Factoid Friday...Interesting Research

Every Friday, I will post interesting research and/or articles I find pertinent to my current fellowship work. Here is a list of my factoid Friday articles:
Impact of non-medicinal invention on ADHD
Techniques for better learning
What is over learned is often forgotten

A New Perspective

For the past ten weeks, I have been busy completing my first quarter as a graduate student. These past weeks have provided me an opportunity to see teaching and learning from a student's perspective. What have I learned from my new role as a student?

1.) Constant and consistent feedback is crucial.
2.) Developing critical thinking skills are extremely valuable.
3.) Clear expectations about course objectives and necessary skills are imperative.
4.) Teach the material, not the book.
5.) Love what you preach and teach.
6.) Frequent assessment of knowledge helps students retain material.


Along with reading The Differentiated Classroom and researching Communities of Practice, I started perusing through Classroom Instruction that Works by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock. The focus of their book is to provide research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. The first chapter covers the instructional strategy of identifying similarities and differences. This past quarter, one of my professors constantly told us to focus on beginning points, commonalities, and simplicity. Every week, he would have us write short essays on certain topics. First, we would have identify how these two subjects are alike and then explore their differences. I like his commonality approach, as I realized that too often we just focus on how things are different. Nonetheless, drawing comparisons through identifying similarities and differences has been found to be basic to human thought. Making these connections are considered to be the "core of all learning." The following are four generalizations Marzano and his colleagues were able to conclude from their research on the impact of identifying similarities and differences, as an instructional strategy, on student achievement:
1.) Presenting students with explicit guidance in identifying similarities and differences enhances students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge.
2.) Asking students to independently identify similarities and differences enhances students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge.
3.) Representing similarities and differences in a graphic or symbolic form enhances students' understanding of and ability to use knowledge.
4.) Identification of similarities and differences can be accomplished in a variety of ways: Comparing, Classifying, Creating metaphors, Creating analogies.

For examples of specific ideas applicable to your class, templates, and /or samples for identifying similarities and differences please come by my office or email me and I can come to you. From my own perspective as a student, this strategy works and fosters a level of thinking that promotes linking ideas and retaining information.

Communities of Practice

This week I have been reading information about differentiating classroom instruction and creating communities of practice. The latter is what I would like to focus on the most during first semester. Through communities of practice, enriching instructional strategies will emerge. Today I read Transforming Education Through Communities of Practice by Tony Wagner. This article made some really valid and well supported statements about the need for communities of practice.
Wagner first points out that good coaches for teaching and leadership are virtually nonexistent, and our performance is rarely critiqued by others. In my personal experience, my first four years of teaching were never truly evaluated. I remember having an administrator come into my classroom once a semester to do a 1/2 hour evaluation. After the evaluation, we had a post evaluation meeting where we discussed performance, not instruction. Currently, my students are responsible for my evaluation. I also complete an annual report at the end of each year that I discuss with one faculty member. While I think evaluation of practice is important, I don't think that my true performance as a teacher has ever really been discussed with others in a collaborative, supportive environment. With that being said, how can we improve or learn our practice if we rely only on ourselves or the limited feedback of others. How does a skilled musician, doctor, athlete learn? They do so through the coaching, collaboration, and critiquing of others. So, why do we not do this as teachers? Really, that question does not matter. What does matter is that we need to start collaborative communities not only to help our own practice, but to benefit others and our students. In his article Wagner states that "nearly every profession has reinvented itself to create forms of collaborative problem-solving except education." He also makes the point that people work in teams at all levels of organizations, helping to embrace challenges and find solutions more effectively. We want our students to interact, collaborate, problem solve, question, and we don't expect them to do that alone. So, why should we?

Where to start...First steps

In my previous post, I identified one of my underlying assumptions. Our challenge as teachers is to provide students with opportunities to discover their learning preferences and create activities that help nurture and develop those preferences. I believe all students are capable and willing to learn. Therefore, our task is to create a student-centered environment that allows for exploration and growth.

So, where do we begin? Currently, I am reading The Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson, focusing on meeting the needs of all learners. In chapter two, Tomlinson explores the dynamics of a differentiated classroom.
The first step in creating differentiated instruction is to identify the "essentials." What are the major concepts, principals, and skills that we want our students to leave our class with? The next step is to address the learning preferences or needs of our students. This can be done through learning style test, inventories, surveys, etc. After processing the essentials and preferences, we can begin to differentiate our content-what we want our students to learn, process-how we want our students to learn, and product-how we want our students to demonstrate their learning. Naturally the next question is what strategies are used in differentiated instruction? Tomlinson lists just a few that I would like to explore in more detail throughout the semester. They include: jigsaw, taped material, anchor activities, varying organizers, varied texts, literature circles, tiered lessons and products, learning contracts, small and large group investigation, orbitals, independent study, varied questioning strategies, interest centers and groups, varied homework.

Getting to know learning styles

Instead of focusing on differences, I think it is important to see our classroom as being filled with an eclectic mix of learning preferences. Just like when we go to a restaurant, we are all hungry but some of us prefer fish over steak. So, I think it is important to figure out early on what type of instruction our students prefer. I found this fun, interactive Multiple Intelligence Snowflake. Try it and tell me what you think. Is this something you could use in your class to understand the learning preferences of your students?

What am I doing and where am I going?

This year I have been asked to work on an Academic Support Fellowship. When I first tell people this they give me a puzzled look. So to clarify for myself and others here is a summary of what my work will focus on first semester.
The two main goals of the fellowship are:
1.) To serve students who may or may not have been diagnosed with a learning difficulty.
2.) To support teachers in creating environments that foster differentiated instruction, helping to meet the need of ALL students.
Now, how am I going to meet these goals? Well, I am not quite sure but one of my ideas is to create this online repository, hoping to share and gain insight from anyone who wants to add to this conversation. Hopefully, this could be a place where people can catch a glimpse into my mind as an educator, see the wonderful work that others are doing, share insight on research, give ideas about best practices or strategies, or just "talk story"about teaching. I am excited to see where this year takes me.