Teaching Techniques for Immediate Impact

10 April 2013

Susan Abelein, Ph.D. Senior Consultant

Common Core Math Shift 1: Focus

• Spend more time thinking and working on fewer concepts.

• Being able to understand concepts as well as processes (algorithms).

Shift 4: Deep Understanding

• Show, through numerous ways, mastery of material at a deep level

• Use mathematical practices to demonstrate understanding of different material and concepts

Shift 5: Application

• Apply math in other content areas and situations, as relevant

• Choose the right math concept to solve a problem when not necessarily prompted to do so

Source: www.engageny.org

Common Core ELA Shift 2: Knowledge in the Disciplines (6-12)

• Infer, like a detective, where the evidence is in a text to support an argument or opinion

• See the text itself as a source of evidence (what did it say vs. what did it not say?)

Shift 3: Staircase of Complexity

• Read to see what more they can find and learn as they re-read texts again and again

Shift 4: Text Based Answers

• Go back to text to find evidence to support their argument in a thoughtful, careful, precise way

• Create own judgments and become scholars, rather than witnesses of the text

• Conducting reading as a close reading of the text and engaging with the author and what the author is trying to say

Source: www.engageny.org

Shift 4: Teacher’s Perspective ELA

Shift 4: Text Based Answers

• Facilitate evidence based conversations with students, dependent on the text

• Have discipline about asking students where in the text to find evidence, where they saw certain details, where the author communicated something, why the author may believe something; show all this in words from the text.

• Plan and conduct rich conversations about the stuff that the writer is writing about.

• Keep students in the text

• Identify questions that are text-dependent, worth asking/exploring, deliver richly,

• Provide students the opportunity to read the text, encounter references to another text, another event and to dig in more deeply into the text to try and figure out what is going on.

Math

Shift 4: Deep Understanding

• Ask yourself what mastery/proficiency really looks like and means

• Plan for progressions of levels of understanding

• Spend the time to gain the depth of the understanding

• Become flexible and comfortable in own depth of content knowledge

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Source: www.engageny.org

Asking the right questions begins with choosing the right texts

Sample Readings from CCSS Appendix B

– Green Eggs and Ham

– The Story of Ruby Bridges

– Charlotte’s Web

– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

– To Kill a Mockingbird

– The Diary of Anne Frank

– “Oh Captain, My Captain”

– “The Road Not Taken”

– The Odyssey

– Gettysburg Address

– Letter from a Birmingham Jail

– Fahrenheit 451

– The Great Gatsby

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Source: www.corestandards.org

Are you afraid of spiders?

What are spider webs made of?

Have you ever visited a farm?

What sound does a pig make?

Have you ever touched a pig?

Do you like bacon?

Students would NOT have to read Charlotte’s Web in order to answer these questions.

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Word of the Day…

Power Point Pictionary

In

Intent

Intention

Intentional

INTENTIONAL Antonyms: Non-deliberate Non-purposeful

Unintentional

Synonyms: Deliberate Purposeful Willful

Definition: done by intention or design having external reference

Draw It:

My Sentence: As a teacher of CC ELA and/or Math, I will intentionally plan classroom question and answer sessions by thoughtfully designing series’ of questions which are progressively more difficult, consider follow-up questions for wrong answers, require students to go to text(s), and engage all students.

Other forms of the word: Intent Intention

Grouping & Engagement Desks Arranged in Pods of 4

Pairs of Students:

Think-Pair-Share

Groups of Students:

Cooperative Learning

Collaborative Problem Solving

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Teacher Facilitation while Circulating

Constantly manipulate Red, Yellow, and Green zones by walking around the classroom

Source: Fred Jones, Tools for Teaching. Santa Cruz, CA: Frederic H. Jones & Associates. (2007).

Creating Text-Dependent Questions Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text dependent questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:

• Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words

• Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another

• Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole

• Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts

• Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do

• Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve

• Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated

Source: http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions 14

Creating Text-Dependent Questions Step One: Identify the Core Understandings and Key Ideas of the Text

• As in any good reverse engineering or “backwards design” process, teachers should start by identifying the key insights they want students to understand from the text—keeping one eye on the major points being made is crucial for fashioning an overarching set of successful questions and critical for creating an appropriate culminating assignment.

Step Two: Start Small to Build Confidence

• The opening questions should be ones that help orientate students to the text and be sufficiently specific enough for them to answer so that they gain confidence to tackle more difficult questions later on.

Step Three: Target Vocabulary and Text Structure

Step Four: Tackle Tough Sections Head-on

Step Five: Create Coherent Sequences of Text Dependent Questions

• The sequence of questions should not be random but should build toward more coherent understanding and analysis to ensure that students learn to stay focused on the text to bring them to a gradual understanding of its meaning.

Step Six: Identify the Standards That Are Being Addressed

Step Seven: Create the Culminating Assessment

Source: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html 15

Bloom: 1.0 and 2.0

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1956, Bloom 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl

Charlotte’s Web (and ANY literary fiction)

Source: Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. (3rd ed.) Newark DE: International Reading Association. See pages 157-161.

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Level of Thinking Questions

Remembering Who are the characters? Where does the story take place? What are the major events of the story? What is the sequence of these events?

Understanding How does the author have the characters interact with one another? How to the characters feelings and interactions change?

Applying What point might the author be making about the characters’ actions? Compare and contrast plot, setting, character, and theme to my life and experiences?

Analyzing What literary devices does the author use? What seems to be the purpose for using these literary devices?

Evaluating What does the author’s choice of words indicate about what the author might be thinking? What emotions is the author eliciting?

Creating What theme or idea might the author be exploring in this story?

Student Conversation and Writing

Source: Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. (3rd ed.) Newark DE: International Reading Association. See pages 190-191.

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Fiction/Literary Text

• I made a connection to…

• I know the feeling…

• I don’t really understand…

• I can’t believe…

• I wonder why…

• I noticed…

• I was surprised…

• I think…

• If I were…

• I’m not sure…

Non-Fiction/Informational Text

(including word problems in mathematics!)

I learned…

I was surprise to learn…

I already knew that…

I was wrong to think…

I wonder why…

I still don’t know…

I found it interesting that…

I thought it was especially important…

I found it confusing when…

“…the most effective teachers…script their questions in advance.” Doug Lemov, 2010 (12)

Regarding an effective teacher witnessed by Lemov, he writes “…she has planned her exact questions, she anticipates the wrong answers she’s likely to get and the follow-up questions she’ll ask if students give them.” 2010 (12)

Engaging Students in Rich & Rigorous Conversations

Creating a Culture for Engaging ALL Students

27 – Vegas

Are your students motivated?

46 – Joy Factor

Do you celebrate the joy of learning? Both “correctness” and failures!

Source: Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Source: Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Techniques for Engaging ALL Students

1 - No Opt Out

Do you have students who avoid getting called on, or when they are called on, make excuses not to answer the question; for example: “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand” or “Huh?”

2 – Right is Right

Do you find yourself affirming students’ answers by repeating their answer and then adding some detail to complete their answer?

3 – Stretch It

Once a student gives you a correct answer, do you find yourself moving onto the next item in your lesson plan?

4 – Format Matters

In class discussions, do you accept slang or poor grammar from students answering questions?

Source: Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Source: Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Techniques for Questioning ALL Students

22 – Cold Call Do you only call on students with their hands raised? If you call on students who don’t raise their hands, are you systematic, upbeat, and positive in your questioning? And, do you scaffold the questions, moving from simple to complex or unbundle questions such that larger questions are broken into smaller parts?

24 - Pepper

Do you question every student in every class?

25 – Wait Time

Do you give students time to think… time to ponder… time to locate the answer in the text?

Source: Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Source: Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Resources Websites

• www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions

• www.corestandards.org

• www.engageny.org

• web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html

Books

• Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. (3rd ed.) Newark DE: International Reading Association.

• Jones, F. (2007). Tools for teaching. Santa Cruz, CA: Frederic H. Jones & Associates.

• Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

• Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Thank you

Dr. Susan Abelein Email: susan.abelein@catapultlearning.com

Twitter: @DrAbelein