Conference on Teaching & Learning

Differentiation Puts Kids Over Content

2005-11-14T15:27:00.000-05:00

"Artful teaching is a love triangle between teachers, students, and content." --Tomlinson

Carol Ann Tomlinson believes that "Differentiated instruction is the means by which teachers ensure that good curriculum is a good fit for each learner." It's connecting with kids, and connecting kids with content. In her Tuesday, October 25th, morning session "Differentiation: Connecting with Kids and Connecting Kids to Content," Tomlinson gave four basic guiding principles for connecting students and teachers, content and students.

Connect--Through student-driven activities, opportunities for kids to share or build on their personal interests, journaling, positive humor, and many other ways.

Respect--For example, learning about and honoring the students' cultures, communicating high expectations, and making time for students.

"The heart of the method is the relationship between teachers and students." --The Macon Telegraph

Challenge--By providing meaningful work that extends the kno wn and challenges the unknown.

Support--For example, giving second chances and deferring grades, clarifying expectations, teaching needed skills, accepting responsibility for student success, and learning students' strengths and weaknesses.

Differentiated Instruction is tied to the new performance standards in the state of Georgia. For a peek at how teachers and middle Georgia are putting differentiated instruction to work, as a means of supporting the performance standards, check out this article from The Macon Telegraph. How is differentiated instruction working in your schools? Is differentiation supported, at the classroom level, on a regular basis? Or is it just more inservice jargon that never really fleshes out into practice? Let us know.

Giving Kids Control

2005-11-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

It doesn't take Tuesday's school shooting in Tennessee (Washington Post, free registration) to convince me that schools can be stressful environments. Aside from the impact of major traumas like violence and death, everyday stressors have huge impacts on how we teach and learn. For students and teachers alike, feeling like you have more control over your life is one way to reduce stress, contends Eric Jensen.

In his Sunday afternoon conference session, Principle-driven Learning: How Highly Effective Teachers Boost Student Achievement, Jensen outlined some ways to make students feel like they have greater control over their school experiences:

Emotional vesting—Teach content student’s feel is worth learning.

Relationship contracts—If you give your word, keep it. Be a good listener, and when applicable, give kids “insider information"--for example, the next step in a lesson. Ask students to do things they like doing, and then expand that into things that are more challenging.

Create “hooks” in your lessons—For example, give kids opportunities to vote, bet, or make predictions about activity outcomes. Keep points during the week, on whether their predictions were correct or not—or allocate a sum of “play money” that they can use to bet answers to questions. This’ll also help reign in the kids who think they have the answers to everything—they’ll soon learn they have much to learn. Another way to hook kids is by asking compelling questions.

Create “ladders” in your lessons—For example, ask students to do one lillte thing that leads to another, and another, and another. Don’t always tell students the endpoint of their actions, keep them curious.

Get kids to change “pools”—This means getting students to change their mental or emotional states before trying to change their behaviors. The objective is to get them into a better state for hooking them into the lesson. For example, getting kids to stand up, move around the classroom, or do some whimsical task like blow bubbles or clap a rhythm.
Allow multiple social structures—Use a variety of pairings for student work.

Provide feedback-driven activities—Build-in scoring that allows for incremental review of student work, use models so that students can compare their work, and if possible, use audio or video to record student work for their review.

We've talked about kids, now let's hear about teachers and colleagues. Principals, Superintendents, and Administrators--Share your strategies for giving your staff greater control over their circumstances in school.

Educating the Whole Smile

2005-11-02T13:19:00.000-05:00

I put off going to the dentist because my biannual cleanings have become painful reminders that I should really floss more often. But for a lot of school-age kids, trips to the dentist are skipped because they can't afford it or they don't have anyone to take them.

In the United States alone,

Nearly 63 percent of all children do not visit the dentist annually.
Children miss about 52 million hours of school each year because of oral health problems.

(Source: The Detroit News)

A mouth full of healthy teeth not only keeps kids' minds on their schoolwork; it also makes them feel a little less self-conscious. During Diane Clark and Pamela Garriott's session "Teaching Strategies That Foster Resiliency in the Inclusive Classroom" (pictured above), one attendee shared how her school helped mitigate disparities between students' appearances and boosted student wellness by funding a Mobile Dentists initiative. In addition to sending the message that student health is valued, providing dental services allowed the school to reach out to those students who may have been limited by time, access, and affordability.

In her "Message from the President" column in the November Education Update, ASCD President Mary Ellen Freeley notes that educating the whole child means more than current fixations on academic achievement and assessment. It also means each student "must have access to health care, good nutrition, and exercise to be physically ready to meet academic demands."

How does your school go beyond academics to support its community of learners? Please share your comments.

Asking for It

2005-10-26T17:18:00.000-04:00

When Stephen Sroka tells you what students want from today's schools, he's not just reading you some 3x5 note card--he's actually asking kids for it.

During Tuesday's closing general session, Sroka's panel of student experts (pictured from left to right: Sroka, Neha, Maggie, Carlos, and Jake) answered questions about the kinds of schools they want to go to and identified their amalgam of the most desirable teacher qualities.

Here's two examples of the questions and the students' answers:

What three things would you remove from your school?

bullying
discrimination (The Boston Globe)
dispassionate teachers and students
testing as a way of ranking students (USA Today)
grades (The Washington Post, free with registration)
drugs

What are the top three things you want in your school?

positive discipline
a clean, safe, and welcoming environment
teaching for understanding
emotionally nurturing, quality teachers (that have senses of humor)
creativity that is valued and encouraged

In this month's "Is It Good for the Kids?" column, ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter asserts that policymakers need to listen to the voices of educators. Implicit in this call is listening to students, as well, so that teachers have what they need to reach each student's needs.

As student expert Jake put it, "I want a teacher that doesn't say I should know something just because it's in the book. If all I need to do is read the book, then why are there teachers?"

Teachers, students, principals, administrators, and support staff--let us know what qualities you'd like in your school(s), and which attributes have got to go! Post your response.

Also, check out the previous post on Stephen Sroka.

A Prickly Pomegranate

2005-10-24T19:47:00.000-04:00

The big problem with No Child Left Behind, W. James Popham asserted during Sunday's opening keynote, is that it uses the wrong kinds of tests to judge the caliber of student learning and teacher instruction. Popham advocates for instructionally sensitive tests, which he claims possess

Clear descriptions of assessment targets.
A manageable number of assessment targets.
Instructionally informative results.

Standards-based tests are a good idea, but according to Popham, they've been corrupted. He explains that there are too many ill-defined content targets and that teachers are often left guessing what's going to be tested. Popham also believes that most standards-based tests don't produce results in ways that make sense to teachers and, thus, cannot be used as tools to benefit instruction.

The problem with traditional achievement tests, like the Stanford and Iowa achievement tests, is that they are derivative of the World War I "Army Alpha" test, which was used to identify potential Army officers. These sorts of tests, Popham notes, must create a score-spread and, therefore, by design, must include items that the majority of test-takers will get wrong or be unable to correctly identify. Often those gate-keeper items can be tied to socioeconomic status--like a pomegranate! They're a pretty pricey fruit, which your average bodega probably doesn't stock; however, more expensive markets do.

What do you think about using instructionally sensitive tests to measure student achievement? Post your response.

For more on Popham's treatise on instructionally sensitive tests, check out his "All About Accountability" column in the November 2004 issue of Educational Leadership.

Also, check out his past contributions to the ASCD canon.

More Than Healthy Events

2005-10-24T18:58:00.000-04:00

Does your school promote healthy events or, on a broader scale, does your school sustain a healthy environment? Here's a quick self-assessment:

Health-related events are one-time, unique, short-term, and nonsustaining.
A healthy school environment is ongoing, repeated, sustaining, and incorporated at the policy level.

In today's session titled "School Employee Wellness: The Connection to Student Health and Learning," Beverly Samek and Eva Marx advocated for coordinated, districtwide health plans that go beyond isolated wellness events. Marx and Samek suggested considering disease prevention, stress management, employee assistance programs, emergency preparedness, wellness policy development, and wellness plans linked to employee benefits as ways to span the gap between scattered healthy school events and a sustained healthy school environment for each student and staff member.

What is your school or district doing to offer more than healthy events? Please share your comments.

Keep an eye on the ASCD Online Store for recordings of this session and others from the 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning. Also, learn more about Samek and Marx's work and their forthcoming book, Protecting Our Assets: A School Employee Wellness Guide, which will be available summer 2006 from the Directors of Health Promotion and Education.

Fit To Be Tried

2005-10-17T11:49:00.000-04:00

Nourishing the body with nutritious food and regular exercise means more than just improving the attendance rates of students and staff.

By the start of school next year, the federal government will require school lunchrooms receiving federal money to have a local wellness plan in place. Today's Washington Post profiles a school in Fairfax County (Va.) that incorporates exercise and healthy eating into its school culture and community.

In the September 2005 Educational Leadership article "Healthy and Ready to Learn," former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher cites several studies that link student health to academic performance and positive social-emotional development. In the same issue, Pat Cooper's article "A Coordinated School Health Plan" profiles a Mississippi school where dedication to schoolwide healthfulness netted lower discipline referrals, higher graduation rates, increased school enrollment, and vastly improved academic performance on state tests. (Log in for full access to Educational Leadership.)

For secondary school teachers, the September 26, 2005, issue of ResearchBrief addresses the issue of thwarting the trend toward physical inactivity in high school girls.

Whether in the daily newspaper or in a school's daily routine, school health is about more than responding to a federal mandate--it's about the whole child who is healthy, engaged, and actively participating in life and learning. Evidence shows that if students have a healthy place to learn, they are going to do a healthy amount of learning.

Related Conference Sessions

On Sunday, October 23, Joyce Fetro walks you through a sample coordinated school-health framework and how its components can be integrated in any school in her Conference on Teaching & Learning morning (1204T) or afternoon (1304T) session titled "Developing Policies and Practices That Support Student Well-Being and Academic Achievement."

On Monday, October 24, Eva Marx and Beverly Samek put teachers' health first and show the student success tie-in during their morning (2209T) or afternoon (2309T) session titled "Teacher Wellness: The Connection to Student Health and Learning."

Where Does Resiliency Come From?

2005-10-06T14:39:00.000-04:00

Some kids seem to have a natural ability to bounce back from trauma, while other kids seem lost in grief or stress. Teachers have the unique opportunity to foster students' resiliency and develop it in those students who struggle with coping. Besides strengthening your commitment to educate the whole child, teaching kids to be resilient helps their school achievement, as well.

In the October Education Update newsletter article "Resiliency and Achievement," WestEd's Senior Program Associate Bonnie Benard, who has logged over 20 years studying resiliency in children, identifies three ways teachers can nurture their students' resilient natures:

Establish caring relationships. Teachers must take time to connect with each of their students, says Benard. It's as simple as making eye contact at least once a day with each student, as simple as knowing each child's name, and as simple as noticing when a child is absent and saying the next day, “We missed you yesterday.” These are actions that all adults who interact with children can take, asserts Benard.

Deliver high-expectation messages. Teachers can help their students realize that, as Benard puts it, “they do indeed have a power within themselves” to rise above difficult circumstances. To do so, teachers and other adults in schools need to convey that they truly believe in each student's capacity to learn and to be successful in life. “Showing that somebody believes in you when you don't believe in yourself is so big,” Benard states. Use a “strengths-focused” approach, she advises: First, identify the strengths and interests that each young person has, and then use those strengths and interests to address any challenges.

Provide opportunities for active participation and contribution. Giving students a voice can be accomplished through classroom management approaches and instruction, Benard suggests. Students can help establish classroom rules that everybody can agree with, for example. Further, she adds, learning strategies such as cooperative learning provide opportunities for students to be resources for one another and convey to them that they can help one another learn. In terms of assessment, teachers can use strategies that invite students to reflect on their work. Benard recommends, for example, that teachers ask students to create portfolios and include items that represent their best work.

Related Conference Session

Learn more about fostering resilience in students on Sunday, October 23, at the 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning. Attend morning session 1203T, "Teaching Strategies That Foster Resiliency in the Inclusive Classroom," presented by Diane Clark and Pamela Garriott, both professors at Grand Valley State University, in Grand Rapids, Mich. If you're already planning to attend this session, let us know what you learn!

Rallying Around Economic Integration

2005-09-29T10:30:00.000-04:00

Wake County in Raleigh, N.C., uses a complex formula to ensure that schools are populated by students from an array of economic backgrounds. This can mean that students spend close to an hour on a bus every morning and afternoon, commuting to their assigned schools. It also means, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times (registration required), a jump in the achievement of black and Hispanic students on standardized tests for math and reading. The article also quotes experts who claim the achievement of low-income students is improved when they have the opportunity to attend middle-income schools.

However, not everybody believes this policy will reach deeply enough to shake the status quo. One teacher on the 1st_yr_teachers discussion board at LiveJournal thinks economic integration in Raleigh is limited because students are resegregated academically once enrolled in their economically integrated school.

How effective is economic integration in leveling the playing field for high-poverty students? Post your response.

Related Conference Session

Here's your chance to ask an expert about this topic--William Parrett, Director of the Center for School Improvement and Policy Studies in Boise, Idaho, will share successful school processes and strategies for raising the achievement of high-poverty learners in his all-day session, Monday, October 24, at the 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning. To get the goods, make sure you're signed up for ticketed session 2102T, "High Poverty Learners: School Practices That Work."

Raising Student Voices

2005-09-28T14:05:00.000-04:00

Students on the school board, sitting in on new teacher hiring, and shaping sex education--that's just how they do it at Kennebunk High School in Kennebunk, Maine.

Today, Edweek.org sponsors a live chat with Nelson Beaudoin, principal at Kennebunk High. He'll talk about the democratic underpinnings of his student-centered school, responsibility and engagement, and whether his school's approach can meet both student and teacher approval.

Get more info on the chat or access the transcript.

Stephen Sroka

The 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning closing general session speaker, Stephen Sroka, knows the power of student voices in education. He blends research and a panel of students discussing real issues in his showcase of strategies for reaching and engaging all students.

Learn more about Stephen Sroka below and catch him live at the conference.

From “Supporting the Whole Child,” July 2005 Education Update:

Empowering Students

As educators aim high, they'll find more students take the higher path when they feel empowered and understood. That's the message from a presentation focused on helping students make healthy decisions and take constructive action.

Too often, educators are competing with TV, which has a clear and consistent message: sex, drugs, and violence, said Stephen Sroka, a health education consultant. But teachers and students have the power to make a difference by doing the right thing, right now, Sroka insisted. Teachers need to step in when they see bullying or other inappropriate behavior, he said, because “what you permit, you promote.”

Sroka is a dynamic speaker who knows the value of showing rather than telling. He let students from Saint John Neumann High School in Naples, Fla., speak for themselves at his session titled Student Voices from the Trenches--Are You Listening? Mark Anthony Rosa, a freshman, acknowledged that drugs, violence, and bullying distract students from their learning. What does he find engaging at school?--sports, music, and math, he said, adding that “happiness is scoring a goal or learning a new song on my guitar.”

Mark Anthony's sister, Daniella Rosa, noted how bullying at her old school had cast a shadow over her entire learning experience. Now a junior at Neumann, she said, “it is a whole different atmosphere.” Daniella and her family found that one of the biggest problems with bullying is denial among teachers and parents. Sroka asserted that adults need to break down the cycle of denial and fear and foster these protective factors for students:

A family who will love them unconditionally.

Friends who pull them up and not down.

Faith and a moral compass—a sense of right and wrong.
Peer pressure from friends is a big issue, noted Neal Ashby, a junior. “Most kids say they don't care about being in the ‘in crowd,’ but they really do,” he said. When they don't have access to enough activities, kids turn to drinking on the weekends. Unfortunately, alcohol and drug use are big problems for high school students, Neal said frankly, and they can lead to sexual promiscuity. Then, as kids strive to keep up with their peers' level of coolness, they get into trouble.
Another junior, Alex Masud, emphasized the importance of teachers and parents demanding that students take the right path. Educators can help students set priorities to be sure they get the most out of their education, he said. Alex noted that his parents have taught him that working and learning are important so that he knows about the world he lives in. “Education doesn't mean anything unless you know how to use it,” he acknowledged. (Read the full article.)

Avoiding the "Pobrecillos" Trap

2005-09-20T18:45:00.000-04:00

University Park Campus School (UPCS) in Worcester, Mass., is no stranger to challenging statistics.

72 percent of their students receive free or reduced-price lunch.
80 percent are English language learners.
53 percent of the residents in the school's neighborhood are unemployed.

When UPCS formed in 1997, the small public school (grades 7-12) took on goliath odds. From the beginning, says school principal June Eressy, it was crucial for the school faculty to avoid the "pobrecillos" or "poor little ones" trap. Through a collaborative school culture, which refused to patronize students by lowering expectations, and an unflinching school focus on literacy, UPCS changed the community profile in its first year.

Eight years later, the students in who attend UPCS boast a 100 percent pass rate on the MCAS (the state graduation exam), close to a 0 percent dropout rate, and a most impressive 100 percent college enrollment rate.

A key component of the school's success is something Eressy calls "low-stakes writing." She explains that high-stakes writing, or writing only for a grade, limits students' ability to take risks and experiment with their authorial voice. Rather, Eressy and her faculty focus the curriculum on "writing-to-learn" activities that allow students to practice different writing styles and enable teachers to differentiate writing assignments. In 7th and 8th grade especially, class is parsed into two-and-a-half-hour blocks so students have plenty of in-class time to practice their writing and other literacy skills crucial to their achievement in the upper grades.

Daily writing has bolstered achievement at UPCS. As Maureen O'Leary Wanket argues in "Building the Habit of Writing" (Educational Leadership, September 2005), it "connects students with their emotional selves and core values."

You can explore writing's potential in your classroom at the 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning. Attend Sue Beers' morning or afternoon ticketed session entitled "Reading and Writing in the Content Areas."

This report was based on the High School Achievement Forum's presentation entitled "The University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts," which took place at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., on September 14, 2005. Audio coverage of the event is available.

A Popham Primer

2005-09-20T09:55:00.000-04:00

W. James Popham, former test developer and outspoken critic of poorly designed or misused tests, kicks off the 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning in San Francisco.

Before you hear his Opening General Session presentation, check out his past contributions to the ASCD canon.

Books

Teach Better, Test Better (2003)
The Truth About Testing (2001)

Educational Leadership articles from the All About Accountability series . . .

Can Growth Ever Be Beside the Point? (November 2005)
The Age of Compliance (October 2005)
AYP Wriggle Room Running Out (September 2005)
NAEP: Gold Standard or Fool's Gold? (May 2005)
Squandered Instructional Zeal (April 2005)
Instructional Quality: Collecting Credible Evidence (March 2005)
Students' Attitudes Count (February 2005)
Swords with Blunt Edges (December 2004/January 2005)
“Teaching to the Test”: An Expression to Eliminate (November 2004)
Tawdry Tests and AYP (October 2004)
Why Assessment Illiteracy Is Professional Suicide (September 2004)

More Educational Leadership articles . . .

The Seductive Allure of Data (February 2003), requires member log in
A Nation at Risk Really Ought to Take a Few (December 2002/January 2003), requires member log in
Teaching to the Test? (March 2001)
Why Standardized Tests Don’t Measure Educational Quality (March 1999)
What’s Wrong--and What’s Right--with Rubrics (October 1997)

Is This Thing On?

2005-09-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

In the September Educational Leadership on the whole child, Nel Noddings notes that education communities

. . . will not find the solution to problems of violence, alienation, ignorance, and unhappiness in increasing our security apparatus, imposing more tests, punishing schools for their failure to produce 100 percent proficiency, or demanding that teachers be knowledgeable in "the subjects they teach." (Read the full article.)

Noddings believes that our current, fragmented approach to issues in public education is yielding inconsistent and incomplete results--in essence, fragmented students.

In particular, she notes that the fever sweeping the United States for assessment in reading and math is limiting educational aims to a no more/no less dichotomy. By expecting no more than math and reading proficiency from our schools, many feel we are abandoning the democratic foundations of education. Instead of compartmentalizing the needs of teachers, students, and society at-large, Noddings advocates that "we must allow teachers and students to interact as whole persons, and we must develop policies that treat the school as a whole community." The September Educational Leadership envisions the possibilities of such a holistic approach to education.

We need visionaries like you to pull the discussion from the page into policy and practice. That's why we are going to San Francisco in October for the 2005 Conference on Teaching & Learning, and why we are blogging on the experiences leading up to, during, and following the conference. Our hopes are that this blog and this conference will be a forum for sharing and exploring the questions, strategies, and needs of whole child educators.

So . . . you tell us. This blog is really whatever you want it to be. Imagine yourself stepping on stage to a capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden. We're just your microphone. You provide the riffs, improvs, sing-alongs, and solos--we'll make sure this thing stays on.

Testing, one, two . . .

Teaching & Learning Blog Terms of Use

2005-08-24T09:57:00.000-04:00

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