Gurian urges teachers to allow kids — boys in particular — to walk freely around the room, squeeze stress balls, deliver papers to the principal’s office, build a report instead of writing one, and work often in same-sex groups.
Clear grade by grade curriculum proficiency targets
Teacher teams that plan curriculum units with an end in sight
Teams engaging in Japanese-style lessons study
A power "learning cycle" in which teachers use student work and data to improve teaching and learning
Effective schools make student achievement the school's top priority. The principal and teachers define plans to improve teaching and set measurable goals for exceeding API targets.
At these schools, reading, writing and math curricula are designed to teach the state's academic standards; teaching is consistent within grades and from grade to grade. Teachers don't close the classroom door and do their own thing.
Principals manage instructional improvement with district support. High-scoring schools tend to be in districts that set clear expectations and evaluate principals based on student achievement.
At high-scoring schools, principals and teachers use data on student performance to fine-tune teaching, target help to students who are falling behind and identify teachers who need to improve.
Parent involvement programs, strong discipline policies and collaboration and training opportunities for teachers had some benefit, but not nearly the impact of prioritizing achievement, implementing a coherent, standards-based curriculum, using data to improve teaching and providing adequate teaching resources.
"[W]e concluded that the quality of student work in all of the schools we studied is alarmingly low," the evaluation says. "This is not surprising, however, because students cannot demonstrate high-quality work if they have not been given assignments that require deep understanding" and higher-order thinking skills.
All three of these reinforce Routman's emphasis on thinking and giving students opportunity to think and discuss before writing.
I think Regie would give a hearty cheer to this statement.
Authentic math activities makes as much sense as an authentic writing activity with a real audience.
Whether it's shared writing,independent reading, or conferring with students, Routman always keeps differentiation and individual needs in the forefront.
Dear Mighty 5th Graders,
Your letter on Monday really made my day. I appreciate the thoughts which were both kind and funny! I hope you appreciate the power writing has on people. Your letter lifted my spirits and encouraged me even thought quitting is the last thing on my mind. Working at Halecrest is truly a joy because of the dedicated and inspiring young people, like yourselves, as well as the professional and compassionate staff, like Ms. Eilat. I hope you will continue to develop those outstanding writing skills and use them to write notes and letters to your family and friends who have helped you along the way.
Sincerely,
Dan Winters
So when teachers say to me I don't have time to teach writing every day, my response is Yes, you do, if you value it; if you don't have time, you're valuing something else more (perhaps skills in isolation or phonics drills or worksheets). Take a look at your teaching day, and decide what's really most important for helping students to become independent learners. Writing is one of the best ways I know for developing deep thinking, so I make time for it.
We believe...
Reading and writing need to support each other (share literature).
Writing everyday (anytime writing) isessential.
Students should write with a purpose; keep audience/reader in mind.
Authentic and honest modeling and using whole/part/whole methodology is crucial.
We need to have high expectations for writing quality.
We must see ourselves as writers, take risks, and create a safe environment for students to take risks.
Students should talk about their writing with teacher, peers and the whole class.
A major purpose of this book is to help you develop and refine your beliefs and practices for teaching writing effectively and in a way that is sensible and enjoyable. By reducing the clutter in our teaching lives - the overplanning, the unnecessary activities, the paper load, all the "stuff" that takes our time and energy and does little to improve teaching and learning - we bring joy back into our work. Nothing I do in classrooms is difficult or draining. As you read this book and get ideas, you will be thinking, I can do that, too.
I wanted to drop everything and write a book that would enable me to understand how this flattening process happened and what its implications might be for countries, companies, and individuals.
We can do so much more with writing than simply use it to show what we have learned. We can actually accomplish the learning itself through writing.
These actions are dependent, however, on a student's ability to 're-view' what they have been thinking at a particular point in time--in other words, asking students to write is not always for the purpose of measuring their learning about a particular subject; sometimes it is for the purpose of improving the quality of their thinking.
The teachers worked in teams, particularly in the primary grades. In some cases, schools started preparing children for testing from the time they started kindergarten, but not at the expense of other activities, teachers said.
Higher performing schools had strong extracurricular programs and effectively communicated their expectations about homework and behaviour to parents.
Schools with lower socio-economic data relied heavily on the strong leadership of their principal to provide discipline and communicate expectations.
Every month the entire school focuses on one concept that improves literacy. One month the whole school worked on how to phrase a question.
The parent council at Burnhamthorpe puts out a newsletter with articles on how to nurture children's intelligence and improve literacy.
There's an emphasis on the arts that has made for an award-winning choir, visiting opera performers, choral and jazz music. Extracurricular activities range from chess club and math club to line dancing and soccer.
Every Burnhamthorpe student has a T-shirt with the school motto: "Good, better, best. Never let it rest until my good is better and my better is my best."
The ultimate goal of training programs is not to create individuals who unthinkingly follow a cookbook approach to teaching, but to develop thoughtful professionals who have the ability to assess and revise their own actions in order to improve the likelihood of success for their students.
Many teachers show students elaborate prewriting strategies (webs, story maps, time lines, outlines), and expect students to use them. They give students detailed editing checklists to use, either individually or in pairs.
The middle element - craft - gets the least attention. During this part of the authoring cycle, students are left on their own to make a thousand decisions in their texts about leads, voice, structure, supporting detail, setting, mood , character, and so on. This is unfortunate because craft is the cauldron in which the writing gets forged.
1. Establish a genuine purpose and audience for all writing
2. Start by demonstrating (writing aloud, shared writing, sharing exemplary writing).
3. Gradually release responsibility to students (a samll group or partners conversing before writing or writing together, sustained writing with your guidance).
4. Celebrate, respond, evaluate, teach, amd move forward (have conferences with students).
Change happens one person at a time, one school at a time, but when it's lasting change (not the fake kind that comes from a teaching-to-the-test obsession),change brought about by hearts and minds working together as knowledgeable, caring colleagues, it has a very large ripple effect. When our work gains credibility in the eyes of our colleagues and the public, excellent teaching becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Write for a specific reader and a meaningful purpose. Write with a particular audience in mind (this may be the author herself or himself) and define the writing task.
Imagine happy and energetic students and teachers, quality writing, and high-test scores! That's what happens when the writing program is all about excellent writing for genuine purposes and real audiences.
John made a dramatic turn and began studying in earnest.
I have not been able to locate any research showing that worksheets or drills carry over into students' successful application of skills in authentic reading/writing contexts. In fact, decades of research show that drills do not improve student writing. Much like passing the Friday spelling test, students can perform the skill in isolation, but they don't apply it in the course of daily writing and reading.
Teacher Direct Instruction where the teacher gives min-lessons to small groups.
Proof Place where students use manipulatives and drawn examples to explain their answers.
Practice Plaza where students practice difficult concepts and reflect on their work.
The Shop where students apply math concepts to help Mr. Fuddle run his store or shop for items.
Project Place where students use math and connect it to a larger world that includes topics of high student interest.
During planning, a teacher should generate specific lists of what students should know (facts), understand (concepts and principles), and be able to do (skills) by the time the unit ends. Then the teacher should create a core of engaging activities that offer varied opportunities for learning the essentials she has outlined.
My real hope is that teachers will be inspired to do what the best teachers have been doing all along-making seemingly remote subjects real and relevant to their students...I think that showing them meaningful links to their own lives will make real readers of them, rather than takers of tests and memorizers of facts. This applies to every subject in the curriculum. Why else did I get a D in trigonometry? I was unconvinced that mastering sines and tangents was interesting in its own right or of any practical value to me. I'm confident, however, that the right teacher could convince me (p. 41).
Product modifications can include transformations, real world problems, and real audiences as the ways students might use or demonstrate what they have learned.
Process modifications can include adding (or substituting) higher-order thinking, open-endedness, group process, freedom of choice, proof and reasoning, pacing, and flexibility.
Content modifications can include adding (or substituting) abstractions, complexity, variety, organization, study of people, methods of inquiry, and a variety of forms of subject-based acceleration.
Through increased understanding of both psychology and the brain, we now know that individuals learn best when they are in a context that provides a moderate challenge.
Put another way, students who consistently fail lose thier motivation to learn. Students who succeed too easily also lose their motivation to learn.
It is unacceptable for any teacher to respond to any group of children (or any individual child) as though the children were inappropriate, inconvenient, beyond hope, or not in need of focused attention.
multiple intelligences
jigsaw
taped material
anchor activities
varying organizers
varied texts
varied supplementary materials
literature circles
tiered lessons
tiered centers
tiered products
learning contracts
small-group instruction
group investigation
orbitals
independent study
4MAT
varied questioning strategies
interest centers
interest groups
varied homework
compacting
varied joural prompts
complex instruction
Activities and products that are quite complex, open-ended, abstract, and multifaceted, drawing on advanced reading materials; or
A brisk pace of work, or perhaps a slower pace to allow for greater depth of exploration of a topic.
However, you need not differentiate all elements in all possible ways. Effective differentiated classrooms include many times in which whole-class, nondifferentiated fare is the order of the day. Modify a curricular element only when (1) you see a student need and (2) you are convinced that modification increases the likelihood that the learner will understand important ideas and use important skills more thorougly as a result.
To skip practice with previously mastered skills and understandings.
A more deliberate pace of learning
Activities or products that are more structured or more concrete, with fewer steps, closer to their own experiences, and calling on simpler reading skills.
More opportunities for direct instruction or practice
Someone to help them identify and make up gaps in their learning so they can move ahead
The teacher's clarity ensures that struggling learners focus on essential understandings and skills; they don't drown in in a pool of disjointed facts. Similarly, the teacher ensures that advanced learners spend their time grappling with important complexities rather than repeating work on what they already know.
"Any classroom efforts that aren't powered by an understanding of what keep schildren eagerly pursuing knowledge are doomed to fail.
Forget all the books and manuals for a minute. Go back to what it was that used to make science magic for you. Think about what it used to feel ike to do science. Then assume the kids you teach will only have your class to learn about sciene. It's their only science class-ever. What do you need to teach them so they will love science? Thnink about that for a minute. Then change one part of what I just asked you to do. Assume you only have three kids to teach: your own three children. And assume that at the end of the year, you will die. What would you teach them about science in that year?"
They (US Department of Education) recommend, for example, research that is embedded in practice and that involves collaborations between researchers and practitioners. Unlike the traditional linear model of “research-into-practice,” their view of productive research and development involves moving back and forth between research and practice. Innovations are developed by researchers collaborating with practitioners. They are tried out in classrooms, refined or developed by practitioners in their schools and classrooms, and then systematically studied by researchers. The link between research and practice is assumed to be complex, reciprocal, and dynamic.
Practitioners’ decisions are based primarily on their own intuitions and experience and occasionally on advice from colleagues, principals, or workshop leaders. The idea of basing decisions on research findings or even data collected at the local level is not part of the culture of teaching. New technology and the push for data-based decisionmaking and evidence-based practice are beginning to change the situation, but basing decisions on research and data is a new concept. Both the desire to consult research and the skills to interpret it will need to be developed within the teaching community.
As a consequence, teachers need to have a deep understanding of the innovative methods and programs they are asked to implement. This requires far more time out of the classroom than they have available during the workday, and more training and support than most schools are organized to provide. Without these, however, the instruction that is actually implemented may bear little resemblance to the instruction that research demonstrated as effective.
Although educational practices are hugely influenced by products developed in the private sector, objective evidence on the effects of these products on student learning is rare. Until recently, there have been no incentives for carefully designed studies because buyers haven’t asked for evidence, and no outside agency has monitored the quality or even the existence of evidence.
Teachers said that time for teaching, planning, paperwork, and empowerment contributed the most to student performance.
Favorable working conditions also contribute to teacher retention. Teachers in both states overwhelmingly said that having a collegial atmosphere was the most important factor in deciding whether to stay in their schools or look elsewhere. (emphasis added)
Some teachers also say that while they want flexibility in the classroom, it’s also important to them that their administrators see what they’re doing.
Elementary teachers, though, are generally more positive about their working environments than those who teach at the secondary level—an outcome that Mr. Hirsch largely attributes to the more collegial atmosphere in what tend to be smaller elementary schools.
A school staff CAN answer all these questions by committing itself to establish performance standards for each of the essential/key/power standards. The professional dialogue, collaboration, and sharing of practice and knowledge that will emerge from the quest to establish performance standards and common assessments WILL bring the staff to new heights and learning for students to new levels of achievement.
They (teachers of differentiated classrooms) work diligently to ensure that struggling, advanced, and in-between students think and work harder than they
meant to; achieve more than they thought they could; and come to believe that learning involves effort, risk, and personal triumph. These teachers also work
to ensure that each student consistently experiences the reality that success is
likely to follow hard work.
Computers haven't made us bad writers. We write badly because we don't know how. For many years, our schools have done a rotten job of teaching writing. Asking students to write without showing them how is like expecting them to drive before they've had a lesson.
Her criticism is a gross generalization and worthy of debate, however it got me thinking about our instructional focus of writing. The point of having an instructional focus is that we become experts at teaching something - in our case - writing. I think we can all agree that we have not yet achieved that status. Our students will reap great rewards as we gain new insights in our role as teachers of writers and maybe, just maybe,someone will write a book in the near future about the renaissance of excellent writers coming from our schools.
But the most telling difference was that in these two schools alone, every teacher we talked to (and we interviewed almost all of them) asserted that he or she was responsible for student success. The qualities that made their school different from the others, they attested, derived solely from their desire to act on this belief. LIke thier highly effective colleagues scattered throughout the two districts, these teachers argued that they could not alter conditions outside school that impinged on student performance, but they could affect the conditions in their classrooms. Using best practices alone was insufficient; effective teaching meant giving students no other choice but success.