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Whose Questions Do We Value?

27/1/2016

 
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What a powerful statement: “The questions a student asks after reading a text are a better assessment than the questions a student can answer.” When I think about David Pearson's quote, I wonder what it means for our classrooms. What does it mean for our assessments? How can this change the roles of the student and the teacher? ​
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When I was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s, Pizza Hut had a computer-based (Apple IIGS) reading incentive program—I just Googled it and it's still around—which offered free personal pizzas if you correctly answered seven out of ten comprehension questions. Well, I was incentivised! Every recess, I sat down at the Apple IIGS and started taking those tests. Well, by the end of Grade 4 and Grade 5, I ate a lot of pizza, but I didn’t read any books. I just kept taking and retaking the tests until I got the questions correct. And, voila, free pizza! No Comprehension Necessary.
Do comprehension worksheets allow for students to share the thinking they had while reading texts? Usually not. Do they celebrate student thinking? Nope. Do they actually keep students accountable? Not really. Do they actually improve student learning? “No. There has never been one study that has ever proven that a comprehension worksheet has ever improved a students’ ability to read" (Steph Harvey). If they are ineffective, what can kids do instead? Read. That’s what kids should be doing, reading! However, the common response is there’s no time. So where do we find the time? By uncovering our benches.   

Guarding Benches

Previously I have posted about Debbie Miller’s analogy in her book No More Independent Reading Without Support  that teachers guard benches, and they often hold onto the things they’ve done for years without thinking deeply about the purposes. She relates this to soldiers in Eduardo Galleano’s short story, Bureaucracy 3:
At a barracks in Seville, in the middle of the courtyard of that barracks was a small bench. Next to the small bench, a soldier stood guard. No one knew why the bench had to be guarded. It was guarded around the clock—every day, every night, and from one generation of officers to the next, the order was passed on and the soldiers obeyed it. No one expressed any doubts or every asked why. If that’s how it was done, there had to be a reason.  
And so it continued until someone, some general or colonel, wanted to look at the original order. He had to rummage through all the files. After a good bit of poking around, he found the answer. Thirty-one years, two months and four days ago, an officer had ordered a guard to be stationed beside a small bench, which had just been painted, so that no one would think of sitting on wet paint (1992, 64). 
The bench was guarded for over thirty years without ever knowing the purpose! How many things do we do in schools and have no idea why we do them? When you think about teaching, can you think of some benches we have, things we’ve always done just because we’ve always done them? ​
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Rather than spending hours figuring out different literacy centers activities where the kids produce sheets and sheets of paper that require very little cognitive demand and often ends up at the bottom of a trashcan, perhaps the kids could spend that time reading and writing down their thinking about a story. Rather than having students fill out comprehension worksheets (shut-up sheets), perhaps the kids could be taught the art of discussion and engage in a thoughtful discussion about a story while being videoed so they can reflect on the depth of their discussion and thinking. 

Valuing the Thinking of Our Students

Over the past ten years, I have embraced the idea of celebrating kids’ thinking, and I have tried various ways to make their thinking and understanding visible. The ultimate goal of a teacher should be to understand a child’s thinking about a text, and how he or she developed that thinking. As inquiry-based teachers, we should teach the reader, not the reading, so that students can seamlessly transfer the skills, strategies, and concepts of reading from one text to another. So, what does that look like? I walked into a Grade 1 classroom and saw exactly what David Pearson expressed: student thinking being valued while providing authentic assessments of understanding. 

The students were sitting on the floor closely clustered around Ms. T who was reading, What Do You Do With an Idea by Kobi Yamada. Teachers and students were equipped with Post-it Notes, clipboards, and pencils. Conceptually, this book is quite difficult; however, what this book does do it push kids to question. In a nutshell, it is about a boy who has an idea that follows him around and grows and grows as the boy’s confidence grows until one day when…(read the book :-)) 


The students’ questions were exploding out of the room. As Ms. T read, students wrote and drew pictures of their questions, teachers scribed, and everyone turned and talked about their thinking. All thoughts were valued, and the students' thinking showed us their understanding, misconceptions, and overall comprehension. 
Students asked:
  • Why is the idea following him? 
  • Why does the idea have legs?
  • Is the idea inside an egg?
  • Why did they say it was a stupid idea?
  • Why is he keeping the idea to himself?
  • Why is he walking away from his idea? 
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When kids ask questions, they immediately want to answer them. They are fully invested in the reading process. So, Theresa masterfully then asked the students to discuss these questions in small groups.
 
Why is the idea following him? 
  • "Because it wanted a lot of attention."
  • "Because he wanted to be friends."
  • "Because [the idea] wants the boy’s imagination to grow."
  • "Because [the boy] was safe with [the idea]."
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When you walk into this classroom, you immediately realise that celebrating student thinking is of paramount importance. Kids were learning, thinking, and understanding, and time was not wasted. How can we ensure that what we value are students’ questions rather than those prescribed or ones we think are important, because in reality, they’re not important to the students. 

Transcending  the  Classroom  Walls

4/9/2015

 
Meaningful Homework?
Since the beginning of school, I have been a part of many discussions across grade levels about the value and purpose of homework. Using our homework policy as a guide, teams have developed homework that helps consolidate learning, is rooted in inquiry, allows for a degree of choice, and integrates IT in transforming how homework is communicated and completed. 

At the end of last school year, I posted about Dan Meyer’s work on how to engage students in inquiry-based mathematics through open-ended problem solving. This past week, the Grade 2 team put this into practice while inquiring into how they can organise numbers by using a big bag of Gummi Bears packets. Following this lesson,  they created a video of the lesson and posted it on their blogs to support parents in understanding what is going on in the classroom; allow students to articulate their learning; and create engaging ways to extend learning beyond the classroom. 

This led one student bringing in several boxes of Hubba Bubba for the class to explore just as they had with Gummi Bears. Below shows the progression of the lesson they developed using Dan Meyer’s Three Acts of a Mathematical Story:

  • ACT 1: Engage All and Lower Barriers to Entry
  • ACT 2: Determine and Overcome Obstacles
  • ACT 3: Resolve Conflict and Extend
Act 1: Engage All and Lower Barriers to Entry
They presented the students with a visual that pushed students to question, wonder, and had very few words. It was something that connected to the students and would engage them in mathematical thinking that they might not have thought of before.

Students in Grade 2 were asked to pose questions about this box of Hubba Bubba. Rather than just posing the question yourself, students are able to formulate their own thinking, which also greatly increases engagement.
  • How many packs are in the box?
  • How many pieces are in each pack?
  • How many pieces are in the box?
  • How many pieces can fit in my mouth?
  • What flavor is the gum?
  • Are all the flavors the same? 
  • Am I going to get a pack?
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The teachers then asked students to share their questions and then focused on the question that will help support the standards they are focusing on as a class. “Great. Love these questions. I hope we get to all of them. Here’s one I’ll need your help with first: How many pieces are in the box? Now estimate and give an answer that is too low and an answer that is too high." This allows all students to focus on developing their estimation skills and gives access to all students.
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ACT 2: Determine and Overcome Obstacles
Students began to figure out what they need to know and solve the problem. “What information would be useful to know here?" After students have listed all the information they need in order to solve the problem, they document their exploration to answer them. 

"How big is a piece of gum?"
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"How many pieces are in a pack?"
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"How many packs are in the box?"
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"How can we easily organize these to count?" 
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"How else can we group these?"
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Students then took time to organise their mathematical thinking on paper.  
ACT 3: Resolve Conflict and Extend
The students then were shown the original box, again and discussed and reflected on how they solved the problem.  Whose estimates were the closest? How did they figure out their estimation? How did students solve the problem? Are there any other questions that weren't answered? 

"Yes, you can each have a pack of gum." :-) 

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Concept-based  Mathematics

28/1/2015

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YouCubed:  Mathematical Fluency Without Fear 

Over the past several years, Jo Boaler, Professor at Stanford University, has developed YouCubed, a website dedicated to promoting inquiry- and concept-based mathematics instruction. In her most recent publication, Fluency Without Fear, she posits that a focus on fluency in mathematics is important; however, fluency is often misinterpreted as rote memorization of math facts without any number sense.
  • “High achieving students use number sense and it is critical that lower achieving students, instead of working on drill and memorization, also learn to use numbers flexibly and conceptually. Memorization and timed testing stand in the way of number sense, giving students the impression that sense making is not important.”
  • “When we emphasize memorization and testing in the name of fluency we are harming children, we are risking the future of our ever-quantitative society and we are threatening the discipline of mathematics (Boaler, pg. 8).”
Fluency Without Fear provides many concrete activities students can engage in to expand their conceptual understanding of number sense. Take a look at the end for some easy and ready-to-use activities for your classes, such as:
  • How Close to 100?
  • Pepperoni Pizza
  • How Many Are Hiding?
  • Shut the Box
Conceptual Learning: Number
Hear Jo speak about the importance of conceptual-based mathematics teaching and learning for all our students, particularly with our students who struggle the most.

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The Power of Ummm...Kath  Murdoch!

5/11/2014

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How can we create a bubble of wonder in our classrooms? Thanks, Kath! 
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The Case for Informational Texts 

8/4/2014

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Nell Duke, professor of language, literacy, and culture at the University of Michigan, helps articulate how informational texts can and should be used in elementary schools. In her Educational Leadership article, The Case for Informational Texts, she states that the seven things that are seen in primary classrooms that are effectively using informational texts to help students learn to read and write.
  1. Informational texts used from the beginning
  2. Informational text read alouds
  3. Sets of related texts
  4. Informational-text-rich environment
  5. A lexically curious environment
  6. Teaching about text
  7. Opportunities to share information through writing
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How do we prepare students for their world?

5/2/2014

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70 years later, Dewey’s final quote still rings true, “The world is moving at a tremendous rate. No one knows where. We must prepare our children not for the world of the past, not for our world, but for their world. The world of the future.”

How are we preparing our students for their world? The world of the future.

Other Resources from Cristobal Cabo
  • Cristobal Cabo Presentations
  • Hands-on Search:  How 3D printing is changing the education world for children with blindness
  • Makey-Makey: MIT students create device that allows children to use and create technology.
  • Young Wired State: Summer camp dedicated to bringing children to code (create computer programs) Some people believe that the language of “coding” should be taught as an additional language to all students. They are doing it.
  • Landfill Harmonic: This video has gone viral so many might have seen it, but still worth another view as it is unbelievably powerful. It helps put a great deal into perspective.
I was fortunate to attend the IB Regional Conference during which time I learned a great deal. One presenter, Cristobal Cabo, shared many innovative strategies to implement in the classroom, which I will share throughout the year. One of the most thought-provoking videos he shared was from the 1940s in the United States. While watching, ask yourself, how has the world changed? Where are we right now?  How far have we come? Where do we want to be? Education in the 1940s
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Creativity Takes time

6/11/2013

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Creativity Takes Time brings to life the impact time has on one’s creativity. It posits creativity is the result of freedom, playfulness, and fun. This video although only two minutes long implores us to find ways to increase the amount of time students are engaged in creative activities. This allows allows students to explore what Sir Ken Robinson defines as the essence of creativity, “The process of having original ideas that have value.” However, in many schools, time constraints and pressure are constantly put onto student activities. In study upon study, increasing time pressure greatly inhibits the ability students have to be creative and only allows for a narrow range of output often resulting in children producing the same work.
The video brings up some important questions about the learning activities we create for our students.

  • How do we create learning communities that allow students to feel comfortable to be creative?
  • Are our learning activities cognitively demanding? Do they require students to be creative? Or, does every student end up producing the same thing?
  • How can we increase the amount of cognitively demanding activities? What do they look like?
  • How can we increase the amount of time allocated to activities that require creative thinking with a schedule that is ‘full’?
Here is a poem I have read to every one of my classes. It’s entitled The Little Boy and emphasizes the importance of allowing for students to be creative individuals. It has a message for all of us.
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