"People who know everything are silent; people who know nothing are silent. In between, there is talk. Literacy floats on a sea of talk." This quote comes from a guy by the name of James Britton. He said it (or wrote it) in 1970. This quote can be found on page 4 in the Ontario "Think Literacy" document (along with a bunch of other really good stuff by the way).
Let me point a couple of things out that I find funny.
1. The quote is older than me. I didn't become aware of it until a literacy camp guest speaker said it this summer.
2. I didn't begin to understand it (though I remembered it clearly enough) until this school year. Now I get it.
"Talk is the foundation for thought and understanding, and the key to literacy learning. Research demonstrates that powerful meta-cognitive strategies can be taught to help students self-monitor their comprehension when reading print and digital texts." This is the abstract for a book by Kathy Mills. It is part of what I believe the quote by Britton to be talking about.
I know I've mentioned it in earlier posts and I've talked about it a few times with some of you, but I wanted to put it down here, if only to document it. I really feel like I am getting to the heart of matters concerning student learning and achievement and becoming better at what I do, not only in practice but in purpose. The reason for this is the number of small talks I am fortunate enough to have with other people that are caring and passionate about education. Every time I get together with just 2 or 3 other teachers and we engage in constructive talk or debate, somewhere along the line, after bouncing ideas off of one another, a collective light bulb goes on. It is inspiring. It happened to me twice today and I had to do two things as a result. You are reading one of them now... the other was the nap I had to take. I was exhausted!
I received a couple of emails that spoke to the idea I am expressing here.
"I wish we could engage in a big 'think tank' from time to time... I bet that is what people like Marzano and Reeves do to move their thinking forward.... get like minded people together (like a kind of retreat) to sit, talk, and think."
and "Maybe we should do away with formal meetings and have the informal meetings more often. That's where the progress seems to happen."
Isn't that just incredible! I don't think there is anything more I can say on the topic right now except that if you aren't involving yourself in professional dialogue, you are really missing out!
I promise, next entry will have more humour/wit and less worky blechness.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Another PD post?
Yep. It turns out that this upcoming Friday I will be involved in presentation during a PD session for the first time in my career. I've been thinking about it for about a week now and I've got a rough idea of how I'd like my section to go. Basically, I want to get teachers to help me present individual strategies that have worked for them regarding effective use of feedback. Bottom up or grass roots stuff that teachers in the school are already using that can motivate and encourage other teachers to try it out.
Feedback is a practice that I have been working on improving in for a few years. There are a few things that I do to ensure that students benefit from feedback and see assessments as yet another way to learn. I recently tried something I hadn't done before and while I'll admit it needs some tweaking, I did like how it went. Instead of having students just correct their answers, I had them write out on a separate piece of paper the reason(s) why they didn't get full marks for the question (ie 'my explanation didn't have an example like the question asked for', or 'I defined/listed the terms instead of explaining their connection' or a big one 'I only did the first part of the question and not the second part'). Mostly, their comments were based upon the feedback I'd left them on the test. I held individual interviews with the students and we went over their reasons, modified them if they were wrong, and made sure they understood everything before moving on. In addition to the learning benefits to the students, this was a good way for me to see if my feedback truly let them know what was lacking from their response, and students appreciated the one-on-one time. The only problem I have with it is that it was FAR too time consuming.
Last night I had an idea. I belong to a wonderful group of teachers (a PLN if you will) on twitter and I posed a question to them: 'Looking for the most effective strategies for giving feedback to students. Ideas?'
Within moments, I had three responses. That started a chat involving about 8 people. I've received 5 good ideas that I hadn't thought to try on my own, and 1 unique way to accomplish something that others have tried that works for them. Many people show a sample of responses from each level so kids have an idea of what they need to do in order to move up to the next level. Some post it on their wall, others do it via overhead and discuss each. @fnoschese suggests posting them on the internet. I already have a website that I refer kids to daily, and I think this will be a great way for me to share content with the kids. Few ever hang back or come after class to check the posted solutions or study the responses at various levels, but perhaps, from the privacy of their homes, students will be more inclined to check them out. Others have suggested using individualized googledocs or wikis to track when students access the material (and more importantly, who does not access it). While I can see that this is a great thing, I'm not confident enough in that technology to be able to do it. I can see this working for me in the future when I have a bit more time to fool around with it though.
If you have any suggestions or would like to share ideas that work for you, you can leave a comment here or email me with them. Better yet, get on twitter and join a PLN. Don't forget to let me know you are there. Just send a tweet to @glevack.
Feedback is a practice that I have been working on improving in for a few years. There are a few things that I do to ensure that students benefit from feedback and see assessments as yet another way to learn. I recently tried something I hadn't done before and while I'll admit it needs some tweaking, I did like how it went. Instead of having students just correct their answers, I had them write out on a separate piece of paper the reason(s) why they didn't get full marks for the question (ie 'my explanation didn't have an example like the question asked for', or 'I defined/listed the terms instead of explaining their connection' or a big one 'I only did the first part of the question and not the second part'). Mostly, their comments were based upon the feedback I'd left them on the test. I held individual interviews with the students and we went over their reasons, modified them if they were wrong, and made sure they understood everything before moving on. In addition to the learning benefits to the students, this was a good way for me to see if my feedback truly let them know what was lacking from their response, and students appreciated the one-on-one time. The only problem I have with it is that it was FAR too time consuming.
Last night I had an idea. I belong to a wonderful group of teachers (a PLN if you will) on twitter and I posed a question to them: 'Looking for the most effective strategies for giving feedback to students. Ideas?'
Within moments, I had three responses. That started a chat involving about 8 people. I've received 5 good ideas that I hadn't thought to try on my own, and 1 unique way to accomplish something that others have tried that works for them. Many people show a sample of responses from each level so kids have an idea of what they need to do in order to move up to the next level. Some post it on their wall, others do it via overhead and discuss each. @fnoschese suggests posting them on the internet. I already have a website that I refer kids to daily, and I think this will be a great way for me to share content with the kids. Few ever hang back or come after class to check the posted solutions or study the responses at various levels, but perhaps, from the privacy of their homes, students will be more inclined to check them out. Others have suggested using individualized googledocs or wikis to track when students access the material (and more importantly, who does not access it). While I can see that this is a great thing, I'm not confident enough in that technology to be able to do it. I can see this working for me in the future when I have a bit more time to fool around with it though.
If you have any suggestions or would like to share ideas that work for you, you can leave a comment here or email me with them. Better yet, get on twitter and join a PLN. Don't forget to let me know you are there. Just send a tweet to @glevack.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
PD
About 5 years ago I vowed to quit being involved in any committees and to just focus on my job and on becoming the best teacher I could be. I changed schools (three times now actually), and I found that I was pretty happy just being a teacher. I can't tell you the reasons (since I don't know them) but people at my new schools would sometimes nominate me for some committee or union position or some other thing (I guess upon reflection it might be because I tend to be a bit vocal), but I would politely decline. I might go into the feelings of powerlessness (and the feeling of being belittled) I experienced the last time I was on a staffing committee in response to the declination of the nomination, but the end result was the same: I was a teacher and not involved in any other way. Except that was never really true either. I coached or supervised all the dances, or just would show up to sporting events and even pop my head into other teachers classes on my prep. I guess not being involved (in education -- I'm no politician!) is not my way.
Anyway, fast forward to the present. I am a department head now, and I actually call monthly meetings whether we need them or not. I am on 3 committees (though the dividing line between them all is quite blurry to me) and I'm doing some extra-curricular stuff. So much for not getting involved. So, what has made the difference, and how does the title of this blog fit in.
Two things. I have an administrator that, as I've mentioned to many of you in private, (or as private as online forums or twitter can be) is supportive, energetic and committed to the students AND the staff, not just to the advancement of their own career. Also, my board has been working really hard to provide us with useful and meaningful professional development. A few years back, when I took a course through Queens, the prof encouraged us to reflect on all of our posts and one of the major things I talked about throughout the course was the lack of meaningful P.D. That has changed.
Today, I was away (and so were about 12 other teachers from my school -- and get this so was one of the administrators and a person from the board!) from school for the afternoon and had the opportunity to participate in a pd session designed to help us become better at what we do by witnessing other teachers and trying to learn from what they have done. That doesn't explain it well, but it is quite forward thinking in my opinion, and it was worthwhile. More importantly is what followed. After the session, a few of us hung back and really talked about things. In the last month or so, I have had more meaningful discussions following regular meetings of the staff than I think I've had in the last 5 years. We get together, talk about what happened during our group sessions, and then we get to the real nitty gritty. The meat and potatoes of the discussion. We bounce ideas off of each other, and we get to the heart of what we need to do in order for our students to do better. There isn't any complaining -- just productive (and sometimes creative) talk. Better yet, the talk leads to something. We are actually implementing change (ok, planning on it currently -- but individually, I'm doing things differently!).
I really think openness and exchange are the key missing ingredients in education today. I forget the name of the schools those two teachers began in the US (featured in Waiting for Superman), based upon their study of the teacher 'across the hall' that was accomplishing something with her students, but those schools wouldn't be possible without talking and exchange of ideas that work. Unfortunately, we don't have that exchange model embedded in current educational practice. We need to change that. Of course, most of my readers are twitter followers, and so here I am preaching to the choir.
My son just came down to talk to me and I seem to have lost my train of thought (always assuming there was an end point or logical progression to this entry), so I'll end here for now.
Anyway, fast forward to the present. I am a department head now, and I actually call monthly meetings whether we need them or not. I am on 3 committees (though the dividing line between them all is quite blurry to me) and I'm doing some extra-curricular stuff. So much for not getting involved. So, what has made the difference, and how does the title of this blog fit in.
Two things. I have an administrator that, as I've mentioned to many of you in private, (or as private as online forums or twitter can be) is supportive, energetic and committed to the students AND the staff, not just to the advancement of their own career. Also, my board has been working really hard to provide us with useful and meaningful professional development. A few years back, when I took a course through Queens, the prof encouraged us to reflect on all of our posts and one of the major things I talked about throughout the course was the lack of meaningful P.D. That has changed.
Today, I was away (and so were about 12 other teachers from my school -- and get this so was one of the administrators and a person from the board!) from school for the afternoon and had the opportunity to participate in a pd session designed to help us become better at what we do by witnessing other teachers and trying to learn from what they have done. That doesn't explain it well, but it is quite forward thinking in my opinion, and it was worthwhile. More importantly is what followed. After the session, a few of us hung back and really talked about things. In the last month or so, I have had more meaningful discussions following regular meetings of the staff than I think I've had in the last 5 years. We get together, talk about what happened during our group sessions, and then we get to the real nitty gritty. The meat and potatoes of the discussion. We bounce ideas off of each other, and we get to the heart of what we need to do in order for our students to do better. There isn't any complaining -- just productive (and sometimes creative) talk. Better yet, the talk leads to something. We are actually implementing change (ok, planning on it currently -- but individually, I'm doing things differently!).
I really think openness and exchange are the key missing ingredients in education today. I forget the name of the schools those two teachers began in the US (featured in Waiting for Superman), based upon their study of the teacher 'across the hall' that was accomplishing something with her students, but those schools wouldn't be possible without talking and exchange of ideas that work. Unfortunately, we don't have that exchange model embedded in current educational practice. We need to change that. Of course, most of my readers are twitter followers, and so here I am preaching to the choir.
My son just came down to talk to me and I seem to have lost my train of thought (always assuming there was an end point or logical progression to this entry), so I'll end here for now.
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