Designing NC’s Measures of Student Learning

For fear of misinterpreting some of the information, I won’t analyze or fully summarize the presentation; I will share a couple basic points and encourage you to read the presentation yourself.

• The proposed MSLs appear to be DPI’s answer to that elusive sixth teaching standard about teachers demonstrating growth in student performance.
• MSLs are not EOCs. The presentation uses the term “performance based” to describe the assessments.
• MSLs would apply to all content areas, presumably in non-tested (EOC/VOCAT) courses.

I can’t say what shape these Measures of Student Learning will ultimately take. I do know this. As teachers, if we focus some of our attention on analyzing standards, particularly the Common Core and Essential Standards, and creating common, performance-based assessments for those standards, and if we work in professional learning communities to pursue success together, then we can build a bat big enough to hit whatever DPI throws at us next.

What We Walked About
About a mile. No great feat, but better than sitting still for sixty minutes.

What We Talked About
After watching Dan Meyer’s TED talk (check it out at www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html) we discussed how teachers might devise compelling problems that prompt deeper, more meaningful learning in our classrooms. The speaker focuses on math problems, but they idea reaches beyond the math classroom. Meyer suggests that if we start instruction with a problem that is relevant and tangible, we might motivate learners to develop both “patient problem solving” skills and the content knowledge essential to the courses we teach.

One example that arose from a walk and talk conversation regards infectious diseases. Students in the health sciences learn about an abundance of diseases, but if they were to be given a stripped-down case study and perhaps a few graphic images with the simple instruction to diagnose the disease, then their learning, whether through research or lecture will have added meaning. That is to say, instead of gathering facts about diseases for the purpose of passing a test–hardly a compelling motivator during instruction–students become motivated learners discovering diseases to determine which one solves the case. They become Dr. House.

This approach to learning requires teachers to understand the relevance of their curriculum in the real world. It asks them to give students time to think, to use their intuition to solve problems, even to figure out what problems they are solving and what information they require to reach a solution. But above all, it gives students an opportunity to develop as critical thinkers while they learn course content, and that’s a solution worth seeking.

Feel free to share your ideas using the comments link above. Thanks for reading. See you at the next walk and talk on Feb. 15.

• Think for yourself.
• Break your topic into pieces and research each of those pieces separately.
• Ignore information that does not help you solve your problem.
• Read for understanding. You will know you’ve got it if you can explain it to your partner.
• Keep good records of your research.

Here’s a video that might help you think about researching your problem:

And don’t forget, you must also create a bibliography page listing all the sources you used in MLA format. I like to use www.easybib.com. Watch this video for a brief demonstration of the site.

Good luck with your project.

We also want your feedback in two ways:
1. If you create a voice thread account, you can share your reaction to students’ essays by recording your comments.
2. If you listen to at least five, vote for your favorite by completing the ballot below. (Vote only once.)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEpSWmNYOUJHNFNvYmFLWUFyVFdBdXc6MQ

• Hold hands
• Go to the bathroom (together)
• Understand neurons

Discuss.

Here are answers to some of your questions:

What are crosswalk and unpacking documents?

The crosswalk documents show the intersection between the new standards and the existing NCSCOS. They provide a brief commentary for most of the standards. The unpacking documents show the connections between College and Career Readiness Standards and each discipline-specific Common Core or Essential Standard. These documents also provide commentary on scaffolding, strategy and assessment.

You might also encounter the phrase, “unpacking standards,” or something like it. This phrase seems to suggest the process of interpreting what each standard means, what essential questions, content, objectives, assessments, and resources might be contained within that standard.

Several PLCs asked variations of a question about the focus on “core” subjects: English, social studies, math, and science. Here is my best effort at a response.

In some ways, non-core disciplines are one step ahead of the core areas. CTE has already moved most of its courses to Revised Blooms (RBT), and essential standards appear to have been adopted and are available in a massive document available online. Foreign languages have adopted an assessment tool in the Lingua Portfolio that aligns well to essential standards thinking. The DPI website links to adopted standards for almost every area, including foreign language, health, and even guidance. EC is definitely incomplete. Sorry JROTC: I didn’t see anything for you yet. Check out: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/acre/standards/new-standards/#worldlang.

Assuming we handle training properly, all disciplines should have adequate opportunity to interpret the standards that relate to the subjects they teach. The technology and language arts standards will apply in every discipline, as technology and reading/writing skills are necessary in almost every major and career our children might choose.

Will the websites be accessible?

Yes. And you should be able to access the documents immediately. If you cannot, please ask me for help. We will figure it out.

How will this change improve learning?

I will respond optimistically here, as I do believe these new standards have tremendous potential. The standards I reviewed give teachers and school systems the flexibility to determine how best to ensure that students develop the skills and knowledge they need. Whereas the old standards in subjects like civics and econ and biology required such extensive memorization of terms and facts, the new standards focus more on conceptual understanding in such a manner that knowledge works in support of the concepts. I believe the essential standards allow for a greater depth of study, a more reasonable and meaningful base of factual knowledge, and an increased school/teacher/student flexibility (i.e. if Rob Miller wants to go loco with dung beetles, he can, as long as it helps his students acquire the essential standards).

What are the trainings going to be like, regarding structure, etc.?

I cannot say for certain, as it has not yet been decided by the RttT team. Some of the training will require group sessions to disseminate information and strategy, but I will push for and make every effort to incorporate substantial time dedicated to PLC work, where teachers of a common course or area of study (Algebra I, Healthful Living) can develop their curriculum, assessments, pacing and resources together. In my mind,  teacher- and PLC-centered training sessions will be essential to the success of this SCOS transition.

Will we get lessons/templates to aid in transition and planning?

“Yes.  We are being told that sample plans will be developed at the State level.  Additionally, there are many sample plans already available through resources such as the Common Core website.  Teachers in PCS will also be developing and sharing sample plans as the year goes on.” (Tom Feller, http://successforeverychild.wordpress.com)

Several people asked about provision of resources and technology…

At this point, no money has been guaranteed for purchase of new text books. I am not certain how this lack of resources will hinder us, though the state is developing resources in every content area. Regarding technology, we probably need to understand that using technology does not mean that you necessarily use a Smart Board instead of a chalk board, or that all of your quizzes are done on CPS. Incorporating technology might mean that students conduct research online, present their learning through web tools like prezi or glogster, participate in an online forum, use educational apps on iPod Touches, or build rockets out of soda bottles. Technology isn’t going to be an every-room-equal deal, but we will need to identify our technology needs—the ones that will enhance student learning—and dedicate a portion of our 411 money to filling those needs.

Sorry I couldn’t answer everyone’s question. We shall learn more as we go, and by the time we hit August 2012, we will all be experts, I’m sure.

In familiar terms geocaching is like a scavenger hunt with a GPS device. It has become a popular activity. Check geocaching.com and you will probably discover that several caches (hidden containers of various sorts) are located within a few miles of your home. Typically, a person would record coordinates of a hidden cache into a GPS device, navigate to that location, and then use clues to locate the cache, which might contain a slip of paper to sign or a trinket to take.

Ms. Dunham and Ms. Watson
My geocaching collaboration began with Sara Dunham and Ashley Watson, who are always willing to take risks to keep their students engaged. The Spanish II students were learning to give commands in Spanish, and one of their goals was to give directions to a location using proper verb tenses and prepositions.  On the day of the activity, students received the following:

• Instructions for the activity
• A GPS device with five preset locations to which they would navigate
• Instructions for working the GPS device
• A set of hint sheets to help them locate each hidden cache
• Rules for behavior, like stay away from roads and don’t cut through the school building

Groups of students scrambled around campus, locating each cache and signing sheets at each location. When they returned to the end of the 200 hall, they received a popsicle (all I got was a sunburn on my dome, but that’s my fault) and an assignment. Each group was charged with the task of writing directions that would help an unfamiliar visitor—one navigating without GPS—make his way to each position they had visited. The tough part: they had to write it in Spanish.

Ms. Noles
Stephanie Noles heard about the activity our Spanish teachers had developed and, having used similar activities to help her freshmen understand the challenges European explorers experienced, jumped at the opportunity to use GPS with her classes. Her students embarked on a similar activity, navigating from one location to another using the coordinates I recorded in their GPS devices. At each location the group withdrew a slip of paper describing an event their party experienced: “Your food supply has spoiled,” or “You found gold.”

These student explorers were charged with a different task—to create an explorer’s journal, a notebook that would help future explorers navigate an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar buildings, flora and fauna. It had to include what Ms. Noles dubbed the three Ds: distance, direction and description. Students sketched and wrote about what they saw, what happened to their team, and how they got from one location to the next.

Brian Callahan
Mr. Callahan teaches AP Human Geography. We asked his students to view the Rose High campus through their geography goggles, recording site information (latitude and longitude) and situation information (observations of surroundings) about each of three locations. As with the other classes, their locations were determined by coordinates preset into their GPS devices. At each location, they also searched for a cache and removed a poker chip, which they traded for a popsicle. While they ate, they collaborated on a one-paragraph analysis of the campus, employing several of the terms and concepts they studies throughout the semester.

Benefits
Time is precious to teachers, so taking a day for this sort of activity must pay off. Geocaching is not the sort of activity that allows students to learn more information faster. It does allow them to learn better. Why?

Novelty: it’s not every day students get to lose themselves walking around campus searching for hidden caches. It’s new and different—it breaks the routine—and so it awakens the brain. It says to the brain (which retrieves semantic or language learning more efficiently when it is paired with an episodic memory): “you should remember this day.”

Physical activity: The part of the brain that controls movement works closely with the part of the brain that controls cognition. A physically active student has increased activity in her brain, and increased brain activity directed toward an academic objective equals better learning. In other words, geocaching gets the body moving, the blood pumping, the oxygen flowing, the brain grooving, and the learner learning.

Problem solving: When students (most of them, anyway) are passive recipients of information, they must perceive the information you teach as truly important to succeed in learning it. When their brains are involved in a problem solving activity like geocaching, however, they become active learners, seeking the information necessary to solve the problem and prioritizing that information—ideas, terms, skills—as useful for survival.

Best of all, geocaching has been fun. Students and teachers have enjoyed going outside, challenging their minds, and doing something new. I would enjoy collaborating with you on a geocaching activity next year.

Data Driven
Perhaps the most common, worthwhile buzz word—the queen bee?—in our profession is “data-driven instruction.” To say that our instruction is driven by data seems a mistake. Many factors shape our instruction; no single driver–and certainly not a set of data–both paces and steers our teaching; however, using data to inform the decisions we make about braking, accelerating, throwing the car into reverse, or pulling a U-turn has advantages.

The question is, what constitutes useful data in your class?

Self-Assessment Polls
I don’t think test and quiz grades are the answer here, though they are part of it. I teach a night class at Pitt Community College, and final paper grades provide an abundance of information about what my students have learned. Unfortunately, delaying data analysis until Sunday afternoon, when I usually grade papers, always means extra work for me in the long run. Most of the data I use in this class is informal and immediate. For example, before, or even in the middle, of class I like to poll students (I do it on Edmodo.com):

A. I’ve got it. Move on.
B.  Almost there.
C. I don’t get it.

If a majority is ready to move on, we keep rolling. I leave conference/writing time at the end of class to target specific students’ needs. If enough students report confusion, we back up and start answering questions to find out what they don’t comprehend.  You can’t keep driving when you can’t even find where you are on the map.

Benchmarks (because one buzz word begets another)
Our English I students have been using data in a different way to guide their instruction this year. They benchmark student and class performance using CPS clickers and released EOCs each six weeks. They also use Study Island data and classwork to help them determine the needs of their students. One English I teacher told me last week, “So what my data is telling me is that, basically, my students need help with reading comprehension.” It was no major breakthrough—he probably could have guessed as much in January—but it was enough to urge him off his defined course and onto a new one, one that includes more time and strategies for comprehending informational texts. Another teacher created partially individualized Study Island activities to intervene where students were weakest.

Algebra II and civics and economics teachers are beginning to use similar data-driven strategies, but few teachers have access to released EOCs and prepared Study Island question banks to facilitate this strategy. So what strategies do non-EOC teachers use for gathering and reacting to data? Let’s find out from the teachers themselves.

Panera Drawing (Now THAT’S a buzz word):

Tell us how you use data-driven instruction. Submit a comment (click “comments” at the top of the blog) answering three questions to enter a drawing for a free sandwich at Panera!

-What data do you collect in your classes?
-How do you collect it?
-How do you use that data to guide instruction?

Submit your response by Thursday at 4:00 p.m. Winners will be announced Friday morning.

He knew what all teachers and most parents know—you can’t learn if you aren’t present. This belief—this assumption—is what led me to begin analyzing data about absence and EOC growth. The question: to what extent does student absence impact the likelihood that a student will achieve growth on an end of course test.

Methods
Using NCWise attendance data for each EOC course—so data that does not include absences due to ISS or Choice—I added to our EOC growth spreadsheet a column of data listing the number of absences for each student beside a column that indicated (Y or N) if the student had or had not made growth on the exam for that course. Students without predictor or exam scores were filtered out.

This information was used to determine the average number of absences for students who made growth and for those who did not make growth.

Then I grouped students according to degrees of absence: minimal (0-2), some (3-5), several (6-8), and many (>9).  This data was then analyzed to show the likelihood that a students in each absence category demonstrated growth.

These methods, I assure you, lack perfect mathematical and scientific precision. I did not account for outliers, such as those students who missed a ridiculous number of days. My goal was to use data to form an impression, which might be why I made a C in Algebra II and Calculus.

Results
Students who made growth averaged 3.8 absences, while those who did not make growth averaged 4.6 absences.

Over 48% of students with minimal absences (0-2) demonstrated growth.
Nearly 40% of students with some absences (3-5) demonstrated growth.
Approximately 37% of students with several absences (6-8) demonstrated growth.
Approximately 34% of students with many absences (>9) demonstrated growth.

Inconclusive Conclusions
I have to admit that when I started compiling this data, I was hoping to share it with Mr. Medlin, so that he could stress to freshmen and to students with frequent absences just how absolutely and perfectly connected attendance and achievement were. I’m not sure that’s what the results show us.

Students who showed growth definitely averaged fewer absences, but it was less than a one day difference, not enough to make a significant impression.

The most significant statistic for me was that students who almost always attended class had an 8% advantage over any other group and were almost 50/50 for showing growth.

Nearly as telling a statistic is that only 6% separates the success rate of students with some absences from students with many absences. That “many” group includes kids with over 30 absences, some of whom actually made growth.

I hate—I mean I really hate—to admit it, but it just doesn’t appear that attendance was the deciding factor I imagined it would be. So what is?

The fact is, I don’t know. The teacher seems to play a much greater role in student success than absences do. Comparing growth percentage within each tested standard and honors course, the gap from the highest-performing teacher to the lowest ranges from a 13% to 45%. Those differences result from a wide range of factors, including teacher experience within a particular course. The fact remains—teachers make a difference in student learning. That’s good (and obvious) news. It means that what we do—how we teach, our instructional methods and management strategies—makes a difference.  It means that we can get better at teaching, even if problems beyond our control get worse. It means that we are not doomed—impacted, yes, but not doomed—by challenges like poor attendance.

I tend to agree with my father’s rule—attend class no matter what. For those students who don’t, all we can do is teach, teach, teach.

I’d love to hear your comments.

One of the great problems we must solve as educators is teaching students to become problem solvers themselves–to assess information, consider options, experiment with outcomes and analyze results. I was intrigued to learn from two colleagues, eager to emphasize the value of developing problem solving skills, how problem solving took center stage in their classes the first day of school.

Jennifer Mabe
Jennifer Mabe introduced her students to the challenge of her advanced functions and modeling course by asking them to produce exactly seven cups of water from two unmarked pitchers measuring three and eight cups. She explains, “After filling up containers with water, dumping containers of water, and transferring water between pitchers(SEVERAL TIMES!!!!!) we were finally able to determine the correct method of getting 7 cups of water.” Student engagement, she observed, was extraordinarily high during that lesson.

Jed Smith
Jed Smith also wanted to observe his physics students’ problem solving skills, so he challenged them with a simple building project. Students  received a few supplies–sheets of paper, paper clips, plastic cups–and one simple instruction: build the tallest free-standing structure you can. The task challenged students to analyze their materials and explore their knowledge of physics as they constructed their creations.

A Paradigm Shift
Mr. Smith and Ms. Mabe both understand the fact that to educate our students we must challenge them intellectually with the real problems of the world in which they live. We must engage them not only as receivers of information, but as thinkers, as doers, as active participants with hands and eyes and brains. The video linked below–a speech by Sir Ken Robinson enhanced by an artistic interpretation–explains this idea (and much more) brilliantly. I hope you will take a few minutes to view it.

Video link: Changing Education Paradigms 

Contest
Let’s have another contest. Submit a brief description of an activity you have used or plan to use that challenges the real-life problem solving skills of your students. Submit your response by the end of the day on Wednesday, Feb. 9 either as a reply on this blog or via e-mail.

Prize: two gift cards for Panera
The winner will be determined by random selection.