How To Find the Hidden Value of Student Work

Miss Shields Grading Essays from the film, A Christmas Story

Admit it. We have, at some point in time, sat down to grade a stack of student papers and wondered why on Earth we had even given the assignment to start with.  And the grading! Mountains of papers waiting for our feedback. Bookbags full of papers being carried back and forth from home to school.  One of my favorite scenes in the movie A Christmas Story is the grading scene.   Miss Shields wonders if her life's work has gone down the drain as she grades paper after paper filled with mistakes, until she comes across the shear poetry of Ralphie's essay. Don't forget Ralphie's wrong ideas about how is work was going to be assessed. How might she have used those essays to find exemplar work for students who "get it", students who are on the road to "getting it" and students who just don't "get it" at all?  How could she have used the student work to evaluate the alignment of the lesson to the standards she was focusing on? What might she have written on the papers that would have provided instructive feedback to the students? How could she have used rubrics to improve the student work? Could her students have helped to build the rubric? We have entered the age of "Evidence Based Instruction" and we need to recognize the hidden value in student work.

Defining common understanding of what standards "look like" and what evidence of learning should be expected.
Evidence Centered Design is one way to work together as a teacher team to come to a common understanding of what students are supposed to know or do based on the standards.  There are all kinds of crosswalks, flipbooks, and unpacking the standards documents that help teachers to have collaborative discussions around the standards.  What is missing is the use of student work "exemplars" to help teachers to really define what the standards "look like, sound like, and act like" and what evidence of this they would want to collect.

Try this. The next time your team works together to plan an instructional unit, agree to bring back to the team examples of student work from the unit.  Each teacher should bring not only the best work, but work from students who are showing partial understanding and students who are showing little understanding of the standards.  Put this work out on the table, minus student and teacher names.  As a team, sort the work along a learning continuum - from mastery to developing. Look back at the standards that were tied to the work. What was the purpose of the assignment -  building mastery of a skill, assessing learning growth, building knowledge? Does the student work reflect that the purpose? What is the evidence that students produced that shows an understanding of the standard/skill at the level of rigor the standard defines? Does the student work show that the lesson really got at the standard that was tied to it?

• Student Exemplars - Achievethecore.org http://www.achievethecore.org/page/507/in-common-effective-writing-for-all-students
• EQuIP Student Work Protocols http://www.achieve.org/files/ELA%20Student%20Work%20Protocol%20FINAL.pdf
• PARCC Student Work Examples from Spring 2015 ELA/Math tests https://prc.parcconline.org/assessments/parcc-released-items

Using work as a formative assessment tool
Formative Instructional Practices (FIP) help teachers plan instruction and help students measure their progress toward understanding/applying knowledge and skills that are part of the class. All of this work begins with a shared understanding of the standards based learning targets for a lesson or unit. Assignments then become a source of feedback to both the teacher and the students.

Try this. The next time you give an assignment, make a data chart for yourself. As you look at the student work, track things like common errors, misconceptions, ideas or answers that go beyond expected responses, ideas or answers that show a student has a more basic understanding of concepts or skills.  Use this data to plan for follow-up instruction. Share this data with colleagues who are working with the same lesson materials.

Then, look at the feedback you choose to give students. How much of it is success feedback - check marks, smile faces, general comments like "good" or "ok" or "I agree"?  How much of it is constructive feedback - coaching remarks to help students move their learning forward like "How might you  use evidence to support this answer" or "What other strategy might you use to approach this problem?"

 Finally, look for opportunities for students to reflect on their own work. One good example of this is a follow-up to the assignment/assessment sheet - What am I not understanding yet? Why am I not understanding it? What am I missing because of a careless error? What do I need to do to improve my learning of this concept?

Student work is also a great tool for developing rubrics with your students rather than for your students. Keeping exemplar work from assignments/units that students can then use to identify traits for each level of a rubric is a great way to get them thinking about the quality of their own work - and the depth of their own learning.  Working together on a rubric also gives them a road map for their own learning. They have an idea of what "mastery" vs "developing" looks like.

• Ohio Battelle For Kids FIP Portal
• New York City Schools - CCSS Aligned Tasks, Rubrics and Exemplar Student Work http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/CommonCoreLibrary/TasksUnitsStudentWork/default.htm
• Expeditionary Learning Project - Student Work Homepage
• http://elschools.org/student-work
• Using Work Sampling in Authentic Assessment - Samuel Meisels (ASCD EdLeadership Dec 1996)
• Learning From Student Work - Gabrielle Nidus, Maya Sadder (ASCD EdLeadership, Feb 2009)
• Book - Jan Chappuis Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning
• Book - How to Give Effective Feedback To Your Students - Susan Brookhart (study guide - is good on its own for discussion topics with teacher teams)
• Article - The Best Value in Formative Assessment by Jan Chappuis (EdLeadership)
• Article - Assessment For Learning - Chappuis and Stiggins (EdLeadership)
• Susan Brookhart - Study Guide for How To Give Effective Feedback
• Article - Feedback That Fits - Susan Brookhart (ASCD EdLeadership 1/2008)

Using student work to identify gaps in learning, plan for extra scoops or build in stretch.
Student work can be a great indicator of how  we are challenging or not challenging our students. It can also be a tool to identify where there are gaps in their learning. As we focus more and more on helping all students to grow as learners, it is becoming increasingly important to use student work to help us measure the effectiveness of our differentiated lessons.  How?

Try this.  The next time you give an assignment, ask students to track how much time they spent on the assignment.  Have them circle or share with you the parts of the assignment that they found "easy" and "challenging".  Ask them what they liked about the format of the assignment?  When you or your team work to create new assignments, think of ways to scaffold the problems or tasks.  Start with questions, activities or smaller tasks that are more foundational and require students to pull from prior knowledge or build new knowledge. Then layer on questions or larger tasks that push them to think about a problem from a different point of view or apply knowledge in a different way. Look closely at how they approach the work and where they become frustrated or start to push ahead.  Use their work to help plan for instructional groups, extra scoops of learning or identify students who are ready to go deeper into a concept.  Think about the difference between benchmarking assignments/assessments that are meant to give you and your students a snapshot of their learning over larger chunks of time and more formative assignments/assessments that give your students a point on their learning map so that they can measure their progress.

• Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs, Question Stems and Activities
• Example of scaffolded assessment questions (secondary) using Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Webb's Depth of Knowledge - With verbs and question stems

The next time you walk out of the building with a bag of student work, think of it more as a bag of evidence of learning and teaching and less as bag full of work that has to be graded and recorded.

Spring Cleaning...Making Room for the Shift in Education

Feeling overwhelmed by it all?  I found myself sitting at my dining room table the other afternoon just staring at the laundry basket full of dirty clothes, the pile of papers to be sorted, the snowmen still on display on my mantle, the dust bunnies on the floor...I sat there a full 20 minutes doing absolutely nothing.  I didn't even know where to start.  I really just wanted to go up to my room, crawl into my bed and pull the blanket over my head.  But, I didn't. I had some chocolate. I prioritized. I started with the laundry. I still haven't gotten to the snowmen, but that's ok.  I am working my way through the tasks in my house, chipping away at them a little at a time.   I think that is the message that may be getting lost in the avalanche of information about Common Core Shifts, Formative Instruction, teacher evaluations, student growth measures, new grading systems, College and Career Readiness, technology integration, inquiry science, real world learning, authentic assessment....  Where to start?  How do we make room for all of this in our day, in our classroom, in our planning time?

As a curriculum director - I am looking at prioritizing my time and resources too.  I suggest starting with the Common Core and Formative Instruction. So many of the other "hot topics" in education are related to these two main initiatives.

Where to start...The Common Core

• If you haven't already, look at the model curriculum for your course, or if you are a teacher in a none core area (foreign language, art, music, phys ed, business, consumer science), revisit your current standards and think about how you might be able to embed more content area reading and writing into your class.
• Focus on content that will be similar in the new model curriculum to what is currently being taught in your classroom.  Spend time thinking about how to teach it more deeply, give students more time to practice a skill, ways to help students apply the content to prior knowledge and real world problems.
• Identify content material that will be "moving out" of your grade level or class and begin to cut away all but the basic lesson material around that content to make room for incoming content or more time to spend on content that will be similar but taught at greater depth.
• Look through your classroom materials, texts and lessons - find materials that you can share with colleagues at other grade levels who may now be teaching content you will no longer be teaching.
• Resources:
• PARCC Model Content Framework - math and English/Language Arts
• ODE k-8 Comparative Analysis - Math 
• ODE Comparative Analysis - Science
• ODE k-8 Comparative Analysis - Social Studies
• ODE  Language Comparative Analysis K-12
• ODE Reading Comparative Analysis K-12
• ODE Speaking and Listening Comparative Analysis K-12
• ODE Writing Comparative Analysis K-12
• Bay Village Common Core Resource Page

Where to start....Formative Instruction

• Write clear learning targets for your class based on the new Model Curriculum or your state standards.  Spend time thinking about what the underpinning learning targets will need to be - what will your students need to be able to do before they can master the ultimate learning target? How will you communicate these to your students? What will your plan be to do an initial assessment to see where they are in their learning? How might you differentiate lessons based on the underpinning targets?
• Choose one unit that you really like and already have learning targets for...and take an honest look at the assignments and assessments you include in that unit.  Do the assignments allow you to formatively assess student learning progress?  Are they differentiated? Is there opportunity for student self assessment or peer to peer feedback? Does the summative assessment for the unit accurately measure their mastery of the learning targets?
• Get out the "New Bloom's Verbs" chart and use it as you create a new unit that might align to the new content coming into your class...or revise a unit that you aren't so happy with. Develop learning and assessment activities that meet higher levels on Bloom's Taxonomy. 
• Resources:
• Classroom Assessment for Learning Chappuis and Stiggins (ASCD Sept. 2002)
• The Best Value in Formative Assessment By Stephen and Jan Chappuis (ASCD  Jan 2008)

I have a small picture I keep on a shelf in my office - it is a Chinese Proverb. " The person who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones"  I have a small pile of beach rocks by the picture to remind me that no matter how daunting or overwhelming a task, you must start one small piece at a time.   Stop staring at the mountain and find a stone to carry away.  Together we will accomplish what needs to be done, one stone at a time.

How to Be An Education Innovator - Education Outside the Box...Part 4

If you do a Google search for innovations in education, you will find articles on technology, classroom materials, classroom management, school design, and creative lesson planning. All of these innovations are dependent on teachers and adminstrators who have a vision of what education can become.  For true innovation to occur, teachers need to be Educators "Outside of the Box".   It is easy to talk the talk about wanting to try new lessons, new technology or new learning approaches in your classroom. It is much more difficult to actually walk the walk.  Sometimes teachers are our own worst enemies.  We let the fear of change stop us from trying something new. We worry about what other teachers or administrators will think of what we are doing. The end result is that we become Educators "Inside of the Box" by closing the door to our classrooms and keeping our innovative ideas to ourselves.

Here is the challenge that Stan Heffner has given to all of us, find ways to break out of the box.  Open your classroom doors.  Make it a priority to collaborate with colleagues.  Read education blogs. Join your content area association.  Talk about what is working in your classroom with your colleagues when you can - even if it is in the office before school, in the hallway between classes or over a lunch in the teacher's lounge.  Support your peers who are trying new ways of teaching, even if it is outside of your own comfort zone.  Focus on what you have control over - YOU! What can you start to do as a teacher to begin to be an innovator?

Part 4  Innovative Ways to Approach Teaching

Co-Teaching
Marilyn Friend is an authority on effective co-teaching.  She describes true co-teaching as a partnership between a content specialist and a differentiation specialist.  The role of the content specialist is to focus on the content area material for the class, share information on what a "typical" student should be able to do as a learner in the class and work on the pacing for the "typical" students.  The differentiation specialist focuses on helping the content specialist adjust the content for a wide range of learners, provides ideas for alternative ways to teach the content and helps the content specialist understand the pacing for students at either end of the learning spectrum.  All students benefit from this partnership and both teachers in the partnership should be able to learn from each other.

Facilitator
Teachers who act as facilitators of learning in their classrooms focus on formative instructional practices. They regularly assess their students learning and collect data that helps them to plan instruction and learning opportunities.   Facilitators use a variety of technology and other lesson resources to help students acquire new knowledge, apply the knowledge and demonstrate their understanding.  Facilitators encourage collaboration and help student groups work effectively together.

• Article on Facilitative Teaching
• Article on Contructivist Facilitation - this is a little older (2001) but the ideas are still applicable

Brain Based Learning
Innovations in the field of brain studies have allowed us to gain new insights into how the brain learns new information, accesses old information and makes connections to form new ideas.  The research has been applied to a variety of education topics including how the brain learns math and how the brain learns to read.

• Eudutopia Blog on Brain Based Learning
• Video of Brain Based Learning in the Classroom  Key Large Elementary School
• David Sousa - Author of a series of books on How the Brain Learns

Marzano Strategies for Effective Teaching (the Marzano 9)
Marzano is one of the leaders in teaching reform. His focused research on the 9 strategies that a teacher can use that have the largest impact on student learning is a good starting point for a teacher who wants to have a framework to build innovative teaching strategies around.

• Basic overview of the Marzano 9  from Middleweb 
• Applying the Marzano 9 to the use of Interactive Boards
• List of Additional Teacher Resources  - Marzano 9 eMints site.