The 11th Friday: Cultivating Curiosity

“Simply providing more education is probably a good thing on balance, especially if a more educated labor force is a more flexible labor force that can cope more readily with non-routine tasks and constant occupational change. But it is far from a panacea…In the future, how we educate children may prove more important than how much we educate them…CQ + PQ > IQ."

                                                      T.L. Friedman (2006, pp. 302-303)

Several years ago, I muddled my way through Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman’s bestselling The World is Flat:A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (2006). It was a thought-provoking look at how the world has changed, is changing, and will change as a result of many forces, particularly technological advances. I was reminded of this book earlier in the week when I watched a TED Talk presented by one of my all-time favorite educators, Jennie Magiera. I hope you will watch her awesome talk: Power to the Pupil.

Although Friedman's tome is not a book about education, he does pose these questions: Are we preparing students for such a changing work environment?  Can we even try?  Should we? Friedman confessed to being a tad stumped on the issues, but did arrive at a few conclusions, which I re-visited this week after watching Jennie's talk and subsequently talking with a teacher in our district about the importance of fostering curiosity in her students as a primary goal and motivation for learning.

First, he suggests that in the future, the “right education” young people need will be less focused on specific courses and more concentrated on certain skills and attitudes. According to Friedman, several traits that will be important for anyone seeking to succeed in the future economy are—somewhat surprisingly—not so cutting edge. They include these two:

• The most important ability students can develop is the ability to learn how to learn. To succeed in the future workplace, students will need to constantly absorb and teach themselves new ways to do old things and new ways to do new things. It will be not only what you know today, but how you learn that will set you apart. What courses should one take, then?  According to Friedman:  Go around to your friends and ask one question: “Who are your favorite teachers?”  Make a list of those teachers and take those classes. It matters not if they are teaching Greek mythology, cooking, calculus, or American history. Thinking back on our favorite teachers, we know not the specifics of what they taught, but we sure remember being excited about learning it. What has stayed with us are not the facts they imparted but the excitement about learning they inspired. To learn how to learn you have to love learning because so much of learning is about being motivated to teach yourself--which brings us to Friedman's second point that struck me...

• CQ + PQ > IQ:  Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is greater than Intelligence Quotient. In the flat world of which Friedman writes, educational opportunities are and will be pretty much limitless. Much of what you will ever need to know is out there on the Web. Paraphrasing Friedman: Give me a kid with a passion to learn and a curiosity to discover and I will take him any day over a less-passionate and less-curious kid with a high IQ, because curious, passionate kids are self-educators and self-motivators. They will always be able to learn. Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid. If this is true, one of our primary goals as teachers should be to instill in students the quality of curiosity. The best way we can make kids love learning is to instill in them a sense of curiosity through our great teaching. As for passion, Friedman suggests that we cannot light the fire of passion in someone else if it does not burn brightly within us first. If you love kids and can convey that, then even if you do not know your subject matter deeply, they will be inspired by you and they will learn beyond your classroom.

The two remaining skills Friedman advocates are playing well with others and nurturing right-brain activity. Again, these are very much unlike the bulk of his book in that they are a bit more “old school” ideas than futuristic visions. Yet, they remind us of our central charge, cultivating a community of passionate lifelong learners. Although his third and fourth points also made sense, the first two struck a chord in me for several reasons. First, I tend to agree that these will be the key to succeeding in the future economy. More importantly, though, they have always been the key to success. So, although we still need to continuously evolve and improve as educators, some things remain the same. Schools staffed with curious and passionate teachers who instill these same traits within the students they serve is yet another example of how we Teach with Passion every day!

Book Bits…

A Repair Kit forGrading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades by Ken O’Connor

As I have mentioned previously, O’Connor devotes a chapter each to 15 “broken” grading practices, offering a “fix” for each problem. This week, we look at the eleventh problem, along with his fix:

Grades are broken when the summary they provide of student achievement is inaccurate because the procedures they used to arrive at the grade are faulty. A primary example is when we calculate the average of a series of scores to determine an overall grade. The fix is to consider other measures of central tendency and rely on professional judgment. Grading should not be merely a numerical, mechanical exercise. O’Connor makes a subtle distinction between the need to move away from calculating grades to determining grades. This strikes me as a subtle, but important, shift.

The 10th Friday: Learning Walls

Reading is the most important subject in school. It’s more important than all the other subjects combined. If a child can’t learn to read well and love to read, chances of that kid finding success and happiness on any level are low…Successful kids represent the spectrum of all racial, religious, economic, and cultural diversity possible, but they all have one thing in common: they read well and love it…I want my students to understand that their ability to read and write is a matter of life and death…Show me a good reader and I’ll show you a child with strong self esteem…Lives hang in the balance. If you do nothing else as a teacher, develop able and passionate readers.

-Rafe Esquith (2003)

I wonder if you agree with this bold statement? I first heard Rafe Esquith speak during an NPR interview many years ago. His comments about teaching—and teaching reading, specifically—were so compelling that I listened intently to the entire interview and subsequently read two of his books: There are NoShortcuts (2003) and Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: TheMethods and Madness Inside Room 56 (2007). His passion regarding the lifelong importance of reading and how imperative it is that we all serve as reading teachers, regardless of our primary content area, is worth considering.

Writing about how to teach reading would fill several hundred blog posts of space—at a minimum. However, I would like to share just one resource and one strategy from that resource today. The resource is How to Teach Reading When You’re Not a Reading Teacher (2006) by Dr. Sharon Faber. Sharon’s extremely readable book contains many ideas, but I want to highlight just one:  Learning Walls—not an original idea of Sharon’s by any means, but one she has written about extensively and specifically in her book as a way to connect kids to academic vocabulary.

Learning walls can be an effective way for students to associate meaning with the words they will use in each content area. First, generate a list of essential words, phrases, concepts, formulas, or whatever students must know depending on the particular content area. Have the learning wall in a prominent place in the classroom where students will be exposed to and can interact with words before, during, and after being introduced to the content. Refer to the wall often, adding pictures, phrases, or color coding dots as you learn more about each term. You can start by simply writing each term on a 4 x 6 index card and sticking them on the wall. You may use one color for words sharing a common concept, theme, chapter, or unit of study. Select only those words that students will see and use often in readings related to your class. Remind students on a regular basis that knowing the terms will help them in their reading and writing.

Finally, try to include an activity or comment about words on the learning wall every day. The more students use the words, the more they will retain them. One simple way Faber suggests is to start class by “guessing the word.”  Choose a word, formula, concept, etc. from the learning wall. Have students number from 1 to 5 on a piece of paper. Give five clues; after each clue, students write their guesses next to the corresponding number. By the fifth clue, everyone should have guessed correctly. The first clue is always the same: “It’s one of the words on the learning wall.”  Add clues as appropriate for numbers two to four.

Although this has been around a long while (Cunningham, 1999), I still agree with these six critical elements to using a learning wall successfully:

1. Be selective, including the most essential items needed to mastery of your subject.

2. Add words gradually—perhaps five per week

3. Make words accessible by putting the wall where everyone can see it. Use big black letters and colors (according to some research, black ink on yellow paper stimulates learning).

4. Practice the words daily by writing, using, chanting.

5. Make sure Learning Wall words are spelled correctly in all student work.

6. Plan a variety of review activities to provide practice until mastery is achieved.

Esquith equates reading to a life-and-death situation. Although perhaps not literally true, reading well is certainly necessary for success in every walk of life, including every classroom in every school. Teaching reading in all content areas is a key component of the Common Core and justly so. Using learning walls is one way we can teach reading across all content areas. The power of visualization is part of long-term memory and a reading strategy we can use to help our students master difficult academic vocabulary. Taking the time to help our students make sense of difficult reading material and academic vocabulary is one way that we Teach with Passion at our schools.

Book Bits…

A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Gradesby Ken O’Connor

As I have mentioned previously, O’Connor devotes a chapter each to 15 “broken” grading practices, offering a “fix” for each problem. This week, we look at the tenth problem, along with his fix:

Grades are broken when the evidence used to determine the grade is from poor-quality assessment and, therefore, misrepresents student achievement. The fix is to ensure high-quality assessments which have:

1. A clear purpose

2. Clear learning targets

3. Sound design

4. Effective communication
5. Student involvement

The 9th Friday: Closing the Deal...

"Lesson designs that have weak closure rob students of the most important part of the lesson-the time when they have the opportunity to think about and discuss what they have learned. This is the time in the lesson when student reflection is necessary for internalization of the skills learned."

-Wolf & Supon, 1994

Obviously, the concept of lesson closure is not a new one to any educator reading this blog. Yet I agree with the authors that it is a very important component of any effective lesson, and I fear that we, on occasion, overlook it—mostly due to lack of time. Instead, we merely conclude the lesson by assigning homework or preparing for dismissal. Closure—what the teacher does to bring the lesson to an appropriate or logical conclusion by giving the learner an opportunity to bring together the things they have just learned—is an essential component of lesson planning and student learning.

Lesson closure can and should be a quick review to remind students what they learned and to assist in planning the next lesson(s). RickSmith (2004) identifies closure as the last few minutes of a lesson, which can be the most significant time of the entire lesson. Effective closure techniques can help teachers determine if additional practice is needed, if they need to reteach, or if they can move on to the next part of the lesson, unit, or concept. Closure is the final time to monitor student progress before moving on to the next learning objective. It is not enough to say, “Are there any questions?” as students begin gathering materials and tuning out. Teachers must plan for specific closing activities in order to maximize student learning. Lesson designs that have weak closure rob students of a critically important part of the lesson: an opportunity for them to think about, write about, discuss, and show what they have learned. This time of student reflection allows students to internalize the skills that have been taught. In general, lesson closure will take anywhere from two to eight minutes and is most effective when it actively engages students in reflecting on the day’s lesson. According to Pollock (2007), many teachers misunderstand closure and use it—if they use it at all—to restate in their own words what they have taught in the lesson. If teachers settle for summarizing the learning themselves, they get the benefit of the closure, not the students. Far better then, to get students actively engaged in “closing” the lesson.

Although we typically think of closure as occurring at the end of a lesson, in actuality it can occur at any time throughout the lesson when the teacher wishes to clarify key points and ensure that students have understood the intended learning objectives. Whenever it is used, closure serves the purpose of summarizing main ideas, evaluating class processes, making decisions regarding questions posed at the outset of the lesson, and providing a bridge between what has occurred and what will occur in future lessons. Used effectively, closure can help students know what they learned, why they learned it, and how it can be useful (Phillips, 1987).

It is very easy to fall into the trap of “closing” a lesson or lesson component simply by asking if there are any questions and moving forward. Again, it is important to go beyond this in order to decide whether or not students have mastered the intended learning and to add further insight and/or context to the lesson. I have seen most, if not all, of these effective closure techniques used already this year at our schools:

1. Ticket out the door: a one or two question check for understanding that students complete in a few minutes and hand to the teacher (or submit on a device) on the way out.

2. Go around the room asking each student to state on thing they learned that day.

3. 3-2-1: Students write three things they found interesting, two things they learned, and one thing they still have a question about.

4. 3-Whats: What did they learn today? So what? Now what?

5. One student interviews another about what was learned in the lesson.

6. Student assumes role of the teacher and presents a summary of the day’s learning to the rest of the class.

7. Students write a postcard to their parents about what they learned that day.

8. Students discuss how the lesson is relevant in their lives.

9. Students write in a journal two or three things they learned that day.

10. Stumping the Stars: Desks are turned so that both halves of the classroom face each other. One group asks the other group three questions about the lesson. Students get thirty seconds to answer. Reverse the teams. If a team cannot answer the question, they must research it and present the answer to the class the next day.

Of course, in a 1:1 environment, the possibilities are endless for closure activities using devices and tools such as Socrative, PollEverywhere, Kahoot, and a plenitude of other neat formative assessment sites. As always, however, it is not the technology that makes the difference, but the pedagogy driving the use of technology that makes the difference. Whether you use technology or more “old school” techniques, effective closure activities allow students to reflect upon and actively think about what happens in class. At the same time, they enable teachers to assess what students got and what they did not in order to plan for future learning. Including purposeful closure activities when planning and implementing our lessons is another way that we Teach with Passion! at our schools.

Book Bits…

A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for BrokenGrades by Ken O’Connor

As I have mentioned previously, O’Connor devotes a chapter each to 15 “broken” grading practices, offering a “fix” for each problem. This week, we look at the ninth problem, along with his fix:

Grades are broken when we assign grade based on a student’s achievement compared to other students. We should not compare students to each other; the fix is to base grades on preset achievement standards—to be criterion-referenced, not norm referenced in assigning grades. In doing so, we acknowledge that it is possible for all students to get an A or a 4 and for all students to get an F or a 1.