Monday 21 June 2010

Some readings

Some quick summaries of book chapters, articles and podcasts, for my reference and your amusement...

DeKonty Applegate, Mary, et al, “Will the Real Reader Please Stand Up?”, The Reading Teacher, April 2010.
What is literacy? A pupil who scores well on literacy tests – good at phonics, etc, will not necessarily be able to read text’s deeper meaning, analyse text.

Hammond, Jennifer. “Is Learning to Read and Write the same as Learning To Speak?” in Christie, Frances (eds) Literacy for a Changing World Hawthorn, VIC: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1990, pp. 26-53.
Quick answer: no. To begin with there are similarities, but learning to read and write is in part learning the difference between reading and writing and speaking. Written text has higher lexical density and grammatical complexity, though spoken text can also have many clauses.

William M. Ferriter, “Preparing to Teach Digitally” in Educational Leadership May 2010 vol 67 No 8 ASCD.
“Schools need a new system”. This will have to come in and will include online courses, redesigned teacher evaluation programs to reward innovation and creation of individualized learning environments for students. Instead of leading groups through stand-alone lessons, teachers will match individuals with learning solutions. Digital as well as f2f interactions. Tips:
• Become an active digital learner: eg take part in the conversation in www.classroom20.com, or http://edupln.ning.com to talk about benefits of using digital to customize learning.
• create screencasts (?)
• asynchronous tools like voicethread
• use Skype in classroom

This article seems a bit behind the eight ball. Using Skype in the classroom doesn’t seem too revolutionary. Stephen Heppell talks about this. Screencasts – perhaps worth investigating what these are, but sounds quite structured – like a podcast but through your screen. Webquests sound more like the students deal with ‘real life’ information, rather than an interactive textbook.

Douglas B Reeves, Transforming Professional Development into Student Results, ASCD 2010
Problems:
• Good intentions, or participant endorsement, ≠ good PD. Results have to be measured in student achievement.
• Accountability should not be measured in paperwork. Some planning requirements correlate positively with student results, some have a negative effect, many have no relationship. (ch 3-4)
• the most salient variable in improving student achievement is not the label of the program (‘but we’re already doing PLCs/high yield strategies/learning stories!’) but the degree of implementation of the program: viz 90%+ teachers using these strategies. (ch 5)
• Too many standards = counterproductive (ch 6). Leads to PD being fragmented and unfocussed.
Solutions:
• learning systems that provide ‘accurate, specific, and timely feedback’
• “Four imperatives for effective professional learning that are related to student results: teaching, curriculum, assessment, leadership”. Focus is extremely valuable.
• Teachers should test the hypotheses presented – good professional learning needs to be based on research.

“The most effective principals understand that custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and every adult in the system is a teacher through their behaviour…
“Autopsies do not improve patient health” Yield interesting information, but feedback has to be timely for these students, based on their results. formative assessment.

Learning Standards for Teachers (from this book)
• Understand academic content in the current grade level and the next grade level
• Provide feedback to students in a timely, accurate and effective manner
• Prepare lessons that are engaging, adaptive, and differentiated
• Demonstrate an understanding of the individual needs of each student


Linon, Judith. “‘Cry Me a River’: Can Literature Influence Children’s Attitude to the Environment?’ Primary Educator 1999, 5:1 p.23.
Method: students in 2 schools were given story books with environmental themes – they read them and were read them but no discussion.
Result: No change in attitudes. Students reading story about catching crabs interpreted the story literally as a hide and seek story, not noticing the scared faces of the crabs. They didn’t get much from the story about sea birds because it was boring, with the exception of the albatross story because the teacher got them to measure the wingspan.
Notes:
• Teachers need to plan activities around the books and leads discussion about the theme.
• Teachers must model how to be thoughtful, participatory, questioning and critical readers. Children need to be taught the skills of inquiry process and need chances to practice them: they don’t just ‘come’ from reading. 8yo: “we don’t know what we think about a story until we’ve talked about it”.
• Best to choose engaging stories and talk about the environment in them than choose based on environmental theme.
• Best to choose stories with explicit links between action and consequence for younger/less developed readers.
• Children need to reflect on their feelings to recognize how they influence their decisions.

The digital classroom
13 May 2010 ABC Radio National Future Tense http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2010/2885066.htm
• Get students to take active role in learning and teaching about how to use technology. get them to help out teachers with ICT issues.

• Alan November: “...we have ... one-room schoolhouses that come out of the 1800s, where one teacher taught every subject, 8 grades. And the only way to do that is to organise it so that kids teach kids. And the research on that model to this day, shows that one-room schoolhouses get better standardised test scores than classrooms where the teacher delivers everything....”
 - Students teaching each other (and the teachers!) always seems to be powerful. Perhaps because students need to fully understand and internalize the knowledge, also because they need to think about how to effectively communicate it – i.e. their audience, and they know the purpose they are communicating it for i.e. to inform another person.
Chris Rogers on problem solving, and using Lego to explore problems:
1) "how do you teach kids to actually formulate the problem? So what are they trying to solve? So a lot of kids, and a lot of adults too, will start solving the problem before they really had clearly stated what the problem is, and so they end up solving the wrong problem. This involves brainstorming, this involves identifying constraints, this involves thinking about your clientele who's actually going to use your product.
2. "Plot a path to that goal. And so that's where the maths and science comes in. How can I predict what's going to happen? So the curvature of my aircraft wing, how curved should it be so that I take off the ground?"
3 "identify that your craft is not going to lead you to your goal and then have you realign your path, or iterate on your solution, so that you can reach the goal you have."
"And the Lego is a great toolset to do that with. Kids get excited when you bring them out. They can build quickly, and easily, it's easy to take things apart when they realise it's not going to work. Some of the stuff that mind-storms brings is not only the ability to animate it, but also the ability to take measurements on it, so you can measure your loads, measure your temperature, you can measure your heart rate, or whatever else it is that you're trying to do so that they can actually do the science research."
"Can a classroom build a whole Lego-town that's completely off the grid? So they have to understand something about wind turbines and the science behind them, how many blades, what blade-angles, they can run a bunch of tests. They have to understand about solar cells and how solar collectors and how to optimise the amount of sunlight coming in to your collector. And they have to understand something about LED lights versus incandescent lights, and energy usage, and they get excited about it because they want to build this town. So by pulling all these different things together, the whole class as one unit builds this complete town, and different kids become experts in different areas, and end up teaching each other in the material."
- I suppose that you could build the town without Lego (and I suppose that unless you are ridiculously rich you would have to) but it would be good to put this together as an extended project – i.e. calculating the different loads, knowing the exact dimensions and weights of the bricks so you could design the buildings and predict what materials you would need to make them. Lego or similar would be useful for that. There are so many areas involved in this – not just the maths/engineering of designing, but the art of designing the architecture, you could cost each item so they have to plan in advance what they will build (but this might stifle creativity??). Could do a unit on cities including the history, each student design a building and produce a report on what it’s for, why they have designed it how they have, how they are going to power it etc. then build it. So much fun.

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html





Two main points:
1. “patient problem solving” is what is required. When creating word maths problems, don’t give the students a diagram and exactly the information (eg dimensions) required. Better to give them a physical picture or video of the subject (water tank, swimming pool, stairs, measuring jug etc filling up with water) and get them talking about how long it will take to fill up. Then get them to figure out what information they require. students can guess in advance – they have buy in.
2. with modern technology it is so easy to create these resources and to post them on the web.


W. James Popham, Transformative Assessment ASCD 2008 Alexandria VA USA.
Read Friday 4th June 2010
Defines formative assessment as:
Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics. (p6)

No such thing as “a formative test” – tests can be used as part of the formative process, but will only be part of the process. 7

assessment doesn’t have to be tests.7

not a matter of looking at test results and doing something different next time – modification needs to be now, on the spot, for these students.

formative ≠ periodic assessment

READ: Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998a). Assessment and Classroom Learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 5(1), 7-73. – the meta-analysis which originally supported and popularized formative assessment.

o Formative assessment raises achievement of all students but particularly low-achieving students. Reduces achievement gap. 19

o No negative effects found from formative assessment

Learning Progressions: / aka task analysis / aka progress map 25
A Learning Progression is a sequenced set of subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge that, it is believed, students must master en route to mastering a target curricular aim – typically a skill, rather than a body of knowledge. Eg the ability to write a persuasive essay or the ability to display a complex set of data in tables, figures, or graphs; or the ability to find a solution to a real world problem in maths involving the use of two or more operations.
A body of enabling knowledge is a set of facts or info a student must memorise or understand