Tag Archives: teaching

Lessons Learned from Coaching, Part 2: Assumptions

Posted on by

This is the second in a three-part series on my reflections of coaching teachers. In 2016, I helped develop and launch the Dell Certification process for Mentors through my work with Advanced Learning Partnerships. The focus is to help new coaches develop skills to help others reach their goals. The first lesson learned was about what I see as the true role of coaches—to build the capacity of others to reach their goals. This second takes a nod from coaching expert Jim Knight.

Listen for Contradictions to Your Assumptions

The above is a piece of wisdom hidden in the work of Jim Knight’s (2007) popular book on instructional coaching. Most coaches I’ve met have read the book, many completing book studies on it. I’ve participated in several book studies with it myself, sometimes as a participant and sometimes as a facilitator. There are a lot of great ideas in the book and in the work of the Kansas Coaching Project (now the Instructional Coaching Project). Some day I may write about the value of Knight’s “Big 4,” which provide a hierarchical framework for beginning coaching conversations, but the idea of assumptions is one that deserves a bit of exploration.

“But first…a story.” (If you’re one of my former students, this is where you’d insert a groan.) After the classroom, I’ve been coaching different groups of educators for the better part of a decade. If you count back to the beginning of my teaching career, when some of my middle school boys referred to me as “the band coach,” then I’ve been doing it all my career. I was working with a new district this past year that had me literally running from one coaching visit at one school to the next over a series of 3-4 days. Luckily, the district have some excellent EdTech coaches that were able to build a stronger coaching bond with their teachers and could continue the coaching conversations in person when I couldn’t be there. It’s a tough model to implement—the outside expert—but it works well when there is someone on the ground between visits.

I tried to see each of the 30 or so teachers I was working with three times over a period of a few months. The goal was to help each teacher develop a personal goal for the coaching visits and to ultimately help them implement new skills in their classrooms, either with my help or having me observe at the end. As might be expected, the teachers ranged in their levels of technology proficiency and willingness to collaborate. One in particular seemed reluctant to meet, often finding last-minute scheduling conflicts, so I had to be persistent and flexible in order to get into her classroom.

At our last session, I watched as this English teacher led her students through a traditional grammar lesson followed by the exploration of a text in which students explored a website she had given them to explain historical references or figurative examples in a text they were reading. The students had to find specific examples and describe their genesis using the website and hand write their responses on paper. I was very underwhelmed. This was technology coaching, after all. There was very limited technology use, despite all the students having access to their own laptop and a district Google account with all the resources that provides.

In our debrief, I walked in with my assumptions clouding my vision. I assumed this teacher just didn’t want to try new technologies, didn’t trust me, and wasn’t going to make any progress on her goal. She had skipped our last session, after all, and this class just wasn’t what I had hoped to see. What unfolded, was just the opposite.

When I asked about the very traditional grammar lesson and whether she had tried other—perhaps technology-based—alternatives she commented enthusiastically that “Yes” indeed she had! She had picked up on the mention of an online grammar resource in our initial training sessions and said her kids had really enjoyed it, but they had exhausted the limits of the free version. She had convinced her principal to seek funds to provide access to the site for all teachers in the school. Wow.

When I asked about whether the kids might possibly find and record information in another way, perhaps using a shared Google doc and perhaps the research tools, as we had gone over earlier in the year (Harumph!), she commented that again, “Yes, they had been using Google docs.” But this lesson was more about building background knowledge and knowing her kids and some of their challenges simply with keyboarding and using the new resources, she thought the paper-based route would help them get through this foundational lesson quickly so she could apply that knowledge in a more substantial matter later when the tools would have greater benefit.

She thanked me for the resources that had been introduced and for the opportunity to work through some of them. Most of all she enjoyed collaborating with other teachers across the district and having the time to share ideas. She said the whole experience had really been beneficial to her. Just because what I saw that day didn’t set my little techno heart ablaze, it didn’t mean that this particular teacher hadn’t been pursuing her own goals for technology use. Again, it was a good lesson for me. I had to step back and refrain from imposing what may have been my goals for her. Not all teachers are going to be as enthusiastic about technology the way I am, but that doesn’t mean they can find ways to support teaching and learning in their classroom. As a coach, I need to remember to keep helping people move forward by making progress on their own goals, not necessarily to the same place I want to be, and especially to not assume that if I don’t see something that it’s not happening.

RESOURCES

Knight, J. (2007). Instructional coaching. A partnership approach to improving instruction. NSDC.

Rethinking Rubrics: Rubrics that Make You Think

Posted on by

In 2010, my colleague (and mentor) Dr. Sharon Harsh was presiding over a meeting with staff from the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center (ARCC—our organization) and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), with whom we had collaborated for five years. She was summarizing the trends in education from the past decade or so and going out on a limb by making predictions of trends that were soon to influence education. She hit them right on the head, especially with one prediction: learning progressions will become prevalent and guide the work educators do at all levels.

Simply put, learning progressions describe the most likely steps people will take when developing new knowledge and skills. For example, before students can combine fractions with different denominators, they have to recognize what fractions are and understand what they represent. They have to know that a larger number in the denominator doesn’t mean it’s a larger fraction. Later they come to understand how different fractions are related—focusing on how to express two fractions with equivalent denominators, then unlike denominators. There’s more, but that’s a portion of the idea of how some concepts related to fractions progress.

Sharon got this so right! Learning progressions strongly influenced the way new standards were developed. And state departments of education, including VDOE staff in the present, are developing and sharing the learning progressions behind their standards so teachers can better understand how students master standards within and across a grade level. Teachers, too, are developing learning progressions at a finer grain that help them understand how students develop skills and knowledge within a single standard (like the idea of combining fractions above). I find learning progressions really intriguing, but I’m a little geeky like that.

Applying Learning Progressions

I’ve long used rubrics to support my instruction and to score student work. In the graduate class I taught, every activity used a rubric, and the students got all of the rubrics on day one and were encouraged to use them as they worked through activities. I’ve never really given multiple-choice tests. Ever. I’ve also helped a lot of teachers develop rubrics, especially when they need to assign some sort of score or grade to complex problems or projects. In many cases, a multiple-choice question isn’t the best option.

Below is an example of a rubric I created in the past. It’s typical of many I’ve seen. If you’re a student who wants to score well, you don’t make mistakes. As you make more mistakes, your score is lower. It seems logical, at first.

 

Learning Outcomes

 Novice Developing Approaching

Expert
Grammar and mechanics of language The product contains numerous (7 or more) errors in grammar, punctuation, and/or capitalization of written text, or 3 or more errors in spoken language. The product contains several (4-6) errors in grammar, punctuation, and/or capitalization of written text, or 1 or 2 errors in spoken language. The product contains a few (1-3) errors in grammar, punctuation, and/or capitalization of written text, or no more than 1 error in spoken language. The product contains no errors in grammar, punctuation, or capitalization of written text, or no errors in spoken language.
Solve multistep problems with fractions The student does not show his/her work, presents incomplete work, or inaccurately presents work in regard to the guidelines. The student designs a solution that has more than one error in calculation. The student designs a solution that has no more than one error in calculation. The student designs a solution that meets the guidelines with no errors.

While this is a pretty typical rubric, it isn’t really very helpful for promoting learning. Why? It’s not the number of errors that’s important, it’s the kind of errors that students make that’s most important. If a student makes two or three errors, but there’s no clear pattern to them, it may just be a mistake because of a lack of time or sloppiness. That doesn’t tell me anything about what they do or don’t understand or how I need to re-teach them. But when a student makes consistent errors, like using “its/it’s” incorrectly over and over, or writing too many run-on sentences, or confusing larger denominators with larger fractions, then I know what to focus on. I needed something that showed me common errors, as well as that progression of how learners move from being a novice to mastering the standard.

Improved Rubrics

I’ve finally been able to connect that sage prediction that Sharon Harsh made with my own practice. Since standards are based on learning progressions, we should be monitoring where our kids are along those progressions. This helps not just teachers, but students too! Both can see what skills and knowledge they’ve mastered, where they need to go, and even suggestions as to what steps they might take to get there. Some might recognize that this is also a critical component of using formative assessment strategies to support learning, especially as proposed by Margaret Heritage (e.g., Where am I going? Where am I now? How do I get there?).

So over the past couple of years, I’ve been pushing myself to improve my rubrics. Instead of just counting errors, which tells me little about what my students truly know or can do, I’m now designing rubrics that describe the progression of learning students go through when mastering a content standard.

Please note: In the examples, the scoring categories are labeled as Learning Outcomes, but many teachers will recognize that the language used is drawn from actual standards, in these examples, the Virginia Standards of Learning, Common Core State Standards, and a WIDA ELD standard. So, in this way, the rubrics are actually standards-based. In fact, they’re probably more standards-based than any forced-choice assessment can be, at least for sophisticated learning outcomes.

Now when I work with teachers on complex problems or performance tasks, we co-develop rubrics that describe learning progressions. See the examples below created recently with some great teachers from the Crestwood School District in Dearborn, Michigan. These are rough drafts, but even at this stage I can see the progression learners go through for each of these learning outcomes. I learned this from these teachers, but every time I do this, the discussion we have about learning progressions is great.

 

Learning Outcomes

 Novice Developing Approaching

Expert
Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.  The student’s product does not contain a clearly stated opinion or goes off topic and there’s no evidence. Possibly no reasons. The student’s product does include a clearly stated opinion, but lacks support through reasons that are expanded or supported by evidence from the texts. The student’s product does include a clearly stated opinion with some evidence, but the reasons lack coherence, may not be clearly sequenced or organized. The student’s product contains a clearly stated argument (or point of view) with reasons supported by evidence drawn from the texts and is clearly organized and coherent.
Students read informational articles on globalization to consider its impact on their lives (e.g., Internet, mass media, food and beverage distributors, retail stores).   The student’s product includes an opinion but does not include information from the articles. There’s no indication the student has or can read the articles. The student’s product contains phrases or some keywords from the articles but may not be explained or connected to a position related to their lives. The student’s product includes some examples from the articles but they may not support their position as it relates to their lives. The student’s product includes citations of examples from the articles that support their position and relates those citations to their lives.
Make a line plot to display a data set of measurements in fractions of a unit (1/2, 1/4, 1/8).  The student’s product does not create a line plot or creates something different from a line plot. The student’s product contains a line plot with simple fractions (e.g. ½ and ¼), with fractions out of order (because of denominator). Something’s out of order. The student’s product contains a line plot with points inaccurately plotted, so it does not match the data, though the fractions are in order. The student’s product contains an accurate line plot that displays the appropriate data and the fractions are in order.

 

Summative assessment is just one use of this type of rubric. Now that we’ve described learning progressions for these standards, these rubrics have multiple uses. Teachers can hand them out at the beginning of any unit, lesson, or activity that uses these learning outcomes so students know what they can do to get the grade they want. It saves teachers time because they don’t need to create rubrics for every activity, just for each standard. More importantly, students can use the rubrics to monitor their own progress. Schools wanting to move towards mastery learning or standards-based report cards can also use these types of learning progressions to truly describe what the difference between an A or a B (or other two grading categories) really means. It’s not just a score, it’s a point along mastery. Finally, this type of rubric is helpful when talking with parents. When parents want to know, “Why didn’t my kid get an A?” teachers can show parents exactly where their child’s current performance is along the progression and where they need to get to master the outcome (and get that A!). Maybe in the future, parents will ask, “How can I help my kid master the standards?” Maybe.

Why Audience Matters

Posted on by

In the past week I’ve had reminders from two great educators in different parts of the country who remind me why audience matters. This is something that comes up often in my work but not something I believe many classroom teachers routinely think much about. For a long time, there were only a few things classroom teachers could do to expand the audience for student work. But the audience for student work is now unlimited thanks to the many safe ways that teachers and students can share work beyond the school walls. And that can be a game changer.

Let’s begin with this quote from David Dulberger, a dynamic fifth-grade teacher at Emma K. Doub School in Hagerstown, MD. His review of Piktochart actually prompted this post. In his review (which you should read if you’re interested in creating infographics, but you should probably bookmark his blog for ongoing great ideas), he makes this statement,

“I have found that my students are inclined to work harder on projects that will be showcased to an audience greater than their parents and me. By simply clicking the publish button, my students know that their work can, and often will be, viewed with more than just our classroom community. The concept of having a 5th grade student publish an infographic to the web may sound outrageous to most people, but my students, and many others around the world are more than capable. “

This is a simple, yet powerful statement. When student see value for their work outside of the classroom–when the audience is greater than just the teacher or their peers–they often feel the pressure to do a better job. That’s the power of audience. Simply by changing the audience for student work, students will want to do better.

The importance of audience is underscored by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their popular instructional design model, Understanding by Design. I use UbD when working with teachers on curriculum design, especially designing performance tasks. A key component of their framework for performance tasks is identifying a relevant audience, and as often as possible, I encourage teachers to design tasks with an audience that goes beyond the classroom to make the tasks more relevant to their students.

Need more convincing? Consider this e-mail from Becki Price, another fifth-grade teacher (just coincidence), but she’s in Round Rock, TX, where I had the privilege of working with a cohort of teachers using Chromebooks. Teachers in the cohort were trying new ideas for student projects, and Becki reflected on a science project. I didn’t get to see it in action but was able to chat with her about it during my last visit. Here’s what she says,

“I wanted to share with you that we wrapped up our first project for the second semester. I took the ideas you shared with me and the student’s projects are posted on my webpage for the world to see! The kids are really excited about this, and some are suddenly not pleased with their final product since it’s out there for everyone to see and compare.”

The Audience Continuum

Perhaps because I taught music, I had the concept of audience drilled into my head all of my career. Everything we did was ultimately for some audience outside of the classroom. We prepared concerts and shows for parents, the community, and competitions across the country. Many school music groups now have their own Facebook or websites with videos of performances that make it even easier to share their work.

But what about a regular classroom? What can those teachers in other content areas do? Digital technologies, as illustrated by these two great teachers, make that easy. Whether using a secure website, a blogging service just for kids, or allowing older students to use social media or other means to promote their work, there’s no reason any teachers shouldn’t be able to “break down the classroom walls” an expand the audience for student work.

As a final example, I use a portion of The Continuum from the Dubuque Community Public Schools (see below). This portion of The Continuum provides guidance for teachers to plan for and implement lessons and activities that promote student communication and collaboration. In terms of audience, my standard story is as you move up The Continuum and you’re trying to promote student communication, the level of audience for student work should increase.

That interprets to moving from an audience of one–just the teacher–to the rest of the classroom. From there, that middle line is really important. It represents the break between inside and outside of the classroom. Moving beyond the classroom means that student work is viewed first in the larger school or family-centric community, but ultimately by the world. In the two fifth-grade examples, note the impact of making the audience the world: same content standards and same learning goals + largest audience possible = increased student interest, engagement, and desire to succeed.

The Continuum

Expanding audiences for student work

Now it’s your turn. Take a lesson you’re working on (or that a teacher you know is working on) and explore ways of expanding the audience. Very often it takes very little work. You may have to explore a new tool, like these teachers did, but chances are most teachers have access to a range of free and easy tools they can use to expand the audience for their students’ work.