Is this for a grade?

We begin a new school year with guess what, a new grading policy. Let’s face it, grading is an art, not a science. Sure, you can do the math, calculate the curves, and post the numbers. The question, however, is, “how meaningful is that grade to the students, the parents, the administration?” The answer depends, of course, on who answers.

How important are grades? Well, we use them to determine class rank, GPA, UIL eligibility, scholarship awards, school club membership, at-risk identification, school rank, and a plethora of other school and non-school judgments. We grade for responsibility (doing it reliably) and processibility (doing it gradually) and mastery (doing it correctly). (I won’t even address the impact of the behavioral grades that we all give.)

The grade for responsibility is based on quantity, how much of the assignment did the student complete? This is appropriate if your objective is to teach the student the consequences of not doing the job. It does little for content mastery other than encourage practice. Grading for processibility, the formative assessment, provides your students with a idea of where they are in the learning process for that lesson, unit, project. We call these quizzes, notebook checks, labs, workbook exercises, and other process controls. Grading for mastery, the summative assessment, is the mother lode of learning feedback. It lets your student know if she got it and how well. We call these major tests, six-week tests, semester projects, term papers, and other assignments that arrange the building blocks of the lesson into a completed structure.

I wrestle with testing every year. I adjust and re-adjust my assessments to match ability, differentiate, accommodate, and evaluate in a meaningful manner to communicate to the student where he or she is at that given moment. Currently, I am reading Ken O’Connor’s How to Grade for Learning. (For his latest, A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, Anne Keith offers a good overview.) Rick Wormeli’s Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom is next on my list. Some day, if I am up to it, I might tackle Robert Marzano’s Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work (Still, anyone who remixes and updates Bloom’s Taxonomy on a scholarly level intimidates me a bit.). And, I’m not even ready to approach Alphie Kohn.

So, how well does your grading policy, whether personal, departmental, and/or district, give meaningful feedback to the student? Can you defend your assessments to a disgruntled parent? Are you in sync with the latest directive from administration? Are you personally satisfied that your grading methodology is the best that it can be?

First Day Back

Well, it’s almost here: The First Day of School. All of you seasoned teachers have developed a first day/week routine. All of you new teachers, here’s some help.

My first day includes:
Greeting students at the door with a warm hello.
Starting the class on time with a warm-up activity.
Calling roll with a personalized greeting to each student.
Beginning class with a classmates icebreaker.
Sharing something personal about myself.
Giving an assignment to be reviewed at the next meeting.
Keeping it light; I don’t want to scare them off the first day.

My first week includes:
Completing any administration mandated assignments.
Detailing my classroom management philosophy.
Discussing the class rules.
Distributing and reviewing the course syllabus.
Painting a mental picture of what an “A” student looks like.
Introducing the textbook front to back.
Assigning the first six-weeks project.
Beginning the first lesson.

In case you need some details, here are a couple of my favorite lists of hints, ideas, and activities. Education World and A to Z Teacher Stuff®

Anyone want to share their personal secrets? Comments are always welcomed.

Do Your Research!

I just completed a professional development course on research methodology using the Independent Investigation Method (IIM®) from Active Learning Systems, LLC. Our facilitator, Melanie, did a great job of covering a usually two-day class in one day.

The authors, Cindy Nottage and Virginia Morse, begin IIM® with a deceptively simple philosophical statement, “All students can do research.” To the best of my recollection, I learned the how-to of research, the methodology, through the dreaded high school social studies or English term paper. That consisted of a trip to the school library where we trudged through the Dewey Decimal System. That’s kind of like running in sand. You can do it, but it is really not fun. We never thought about the actions of research, much less learned a system.

Along comes IIM® with a simple 7-step process of research that all K-12 student, individually or collectively, can use in any class. It’s simple, easy to learn, and easy to use. Best of all, once learned in the early grades, a student’s research efficacy and efficiency increases through her school career. She simply produces more sophisticated quality research through adherence to the steps. So, from Kindergarten TEKS through the Social Studies Research Methods course, we are not just required by law, but obligated as educators, to provide our students with an understanding of the how-to of research.

Now, where is the district administration direction to mandate a standardized research methodologies system, like IIM® ? LEAs need to step up with local funding, development, training, and implementation of a system that will carry its students from K-12 into a guided approach to critical thinking, reasoning, and subsequent intelligent action throughout life.

As a side note, I promised to link Diigo in this post. Diigo advertises itself as offering two services in one, “it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other.” On the research side it offers is a bookmark organizer and text highlighter where the researcher can add notes, tags, send info, filter, search keywords, create lists, and more. As a knowledge-sharing community it offers a social/professional network where one can invite friends/colleagues, create groups by topic for discussion, search & explore established groups, create lists, search & explore others lists, and still more.

I keep the Diigo toolbar resident everytime I go on-line. Try it and pass it along to your students.

Monthly Happenings

Farewell, Frank McCourt. Becky and I listened to him read his Teacher Man book as we raced across the West Texas desert between El Paso and Ft. Stockton. If you have not read his book, don’t. Listen to him read it. Then, go to Only A Teacher for his frank responses about teaching.

The feds approved $2 billion of ARRA funds for Texas educational use, primarily funding pay raises. I’ll leave my thoughts in the words of Frank McCourt when he said, “We know that surgeons are well paid… It should be the same way with teachers. They're the single most important profession in the country because they're shaping the future.” Who’s listening?

Speaking of the feds, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke to the National Council of La Raza re-stating several statistics about the Latino drop-out rate. The answer, according to the administration, is the Race to the Top program initiated with $4.35 billion from ARRA. If you don’t know about our Race to the Top, go to this page at ED.gov

Finally, speaking of the drop-out rate, TEA announced its annual school ratings. Due to rules changes the number of exemplary schools doubled, but nearly matching that is the increase in academically unacceptable ratings. It’s all a matter of crunching the numbers. I predict a record increase of appeals from borderline school districts in the lower ratings.

Hope you had a great July. Wishing you a cooler August with anticipation of a new school year.

Be In The Moment

Teaching is very much a present profession. I read this the other day on Vicki Davis’ CoolCatTeacher blog. A simple phrase with myriad meanings that got me to thinking about being in the present. I am a follower of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist monk nominated for a Pulitzer prize in 1967 by no less than Martin Luther King, Jr. I have a quote from him on my bathroom shelve that I see each morning, “The foundation of happiness is mindfulness.” Without pulling out the old Sanskrit, mindfulness means in the sense of one’s being in the moment.

So, what does “teaching is a very present profession” mean? It means being totally with the students in mind, body, and spirit. On the first day of school in September, looking out at the 30 or so eyes looking back, I pause briefly to be in the moment. At that moment, more than any other during the school year, I command the center of attention, something that I will not enjoy fully from that day on. The first thing I do is smile. Not just a pressed-lips-in-an-upward-curve look, but a genuine full teeth exposed, on the edge of a laugh, engaging SMILE. Why, because at that moment, we are all equally on the same ground, without baggage, with full trust accounts, awaiting that initial gesture of connectivity.

I read names on the roll, smile, look into the eyes of that specific student, shake his or her hand and ask or say something about them that gives us a connection with one another as well as with the course topic. It may be as simple as, “did you know your surname Smith pronounced in French is smeet?,” or as subversive as asking a question in French to gage their response. That really puts them in the moment. LOL.

Next, I redirect mindfulness to their classmates using a twist on Kagan. I have everyone line up alphabetically. Of course, they always say, “I don’t know everyone here.” To which I reply, “then you need to find out names so you will know where to sit.” Usually, they stroll in the direction of seating from A’s to Z’s. It’s hectic, but totally engaging, and let’s face it, it’s all about engagement, n’est-pas?

From that point on, it is up to each individual to be in the moment in my class. We necessarily move on to the first-day-of-class plan with all the syllabi, classroom expectations, and general housekeeping notes. Those are important, but not connective.

I know every teacher has his or her own particular special moment of engagement on the first day. I encourage you to tell us about those.

School bus art from http://testimonials.epromos.com/school-bus-resized.jpg

Low Scores = Poor Teachers

What a great vacation in the Outer Banks! Now, back to business.

If you look at the website links on the right, you will notice that I added two: Kids Count and The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Both are places that a teacher ought to visit. They speak to a question that we all have asked, “Who says it’s the teacher’s fault for low TAKS scores? “

First, visit Broader, Bolder Approach. Read the home page, then click on Read the Full Statement. Take your time to browse. You will find a comprehensive, research-based discussion about what we must do to improve our children’s education from a national perspective. It requires understanding and acting on the association between social and economic inequities and low student achievement. It shows what we as teachers already know, that school improvement alone is not the answer.

Next, visit the Kids Count site of the Center for Public Policy Priorities by clicking KIDS COUNT on the menu bar. This is a great site for information and, more importantly, data that shows the correlation in Texas between low socioeconomic issues and the disadvantages those create for our students. This site does not speak to education alone, but provides good information on all social and economic issues that affect Texas families.

Teaching Reading

Well, tomorrow is the first day of a long awaited six week vacation. Thursday ended my third year as the teacher of the high school summer Reading Academy. This program serves special education students who need assistance in improving their reading skills. They have taught me so much for which I am so thankful.

As a novice “reading teacher” I got to wondering about reading programs sanctioned by the state. Giving credit where credit is due (and this is difficult for me) then-Governor Bush’s administration mandated the Texas Reading Initiative (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/reading/) in 1996 to combat the state’s 25% failure rate on state reading tests. A full frontal attack on illiteracy resulted in several programs that are notable and sustainable. The announcement of initial organizations agreement to approaching the battle was published in 1997 as Good Practices: Implications for Reading Instruction (http://www.eric.ed.gov/for the original). This contains a good overview of what the strategy for fighting illiteracy would look like.

This initial effort gave birth to several programs from Reading Academies to Reading Summits to Reading Spotlight Schools, to name a few. TEA teamed up with focused organizations that continue to play off one another for synergistically step changes in good practices. One only has to visit the website of Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts (http://www.texasreading.org/utcrla/) for proof.

Texas’ report card, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ ) shows 41% of fourth grade students in 2003 as below basics in reading. By 2007, those same students as eighth graders posted 27% below basics in reading. Seems like progress to me, but I’m not an educational researcher. I’m just a teacher with the desire to help one student at a time enjoy reading.

(Note: Bookbird clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com (http://discoveryeducation.com/).