Knowing vs. Remembering

The dichotomy between knowing a topic and remembering information needs some more attention. I am noticing that on assessments some students can mask a lack of true understanding with their excellent memory skills, as long as the test presents a question or problem in a format they are familiar with.

For example, if I ask students to fill in the data on a blank chart, and certain ones have seen that chart format in their book or notes or on a study guide, they can complete the chart successfully. But if I ask them to provide that same information in sentence form, they might struggle to do so. A student who really understands the concept, on the other hand, will be able to answer successfully regardless of their familiarity with the format of the question.

This suggests that we need to focus more on finding ways for students to reach understanding during instructional time, so that they will be ready for assessments. A first step will be to raise students awareness of the difference between the two - and thus my lesson plan for tomorrow.

This Again

In a meeting today, I made a positive response about an organization and added (without really thinking) that any organization is only as good as its communication.

The notion of communication keeps popping up, all the time and in any situation. Communication in a relationship, in a business, in school - without it, any of those endeavors will stumble.

So boiling it down to its simplest terms, education is about helping kids become good communicators. Can they process information and can they express themselves? Everything else follows.

A Lesson in Assumption

So many lessons naturally occur in life. Here's today's:

Three times a year, our students choose elective courses. They receive a description of the seven options and rank them from most to least preferred. Because some options are more popular than others, not everybody receives their top two choices, and my colleague does her best to create groups that are relatively equal in size.

Today, students found out their electives, and two eighth graders immediately went into 'outrage' mode, insisting they had gotten their seventh (and last) choice.

They hadn't. I checked with my colleague who said everyone got their fourth choice or higher, and the upset students had actually gotten their third choice. Somehow, in the twenty-four hours since making their selections, they forgot what they had picked and immediately assumed the worst. And I immediately bought into it. Oops.

I assume that it wasn't rabble rousing but more that their perceptions and memory were obscured. By time? By excitement? By youthful hypersensitivity? Who knows . . . what I do know is that it happens often. Our perceptions influence our reactions, and when memory is involved, our perceptions can take another step away from reality. And that's a good lesson to remember.

Revisiting Technology & Education

I read a column in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer by a fellow educator and felt it was worth a response.

Hysterical claims sometime obfuscate legitimate beliefs. In the column, Grant Calder pokes fun at the people who exaggerate the importance of the present, and rightly calls into question whether "we live at the most important juncture not just in the four-billion-year history of the planet, but in the history of the cosmos". That is surely an unprovable claim, and deserves to be called out as hyperbole.

But if we put aside the loftiness of the "most important juncture . . . in the history of the cosmos" statement to look at what those claims are based on, there is plenty to suggest that the digitalization of information does have us in a the midst of a sea change in educational objectives and practices. This is a reality that the educational world is grappling with, and the potential outcomes are myriad.

As Grant points out (he also teaches at a Friends' school so I'm sure he is used to being called by his first name), the mere development of new technology is not likely to create a new type of human existence. Analog-era skills like communication and personal responsibility are no less important today than they were in past generations.

Bottom line - there may be drum-beaters who carry their beliefs too far, but let's not miss the accurate notes they strike.

Feedback

I am referencing the post of a friend and fellow educator, Michael Corso, on the Quaglia Institute blog. In it, he relates the experience he had in a school where teachers had made a conscious effort to inform students of the goals of each class. The students reported significantly increased awareness of the practice and engagement with their learning as a result.

In my own classroom, another friend and fellow educator who works with one of my students suggested that student would find a similar focus on lesson objectives beneficial. I agreed, and have begun to write some key-words on the board at the beginning of each class as a way of narrowing students' attention.

The thing is, I knew this already and have known it to be a good practice for years. And sometimes I remember to do it, at least verbally, as we begin class. But I have not been consistent, and I regret the missed opportunities since September to help students better manage their learning. One strategy I am trying to employ is jotting a couple of items on a post-it and sticking it to the board in the morning as a reminder when the daily routines threaten to sidetrack my good intentions.

It's good to have friends in the business - and I always welcome their feedback.

More Technology

One looming sea change in the field of literacy is the emergence of e-book readers like the Kindle or the Nook which will be rolled out by Barnes & Noble this holiday season.

The increased availability of these devices and download-able books will have some people saying, "It's about time!" while others will be decrying the death of literature. Hyperbole abounds.

Literacy is evolving, but not going away. Neither are books. They will simply be joined by new devices that, who knows, may even help boost literacy.

Still Learning Online

One of the criticisms that I have heard about online learning is that it is impersonal and does not provide a community in which one can learn through interactions with others. Perhaps that is true in some models, but it has not been my experience.

There is a robust sense of community that continues to develop as we approach the midway point of the online study group I am facilitating. These are all busy people, juggling a full-time teaching job and managing the courseload in addition to whatever home commitments they have. Yet, through a discussion board, they interact regularly.

I have never met these folks face-to-face (at least that I am aware of), yet I am getting a sense of their personalities, their humor, and their challenges. It is different than the communication you find in traditional professional development settings, but it is still a vibrant learning community.

I suspect that the criticism of online learning is little different from that levied by those who believed that texting, cell phones, e-mail, mp3 players, and even the telephone were going to cripple personal communication as we knew it. Communication methods evolve, but it is hard to imagine a world where communication is not still vital - we might as well embrace the possibilities as new trends emerge.

Learning Online

A generation ago, distance learning conjured up images of remote locales, with stray learners here and there tuning in to a lecture. Now, though, online learning is increasing in popularity everywhere - the city, the burbs, and outlier areas.

Convenience is a big factor. Much online learning is asynchronous, so people can log in and crank out assignments whenever they wish. For people with busy schedules or odd hours, this may be the difference between furthering one's education or not. In many cases, the price is lower than traditional schooling - another powerful factor.

Recent experience has shown me that it is not only about convenience though - an online course may provide students with a better timetable for learning. Instead of spending a finite, predetermined amount of time on a topic, as one would in a live class, online students can accelerate or decelerate their pace, depending on various factors - complexity of the material, background knowledge, interest level.

In the last year, I have taken an online course and am currently facilitating a graduate course for educators online. These courses have been driven by content rather than technology, and the content has been relevant and comprehensive. I can't say these courses are better or worse than a live version would be, only that they are different. Overall, pursuing this line of learning has been a positive, and I am glad I was open to it.

The Forest

Late October in Pennsylvania means fall colors at their peak, and the best way to experience them is by taking a walk in the woods. A forest provides a palette that a single tree cannot.

We all know the saying about missing the forest for the trees, when we miss the colorful palette because we are too focused on a single specimen. This is a time of the school year when it becomes very easy to get bogged down in everyday items like grading homework, giving tests, contacting parents, and attending meetings.

So . . . this post is about stepping away from the tree and seeing the whole palette by revisiting the big picture goals. I want my students to become more literate by developing their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. No single lesson, test or homework assignment will accomplish that, so I need to make sure I keep all aspects of the program in place.

That includes the type of reflection that blogging allows. I hope to avoid a ten-day lapse between posts again.

Six-Word Memoirs

After hearing a radio interview some time ago, I have become a big fan of the Six-Word Memoir. The concept comes from the website of Smith Magazine, a literary publication that allows writers to submit their personal stories in six words. Apparently, the basis of the idea came from a story about Ernest Hemingway - when challenged to write a story in six words, he came up with this: "For sale, baby shoes, never worn."

Earlier this year, my eighth graders tried out the process and came up with some gems. It can be a challenge to make meaning in so few words, but they did so in creative and touching ways.

This week, I posted some of them on a bulletin board and will invite students and guests to add more. (Leave one in the Comments section and it will go up on the board.) I love the activity because it really engages students with content and meaning without being bogged down much by the mechanics of writing. Consequently, students who may normally struggle with certain elements of writing longer pieces get to shine in this format.

Being Institutionalized

While at a meeting this week, the speaker noted that as the organization we are a part of grew, it became more institutional in the way it managed tasks. He also opined that this was not necessarily a good thing.

The parallel to education revealed itself immediately. As the education system has metastasized towards amorphous entities with increasingly narrow goals, teaching practices have become standardized, even scripted in many cases. The narrow goals result in what I like to call the 'franchising' of education - the same experience for every student in every place.

This works well with hamburgers. A Big Mac in Philadelphia tastes the same as a Big Mac in Riverton, Wyoming. But does the same hold true for education? No - because the ingredients are too different. Students in Riverton would likely have an understanding and appreciation for the outdoors that Philadelphia students might lack. And in Philadelphia, students have access to an arts scene that would be foreign to kids in Wyoming. Within any classroom, you will find students with different experiences, enthusiasm levels and learning styles. Squeezing them all through a narrow set of goals reduces education to a matter of least common denominator - the bare minimum that must be mastered rather than taking advantage of the multiple gifts that students come to school with.

The least common denominator, the standardization of the experience reflects the institutionalization of education. Students, parents, teachers and schools need more choices, developed with the best interests of all in mind. This means more local control, more choices, and validation of the belief that there are many ways to be productive in this world.

Would more choices be tidy? Certainly not. But it is hard to argue that there are not already plenty of messes to clean up. I would much rather see achieving maximum potential as our goal, rather than settling for minimum standards.

Quality vs. Quantity Redux

In a previous post, I outlined my thoughts on the debate over whether the school day and school year should be extended. I'd like to revisit it through two recent articles on the topic.

In a post entitled Meatloaf Again? on the Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations blog, Michael Corso illuminates the highlights of the issue with clarity and a great analogy. In Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, an opinion piece by Michael Smerconish provides a thoughtful discussion that incorporates multiple viewpoints from someone outside the education field - a necessary part of any educational policy debate.

Communication Modes

A primary objective for both 7th and 8th grade Language Arts classes this year is an appreciation for various ways people choose to communicate. Two activities today helped underscore this objective.

As a Steinbeck fan, I am always happy to use his books with students. The 7th graders are reading The Pearl, and as a way to briefly summarize before moving ahead, they wrote headlines for the first chapter. Their creativity was excellent - some of my favorites were 'Song of Evil Overcomes Song of Family', 'Doctor: Friend or Foe?', and the tabloid-y 'Doctor Disses Patient'. Being succinct is not always easy, but they were still able to communicate the gist of the chapter successfully.

The 8th graders are reading Of Mice and Men, and their job was to text a conversation between Lennie and George. Texting is a process they are quite comfortable with, and were able to see the parallels to dialogue while having fun in the process.

TTFN ;)

Quality vs. Quantity

A ringing new debate is shaping up thanks to the proposal this week to extend both the school day and the school year. Since the proposal has come from the White House, there will be plenty of political histrionics both pro and con. Let's ignore that element of the debate and focus on the real issues.

To me, if the education students are receiving is of a high quality, then the amount of time they are currently spending in school is likely sufficient. If it is not, it is hard to believe that doing more of the same will bring positive results. Kids who embrace learning are working hard, and I fear that adding more hours and days will bring diminishing returns.

This is not to say that the current school schedule is ideal for everyone. To have extended day and year schools as an option would be a wonderful benefit to students and families who want more academic time and structure, as would shorter, better spaced breaks than the nearly quarter of the year students are off in the summer. The operative word here is option - we have seen what the 'one size fits all' approach has done in education. There is just too great a disparity between high-achieving and low-achieving schools and students to offer a single plan.

We have traveled this path before, where a simple solution (in this case, extending the day and year) is applied to a complex problem (achievement gaps), and unintended consequences will inevitably follow - and I didn't need extended time to figure that out.

Student Bloggers II

I am happy to report that my students have begun publishing on their collective class blogs. You can find them at http://literacy7.blogspot.com/ and http://literacyeight.blogspot.com/.

In addition to writing, students are also performing proofreading tasks. My only input has been to set the sites up and let them know how to use it.

Process Over Product II

One of my favorite early-year activities is to create rubrics with my students. While there are plenty of pre-published rubrics available, I find that they are primarily written for teachers and not students. For example, here is the Pennsylvania Writing Assessment - well meaning, but not particularly well written.

When students are involved in the creation of a rubric, I find that they are better able to understand and apply it. It is a process that is certainly worthy of the time investment needed to complete it.

This past week, both classes created a rubric for answering questions, such as the type typically found at the end of a textbook chapter. First, they wrote answers (anonymously) to two sample questions. Next, I selected five responses for each question and displayed them on-screen to the class. We thoroughly critiqued them and created a list of qualities we look for in an answer - this list was able to be collapsed into three general categories. Then, referring back to the examples, we created a four-point range of criteria from Great to Poor to complete the rubric. I typed and printed it and distributed them to the class (two copies per student - one for the language arts binder and one for the social studies binder).

Now the rubrics are ready for self-evaluation as well as for teacher evaluation. I am happy with the product, but I see the real value coming from the fact that the students created them from the ground up. They will have a sharper sense of what to look for in their writing and better understand what I am grading them on. Had I simply handed them a rubric, their investment level would be much lower.

It is a great process, and can be adapted to create rubrics for any task.

Process Over Product

Education has (at least) one great luxury over business - the luxury of an extended learning curve. By definition, business depends on the bottom line, where one must produce or hit the pike, but school is a place where management has the option of being reasonably patient.

As teachers, we love to receive a great product when a student hands in an assignment and slap that 'A' on the top of the paper. But there is a critical next step to take that is often overlooked.

If the student doesn't understand how she created that product, then how confident can we be that she will be able to duplicate similar results the next time? Or that she can apply her skills to new and different situations?

This is where a determined focus on process comes in. After an assignment or activity is completed, teachers should debrief with their students and give them the opportunity to genuinely consider what worked well, what was a challenge, and what they learned from the experience. It is through this kind of metacognition that a student can gain a greater understanding of himself as a learner and approach his education in an active rather than passive way.

Let's take advantage of the extended learning curve the education laboratory allows us. It may be nice to develop producers, but it is even nicer to create producers who can think and lead.

Student Bloggers

One of the Language Arts requirements for my 7th and 8th graders this year will be to contribute to a class literacy blog. Unlike many assignments, they actually seem eager to do it.

There are several desired features:
- students will be writing for authentic publication
- each poster will have two peer editors to work with, so there will be practice with proofreading and constructive criticism
- because they will have considerable flexibility in topics, students may discover new areas of interest they would not have otherwise explored
- we will have an archival record of the growth and progress of the classes

Digital natives are typically quite comfortable with technology, and Blogspot provides a great free service - it makes sense to tap into these two realities to promote literacy. Once the sites are active, I will publish links.

Some People Call it . . .

Language Arts, English, and Reading are often used interchangeably when discussing that block of literacy instruction that takes up a good chunk of a middle-schooler's day. I suspect that people tend to use the term most familiar to them.

Personally, I prefer Language Arts because I see a diverse set of goals for the class. Certainly, there is plenty of reading and writing and literature. But I believe it is also critical to help students develop good listening and speaking skills, to be able to process verbal information and speak with clarity in formal and informal situations.

When I polled students the other day, they believed that success in 70% to 95% of their school day depends on good listening. And while I will become more acquainted with their writing, the lion's share of what I have learned about my students so far has come through verbal interaction.

So call it what you will . . . as long as speaking and listening are components of language emphasized in the class. These are skills, and like other skills they can be strengthened or they can atrophy. To me, it's a clear choice.

Underway

Students returned to school today and we have begun the long journey through the school year. Realistically, it is much longer for them than me - at my age, a school represents less than 2 percent of my life. To an 8th grader, it's more than triple that percentage.

An objective for today was to survey the reading enjoyment level of the students, and I found that over 60% of the responses to survey items indicated a positive disposition towards reading. That's a nice start. But there was some discrepancy between how some students viewed their ability to read and their desire to do so.

One of the duties of my job this year is to help enhance the perception of literacy of those students who would rather not read. Today's survey was completely anonymous, but it provides a group baseline. My hope is that there will be a significant increase in the percentage of positive responses at the end of the year.

Glogging

That's not a misspelling.

Thanks to one of my Cabrini students this summer, I became acquainted with the Glogster Education site. This is a place where students create online posters that can include text, graphics, photos, animation and embedded video. It's a great, free site that sets up perfectly for teachers - secure accounts for up to 200 students and easy-to-use controls for the budding website designer.

Initially I will be offering it as an elective choice for 5th - 8th graders. As the year progresses, I hope to incorporate Glogster into an option for classroom projects.

Upcoming Projects

Students return in one week so I want to be sure to complete the prep work on several web-based projects. The availability of so many free sites makes it easy to experiment, but I want to be sure the project pays real educational dividends, rather than simply being technological fluff.

For each of my Language Arts classes, we will be maintaining a literacy blog. Each week, two students will be assigned to post to the blog on a topic relating to literacy and our work in class. Each poster will be assigned two peer editors who will have to check their work before posting. This will tap into authentic writing and editing/proofreading skills, as well as provide an opportunity for students to publicly express their ideas, create a working portfolio of the group's growth, and provide parents the opportunity to have perspective on our work.

In Social Studies, I have created a wiki for each class. New pages will be created for each unit of study and students will use them to strengthen understanding and create their own study guides. Some of the posting to the site will be done in class (thank you, SmartBoard) but the majority will be done by the students on their own time. I am curious to see if they embrace the opportunity to develop their own study aids.

As these projects take root, I will provide updates and links. To protect their privacy, all students will be required to create an alias before contributing.

Back on Board

Yes, it’s been a while.

The Twitter version of an update: I’ll be exploring literacy, life and learning through the eyes of a middle school language arts and social studies teacher.

Being back in the classroom full-time affords the opportunity to test-drive ideas and receive ready feedback. In the five or so years since I have regularly taught middle school, there is an entire generation of new tools to use. As always, understanding is the primary destination, but I’m eager to play with some of the new toys along the way.