by Andrew K. Miller | Nov 17, 2013 | ASCD, Whole Child Blog
This post originally appeared on The Whole Child blog, an ASCD initiative to call on educators, policymakers, business leaders, families, and community members to work together on a whole child approach to education. View Original >
How do we support our students in being career and college ready? This is not a new question, and educators continually struggle with what that even means. We leverage rigor and relevance as keys to prepare students for the postK–12 world, but what does that look like? What are some practical ways to promote rigor and relevance and target specific Common Core State Standards? One key method, which is not new, is authenticity. Teachers can support students in meeting the Common Core by creating more authentic reading and writing tasks. Here are some ideas to consider as you target specific Common Core standards in instruction and assessment.
Authentic Written Products
The Common Core does not dictate the vehicle with which students can show their writing skills. No matter what specific writing strand of the Common Core you are targeting (argumentative, narrative, or informative), consider having students create assessments and products that mirror work from the real world. Letters, blogs, podcast scripts, infographics, press releases, guides, and the like can provide not only voice and choice to students, but create engagement to do relevant and meaningful work. Pick appropriate authentic products that can align to specific standards so that students can write authentically.
Authentic Reading of Primary Sources
Create contexts for students to read primary and not secondary sources. Not only does the Common Core call for the ability to cite a variety of sources and read a variety of texts, but primary sources can help provide relevance in the classroom, as they are more authentic. Reading and scaffolding authentic texts can help create reading engagement in the classroom.
Authentic Roles
Students of all ages like to take on roles that real people do in real life. Now, I am not saying they are actually performing these roles (pretend can be good, too), but sometimes you can create a space to practice. Students can be architects and use math skills to create effective bridges, and they can be poets to tell the stories of homeless youth in the community.
Authentic Collaboration
The Common Core has a speaking and listening standard at every grade level that calls for “collaborative discussions.” This is a great opportunity to have students tackle real-world challenges and problems in teams and build collaborative skills. We know collaboration is a valuable skill, and we can make this collaboration more authentic through real-world scenarios, challenges, and problems.
As you continue to support students in meeting the Common Core standards, consider authenticity as a model to create a space where relevance and rigor are at the forefront of your instruction and assessment. The Common Core is only the “what,” and we educators must use our methods of “how” to support all students. Authenticity can be one of these “hows.”
by Andrew K. Miller | Sep 17, 2013 | ASCD, Blog
This post originally appeared on InService, the ASCD community blog. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization with 160,000 members in 148 countries, including professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.
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Educational leaders, I have an important announcement for you! (You’ll get the joke later). We are always pressed for time. Many of us do not have collaborative planning time, or if we do, it is limited. There is never enough time, and so we have to be creative, both in creating space for work and in changing how we would normally spend our time. The staff meeting is one place where we can be creative with time and refine it to meet our professional learning goals. Here are some things you might do to restructure and “flip” the staff meeting.
Quit the Announcements – You know what gets old at a staff meeting? Announcements. At every staff meeting, I was always frustrated when we spent 15–20 minutes going over logistics and making announcements. You can record these announcements, create a document, or send an e-mail and spend the time asking clarifying questions instead. This way, you can save time for better work; work that teachers will find more meaningful.
Teacher Led PD – Based on needs assessments of teachers, we create targeted professional learning activities. Frankly, we don’t need to do this creation ourselves. Our teachers have great ideas, and we can ask them to share these ideas that are aligned to faculty and staff needs. We can co-create professional learning sessions. Build your teacher leaders and have them model great instruction by leading focused professional learning.
Ongoing Protocols – Discussions can sometimes get out of hand. We are educators, and often we love to talk…and talk…and talk. I’m guilty of this as much as the next teacher. Let’s honor the talk, but also focus it. Choose professional learning protocols to use in staff meetings. Perhaps it’s a critique protocol or looking at student work protocol. Regardless, your staff meeting can now become a time where revision and reflection occur, and student learning is the focus of the time.
These are just three ideas you might use to start flipping your staff meeting. It can be a valuable time for professional learning, but only if we are creative with that time and shed some of the “traditional” ways they have been used. How do you foresee flipping your classroom for the upcoming year?
by Andrew K. Miller | May 31, 2013 | ASCD, Blog
This post originally appeared on ASCD Express, a regular ASCD Publication focused on critical topics in education. This article appeared in Vol 8. Issue 12, the focus topic being assessment that makes sense. View Original >
People play games for many reasons, but a major reason is that games are designed in specific ways to ensure that you keep playing. You are challenged at just the right level while being given enough scaffolding to continue trying. This creates the “flow” where engagement is maximized. We take these, as well as other game mechanics, for granted, when in fact we should look to them as models of instruction and assessment. Here are three big lessons we can take from games to improve our classroom assessment practices.
1. Mastery and Freedom to Fail
Allowing yourself to fail is probably one of the most important and best things games do in terms of effective assessment. When you make mistakes in a game, you are given as many opportunities as you need to successfully complete the level. If your player dies in Super Mario Brothers, you simply start over at the level at which you left off. In other words, you are given freedom to fail until you are successful. Many of our antiquated assessment practices in education do not do this. We rely on points and weights to try to create an elaborate grade book that seems balanced. But in fact, it still punishes students for making mistakes in the learning process. Just like in games, we need to reward our students for their best work and give them multiple formative assessments that allow them to try and fail in a safe space, where mastery is truly valued.
2. “Just In Time” Feedback
Games give you feedback immediately. For those of us who play Angry Birds, we often fail a level, but we know why we failed—the game lets us know our mistakes up front. Although we’re informed of our failure by a crass “You Lose!” phrase that appears across the screen, we know that we have failed and can reflect on how we need to make adjustments in our game play in order to be successful. You don’t find out three hours later that you lost; you know immediately. Although it often takes time to give high-quality, lengthy feedback, we can prioritize feedback on a targeted instruction area to be given immediately. Technology can be a useful aid in sending or noting a quick response to an assignment. Formative assessments also allow for quick check-ins to note progress or needed adjustments.
3. Assessment of 21st Century Skills
Although many games do not assess the formal content in our classroom, such as world history, writing skills, or physics, they do assess crucial 21st century skills that can go overlooked in traditional classroom assessments. For example, Halo involves players both playing solo and working in pairs or teams to defeat enemies and conquer stages. Defeating these enemies requires not only strategic thinking and problem solving, but also creativity, collaboration, and communication. If you play a multiplayer contest and win, you have shown that you can collaborate and strategize in teams, and the game play is designed to assess these skills. In our classrooms, we can create rubrics and align student products to assess the same skills that games do, thereby valuing not only content, but also 21st century skills.
To really push the envelope of games as assessment tools, consider using them as a formative or summative assessment. It might make educators uncomfortable to trust games as rigorous assessments, but in fact, we often trust games as the best assessment tools. Stanford professor James Paul Gee captures this concept best: “If a student plays Halo on hard … and beats it, would you be tempted to give that student a Halo test?” The answer, of course, is no. The game was designed to demand that the player met specific, rigorous goals. We trust the game to accurately assess those goals. Well-designed educational games can be great assessment tools, or more generally, we can borrow from game design to improve classroom assessment practices.
by Andrew K. Miller | Apr 8, 2013 | ASCD, Blog
This post originally appeared on InService, the ASCD community blog. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization with 160,000 members in 148 countries, including professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.
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When I work with educators on their professional development needs, rubrics frequently come up as something that teachers want to understand better and be able to find quickly and easily from a variety of sources for immediate use in the classroom. Often, however, rubrics found on the Internet are not of good quality—they may not be grounded in learning targets or the language may be too vague and confusing for students. The good news is that there are many great resources and tips out there to build your own rubrics. Here are some ideas to start.
Use Common Rubrics. For some students, school is one of the few stable routines in their young lives. Let’s support this safe and supportive culture by using common rubrics across subject areas or grade levels. This will help to ensure that each teacher is looking at student work objectively and lets students know that the expectations are the same regardless of the classroom. These common rubrics might be based in content or even 21st century skills. Students will appreciate these common expectations and common language around learning.
Decide Between Checklists or Rubrics. I used to fall into the trap of having too many numbers in my rubrics. I listed different numbers of sources, sentences, and so on, under each level, from approaching to exceeding a standard. Numbers don’t indicate quality. Focus on quality indicators when creating rubrics. However, if students need to have a specific number of something as a nonnegotiable, then create a checklist for them. Ask yourself, is this better on a checklist or a rubric?
Use Them! Rubrics are useless unless you use them. Why do students often throw them away or lose them? Because they don’t see the value in them as a learning tool! It is critical to have students use a rubric for an entire curriculum unit, project, or even over the course of a year. Use rubrics to set goals, provide peer- and self-assessment, and reflect on learning. Through intentional and meaningful use, rubrics can become a tool that students see as invaluable.
Focus on Learning Targets. Unless you are truly assessing creativity, it may not be appropriate to list creativity on the rubric. Similarly, neatness may not be appropriate if it isn’t directly related to the content or core discipline you intend to assess. Make sure you focus on learning targets, which could be standards or specific criteria, when you create the rubric. Articulate what the learning will look like in terms of approaching, meeting, and exceeding standards.
My biggest recommendation is to collaborate with others to create rubrics that are specific to your school, district, and learning targets. Whether they are state, Common Core, or 21st century standards, some of the best rubrics can be developed in-house. Use these tips as well as books from ASCD to support your work in building the best rubrics.
by Andrew K. Miller | Jan 4, 2013 | ASCD, Blog
This post originally appeared on InService, the ASCD community blog. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization with 160,000 members in 148 countries, including professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members.
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“A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.”
Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
Game-based learning is fast becoming a trend in education. Teachers across the globe are experimenting with not only using games, but also game mechanics in the classroom. Games engage us. Our students are playing games whether we approve or not. Whether spending hours at home in the evening playing Call of Duty or more casually playing Angry Birds, students are spending time relentless trying to achieve. We can use games in the classroom to not only leverage engagement but also to align games to instructional principles.
Games as Assessment: As students play games they are being assessed on their progress, provided feedback, and allowed to try again without fear of failure. Our education system does not always align to that principle. Often we punish children with “points” as they practice with the content. Games do not do this. Players are given the freedom to fail and given specific feedback through formative assessment on how to improve. In fact, when players win the level or game (the summative assessment), they are rewarded with a true sense of accomplishment as the assessment is meaningful. Games are excellent models for assessment best practices.
Games as Engagement: Games are carefully and intentionally designed environments that create flow—the balance between challenge and progress. Great games are challenging but not too difficult and thus not boring. On the contrary, they have specific mechanics to create this game flow. It’s not necessary about winning—in games like Tetris you are destined to lose—but rather a game gives us multiple victories on rigorous challenges. The rigor engages us, and a game scaffolds that rigor intentionally and in an exemplary manner.
Authentic Learning Experiences: James Paul Gee, game-based learning advocate and guru refers to this as “situated learning.” We know that students must construct and apply knowledge for deeper learning. In great games, students are both learning content and applying in complex problems to solve. Take Portal for example. In this game, the player must create portals between two flat planes. The player not only experiences principles of physics, but must use this knowledge to solve related puzzles. In addition, the player takes on an authentic role. Although based in a fantasy world, the player becomes one with the playable character of the game and invests in the growth and story of that character. When playing in this authentic story and learning environment,the player sees the relevance in learning the content for the purposes of playing.
Games can be another tool for engaging in rigorous and authentic learning. There are many games available to classrooms, from educational games at iCivics, to educational versions of games, like Minecraft. There are even noneducational games that are being paired with instruction to make the game educational, such as Sid Meier’s Civilization or World of Warcraft. Explore what other teachers have done and start engaging students in meaningful play.
by Andrew K. Miller | Oct 5, 2012 | ASCD, Blog
This article originally appeared in Washington State’s ASCD journal, “Curriculum in Context.” Washington State ASCD in as an affiliate unit of ASCD, and has a membership comprised of over 2,000 educators in diverse positions throughout the state. View Original >
In Washington State, and in many states across the nation, the implementation of the Common Core is finally coming to fruition. Districts and Schools have invested in training their teachers to align curriculum and instruction to these Common Core standards. This has been a major challenge for some, while not as much for others. Washington has been working with standards based instruction for some time, and teachers are familiar with targeting standards. The transition to the common core is a transition to new standards, not necessarily the process of standards-based instruction. Where, then, do we need to focus our efforts to ensure that students are meeting these standards? What is the next step in professional development for teachers? What does the Common Core not address in terms of reform? One answer to this question is engagement. To truly ensure that students are meeting standards, we need to focus on creating engaging learning environments where the Common Core Standards are taught and assessed.
Continue reading the article on Page 18 of the Fall 2012 edition of “Curriculum In Context” by clicking here.
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