High School Challenge: Challenging Schools to Challenge their Own Thinking!

Attended a two-day seminar in Bloomington, Illinois this week–the High School Challenge. The event was sponsored by Coalition for Illinois High Schools, a medley of twenty+ educational groups, among them the Illinois Principals Association. The keynote speakers were top-notch: Debra Pickering from Marzano’s think tank in Colorado and Dr. Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center. They were an interesting mix….Pickering provided practical examples and Dr. Reeves quoted research complete with citations. More than that, the topics they addressed are real concerns for teacher and administrators in Illinois and around the country.

The focus seemed to be on grading, though topics like vocabulary and gender gaps were part of the discussion. Both speakers addressed some of the minutie that teachers continue to preach and test, and both speakers addressed the challenge of meeting the needs of diverse audiences. Pickering and Reeves both drew on personal stories of their children and how different siblings can be and learn. Part of that discussion comes from Reeves research on 90/90/90 and the myths that low SES and minority kids are destined to perform at levels significanly lower than white middle class kids.

Both speakers offered workable solutions to the current A, B, C, Dilemma. Grades, as they are used today, demoralize some students while giving a false sense of intellectual security to others. Students who both 1) know how and 2) are willing to play the game of school can probably earn grades that will get them a diploma and maybe even garner them college entrance. But the fact of the matter is that most kids today are taking remedial classes in their freshman year either in English, math or both! What does that say about high school math and English?

Part of the discussion over the two day sessions dealt with methods classroom teachers can and should take to not only to more effectively evaluate, but to teach through engagement! Assessment should be a tool for engagement, not the dreaded testing situation that it has been made to be, not just because of NCLB, but through the epochs of testing as we knew it ourselves. Tell me, honestly, who ever looked forward to a test. The greatest concern I usually had was whether the teacher would test over the material that I had studied or would h/se pick some obscure fact or perhaps something not so obscure, but equally out of my reach because the information didn’t resonate with me. Twenty years later, that is my own children’s nightmare before testing. We just don’t learn. (kinda funny, isn’t it…we want our kids to learn what we think is important, but we don’t learn what research and past practice shows us is detrimental to achievement!)

In my last few years of teaching, I worked with a team of teachers on an “integrated curriculum.” We worked as a team incorporating literature, social studies, and science. Amidst that, we ensured that essential vocabulary was taught and that various ways of knowing were actively addressed. And get this…we had NO tests. All grades were based on projects and those projects offered choice both in their composition and in the lengths students chose to go in proving their mastery of content and skill. They were motivated…most of the time. And that, I must say was the finest hour of my teaching, partly due to the results but mostly due to the comradery of teachers and students. We were all learning and we were doing it together.

Back to the “High School Challenge…” One of the ideas I took to in grading was not to list grades in the book by test or quiz and the date, but by what the assessment measured…and that made me wonder why we couldn’t change our grading so that instead of having a composite score for an assessment, why couldn’t we write better assessments that truly measured what we had taught and break our grade books down into those goals rather than dates. Then, in any given assessment, we may be able to measure the students’ level of proficiency that way….once they were proficient in the skill or the knowledge, then move on…or at least they could. One way we lose kids is through repetition. They get tired of making the diorama or learning about the Battle of Gettysburg or defining a simile. Every content area is guilty of redundant malignancy.

Just a few thoughts….

 

 

Engaging Students with Gross but Informational Texts

I spent the last two days in Edwardsville, Illinois with Janet Allen sharing in how to engage students and teach vocabulary. Yes, I said engage students! At IRA, I ran into a colleague and friend who said, “If I hear the word ‘engage’ one more time, I’m walking out!” Obviously, she doesn’t get it. If we cannot get a kid’s head or heart into what we are trying to teach, we cannot teach. The lessons that hit home the hardest and last the longest are those attached to belly-laughter or tears.

Part of our talk in the last two days has been about effective teaching and that requires that we not only get kids’ fully “into” what is happening in the classroom, but also providing them a variety of vehicles that can drive their learning home. Janet promotes using a variety of texts for both purposes. Here is a list of some middle and high school “must reads” for read alouds and shared reading Janet shared:

The Copper Elephant  by Adam Rapp

The Joey Pigza books by Jack Gantos:

What Would Joey Do by Jack Gantos

The Joy Masoff Collection

Oh Yikes! and Oh Yuck!

The Kathleen Krull series: Lives of Artists, Lives of Muscians, Lives of Atheletes, etc.

Lives of the Artists: Masterpieces, Messes (and What the Neighbors Thought)

 Food Rules! The Stuff You Munch, Its Crunch, Its Punch and Why you Sometimes Lose your Lunch! By Bill Haduch

 Suggested Independent Reading for Girls:

Lurlene McDaniel—stories that engage adolescent girls and have have heavy science vocabulary

Sometimes Love Isn’t Enough

The End of Forever

Last Dance

The books of Paul Janeczko

Continuing Notions About Differentiation

Busy, busy, busy!! The mantra of the day…not just for me, but for nearly everyone I meet! 

Much of my recent work has been in the area of differentiation. Last week, I led two workshops on differentiation and this week, yet two more. For me, the break-throughs have been in math. My math teachers expressed to me a concern that most of the workshops or presentations that they had attended addressed methods to differentiate in language based courses, but had not addressed any specific mathematical strategies. I appreciated their critique. And I agree. But agreement does not address the challenge….and so we began to look at ways that accepted differentiation methods could be adapted to math. What about vocabulary instruction? That was a consistent issue. Good reading instruction frontloads vocabulary; but too often, math teachers to no fault of their own, address terminology when it presents itself in the text. One of my math teachers, a department chair, told me that they had analyzed test scores to determine where they students fell short…and to her surprise, the analysis showed the skills weren’t the problem…but vocabulary mastery was! Differentiating vocabulary is not as challenging as one may think.

The first step to teaching vocabulary (in any content area) is getting rid of the dictionary and talking about words. And talking about those words before students encounter them: frontload vocabulary!

The second step to teaching vocabulary is making kids connect….if they cannot visualize or reflect or predict on how a word may have significance for them….it just won’t. Along with connecting is having students identify similar and different words from that they are learning. What I so enjoy about language are the nuances; however, nuances are the challenges for learners.

The third step is getting students to use newly acquired vocabulary in authentic ways. Language learning and vocabulary building require practice through discourse. I like to get my students using their new vocabulary in their writing. Writing allows them time to think about and choose the words they use, so instead of giving multiple choice or fill-in reading quizzes, I provide my students with vocabulary words that we have studied and ask them to write about what they have read using the words. I allow for choice, giving them a list of more words than they are required to use. You determine how many or which words they will select among.

I have found that technique to be very successful for both the students and me. They see the importance of learning a broadened vocabulary and how the words help them express meaning and I am able to see the levels at which they are able to use new words.  This practice also heighten their word consciousness. By using the words, they are more sensitive to hearing and seeing these same words when they are used in the media or in the lyrics of songs or in the scripts of entertainment programming.

Want to read more about teaching vocabulary? Reading Rockets provides sound pedagogy and practical tips and models. Moreover, the site archives current research and noteworthy publications on a wide variety of educational issues and practices.