Release The Tests!

Full disclosure: I am a New York Network Team Representative that is charged with taking the message of NY State Ed back to my participating districts. I attend meetings in Albany several times a year and then share this information with the schools I work with and help them understand and implement all that is coming in the wake of Race to the Top.

I believe in helping teachers help students. I believe that students are the focus of everything I do. I believe that some of this initiative, including the new Standards, is working but I also believe some of it is not. I believe that teachers are professionals that deserve better than they’ve been treated in the last couple of years (particularly in the media) and I believe that if we trust them with children, then we should trust them with how to instruct and assess those children as well. I believe in fairness and I believe in calling attention to inconsistencies, not for the sake of argument or anger, but for the sake of solving solvable problems and getting this right.

I believe that NY State has an opportunity here to build a new bridge.

But first, a little background:

In August of 2011, I began attending the NY State Education Network Team Institutes--the first of many that I’ve attended where State Ed rolls out initiatives, resources, upcoming expectations, etc. At one of these meetings, I had the very good fortune of meeting Mr. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, author of Driven By Data. Data Informed Inquiry models were to be part of our message that we took back to schools as schools were expected to form their own inquiry teams for the sake of letting the data guide instructional decisions. The assessments were meant to be more frequent and standards-based with a quick turnaround so that teachers could use the data and make necessary tweaks and improvements to the instructional program in the moment, rather than waiting until the end of the year to see if students “got it.”

The most important part of Santoyo’s message is transparency in the assessment. In order to do the deep analysis required, teachers must have the assessment in hand so that the skills that a student needs to answer the questions could be analyzed. Additionally, having the test in hand means that there are further opportunities for professional development around the structure of the test, the deconstruction of the questions for type and strategy, and the levels of cognition (Bloom’s, Webb’s, etc.) on the assessment and how those compare to the levels of cognition in instruction. Understanding by Design 101.

At these Network Team meetings, we spent HOURS understanding this methodology, preparing to turnkey it to our participating districts by exploring the models and creating our own data analysis spreadsheets and understanding protocols for data meetings. Throughout every single bit of this, we had the assessments in our hands. Again, let me say, WE. HAD. THE. ASSESSMENTS. IN. OUR. HANDS.

We taught our districts to do this exact same thing through their data meetings. Test in hand, begin analysis, use the observations to make changes in instruction to benefit students and their success.

This is not intended to give teachers ammunition for teaching TO the test, this is about understanding skills and strategies that enable students to be successful on assessments. This is not just about multiple choice either--it’s meant to analyze multiple types of assessments but to do so quickly so that students reap the benefits of deep understanding and teachers reap the benefits of planned student successes. This is an opportunity to leverage our professional development to do well what we were trained to do: TEACH.

Jump to now.

New York State just finished administering the first tests that are aligned with the Common Core. They were way more rigorous than previous assessments and both teachers and students struggled. Sometime over the summer, scores will be released, but not the test.

The test will be embargoed and teachers will not be able to see it. State Ed Leadership will say that there are samples available online. They will say that there are curriculum modules to help with understanding skills and cognition to prepare for the assessments. They will say that it’s too time-consuming and expensive to share the tests as new ones will have to be developed.

They will also continue to promote Santoyo’s model on one hand, but deny teachers access to the central message of the model on the other hand. This is the inconsistency.

With all of the stress that teachers are under to both perform and be evaluated on that performance in ways they never have before, there needs to be some team-building going on, something that will bring everyone together for the sake of our students.

There is an opportunity here:  Release the tests.

Teachers need an anchor right now, a shelter in the storm of changes. They need something concrete that will help them and their students be more successful and help them to feel that they have more control over the flawed teacher evaluation system currently in place. There are so many across the state just treading water and releasing the test would be a major lifeboat moment.

Many of the teachers I’ve talked with over the last couple years of implementation will tell you that the Common Core Standards are not bad. They will tell you that with time and continued professional development that we can use those standards as a basis for modern learning practice and to prepare our kids to succeed in the world they will graduate into.

These teachers will tell you that data driven inquiry is important and that they agree that it is necessary. They will even tell you that they are fine with teacher evaluation and that, for the most part, there is a desire to improve professional practice and discover opportunities to do things better and implement new ideas.

They will also tell you that the current evaluation plan is inauthentic, inspiring a checklist of “to-dos” that meet the requirements of Race to the Top but do little to impact practice. They will tell you that a single test score has too many uncontrollable variables such as parent support, home environment, and poverty status to be a reliable measure for any part of a teacher’s evaluation. They will tell you that doing the same thing for all may be equal but it is not fair.

They will also tell you that it is difficult to prepare for an assessment when the potential exists for broad preparation for a narrow secret set of assessed standards.

Release the tests.

Teachers need to see that they are trusted and valued. They need to see that they are viewed as capable collaborators in this quest for college and career readiness. They need to see themselves as part of the whole team.

Release the tests.

Follow Mike on Twitter: @fisher1000

Upgrade Your Curriculum now available from ASCD.org

The Flow of Professional Development: An INFOGRAPHIC

I just created an infographic based on a conversation that I had with teachers and administrators at EdCamp Buffalo last weekend. During the conversation, I was explaining that Professional Development sometimes falls flat because the groundwork hasn't been properly laid. In essence, professionals don't always understand or contribute to their needs around meaningful Professional Development. I created a flowchart in the moment, but thought I would use an infographic maker, Piktochart, to better visualize the conversation.

It launches in its own iFrame and may take a moment or two to load:

Contextual and Authentic

I’m working with a new group of collaborators who happen to be in the fourth and fifth grade.

Nine to eleven year olds from the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School (http://www.mjgds.org) are creating a book based on some kids’ poems I wrote decades ago and are illustrating them and publishing them and selling them and creating a marketing plan around our work. Eventually, they will use what they’ve created as a fundraiser for their school.

These students are participating in a new form of learning that involves a mentoring relationship, new classroom roles, and embedded virtual learning. I’ve been able to Skype with them, email feedback about their work, and create additional learning “side trips” based on in the moment opportunities.

Their art teacher, Shana Gutterman- http://shoshysartroom.blogspot.com/, their classroom teacher, Stephanie Teitelbaum- http://teachblogandtweet.wordpress.com/,  their Learning Coach, Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano- http://langwitches.org/blog, and I virtually collaborated on the development of this project, via Skype, email, and Twitter. We came up with objectives and lesson activities and planned virtual sessions. We had a modern learning plan in place and launched our project with the intent of changing the level of engagement and learning with students.

Then, we discovered something. Something big.

Because of the depth of instruction and the built in time to negotiate new roles for the students and the upgrade of seeing themselves as collaborators rather than passive learners, we struck oil! Silver! Gold! Students began to self identify interests that were related to their planned learning and lead us down paths of unplanned learning that enriched the designed project.

While students were working on designing pictures to accompany poems in a book for multiple audiences, they also opened up cans of worms that were unforeseen in the curriculum design. These were some of the “teachable moments” the “side trips” that came out of our collaborative work:

• Students learned new contextually specific vocabulary words such as emphatic, explicitly, iteration, synesthesia, and negative space.
• Students were invited to investigate the meaning of “chiaroscuro” as it related to contrasting elements in their illustrations.
• Beyond the chiaroscuro investigation, they were invited to read a book, The Tale of Despereaux, which explores chiaroscuro as a metaphor for the characters and action.
• Students were asked to investigate and learn about Grandma Moses and art techniques that involved the layering of backgrounds and foreground elements in a painting.
• Students learned about warm and cool feedback and improvement for the sake of the team versus just getting good grades.
• They learned to articulate the reasoning behind the “why” of what they were doing and to be as specific as possible in deciding why their illustrations were a good fit for the poem’s text. They did this both with me and their peers, which I personally think is hugely significant. Once again: their peers helped to inform their improvements.
• They became open to suggestions that were rooted in improvement versus identifying what was wrong with their work. This positive take on “doing what’s best for the intended audience” was a huge shift in meaning making.
• They learned that its okay to explore different interest areas that were outside of the intended learning, particularly with one student that wanted to create his own comic books. We were able to have a conversation about the usage of Comic Life on the iPad to start designing his own graphic novels.
• They learned to respond to different types of feedback from their formal teacher, their virtual collaborator, and their peers as they shaped their work.

I would also like to add that the students referred to me as their collaborator; that the work we were doing was OUR work. I loved that. I also loved that their classroom roles included roles like “Skype coordinator,” “Twitter Expert,” and “Illustrative Notes Expert.” So far beyond “Reader,” “Writer,” and “Notetaker.”

Authentic learning experiences that ask students to be part of the instructional design process AND the product are critical in the modern learning classroom. Student-centered work becomes student-owned learning even if teachers maintain an instructional anchor. In this case, the anchor was the product: the book. Everyone is contributing to it, though in multiple ways and with multiple extensions around their individual learning.

I should also mention that this project, because of the level of collaboration between teachers and students, was not a neatly contained event. It took some time to develop, to interact, to collaborate both virtually and in person, and even after these several weeks, the students are just now gearing up to start working on the marketing plan. As teachers, we had to find a new common ground of comfort when balancing the time it takes to do something like this with the deep learning that was possible.

Also, if you’d like to look at the project from several points of view--there’s a lot of blogging going on around it:

Learning in the Modern Classroom - by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Assessment in the Modern Classroom - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 - also by Silvia

Student Blogs:

Who or What Is Digigogy?

We Skyped with Mike Fisher

And my favorite on vocabulary: Wacky Wacky Words!

Needless to say--but I’m REALLY proud of my collaborators! I will be presenting with them at EdJEWcon in Jacksonville, Florida in a couple of weeks. I couldn’t be more excited to finally meet them in person and see our finished product! I’d also like to say Thank You to Shana, Stephanie, and Silvia for all of the great professional collaboration.

Follow Mike on Twitter

Upgrade Your Curriculum - Now available from ASCD

Picture from Pixabay

EdCamp Buffalo Recap!

The Opposite of Awesome

The picture above was shared on Facebook by a valued member of my Digital Learning Network (DLN). In the picture, my friend’s daughter is dutifully transcribing her digital writing to paper, so she can turn it in to her teacher.

Seriously.

Preparedness for college and careers comes in many forms--I understand that. I get it. What I don’t get is how pervasive and valued the traditional is over the modern.

The word curriculum, etymologically, is Latin based and is rooted in a meaning around a course or path to be run. The path here, as evidenced by this single image, is leading to irrelevancy. It’s ok as a teacher to not know all that is on the digital horizon, but to ignore it or to minimize its use, here in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century, is outrageous!

When technology allows us to do something markedly better or easier than we ever have before, it almost seems like there is an air of deceit in using it. Modern tools are more likely to be seen as ways to get into trouble, or cheat, or worse.

Over the years though, through the centuries, the pencil has gotten mankind into more trouble than any computing device. Just ask Alice Walker or Salman Rushdie. Or Toni Morrison or D.H. Lawrence. Or even Suzanne Collins or J.K. Rowling. But the pencil is still the belle of ball, even today.

Would we forgo the use of a lighter and start brandishing sticks to rub to make fire? Why not? It’s authentic!

This picture just blew me away. But I’m not going to dwell on it...I’ve got quills to sharpen and scrolls to roll before I leave work for the day.

Picture courtesy of Crista Anderson.

Our Global Family Needs Us!

I just got word that a member of our global family is in need in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Many of you know our colleague Silvia, (@langwitches) and her family is being impacted by devastating flooding.

She has blogged about her recent trip to Buenos Aires and the impact the floods are having on her mother and their neighbors. Please read her recent blog post and help if you can:

http://langwitches.org/blog/2013/04/03/flood-in-buenos-aires-please-help/

This is video from one of Silvia's Mother's neighbors:

Modern Math: Upgrade Your Curriculum

In a recent MiddleWeb post, I blogged about digital tools that can help teachers align their instruction to the ELA Common Core standards. Now I’d like to do the same for Math.

As before, teachers want to make sure that the task is always the focus of lessons and units, not the tools. But we also know that with the right digital tools to help us, we can further engage our students around challenging content and deepen their learning experience.

In my new book with Janet Hale, Upgrade Your Curriculum, this is a persistent theme: Tools support the learning — they aren’t the purpose of the learning. Janet and I also advocate for

• upgrading curriculum one unit or even one lesson at a time;

• being considerate of the resources available;

• building on the new Common Core standards,

• collaborating with your colleagues.

We also concentrate heavily on our Transformation Matrix, which can help sustain a balance between learning and engagement. In a nutshell, the matrix encourages teachers to visualize a transformed curriculum where much of the teaching and learning is student-centered and thus student-owned.

Digital tools that can help (or not)not)

The digital tools that I’m sharing here could be used on several levels in the math classroom. For one, they represent a moment-in-time assessment of student ownership. Because all of the tools are visual representations of learning, we can see a fairly clear picture of what a student can do with the knowledge/content.

These tools also offer an opportunity for engaging in specific literacy strategies around writing for new audiences and integrating domain-specific vocabulary into the literacy experience. While we may be specifically aligning to the CC Math Standards, we also need to integrate aspects of the ELA standards that help students comprehend our core content.

This integration helps students see relationships between what they are learning in multiple classes and helps contextualize learning moments, creating mental glue that holds on to that learning. This is a shift away from the traditional teaching and learning of isolated facts or processes — a much-needed shift that’s called for in the underlying Common Core principles.

A word of caution: These digital tools can also mask the learning that has occurred if we don’t stay on our teaching toes. Teachers have to be savvy about the ways in which the tools are being used. If students are just creating visualizations on the fly without (1) support for understanding the content well enough to dramatize it; (2) writing a script to go along with it, and (3) soliciting feedback from peers and their teacher before publishing it — then these tools aren’t being used in the most constructive way.

I’d like to think that any of these tools would be great as a formative assessment of learning and a student-created bank of resources for re-visiting the learning at a later time. Think of your own “Khan” style academy on your school’s website, where students share their learning with their classmates, the community, perhaps even the world!

Thanks up front to the teachers and students that shared their examples, particularly Ryan Graham, an 8th grade math teacher in Kannapolis, North Carolina. Please keep in mind that these are ALL middle school students, and all of the examples exemplify that age group. One in particular has a moment that other middle school students will find hilarious, and I suspect their teachers might laugh as well.

xTraNormal: Math movies

xTraNormal is a free web tool based on the premise that if you can type, you can make a movie. Students write out their scripts, use the web controls to manipulate characters and settings, and create a movie that talks, using the text (“script”) that they type in.

Both of the samples represented here are from 8th grade students working on Math Equations. In the videos, the characters suggest a particular way to solve an equation by isolating the variable. The students talk through it without showing the equation visually. While it seems that this is a very quick explanation for the amount of time invested in creating it, I’d like to remind you that this had to be articulated textually and the dialogue typed in before the video was made. That’s where the brain sweat appeared!

I’d also note that the student who added a humorous moment to his video did two important things. For one, he demonstrated a level of confidence and comfort with the material. Nothing says that learning happened louder than knowing the content so well you can laugh about it. The other thing this student did was create a mental “set point” for any other kid who watches it, even if the adults might roll their eyes a little. Kids will remember the funny moment as well as the content that was associated with it. Brain-based learning 101.

Math Equations
by: 16washid

Superzeroz Matho
by: chaos47

Prezi: Innovative slideshows

Prezi is a 21st Century presentation tool — something like a slideshow in the “Cloud.” It combines text and graphics in an innovative and easy-to-use interface that navigates through a presentation in a nonlinear and engaging way.

With xTraNormal, the literacy is in the background. We see the effect but not the cause. With Prezi, the literacy angle is front and center. Students write informatively to convey information about how to solve a multi-step equation. (Common Core writing standard #2) We get to see the learning that occurred and the explanation of the learning.

What better way to cement learning in a student’s brain than to have them teach it to someone? Prezi also allows embedding of YouTube videos (if that site is not blocked in your schools) which gives the students another opportunity, with a different type of media, to show what they know. Personally, I like multimedia approaches to learning and assessment.

Animoto: Quick and simple

Animoto is technically a slideshow type movie application. It uses still images, short videos, and text to convey a message in a “movie trailer” format that is visually spectacular. Students are using this tool in innovative ways to share the content they are learning as well as leveraging knowledge of other technology tools to make it work for them.

Both examples here are very quick and may potentially need to be paused so that the viewer has time to absorb what’s being shared. Additionally, both examples involved students who created images with an outside program, one being PowerPoint, saved as image files, and uploaded to the Animoto system.

The Halloween Slope Project

Untitled Project – Tabb Middle

Animoto contains embedded images and opportunities to add text, but it’s not sophisticated enough to share all of the math formulas and explanations that the students wanted to share. This could potentially be a limitation, but the students found a way around it. Because they created their images in a different software program, the students had the opportunity to both textually and numerically represent their learning. This means that there is a dual layer of articulation here and pretty solid evidence that students are owning what is going on.

Showing and sharing what we know

All of these tools allow students to both SHOW what they know and SHARE what they know. We change attention toward and engagement with the task, and the task’s associated elements, when we upgrade the potential audience. We also start to build in different types of motivation that lead to a better balance of engagement with and focus on learning.

Janet Hale

iPad Math Apps: In the interest of adding additional tools to your toolboxes, I’d also like to share a Pinterest page that I created. It features Math Apps for digital devices, some of which are awesome for fluency exercises and others for the creation of fun instructional videos and other forms of engagement with math content that go above and beyond what students might traditionally experience.

I’ll be exploring more of these ideas with posts at my ASCD Edge blog as we lead up to the launch of our book in early March. If any readers would like to join Janet Hale and me in Chicago at the ASCD conference, we’ll be exploring the Common Core math and ELA standards, and what it means to Upgrade Your Curriculum in person. You can also use the Twitter Hashtag #UpgradeYC to interact online right now!