Using the students' questions

A few days before our unit test, I gave students the following directions:

Look back to everything you have learned starting with the microscope. Using your notes, handouts and your textbook, create a fair test that includes content about microscope and slide preparation skills, identifying cells and cellular structures under the microscope, lab safety rules, and an overview of the 6 Kingdoms of Life.

The students were very engaged in creating a practice test with an answer key, and their tests were actually really thoughtful.

On the following day, students exchanged tests with other pairs and then were graded. For HW, over the weekend, students were to review the tests they created as well as the tests that they took. On Monday, we had a quiz show, which the kids were just over-the-top excited about. They loved it so much, they wanted to have a similar quiz show for math. I asked students to write down questions that were new to them or that they got wrong during the game so they could add them to their study guide.

I used the students questions to create questions from the test. Some were questions they had answered during the quiz show, and other were the questions directly from their practice tests. Tuesday was the day of truth.

I looked back at our first disappointing test and the averages in the two classes were a 64% in 7F and a 65% in 7P. For our second test, there was a 10 point increase in both class averages: 74% in 7F and 75% in 7P. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was hoping that most students would do well. The case is that a few did well and most passed, hence the low average. Still, I think the 10 point increase is significant and a small success. I believe the students who failed are students who relied solely on the time we spent reviewing in class and spent no time at home preparing.

I am using more cooperative learning activities in science class now (i.e. JIGSAWS, 3-minute review, team-pair-solo) more often in I am hoping that the class average on our next test can be comfortably in the 80-90 range. I plan to use this method again, though there are some drawbacks. It does involve several days of preparation prior to the test, and as I found, some students are content to rely only on the time we spend together in class as their review time. What do I do with these students? I am reluctant to give them more of my time if they do not take any time on their own to prepare. I don't assign students any science homework (except to finish work they've started in class), so I think it's a reasonable expectation to have them study for tests on their own at home, especially if we've already devoted so much class time to reviewing.

Assessments

My efforts to have students become thinkers and problem solvers...

Although this post is more about students thinking (or not thinking) about their evaluations!

Some thoughts on Angie's comment about study guides etc. On our first big food chemistry assessment the students reviewed their notes in small groups and wrote example questions using Bloom's taxonomy, and from those questions I typed up a study guide...rather simple, grouping similar questions. The test was OK for some, but I'm concerned about the students we are always concerned about...Do they make no effort to prepare other than sitting in class? Do they not process anything that goes on in class? This was also the time of kids being out for 3-4 days at a stretch. Do I need to teach the class to them after school? Maybe that's what I should have done. Classmates shared notes with them and helped them with the study guide, but I had two students tell me they just couldn't do the test; they had been out sick, but they also did not seriously use the extra time they received or fully complete the study guide. After the first round with the test, I redid the study guide giving more space, making more diagrams etc. and students who wanted to complete the new guide could retake the test. There was only one student who really made an effort to do it well and retake the test. He did much better. It seems like a lot of work on my part for not much return. I would be interested to hear more about the assessment group Angie works with to get some ideas. DC

Goal Blogging

How well is this goal blog working for you all in terms of giving and receiving feedback? Tamar, I wonder whether you could update the settings to email everyone participating in the blog when someone publishes a post so that we can see what everyone is doing/trying and give each other feedback in a timely manner. What do you all think?

Angie's Assessment Update

Progress is slow, but I am reconsidering what the assessment should look like after my first run.

I created a study guide for the first unit based on the notes and lessons we had. Then I created the test from the study guide. The test had to be shorter than the study guide, but I felt it was good for the students to review all the important terms, concepts and applications even if they would not be tested on them because they form the background students would need for future lessons.

The test, like the study guide, had two parts. Part A was vocabulary and concept check, with some very basic application (i.e. do you know how to create and label a box-and-whisker plot given a data set). Part B was a mini-lab in which students would work with a lab partner to expose potatoes to three different environments, with one control, and explain the movement of molecules based on their observations and measurements. Both parts would be given over two days. So this is where I started.

On day one, I looked over the tests the students had completed and I knew we couldn't complete Part B. The vocabulary section was the worst. I thought students would ace this part since it was basic recall of vocabulary and concepts and also since we'd spent weeks defining, labeling, and identifying the vocabulary in various contexts, including the infamous Egg-speriment (which I am also reconsidering now after 4 years at it). Instead of giving the second part of the test the following day, we talked instead about what students did (or didn't do) to prepare for the test, whether and how the study guide was helpful, and lessons we can learn for future assessments. By the way, I did have three students get better than 100% on this first part of the test, but that is clearly not enough to make up for the utter failure of most of the class. The students admitted that they only relied on our class review to prepare for the test; many had incomplete study guides and most did not bother reviewing.

At this point, I know that the primary problem was not the assessment itself since I have given a form of this test in previous years without a dismal passing rate. What I did learn for next time is that students strongly felt that a review game would have been helpful. In the past, while I have found review games to be fun, I have not seen that it results in significant gains. In as much as they play a role in assessments, I would like to steer away from them and use review stations instead, which I feel are more focused and the distraction of earning points for one's team isn't there.

Moving forward, I would like to try creating tiered assessments. I meet regularly with a small Critical Friends Group of middle school math and science teachers and one of the things we discussed this weekend is using tiered assessments to determine how well students are meeting objectives. I think I already do this in some fashion, but the idea of explicitly designing a test with clearly labeled levels of questioning isn't something I've done and would be an excellent use of Bloom's taxonomy. I think this change will be better than the mammoth 2-day assessment I had in mind because it can incorporate application of concepts as a basic objective that all students have to meet. I have a couple of ideas on the actual design of the assessment so that it is a simple one-day assessment. Labs will still have to be separate assessments; there's no way to get around this. They become fewer and fewer as we move into more activity-based (rather than lab-based) lessons, so this will be something that applies only to the first unit.

What's Working - Tamar's update

I don't know about other people, but I felt really good about the "critical friends" group that took place on Friday. For those of you who weren't there, it was my turn to share student work, and I brought in an email from one of my students to her "book buddy" in Kenya. The letter was two paragraphs long, and the first paragraph (social) included text messaging language, while the second (academic -- about the books she is reading) was written in standard written English. We used a protocol that I adapted from the National Writing Project's protocol for looking at digital composition, a protocol that I will be using in a presentation on this digital writing exchange at the MacArthur Foundation's "Digital Is..." conference in Philadelphia next month. The protocol asks participants to focus on what they notice, what they wonder, what questions the piece raises for them, and what's working. They are asked to withhold all judgment. This is an approach that was central to a graduate class I took at Bread Loaf a few years ago with an incredible professor named Michael Armstrong. His work is all about looking at what's working in student writing.

I left the "critical friends" group on Friday feeling energized and excited about the work our students are doing. So often I can get bogged down in what they're doing wrong in their writing, and I forget to look at what they're doing that's working. So often I can get judgmental -- not just of them, but of myself as a teacher, since I feel responsible for every mistake they make -- and I forget to appreciate and learn from what they write. The NWP/Michael Armstrong approach has been invaluable to me as a writing teacher, and I was very happy to share it with my colleagues.

This weekend I am reading and responding to my students' epic stories (based on structural elements we found while reading Beowulf). They are long. I have been dreading this weekend of grading... But as I read through them, I am reminding myself to notice, to wonder, to question, and to appreciate what is working.

As part of the writing process for this piece, students all commented digitally on their peer's epics, and they used these comments (theoretically!) to revise. I'm pleasantly surprised as I look at the comments they left for each other and the revisions they did to see that they really took their roles as commenter and reviser seriously. As I read, I am responding to their comments (things like, "I agree with what Jafah noticed here... I see how you changed this paragraph in response to his comment"). I am also writing a two-part comment at the end of each piece: What I noticed/what's working (this part is a narrative... 4-6 sentences), and a bullet-point list of "suggestions for next time," which tends to focus more on mechanical elements.

Then I'm slapping a grade at the end, which still feels a bit problematic... This process just isn't easily quantifiable!

New assessment (Tamar)

I'm grading the kids' creative endings to The Giver, and after much deliberation about how to balance the nitty-gritty (mechanics) with the touchy-feely (creativity, effectiveness, style, voice), I came up with a combo-rubric of sorts. I can't seem to paste the document here, so I'll just describe it. The top half is a chart with 4 columns labeled: "Based on this piece, the writer is..." "a novice (just learning)" "an apprentice (shows some skill, but needs work)" "a master! (very few mistakes)". There are 6 rows: "paragraphing," "capitalization," "spelling (including homonyms,""consistent verb tense," "complete sentences (no run-ons or fragments)," and "correct formatting." The bottom half of the page is a empty box labeled: "The effect of this piece on the reader (Ms. Paull)." I'm pretty happy with this as far as teacher-friendliness. I'm not marking any mistakes on the writing itself, which saves time and also satisfies my goal of not wanting to bleed ink all over the kids' work. The chart allows me to give the kids specific feedback on their mechanics. I'm trying to reserve the bottom box for positive or judgment-free comments. If anyone would like to try (or adapt) the rubric, let me know.

Now I better get back to that grading...

Tamar's Update: A Positive Approach

I had a really eye-opening goal conference with a student in August. He told me that he loved reading, but was a bad writer. He wanted to learn to make fewer mistakes in writing, but really didn't like writing... because he made so many mistakes! Makes sense, I thought. So what would happen if I focused on getting him to love writing, and addressed his "mistakes" some other way?

I decided to try a new approach with the first set of writing pieces this year. No corrections. None. Only positive feedback. OK, maybe a few tiny little suggestions. But NO circles, cross-outs, "frags" or "awks." This was not as easy as it sounds...

I have never been so aware of my inclination to mark up student work as I was when I read and responded to these papers. I had to keep reminding myself of this experiment, and its purpose. I want my students to become better writers. In order to become better writers, they need to enjoy writing. As my student reminded me in his goal conference in August, nobody likes doing things they are "bad" at. So my goal in responding to this first set of papers was to make everyone feel like they had done a good job. And they had... when I looked at the papers through a purely positive lens.

I underlined my favorite lines in their pieces, looking primarily for sensory detail, which was the focus of this narrative assignment. I then wrote a few sentences at the end telling them what I liked the most about their pieces. I did make the suggestion in several cases that they read their work aloud to make sure it said what they meant to say, but that was the closest I came to mentioning mistakes.

When I handed back the papers, I told them what I had done and why. I said that I didn't circle a single mistake, not because there weren't any ("everybody makes mistakes," I reminded them), but because I wanted to focus on what was best about their writing, and I wanted them to do the same. Then I did a lesson on some of the most common errors that I noticed in their writing (capitalization and homonyms. I mentioned that they would probably notice some of these things in their writing, and that next time they could catch the errors before handing in their work.

Today they completed their second big writing assignment, a creative ending to The Giver. They have spent the week writing, peer conferencing (with a set of questions, all of which focus on revision, not editing), revising (which I am still struggling to get them to see is different than editing), and editing (using a checklist of the skills I have taught them thus far). Now I'm torn about how to respond to these pieces. I really want to stick with the positive approach that I used on their last pieces. I still strongly believe that correcting their work won't teach them much of anything... Yet I'm concerned about my own accountability. I'm also torn about the role of their writing assignments in their final grades. I'm thinking about not assigning a grade to their writing pieces at all, but instead giving them narrative feedback that I think will actually make them enjoy writing more (which, I believe, will lead to them becoming better writers). I'm toying with giving more skills-based assessments that I can grade objectively, and really separating that part of grading from the much more subjective process of responding to their writing pieces. Any thoughts? Thanks!