Schmoker - Simplify ELA Curriculum

From Marshall Memo 823

Mike Schmoker on a Radically Simplified ELA Curriculum

(Originally titled “Radical Reset: The Case for Minimalist Standards”)

            “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.”

“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.

Small Ways to Show Appreciation and Gratitude

From Harvard Business Review

The Little Things That Make Employees Feel Appreciated

• Kerry Roberts Gibson
• Kate O'Leary
• Joseph R. Weintraub

(link to article)

Here are some of the most important parts from the article for teaching:

1.Touch base early and often. While regularly taking time to say hello to employees and check in with them might seem like an unnecessary drain on your productivity, these interactions are actually valuable points of connection for your employees (and for you). They prevent your staff from feeling invisible. One of the employees in our focus groups told us that simply hearing “Good morning” or “How are you?” from his department manager would have been as meaningful as formal recognition. If you create routines that allow your employees to share stories with you about what they’re doing or working on, you can make them feel “known” by you — and stay in the loop on what’s happening within your organization.

3. Address growth opportunities. Employees want to know what the future holds for their careers. When managers take time to explicitly discuss growth potential or provide opportunities and “stretch” assignments, employees interpret it as evidence that they’re valued. Conversely, when managers neglect to address people’s development, employees take it as a sign that they are not. One employee told us, “My manager is constantly recognizing my work, and I know that she sees that I go over and above. The issue is that she doesn’t fight to get me new and greater opportunities.”

5. Make it a habit. Simply taking a few minutes to tell your employee specifically what you value about their contributions can have a tremendous impact. Try to build it into your regular routines, perhaps by spending the first 15 minutes of your week writing a personal thank-you note or starting your team meetings with shout-outs briefly acknowledging accomplishments of individual team members. The range of options are almost limitless. Some managers we spoke to gave food and gift cards as tangible expressions of their appreciation; others made it a point to visit with each of their reports daily. The idea isn’t to create an automatic system for thanking employees, however; it’s more about giving yourself permission to express your appreciation in a way that feels natural to you.

 Mistakes to Avoid

Employees were equally clear about the ways in which managers communicated a lack of appreciation for them. Here are some common things managers get wrong:

1. Expressions of gratitude that are inauthentic or sweeping generalizations. Appreciation needs to be specific and genuine. While employees were enthusiastic about the variety of ways in which gratitude can be expressed, they were not moved by empty or offhanded gestures. There’s a big difference between yelling a thank-you on your way out the door versus sitting down with someone to describe the things you value about their work and its positive effect on the team or organization.

Meaningful expressions of appreciation were often described as timely, relevant, and sincere, and expressions that come off as hollow may actually be worse than no thanks at all. Managers also need to tread carefully when recognizing everyone on a team. Sometimes a group’s performance is not a reflection of equal contributions from all its members, and you run the risk of alienating high performers if everyone receives the same recognition.

2. Neglecting standard company procedures. Many busy managers feel that procedures like annual reviews, quarterly check-ins, and nominating employees for awards are a waste of time. But to employees, they’re important milestones that provide clues about their progress and performance. When a manager skips them, employees often infer that they, not the procedure, are what the manager doesn’t value. If you’re going to deviate from the organization’s rulebook, at the very least you need to be explicit with your employees about why, or they might conclude that your inaction is a statement about them.

3. Letting employees feel isolated from coworkers or the larger organization. For managers, it’s much easier to see how the contributions of each person fit with the work of others, but employees often lack that insight. When managers highlight how employees use one another’s work within their department or across others, it sets the stage for appreciation to spread throughout the organization.

Make Work Meaningful for Teachers

Use the summative meeting to help make teachers’ work “meaningful” to them. HBR article. "How to Make Work More Meaningful for Your Team" Good leaders "are curious and inquisitive. Studies show that people tend to experience work as meaningful when they feel like they are contributing to creating something new — especially when they feel able to explore, connect and have an impact. Curious leaders help people find meaning at work by exploring, asking questions, and engaging people in ideas about the future. In a way, curious leaders help employees find something meaningful by providing a wider range of possibilities for how work gets done, as opposed to being very prescriptive and micromanage people.”

Jo Boaler on how she stays on top of research

Article in Education Week (link) "When Picking Up My Phone Replaced Picking Up a Journal"


References her most-read article.  How drawing from different types of sources influences how she writes about research:

My approach of drawing from these different kinds of sources to find new research has also shaped how I write about research—and where I choose to publish that writing. A good example is the paper I wrote that has probably had more impact and received more attention than any other I have written. The article, "Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts," which is currently approaching half-a-million reader views, was published on my research team's website (youcubed.org) rather than a journal where it would have reached vastly fewer readers.
"Fluency Without Fear" opens with a popular account published in newspapers across the United Kingdom of a British politician who was ridiculed for not being able to immediately give an answer to the question: What is 7 x 8? My paper then introduced important research from mathematics educators, cited the results of several neuroscience studies, and concluded with the insights of prominent mathematicians. 

The paper builds a case, from peer-reviewed research in learning and neuroscience as well as from the experiences of mathematicians, on the importance of moving away from speed and memorization toward number sense and conceptual thinking. It does not read like a typical research paper, but its impact draws from its breadth of sources. By combining research and real-life events, the paper was more accessible for a wide swath of teachers, parents, and other educators.

Don't just read "mathematics education articles":

I view myself as a mathematics educator first and foremost, but there are dangers to reading only mathematics education articles, as the field can become isolated and irrelevant. In our complex, technologically connected world, we must rely on complex technological connections to remain relevant and informed. This information highway is exciting and vivid but it brings with it dangers. We must, of course, be vigilant about the credibility of our sources.

Dylan Wiliam: How to Improve Curriculum and Teaching

from Marshall Memo #880

Dylan Wiliam on Two Strategies That Really Work in Schools

            “Today in America,” says assessment guru Dylan Wiliam in his latest book, “the biggest problem with education is not that it is bad. It is that it variable. In hundreds of thousands of classrooms in America, students are getting an education that is as good as any in the world. But in hundreds of thousands of others, they are not.” Wiliam argues that these recent initiatives in U.S. schools are not the best ways to solve the problem of variability:

-    Recruiting “smarter” people as teachers (they aren’t necessarily effective with kids);

-    Focusing on firing “bad” teachers (although of course the very worst need to go);

-    Using infrequent classroom observations (“Good teachers have bad days and bad teachers have good days,” says Wiliam);

-    Using test scores to evaluate teachers (“Every teacher builds on the foundations laid by those who taught their students previously.”);

-    Merit pay for the “best” teachers (there aren’t reliable ways to identify them);

-    Reducing class size (except in the lower grades, if effective teachers are available);

-    Copying the practices of other countries (many of their ideas don’t travel well);

-    Expanding school choice (there are several challenges and scaling up is problematic).

So what does work? Wiliam believes two approaches will bring more good teaching to more students more of the time, with particular benefits for the least advantaged:

            • A knowledge-rich curriculum – Students enter school with significant differences in vocabulary, processing power, and working memory. However, says Wiliam, “The differences in people’s intelligence and differences in the capacities of their short-term working memories (which undoubtedly exist) matter very little if they have the same extensive knowledge. Education can’t do much for intelligence or working memory, but it can have a massive impact on long-term memory.” That’s why a curriculum rich in knowledge closes achievement gaps.

“The big mistake we have made in the United States, and indeed in many other countries,” Wiliam continues, “is to assume that if we want students to be able to think, then our curriculum should give our students lots of practice in thinking. This is a mistake because what our students need is more to think with. The main purpose of curriculum is to build up the content of long-term memory so that when students are asked to think, they are able to think in more powerful ways because what is in their long-term memories makes their short-term memories more powerful. That is why curriculum matters.”

Wiliam lists these desiderata for a high-quality curriculum: (a) it’s well aligned with the aims of K-12 education; (b) it has a carefully structured sequence for building knowledge (for example, it’s easier for students to understand how to find the area of a triangle if they’ve first learned how to find the area of a parallelogram); (c) the pacing of knowledge acquisition avoids overloading short-term memory; (d) material is distributed over weeks, months, and years with review built in; and (e) students have frequent opportunities for self-testing so knowledge is firmly embedded in long-term memory.

            • Improving the teachers we have – “Schools and districts need to focus on the idea that all teachers need to get better,” says Wiliam, “not because they’re not good enough but because they can be even better. Moving the focus from evaluation to improvement also changes working relationships in a building. Where teachers are in competition, either because they are seeking scarce bonuses or to avoid sanctions, then they are unlikely to help each other. In contrast, when it is expected that all teachers improve, cooperation is encouraged and even expected.”

            Teacher teamwork has the greatest potential to improve teaching and learning, says Wiliam, so the most important job of school leaders is fostering a professional environment that supports frequent team collaboration. Foundational conditions include: order and discipline; addressing teachers’ basic concerns; time and resources for professional development; a culture of trust and respect; a “press” for student achievement; and reorienting teacher evaluation to focus on improving instructional practices.

For teacher team meetings to have the greatest benefit for students, Wiliam believes they need to be tightly structured and spend most of the time looking at evidence of student learning (from classroom assessments or samples of student work). He and his colleagues have developed the following steps for once-a-month 75-minute team meetings (with one member serving as timekeeper and facilitator). The focus is always on looking at student work and assessment evidence and thinking of the best ways to adapt instruction to meet students’ needs in real time. Here’s the structure:

-    The teacher responsible for running the meeting outlines the meeting’s aims, including the student learning intentions and criteria for success (5 minutes).

-    The team does a warm-up activity, perhaps sharing something a student said that made them smile, something a colleague did to support their work, something they’re looking forward to, or something that’s bugging them (5 minutes).

-    Each teacher reports on an instructional change they promised to try in their classrooms at the previous meeting with evidence of how it went, and colleagues share ideas and suggestions (25 minutes).

-    The team discusses a new article, book chapter, or video on formative assessment (20 minutes).

-    Each teacher shares a classroom practice they are going to implement over the coming month (15 minutes).

-    The team wraps up by reviewing whether the meeting’s goals were met – and if not, what action needs to be taken (5 minutes).

Wiliam says this protocol has been dramatically successful in improving teaching and learning in hundreds of schools across the U.S.

Educators often voice two concerns about structuring team meetings this way. First, will having the same sequence be monotonous? Not so, says Wiliam; a familiar structure with different content keeps things on track and saves time that might be taken up repeatedly inventing new structures. Second, don’t teachers need an outside facilitator to stay on task? “Our experience,” says Wiliam, “is that teachers really can do it for themselves.” He points to three reasons for not depending on teacher coaches as facilitators: (a) pulling good teachers out of the classroom to serve as coaches often results in a net loss of a school’s instructional capacity; (b) coaching positions are often the first to be cut in hard budget times; and (c) coaches don’t always have credibility. “Even when teachers come from the district,” says Wiliam, “as soon as they stop teaching and become coaches, many teachers regard the coaches as being out of touch with the realities of teaching.”

            What makes this meeting structure so successful? First, says Wiliam, “focusing on classroom assessment seems to be a smart place to begin the conversation with teachers… All teachers in America would probably agree that it is part of their day job to find out whether students have learned what they have been taught.” Second, research points to the power of formative (on-the-spot) assessments to improve teaching and learning by adjusting instruction minute-by-minute and day-by-day, and that is always the heart of these teacher meetings. And third, says Wiliam, “when we develop teachers’ ability to use real-time assessment to adapt their instruction to their students’ learning needs, those skills can be applied in all their teaching.”

            Boosting these skills involves changing teachers’ daily practice, which can be challenging. Wiliam believes this “is most likely to be achieved through regular meetings where teachers promise to their peers what they are going to try out in their classrooms and are held accountable for making those changes.”

Creating the Schools Our Children Need by Dylan Wiliam (Learning Sciences International, 2018); Wiliam can be reached at dylanwiliam@mac.com.

Information Literacy Techniques: Fact Checkers Win

From Marshall Memo 819

Who Is Best at Spotting Junk on the Internet?

            “Technology can do many things, but it can’t teach discernment,” say Sam Wineburg (Stanford University) and Sarah McGrew (University of Maryland) in this Teachers College Record article. “The Internet has democratized access to information but in so doing has opened the floodgates to misinformation, fake news, and rank propaganda masquerading as dispassionate analysis.” Wineburg and McGrew share the results of their study of three different groups’ ability to critically examine online material, how long they took, and the strategies they used. They watched 25 Stanford undergraduates, 10 Ph.D. historians, and 10 professional fact checkers as they looked at online material on bullying in schools, minimum wage policy, and teacher tenure.

Who did best? It wasn’t even close. “Only two of the 10 historians adroitly evaluated digital information,” say Wineburg and McGrew. “Others were often indistinguishable from college students. Both groups fell victim to the same digital ruses.” Only 20 percent of the undergraduates were able to identify the most reliable website for one of the issues, only 50 percent of the historians – and 100 percent of the fact checkers. The amount of time needed to find a relevant source for another issue was 318 seconds for the students, 220 seconds for the historians, and 51 seconds for the fact checkers.

The fact checkers did significantly better because they used two specific techniques that are eminently teachable:

-    Taking bearings – “Before diving deeply into unfamiliar content, chart a plan for moving forward,” say Wineburg and McGrew. “Taking bearings is what sailors, aviators, and hikers do to plot their course toward a desired destination.”

-    Lateral reading – This means immediately leaving the website being examined and opening new tabs along the browser’s horizontal axis, drawing on the resources of the Internet to learn more about the site in question and its claims.

It’s interesting that these approaches are quite different from the Common Core skill of close reading: “read and reread deliberately” in order to “reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences.” When looking critically at Internet content, quite a different approach is needed. “Instead of closely reading or ticking off elements on a list,” say Wineburg and McGrew, “[the fact] checkers ignored massive amounts of irrelevant (or less crucial) text in order to make informed judgments about the trustworthiness of digital information. In short, fact checkers read less but learned more.”

“Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information” by Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew in Teachers College Record, November 2019 (Vol. 121, #11, pp. 1-40), available for purchase at https://bit.ly/2RbxpbL; Wineburg can be reached at wineburg@stanford.edu, McGrew at mcgrew@umd.edu.

Active Learning research

From Marshall Memo #819

Clickers and Peer Discussion in High-School Classes

            In this Harvard Educational Review article, Bryan Henderson (Arizona State University) says “active learning” is a broad term that covers everything that isn’t traditional lecture teaching to passive students. In fact, there are many ways of making students more “active” learners; one of the best, Henderson believes, is “peer instruction” using clickers (wireless audience response devices) in the following manner:

-    Students listen as the teacher presents content.

-    The teacher poses a conceptual question on the content with several answer options.

-    Students consider the options and anonymously submit their answers via clickers.

-    The teacher displays the number of “votes” for each option.

-    Students pair up and debate their choices and the reasons they made them.

-    Students re-vote on the same question via clickers (they may or may not have changed their mind after discussing the question).

-    All answers are displayed (the correct answer usually gets more votes).

-    The teacher discusses the correct answer and any lingering misconceptions.

This process has produced learning gains twice as great as conventional instruction in some studies.

Henderson wondered which was the most important step in the model and whether variations in active-learning pedagogy might produce the same robust learning gains. He studied the same teacher working with four different groups of high-school physics students, introducing variations in how students spent their time between their first clicker vote and their re-vote: (a) pure lecture and note-taking; (b) students writing down their thinking; (c) students debating each question with peers; and (d) students writing first, then discussing with peers.

The results showed the strongest learning gains when students were given the chance to talk with other students between clicker votes. Henderson also found that time of day mattered: the benefits of turning the class over to the students for discussion were greater in the morning than in the afternoon.

An important message here is that results were not dependent only on whether clicker technology was used; what mattered was how and when the technology was used with students, with the most powerful variable being a chance to talk with a peer about a challenging question.

“Beyond ‘Active Learning’: How the ICAP Framework Permits More Acute Examination of the Popular Peer Instruction Pedagogy” by Bryan Henderson in Harvard Educational Review, Winter 2019 (Vol. 89, #4, pp. 611-634), available for purchase at https://bit.ly/3a9xfdk; Henderson can be reached at jbryanh@asu.edu.