following the way my father packed the car  He always packed the big things first and then worked the little things around the big things.

I wonder how often we pack the big ideas, the major concepts in the standard, first with students. Do we lead off the unit with telling them about the standard? Do we instruct them directly on the big ideas?  Do we give them activities that clearly focus on the big ideas? Do we assess them on the big ideas?

I remember watching a teacher who did a half period introductory activity to the unit. The activity was engaging.  However, it did not deal with the big ideas of the unit but with a very minor point.

Do you pack the big ideas first with your students?

Learning from a Young Child

I was watching my 4 year old nephew and niece (twins) as they were playing, watching tv, drawing and having fun.  My niece drew scribbles and then told me a story about the scribbles.  Her parents obviously read to them. She did  sentences such as   “The cow goes to the party.  The horse goes to the party.  The dog goes to the party. They have fun.”

I thought of how much her parents read to her and of how interesting the story was that she wanted to hear it over and over again. Her parents have encouraged her to tell stories.

I wonder how we present interesting material to our students so that they want to pay attention to it, how we present the same information in different ways to them , how we expect them to learn big skills, and how we encourage them to tell us their learning stories.

Or do we read to them our book that does not interest them and only expect them to remember obscure details from the story instead of achieving big skills?

Gladly would the teacher help the students to learn

Chaucer wrote “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.” I would like to change that to “Gladly would he/she learn and gladly help students to learn.” Unfortunately some teachers think of teaching as presenting information and then testing on that info. In the formative assessment process, the focus is on helping the students to learn.

Glick wrote :”It is not what the teacher does but what he gets the students to do that results in learning” Our focus should be not on what the teacher does but on what the teacher helps the students to do. The teacher’s “best” lecture is not good if it does not help students to do something to learn the standard. Teachers should teach less and have students learn and do more in the class. The more students do in the class, the more teachers can observe them, diagnose them, and offer formative feedback to help the students so that the students can improve drastically in their learning.

Do you focus on teaching or learning?

Excitement or Content in Learning

I recently attended a conference. In the first session I went to the person was enthusiastic, excited, and full of personal stories that had very little to do with the content. We got through about 1/4 of the content and then very superficially. The next session was a very methodical person who went step by step through a process and showed examples. I wonder how we are when we teach. Do we focus on content as the second person did or do we focus on being interesting & friendly as the first person? Yes, we can combine both but usually we focus more on one than the other. I spent time last year in visiting many schools and I find most teachers were trying hard to make the class exciting. They tried so hard that they spent less time on content and more on “fun and games”. One of the teachers had PowerPoints that made weird sounds and had flying things. The PowerPoint become more like a circus show than a learning environment.

How do you teach and how do you use technology to support your teaching?

Teaching or Educating with Web 2.0 Tools

If teaching is to impart (or stuff in) knowledge & educating is to nourish (or pull out), which do we use technology for?

Any technology can be used for either. A wiki can be used to push stuff in such as a chapter summary or it can be used to have students think through the pros and cons of a real life situation.   Just because a technology is a Web 2.0 does not make it an educating technology.   Videoconferencing can deliver lectures (teaching) or have students share similarities and differences in local folktales (educating).  Social bookmarking does not necessarily educate, it can just provide lists of websites (teaching).

How do you use Web 2.0 Tools?

Student Learning and Our Teaching: Lucky, Losing, Learning or Leading?

Reeves’ matrix helps us to examine why our students are successful or not. Do we have a high understanding of antecedents such as pre-tests and regular embedded formative assessments that help us to analyze students’ progress and to discern how to reteach information so that our students can have high results? Have we kept a digital record of what misconceptions or conceptual errors our last year’s students made in this standard? Do have a digital record of which of our teaching strategies were successful last year based on the many formative assessments we gave? Or do we teach blindly without the valuable information from pre-tests and embedded formative assessment and therefore, we have little ability to duplicate success?

Do you keep online team blogs of the results of formative assessments and build online team resources so that all of your students can replicate student success in the standards?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Reteach instead of Teach for Greater Student Learning

You go to visit a specialist, Dr. Cuchil, for the first time. As soon as she walks in the room, she says “Surgery.” You go to another specialist, Dr. Tened. He asks you some questions, has some X-rays taken, and moves your hand in various positions. He then suggests a treatment. Dr. Tened has vast knowledge about your condition but bases his comments directly on your condition as he has diagnosed it. One teaches without any knowledge about you. The other one re-teaches based on your information.

I think that reteaching is the key to student learning, not teaching. Reteaching implies that the teachers have made an assessment of student’s learning needs and these educators have come up with a different strategy or strategies to help those learners be successful. In a classroom the teachers pretest the students either in paper or, hopefully, electronic means; they analyze the results or look at the electronic results. They become aware of the academic strengthens and weaknesses of their students; they know where learning problems are. Then the teachers use their word processor to modify/change the unit to better help the students; the teachers reteach what the students do not know or cannot do yet. They do not teach what the students already know. They regularly check the students’ progress.

Do you teach or reteach? How do you use technology to help you reteach?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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