What are we doing wrong in math?

Math instruction has been on my mind a lot in recent years. My school has done so much to learn about how to most effectively teach language arts that I have a lot of confidence in that area. However, I feel as though we have a lot to learn about math. I've come to the conclusion that my school is typical in this matter. As a society we do not have the most positive attitude towards math. It would be highly embarrassing as an adult to say that you can't read, but it is perfectly acceptable to say that you don't do math. Why is that? What message does this send to kids?

Because I feel so good about my instruction in writing and reading I keep looking for ways to make math more like those workshops. So far, I've had minimal success at best. I have come to one significant (I think) conclusion; in language arts we are teaching our students skills but in math we are teaching content. In language arts we teach students how to make connections as they read, how to organize a piece of writing, or how to write strong leads; skills they could use in any text they read or write. In math we teach students how to multiply or divide, but we limit the use of the skill to specific instances. Instead of teaching students to think like mathematicians we are teaching them to follow set rules. We teach students to be readers and writers. We should be doing the same in math.

I just don't have any idea how we do it.

Text Type Units of Study

I've had the luck of working with our phenomenal reading teacher for two years now. She and I have co-taught reading, writing, and word study for two and a half hours a day. It has been the greatest learning experience of my career and more fun than one deserves to have at work. However, it will soon come to an end. She will move on to another classroom next year and I will go through severe withdrawal.

One of the things that I think has gone exceptionally well during these two years has been our text type units. I need to review them for myself in the hopes that I will remember how to do it on my own next year. We've taught our students how to write personal narratives, essays, and reports. We spend about one quarter on each unit. The first quarter we focus on writer's notebooks and the writing process.

At the beginning of a unit we immerse the students in the text type. We read aloud or do shared readings of multiple examples of the text type. After reading many we guide the students in developing a list of characteristics of the texts we have read (we still may not have named the text type). After creating a comprehensive, or at least significant, list we write one together as a class. This may take a couple of weeks. We plan, draft, revise, and edit it together.

The next step is a preassessment. Students spend one or two days writing their own text without any support from teachers. From these examples we are able to determine what areas of focus we need for the unit (leads, organization, homonyms, voice, paragraphing, etc.) It takes several days to really look over their preassessments, so during that time we do some writer's notebook lessons that support the text type (maybe interviews or notetaking ideas for reports, for example).

Finally, we begin teaching focus lessons to help students become better writers of the current text type. These lessons are based on our notes from their preassessments. Some lessons are for the entire class, other items are focused on guided writing groups of a few students, and some things are addressed through individual writing conferences. During this time students are independently writing about anything they wish.

Near the end of our focus lessons students being working on their "big game" text (thank you, phenomenal reading teacher!). In this text they should be considering all of the things we have been working on during the unit. For this text we will conference with them for revisions and edits and anything else they need. A date will be set for final completion (many finish early) and a date for a writing share with another class.

There are still some areas in which I want to improve my instruction during these text type units. One piece that is a challenge for me is sending students to look at mentor texts. I need to be sure that I have a plethora of examples and that students understand how to turn to mentor texts to help them improve their writing. It would also be beneficial to determine a way to streamline the shared writing of our example. It is a very important piece, but hugely time consuming. Next year will be challenging as I attempt to do all of this on my own. Fortunately, I've had the best teacher and learning experience possible.

Reading Recovery & the Miracles of Primary Education

First off, I have to say that I am an upper grade teacher. I have spent the last nine years in fourth or fifth grade. I love the students' independence, their ability to discuss topics at such a mature level, their sense of humor, and their attention spans. However, I'm becoming fascinated more and more with the little ones. Maybe it is because I have young children. Maybe I'm reverting (I did my student teaching in K and 2). Who knows? But this new interest led me to observe a reading recovery lesson last week.

Reading recovery, to the best of my knowledge, is designed for first graders who are having difficulty with reading and/or writing. They receive one-on-one instruction every day for 12-20 weeks from a specially trained teacher. I was so impressed with the lesson I observed. I must admit that I truly believe a lot of the credit goes to the teacher, as she is amazing. However, I think the structure of reading recovery deserves praise as well. The student did word work, reading, and writing in the span of half an hour. Reading recovery teachers (at least at our school) only work with four students at a time. They each do reading recovery half a day. To the uninitiated I'm sure that sounds like nothing, but those half hours are intense. What struck me the most was that the student was not only learning strategies and skills for reading and writing. While that is a huge part of the lesson, it is not all of it. The student was being forced to be a responsible learner. The teacher reminded the child of her jobs (check the endings as you read, use your thumbs to help with that) and pushed her to make sure she was correct (what can you do to check it, is that what you expect to see, are you right). In this way the student was responsible for making sense of her reading and writing. As teachers we are often in a rush and have such a strong desire to help students that we end up giving them the answers. Or, just as bad, we only question them when they are wrong. As a result, they assume they are wrong anytime we push them to check. This first grader was questioned throughout the lesson when she was right and wrong. She had to be sure she was understanding; no one was doing it for her. This is a critical life skill.

I so enjoyed this observation I'm going back this week!

The Extremes of Standardized Testing

Our school began our spring, state-mandated, standardized tests yesterday. The first group of students to endure this challenge are our fourth graders. Yesterday's test was math, which is a marathon of questions. At the end of the day I asked one of the fourth grade teachers how it had gone. She said she had students at both extremes. I took this to mean students who took their time and took it seriously versus students who zipped through the test. That's not what she meant at all. She had one young woman who had been coming in everyday for the last week stressing out about things she could not remember how to do: adding decimals, finding the mean, the median, and the mode, etc. This student bawled for the first hour of the test necessitating a call to the testing coordinator because it was a disruption for other students. The other end of the spectrum was a student who took the test in another room in a small group. He fell asleep.

I'm not sure what these two examples suggest about our culture of testing. I think it can't be too good, though. As teachers we walk a fine line trying to be sure our students take the tests seriously without falling apart at the seams. Students begin taking these tests at the age of eight. That is awfully young to feel the burden of test scores. I worry that learning for the joy of learning will quickly be lost when we subject students to more and more standardized testing.

I saw a local high school's spring musical this weekend. The production was well done and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I was struck, however, by the extreme whiteness of the cast. I teach in an elementary school that is 15% white. I looked up the high school and it is 61% white. That doesn't seem so overwhelming, but in our area that is significant. This would have been simply an interesting observation except for a discussion I had later that afternoon.

Speaking with colleagues of my husband (college professors) about an acquaintance who is looking to relocate in the area, they said they had recommended this high school to him. I mentioned my experience and observation about the racial demographics. They seemed quite surprised by it. I was left with the sense that these individuals did not believe that the demographics played any role in the school's reputation, something which seems like an obvious factor to me. I agree that this high school is well respected, but I believe that its population is a part of that. Fewer than 10% of students there receive free or reduced lunches (for our school district almost 20% do). Almost 60% of students at my elementary school do. The high school we feed to is not as well respected, even though they had a principal for years who was award-winning and very highly thought of. Race and socio-economic levels are a large part of what determines a child's fate - in school and out.

Technology

I haven't gotten involved in all the discussions of technology in education for a variety of reasons. One reason is that there are so many people who are much more highly qualified than I am to weigh in on these issues. However, my school-provided laptop crashed last night. It managed to crash in such a way that even my husband could do nothing to fix it. The tech person at school turned it on this morning, said, "Interesting." Then, "It may be a few days." Luckily, everything is saved to our server so even if my laptop is done for good I haven't lost my work. Also luckily, I have another laptop temporarily while mine gets help. However, this laptop is clearly not mine. It doesn't have all of my links saved, things are not formated the way I want, the little things are a problem.

Obviously, this technology snag does not really impact my students. But dealing with the challenge has taken time and energy from me. And now other work takes me longer because my routine is gone. This should not suggest that I am against technology in any way - I could not live without my laptop. Technology, like anything else, is wonderful when it works the way it should.

5/1/07 - Our tech person was able to restore my computer without having to reimage it. So, I lost nothing but a little time. I am so grateful to her!

Back in the Saddle

I've had a week back after maternity leave. Looking back, I realize I did very little actual teaching during the week, but it is probably best to ease back into things.

I did do individual interviews with the majority of my class in math (I'll do the last few tomorrow). I wanted to assess what they understood about probability and graphing, which they studied while I was out. I didn't want to give them a test for two reasons; they have already been tested on this material and I'm not convinced a written test would have given me the information I was looking for.

I designed an in-depth interview based on the SOLs in these two areas. I found graphs to show them and have them explain to me. I wrote up sets of data for them to describe how they would graph. I had a list of possible events for them to explain the likelihood of. Each interview took between ten and fifteen minutes. I had to bite my tongue on occasion to keep for turning interviews into lessons and stay focused on the assessment. However, on the whole, I am thrilled with how they have gone. In that short time I have learned a lot about what my students do and don't understand about probability and graphing. We'll see if I'm still this happy with the interviews after I record them tomorrow and can watch them!

Going On-Ramp

I have spent the past few days preparing to "go on-ramp" (as Amy told me), returning to work after a few months of maternity leave. One of the things I noticed immediately is how little time we have before we begin our Standards of Learning tests in reading, math, and science. Not surprisingly this got me thinking about preparation for them.

That train of thought followed a meandering path and I came to the conclusion that we, as a society, feel a need to quantify everything. Unfortunately, some things are not quantifiable. Facts we expect students to memorize are quantifiable. Understanding of some concepts is quantifiable, but not all. Some skills are quantifiable, but again, not all. However, the standardized tests that we administer on a grand scale every year only cover things that are quantifiable. In doing so, we do a terrible disservice to our students and teachers.

My issues with standardized tests are at least three-fold:
1. They only test things that are quantifiable. This is an issue in that it places priority on those things. This automatically makes other skills, concepts, etc. less important in our schools. We must focus on those things that are tested to the detriment of everything else.
2. Any standardized test is just a snapshot. It gives one brief picture of a student. If they are having a bad day for any reason; family issues, little sleep, not enough food, friendship problems, etc. they may not perform accurately.
3. The way we adminster standardized tests does not show a student's growth. We test students at the end of each year in ways that are completely removed from previous year's tests. We compare students to benchmarks without giving any consideration to where they began. This means that a student could make stupendous growth and still appear to be a failure under our current system.

For an interesting, amusing analogy on this issue, see A Year of Reading's post titled "No Dentist Left Behind".

I spent about an hour back in my classroom today because my students were having a goodbye party for the substitute teacher. This woman is absolutely amazing. She taught for many years - a variety of subjects and ages - and was a principal. She is retired but still teaches for our intersessions and does some long term substituting. She substituted for me on my first maternity leave and I was thrilled that she agreed to do so again.

When we spoke today she was very apologetic because she felt they had not gotten through enough of the science unit that I had planned for them. This gave me pause for three reasons. The first was simply that I did not want her to be concerned about it. I know that my students' time was well spent while she was with them. Secondly, it pains me a little to think that we have to "cover" information. This does not suggest real learning to me. The unit she was teaching was on light and sound. They have done all of the lessons on light. My feeling is that if they have a deep understanding of the concepts surounding light then they have done well in science. If they had managed to get through all of the lessons but did not really understand the concepts, then the entire quarter would have been wasted. Last of all, she felt they had not accomplished as much as she had hoped because there were so many interruptions to their instructional time.

All teachers struggle with this. I think it probably becomes a bigger and bigger issue as the students get older. The interruptions they faced in the last two weeks were a school math tournament, an assembly, patrol meetings, and a school-wide writing celebration (and of course the mercury fiasco). All of these are worthy ventures. This was simply another example for me of the balance teachers and schools walk in their attempts to teach children all of the ideas, concepts, and information we have deemed necessary, and build life skills, and expand their horizons. Schools have so many more responsibilities to our children than most people realize. I think we are trying to be everything to everyone, and ultimately that is not possible. Individual schools and society at large must consider the expectations and be prepared to make adjustments as needed.

HazMat and the Hazards of Teaching

A couple of days ago one of my students brought a small vial of mercury to school. At the end of the day, during science centers, she passed it around to about half of the class. (I am on maternity leave and missed this excitement, chaos, or insanity - depending on your viewpoint.) No one shared this information with the teacher that day. That evening a parent, whose child fortunately told her, called the principal to inform her. She immediately began taking steps to ensure everyone's safety. She called the public health nurse for advice. The nurse notified the environmental health office. The principal called the office of risk management. She then spoke to those students who were involved in the incident. Both a HazMat team and the office of risk management came to inspect the classroom. The students had to be relocated until the classroom was inspected and deamed safe. Those students involved had to be checked by the HazMat team. This means that half the class was pulled out of instructional time twice (once with the principal, once with the HazMat team) and the entire class was relocated for a couple of hours. It is challenging to teach and learn under those circumstances. In addition, those classrooms near ours were distracted by the arrival and work of the HazMat team, not a quiet process I'm sure. The teachers were highly distracted due to unease about what has happening in their wing of the building. A conservative guess would be that this impacted 120 children for at least half a day.

I recount this incident because it is an example, albeit an extreme one, of how events get in the way of teachers teaching and students learning. We are together about six hours a day for 180 days of school each year. If all we had to do with that time was teach, we could accomplish so much. However, we are teaching children, not just curriculum, and this can lead to challenges. They are people with complicated lives, just as adults are. No adult spends all of their time at work accomplishing tasks. There is time spent socializing, time spent lost in thought about wonderful or terrible things happening in lives, time spent redoing work that was orignially completed while distracted by something, and on and on. This is true for children as well, we are simply less willing to admit it and try to address it.

I do not believe that we should lower standards, change our curriculum, or make any other drastic changes. I simply believe that we need to look at our schools as places where people are learning, teaching, and living everyday.

My students have been chastised for not letting an adult know immediately about the mercury. They have had quite a scare. A couple of students' shoes were confiscated because mercury was found on them. I am glad that the adults involved made sure that the students understood the seriousness of this incident. I am also glad that the adults involved did not overreact to the situation. These students realized they were doing something they shouldn't, but they had no idea of the dangers of mercury. Nothing about this whole episode is in our curriculum, but I would suggest that my class learned more from this than they learn from a week of my lessons.

Flexible Interviewing in the Classroom

The Teacher's Guide to Flexible Interviewing in the ClassroomLearning What Children Know About MathBy Herbert P. Ginsburg, Susan F. Jacobs, & Luz Stella Lopez

Thoughts to remember:

• Need to always (or at least frequently) ask students to explain answers - even (especially?) when they are correct.
• Need to use more open-ended questions.
• Need to focus less on the answer, and put more focus on the process.
• Need to have students do more writing about their thinking.
• Need to have students do more self-evaluation.
• Need good ways to document what I learn from interviews/conferences.

Fair Isn't Always Equal by Rick Wormeli - Reflections

Reading this book has made me think of something I read several years ago (sadly, I don't recall where) about our education system. The argument was that in the US we do our pre-K and graduate schools better than anyone else in the world. Our K-12 and colleges are another story. That isn't to say that we don't do those well, they are just not as outstanding globally as our pre-K and graduate institutions. I'm left wondering how much this has to do with grades. In pre-K students are learning for the thrill of learning. While information on their progress is conveyed to parents (and possibly students as well), they do not receive grades. Our strongest graduate institutions are similar. Students are working for the knowledge (and of course, the degree), but they often do not receive grades. If they do receive grades, they are not below a B. Interesting.

It is easy to think that grading students puts the emphasis on those letters rather than on the information they are learning. One argument for grades is that students will not bother to do the work without them. However, that is clearly not true for pre-K or graduate school. Is it possible that we have socialized students into valuing grades over learning? Is it possible to create an environment in which students are focused on learning regardless of, or in spite of, grades? It is something I would love the opportunity to try.

Fair Isn't Always Equal by Rick Wormeli - Grading

The final section of the book focuses on grading. In recent years I have come to view grading and assessment as two very different things and two that are often confused or misunderstood. Wormeli addresses some of my concerns.
One of the first questions addressed is that off adapting/adjusting grades based on students. Does a student with a learning disability or one learning English earn a different grade for the same sort of work than a GT student? It fascinates me to see this questioned because it seems like common sense to me. We must hold students accountable, but we must also understand their limitations. It is important to stretch students and push them forward, but if our expectations are unreasonable these students will give up and we will lose them. As I grade (something I do almost solely because it is required of me) I consider the individual student. The grade is based upon their abilities, not those of their classmates or other grade level peers. A student working above grade level will not automatically earn an A or B simply because they have met, or exceeded, our objectives. If the work is average for that student they will earn a C. I believe they need to measure themselves against themselves, not against an arbitrary standard or against their peers.

Wormeli also addresses the issues of effort, attendance, and behavior as they impact grades. I feel lucky to teach elementary school in a district that has a separate grade for effort. This allows me to address that issue without it impacting the academic grade. However, it is an important question as students move on to middle and high school where there is no separate grade. I believe it tells students and parents a lot to see the effort grade alongside the academic grade. If a student has earned a B but has an S (satisfactory - versus good or outstanding) for effort, it should be a sign that they could be doing a lot better if they were willing to work at it. I think the difficulty in addressing attendance, behavior, etc. in grades is a sign of the problems we face with grades. A letter grade for a subject for an entire marking period tells so little. A student may have studied the five kingdoms of living things, animal cells, plant cells, and microscopes in science during one marking period. If they receive a B on their report card in science, what does that tell them or their parents about their understanding of those various concepts? Practically nothing. And if they were frequently absent or misbehaved often and this resulted in a C or D, they know even less about what they learned. A simple letter grade is too vague to mean much to anyone.

I have many issues with the ideas of grading and with the way we currently grade. However, currently it is the status quo and something that I must do. As a result, Wormeli's chapter on 10 approaches to avoid in grading was interesting. Some of his 10 approaches seemed obvious to me: avoid incorporating nonacademic factors into the final grade, avoid grading practice (homework), avoid withholding assistance, avoid group grades, and avoid grading on a curve. These were not things I needed to be told. It may have taken me time as a teacher to learn some of them (especially the one about homework), but I came to these conclusions before reading this book.
However, other approaches he mentions have given me good food for thought. "Avoid penalizing students' multiple attempts at mastery." Wormeli's argument is that if our goal is mastery and learning, then allow students as many opportunities as necessary to learn! If we don't offer those opportunities or if we penalize students for using them, we are not focused on their learning.
"Avoid assessing students in ways that do not accurately indicate their mastery." At face value this seems obvious. However, when I really stop to think about the ways I assess students I know I am guilty of inaccuracy at times. In the attempt to be creative and to allow students a variety of ways to show their mastery, there are times when the assessment is out of line. Having students do a lot of writing or use art can be fantastic assessments, but sometimes those options don't match the learning. This approach is one I need to keep in mind.
"Avoid allowing extra credit and bonus points." This is the opposite of the last one, in that my initial response is, "Why not?" Wormeli explains, "Anything that has enough points attached to it to alter a grade's accuracy in terms of what students have mastered should be avoided." His point is that many of our extra credit or bonus options have little or nothing to do with the objectives we are studying. He suggests ways in which extra credit is useful - to push students to attend a lecture or other outside academic activity for example. However, he suggests that it makes more sense to give students the opportunity to prove their mastery on another test, project, or in another way rather than simply do something extra.
On this topic of redoing work or retaking tests, Wormeli has a short chapter about how best to handle this. He makes the point that this is only done at the teacher's discretion, that parents should have to sign the original work to ensure that they are aware of it, that it is important to work with students to set a timeline for the work (or else we may be setting them up for failure again), and that students must attach the original work to the new work. The fact that this is written by a classroom teacher who understands the realities we face is shown in one of his points in this chapter: "Do not allow any work to be redone during the last week of the grading period." He understands how busy teachers are at that time and believes that for our own sanity we should stop work being redone before this point.

Grading scales are not something I have spent a lot of time thinking about as an elementary school teacher. However, Wormeli's chapter on them is interesting. He discusses the difference between a 100 point scale (with the traditional percentages) and a 4.0 scale (as used for GPAs). He also mentions that various school districts, schools, and even teachers often define letter grades differently on the 100 point scale. For example, one might consider 90-100 to be an A, another 80-100 an A, and another 94-100 an A. This makes students' grades even more vague. Another important issue he addresses is the idea of using rubrics. He suggests that when using rubrics with 4 levels we set them up for students and parents to see each level as a letter grade. We would be better served to use rubrics with 3, 5, or 6 levels so that the focus is on the objectives and descriptors rather than considering how they equate to letter grades.

How we record these grades is not something I had thought very carefully about before. I tend to record grades simply, quickly, and with a minimum of fuss. Wormeli recommends that our gradebooks should reflect our thinking about teaching, grading, and assessing. One suggestion of his that I am considering is having grade books be organized by objective or standard rather than by medium (test, homework, etc.). This will allow the gradebook to reflect not just students' grades, but also achievement levels for standards which will drive instruction. Currently, I keep separate checklists by standard to serve the latter purpose. Combining those with my gradebook makes a lot of sense. One point that stands out is that this may require recording one assignment in multiple places (with a grade for ordering decimals, a grade for adding decimals, and a grade for converting decimals to fractions, for example).

One last point about gradebooks and calculating grades is to consider using medians or modes rather than means. Finding the mean allows one really bad day to significantly impact a student's grade. Using the median or mode may give a more accurate picture of the student's learning over time.

Wormeli also writes about report card formats. I can't control this, but I found his chapter to be very validating. He addresses the issue of grading students against a standard versus against their own progress. I believe that students need to see how they personally are progressing regardless of how this balances against their grade level objectives. However, I also understand the importance of informing parents of that progress as well. Wormeli recommends recording a letter and number grade. The letter grade would reflect achievement in relation to the objective and the number, from 1-3, would reflect personal growth throughout the grading period. My team spent time last summer creating a "progress report" that allows us similar freedoms. Our traditional school district report card remains the same - and I use it to grade personal growth for each student. In addition to it, we send home a list of the fifth grade objectives in each subject that were studied for that grading period. For each objective a student earns a number from 1-4 showing their progress in relation to that standard. In this way, parents and students can see personal progress and grade level standards.

Fair Isn't Always Equal by Rick Wormeli - Assessment

The second section of the book focuses on assessment. From it, I have a new favorite quote about grading & testing: "Too often, educational tests, grades, and report cards are treated by teachers as autopsies when they should be viewed as physicals." Douglas Reeves

Wormeli writes about 3 types of assessment: preassessment, formative assessment, and cumulative assessment. "Many teachers make the mistake of spending considerable energy designing a culminating project or test, but its end-of-unit nature limits impact on student learning. Students can't use the feedback they gain from such assessments to grow. A better use of energy, then, is for teachers to spend considerable time and effort designing and using formative assessments offered in route to summative achievements. These frequent checkpoints are where students learn the most. They allow teachers to change course mid-journey, and they keep students and their parents informed - positives all around." (p. 28) I know that I have been guilty of this and I have watched numerous other teachers do the same. I think I have now gone too far to the other side; I use many formative assessments and almost no cumulative assessments. Wormeli has me seriously reconsidering this.

Wormeli spends a chapter on 3 types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessments. He makes some interesting comments about rubrics, including dividing them into analytic vs. holistic rubrics. It appears that analytic rubrics are what I'm accustomed to using, but I'm still not sure I fully understand the differences. I'll have to do some more research.His ideas about portfolios and student assessments have provoked some interesting thinking. I've been struggling with how best to use portfolios in my classroom and have not managed to come up with anything reasonable. Wormeli has managed to give me some good ideas, including doing some things electronically. I think it would be fascinating to have students scan in work and orally, digitally record their reasons for including each item. However, this will require that I think seriously about how to help students choose work examples.
Reading the ideas on self-assessment prove to me that I am already doing some of this, without realizing. However, I need to formalize and find better ways to respond to students' self-assessments. Their interactive notebooks, reading notebooks, and math logs all include at least a bit of self-assessment, but they do not currently get any useful feedback from me. This has bothered me before, but it is really eating at me now that I've read this.

Going into more depth on assessments, Wormeli writes about ways to tier assessments. One good point that he makes is that teachers should begin with the on-grade level task and then work up or down as necessary to meet the needs of the students. In this way, teachers can be focused on the on-grade level tasks rather than ending up with unreasonable expectations based on having planned for advanced tasks. Many of Wormeli's ideas for tiering assessments seem too cumbersome for daily use (at least to me): learning contracts, learning menus, and tic-tac-toe boards. Others, like cubing and RAFT, seem forced in some ways and not completely useful. However, the overall idea of tiering assessments is critical and he makes some good points. He reminds teachers that we must begin our planning for tiered assessments by "expecting every student to demonstrate full proficiency with the standard, not something less." (p. 56) This sends us back to the ideas of differentiated instruction and the need to fully understand the standards and objectives and what it means to meet and master them. The one idea of a possible assessment that was completely new to me and seems worth a try is the "one-word summaries". Students choose one word to describe a topic and then argue for or against it as a good description. The teacher can supply the list of words which can allow for tiering. It sounds like something I want to try with my class this year.

Fair Isn't Always Equal by Rick Wormeli - Differentiation

This book focuses on the idea that differentiated instruction should also include differentiated assessment and grading.
The first section focuses on differientiated instruction, why we should do it, and how it should work. This is mostly review for many of us. However, one of the first points that strikes me is the idea of determining what it means to master a subject/topic/objective. As we have focused more and more on the Standards of Learning we have become proficient at analyzing objectives and considering exactly what it is students need to know. However, I don't think we are as strong at identifying what it means to master something. This takes an even bigger picture view than I am accustomed to.

More Thoughts on Grades

A recent article in the Washington Post gave me more food for thought on the whole issue of grades. It seems there is quite a hullabaloo in our area about the different ways school divisions calculate grade point averages. Not every school district weighs every class the same. As a result, the same course load can earn students higher GPAs in some districts than in others.

It saddens me because it shows, yet again, that what matters most to parents and students are the grades, not the learning. I find that to be a sad commentary on the state of education today. Educators talk frequently about wanting to encourage students to become life-long learners. Grades encourage the polar opposite.

VASCD - Ruby Payne

I was disappointed in Payne as a speaker because I felt that she was hard to follow. She had a lot of good information and ideas to share, but at the end of two jam-packed days, I had trouble staying with her. However, I did get some good nuggets of information to think about from her.
One thing that I latched onto from her talk was a phrase that she often uses with teachers, parents, and students when communication is breaking down. She says, "Help me understand..." whatever the issue is at hand. So even if a parent or teacher seems completely off their rocker, she will say, "help me understand" and give them the opportunity to voice their thoughts and feel respected without agreeing with them or giving in. It puts the responsibility on both parties involved and builds a sense of partnership.
Another thing she talked about was interesting to me both as a teacher and as a parent. She said that parents often want to negotiate with their children when the children don't have the necessary skills. Her theory is that children must understand parameters, choice, and consequences in order to participate in real negotiation. Many parents have taught their children one or two of those three concepts, but the children are lacking in one area. It also takes children time to develop real understandings of these three concepts.

VASCD - No Common Planning? No Problem!

Pam Roland from UVA is working on ways to support teachers who are trying to collaborate and finding many challenges. She has some interesting ideas, but is starting from far behind where we are now. Sessions like this and discussions with teachers from other schools and other school districts always serve to remind me of how very lucky I am to teach where I do. The things that frustrate me always seem so petty when I talk to others. It is much too easy to forget how very wonderful our school is and how hard we have worked to make it this way.
The one thing that struck me from Roland's presentation was the roles/tasks fro regular ed teachers and the specialists who work in their rooms. Her expectations for coteaching are not the same as ours at our school, but she makes some good points. One thing she says is that the regular ed teacher needs to make a space for the specialist. As we set up our rooms and consider all the things we need to have and organize for, it is important to remember that if we want specialists to feel comfortable working in our rooms, they need a space to call their own. Being a homeless teacher can not be conducive to coteaching.

VASCD - Crystal Kuykendall

Kuykendall is a mix of teacher, advocate, inspirational speaker, and revivalist minister. She is an absolute joy to listen to. Her own personal stories about her life and her children are powerful and beautifully told. She reminded us in so many ways that it is the students who matter and that we can make a difference for any and all of them.
Her handouts were very basic and straightforward. One of the things she lists are factors which influence teacher expectations: prior student achievement, prior student behavior, prior student placement, socioeconomic status, language ability, physical attraction, gender, and race/ethnicity. It is almost painful for me to seriously consider how these factors contribute to my feelings about students, but when I am honest I know it is true. The factors around students' prior selves are so easy to be influenced by and to set up high or low expectations. It is so hard to start fresh with students, but it can make such a difference for them. The other factors are all out of their control, and yet play such a large role in their young lives. I am frequently reminded of how lucky I am to have been born in the country, economic status, family, etc. into which I was born. All of those factors contributed to my being who I am today and they were all just luck. Many of our students are not as lucky.
Kuykendall also writes and talks about climate variables in a classroom. She believes that physical proximity, courtesy, praise, affirmation, acceptance of feelings, and appreciation of differences build respect between students and teachers. If we as teachers stop to think about what we want from coworkers, peers, administrators, and family members it should be obvious to us what our students need. However, it is so easy for us to get caught up in the focus on instruction and teaching and forget that we are teaching children with all the related issues, emotions, and needs.

VASCD - Thomas Guskey

Guskey's presentation was titled "Improving Student Learning with Standards and Assessments". He was funny and enlightening - a strong combination for the end of the day at a conference. His thinking about grading was very helpful to me and gave me a lot to continue to think about. As assessment is one of my "big idea" issues!

The packet of information he gave us is extensive and I have only begun to truly dig into it. It includes a grading and reporting questionaire that I found to be fascinating. It asks questions about the reasons we use report cards and assign grades, any changes one would make in standard grading systems, what teachers use to determine students' grades, and positive and negative aspects of grading and report cards. Simply as a personal reflection it is an interesting exercise to undertake.

He also included a table of student grades for seven students with a bit of background information about them. This table shows five grades per student and then three different final grades. One final grade is simply the average, on is the median, and one is the average without the lowest grade. Looking at the table and the background information it is thought-provoking to consider what grade each student deserves.

One of his suggestions is that teachers always consider two questions as they plan: What do I want students to learn? and What evidence would I accept to verify their learning? This seems to tie very neatly into the ideas of the DuFours.