• To learn more about this project’s purpose and outcomes, you might want to read the first post.
• If you are interested in understanding how this project enabled the teachers and coaches involved to position themselves as learners, you can click through to the second post.
• This post demonstrates the beginning of instruction, where researchers applied strategies that helped them gather facts.

When students were finished taking visual notes from their research on the iPad, Heather printed each researcher’s visual notes. We used this work to assess each researcher’s needs.

We weren’t surprised by what we saw. As we predicted, three striking trends emerged:

• Some researchers gathered far too many facts about one specific topic
• Other researchers gathered very few facts about far too many topics
• A small number of researchers needed more time to gather more facts

We planned to differentiate the support that they were provided moving forward, but we began with a full group mini-lesson intended to help writers

• Develop a strategy for determining which topics were most important and which facts and details connected to them
• Understand and engage in revision

I began by sharing my own visual notes about all of the facts that I gathered relevant to several different topics. These were intentionally drawn on pieces of tag board, because I wanted to students to be able to lift these facts up and physically reposition them. I had a hunch that doing so would help them develop a physical sense of what it meant to determine importance, connect related facts together, and revise.

“Yesterday, I found a whole bunch of facts about a whole bunch of different topics. I need you to help me determine which ones I should use.”

“How many different animals have I found facts for? Which one should I focus on?”

Brianna said, “You have facts for two different animals: ducks and spiders. If it were MY choice though, I would focus on the duck. There are more facts for the duck than there are for the spider. Plus, I don’t like spiders.”

“If your TOPIC is the duck, which of my notes connect to them, Brianna?”

Brianna physically connected the appropriate notes together, and as as she did so, another child intuitively created a cue for this activity: he held his hands apart and then drew them together to demonstrate the act of connecting. This became a cue that all of us practiced.

“Whenever someone shares this cue with you, remember this lesson and use the strategy we just demonstrated to help you,” I suggested. “It will help you revise your thinking and your work. Revision happens when we think again and change our work as a result.”

Each writer was invited to continue the research and writing processes by thinking again and changing their work.  They used the strategies taught to determine important topics and connect the appropriate facts to each:

At this point, some researchers discovered that they would need to gather additional facts in order to write something meaningful. Others learned that they would have to abandon one or more topics in order to investigate a single animal with greater depth. This work was enabled by a variety of experiences, including opportunities to connect and learn with their friends via Skype.

Reflections:

• One of the pre-planned objectives of this unit was to ensure that all researchers could identify three facts about a single animal. Rather than setting them up to investigate only ONE topic by providing them specific prompts, directions, or the rigid frame of a graphic organizer, we intentionally invited them to dive into their work and begin gathering facts about animals they were most interested in. This enabled us to study these learners and their unique processes.
• Some of them did research one animal with depth. Others were really excited to study a whole bunch of different animals at first, and they found doing so engaging and informative. This didn’t derail the process or allow learners to deviate from our objective in any way. In fact, it expanded our opportunities to learn tremendously.
• For instance, we were able to study how researchers and writers use different processes. As teachers, we were also able to provide targeted instruction that was truly aligned with what we noticed about these specific learners as they worked. Had we  provided a rigid process and set of directions or prompts from the outset, these discoveries may not have been made. Each student’s process would have remained hidden as they obediently adopted our own.
• This left me with the realization that in as much as choice attends to interest, there are times when it can enable a more genuine assessment of students. When we let these kids go and took a step back to simply capture what we were seeing, it allowed their varied strengths and needs to emerge. We couldn’t have planned ahead for this. We needed to pay attention during instruction, capture what we were noticing, and respond to that data.
• Those responses weren’t merely about intervening in order to address areas of need, surprisingly. We also found ourselves responding by leveraging the strategies and realizations students shared with US. Much more on that to come, but one quick example: when one of the students in the room used his hands to physically demonstrate what a connection looked like, it became a powerful cue that seemed to resonate with the rest of the class. We continued to use it throughout the writing process whenever writers struggled to connect facts and align them to appropriate topics.

To be continued……

“Things that hatch!” They sang.

“And how have we been doing that?” Heather asked.

A jumble of ideas poured out of them at once, and fingers were pointing to different corners of the room, where a bunch of creatures were in the process of hatching:

“Today, we’re going to take the next step in our learning. We’re going to become researchers. I wonder what that word means,” Heather prompted them, and everyone started thinking aloud.

“I think it means I need to search for something,” Zion told her.

“I already did some research!” Brianna said. ” I know a lot of facts about things that hatch from eggs from watching our chicks and butterflies. But I want to find out more.”

“When we research, we use different tools to uncover facts and learn things we didn’t learn before,” Heather explained. “What kind of tools can we use?”

“We can ask our friends!”

“We can ask our parents!”

“We can look on the computer!”

“We can look in books!”

“We can use the iPad! You are going to let us use the iPads today, right Mrs. Bitka?”

“Sure I am. First, let me show you a strategy that can help you make notes as you find facts during your research today,” she said, grabbing Norma Gentner’s book, What Hatches from an Egg? “I know we read this last week, but we’re going to reread it together today as researchers on the hunt for what?”

“FACTS!”

Heather used the first story in Gentner’s text to demonstrate what facts were and explained that researchers often collect facts by making notes. Then, she modeled visual note-making for her very eager audience:

“Next, I’d like YOU to show me that you know what a fact is by making a note of your own about a fact that you found in the story,” Heather challenged them. They fired up their iPads and opened the Draw 4 Free app without prompting. As they worked, we were able to:

• Check in with each of them in order to assess their understandings of what facts were
• Assess their abilities to locate a fact within the mentor text that was studied
• Provide feedback to these researchers on their note-making skills

“I like your use of color here,” I suggested to one writer. “It helps me understand what color the chick’s wings are. I’m wondering what they would feel like if I touched them though? Do you know?”

“If the chick just hatched, they would feel wet,” Austin told me. “Then, they might get fluffy.”

“Those are important details. How can you add them to your notes?”

He leaned into his iPad and began drawing again.

Our formative assessment revealed that each student was able to identify and make notes about at least one fact from the reading.

Next, they were invited to research other creatures that hatched from eggs.  This began with a bit of enthusiastic book-browsing:

Some decided to roam the room a bit and skim the wide variety of books available to them before selecting a topic. Others seemed to know which creature they were interested in learning more about and went in search of the texts that would help them.

Once they settled in, they began reading independently and flagging the facts that they found:

Then, they began making notes for each of the facts that they gathered:

As they worked, Heather, Sheri, Kay, and I chatted with each of them once again, asking them to share their notes with us and to describe what their visuals revealed.

We learned a great deal from them, and as the morning block drew to a close, we began reflecting on the spot about what we were noticing, what we were wondering, and what we would do next as a result.Most of the kids flagged every single fact that they stumbled upon in their reading. This generated an abundance of facts, some of which were relevant to multiple topics. Other facts didn’t seem important at all. This provided us an entry point into the next lesson that we would teach: how to choose ONE topic and connect the most important facts from our reading to it.

We wondered how their process might have been altered had we provided them guiding questions from the outset. In the end, we were glad that we decided not to do this for several reasons, though. First, we knew that doing so would limit their exploration of the books that they were reading. These questions might have narrowed their paths and the amount of information they took in. We also thought it was important to see what would happen if these researchers were left to their own devices. Our job involved paying close attention to what they were teaching us about their actual needs as they worked and to respond in ways that were aligned. In order to enrich our perspective about this a bit more, Heather decided to print each researcher’s visual notes that evening, and we met the following morning to discuss what they revealed.

To be continued……

This post is the third in a series about Heather Bitka and her kindergarten researchers.

• To learn more about this project’s purpose and outcomes, you might want to read the first post.
• If you are interested in understanding how this project enabled the teachers and coaches involved to position themselves as learners, you can click through to the second post.

• I introduced Heather in this post.
• The prologue to this learning experience, which explains our work as co-learners with greater depth, can be found here.
• This post speaks to the common questions that began provoking us right from the start and what the adults involved hoped the kindergarteners would know and be able to do when we were finished.

Today, I’ll share a bit about how each of us pursued those guiding questions, despite the fact that our roles and purposes within this experience were different.

When I say that these questions began provoking all of us, I mean that literally. We didn’t generate these questions prior to our work together. We aligned purposes and outcomes to the distinct roles and needs of different learners involved in this process, but these questions emerged on their own, revealing themselves early on in the unit and winding a common thread through our work together, regardless of what we were studying individually.

For example, it is easy to see how these questions are relevant to kindergarteners engaged in research about creatures who hatch from eggs.

But they also worked for Heather as she put a critical eye on her curriculum design and instructional practices.

And Kay Shanley, the classroom aide who supports Heather and her students, kicked questions like these around as she considered the role of technology in helping learners seek, record, and share their learning with increasing independence.

They also worked for Sheri and I  as we invested ourselves in a deeper study of  instructional coaching practices.

Some discoveries and things I’m still reflecting on:

• Questions like these transcended the content of the unit, which opened up new possibilities for learning and also created some unexpected challenges. I’m rethinking which content and skills were really at the “center” of this unit, and I know that Heather and I will have time to talk about this more later this week.
• Attending to these questions purposefully also seemed to create greater opportunities for children and adults to shift between the roles of teacher and learner. I was blown away by how interested these kindergarteners were in sharing their unique expertise, walking me through their processes, and revealing the details of their thinking and how it was changing. I truly learned a ton from them, and will be devoting the posts that follow this one to a bit of elaboration around all of that.
• Finally, it seemed that revisiting the questions, reflecting on them in different ways, and opening dialogue around what we were learning as a result amplified their power and inspired the creation of new ideas and the consideration of different possibilities.
• Again, these were not pre-planned essential or guiding questions. They were questions that seemed to be relevant to each learner’s work, and we discovered them by paying careful attention to what was happening while we were learning. Could they evolve into those other forms? I think so, and just as I have been intrigued by the idea of designing rubrics with students, I’m now very interested in studying what would happen if students actually worked with teachers to fleece out the essential or guiding questions from a unit as they were experiencing it.

• It’s very popular to apply solutions to perceived reading problems before we’ve accurately defined what the problem may really be. For example, it’s easy to assume that all reading issues at the primary level are about fluency (this is the trend now, but it used to be phonics in the past). At the middle and high school level, we assume it’s all about comprehension. Assessment can empower us to make better decisions.

• “If we can’t read a text, we can’t learn from it (but we can learn).” Fisher shared his own personal connections to this reality by demonstrating how, when confronted with the textbook for a college level course on learning and the brain, he quickly assessed his inability to read it and chose instead to build his background knowledge using non-traditional texts that he found on his own. I think it could be powerful to teach children how to do the same, and I’ve already begun thinking about what this kind of instruction would look like.

• Fisher claimed that we are overdosing learners on feedback (and what he calls feedbad) without using what we’ve learned about student performance and their specific needs to inform our next instructional steps. “We need to make feedback actionable.”

• In order to accomplish this,  formative assessments must be purposeful, and the data we capture from them must be as reliable as possible. We ensure this by: establishing learning targets, checking for understanding frequently, providing immediate feedback to learners and strategies that will help them move forward and capturing our data before we give it all away. Quality feedback is: timely, specific, understandable for students, and actionable.

• Over the last several years, I’ve been learning more about how to capture formative assessment data and code and catalog errors in ways that can inform instruction. Frey shared some simple but very powerful processes and recommendations that I’m looking forward to exploring with teachers this spring and summer.

• Fisher also spoke to quality assessment design, demonstrating how teachers can create diagnostic distractors on assessments and catalog the findings appropriately in order inform our own learning about kids in far more valid ways. Unless we do this, we tend to over-generalize the findings and re-teach in global ways rather than supporting the distinct needs of students and sub-groups. When learners make errors, we must consider what it shows us about their thinking. If we aren’t documenting this, it’s impossible to remember it well, respond accurately, or study progress over time. Data does drive instruction, but data are not merely numbers.

Jessica Gentner, Fifth Grade Teacher at Lindbergh Elementary School in Kenmore, New York

Parent-teacher conferences were different for our family this year, thanks to our school district’s recent decision to move toward standards-based grading and report cards at the elementary level and this very talented teacher’s thoughtful use of formative assessment processes. Jessica Gentner is our daughter Nina’s fifth grade teacher. Quite a few parents are more than impressed by the fact that she knows her stuff. I’m impressed because this doesn’t seem to stop her from learning more.

See that binder in front of her? It houses her curricula. The research that her curricula is guided by is included at the front of this binder, and as I flipped through the pages, I noticed:

• That she took pictures of the posters that emerged from the critical thinking lessons she facilitated throughout the year
• Behind each poster, she annotated learning targets, assessment moments, promising instructional strategies, resources, and other tools that she is testing (“This is all a work in progress,” she assured me).
• The binder, her “grade” book (which includes a lot of data but very few numbers), the report card, and the formative assessment findings she shared with me were tightly aligned and enabled her to begin an evidence-based conversation with Nina and me about her strengths and the goals that she might consider setting as a learner.

Nina didn’t need as much help with this as I thought she might, though. It’s very clear to me that Mrs. Gentner has worked hard to help her students conceptualize what quality work, critical thinking, and reflection entail. Nina not only shared these understandings with me, she applied a bit of what she learned during our conference, when her teacher asked to demonstrate her ability to analyze and then synthesize text.

Maybe I should apologize for this, but I will admit that I was surprised that she really knew what these words meant. When she went about the business of analyzing and synthesizing in front of me? Well, it’s without shame that I admit I nearly wept with gratitude. And so it is Jessica Gentner who captures the first spotlight on what I hope will be a regular feature here at my little blog: WNY Educator Wednesdays. For years now, I’ve been able to work and learn from such incredible local teachers. I figure it’s time I share some of them with all of you, and my blog allows me to do that.

As Mrs. Gentner and Nina chatted more about all of the learning and work that has been going on in their classroom this year I found my attention drifting toward the walls of the classroom, which provided me an even greater education. Over the years, I’ve been in many classrooms that feature posters aligned to the comprehension strategies, the writing process, or literary forms. The posters are nothing new. The level of instruction that is happening in Mrs. Gentner’s room is very different though, and her walls are a testimony to this. Again, I know that most teachers are fans of the flip-chart. But take a close peek at the construct of this:

This poster is one of many that line the walls of Mrs. Gentner’s classroom. They emerge from conversations and lessons with kids, like most tend to. But these posters are a bit different than those I tend to see because they empower young learners to critically analyze and share their thoughts independently.

Mrs. Gentner’s approach here reminds me of Jim Burke’s work relevant to sentence structures quite a bit (see page 16 of this handout). Rather than merely defining critical thinking skills for learners and expecting that they will employ them, both of these teachers arm students with starters and prompts that get them thinking and talking in meaningful ways. It makes sense that when kids know what synthesis sounds like, they are better able to synthesize. Beyond providing kids solid models, hand-outs, and notes for their binders though, Mrs. Gentner has transformed the walls of her classroom into a living resource. When she challenges her students to analyze, evaluate, synthesize, or connect to text, they can refer to these documents for help, if needed. They also serve as critical supports for student-led book clubs, small group text studies, and independent problem-solving. I’m imagining that these visuals allow for greater distributed practice over time, ensuring that kids actually need to rely on them less and less.

Over the years, I’ve led and observed many a think-aloud and mini-lesson. One of the greater challenges that I face in my own work is flipping the process into one that engages kids more than teachers and ensures that they are the ones who are doing the thinking and creating and sharing and learning. Mrs. Gentner’s approach accomplishes this, and my kid is providing me evidence that it works.

I’m so grateful that she came to Lindbergh this year, and I know that Nina is too.

If you’re interested in connecting to her, please let me know.

“Some of my former students came back to see me this year,” she said. “They graduated a couple of years ago. When they were here, they really struggled, but they wanted to do well, and they listened to me when I told them I could help them. I helped them read. I helped them write. I gave them strategies that got them through the tests. When they complained, I promised it would be worth it. ‘Don’t you want something better?’ I said to them. ‘Don’t you want choices in life?’ And of course they did, and they worked to prove it. It was a miracle that they didn’t drop out.”

She didn’t seem to feel victorious about this….or even particularly happy.

“When they walked across the stage to get their diplomas,  I knew they would go to college, and they did. For a year. I knew they wouldn’t make it there, and now they are back home again. They have no idea who they are….what they are good at….who they are meant to be. I see these kids on the street now. I see them hanging out in town, doing nothing that really inspires them.”

I nodded. Some of us really do get it. By “us” I mean staff-developer types. Even ones who appreciate data. And rubrics. And standards.

“I helped those kids get a diploma, but you know what? I failed them anyway, and that just haunts me. I can’t help it. Our drop-out rate is a problem, but it isn’t our only problem. If we’re going to do this right, we have to do something completely different from what we’ve done before. I will continue to help them read. I will help them write. They’ll pass the tests, and they will graduate. Don’t get me wrong, I am so glad to be able to use information about performance in better ways now. You know I can’t wait for us to work to our full potential there, but it isn’t enough.”

She’s right.

We need to define what dropping out really means. We need to admit that it’s happening after graduation too, and the consequences are just as dire.

All that stuff I’ve been saying this week about helping students understand who they are, what they love, and all that really matters to them? I know it’s about so much more than defining writing territories. Each of the students we work with, regardless of how they might perform within our classrooms or on the tests that we give them, has something significant to contribute to our classrooms…our schools…our communities….our world. It’s important to ask every student we teach the questions that will help them figure out exactly what this might be.

So, how can we begin connecting kids to the places and the people that might really benefit from their contributions?

And if we did this, would it keep them coming back to school during those moments when academic struggle might tempt them to opt-out? If we did this, would it help them engage in life beyond school the same way?

I honestly don’t know, but I’m grateful to be working with a group of teachers who are really eager to find out.

Anyone else interested in connecting with us as we begin this particular journey? We’d love to learn with you…….

Photo Credit: The roots of education are bitter via Schluesselbein2007 @flickR

“…simply treating formative assessment as a series of more frequent mini-assessments misses the point about its value to learning – a value that is rooted in theory and research. At a time of unprecedented opportunity, it is regrettable that roles of the teacher and the student in enabling learning are not at the center of current thinking about formative assessment within the proposed next-generation assessment systems. This may well result in a lost opportunity to firmly situate formative assessment in the practices of U.S. teachers.”

Formative Assessment and Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity?

Margaret Heritage, September 2010 in a paper for the Council of Chief State School Officers

As a teacher, a literacy coach, a professional development provider, and especially as a parent of children who frequently “take” formative assessments I remain as passionate about this topic as ever.

How do your school leaders define formative assessment?

What does the process look like?

How well does it align with the criteria shared in the document above?

Then, she asked me to tally up my own numbers. I’d actually never done this before, and it got me thinking a bit. I spent twelve years in the classroom, so I’d put my estimated total somewhere around 1400 students. Over the last eight years, I’ve facilitated pd in over forty different school districts and 120 different schools, I’d guess. That’s maybe….I don’t know……4000 teachers I’ve worked with or more on site, and I wouldn’t know where to begin tallying up the numbers of people who I might have worked with at different events.

“Makes the whole concept of meeting individual needs more than a bit daunting, don’t you think?” she asked me, and I have to admit: it does. It’s something I know I’m continually trying to improve the likelihood of, though. This hasn’t been without its successes and failures.

For instance, when I was in the classroom, I tried to learn as much about my students each fall by talking with them about their interests, their families, the things they loved about learning, and the things that drove them a little bit crazy. Over the course of the year, I think I got to know all of them well of course, but I never wanted to wait this long to begin. Doing so would result in missed opportunities. Most teachers do the same.

The same is actually true now that I work with teachers and administrators every day. Yet, it’s often assumed that professional learning can begin before the facilitator comes to know the audience they will be serving, the culture they will be working in, and what everyone might need. Talk about a recipe for missed opportunities…..and potential disaster. Time is always incredibly tight though, and finding space for this is hard, particularly when everyone is eager to just get started. In an effort to remedy this, I’ve taken some different steps over the last few years whenever I’ve been asked to begin work in a new place: I’ve started taking literacy walks within buildings, I’ve begun talking with kids about their experiences as learners, and I’ve opened dialogue with teachers and administrators prior to creating proposals or strategic plans.

These resources and conversations have been helpful to me as I’ve shaped my pre-pd plans:

• Different leaders have shared their experiences with walk throughs, including building principals and teachers like Bill Ferriter, who poses some thoughtful challenges to these practices.
• Literacy walk throughs often look a bit different and are used for different purposes. Scroll to the Staff Development section of this page to see Ellin Keene’s version of this.
• Chris Unger, a former researcher at Project Zero of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, shares his thoughts about listening to students here, as well as prompts.

The results from my own walks and talks have been as surprising as they are informative (which inspired a whole new set of questions to consider, of course). Hoping to write more about that tomorrow and share some of the tools I’ve used.

In the past, I’ve written about learning experiences, communities, and frameworks that have helped me become a more effective agent of change. Over the last two years, I’ve shifted my practice in another significant way: I’ve started asking kids, teachers, and administrators to develop rubrics that articulate the change they hope to see, what success might look like, and each level of development that might lie between the entry point into their work and the place where mastery could exist.

Doing so has enabled different groups of people within the same system to begin speaking the same language. This helps them hear each other better. It’s established greater clarity about expectations, and it’s ensured that they expectations are shared between groups rather than imposed by one group upon another in ways that leave people feeling devalued, confused, and frustrated. Most importantly, using rubrics has enabled everyone to work together in an aligned and coherent fashion without the need for quite as much outside facilitation. People know where they are going, why they are going there, and what it will look like when they’ve arrived. They also know that change may be incremental, and if so, they have some idea of what each phase might look like.

This simple shift in practice requires a bit of time and a commitment from everyone involved, but I’ve found it to be more than worthwhile. Over the last two years, I’ve helped groups design rubrics for initiatives relevant to curriculum mapping, curriculum design, formative assessment practices, guided reading practices, writing instruction, the use of reading and writing workshop, engagement, the use of project-based learning, and differentiated instruction. I have permission to share them too, so if you want to see, just let me know. The power doesn’t lie in these products, though. It lived inside the conversations that led to their creation and the conversations that continue, which will inevitably lead to changes that we make as we learn and grow together.

Over the last few years, I’ve come to realize that my greatest duty as a teacher in any capacity is to create the conditions that enable relevant (or at the very least meaningful) and engaging learning and work. These words possess a distinct and critical meaning, too.

This conclusion led me to another important discovery:  I need to become very critical of my own practices and processes as well as those that are imposed upon me. More and more often, I’m finding myself stepping back, slowing down, and thinking very carefully about how I might coach, teach, plan, problem-solve, and even parent in the “least invasive” way possible. What does this mean?

Well, for one thing, it means that while I rely on data to drive many of the decisions I make, I must be careful not to capture that data in ways that might feel invasive to the learners I’m working with or others I am serving. For instance, photos like the one above (taken during last summer’s Studio sessions) can provide me with very meaningful information relevant to our outcomes, but I don’t have to disrupt student-centered learning in order to capture it. In fact, I’m realizing that I rarely need to be invasive in order to assess learning. I also don’t need to stand at the front of the room or direct the train. If meaning and engagement are priority number one, then those things can’t be sacrificed to the gods of assessment or data-driven instruction. We’re losing too much time to this. We’re losing too many kids. I truly believe that we can’t improve what we do not measure, but I also know that the way we measure must be improved if we’re to truly create and maintain conditions for learning.

Many years ago, I actually thought this might be an either-or proposition. I’m realizing that it isn’t though and that in fact, skilled practitioners are often quite stealthy in their approach around assessment and the collection of meaningful data.What they learn enables them to be even less invasive teachers. It empowers them to put learners and learning at the center of their work rather than themselves and their own stellar but still teacher-driven plans. This has been one of the most exciting discoveries I’ve made, as it’s provided a lot of resolution around issues that have always seemed to plague me.

Teachers and leaders who get this give me so much hope, and more and more of them seem to be.

We’re teaching in profoundly exciting times.

I’m interested: how do you teach or lead in quiet and less invasive ways?

I’d like to learn more from others who are striving to seek resolution here as well, particularly literacy coaches, teachers of writing, and those charged with leading assessment initiatives. Who can you recommend?