Friday, January 29, 2021

Do Kids Need to Fail to Succeed?

This week's article summary is Why Have So Many Accepted the Idea That Kids Need to Fail More.

The article focuses on the different impact the words ‘failure’ versus ‘mistake’ can have on student attitudes about the process of learning 

As I read the article, I found myself in the camp that prefers to use the word ‘mistake’ as I think kids too easily may consider the word ‘failure’ from a Fixed Mindset finite and hopeless manner, rather than a step toward progress and eventual success. To me, the word ‘mistake’ implies I can fix it, will try again and will get better through effort and practice—hence, the Growth Mindset attitude teachers try to instill in our students.

Whether teachers use ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’ with students, we all need to create and sustain a classroom culture where experimentation is the norm and where students understand that growth and progress rarely occur in a smooth trajectory and are more often fraught with fits, starts, and regressions. Because we have experience in the classroom and in our lives, we are the wise sages of our classrooms.

Telling our students about the struggles we have with learning something new will help them maintain their confidence and build their resilience as they inevitably encounter obstacles.

.Joe

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Is it important to allow students to fail in class — or not to fail? 

How much should teachers allow kids to struggle before helping them solve a problem or understand a concept? 

These may seem like simple questions, but the answers are complex.

A Texas high school teacher wrote in her blog that she has a large quote on the wall above the whiteboard that says, “In this class, failure is not an option. It’s a requirement.” As she blogged,  "As my students started to learn that first day, I have this quote hanging in my classroom, not because I have a desire to see any of my students fail the class, but as a constant reminder of the powerful learning that occurs when people have to (or are given the opportunity to) struggle through challenging material and fail a few times along the way."

A California teacher has a different take, writing that there is a big difference between failing and making mistakes and that it is important for teachers to help students understand the difference. He wrote: "Failure for a student, I would suggest, is the experience of not making progress towards their key hopes and dreams. One of the many jobs we teachers have, then, is to help them see that challenges they might face are just mistakes, which the dictionary defines as 'an error in action, calculation, opinion, or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness, insufficient knowledge, etc.' Mistakes are things that students can fix — with support — in a reasonable amount of time and without an unreasonable amount of effort."


Friday, January 22, 2021

How Can Teachers Nurture Meaningful Student Agency

This week's article summary is How Can Teachers Nurture Meaningful Student Agency, which, to me, is an apt topic as we settle into the second half of the school year.

At every Admissions Open House, I talk about how Trinity helps shape every child’s character foundation. I tell parents that character at Trinity comes down to a confident sense of self and sincere care and concern for others.

Sense of self is fostered by allowing our students to develop agency, confidence in their abilities and their influence in who they are and what they do.

I really liked the 7 aspects of student agency the author lists: 

  • Genuine decision making
  • Knowing my strengths and stretches as a learner
  • Exploring my wonderings, curiosities, and passions in school
  • Having my questions shape my learning
  • Having a genuine voice in the assessment of my learning
  • Showing and explaining my learning in different ways
  • Deciding how I want to share my learning
  • Growing into the person I want to be
While the article is written by a teacher of older students, I see the aspects above as an inspirational guide for all of us as we teach and mold young minds, habits, and attitudes.

Keeping these components of student agency at the forefront of our planning and classroom activities will help our students become more confident and self-assured in their abilities.

Joe

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The term “student agency” continues to be at the forefront of the educational discourse around the world. By encouraging children to have more control over their learning, educators hope students will leave our classrooms and schools with a range of skills that will support them in being lifelong learners, engaged humanitarian, and empathetic people.

In my work with schools to create more student-agency-rich environments, I fear we may be missing the mark on what “student agency” truly is. Teachers frequently talk about student agency as a choice over assignments, like a list of items on a menu: essay, PowerPoint presentation, poster project or some form of digital literacy, such as a video, Padlet or Prezi. Although it’s important we ask our students how they would like to demonstrate their learning, student agency is about so much more. It requires educators to hold ourselves accountable to values that we must embody and intentionally work towards. 

Let’s have a look at these values in more detail in order to clarify what we mean when we talk about student agency.

Genuine decision making: Student agency is about having students take on some of the heavy lifting of learning. When students can have a genuine role in the decision-making process, this will create a classroom culture that values learning as an action. When I teach, I often ask myself, "Am I doing something my students could be doing themselves?" If the answer is yes, I de-center myself so students can take on these responsibilities. The more I do this, the more comfortable and confident they become in taking on this agency over their learning. Learning becomes a partnership between the teacher and the student as we co-design and co-construct the learning experiences together in the classroom.

Knowing my strengths and stretches as a learner: I often ask myself if my students know where they are at in their learning, where they need to go next, and if they can identify the steps they need to take to get there. Teachers can often answer these questions about each of our students, but can our students answer these questions for themselves? To help get these conversations started in class, I ask a series of guiding questions to help students reflect and begin to get to know themselves better as learners. For example, "Do you learn best alone, in a small group, or in a large class setting? Do you prefer to write, talk about or draw your learning for others to see? What is your focus threshold, as in, how long can you remain focused on something before you feel you need a change of pace, setting or action?" These questions all help students begin to take on more ownership over their learning.

Exploring my wonderings, curiosities and passions in school: All students enter their schooling as curious and inquisitive beings. They are full of questions and wonder as they explore and discover the world around them. However, somewhere in their schooling, many become complacent, disengaged, and uninterested in their learning and in school. What does our teaching do to support and honor the innate curiosity of all students? How do we lean into student wonderings to make rich connections to our curriculum? How can we make our curriculum come alive so students see it as something we explore rather than something we merely cover? These questions help honor the wonderings, curiosities, and passions of all of our students so that they can see themselves as important stakeholders in their learning.


Having my questions shape my learning: Questions are an invitation to learning. They call for us to be engaged, to be inquisitive and to research and problem-solve. In order to utilize this opportunity to create student agency, I often pose big questions to frame our units of study in class that draw students in and will act as our overarching big idea for our learning. I make this question highly visible in class. I compose this question to be compelling, relevant, and interesting with a hope that this one big question will spark wonder and curiosity in students to ask their own connected questions. We discuss the questions that students generate and begin to sort them into categories and themes before we post them in class under the larger question. They have a genuine voice in the design of the unit in that we will explore the questions they posed in our research and exploration together. Students begin to see how their questions shape their learning.


Having a genuine voice in assessment of my learning: If we are talking about student agency in the classroom, we must ensure there is student voice in the assessment of learning as well. Students have a genuine voice in the assessment of their learning when they can confidently give accurate feedback to peers, take and apply feedback without worry of ridicule or embarrassment, and embark into learning through the lens of taking risks in order to grow, rather than for a grade, mark or percentage score. Students need to feel psychologically safe if we are to ask them to take on a more active and meaningful role in their learning, which is why as we nurture student agency in our classrooms, it’s important that we also nurture relationships, trust and risk taking.


Showing and exploring my learning in different ways: Whatever the big idea or content we are learning about, I often begin the school year with a new group of students by providing a choice board through which kids can explore content. A choice board is a digital slide that I have embedded resources into that allows students some options to select information in a means that they feel best supports their learning. I often introduce the exploratory nature of a choice board by asking students, "Do you enjoy taking in information by reading text, looking at images, infographics or charts, watching a short video, exploring a website, or listening to a podcast or someone talking about the information?" Once students have reflected on this prompt, they have a clearer understanding of what best supports their learning. When facing the options on a choice board, they make a decision based on their better understanding of their learning needs and strengths. Further, I encourage students to document their learning–"evidencing," as we refer to it–in a manner that they decide. I always provide a few options in the form of thinking maps, thinking routines or templates to help anchor and organize their learning. After exploring these options and considering if any of them would support their learning, I encourage students to take ownership over this decision and select an evidencing method that works best for them. The power of this choice over showing and exploring their learning in different ways is seen in their success and engagement as well as the greater understanding of how I can best support each individual student that I gain. I observe and document their choices and pathways and then reflect on how I can help them with this agency and have them be continuously successful throughout the process.


Deciding how I want to share my learning: I often ask my students, "If you could show me your learning in any way, how would you show me what you know?" My hope is to honor the diverse learners in the room whilst simultaneously leaning into student’s strengths when it comes to agency. I often observe that students don’t reflect on this prompt with the depth, individuality or creativity I would hope the opportunity offers. That’s why it’s so important that I share with students any artifacts I have curated from other classes and previous years to help paint the picture of what is possible in their learning. I have these artifacts posted on my walls, on display on my shelves or saved as digital files so I can do a bit of a show-and-share and speak to how other students have shown their learning before them. The result is that students begin to see that in our classroom, they will have some voice and choice in how they show their learning and that they can really lean into their strengths and interests. Kids will choose things that they’re good at, interested in exploring more meaningfully and are more genuinely engaged in. 


Growing into the person I want to be: What are the enduring skills, lasting values and habits of mind that will be the legacy of our time with children in our classrooms? How are we cultivating the conditions in today’s classrooms that will nurture the empathy and equity we hope students embody as citizens of tomorrow’s world? How do we view each and every one of our students as unique individuals with strengths, talents, characteristics and perspectives that we need to honor and help flourish during their time in school? It is within our active exploration of these questions and our validation of them in our interactions with students that will give space and support for them to grow in our classrooms. Student agency is not about pushing all kids down the same pathway or having all kids choose the same goal. Student agency is about empowering students to know themselves better, determine who they want to be and identifying steps we can take together to have this goal become a reality.

 







Friday, January 15, 2021

The 10 Most Significant Educational Studies of 2020

This week's article summary is The 10 Most Significant Educational Studies of 2020

I only included 7 of the studies—you can click the link above for the other three that don’t apply greatly to Trinity or early childhood/elementary educational practices.

To me, what’s particularly gratifying is the studies affirm the ongoing programmatic and pedagogical work we do at Trinity. While there is art to great teaching, Trinity utilizes teaching practices whose evidence is demonstration of student learning and understanding.

Our school mantra is to cherish childhood as we simultaneously prepare our students for the future by shaping a strong academic and character foundation (the four Cs of Cognition, Character, Continued Curiosity, and Cultivating Confidence).

You’ll see proof below of what we’ve been focusing on:

  • Importance of stimulating multimodalities (including handwriting) to reinforce content in long-term memory and ease of retrieval
  • The very limited connection of standardized testing results with student success in the classroom
  • The benefits (for both teacher and students) of proactive clarity about what is going to be learned and then assessed
  • How student engagement aids in learning
  • Why Lucy Calkins’ three cueing is not sound pedagogy
  • Why deep, rich content is so important (the subject of some earlier article summaries).
Obviously, we’ve all been consumed by the black hole of Covid-19 for the past 10 months, yet this week’s article is a reminder of the bigger aspects of education and, more importantly, that Trinity, as always, remains in sync with current educational research!

Joe

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TO TEACH VOCABULARY, LET KIDS BE THESPIANS: When students are learning a new language, ask them to act out vocabulary words. It’s fun to unleash a child’s inner thespian, of course, but a 2020 study concluded that it also nearly doubles their ability to remember the words months later. It’s a simple reminder that if you want students to remember something, encourage them to learn it in a variety of ways—by drawing it, acting it out, or pairing it with relevant images, for example.


NEUROSCIENTISTS DEFEND THE VALUE OF TEACHING HANDWRITING—AGAIN: For most kids, typing just doesn’t cut it. In 2012, brain scans of preliterate children revealed crucial reading circuitry flickering to life when kids hand-printed letters and then tried to read them. Also, a team of researchers studied seventh graders while they handwrote, drew, and typed words, and concluded that handwriting and drawing produced telltale neural tracings indicative of deeper learning. Whenever self-generated movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated. It also appears that the movements related to keyboard typing do not activate these networks the same way that drawing and handwriting do.

All kids still need to develop digital skills, and there’s evidence that technology helps children with dyslexia to overcome obstacles like note-taking or illegible handwriting.


THE ACT TEST JUST GOT A NEGATIVE SCORE (FACE PALM): A 2020 study found that ACT test scores, which are often a key factor in college admissions, showed a weak—or even negative—relationship when it came to predicting how successful students would be in college. Often students with very high ACT scores—but indifferent high school grades—flame out in college, overmatched by the rigors of a university’s academic schedule. In a similar study about SAT scores, researchers found that high school grades were stronger predictors of four-year-college graduation than SAT scores. The reason? Four-year high school grades, the researchers asserted, are a better indicator of crucial skills like perseverance, time management, and the ability to avoid distractions.


A RUBRIC REDUCES RACIAL GRADING BIAS: A simple step might help undercut the pernicious effect of grading bias: Articulate your standards clearly before you begin grading, and refer to the standards regularly during the assessment process. When grading criteria are vague, implicit stereotypes can insidiously “fill in the blanks.” But when teachers have an explicit set of criteria to evaluate the writing—asking whether the student “provides a well-elaborated recount of an event,” for example—the difference in grades is nearly eliminated.


STUDENTS WHO GENERATE GOOD QUESTIONS ARE BETTER LEARNERS: Some of the most popular study strategies—highlighting passages, rereading notes, and underlining key sentences—are also among the least effective. A 2020 study highlighted a powerful alternative: Get students to generate questions about their learning, and gradually press them to ask more probing questions. In the study, students who studied a topic and then generated their own questions scored higher on a test than students who used passive strategies like studying their notes and rereading classroom material. Creating questions, the researchers found, not only encouraged students to think more deeply about the topic but also strengthened their ability to remember what they were studying.


DID A 2020 STUDY JUST END THE ‘READING WARS’?: Lucy Calkins Unit of Study was dealt a severe blow when a panel of reading experts concluded that it “would be unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren.” The study found that the program failed to explicitly and systematically teach young readers how to decode and encode written words, and was thus “in direct opposition to an enormous body of settled research.” The study sounded the death knell for practices that de-emphasize phonics in favor of having children use multiple sources of information—like story events or illustrations—to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words, an approach often associated with “balanced literacy.” Calkins seemed to concede the point, writing that “aspects of balanced literacy need some ‘rebalancing.’”


RESEARCHERS CAST DOUBT ON READING TASKS LIKE ‘FINDING THE MAIN IDEA’: “Content is comprehension,” declared a 2020 Fordham Institute study, sounding a note of defiance as it staked out a position in the ongoing debate over the teaching of intrinsic reading skills versus the teaching of content knowledge. Exposing kids to rich content in civics, history, and social studies appeared to teach reading more effectively than our current methods of teaching reading. According to Natalie Wexler, the author of the well-received 2019 book The Knowledge Gap, content knowledge and reading are intertwined. “Students with more background knowledge have a better chance of understanding whatever text they encounter. They’re able to retrieve more information about the topic from long-term memory, leaving more space in working memory for comprehension,” she recently told Edutopia.


Friday, January 8, 2021

Thank You For A Great First Week of 2021

Even though it’s been a tragic and tumultuous week for our country, I want to thank all of you for such a phenomenal beginning of the second half of the school year! Every email I received from parents was effusive in praise of how impressively you all engaged their children--not an easy task in a virtual environment! Parents clearly recognize the care, thoughtfulness, creativity, and energy you all put into this week. Thank you!

My emotions are still so raw from what we witnessed in DC this week, I haven’t been able to process and organize my thoughts, so forgive the incoherent blathering of the rest of this paragraph. As I watched the hate-filled, brazen vandalism of the Capitol, I recalled how many times I had stood with groups of students in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall describing the basic tenets of democracy and the complementary workings of three branches of our federal government. While our country isn’t perfect, I enjoyed teaching my students about our country’s core values and virtues, including our freedoms and our individual and collective responsibilities of being a contributing citizen in a democratic republic. To see such wanton and lawless destruction of our country’s democratic pillars--checks and balances, trust of the voting process, peaceful transition of power, putting aside personal wants for the good of the whole--was one of the lowest points in my life as an American. Much like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, this week’s events will go down in infamy in the history of our country. As an eternal optimist, though, I am hopeful that good can come from bad and those who believe in and live by fairness and empathy will guide and lead us. Here’s to a better 2021, even though it’s off to a rocky start.

Anyway, the very short article summary is a number of quotes from elementary school children who were asked to describe the year 2020 in only six words. As always, kids are more insightful (and funny and poignant) than we give them credit for: 

  • Daytime pajamas make great school attire
  • Never take seeing friends for granted
  • The world is a fragile place
  • Great parents aren’t always great teachers
  • Life can be easy…and hard
  • If I learned one thing: masks
  • I love and hate my family
  • Be catlike: nap, eat, avoid humans
  • Real friends actually stick with you
  • Lifesavers: doctors, cousins, teachers, elections, Minecraft

 Enjoy the weekend! Stay happy and healthy!

 Joe