Improving Individual Student Reading Conferences

 (from MM 826 - March 2, 2020)

Ideas for Individual Student Reading Conferences

            “My favorite moments with my students happen one-on-one,” says Arkansas teacher Justin Minkel on this article in Education Week Teacher. To make the most of reading conferences, he suggests the following:

            • Prioritize quality over quantity. Trying to rush through the entire class each week is a mistake, says Minkel. His routine is doing two or three conferences a day, so some students are seen every other week.

            • Read with struggling readers more often. “Being equitable with our time doesn’t mean allotting it identically to each student,” he says. Minkel’s emergent readers have conferences almost every day.

            • Begin with a compliment. Reading aloud is a “vulnerable process for many children,” he says. “They tend to be more receptive to feedback on their reading abilities if we begin that feedback with one or two of their strengths.”

            • Have the student try out a new skill on the spot. “Sometimes, even when they’re eagerly nodding their heads, our students have no idea how to go off and do what we just told them to do,” he says. “It’s not enough to teach. We have to make sure the kids learn.”

            • Check for comprehension. Some students can read with 100 percent accuracy but not understand what they just read. Simple, low-key questions – What happened in this story? What did you learn from this book? – tell whether the student is doing the “critical, invisible work of reading – visualizing, connecting, inferring, predicting,” says Minkel. This is especially important for English learners, and for all students it builds the bridge from thinking to talking and then to writing.

            • Immediately put observations to work. Reading conferences give teachers invaluable information about each student’s fluency, comprehension, and strategies for figuring out tricky words, and it’s a shame if the data wind up in a manila folder and aren’t used. Minkel believes in applying insights on the spot – grabbing a whiteboard and helping a student see how to turn the word moon into main and mean, or asking, What happened so far? “The time we spend gathering data is only useful if we actually use the data to make kids better readers,” he says.

            • Teach the reader, not just the reading. Minkel suggests using one-on-one time with students to check in with them on the bigger picture: How’s our class going for you? Any problems? How’s your baby sister doing? “Taking that half-minute to ask how students are doing can convey that we care about them as human beings, not just as a collection of reading levels and test scores,” he says. “Over time, these little human moments can strengthen, reinforce, or repair the relationship at the heart of teaching.”

 

“Six Tips for Making the Most of One-on-One Reading Conferences” by Justin Minkel in Education Week Teacher, February 25, 2020, https://bit.ly/2PCU2FO

Ask These Questions to Foster an Employee’s Sense of Purpose

 From HBR newsletter:  I'm thinking they're good for summative evaluation.

"We all want to find meaning in what we do. As a manager, you can help your team members foster this inner sense of purpose by asking them a few simple questions:

• What are you good at? What do you take on because you believe you’re the best person to do it? What have you gotten noticed for throughout your career? The idea here is to help people identify their strengths.
• What do you enjoy? In a typical workweek, what do you look forward to doing? These questions help people find or rediscover what they love about work.
• What feels most useful? Which work outcomes make you proudest? Which of your tasks are most critical to the team or organization? The answers can highlight the inherent value of certain work.
• What creates a sense of forward momentum? How is your work today getting you closer to what you want? The point here is to show people how their current role helps them advance toward future goals.

It’s not always easy to guide others toward purpose, but these questions can help.

On "Social Loafing" -Getting more value from "Turn and Talk"/ The Science of Talking in Class

Getting More Value from “Turn and Talk” (from MM 826)

            In this Forbes article, author Natalie Wexler describes what she often sees in classrooms when the teacher tells students to turn and talk about something just taught:

-    Students talking about the intended topic but not making any sense;

-    Students having a lively discussion on a different topic;

-    Capable or assertive students holding forth while others listen – “social loafing”;

-    Students staring into space waiting for the teacher to say time is up;

-    A very noisy classroom, making it difficult to hear, also inviting off-task behavior.

Teachers may suspect that their turn-and-talks aren’t that productive, but many believe their administrators expect this pedagogical move to be used in every lesson.

            “To be sure,” says Wexler, “there’s truth to the idea that interaction has educational benefits. Learning doesn’t happen unless students are engaged, and group and pair work can be very engaging for students. But it’s possible to have engagement without learning.” Here are some research-based ways to get maximum value from turn-and-talks:

-    Make sure students understand what they’re supposed to be discussing, starting with enough factual information and a clear and interesting prompt.

-    Give students guidelines and protocols that help them debate and negotiate – for example, “Make sure you understand your partner’s perspective.”

-    The quality of turn-and-talks can be enhanced if students are asked to write silently before discussing with their group.

-    Pair sharing can be especially helpful in world language classes, giving students more practice using the language without the pressure of performing for the whole class.

“Why Teachers Need To Do More Than Have Kids ‘Turn and Talk’” by Natalie Wexler in Forbes, February 9, 2020, https://bit.ly/2TxOfCH 

***

Studies suggest how to guide students for productive discussions and group work

Yet when teachers open the classroom to group work and children’s chatter, peer learning can seem like a waste of time. Students often veer off-task, talking about Fortnite or Lizzo. Noise levels rise. Conflicts erupt. Are they really learning? Whether it’s productive to allot precious classroom minutes for children to talk with each other remains a debate with practical consequences.

Students didn’t always learn more from interacting with each other than working alone in the 71 underlying studies. The ones that produced the strongest learning gains for peer interaction were those where adults gave children clear instructions for what do during their conversations. Explicit instructions to “arrive at a consensus” or “make sure you understand your partner’s perspective” helped children learn more. Simply telling students to “work together” or “discuss”  often didn’t generate learning improvements for students in the studies.

source: Hettinger report: https://hechingerreport.org/the-science-of-talking-in-class/

Alexis Wiggin's student-driven revision

 (from MM 872)

Here's my copy of her rubric

Enthusiastic, Student-Driven Revision

            “How do you get students to want to revise their writing?” asks high-school teacher Alexis Wiggins in this Education Week article. “That is the $64,000 question.” A few years ago, she had the idea of returning students’ papers with formative feedback on each standard on a comprehensive three-level rubric (she got the idea from her father, Grant Wiggins):

-    Publishable (A work)

-    Revisable (anywhere from a B+ to a D-)

-    Redo (completely missed the mark and needs a reboot)

Wiggins was delighted with the response: “My students largely worked their tails off to eventually move from the “Revisable” column to the “Publishable” column. The downside? It was killing me. I couldn’t handle the volume of revisions I was confronted with and the amount of comments I had to write out on every single draft submitted to provide adequate feedback to help students revise and improve.” This led her to abandon the idea after only a year, but she was stuck with the humanities teacher’s emotions about grading: “Dread, loathe, and avoid.”

            Ten years later, it occurred to Wiggins that the three-level feedback system would be workable if students did most of their revising themselves using a detailed, standards-based rubric as a guide. This rating scale is “designed backwards from the end goals,” says Wiggins: “persuasive, eloquent use of language and argument.” All she did now was check the level at which a student’s work was (Publishable, Revisable, Redo) and, if it wasn’t already Publishable, jotted the student a quick note on what needed to be done to boost the level on that standard. Wiggins tried this last year with her Composition and Film classes, and found that grading time was cut in half, even though students were submitting similar amounts of writing.

            The key point, she says, is that students don’t get grades for individual assignments; all they get is a Publishable/Revisable/Redo on each rubric standard. At the end of the semester, Wiggins decides each student’s grade based on a breakdown of how many assignments are in each of the categories. Students can revise as many times as they like before the due date (close to the end of the semester). The criteria are spelled out on the back of her rubric.

            Wiggins says the rubric and targeted feedback are “the best system I have ever experienced in my 20-year career, hands down… Students have reported nearly unanimously in surveys that they have improved, wanted to revise their work, and paid attention to teacher feedback more than ever with this new system. Nineteen out of 20 of my students said this was the best style of assessment they had ever experienced and that all teachers should use it.” That’s because they’re less anxious now that they’re in control of their grades, revisions, and what they learn. Why? When they got letter grades, there was an element of adult judgment that provoked negative emotions – and that happened to the teacher as well. “The reason I most dreaded grading before,” says Wiggins, “wasn’t so much the time commitment as the fear of how a student would respond emotionally to the grade I gave them.” Now it’s simply a joint effort to revise work up to the Publishable level – with students doing most of the work.

 

“‘Publishable’ and ‘Not Yet Publishable’” by Alexis Wiggins in Education Week, January 3, 2021; Wiggins can be reached awiggins@ceelcenter.org.

Mike Schmoker Radically Simplified ELA Curriculum

 “Radical Reset: The Case for Minimalist Standards” by Mike Schmoker in Educational Leadership, February 2020 (Vol. 77, #5, pp. 44-50), https://bit.ly/2vouIvW; Schmoker can be reached at schmoker@futureone.com

From Marshall Memo (#832).

            “In profound ways, literacy is destiny,” says author/speaker/consultant Mike Schmoker in this Educational Leadership article. “It is the single most important goal of schooling and the key to academic and career success.” The Common Core standards were a well-intentioned effort to pare down ELA standards and support effective literacy instruction, says Schmoker, but he believes the standards went off the rails – an important reason that American students’ achievement over the last decade has flatlined.

            What went wrong? “In the heady development phase, there was plenty to like about the ELA Common Core,” says Schmoker. “They called for vastly more content-rich, grade-level reading, discussion, writing – and writing instruction – across subject areas.” The Common Core ELA’s introduction and appendices are “inspiring and largely on-target.” However, says Schmoker, the detailed standards created by committees are “an impossible profusion of grade-by-grade minutiae.” The result is that many teachers have been spending far too much class time on strategies, skill drills, and worksheets, and students aren’t doing much real reading, discussing, and writing grounded in literature and subject-area knowledge. Hence the lack of progress at a national level.

            How can we return to the fundamentals that Common Core got right and “reset” literacy instruction in classrooms? Schmoker recommends that school leaders issue explicit public statements describing what went wrong so teachers and parents understand what isn’t working and why. Then schools and districts should go about reducing the literacy curriculum to the essentials. For starters, this means intensive, explicit phonics instruction so every student is able to decode text by the end of first grade. But this shouldn’t distract from the core of literacy, which Schmoker believes is “frequent, abundant amounts of reading, discussion, and writing” from the very beginning. He agrees with Richard Allington’s 2006 goal of students doing at least 60 minutes of reading and 40 minutes of writing (across the curriculum) every day.

Following this general injunction, what do simple, high-leverage standards look like? Schmoker suggests that teacher teams spell out “the approximate number, amount, length, and frequency” of reading, writing, and discussion for each grade level – specifically:

-    The number of knowledge-rich, grade-appropriate fiction and non-fiction books, articles, textbook selections, poems, plays, and primary resources students will read in each course (a high-performing network of schools in Texas and Arizona posted its grade-by-grade sequence at https://bit.ly/35FkPak);

-    The number of pages of actual text (minus illustrations) that students will read each year (for example, at least 1,000 pages);

-    The number and approximate length of inquiry-based discussions, seminars, and debates students engage in – that are “purposeful, grounded in reading, and aligned with simple criteria,” says Schmoker, “– for example, speak audibly, clearly, logically, and with civility.”

-    The number and approximate length of short writing assignments completed each day and week, and more extensive, capstone-like projects at the end of a grading period or year, all assessed with detailed scoring guides and supported by exemplars of high-quality work.

Are such short, basic standards (without detailed skill objectives) enough to guide teachers? asks Schmoker. Absolutely, he says, citing the gains of a number of schools and networks that have taken this approach. “So why wait?” he challenges. “Arrange, as soon as possible, for your school or district teams to develop provisional standards and expectations for reading, discussion, and writing. Then stand back and watch your students’ life chances soar.”

Making Cooperative Learning Work Better

“Making Cooperative Learning Work Better” by Jennifer Gonzalez in Cult of Pedagogy, February 3, 2020, https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/making-cooperative-learning-work-better/

Here's Marshall Memo (#823) summary of the information:

            In this Cult of Pedagogy article, Jennifer Gonzalez recalls that when she was a middle-school English teacher, she often had students work in groups – sometimes to brainstorm ideas, sometimes as a break from the whole-class routine, and, she confesses, sometimes to lighten her grading load (30 final products versus 120).

            But cooperative work was not without its problems. Some groups didn’t stay on task, there were personality clashes, absences complicated things, and certain students ended up doing most of the work in their groups. Gonzalez began to question whether cooperative learning was adding value. Recently, she took a careful look at the research and reached out to colleagues to answer some basic questions.

            First, is cooperative learning worth it? Researchers say that it is. “In general,” summarizes Gonzalez, “when students work together, they make greater academic and social gains than when they compete against one another or when they work individually.” But cooperative learning produces these gains only when teachers orchestrate group activities to include these key elements:

-    Positive interdependence – Kids must work together to achieve a common goal.

-    Individual accountability – Each group member must do his or her part.

-    Supportiveness – Students help and encourage each other.

-    Developing interpersonal skills – Students are taught how to communicate, tackle problems, and resolve conflicts.

-    Processing – Students have time to reflect on their group’s interactions.

Implemented with these components, cooperative learning works, and it’s especially important given the demands of the 21st-century workplace, where communication, creativity, and collaboration are more important than ever. What’s more, says Gonzalez, contemporary Americans’ fixation on smartphones “is stunting our ability to have regular conversations and robbing us of all the gifts that come with those interactions. Giving students regular opportunities to share physical space and actually talk through complex problems is a gift they may not get anywhere else, so yes, it’s worth it.”

            Having established the value of cooperative work in classrooms, Gonzalez reached out for solutions to four common challenges:

            • Problem #1: Uneven student contributions in groups – Quite frequently, academically stronger students do most of the work while others freeload. Or everyone works, but in “parallel play” mode, without truly collaborating. Teachers can address this problem by:

- Explicitly teaching the skills required to work well in a group. This means doing role-plays, modeling desired behaviors, and demonstrating what not to do. “Do not assume students have already been taught how to collaborate or that they should know better,” says Gonzalez. She advises starting with simple group tasks and debriefing with students. The links in her full article below include a breakdown of skills and rubrics to evaluate group work.

- Structuring the learning task so it lends itself to collaboration. Gonzalez provides links to resources for these approaches:

-    Jigsaw, in which each group member learns a discrete body of information and is then responsible for teaching it to the rest of the group.

-    Solve in Time, in which students clearly define a problem, research and understand it, come up with a solution, and share their work.

-    Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures, including Quiz-Quiz-Trade and Numbered Heads Together.

-    Team-based learning, popular in medical schools but applicable in K-12.

-    Agile Project Management, breaking large projects into shorter cycles.

-    POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning), often used in science courses.

It’s also important for the teacher to set norms and expectations up front (which might involve students creating group contracts before they get to work), spelling out procedures and roles, and what to do when there are serious disagreements.

            • Problem #2: Interpersonal conflicts – Researchers have found that psychological safety is an essential prerequisite for successful group work, so it’s wise to spend time developing a comfortable group dynamic before students tackle academic tasks. Gonzalez suggests surveying students ahead of time (to avoid personality clashes that might derail a group), doing team-building activities, surveying students in the middle of multi-day cooperative projects, and actively problem-solving when issues arise (perhaps changing groups or having some students work independently).

            • Problem #3: Off-task behavior – This might be excessive chit-chat, kids on their devices, or just plain fooling around. Gonzalez suggests establishing check-ins when specific tasks must be completed, using a timer for completion of certain tasks, and the teacher being self-critical about an assignment that confuses or doesn’t engage students, leading to a mid-course correction.

            • Problem #4: Student absences throwing things off – “One missed day is usually not a big deal,” says Gonzalez, “but if a student misses multiple work days when the group should be actively collaborating, it becomes much harder for that person to make an equal contribution.” Her suggestions:

-    Design group projects so some parts require everyone’s involvement and others are done by individuals and collaboration might be “nice to have” rather than “must have.”

-    Be clear about individual roles and responsibilities so if a student has been absent, it’s clear what he or she must do to catch up.

-    Have groups use Google Drive or Hyperdoc, keeping the work in one cloud-accessible place so it’s possible for an absent student to contribute from home.

-    Let groups use Skype, Facetime, or Google Hangouts to chat with an absent student.

-    If a long-term absence is holding a group back, reshuffle groups or have the absent student work individually.

Gonzalez concludes with three practical tips:

-    Conduct cooperative projects in the classroom. Differences in students’ access to materials, technology, and transportation may create inequities if major collaboration is done outside of school.

-    Limit groups to 3-4 students. “Once a group gets larger than four,” says Gonzalez, “it becomes easier for students to slip through the cracks.”

-    Check out collaborative technology. Beyond Google’s tools, there are collaborative features in Trello, Asana, Kanbanchi, Slack, Wakelet, and Canvas.

Well Said in emails - following up, subject lines, tone

 From Harvard Business Review:  ""How to Follow Up when Someone's Not Getting Back to You"" by Rebecca Zucker

This HBR is great!

""We’ve all been there. You email someone asking for a conversation, information, input, or an introduction, and you get no response. Whether you are reaching out to a coworker, a client, a recruiter, a classmate, or even an old friend, not everyone will get back to you on your timeline — if at all.

As frustrating and disappointing as it may be, a lack of response doesn’t mean they’re ghosting you. It’s important to maintain perspective. People are often juggling a series of important work and personal responsibilities. Your email probably doesn’t make the top 10 on their priority list. Remembering this can help de-personalize their silence, and make you less hesitant to send a follow up message.

That said, it can still feel awkward to follow up, especially if you need to do so more than once. Here are some key things to keep in mind when you reach out to someone for the second (or third, or fourth) time.

Have a compelling subject line.

Forty-seven percent of emails are opened or discarded based on their subject line alone. Research shows that shorter subject lines with only four words have the highest open rates, which makes sense since two-thirds of emails are read on mobile devices.

For example, Paul, a client of mine, needed his colleague to sign off on a communication plan around the announcement of his move to a new group. His first email, with the subject line “Team communication plan in advance of firm announcement” didn’t get a response. Paul emailed his coworker again, changing the subject line to “Time sensitive: communication plan,” and got an immediate reply.

Though not every email will be urgent, like Paul’s, you still need to be thoughtful about your subject line. Avoid generic phrases like “Following up” or “Checking in.” Those are not only vague — they may also make the reader feel bad for being slow to respond (even further delaying a prompt reply). Instead, use the subject line to give the recipient a short preview of your request. You might say, “Next steps on X project” or “Question on job application.”

Be mindful of your tone.

Tone can easily be misinterpreted via email, so take care to craft a message that sounds friendly and polite. Research shows emails that are slightly to moderately positive in tone have a 10-15% higher response rates than more neutral messages.

Think of your message as a gentle nudge. Imagine receiving an email that says, “Please send your feedback on my project by Thursday,” versus, “Given your experience with these types of projects, I’d love to get your feedback on the work I’ve done so far. This would be a big win for my team and I, so we appreciate you sending any thoughts you have by EOD Thursday.”  The former is neutral and could potentially be construed as demanding, whereas the latter is slightly more upbeat and appreciative while also being complimentary to the recipient. Subtle flattery — without going overboard — helps.

Keep it short and use simple language.

No one likes to receive a long or dense email. The most effective messages are short and easily scannable. Research shows that between 75 and 100 words is ideal, yielding the highest response rate at 51%. This means that if you’re forwarding your initial email, your follow-up message should be even shorter.

The same research also shows that using simple language (at a third-grade reading level) results in the highest response rate (53%). Longer, more complex emails are often put to the side and revisited later when the reader has time to focus on your message. This means that longer emails are more likely to be forgotten.

Try keeping it simple and straightforward. For instance, you could say something like, “I’m following up to see if you might have some time to talk in the next week or two about your experience working at Company X, as I just applied for the financial analyst position.”

Make a clear ask.

An unambiguous, direct question will make your request evident to the reader. The clearer you are, the easier it is for them to respond. In fact, you are 50% more likely to get a response if you ask up to three questions than no questions at all. Your questions might sound something like:

• “Is there a time in the next week or two that works for you?”
• “Would you be willing to make an introduction to William Burns?”
• “Do you have some time to talk in the weeks ahead about my development priorities?”
• “Are you able to participate in our conference panel on Women in AI next quarter?”

Give them an out.

One reason someone might not reply to an email is that they aren’t able to help, or don’t feel comfortable following through on your request. Giving your email recipient an out will ease their discomfort and demonstrate humility, making the other person more likely to reply.

Try using one of the following phrases:

• “If you don’t know William well enough to make the introduction, I completely understand.”
• “If you’ve gone in another direction in hiring for this position, please let me know.”
• “If there’s someone else I should reach out to for this information instead, please let me know.”
• “Please let us know if you’re too busy to provide feedback on my project or need more time.”
• “If you’re unable to participate in our panel, we welcome suggestions of other Women in AI that you’d recommend.”

You can also give the recipient a chance to save face by acknowledging that you know they’re busy and have a lot on their plate. The last thing you want is for them to associate negative emotions with receiving emails from you. In this case, a simple statement like, “If you’re too busy or it’s not a good time right now, no problem,” works well.

Be judiciously persistent.

Research shows that asking for what we need reduces anxiety and improves your self-esteem, sense of agency, and the quality of your relationships – not to mention, it may help you to get your request fulfilled. In short, following up is worth the effort.

But there’s a fine line between being persistent and being annoying. You need to demonstrate both assertiveness and good judgment about when to follow up and when it’s time to cut your losses and move on. As a general rule, a week after your initial email is a good time to reach out again as a first follow-up. However, depending on the nature of your request, prior conversations, and/or relevant deadlines, it may be appropriate to follow up sooner.

Unless it’s time sensitive, each successive follow-up should be spaced a bit further apart, adding another week’s time in between, until you’ve followed up three times. There could be an additional fourth “hail Mary” attempt, depending on the situation. One client of mine had interviewed for a senior role and the recruiter said she was impressed and wanted him to meet with the CEO. After three follow-up emails, my client had still heard nothing. It had been six weeks from his last follow-up email. He had nothing to lose, so he decided to email the recruiter one last time and got a response within minutes.

Following up with others who aren’t getting back to you is an inevitable and necessary part of business and accomplishing your goals. Use the strategies above to increase the effectiveness of your follow up and help you get the response you need.