students measuring their own progress

We were at a faculty meeting and a veteran teacher commented that it wasn't practical to try and measure high school students growth on a graph. This did scare me. We are a special education department. Special education is supposed to be about data collection and analysis to identify what needs work and how successful our interventions are being. My first comment was that I had an algebra student who did not know his multiplication facts. I worked with him every day for about 5 minutes a day on this skill and we graphed the number of facts he could solve in one minute. It was extremely motivating. This student who had said he could never learn the facts was able to solve 60 problems in 1 minute by the end of the year. He saw himself as successful at something as a result of his effort for the first time. It was amazing how his confidence in himself grew. I have had students graph the number of words they can read fluently in a minute, how long it takes to identify the time on 9 clocks and how many vocabulary words they can identify from a unit. Yes, these were all secondary students, from seventh to eleventh grade. No, much of this was not part of the coursework they were doing, but it was important, so I carved time out of our block together to work on it and the students felt successful.

I have been reading Robyn Jackson's Never Work Harder Than Your Students. She reiterated how important students tracking their progress is. This is something that has been cited repeatedly in the literature, and as you noticed, something that my anecdotes bear out as well.  Critics will say that I have done these graphs in resource rooms with small student numbers and it is true. It is not the only way it can be done. Graphing spelling words and math facts is something my teachers had our class do thirty-five years ago. If we want to graph things related to the CCSS then graphs like the one below can be used.

Grade three writing scoring

level	content and analysis
4
3
2
1
0
assignment

level	command of evidence
4
3
2
1
0
assignment

level	coherence, organization, and style
4
3
2
1
0
assignment

level	control of conventions
4
3
2
1
0
assignment

The titles of each section correspond to the areas of evaluation found on the scoring rubric. This could be done for any important area that a rubric exists. It should be considered with activities that will be long lasting. You can see improvement if a writing sample is done twice a quarter. Bar or lines could be used to mark the progress.

Students can see where they are, where they have been and where they need to go. Students can fill them out themselves and track their progress, teachers can look in to see how students are doing in individual areas. This is something that can be done across the curriculum and over the spectrum of grades. Students can focus their learning, teachers can focus their instruction and parents can see the progress that their children make. It can be done. It is an element of good teaching. It doesn't take long for students to complete. We need to invest in ways to improve our instruction. This is a little thing that can mean much more than what is the average of his homework.

Role reversal

Mark Barnes's book, ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student -Centered Classroom, describes his approach on student-centered learning. In it he describes eliminating classroom rules, homework, and grades in favor of student self-governed behavior, intrinsically motivated learning and feedback centering on year long learning projects. He also is a huge user of technology in his classroom with classroom websites, blogs, and resources factoring in for extensive pieces of the program.

It is an interesting contrast with some recent research regarding the different needs and desires of minority learners from middle class white learners (see M.J. Pitrilli; C.E. Lamy; or E. Jenson from the May 2013 Educational Leadership). Those authors suggest that learning differences exist between these groups and more traditional learning systems are not only embraced but more successful for minority and students of poverty. Perhaps one reason is the major difference in background knowledge that persists between the groups and the acknowledgement that to be successful in today's world requires intensive cultural indoctrination into education and middle class values. Catching students up to the cultural "norm" and background requires time.

Mr. Barnes has achieved greater success than his more traditional colleagues in his middle school ELA program which serves approximately 60% minority and 33% eligible for free or reduced lunch and 10-15% students with IEP's (p. 14). While this mix is a minority majority, it is not a high poverty school. It would be interesting to see how the data compares with other population mixes.  In some ways ELA is an easy place to center student centered learning. Classes with a greater specific content "memorization" demand such as science or math would require a dramatically different program from what he describes.

I am a fan of benchmarks rather that grading. All too often I have seen students ignore the feedback written on their papers only to look at the grade and throw the paper away. We have a grade centric society. In graduate school I had a class that frustrated me tremendously because of an amorphous grading system that provided limited feedback, but rated progress based on subjective feeling of what the student was able to do. Everyone passed. Only one person earned an A. I was perpetually frustrated. I suspect some students and families would feel this way under his system. If the feedback were based on standards with the goal of mastery, perhaps this would not be the case.  Giving students multiple opportunities to learn material and revise work allows for mastery to be a goal. However, in some subjects where there is an enormous quantity of material to cover, right or wrong, NY is one such state for our cores of history, math and science, redos can leave some students buried as they try to keep up and fix the missed learning of the past. My special ed students would be likely to fall victim to this problem more than the average student.

I suspect one major reason for the success of his program is the extensive reading that students are asked to complete. Middle school students are required to read at least 25 books on top of completing what appears to be two projects per quarter. This amount of reading, in and of itself, might be responsible for the students' development of vocabulary and background knowledge that enables his students to be successful.

I very much liked the Year-long project guidelines present on page 48. Students are asked to select one item from each part of the menu to respond to for at least three of their books. This promotes thoughtful use of the developing skills taught in mini-lessons, enables choice in assignment and gets students writing. Students then receive feedback and may elect to revise the work to meet the standard.

Feedback is not of the redline through the word with the correction written over it. He describe a four step feedback process called SE2R which stands for summarize, explain, redirect and resubmit. I will make a stab at creating such a feedback statement:

Johnny, you completed a research project on how students in Afghanistan are different from students in America. You described four ways that schools and students are different in the two countries. You did a nice job citing your sources.	summarize
Some of your word choices are either repetitive or poor choices for substitutions for common words. You also have numerous run on sentences that interfere with meaning.	explain
Look back at your notes and our class website for how to revise for word choice and how to determine what a sentence is. If you need more help see me.	redirect
When you have revised your work turn it back in.	resubmit

 Without a grade attached, the student is faced with a choice, forget it or redo it to try and master those two problematic skills. There is a plan for learning the material that is unknown and a way to demonstrate that learning. Many times I have had students redo work. Rarely have I had a teacher provide any extra instruction. In mastery teaching, that is a critical piece of the puzzle.

The other piece that I really liked was the performance review directions. He has students annually reflect on their performance in four areas: Reading all year project (25 book goal), year-long projects, participation in ROLE, and improvement (p. 123). While some students might need more scaffolding to be able to effectively complete this task, completing this review facilitates metacognition of the student and his role as a learner. It also allows teachers to reflect on where changes might need to be made.

For additional information, Mark has a blog, websites (http://learnitin5.com/ and classroom sites), multiple online courses for technology in the classroom and completed a webinar on ASCD's website.  Mark Barnes ASCD webinar

(Re)(Organize) for Resilience

I work for a BOCES program. For people outside of New York, this stands for Board of Cooperative Educational Services. BOCES' job is to use economies of scale to meet the needs of districts within their constituency. For example, they organize a health care pool for districts to offer to their employees, have professional development programming, offer special education for student with highly specialized and/or intensive needs and vocational education programs to students. Approximately two decades ago, our BOCES noticed that districts were having a hard time finding people to provide in home tutoring to students out of school for medical reasons and that some districts were looking to better meet the needs of their residents who attended private schools but still needed special ed services. They established a small group of professionals to serve this role as a trial. As they proved capable of meeting the needs of the districts, the department expanded. This is a great example of responsiveness and customer centered offerings.

Ranjay Gulati is a professor from the Harvard School of Business who wrote (Re)(Organize) for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of your Business. He would argue that any successful organization that can withstand the cycling of the economy, competition for services and changes of technology needs to be customer centric. To be resilient in the face of challenges, a business cannot be about its products and what it offers, but must be about solving its customers' problems. When my boss developed our department, that is what the goal was: identify a problem: tutoring in homes and private schools- propose a solution: certified staff that will accommodate the needs of the families or schools assigned.

Fast forward to today. The department has gone from part-time, hourly staff to full-time, salaried staff. The flexibility to meet the needs of the clients has been impacted. An hourly person may choose to sit for an hour until the next student needs services, a salaried person needs to be booked so that their salary can be paid. Experts in a particular area or age group could be utilized and two people might serve a school part time each versus a full time person supporting parts of programs that they do not have the skill set to adequately support. Staff that wanted to work part time could be employed, now they are jettisoned to be rehired as new opportunities arise.

It is an example of how schools are different from businesses. They cannot flexibly change staffing to meet changing needs. If staff do not have the capabilities to handle the evolving demands of the job, training can be offered, but in light of tenure and teacher contracts, legacy employees are not bound to upgrade skill sets. Switching out unsuccessful pairings is difficult because staff need to be paid whether they are busy or not.
As much as people would like to compare schools to businesses, they are different in fundamental ways. Some like having to accept everyone who comes through the door, regardless of their race, home language or disabilities are important. Others, however, interfere with schools being able to adjust with the time.  If schools want to become 21st century learning centers, they need to eliminate the binds that prevent them from being flexible and embrace the risk that is inherent in progress.

Finding ways to be student-centric is important. Although many schools would propose they are just that, they do not offer programs to meet the advanced potential of our gifted students and often struggle meeting the needs of our struggling students who do not fit in the box. Gulati's tools of cooperation, coordination, clout, capabilities and connections could be used to meet these students needs, if we can break free of the chains of "the way we do it" and "what we have to offer." Unlike a business, a school will not fold when it fails to meet the needs of its students. The children, however, will fail- either in school or once they leave it.

Writing Instruction that Works

A.N. Applebee and J. A. Langer's study of writing instruction across the nation is described in their recent publication, Writing Instruction that Works: Proven Methods for Middle and High School Classrooms. The book has chapters for ELA, science, social studies, math and technology as well as ELL and students in poverty. Interestingly, they do not examine the role of special ed or struggling learners outside of English language learners. Each chapter begins with a background and overview of current practice, and continues with portraits of successful practice, the CCSS, a bottom line and future directions. While some of the chapters were penned by some associates working on the multi year study, the format contributes to the consistency in tone and concept that makes the book readable.

Key findings were that good instruction in writing can and does take place in pockets of excellence around the country and across subjects. That being said, writing is usually constrained by a focus on high stakes testing that CCSS is only likely to increase. While teachers of different subjects will agree that writing in their discipline contains unique elements separate from other disciplines and that writing is an important element of their subject area, they do not spend considerable time having students write or teaching them to write within their discipline. Furthermore, the CCSS have structured writing so that there is no appreciation for writing style differences across disciplines. One such difference- English uses active sentences with a rich and diverse use of vocabulary while science uses the passive voice and repetitive use of vocabulary (p. 6)- indicates the challenge of cross-curricular writing that prepares students to write in different subject areas in college and career and the challenge of allowing English teachers to lead the charge of grading standards across a school building.

Another point of interest is in how technology is utilized in writing instruction. So long as technology is used only as a reference material (ex. encyclopedia and dictionary) and a typewriter, it will not teach students to write in a functional manner beyond school. Collaborative writing such as wikis and blogs and platforms like Google documents enable a rethinking of the role of writing and communicating across the curriculum. So long as broadband connectivity and hardware access is limited, the ability to effectively and efficiently use these tools is limited. If we want to re-envision writing in education, we must embrace tools and their power to change communication.

Cross curricular ideas for increasing the amount of writing in classrooms include:

• opening activities like quick writes that ask students to describe what they know about a topic,  predict how yesterday's learning could be applied to the topic of the day, compare yesterday's learning to something else, use vocabulary to describe something in their personal lives, etc.
• ticket outs in which they summarize what they learned about the topic to date, compare and contrast two concepts, explain or describe what they learned, provide a quote, example or situation and ask them to analyze it or form an opinion using information from the day's lesson, identify how the knowledge from today could be used in their lives, ...
• reflection on their performances
• summarize their notes or a reading passage

Many of these activities are short, taking five minutes or less. They can be completed independently. They are open ended and require higher level thinking. They are real life applications of writing to learn.

If we want our children to be better writers, they must write. Not everything they write needs to be graded. Feedback can come from peers or self-reflection. Finding ways to incorporate writing into the day, every day is important. It helps develop thinking and learning. It reinforces ideas and exposes errors of thought. After note taking, short answer responses may be the most often type of writing that students complete. We need to incorporate the higher level thinking and composition skills rather than the spit 'em back skills that students learn how to do, but benefit little from.