Setting kids up for success

Many of us are two weeks into a new school year and with that comes the opportunity to think reflectively about what has worked and what hasn't.  Here are a couple of ideas that may help to create a positive learning environment and set the tone for the rest of the school year.

Have EVERY student create an IEP (Individualized Education Plan)

Image:  http://blog.enablemart.com/letsblogability/2010/06/what-is-an-iep-learning-about-ieps-individualized-education-programs.html

We understand that students who are accessing student services are legally entitled to an IEP, but wouldn't it be useful if all students communicated their strengths and needs to their teachers?  Not only might this be a great opportunity for teachers to get to know their students, but it would also eliminate the stigma of an IEP.  Heck, I wish I could give some conference presenters my own IEP!

How about creating IEPs on a Google Doc or Google Form so that it can be shared with teachers the following semester or year?

Sample IEP on Google Forms

Foster a Growth Mindset

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." Benjamin Franklin

I just returned from a two-day SIM session which used the Growth Mindset Theory as the underpinning of how we can achieve greater student success in Math in Ontario.  The theory has been around for a while, but it's worth mentioning because research supports that fostering a growth mindset works.

Some students (many of whom have been told they are failures in school since Kindergarten) don't believe that they can learn, that trying is futile. Undoing these beliefs takes persistence and a caring adult who genuinely believes every student in front of them can learn and who provides opportunities for growth and reflection.

So Teacher mindsets make a huge difference!  Do we already pre-determine our students' ability based on social, cultural, or genetic factors? Do we think we know in September which students will work at Level 4?  Do we refer to a group of students as "My Level 2's,  Level 4's?"  If the research shows that Growth Mindsets contribute to student success, then our language and actions as teachers has to reinforce the belief that the students before us can and will learn as a result of our teaching.

And it works!! We told a group of grade 9 Applied students that they would be better readers at the end of the semester, worked hard to give them strategies, asked them to reflect on which strategies helped them to be better readers, and guess what? At the end of the semester, they not only thought it to be true, but they performed better on the post-diagnostic.

Check out this video:

This simple anchor chart shared on Twitter by @Principal_EL reminded me about how important it is to ensure that students really believe that they can become better readers, writers, creators, etc...

I would actually have students sort a few sentences that reflect one Mindset or another and then create their own anchor chart.  

More information on Growth Mindsets:

Carol Dweck's article on Mindsets and Equitable Education
Jo Baler's work on Mindsets in Math
Brain Pickings Blog on Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets
You can even become a Mindset School.

ASK your students for Input and then LISTEN to what they say

Why not show kids the Curriculum expectations and get their ideas?  If we relinquish our "control" of what kids are learning, we may just be surprised at the results.  Perhaps not for the entire course (just yet), but how about for one "unit" or for 10% of the time?

I love Shelly Wright's three guiding questions:

What are we going to learn?

How are we going to learn it?

How will we share the learning?   

Her blog is a great starting point for any teacher looking to move to an Inquiry-based classroom.

In my experience, students who were able to choose their own reading, tended to be more engaged in the activities.  So obvious but so often we dictate what kids read, when they read it, and what questions are important about the reading!

Focus on Self-Assessment and Goal Setting

In their book, "Knowing What Counts, Self-Assessment and Goal Setting," authors Gregory, Cameron, and Davies provide practical ideas and templates for practising self-assessment so as to improve self-directed learning in students.

I especially love the simplicity of some of the strategies and the reproducible templates, particularly the idea of "proof cards": Teachers give students cards that have a word or phrase printed on it such as "favourite," "potential," "perseverance", or "improvement".  Students select ONE proof card, a word, and an example from their own work that provides evidence or proof of that word or phrase, as well as reasons to support their selection.  It's a great way for students to recognize their growth.

Regularly asking students what strategies work and don't work best for them, also helps them to realize that they can actually control how they learn best.  Tech tools such as Google Forms, Padlet, Socrative are quick ways a teacher can gather and share regular input from kids about what they know.

Here are a couple of examples of student self-assessment forms I've used in English Class:

Exit Card
Final Metacognitive Reflection

There's something about ISTE

I am constantly in a line (for food, for a session, for the bathroom), and the Wifi is quite frankly worse than it is at home, and yet the experience of ISTE is one that is incomparable to any other.

Where else, would you be in contact with about 15,000 other like-minded educators who know that teaching can look differently?  That student-centered learning yields remarkable results, and that technology can help students to create and share in ways we could have never imagined?

Kevin Carroll (in his keynote address today) said that the moment he committed himself to the path he had chosen, providence set in; everything he needed to be successful just fell into place.

And so it is with ISTE, I think.  Once you commit yourself to being a part of this amazing energy, that is bigger than anything you've experienced before,  you can't help but go back to your classroom and commit to transformation.

Even though I know it will take weeks to digest all of the information that has come my way, I think there is no better PD in the world and no better opportunity to connect.  Because even though we have Twitter and Google Plus and other collaborative virtual tools, we thrive on the  face-to-face connections that validate us as a part of something bigger,  and that dispel the belief that we're just outliers in our lives back home.

Cheers to all you amazing educators in ATL! Looking forward to Philadelphia in 2015!

It's time we try something different in English class

On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, I had the privilege of listening to Will Richardson speak about bold classrooms and what they could look like.  He told over 500 teachers at YCDSB that we need to suspend our nostalgia for what school looked like in the past, because that world no longer exists.  He challenged us to look at the courses we have been teaching for the past 10 years and ask ourselves whether or not they are fundamentally the same now as they were then.

His challenge to our group of 500 teachers and administrators over the two days he spent with us:

Transform your classrooms into places of passion, purpose, and participation, where kids are using technology to do real work for real audiences, solve problems, make things that matter, and change the world.

These ideas are not really new to me.

And yet, I was perplexed and couldn't sleep after that first presentation.  I came to the realization that in the four years that I've been in my role, I hadn't really impacted as great a change as I would have hoped: that nostalgia for what school should look like, very much impedes any real transformation in Education today.

Without adequate time to process my learning, I became immersed in new learning at the Connect 2014 conference in Niagara Falls where I was able to meet and speak with so many like-minded educators.

The presentations and ideas of Michael Fullan, Shelley Wright,  Lori DeMarco, Peter Aguiar, Paul Yip,  Zoe Branigan-Pipe, and Jim Pedrich each with their own rich experiences and stories from the field, swirled together with the ideas that had been already tossing in my head, creating a tsunami.  I spent two days completely impressed by the innovation of teachers and students in pockets around our province.  And again, I felt like I hadn't been enough of an "instigator" in my own professional life.

For me, the easiest and most difficult transformation can happen in high school English class--especially our applied courses.


Why?

English teachers are passionate and hard-working and they spend so much time and energy trying to connect stories, novels, plays, and poetry to students' lives.  They change their syllabus regularly to include contemporary texts and include current events.  They spend more of their time providing feedback to students on their papers than any other discipline.

And yet...

"Students are increasingly bored in school and teaching bored students is especially challenging."
                                                    --Michael Fullan, Connect 2014

Students in applied English courses are generally disengaged, unmotivated, and disinterested. They don't feel connected and don't feel that the course is relevant.  Plagarism runs rampant and students spend more time reading summaries of texts on the web than they actually do reading the texts. And generally speaking, technology doesn't help because students are not impressed by technology in and of itself.  And let's face it,  submitting a literary essay electronically is not too different from submitting a word-processed print copy.

When I think about why so little has changed in terms of the way we teach English over the past 20 years, I can only conclude, that as Will Richardson suggests, it is nostalgia.  You see, unlike other Ontario Curriculum documents, no content is prescribed in the Overall Expectations for Language Arts or English.  Students are required to read, write, listen, speak, and create and understand media for a variety of purposes and a variety of audiences.

That's it.  Lots of examples (from 2007 when the document was created), but no "thou shalt" statements.

And yet, across the province (and I know because I ask everyone I meet) English high school courses look like variations of this:  poetry unit, non-fiction unit, short story unit, novel study, Shakespeare. Our texts are still primarily selected by teachers and delivered to a whole class at the same time, and our physical classrooms still look very much the same.  And while that may have been an effective way to organize a course ten years ago, this is not working for many of our students: especially those in applied courses.

Could we find a more modern approach?

What opportunities exist for inquiry-based or project-based learning in an English class?

How might we better equip our students to read and understand the world in which they live and into which they will graduate?

You could say that because I haven't had my own classroom for four years (I am in classrooms co-teaching regularly, but that is not the same), I am idealistic and out-of-touch with the realities of a modern classroom today.  And so, I am going to get into a classroom in September to reimagine English for modern learners. 

Are you with me?  Let's create a "Modern Learning Movement" in English! I'd love to hear your ideas!