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Classroom Interactions Are Soccer Touches – Quality Touches Create Scoring Opportunities

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“How many touches did you have?”

“How many were quality touches?”

“And, what did you do with your quality touches?”

I listen to kid-talk about their soccer game. I did not play soccer, so I am learning by watching and listening. A touch is a player getting a foot to touch the ball for a pass, shot, dribble, trap or tackle. I have learned that a tackle in soccer is not a tackle in football. Everything in soccer revolves around touches. Touch the ball and make good things happen.

The kid-talk is genuine. They are very candid in declaring or describing a good touch and in explaining how a touch failed. Interestingly, they talk about the importance of seeing ahead – how their preparation for a touch needs to be viewed by the next two or three touches to follow. Few touches immediately result in a score, but a quality touch in a sequence of quality touches can lead to a score or keep an opponent from scoring.

The same questions can be asked about what happens in a classroom at school. Causing learning is all about touches, of a different yet similar kind.

“How may interactions did a teacher have with a student?”

“How many of these were quality interactions?”

“And, what did the teacher and student do with their quality interactions?”

Like watching soccer, I visit classrooms to watch and listen for how a teacher causes each child in class to learn in that specific period of instruction. Unlike my viewing of soccer, I know what quality touches or interactions in a classroom look, sound and feel like. I look for a teacher’s intentional touches.

  • Questions or statements a teacher directs at the class or at a particular group of students to cause them to think and respond, to apply a problem resolution and share their solution with classmates, and to ask questions or make statements to set up the next questions.
  • Questions asked of a specific student to elicit a specific response.
  • Kicked questions that use one student’s response to seek agreement or disagreement from another student or to ask for add-on thinking from successive students.
  • Questions that are not to be answered immediately, but after more information and thinking have been exposed.
  • Questions that expose students’ readiness for the next teaching.

I listen for student questions and statements that expose what they know and can do with confidence, what they are unsure of, and what is just plain misunderstood. And, I listen for the teacher’s responses, the touches that reinforce, build confidence, clarify and correct. This type of interaction is essential. If there is a strong sense of teamwork between students and their teacher, I expect to hear these touches all the time. If there is no trust between students and their teacher, students will not risk exposing their uncertainties.

The sociometrics of classroom interactions are fascinating and telling. When the interactions ping-pong around between teacher and students, kids are scoring all the time. When the interactions are stilted, contrived, unidirectional, and closed, there is little scoring. Students just wait for the quiz or test without confidence that every student is able to share in a good score.

Interactions can be questions, as shown above. Interactions can be visual looks of support and reinforcement, quizzical looks that ask a question without words, a physical proximity that says “I care”, a kneeling down next to a child’s chair to make a conversation private, and a smile to say “well done.” A tally of the interactions between a teacher and all the students in a class rises to the thousands every day. How many are quality interactions?

For teachers, the ability to make quality interactions is a learned and acquired skill set. It is intentional within a teaching and learning design. It is mentally rehearsed. It is practiced often enough that students will risk their engagement. Good interactions beget more good interactions. Quality interactions are the heart and soul of good teaching.

Every now and then, I hear teacher-talk that sounds like kid-talk about their soccer game, talking about how well a teaching episode felt as a result of quality interactions. Teachers know all about quality and no-quality touches with students.  The task is increase the number of quality, diminish the number of no-quality, and improve the likelihood of student scoring.  Goal!!!!!!

Classroom Passwords: Booster Rockets For Learning

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It starts in the doorway. Kindergarten children are greeted by their teacher standing in the doorway of their classroom. The passwords of the day for entering the room are two rhyming words. The teacher says “cat” and a K-girl in an oversized sweatshirt and leggings says “fat and rat”. Smiles and fist bumps are shared and the girl doesn’t walk into class, she skips. Quickly word spreads down the hallway where other K-kids are hanging jackets and backpacks on hooks below their names. “Rhyming words.”

Synonyms, antonyms, homophones, articles, and conjunctions are common passwords into this Kindergarten class. “Spell your name” will begin a week of spelling passwords. Some days the password gets children in the door and sometimes it gets them out the door for recess. Words fly when passwords are necessary for recess.

A taller, quieter K-girl takes more time digging into her backpack before hanging it. She often is the last into class. Her teacher raises the rhyming bar. “Chair.” K-girl raiser her hand to twirl a strand of hair, smiles and says “hair, fair, pair, bear, tear.” Her teacher gives an “Oh, my. Tear is not spelled with an -air like chair and hair.” K-girl gives her teacher a quick hug. “I know” and slowly walks into her classroom.

These K-kids will do very well on their state assessments in third grade. The fast start they get in vocabulary and word forms in Kindergarten is like a booster rocket lifting a space package. Their interest and facility in words moves from the extrinsic gaming of their K-teacher to an intrinsic interest in language. Their early word work will make reading across subjects in social studies and science easier. Anyone who follows the academic achievements of this class of children will know their school ancestry began with this K-teacher.

It starts in the doorway. So many things do.

If Students Did Not Learn, Were They Taught? No

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Start with this thought experiment.  “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, did it really fall?”  You’ve heard it before.  It poses the relationship between observation and perception.  If you cannot observe something, it becomes hard to prove that it scientifically exists.  Similarly, Einstein posited that “…the moon does not exist if no one is looking at it.”  Now, extend the thought experiment to this:  “If I taught my students a unit of instruction and they did not learn it, did I really teach them anything?”  The answer is no.

Like observing a tree falling in the forest or the moon in a nighttime sky, the perception of teaching requires an observation of learning evidence in order to prove the reality that teaching occurred.  Just as George Bernard Shaw could not disprove Einstein’s statement that the moon must be observed to prove it exists, a demonstration of successful learning is required proof of successful teaching.

Given the above, why are educational leaders loath to be so direct in their evaluation of teaching?  Why do we place more emphasis on the delivery of instruction than on the learning outcomes teaching is designed to cause?  This is true.  Our scenarios for determining educator effectiveness show that a teacher who demonstrates high scores in the use of models of instructional delivery that result in lower scores of student achievement will be rated higher than a teacher who demonstrates low scores in instructional delivery that results in higher scores of student achievement.  Teaching practices are prioritized over student learning.  Why?

We want there to be a direct cause-effect line between a set of teaching practices and student learning.  But there are variables in the learner that disrupt this causation, we are told.  We know this by the ways in which we manipulate student achievement data based upon the presence of students with special education needs, who live in poverty or unstable home environments, are effected by drug and violence in their community, and attend schools with higher percentages of similar students.  Institutionally, we posit that these students will not demonstrate high levels of achievement in learning as compared with students without these challenges.

Yet, there are many stories of success with highly diverse students.  In each of these stories, teachers who add “the art of teaching” to the science of effective teaching practices find ways to connect their teaching to their students and cause high learning achievements.  These teachers observe falling trees and a nighttime moon, because they are present in ways that exceed and/or differ from the standardized instructional practices.

I refer to Billy Bean in the movie Money Ball.  “If he is a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good.  We need more players that hit good.”  For Bean, the batter’s technical skills were not as important as the batter’s ability to get on base.  For educators, the teacher’s technical skills matter but not as much as the teacher’s ability to cause all children to successfully learn their grade level or course curriculum.  We need to prioritize our teachers who cause children to get on base and score with high regularity.  Otherwise, a teacher can teach a classroom empty of students or full of inattentive students and still believe that teaching occurred.  Without learning, there is no teaching.

(Prioritizing learning outcomes does not condone a reaching of achievement measures by any means possible.  Breaching professional ethics can and should lead to loss of employment and/or incarceration.)

Academic Standards – The Genome of Proficient Learning

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Academic standards are the genome of a 21st century PK-12 education.  Turn back the covers on any curriculum today and you will find “standards.”  They are the “who says this is the right stuff to teach” credentials of school curriculum.  As consumers, we look for credentialing,  like the Good Housekeeping Seal or Underwrites Laboratory Approval, that gives us reliance that school curriculum is not something cooked up during the summer by a local committee but is written by experts in the field of PK-12 education.

Although politics has kicked dirt on the Common Core Academic Standards, they remain the best of academic standards available to PK-12 educators.  In Wisconsin, the Common Core Standards were adopted as the official academic standards of the Department of Public Instruction in 2010 and are the basis for instruction, assessment and educational accountability.

A genome, even the sound of the word, is scientific.  It is the complete set of genes present in a cell or organism.  By applying genome to the organism of academic standards, academic standards are the complete set of academic characteristics of a graduate of our PK-12 educational system.

Like the genome encoded on a strand of DNA, the genome of academic standards seems just as mysterious.  But, it isn’t.  They are clearly written and complete, just in educationese.  Educational leaders need to take the time and make the effort to de-mystify the verbiage of academic standards into plain speak.  This explanation must include two components – why they are important and how they work.  What are academic standards and how does our school use PK-12 academic standards?  And, what does proficient performance of each standard mean?  The latter is essential, because proficiency or advanced performance indicates the grade level goal which are the code of the genome.

This is what the DPI says about standards.  It is a good beginning.

What are academic standards?

Academic standards tell us what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.  Wisconsin has standards for 24 separate subjects.

Why are academic standards important?

Standards provide goals for teaching and learning. Standards are clear statements about what students must know and be able to do.

What does an academic standard look like?

Seventh grade mathematics: solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume.

How do standards differ from curriculum?

While standards provide the goals for learning, curriculum is the day to day activity that helps a student meet those goals. Curriculum, which should be thought of as the student’s overall classroom experience, is affected by lesson plans, classroom assessments, textbooks, and more. In Wisconsin, curriculum is developed and approved by local school boards to meet their local needs.

https://dpi.wi.gov/families-students/student-success/standards

This explanation should be repeated to students and parents frequently, so that children and their moms and dads clearly understand that “standards-based” means “these are statements of what each child should know and be able to do and all of our assessments will focus on helping everyone understand how well children know and can perform these.”  And, because the standards build upon each successive grade level and course, students and parents need to know that Algebra and Geometry, for example, are introduced in elementary school arithmetic and are developed through middle school and applied and expanded in higher mathematics courses in high school.  Like the DNA genome, the genome of academic standards winds through the school organism across many years of student learning.

This explanation may sound or read like, “This year our first grade math students will begin to use mathematical operations and algebraic thinking.  Yes, Algebra in first grade.  These are the operations and algebraic thinking standards and a description of what your child will know and be able to do as a result of our first grade math instruction.

Standard:  Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
  2. Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Standard:  Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Performance:

  1. Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.3 Examples: If 8 + 3 = 11 is known, then 3 + 8 = 11 is also known. (Commutative property of addition.) To add 2 + 6 + 4, the second two numbers can be added to make a ten, so 2 + 6 + 4 = 2 + 10 = 12. (Associative property of addition.)
  2. Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. For example, subtract 10 – 8 by finding the number that makes 10 when added to 8.

Standard:  Add and subtract within 20.

Performance:

  1. Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).
  2. Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Standard:  Work with addition and subtraction equations.

Performance:

  1. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.
  2. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = � – 3, 6 + 6 = �.

This standard is just one of many in first grade mathematics instruction.  As your child tells you ‘This is what we learned in math today,’ please keep these standards in mind.  When your child enters second grade, the next instructional year will add to and expand these first grade standards.”

As an extension, good practice would also help children and parents to connect standards to periodic classroom tests and assessments.  Just adding a standards statement to the top of the test page indicates the alignment of preceding instruction and the assessment to a particular academic standard.

The reason for this time and effort points directly to the accountability that school leaders and teachers have for causing all children to learn and proficiently perform grade level academic standards.  Each first grade child who successfully knows and can perform the operations and algebraic thinking standard given in this example will be ready for instruction in second grade operations and algebraic thinking.

And, here is the rub.  Every child who does not successfully know and can not perform the elementary and/or middle school grade level math standards at the appropriate grade level proficiency level begins a parade of successive years of incomplete learning in math.  It is no wonder that high school Algebra is “the wall” for so many students, the course where the annual standards of algebraic thinking in elementary and middle school coalesce into a single math course.  Children who have successfully learned and performed their elementary and middle school math standards are ready and prepared for high school Algebra.  Children who did not are severely challenged in Algebra and all subsequent math courses.

The mutual responsibility that school leaders, teachers and parents have for student learning can be made easier when annual academic standards are explained, distributed across the year of their instruction, and clearly aligned with grade level instruction and assessments.  When we know what we are supposed to do, the doing is made easier.

The genome of academic standards is a road map that is designed not only for instruction, but to aid school leaders and parents to assure that each child successfully learns what they are to know and be able to do each school year.  It is our road map and needs to be closely followed.

Promotional Proficiency – An Educational Promise Unkept

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“I promise…” are words added, often unconsciously, to statements we make to others. Other add-ons include, “… believe me”, “…to be honest with you”, and “… you have my word.” We speak these words and we hear others speak them, but what do they really mean? Do we really make a promise when we say “…I promise” with an expectation of being held to that promise? Does saying “believe me” make a person more believable? If one says “honestly”, does that word make what follows more honest than all else the person usually says?

I am told that these are just colloquialisms, figures of speech, and attention-getters when I respond with “I shall hold you to that promise.” Call me old-fashioned, but grandmother taught us that “a promise is a debt unpaid” and grandfather told us “a man’s word is his bond.” These words matter, because promises that are unfulfilled and statements of honesty that turn out to be lies are and should be held against the speaker. If you say it, you should be committed to living up to your word with hard and clear evidence of effort. People can understand that time and unseen occurrences may prevent complete fulfillment, but they should not forgive meaningless statements of a promise, or a request to be believed, or proclamations of honesty when there is no intention of living up to these words.

That said, I apply this truth-telling to the work of a school board. The American Dream is founded largely on the success of a child’s education. Over-simply stated, learning to read becomes reading to learn and reading complex and complicated information grows knowledge, and skills and problem-solving abilities and these lead to a high school graduate’s readiness for success in college and career. Apply the same scenario to arithmetic and mathematics and you have the backbone of a school curriculum – reading and mathematics. Success in school, children are told, promises preparation and readiness for success in adulthood. This is a traditional school promises and school boards are the keepers of that promise.

What then are we willing to do to pay the debt of this universal promise we make to students and parents, to paraphrase grandmother?

When a child is promoted to first grade and each subsequent grade level, the child is prepared and ready for instruction at that next grade level and when a student graduates from high school the graduate is prepared and ready for post-secondary education.

This is our fundamental promise. It is the premise and foundation for the ladder of PK-12 education. We march cohorts of children through their school years in an enactment of this promise. Take this promise away – tell children and parents that there is no assurance that first grade is necessary for entrance into second grade and middle school is not a preparation for high school – and school becomes the K-Mart of education with blue light specials in every school corridor. The cashier will check you out.

Are we fulfilling our promise? Are all children prepared and ready for their promotion? Not so much. The Wisconsin DPI released its 2018 School Report Cards in late November and a perusal of state data and randomly selected school districts indicates these two facts –

A percentage of children but far from all are proficient, achievement at the advanced of proficient levels, in reading and mathematics. That percentage is higher or lower depending upon school district, and too often, the socio-economic characteristics of the district are a determinant in that percentage.

The percentage of children statewide who are proficient in reading and math is static if not trending slightly downward – approximately 40% of all children are proficient in reading and less than 40% are proficient in math.

In our local schools,

68.9% of elementary children were proficient in reading; 68.2% in math.

48.9% of middle school children were proficient in reading; 39.4% in math.

48.8% of high school children were proficient in reading; 29.2% in math.

We acknowledge that a quality education is comprised of many more variables than proficiency in reading and mathematics. Our local school touts the breadth of its programming in academics, activities, arts and athletics and the high percentage of student participation in the latter three. However, we made no promises other than “access to opportunity” in activities, arts and athletics. We did make promises regarding academics. Promotion means preparation and readiness for what comes next.

Interestingly, the State of Wisconsin proclaims that our local middle school and high school meet our state’s educational expectations and the elementary school significantly exceeds state expectations. Perhaps the State of Wisconsin is no longer a party to the promise of readiness and preparation or takes the promise as lightly given.

Locally, we have our work before us. What are we willing to do fulfill our promise and keep our word? Time will tell, but for secondary students, time is running out.