Yours, Mine or Ours-Teaching All Children Through the Common Core.

One of the advantages of my job as the Director of Curriculum and Instruction is that I get to go out and about to classrooms across content and grade levels to watch teachers and students in action. I don't know which students have been labeled what, I just get to see them all participating in their classrooms or activities.  This year I have seen an Amelia Bedelia fashion show, heard a gym full of starting string players make great music together, tapped words with Kindergarteners,  listened to second graders share military stories from their families, played in an orchestra with HS musicians, and shared the enthusiasm of MS Lego builders.  I have also led many discussions on what the Common Core and the Ohio Model Curriculum will look like in our classrooms.  In order for the Common Core Curriculum to REALLY be common to all of our students, we need to start with the understanding that all of the students are OUR students.

There  is a much used African proverb, "It takes a whole village to raise a child". What it means is that the village must take responsibility for that child.  A school is like a village. A classroom is also like a village.  As the new Common Core Standards are implemented, with their increased demands for rigor and depth of knowledge, a lot of teachers and administrators are wondering what this will mean for students who have been identified as "special ed".  It is the intent of the Common Core to raise expectations for ALL students and to make this education available to as many students as possible in a regular education setting.  This is a shift in how we think about "special education".  As educators, we need to move away from the thinking that if a student doesn't fall in the "norm" it is someone else's responsibility to educate this child. We need to stop thinking of Special Education, as a place and think of it more as a partnership.  It is all of our responsibility to have high expectations for our students and to differentiate our instruction to allow them to grow as learners.  We need to start acting more like a village and less like remote islands.

It starts at the top with district leaders.

• What professional development do teachers need to help them plan lessons that will challenge all students in their classrooms?
• How can co-teaching partnerships be supported and developed?  
• What data can be collected to help teachers and building principals make informed decisions about educational supports and interventions? 
• How can we continue to educate parents about their role in their child's education?
• How do we identify resources that teachers can use to make the Common Core accessible for all students? 
• How will we develop grading policies that accurately reflect the progress of all students on mastering grade level content standards and college/career skills like communication, collaboration and research?
• How can we contribute to the state-wide discussions on graduation requirements and college/ career readiness to make sure that all of our students will have what they need to access education and training after their k-12 education?

Teachers also need to reflect on their own classroom practices:

• How do you collaborate with peers and support staff to take "shared ownership" of all the students in your classroom?
• What resources might you access to help you differentiate lesson materials to challenge all learners?
• How are you using formative instructional practices (formative assessment) to help you plan lessons, help your students monitor their learning and help you assess progress?
• How familiar are you with IEPs, 504s, and WEPs?  
• What information you can gather from them? 
• How can you provide feedback to monitor progress? 
• How can you participate in  developing standards based goals that would help students access the Common Core?
• How can you participate in designing appropriate modifications or accommodations to help students access the Common Core?
• How can you help students to work on mastering goals?

Resources to Learn More About Special Education and the Common Core

• CEC  Common Core Standards - What Special Educators Need to Know (from CEC Today)
• Special Educators Look To Tie IEPs to Common Core Standards ( Education Week May 22, 2012
• Common Core Tests to Have Built In Accommodations  (Education Week May 22, 2012)
• High Expectations for All (Robert Marzano, EdLeadership Sept 2010)
• Grading Students With Disabilities (Dennis Munk  CEC Today)
• Understanding Subgroups in Common State Assessments - Special Education Students and ELLs (NCEO Brief July 2011) National Center for Educational Outcomes
• Presentation - Designing Applications of the Common Core State Standards for Students With Disabilities (Peter Kozik, PhD Keuka College -posted on the EngageNY Common Core Website)
• Quality Indicator Review and Resource Guides For Special Education Instructional Practices  (New York State Education Dept.)
• Ohio Dept. of Education - Ohio Academic Content Standards - Extended   links to a 4 core content areas.  These standards are designed to help students with significant cognitive disabilities to access the common core standards and use alternative assessments.
• My blog on Educational Innovation - with co-teaching and Marzano resources
• EdWeek Blog Designing Common Core Tests for All Proving A Challenge (May 23, 2012)

The Uncommon Core Curriclum

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!  

This word cloud was made from the tribute letters written by Bay students about Bay Village teachers and staff who had been a positive influence in their lives.  The larger the word, the more times it appeared in the text of the letters.

Last night I had the opportunity to go to a unique program in our district.  The Superintendent's Best Awards evening  gives the top academic students in 8th grade and 12th grade the chance to nominate a teacher who had an impact on their lives.  One by one, students stepped up to the podium to read their tribute letter to the teacher they nominated. Some were very brief, a few were poetic, a couple were funny - they all were sincere.  In all, 53 staff members from kindergarten through high school were recognized.

What set these teachers - and really all teachers - apart in the students' minds was not just academic knowledge or the content itself.  It was the role the teachers played in helping the students build confidence in themselves and their learning. It was the extra time teachers spent getting to know the students and supporting them as they grew as individuals.  The Common Core Curriculum is just a lot of words on paper - or a website! But it is the teachers and the students who make it a real.

If I were Ruler of the Education World for just one day, I would put in place the Uncommon Core Curriculum.   The strands would include Character, Vision, Sense of Self, and Life Long Learner. These are the things that make us unique individuals and lead to our success or failure in life. These strands are difficult to measure using traditional assessments.  Instead, teachers sometimes have to wait years to see the results.  These are difficult to teach using traditional approaches.  Lectures and worksheets, group projects, lab activities and research papers don't always allow students to directly learn these strands.  Often it is the modeling and the encouragement that is given by the classroom teacher, an administrator or a staff member that can have the greatest impact on the students who are learning these strands.

Character  
Anchor Standards

• Analyze how decisions made will impact others and yourself.
• Describe an idea or event from various points of view
• Demonstrate empathetic behavior in a variety of circumstances

Vision

Anchor Standards

• Identify short term and long term goals and plan for how to meet them.
• Illustrate how current activities or work will help lead to a larger goal
• Communicate your goals clearly to others

Sense of Self

Anchor Standards

• Use a variety of methods to confidently communicate opinions and ideas to others
• Identify areas of strength and weakness to plan for personal growth
• Demonstrate pride in accomplishments and celebrate success

Life Long Learner

Anchor Standards

• Apply strategies that are effective for learning new material
• Participate in a variety of experiences and activities 
• Demonstrate ways to share a joy for learning with others

Common Core Ingredients

My daughter and I like to watch Chopped every Sunday on the Food Channel.  Each week, chefs are given a basket of "mystery ingredients".  They have a short time to turn these ingredients into something that not only tastes good, but looks good too.   The real challenge, figuring out ways to combine ingredients that may not traditionally go together in a dish.   Often, the chefs are faced with ingredients they have never worked with before.   If there were an Education Channel, I think I would host Core each week.  On Core, teachers would be given a set of standards from each of the 4 core content areas and would have 50 minutes to put together a lesson that not only taught the standards, but kept the students engaged too.  The challenge, figuring out how to relate the standards to each other, to the real world experience of the students and make the whole lesson approachable to a wide range of student learning styles and abilities.   There is no Education Channel, but as Ohio moves toward implementing the Common Core and Model Curriculum for the 4 core content areas, teachers will need to look at new ways of integrating the core standards to create lessons that teach to a greater rigor or depth and allow students to make connections to real world problems.

No matter what grade or content you teach, when faced with new content standards, you can build engaging, integrated lessons if you follow some basic unit "recipe" rules.

Char's Integrated Lesson Recipe
To build a successful integrated unit or lesson using the new Common Core Standards and the Ohio Model Curriculum, think outside the boundaries of a single content area to find the "common denominator" for the unit or lesson - what real world context could each of the content standards you are working with fit into?

Ingredients

• Reading Activity - often times, the reading activity can be the "base" for the lesson - it might be an article, a novel, a picture book, a primary source document, or data base materials. This is a good place to differentiate - picking reading that is approachable by the range of students in your classroom.  Usually the social studies standard or the science standard can be used as the "frame" for the integrated lesson. Don't forget to include opportunities for CLOSE READING.
• Math Activity - math is the international language for a reason - math can be taught within the context of almost any real world scenario. Once you have identified the science or social studies standards you will include in the lesson or the reading materials you will use - write the math lesson components within that "framework" 
• Writing Activity - remember, writing can be about solving a math problem, it can be a journal entry, it can be research, it can be an argument or persuasive piece, it can be more creative. This can be a final assessment or it can be more formative instruction.
• Collaborative Activity - students work together to create a product - this can be the "real world' piece where they create a product as part of a service learning activity, it might be a presentation, a model, a video or poster project - something that requires them to APPLY the skills/knowledge learned in the lessons. This is a good place to put the Performance Task in a larger unit or in a single lesson, this is a good reinforcing activity.
• Inquiry Activity - Inquiry can be included by encouraging students to ask questions and pose possible answers, letting students try out possible solutions, giving students data or information to analyze or giving students opportunities to decide how where to go next with their learning.
• Connection Activity - doing mind mapping, using living word walls, think pair shares, entrance and exit cards, cartoons, journaling - any activity that helps students connect the new knowledge they have been building to their existing knowledge base. This is a good beginning activity in a set of lessons but it can also take place as the lessons progress to help students stay focused on their own learning. This is also a good place to do specific instruction on vocabulary students need to access the unit or lesson materials.

Mathematical Practices and Mathematics Common Ground

Finding common ground when talking about the new Common Core standards for math has not been easy.  The ODE is still in the process of completing the Content Elaborations for the Ohio Math Standards. PARCC has released their own suggested framework. Teachers are trying to come to terms with a shift to teaching more about less, especially in the elementary grades.  Traditional math programs, existing integrated math programs and secondary course offerings don't neatly align to the new content. There are significant shifts in content from one grade level to another.  Textbook publishers are playing catch up to the new curriculum.

Eight.  No, it is not my lucky number or how many pieces of chocolate I ate as I sat down to plan for my upcoming math team meetings. (that was only 3)  Eight is the number of mathematical practices that serve as a single thread across all grade and ability levels.  Eight is the common ground.  The Mathematical Practices don't describe what math facts a student should know or the order that they should acquire knowledge of geometric concepts.  The 8 Mathematical Practices define how a student should be able to act and think as a mathematician, whether they are doing basic addition or Calculus BC.  These are not just good mathematical skills, in many cases they are good for science, social studies and language arts thinking as well.  As teachers sit down together to work on creating lessons that will begin to transition their math curriculum to the new Common Core model curriculum, they need to start on common ground, framing each lesson within the concepts of the 8 mathematical practices.

The 8 Mathematical Practices 

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
4. Model with mathematics
5. Use appropriate tools strategically
6. Attend to precision
7. Look for and make use of structure
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Learn more about the 8 Mathematical Practices
Resources

• Engage NY - Instructional Shifts for Common Core Math
• Carroll County Public Schools - Mathematical Practices Resources Mini posters - 8 mathematical Practices, template for evaluating lessons based on mathematical practices, lesson plan template.
• Inside Mathematics  Good explanations of mathematical practices with example lesson videos. (various grade levels spans elementary, middle and high school)
• Mathematics Assessment Project ( University of California Berkeley)  example lessons for each mathematical practice (MS and HS)  The  MAP also has formative assessment lessons for HS and MS math.  Also great are the performance tasks, aligned to the 8 mathematical practices, written for experts, novice and beginner level students that can be used for summative assessment http://map.mathshell.org/materials/tasks.php   Finally, professional development articles and activities http://map.mathshell.org/materials/pd.php including handouts, examples, videos and interactives.
• Teaching Number Sense - how number sense is similar to phonemic awareness. ( Reading Rockets.org)
• Thinkmath.org  K-5 version of the 8 Mathematical Practices
• Chittenden East Supervisory Union - good summaries and discussions of the 8 mathematical practices.
• Teaching Problem Solving Skills  (Waterloo University Centre for Teaching Excellence)
• Understanding the 8 Mathematical Practices   a K-4 Progression created by Mesa Public Schools

What's In A Grade...How Does Grading Change With Common Core?

Consistency is one of the benefits of the Common Core Standards.  Consistency in what content will be taught at each grade level. Consistency in how students will be assessed by the state on their content mastery. Consistency in how each student is graded on their work...well, hmmm, maybe not so much.

Our district is working on transferring to a new gradebook/reporting system.  It is a great chance to spend time revisiting grading scales and grading practices across our different grade levels. What I have found is that there is no consensus among my staff on what grading system really is the best for reflecting student academic mastery - letter grades, percentages, checks and minuses, 1 2 3 and maybe 4 or rubric categories.  Each group has valid reasoning for why they support one over the other.  Venturing into a discussion on how to delineate academic progress from "good studentness" is even more heated.  Add to this mix the fact that even within a subject area or grade level, teachers teaching the same content may have different interpretations of what each grade category "looks like" in terms of student work and you wind up with a grading system that is anything but consistent... and a reason to avoid the conversation all together unless you have an hour or two to spend in debate.

Where to start the conversation?  I think everyone involved needs to have a clear understanding of why we assign grades to begin with.  Grading is a very emotional, personal issue for teachers. This is because down deep teachers take grading, to some degree "personally".  I think that sometimes we think that grades are a way to justify a our success or failure. We use them to delegate responsibility for lack of learning back onto the student as evidence to prove that students "could have done better if only they had -fill in the blank_____." Sometimes, we may even take a low grade to heart, as if the student is saying " I don't like you or this class".    As teachers, we need to take a step back and reflect on what grading REALLY should be.  Grades are a way to help teachers, students and parents monitor the student's progress and eventual mastery in learning and applying content for a course or grade level.  Grades cover to two types of work, formative and summative.  In order for grades to be an effective tool to communicate this learning progress and mastery, teachers all need to be in agreement about what mastery or developing work looks like.  And, teachers need to be using a grading system  that  will allow students and parents to compare progress from year to year.

First, come to an agreement of what grading system will accurately communicate student learning progress and mastery of content.  Make this decision at least at the building level. There are some districts nationally that have moved toward adopting district wide grading.   Distinguish between academic grades and reflections of "student habits of mind" which can be reported to parents, but should not be included in academic grades.  Habits of mind include classroom skills like collaboration, communication, preparedness, critical thinking, quality of work etc.  Talk about how to report formative assessments and summative assessments and what might be included in a final grade.

Then, the best way to come to a common understanding of what "A" or "4" work, "B" or "3" work etc. looks like is to sit down together and look at samples of student work.  Have conversations within grade levels, building and subject areas about what learning is expected in the Common Core or the Model Curriculum and what mastery student work would look like.  Build a portfolio of "exemplar" work for each grading category that everyone has access to.  Show this exemplar work to the students so they can see what is expected of them.  Communicate these expectations to the parents so they understand what a grade actually represents.  Share student progress regularly with parents and students.  Make students accountable for their own learning by helping them monitor their own progress.

Grades should never be a surprise, a gift or a consequence.  Grades for content mastery should not be determined by behavior, personality or attitude.  Grades ARE a communication tool. Grades are a way to help teachers AND students monitor the student's academic strengths and weaknesses as they work toward mastering content.

Resources

• EdLeadership Study Guide - Effective Grading Practices   Guiding questions to help focus discussions on grading policies and practices. (Teresa Preston, Nov. 2011)
• At Some Schools, Failure Goes From Zero to 50 ( Steve Friess, USA TODAY,  May 2008)
• Courageous Conversation - Formative Assessment and Grading (Andrew Miller, Edutopia Blog, Dec 2011)
• Grading Practices (Barbara Gross Davis, UC Berkeley )  Good insights for College Readiness
• The Case of Illogical Grades (Lissa Pijanowski, EdLeadership, Nov 2011)
• Grading Exceptional Learners (Lee Ann Jung and Thomas R. Guskey, EdLeadership, Feb 2010)

  

Is There Room For Poetry In A Informational Text World?

I become liquid

Conforming to any shape

I flow, I shift, change.

C.S.

April is National Poetry Month. I challenge all of you to tie poetry into one lesson this month. One lesson. What, you say, you are not an ELA teacher? That's ok. Poetry is about taking content knowledge and interpreting it in a new way that someone hasn't thought of before. Take a look at my Haiku, is it about liquid as one of the 3 states of matter - science content OR is it about how I feel about what is being expected of teachers as they transition to the Common Core? Poetry is a way to condense key ideas, vocabulary, concepts down into something that is approachable or memorable. Poetry can be very structured and mathematically precise or it can wander and roam across a page mapping out thoughts and ideas. Poetry can be a bridge between fiction and non-fiction. Poetry requires the readers to really work at understanding the meaning of the poem - looking closely at what words the poet chose to create an impression or provoke an emotion.


But wait, the Common Core focus is very much on reading Informational Text and not poetry. Do the writers of the Common Core really expect the math department or the history department to teach reading? No, not directly. The writers do expect that all teachers will take responsibility for ensuring that students in their classrooms have the background knowledge experiences they will need to be successful readers of a wide variety of materials as they become adults. Don't you as teachers already teach them how to be thinkers? Stretch that thinking just a bit and you will realize that in order to be thinkers in your classroom, students must be able to read primary source information and draw their own conclusions. Readers need to spend time deciding what the author of a primary source document was trying to accomplish with the writing. What information did they choose to include or not include? What impression or emotion were they trying to elicit? What was going on in society at the time the piece was written? This is a shift away from the traditional textbook based content area reading assignment where the student reads p16-23, taking notes on bold faced words and answering the questions at the end of the section. It will require department and grade level teams to spend time reading the primary source material they will be using in their classrooms and having their own discussions. Lunch room conversations could become a lot more interesting!  


Are you up to this challenge... can you figure out how to add a little poetry to your classroom? And more importantly, can you help students to unlock the meaning of primary source materials that are relevant to your class?

Resources

Teaching Informational Text

• EngageNY  ELA Shift 2 Video (New York Dept of Ed) Informational Text, Knowledge in the Disciplines
• Appendix B - Common Core Curriculum ELA Exemplar Texts and Performance Tasks
• Teaching With Documents Lesson Plans - National Archives
• Teaching With Primary Sources - The Library of Congress
• Switching Gears - Helping Students Move Successfully From Reading Literature to Reading in the Content Area - Steve Peha (Teaching That Makes Sense)
• Simple Poems, Powerful Teaching: Experiencing Poetry in Content -Area Classrooms by Allison Baer (2007 Adlit InPerspective Magazine Ohio Resource Center)

Poetry Websites

• Ohio Resource Center - National Poetry Month Website
• British Poetry from Old English to the Modern Day  searchable by author view, first line view, timeline view, keyword view. Includes a section of literary criticism of poetry.
• The Academy for American Poets homepage  find text of poems along with a wide variety of lesson resources
• Poetry for Teens - poems about topics relevant to teenagers
• Popular Poems for teaching poetry
• World Poetry Sites  part of the National Poetry Month Initiative
• Poetry Foundation

Poetry Lesson

• Poems for Democracy
• Lessons to Teach the Power of Poetry
• In the Poet's Shoes

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.