Chapter 8 Prompt

Prompt number three focuses on the fact that students must feel that they are in a safe environment in order to have a good class discussion and to get all students to participate and what kinds of school support is there to back up this policy. My CT and I have not used much classroom talk as described by the book, it is mostly the teacher asking a question and calling on a student and then moving on to the next question. The students have not had to really respond to other classmates responses or had to revoice them or build on them. In general they talk to the teacher and the students are not really talking to each other when it comes to academic topics.

As a class we have established our classroom norms and being with first graders we are constantly repeating rules for discussion such as when one person is talking the rest of us listen, raising your hand and just being respectful. These concepts will take a while for the students to really remember and understand and I feel that later in the year after more practice and experience we will be able to move towards discussions where the students can talk to each other more and hopefully really listen and think about classmates responses. As a school there is a big focus on all of us being one community, at our summer staff meetings there was emphasis on every kid in the school being all our kids. Many classrooms also are centered on cooperative learning and groups and sharing. They are trying to instill ideas of respect, being good listeners, trying to do your best and being good learners from the pledge they recite every morning as a school and I think this does help and there have not been too many instances where we have had issues of disrespectful behavior in the sense of saying rude or disrespectful comments. Our disrespectful behavior is more centered around not listening, talking when one person is trying to share and minor things that I will get better as they get used to school and the set up if class discussions.

Principles of Productive talk

In Chapter 8 of “Classroom Discussion” lots of practical advice about who to implement Math talks effectively. I loved how they recognized that this approach to math learning is not miraculous overnight improvement plan for any student but that the results typically take years to show. Of the 5 principles the book offered to ensure the math conversations are productive, I can’t say that I find any of them to come naturally.

I highly value the concept of establishing and maintaining a respectful supportive Environment (Principle 1), but to be honest I am still trying to figure out how to do that in my placement class. You can’t force a child to be respectful if he or she doesn’t want to be. The best I know how to do is positively encourage them to practice respect or remove them from the group. For me, and I suspect for most teachers, this is the hardest part of teaching in general.

I like however, that the book did not encourage teachers to start with Principle 1 but actually to start with Principle 4 (Explaining Your Expectations About New Forms of Talk). Before you can establish and maintain a respectful environment you have to clearly communicate the expectation you have for your students. This may include expectations for new forms of talks but also for behavior in general. Another thing I appreciated about chapter 8 was the checklist at the end where the principles were broken down in to 3-4 tangible questions that help you gauge whether or not a principle is being met. For example for Principle 4 they ask if new talk moves or formats are started by clearly explaining what students are expected to do and why it is beneficial. They also ask if there are any signs that these expectations need to be revisited in regards to familiar Talks or formats.

Chapter 8

At the end of chapter 8 it asks you to reflect on times before when you have has class discussions in your room with the students. I fortunately have had a few times where I have led a class discussion math related and not math related. I can immediately think of the students in my class who have a hard time participating. This is for all sorts of reasons. Not paying attention, distracted, don’t know the answer, talking to a friend, or they are just shy. I also have students in my class who like to blurt out or can’t wait for the other student’s to think of the answer. I think in situations like this many things are important to factor in. One is the personal and medical issue that might be happening. I do have a student who has a medical issue which makes him easily distractible. My CT and I have been working on some behavorial things that he can work on to make him more productive at group times. I think it is important to realize issues like this because instead of always disciplining kids you should really take time to find out what is going on. The other kids in my class who get distracted or to have no desire to talk about the topic, I find the most difficult. I want to make things fun and interesting to them, and give them something to do so they feel like they are doing something that matters, but there are just too many of them in my class for that to be effective and not detrimental to the other students. This is something that makes me a little anxious when leading class discussions, especially in first grade. With that I think it is important to remember principle 5: trying only one challenging new thing at a time (147). I think as a new teacher sometimes I tend to be too hard on my self or I feel pressure to try everything all at once. One thing that really stood out to me was to remember “It’s important to give yourself and the students adequate time to use these new tools,” (147). It is important to remember the first time you were learning something. It takes patience.

The procedure that my CT uses is to give them a warning and then send them to their desk. I am still waiting to see how effective I think this approach is because I am worried that when students go back to their seat they are losing time where they could be learning. However we have had a few students who have had to do this, and their behavior was corrected after one time.

One new thing at a time...

The principle of productive talk that stood out most to me is trying one challenging new thing at a time. Being in a first grade classroom I have found that attention spans run particularly short. It is important that you are not loading too much information on them at once because they most likely will not be able to process and comprehend five new concepts. That is why it is important that you are using consistent terminology and routines that are familiar to the students before introducing challenging new material. “When introducing a new talk format or move, make sure that the mathematical concepts or procedures you are talking about are familiar to all of the students in the class.” (pg 108) I think this is a useful tip across all subjects. In math particularly the language used can be challenging for some students especially when it is first introduced.

One math lesson about geometric shapes my CT introduced the shapes in a whole group discussion. As a follow up activity we split the class into two groups. The students had never been split up in that manner before and we did not have any “established” norms for this kind of a group discussion. The students that were in my group were very off task. They did not know how to respond to the questions they were being asked and I think since it was a smaller group many of them were weary to answer. This did not produce a productive conversation about the topic. We then did the same activity in a whole class discussion and it went much better. Everyone was on task. I also think the activity did not go as well the first time because we were sitting on the floor instead of at their tables and they were not used to that for math. As the book says it is important to introduce one challenging idea at a time and I think that split class activity had too many new things in it and the students could not focus.

Principles of Productive Talk

After reading about each of the five principles of productive math talk, I realized that in my classroom I already have established a variety of methods for providing “equitable participation in classroom talk,” so apparently it must be the principle that comes most naturally to me. Currently in our classroom we rely on different methods of participation depending on the structure of the lesson. Very often we pull Popsicle sticks with each of the students’ names on them out of a cup to determine whose turn it will be. To make sure that the same sticks aren’t repeatedly picked, we put the previously drawn sticks into a separate cup until we have pulled each and everyone’s stick. For some activities, both my CT and I keep a running checklist of the students who have verbally participated and shared their ideas. I have to admit that often we do rely on the traditional method of teacher calling on students as well.

Obviously, participating does not just consist of answering questions, listening is a component as well, and there are definitely students in my class who prefer to demonstrate their participation by being an active listener rather than speak in front of their peers. I think that so far the combination of our Popsicle stick method combined with another method we use to check for listening, hand signals such as thumbs up, pointing, etc, has ensured that those quieter students are still being given the opportunity to participate. The chapter does suggest another method in which the students nominate the next speaker after they are finished. Given the independent nature of my particular group of students this year I think they will like being asked to “do one of the teacher’s jobs” and plan on trying this one out!

5 Moves of Math Discussions

Move 5 stood out to me the most, mainly because I have a hard time seeing this modeled in my first grade classroom. Though I have students that need the time to be able to think through what they are going to say, the attention span of my students are very short and they have difficulty waiting for each other. One way to compensate for this that I have observed recently is by allowing for a time when everyone is required to think and no one is allowed to talk. Then follow that with a time just for sharing.

Looking at move 2 I think that calling on students to restate what their peer said can be abused if not handled carefully. I have seen teachers use this in a negative way to humiliate students for not listening. For example if Billy is being loud while someone else is trying to explain something a teacher may purposely call on Billy so restate what the other student was trying to say knowing full well that Billy will not be able to do it because he was not listening.
While this may or may not be beneficial to get Billy to stop talking out of turn it certainly is not helpful for helping Billy understand the math concepts better.
If used correctly however this move helps students who are auditory processers to deepen their understanding. It also lets student who are listening hear the same concepts explained from the perspectives of several of their peers. So, if what way of explanation does not make sense to them hopefully one explanation will

In case study #2 the teacher uses several moves in her initial conversation with the small group of students about triangles. She asked the students to give the reason why they put the shapes in to the categories that they did. She then typically restates whatever the students’ voiced back to her. She draws in students who have remained quiet by inviting them to reason (move 3) why they either agree or disagree with different concept presented. I like that the case doesn’t end with the teacher just realizing the students’ misconceptions about triangles but the case goes on to show how the teacher used the information gathered in the conversation and turns it into a related lesson to help correct the misconception.

The move that seems to come the most naturally is revoicing. I think this seems the most natural to me because I have worked with younger children for a good portion of my education. Because of the fact that many kids at this age are still learning the correct pronunciation for words I got in the habit of restating what a child said to me just to make sure I understood the child correctly. Even though I used this mainly with younger children I can see the benefit of using revoiceing with all people. It lets the person who you are listening to know that you heard them and it give them a chance to re-explain in case you understood them incorrectly.

assessment

Assessment

I have never heard the term backwards design in relation to lesson plans. From my experience and interactions with teachers I think they do in some ways think about the goal first and work backwards but perhaps not in the exact way the article “The three stages of backward design” describes. For example the template on page 22 starts with the goals and moves to the childrens understanding and then to stage 2 on performance tasks and assessment evidence and then to stage three planning the learning activities. I believe some teachers and even myself may have started with the goals and then moved to stage 3 the learning activities without really thinking about assessment evidence and criteria and performance tasks second. Something else I believe I tend to see a lot is an activity a teacher really likes and has done for years and they are just trying to find somewhere to fit it in and make it relate to something the kids are currently learning. Being in more of a teacher role I have experienced how important time management is and there is not a lot of “free-time” or time to “waste” in school, school curriculums are so detailed and then planning around specials, using classroom time to its maximum potential is crucial. I think using this strategy of backwards planning if one really plans from the objectives or goals and follows the stages will make sure that all of the lessons are working towards a goal and are relevant . One example from the article was about a kindergarten assignment for the hundredth day of school for the kids to bring in a poster with one hundred things glued to it. In my opinion this was just an activity a teacher is probably used to doing and thinks it is “fun”, but having something along the same lines and even having the assignment include grouping the objects on the poster or putting the items in a certain pattern could work towards a kindergarten standard or objective and it would still be fun or engaging for the students. I liked these articles because they did help me think about how I can use class time wisely but I feel like I need to see more examples of different kinds of assessments, especially for math besides tests.

Backward Design and Assessment

Out of the three articles, I felt that the last one that I chose to read, "Gaining Insight into Students' Thinking Through Assessment" was both the most interesting and helpful. Honestly, when reading about backwards design it never occurred to me that educators planned lessons any other way. I have never planned a lesson or activity without beginning at the end and first considering the desired results. How can you plan a lesson without really thoroughly thinking about where you want it to go and what you want the students to accomplish intellectually? It was interesting however to read about the "backward design" phenomenon and acquire an actual term for the particular philosophy, which apparently I had been looking at a bit naively.

That being said, the actual snapshots of multiple activities in the 3rd assessment article really made me reconsider the outcomes of certain assessment questions. For example, the author provided 8 different answers they had received from the question, "The Clearview Little League is going to a Pirates game. There are 532 people, including players, coaches, and parents. They will travel by bus and each bus holds 40 people. How many buses will they need to get to the game?” When I first glanced at the answers (and then took 5 minutes to do the math in my head, I thought, yep ’14,’” but as I began to look closely at how each student worked out the problem, I noticed that even though some of the students had the correct number answer, they clearly still did not fully understand the math they were performing. One of the students actually divided wrong getting the answer of 14 R12 instead of 13 R12 but because of their logic, they technically wrote down the right answer.

This solidified for me the importance of students’ assessments including explanations, presentations, written work, and the like. As teachers we have to, as the backward design model insists, remain focused on the real goals of assessments. When we assess we must assess not just the answers or the students’ abilities to fill in a blank with the appropriate information, but our students’ understanding; the process of their learning not just what they “learned.”

Assessing assessments

I always have felt like assessment is my weak point. I love the challenge of looking at standards and coming up with creative ways to teach the materials. The "Backwards Model" article reminded me of the curriculum planning strategies they gave students in my FCE 321 class. In that class we learned goal curriculum is made up of long term goals, short term objectives (somewhat like the GLEC's), Methods of carrying out objectives, Activities, materials and Assessments. The class emphasised the importance of assessments and that they are what propel what objective based activities you do next and the methods you use. Although the class emphasized the importance of assessment I still don't feel confident in creating assessments that are meaningful and affective.

I was nerdishly excited when I found our the 2nd part of "The Backwards model" article focused on creating affective classroom assessments. I found the questions given in the article that prompt teachers to think more critically about the purpose of activities helpful and I plan on reading over them again when we are suppose to do our two week units plans. However, I still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what meaningful assessments are. I am hoping first of all that we get to do more than just read about the Backwards model and actually get help carrying it out. Through that process I also hope to get most of my confusion cleared up.

For my second article I read the Cantlon article about authentic assessments. I really am put off by the idea of standardized testing and love how she came up with creative ways to assess her students learning in an "on-going, holistic" way. It seems that this article helped me put more of a face to the principals discussed in the "backwards model" article.

~Donnalee

Assessing your students

I think it is very important for teachers to work backwards and know what they expect their students to accomplish from a specific task. I do not however, agree with the fact that all teachers need to have the same assessments for their students. “Three different teachers may all be working toward the same content standard but if their assessments vary considerably, how are we to know which students have achieved what? Agreement on needed evidence of learning leads to greater curricular coherence and more reliable evaluation by teachers” (pg 20). I do not think that all teachers need to have the same assessments for each of their students in order to know if they learned the material or not. I think it is important to be flexible with your assessment in order to cater to the personalities in your class room. It is obviously important and necessary for teachers to teach to the standards but I think there can be different ways of showing it. Students are not always all on the same page even though they may have been taught the same content. I think it is very important for formal assessments to be the same such as trimester tests, but assessments given throughout the trimester can be different. At my school, all of the first grade teachers meet every Wednesday to discuss the plans for the coming week. In some cases a class may be ahead of another class and therefore the worksheets or informal assessments will vary. One class may need more instruction on a specific topic than another class. There are also different kinds of assessments that have been given such as verbal assessments, written assessments, or assessments that are shown through pictures. I think it is important to have some formal assessments that can be compared with the other classes but I also think it is important to add in your own assessments because ultimately you are the one that needs to know what your students can or can’t do. You are the one that needs to be able to correct the misconceptions that your students may have.

Assessment

In the Thinking like an Assessor article I read about the backwards design program and how it is important to make sure you have a specific reason for the assignment. With the case about the kindergarten teacher who had the students make a poster of 100 things for 100th day she did not make the children count in any column or row to show they can actually count 100 things. After reading this I am worried a little bit about making sure everything has an academic purpose. It sounds obvious but I am worried that something like this might slip through the cracks during my first year of teaching. Having students make a poster of 100 things seems like a great assessment until the question is asked of how do you know for sure that students can count to 100 and understand the concept of bundling and regrouping.

That is why I liked the three basic question section. I think these are great questions to ask yourself when you are coming up with tasks or assessments. I think these questions could be helpful when creating new curriculum. In the article it says it is “important to consider the general types of performances that are implied,” “What specific characteristics in student responses, products, or performances should we examine,” and “Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a student’s knowledge, skill, or understanding?” All of these questions help narrow down exactly what you are looking for in assessment and how you are going to go about assessing these things. While I think I have a good idea of what I am looking for on assessment I think these are good questions to keep in mind when coming up with assessments. I will try to keep them in mind when I come up with a task in the future.

Talk moves

The talk move that stood out the most to me was revoicing. I like this idea because especially being with first graders it can be difficult to understand the message they are trying to get across to the rest of the class and in order to have a good clear class discussion I think revoicing will be a necessary practice. Since the teacher does not know what the student is thinking it may be a challenge to correctly revoice what the student was actually thinking. If a teacher revoices using a question the student may say “no that is not what I was talking about” or the student may just say “yes that is what I meant” although it really not be what they were thinking but they do not want to correct a teacher. Also as a teacher during these discussions it would be important to let the students finish their complete thoughts because it may take them time t think of the right words and I think it is important as a teacher to not cut them off and just interject our assumptions on what they were going to say without letting them finish.

My case study was the first grade case study with the teacher Mrs. Sigler. I noticed a lot throughout her case study that she asked the other students to repeat what other students were saying. The whole group discussion led to new ideas of triangles as a class. It seemed as if the questions kept building off of each other and helped all the kids expand what they believe a triangle to be. I can see myself using reasoning a lot in the classroom in discussions. There are many ways it can be used you ask the class to just give a thumbs up if they agree with whatever concept we are talking about it helps to give a quick check for understanding. Then it can go in depth and can give kids an opportunity to interpret what another student is saying and different students have different points of views and may interpret ideas differently and by asking them to apply or use someone else reasoning is a good way for them to share.

carolyn

Student Talk in Case study number 2

In Case Study 1 the first grade students were learning about geometric shapes, triangles in particular. The teacher, Mrs. Sigler, gives the students a task of sorting different geometric shapes. However she notices that one group has only put equilateral triangles in the group designated for triangles. She points to the other triangles and asks the students why they have not put those in the triangle group. They respond by saying they are not triangles because they do not look like the picture of the triangle on the poster (which is an equalateral triangle). She continues to talk to them and they give her explanations as to what a triangle is. They say “It’s short and fat and looks just right,” and “They’re flat on the bottom”. She then proceeds to do a number of things with the triangles and the students all give her explanations relating back to the poster. This talk with the students helps the teacher understand why they were not seeing all the triangles, just the equilateral ones. In her classroom she has only provided one example of a triangle and some of her students see that as the only way you can have a triangle. The image of the triangle becomes more important then the definition of what a triangle is. The next day she decides to do a different activity where she hopes the students can learn more about the definition rather then just the image. She provides them with three strips of paper and has them make triangles. Then they have a class discussion to talk about why they are triangles. She uses a couple different talk moves during her discussion. She repeats what students are saying, has other students repeat what students are saying, and most importantly gives the students time to come up with their response. Through the student talk the teacher was able to get a clearer understanding of what her students were thinking about and how they were drawing on certain conclusions.