Chapter 4: Reinforcing Effort & Providing Recognition

You may find this hard to believe, but not every student understands that effort is just as important as the final product! There are several ways to encourage increased effort, however. Younger children learn from examples, such as the tried-and-true "Little Engine That Could" story. Teachers can also use examples of well-known role-models, like professional athletes, entertainers, etc. Think of movie characters, too!

In the upper grades, I suggest using rubrics over checklists. There is a difference, you know! A few of us discussed this briefly at an earlier meeting, but it's worth bringing up again: A "Checklist" is usually a tally of the quantity of characteristics present in student work. A Rubric, on the other hand, contains numerous descriptions of the qualities of student work.

What makes rubrics vastly more valuable (my opinion, not the authors') than checklists is that students can read a description of the quality of work that will yeild the desired score, and understand what kind of effort is required. Kids can read to understand the difference between various achievement levels in each desired quality.

Rubrics have the added benefit of supporting good work in certain categories. Students can see that they have done well in, say, writing topic sentences and focusing on a thesis, but need work in conventions and grammar, for example. Rubrics help break down the "good/no good" feelings that go along with grading and help kids focus on their strengths and developing their skills.

The authors suggest combining a rubric for effort with a checklist to rate their overall performance.

As far as rewards in education, there are two camps. There are those who feel that learners should feel intrinsic motivation to continue to succeed, and external rewards have a negative effect on student motivation. ("What will you give me if I choose to do this assignment?") Others feel that almost everything we do has some sort of external reward. Face it, they would say, would you come to work each day if you didn't receive a paycheck? So, they would argue, why not reward the kids for the work that they do each day?

There's no correct answer here. Different kids are motivated to perform by different resources - some internal, some external. And you'll have a random mixture of kids of both types in every classroom, every year.

So, what works? According to the authors on pages 55-58:

1. Rewards will not necessarily reduce intrinsic motivation
2. Rewards help most when kids meet or exceed a goal that is known to them ahead of time (random rewards are far less helpful)
3. Abstract rewards are more helpful than tangible rewards (there are hundreds of ways to give praise to a child or recognize a child's achievement)

Recognition for achievement should be personal to the child. Take the time to pat them on the shoulder and tell them quietly that you appreciate the hard work they put into a project (regardless of the grade they may have earned).

Kids LOVE stickers and stamps! Even in high school! Get a variety of them (stamps are a bit more eco-friendly, but stickers can be peeled off and worn for the rest of class) so kids will be surprised when they see them.

Make sure that every child has the opportunity to earn praise, too, but remember that kids may have a wide range of skills. If you teach a music class and a child can't hold a note with a bucket, give them a task they can excel at and tell them they're doing a good job when they do it.

Generating & Testing Hypotheses

Hypotheses are similar to inferences or predictions in that they are logical guesses based on factual information. A deductive hypothesis uses a general rule, law, or principle to make a prediction. An inductive hypothesis, on the other hand, might be based on past experiences, observations, etc.

Students whould be encouraged to create and test hypotheses. This is the basis for "constructivist" learning: helping guide students to create their own understanding of the world around them.

Throughout all of these, the key is to be able to explain the hypothesis, HOW they arrived at it, WHAT EVIDENCE led them to the hypothesis, and HOW THEY TESTED to see if their hypothesis was correct.

Several other techniques can be used to develop & test hypotheses, including varoius problem-solving activities, historical investigations, research, invention, and decision-making activities. You don't have to be a Science teacher to help kids develop & test hypotheses!

At our last meeting...

We spent a lot of time discussing how to give feedback using rubrics. It is easy to confuse checklists with rubrics.

Checklists work well for assigning grades - they usually list characteristics that a teachere is looking for and rate student performance on a scale (1-5, 1-10, etc.) . The problem with checklists: What differentiates a 3 from a 4, etc.? Another problem: Why is the highest number usually the best, when most kids want to be "Number 1"? Checklists are faster to create, though, and work well with summative assessment techniques, like one-time projects.A real rubric is much more text-based.

A rubric is a matrix of cells with descriptions of student work within each cell. Teachers still circle to indicate student performance, but this time the item circled gives students feedback on what students did well and what they might do to improve their work in the future. Teachers can still assign point values to each cell if desired. Rubrics are formative (they help inform students about their performance) work well with repeated assessment tasks, like writing samples, reports, essays, etc., and can be used with one-time projects as well.

Both rubrics and checklists should be gone over with students before beginning an assessment task so students understand what they'll need to do and how their performance will be assessed. Also, both can be created with student input. Let kids help you decide what characteristics to grade and how each characteristic should be assessed.

Last - and this is hard for first-time teachers - show kids what good work looks like by either creating the project yourself before presenting it or by saving student work from previous terms/years.

For help with creating rubrics, see www.rubistar.4teachers.com/

Meeting #4: Tuesday, March 17

Read Chapter 9

Ch. 10: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

While 'discrepant events' are a great way to stimulate student interests, quesioning should focus on what is important instead of what is unusual. Focus questioning on HOTS: Higher Order Thinking Skills, rather than simple recall of facts. The authors offer a number of question stems that help illicit HOTS on pages 114-116. Teachers should provide appropriate 'wait time' after asking questions to allow students to process and to fomulate a response. Advance organizers are a nice way to focus on these areas and stimulate student thought. These advance organizers should be flexible and allow students to develop ways to organize information for themselves. A number of advance organizer ideas are listed on pages 118-120.

Ch. 5: Homework and Practice

The authors suggest that assigning homework has a greater positive effect on student achievement at the upper grades that at the elementary grades. They also suggest that teachers design homework that requires a minimum of parental involvement - students should learn by doing the assignment. The reasons for assigning homework must be made clear to the students. Homework should not be 'busy work;' it should be meaningful and an integral part of the learning process. Finally, teachers should always comment on homework that is assigned - without personalized feedback on each homwork assignment, the homework becomes meaningless to the student and its benefit to student achievement is also reduced.

When assigning homework, teachers should first set a firm and consistent homework policy that is communicated to parents on the first day of class. As stated above, the purpose for each assignment should be made very clear to the students, along with its expected outcome. Last, feedback should be should be varied and include both positive messages and suggestions for improvement.

Ch. 7: Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning is very different from simply allowing students to work in groups. Cooperative Learning assigns specific roles to students organized in small groups to accomplish a specific task. Doing so promotes positive interdependence and accountability, which is often lost when students are informally grouped together. Students also learn vital interpersonal processing skills.

It is strongly advise to group students heterogeneously, with a broad range of abilities in each group. Group should be kept small, between 2-5 students. Cooperative Learning should not be used on a daily basis - about once a week seems to offer the best results. Used too often, Cooperative Learning loses both its positive benefits and its appeal to students.

The authors suggest that Cooperative Learning an take place in 3 different types of groups: informal, formal, and base groups. Informal goups are just that: loose, informal arrangements of students for the purpose of accomplishing a brief, short-term objective (turn-to-your-neighbor, or a quick pair-share discussion, etc.). Formal groups are better for more complex tasks, where students are grouped heterogeneously and given specific roles (chairperson, recorder, fact-checker, etc.). Base groups are longer-term arrangements, lasting all semester or all year, that students use for a variety of activities. These might include classroom chores, daily errands, homework helpers or 'study-buddies," etc.

Homework?

Well, sort of... A CHALLENGE!

Between now and the next meeting (Tue., Feb. 17 @ Lincoln) bring or post here a rubric that you have or will use with your classes.

Ch. 8: Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback

Specific goal-setting helps students focus on specific learning targets. Learning goals should not be too specific, and teachers should flexible and allow students to develop personal "subgoals" (p. 95) to help them focus on accomplishing smaller tasks that help them achieve the broader learning goals. Standards-Aligned Classroom (SAC) language of "I CAN..." statements fit in nicely with these ideas. as do learning/behavioral contracts.

Providing students with feedback on their progress toward achieving these learning goals is essential. The authors suggest that feedback should tell students what they are doing right as well as what they might improve upon. Feedback should be given as immediately as possible following a task or assessment, and should focus on students' individual learning goals (see above). Students should be encouraged to evaluate themselves in relation to their learning goals as well. Using rubrics, 'morning meetings,' student-led conferences, and portfolios are among several ways to provide students with timely feedback and help them develop metacognition (thinking about one's own learning).

Ch. 2: Identifying Similarities & Differences

This chapter explains the importance of comparing and contrasting information in helping your students derive meaning from classroom activities. The authors begin by suggesting that teachers model by pointing out explicitly the ways that things are similar and/or different, and then ask students to do so on their own. Using graphic representations, like Venn diagrams and graphic organizers, can be very effective at helping students derive meaning from learning activities, as well as using analogies, metaphors, and classification matrices.

Welcome to the Club!

This space wil be used to post comments for and summaries of our Spring NTLT Book Club meetings. We'll be reading Classroom Instruction That Works, and discussing how ideas within the book can be applied to our classrooms.

Meeting #1: Chapters 1 & 6
Chapter 1 discusses the importance of past and current research in teaching. Chapter 6 looks at how different visualization strategies can help learners develop meaning, with specific emphasis on graphic orgainizers and mental images.

Personal Thoughts:
This fits in nicely with the High School's work with CRISS Strateies. If you have Smart Board (www.smarttech.com) software installed, several graphic organizer templates are available. You can also download some for MSWord or Powerpoint from www.microsoft.com.

Here's an idea (at least for grades 6-12): Try using multiple representations: put an outline next to a concept map, for example, but make sure they both contain the same information. Kids learn in a variety of ways - let them choose what makes the most sense or has the most meaning for them. What do you think of this idea?