My "Oh no" moment...
My math tests were an amazing success! Tests on Tuesdays, retests on Thursdays or Fridays. Things were working, kids were engaged and striving to move up from test to retest, and parents could see and help with exactly what the student was struggling with. All was going well, until I read to about halfway through Differentiation : Simplified, Realistic, and Effective by Bertie Kingore. I was convinced of further change in the first few chapters and then started swearing to myself about chapter 5 or so. What was working so well for tests needed to be done for instruction. This idea hit like a semi-trailer. I could see the reasoning. I had experienced the wonderful results of my initial changes, but this would require an overhaul of how I delivered my lessons. How could I do for instruction what I had done for assessment? I started small and I started with math...
Math practice sheets had always been part of my warm-up for each lesson, and I had systems in place for tracking student progress through mad-minute times tables, etc. I decided the sheets, handed them out each day, collected them, and marked them. "Challenge by Choice" was one of the catch-phrases in Tiered Teaching, so what if the students just chose their own sheets? Would this work? Wouldn't they always just take the easiest sheets? I decided to try it out. I set them all up at the back of the class in 6 different bins, and talked with the students at the beginning of class.
"Challenge by choice is like playing basketball. If as intermediate students you play against kindergarten kids, you get lots of points but you don't improve on your skills. It doesn't' make you a better player. On the other hand, if you play against a NBA player, you don't score many points at all (if any) and you also don't really get to improve. Challenge by choice means finding a sheet at that just-right level so that it drives improvement. I am not so much interested by points as I am with improvement."
It still took a few weeks or maybe a month before the last of the students were selecting a just-right sheet each day.
Great, this part was working. What's next?
Friday, 24 April 2020
Developing the Plan
My new class presented with its own challenges. With 28 students, 8 on Individual Education Plans (IEPs), and 2 with behaviour plans, it was a challenge that required new tools. Leading all my students to jump over a certain learning goal and on to the next was not going to work. Some students could easily clear the bar without any instruction, while others struggled and could not meet these learning goals even with extra help. What I was doing was clearly not working.
I had always taught with rubrics, performance standards, and in Bella Bella I learned about Layered Curriculum from Judy Rourke. Layered curriculum seemed like part of the answer I needed; it helped challenged more of my learners (especially the higher academic students), but I still did not like the problem that higher marks was just a lot more work. Something about that just did not seem quite right to me. So one professional development day in 2014 while doing some online research, I stumbled upon the Tiered Teaching model. This was a differentiated instructional model that seemed to fit my teaching quite well.
After watching a few videos from Dr. Kathie Nunley, I realized that my assessment was wrong. All my beautiful tests did not really tel me what I wanted to know, or help my students see what they had learned and what they needed to know. What kind of questions were on my tests? Did I ask a lot of easier questions? Harder? In what order? If a student got a 16/20 then what did they know? On what concepts did they need to improve? Did they get another chance to show their knowledge?
I swore a bit at my classroom laptop (in an empty room) and then got to work. Step one was just trying to limit my tests to assessing only one concept at a time. If the student got 15/20, but there were multiple concepts on the test were they a 15/20 on both or did they know one but were unsure of the other? Step two was making the questions go in a logical order from easy to hard, that way any student looking at the test sees questions that they know they can be immediately successful with.
I tried the first tests out in Math, and immediately loved them' they were by no means perfect, but they told me what I needed to know. I could look at a test and immediately see what level the student was at and what I needed to help them with. The students liked them as well because they could just work until they got stuck and that was okay. After marking these tests (which was way faster), the students got to take them home to study for the retest a few days later. The tests showed exactly what they knew and the next steps that they needed to learn and need help with. Parents liked how it showed what they need to work on with their child, but were a bit confused because they no longer included a numerical grade like 15/20 but instead a "meeting expectations". I remember one conversation with a parent where they expressed how they thought that numbers and percent were better and easier to understand. I explained that numbers don't give a great picture of learning or ability level.
"For example, if you were given a percent score for your job performance each day, or for your performance as a parent each day, would that help you to improve? Would it describe your abilities and outline your strengths and areas for growth? We give kids numbers or percents, but as adults do not like the idea of being ranked or evaluated in the same way? Obviously in school we need to change to something that empowers students and allows them to take control over their learning."
I had always taught with rubrics, performance standards, and in Bella Bella I learned about Layered Curriculum from Judy Rourke. Layered curriculum seemed like part of the answer I needed; it helped challenged more of my learners (especially the higher academic students), but I still did not like the problem that higher marks was just a lot more work. Something about that just did not seem quite right to me. So one professional development day in 2014 while doing some online research, I stumbled upon the Tiered Teaching model. This was a differentiated instructional model that seemed to fit my teaching quite well.
After watching a few videos from Dr. Kathie Nunley, I realized that my assessment was wrong. All my beautiful tests did not really tel me what I wanted to know, or help my students see what they had learned and what they needed to know. What kind of questions were on my tests? Did I ask a lot of easier questions? Harder? In what order? If a student got a 16/20 then what did they know? On what concepts did they need to improve? Did they get another chance to show their knowledge?
I swore a bit at my classroom laptop (in an empty room) and then got to work. Step one was just trying to limit my tests to assessing only one concept at a time. If the student got 15/20, but there were multiple concepts on the test were they a 15/20 on both or did they know one but were unsure of the other? Step two was making the questions go in a logical order from easy to hard, that way any student looking at the test sees questions that they know they can be immediately successful with.
I tried the first tests out in Math, and immediately loved them' they were by no means perfect, but they told me what I needed to know. I could look at a test and immediately see what level the student was at and what I needed to help them with. The students liked them as well because they could just work until they got stuck and that was okay. After marking these tests (which was way faster), the students got to take them home to study for the retest a few days later. The tests showed exactly what they knew and the next steps that they needed to learn and need help with. Parents liked how it showed what they need to work on with their child, but were a bit confused because they no longer included a numerical grade like 15/20 but instead a "meeting expectations". I remember one conversation with a parent where they expressed how they thought that numbers and percent were better and easier to understand. I explained that numbers don't give a great picture of learning or ability level.
"For example, if you were given a percent score for your job performance each day, or for your performance as a parent each day, would that help you to improve? Would it describe your abilities and outline your strengths and areas for growth? We give kids numbers or percents, but as adults do not like the idea of being ranked or evaluated in the same way? Obviously in school we need to change to something that empowers students and allows them to take control over their learning."
The Beginning
After spending a few years now connecting with kids, putting on professional development workshops for teachers, and sharing resources, my wife (Shelien) suggested that I put my stuff down in a blog to share.
I came out of university and started teaching in 2001 with lots of energy and enthusiasm, and I hate to say quite a bit of arrogance. My first teaching position helped me truly see the extent of my current skills...I had a long way to go before I would become the teacher that I really wanted to be. Some kids were totally connected to me, and to some I was just another teacher that they had to put up with until June. I was fortunate to be supported by other teachers around me (like Mike Rennie) as well as my principal Bob Latham. In those first few years of teaching a good principal who can provide support and guidance, as well as buffer some of the school drama is very needed.
When the provincial government upped the class size limit, my wife and I went from being close to getting our own classes for September, to about 37th on the recall list. So we decided to accept positions in the small community of Bella Bella. This First Nations community is only accessible by ferry or plane, so all supplies to the town were quite expensive. Quickly however, we found the community welcoming and seafood cheap and easy to obtain. We went to numerous potlatches and were culturally adopted into local families. Sometime later I will do another post just on the Heiltsuk culture specifically since it deserves its own space and its people deserve their specific recognition in our lives.
After Bella Bella we eventually settled in Prince George, BC. It's amount of sunlight were a pleasant change from the coastal rainforest and we settled into our new school. We were hired to teach at the new Aboriginal Choice School that was just opening up, and we were selected because we had taught in both the band-school system as well as the public system. The original goal of the school was to be somewhere in-between the two systems, and could hopefully be the best of both.
Trying to adjust to such a diversity of learners was a challenge. I had dealt with diverse classes in the past, but these were mostly academic challenges for me. Now I had kids that were academically and behaviourally diverse, as well as having issues with attendance. I realized that I had to teach a completely different way, and had no idea what that was going to be.
Figuring out how to completely redo your teaching style while being totally stressed out with classroom behaviours, meetings, testing, etc. made progress slow. My students did not do any homework, so how was I going to adapt to that? Some of them needed a teacher, others a Dad-like figure, and others a behaviour coach. By the third year my new structures were in place, and it was working. I integrated my Heiltsuk knowledge of family and protocols with a learning-centers based classroom and my students showed progress. They were learning how to read and write, could solve math problems, cooperate in small groups and were learning First Nation's culture.
When I changed schools, I moved back into intermediate to a group of students who, when I told them to take out their novels and read for 25 minutes after lunch, actually did it, at the beginning of September! I realized that since I was not going to be as stressed, I could further adapt my model of teaching.
I came out of university and started teaching in 2001 with lots of energy and enthusiasm, and I hate to say quite a bit of arrogance. My first teaching position helped me truly see the extent of my current skills...I had a long way to go before I would become the teacher that I really wanted to be. Some kids were totally connected to me, and to some I was just another teacher that they had to put up with until June. I was fortunate to be supported by other teachers around me (like Mike Rennie) as well as my principal Bob Latham. In those first few years of teaching a good principal who can provide support and guidance, as well as buffer some of the school drama is very needed.
When the provincial government upped the class size limit, my wife and I went from being close to getting our own classes for September, to about 37th on the recall list. So we decided to accept positions in the small community of Bella Bella. This First Nations community is only accessible by ferry or plane, so all supplies to the town were quite expensive. Quickly however, we found the community welcoming and seafood cheap and easy to obtain. We went to numerous potlatches and were culturally adopted into local families. Sometime later I will do another post just on the Heiltsuk culture specifically since it deserves its own space and its people deserve their specific recognition in our lives.
After Bella Bella we eventually settled in Prince George, BC. It's amount of sunlight were a pleasant change from the coastal rainforest and we settled into our new school. We were hired to teach at the new Aboriginal Choice School that was just opening up, and we were selected because we had taught in both the band-school system as well as the public system. The original goal of the school was to be somewhere in-between the two systems, and could hopefully be the best of both.
Trying to adjust to such a diversity of learners was a challenge. I had dealt with diverse classes in the past, but these were mostly academic challenges for me. Now I had kids that were academically and behaviourally diverse, as well as having issues with attendance. I realized that I had to teach a completely different way, and had no idea what that was going to be.
Figuring out how to completely redo your teaching style while being totally stressed out with classroom behaviours, meetings, testing, etc. made progress slow. My students did not do any homework, so how was I going to adapt to that? Some of them needed a teacher, others a Dad-like figure, and others a behaviour coach. By the third year my new structures were in place, and it was working. I integrated my Heiltsuk knowledge of family and protocols with a learning-centers based classroom and my students showed progress. They were learning how to read and write, could solve math problems, cooperate in small groups and were learning First Nation's culture.
When I changed schools, I moved back into intermediate to a group of students who, when I told them to take out their novels and read for 25 minutes after lunch, actually did it, at the beginning of September! I realized that since I was not going to be as stressed, I could further adapt my model of teaching.
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