In This Issue:

1. Five myths about technology in schools

2. Using a daily poem to jump-start high-school English classes

3. Question-asking as a key 21^st-century skill

4. The best way to teach decision-making skills

5. Helping students be critical media consumers in an election year

6. Science teachers who know students’ misconceptions get better results

7. Teacher teams as powerful engines of change

8. Robert Slavin on the success and promise of Reading Recovery

9. How a cultural experience can change a student’s life

 

Quotes of the Week

“It’s orange juice for some, orange drink for others.”

            Tommy Chang, Boston Public Schools superintendent, commenting on the contrast

between fourth graders in advanced-work and regular-education classes, quoted in “Fourth Graders Are Getting Unequal Educations, Says Chang” by Jule Pattison-Gordon in The Bay State Banner, March 24, 2016 http://bit.ly/1UpFxmg

 

“There is no point in producing people who have only met people like themselves.”

            Patrick Derham, headmaster of Westminster School in England, in “Britain’s Exclusive

Schools Try to Be a Little Less So” by Stephen Castle in The New York Times, March

6, 2016, http://nyti.ms/22HllkA

 

“The purpose of teacher evaluation is to accelerate professional growth and development that leads to instructional improvement and greater success for students, not to create anxiety and concerns about job security among educators.”

            The Aspen Institute, “Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems: A Roadmap for

Improvement” March 2016; the full report is at http://bit.ly/1UpsT6U

 

“We can’t shift the sex education paradigm until we acknowledge the monumental changes in American society and in young people’s physiology that have coalesced to create a 12-13-year gap between sexual and reproductive maturity and age at first marriage. In the absence of adult preparation and guidance, how surprised should we be that so many young people turn to pornography and hookup culture?”

Deborah Roffman in a letter to The New York Times, March 25, 2016, responding to Peggy Orenstein’s article, “When Did Porn Become Sex Ed?” http://nyti.ms/1XY65cl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Five Myths About Technology in Schools

            In this article in American Educator, Pedro De Bruyckere (University College in Ghent, Belgium), Paul Kirschner (Open University, the Netherlands), and Casper Hulshof (University of Utrecht, the Netherlands) address some common misconceptions about how computers, smartboards, and tablets are affecting teaching and learning:

            • Myth #1: New technology is causing a revolution in education. Actually, despite all the gadgets, classroom fundamentals have changed very little, say the authors. They quote Bill Gates saying, “Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record.” What matters is teachers, their instructional strategies, and how they interact with students. Computers and other pieces of technology are the medium through which instruction passes and have no more influence on student achievement than a grocery delivery truck has on our nutrition. Situations where researchers have found positive effects from technology (blended learning is one) can almost always be traced back to how teachers use the technology to supplement or amplify their pedagogy. Three areas have been particularly disappointing in terms of the supposed impact of technology:

-   Multimedia instruction accommodating different learning styles – Learning styles are not a robust foundation for customizing instruction.

-   Multimedia facilitating constructivist and discovery approaches – High-achieving students can benefit, but lower-achieving students do better with direct instruction.

-   Multimedia providing students with autonomy and control over instructional sequence – Very few students get this benefit; for most students, it has a negative effect.

The bottom line, say the authors, is that “the medium seldom influences teaching, learning, and education, nor is it likely that one single medium will ever be the best for all situations.”

            • Myth #2: The Internet belongs in the classroom because it’s part of children’s world. True, today’s youth are entranced (and skilled) with technology, but that’s mostly for social purposes. When students are polled about classroom preferences, there’s surprising support for traditional structures with only moderate use of technology. Given a choice of digital and real books, most students prefer the latter. Students advocate for regular access to human interaction and being able to work with a smart person at the front of the classroom.

            • Myth #3: Today’s “digital natives” want a new style of education. In fact, there is little hard evidence that today’s youth are innately tech savvy, avid multitaskers and collaborators, naturals with the language of technology, demanding instant gratification, and more. Yes, young people use their devices and the Internet heavily for personal empowerment, staying connected with friends, and entertainment, but their use of technology for creating content for academic purposes is limited. One study of tech-rich European countries found that only 36 percent of 16-year-olds said they knew more about the Internet than their parents. Studies in other developed countries including the U.S. found that there is actually no such thing as a generation of “digital natives.”

            • Myth #4: Technology is rewiring our brains in a harmful way. The authors are both reassuring and wary on this issue. There’s little evidence that devices and the Internet are making us dumber. In fact, say De Bruyckere, Kirschner, and Hulshof, being able to outsource retrievable memory items to Google may be making us smarter. But there is evidence that when children spend more than 1-2 hours a day looking at screens, they tend to gravitate toward shallower information-processing behaviors and develop patterns of multitasking that increase distractibility and depress executive functioning. More research is needed to draw firmer conclusions.

            • Myth #5: Young people don’t read anymore. This usually refers to book reading, and indeed, there has been somewhat of a decline across the developed world. However, kids are doing a lot of reading on their devices, much of it for pleasure, so the total amount remains quite high.

            The authors feel good about successfully puncturing these five myths, but they’re discouraged that the myths persist in spite of the evidence. Why? First, myths serve a function in any society, propping up “obvious” beliefs. Second, there’s no filter on the free flow of information these days – anyone can blog or post on Facebook without the intervention of an editor or fact-checker. Third, critical thinking skills aren’t what they should be and people blithely circulate and strengthen myths. After too much of this, it becomes difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.

What is to be done? The authors believe we need theories based on solid research methodologies rather than legends and hype. And they say educators should always keep this maxim in mind: “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.”

In a sidebar accompanying their article, the authors offer the following research-based rules of thumb for effective use of technology in classrooms:

-   Use graphic images in place of text wherever possible.

-   Stick to the most relevant material – students are distracted by irrelevant subtitles, nonessential illustrations, and duplicative narration.

-   Spoken narration accompanying images is better than text – it allows students to concentrate better on the visual information and avoid splitting their attention.

-   Work with relatively small chunks of learning material – better four 5-minute segments than one 20-minute marathon.

-   Let individual students stop, review, and repeat videos, animations, and dynamic images, but keep the sequence the same for all students.

-   Build in plenty of opportunities for students to practice what they’re learning in technology-based lessons.

 

“Technology in Education: What Teachers Should Know” by Pedro De Bruyckere, Paul Kirschner, and Casper Hulshof in American Educator, Spring 2016 (Vol. 40, #1, p. 12-18, 43), http://www.aft.org/ae/spring2016/debruyckere-kirschner-and-hulshof; this article is drawn from the authors’ book, Urban Myths About Learning and Education (Academic Press, 2015)

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2. Using a Daily Poem to Jump-Start High-School English Classes

            In this Edutopia article, Pennsylvania teacher Brett Vogelsinger says that for several years he’s started his ninth-grade English classes with a poem – among them, poems by Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Rumi, Basho, Shakespeare. “These voices, contemporary and classic, have helped define my classroom culture to such an extent,” says Vogelsinger, “that on the rare occasion when I postpone the ‘Poem of the Day’ until later in the class period, my students interrogate me about it. I confess that it makes me smile.” Here are four reasons he believes this is a valuable classroom routine:

• Poems can pack a lot into a few lines. It takes just a few minutes for students to read a short poem twice and dissect and analyze it. Some options:

-   Filling in a sentence frame: When the poem says _______, it suggests that ________.

-   Discussing the choice of words and the mood created by a poet;

-   Having students change the mood by changing just five words and the title.

Vogelsinger suggests these poems:

-   “Fog” by Carl Sandburg - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174299

-   “Wild Geese Alighting on a Lake” by Anne Porter – http://bit.ly/1PAtk6c

-   “Keeping Quiet” by Robert Bly – http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20150828

-   “The Balloon of the Mind” by William Butler Yeats – http://bit.ly/22TWh6x

-    “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar – http://bit.ly/1Rnux6C

He also recommends several books of haiku (Amazon links in the full article).

• Poems are intense. Unlike novels, which can take hours to forge an emotional link with students, poems can do so in a few minutes. “Even reluctant readers can be captured quickly by the right combination of words arranged into a powerful rhythm,” says Vogelsinger. Some suggestions:

-   “Tariff” by Michelle Boisseau – http://bit.ly/1SqDESK

-   “The Terrorist, He Watches” by Wislawa Szymborska – http://bit.ly/1WSEJEm

-   “Speak with Conviction” by Taylor Mali – http://bit.ly/1SgGxDb

• Poems connect to other reading. For example, a teacher might have students read “We Real Cool” by Gwendelon Brooks http://bit.ly/1SgGVl8 to introduce underlying conflict in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. The 13^th century Persian poet Rumi has written verses that presage specific lines in Romeo and Juliet: http://bit.ly/1WSEWr5. “Incorporating writing from a completely different culture that speaks to the same aspect of the human condition sends a powerful message about inclusion and diversity,” says Vogelsinger. He’s also used a haiku about a falcon http://bit.ly/1SqEU8q by An’ya, a reclusive poet from the Pacific Northwest, to make a comparison with Atticus Finch’s treatment of his children in To Kill a Mockingbird.

• Poems inspire writing. “When we share poems with students and invite them to respond with their own ideas and musings while imitating the writer’s form or style,” says Vogelsinger, “we empower them to develop a voice, to work at something that will eventually become their own.” When students read Elizabeth Coatworth’s poem “Swift Things Are Beautiful” http://bit.ly/1URjGEj, they’ll be off and running. The same might be true of “Shake the Dust” by Anis Mojgani http://bit.ly/1Te8dxs. Vogelsinger also suggests “Words That Make My Stomach Plummet” by Mira McEwan http://bit.ly/21P05nj and “What I Like and Don’t Like” by Phillip Schultz http://bit.ly/1pUgVpd to get students’ writing juices flowing.

 

“4 Reasons to Start Class with a Poem Each Day” by Brett Vogelsinger in Edutopia, March 11, 2016, http://www.edutopia.org/blog/start-class-poem-each-day-brett-vogelsinger

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3. Question-Asking As a Key 21^st-Century Skill

            In this article in Mind/Shift, Katrina Schwartz says getting the answers to straight-forward information questions is just a mouse-click away on the Internet. “But while computers are great at spitting out answers,” she says, “they aren’t very good at asking questions. But luckily, that’s where humans excel. Curiosity is baked into the human experience.”

            Questioning comes naturally to young children, but it “drops off a cliff” when they turn 5 or 6, says author Warren Berger. In school, he observes, “Time really conspires against questioning.” Classroom dynamics and curriculum coverage work against exploring thought-provoking queries. “Many kids don’t see asking questions as ‘cool,’” says Schwartz. “And the perception that question-askers are suck-ups or dorks probably also comes from fear. Many people feel vulnerable admitting they don’t know something. They are afraid to offer a window into their inner world by wondering out loud.”

But questioning is a highly valued skill for the 21^st century – in companies, in day-to-day interactions, and as citizens asking questions about the world, policies, and the actions of our government. Schwartz suggests five ways to help students become better question-askers:

• Make it safe. “Fear kills curiosity,” says Berger. “The two things do not exist very well together.” That’s why teachers need to be explicit in encouraging big-picture questions, letting students know that they’ll be on a learning curve as they get better at formulating good questions, and making it easier for shy students to get their questions out there by forming small groups or encouraging students to submit questions on cards.

• Make it cool. “The people who are really breaking new ground are the people asking questions,” says Berger. “Questioners are the explorers, the mavericks. If you are a questioner, you are going against the grain. That could appeal to young people.”

• Make it fun. Teachers can turn question-asking into a game by framing the process as a detective solving mysteries, puzzles, or riddles. Students can take closed questions and turn them into open questions and vice-versa and experiment with different lead-off words:

-   Why… ?

-   What if… ?

-   How might we… ?

-   How could we… ?

-   How should we… ?

• Make it rewarding. Some teachers respond to a thoughtful student question by saying, “That’s a great question” and moving on. Genuine interest and enthusiasm about a question may be all the reward some students need. Teachers could keep track of good questions and have students vote on the best question of the week, or add this question at the end of a test: What question should have been on this test, but wasn’t?

• Make it stick. To become a lifelong habit, asking good questions has to be a regular part of the school day. The comedian George Carlin had a routine on “Vuja de” that celebrated his ability to look at familiar situations in a fresh way (see the video in the link below). Teachers might ask students to look at an object in the classroom or their everyday lives in an entirely new way. “If you can instill this habit of mind in kids,” says Berger, “this is the key to success for innovators.”

“Kids need to learn during their time at school that they have the right to know,” concludes Schwartz, “to challenge assumptions and to dig deeper. Fostering this mentality in students can be challenging for teachers who are often complicit in systems of control over students. But often when teachers open the space for these questions, value them and explore them with students, a deep trust is built.”

 

“How to Bring ‘More Beautiful’ Questions Back to School” by Katrina Schwartz in Mind/Shift, February 9, 2016, http://bit.ly/1RCg2uv

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4. The Best Way to Teach Decision-Making Skills

            In this American Educational Research Journal article, Xin Zhang (University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign) and 13 colleagues report on their comparison of the impact of two different approaches to improving students’ proficiency as decision makers. The researchers studied 764 fifth graders in a number of high-poverty schools as they were taught the same curriculum unit over a six-week period. Some students worked in collaborative groups while others had traditional direct instruction. The researchers then assessed students’ ability to transfer decision-making strategies to a novel situation – they were asked to write an essay on an unrelated topic.

What were the results? Students were assessed on three aspects of decision-making:

(a) looking at more than one side of a dilemma, (b) considering all the possible information, and (c) weighing the importance of different pieces of information. The researchers concluded that students who were taught the unit in collaborative groups were significantly more proficient at applying their decision-making skills. Students who had direct instruction did no better than uninstructed control group students. What seems to have made a difference was that students in the collaborative groups heard conflicting views that pushed them to rethink their own preconceptions. “When making a decision,” say the authors, “the weighing of options builds on the recognition of the competing sides of a dilemma and awareness of various reasons that can be advanced on each side. Piaget maintained that real learning does not occur until children reach a state of disequilibrium when newly encountered information contradicts their previous beliefs.”

            One insight the researchers gained from observing classrooms was the way specific conjunctions were used:

-   Because and so to mark causal connections;

-   If and then to indicate temporal and logical relations;

-   But to introduce a counterargument.

In the direct instruction classrooms, teachers used these connecting words twice as frequently as teachers in the collaborative group classrooms – but in the collaborative classrooms, students used the words four times more frequently than students in the direct instruction classrooms. “The picture that emerges of the direct instruction classrooms,” say the authors, “is one in which the teacher does most of the reasoning, with students filling in small pieces when requested, where in the collaborative group classrooms, students do most of the reasoning, with the teacher occasionally redirecting when students go off track.”

 

“Improving Children’s Competence as Decision Makers: Contrasting Effects of Collaborative Interaction and Direct Instruction” by Xin Zhang, Richard Anderson, Joshua Morris, Brian Miller, Kim Thi Nguyen-Jahiel, Tzu-Jung Lin, Jie Zhang, May Jadallah, Theresa Scott, Jingjing Sun, Beata Latawiec, Shufeng Ma, Kay Grabow, and Judy Yu-Li Hsu in American Educational Research Journal, February 2016 (Vol. 53, #1, p. 194-223), available for purchase at http://aer.sagepub.com/content/53/1/194.

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5. Helping Students Be Critical Media Consumers in an Election Year

            “Being informed today requires being more vigilant and critical than ever,” says Stergios Botzakis in this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy article. Students need to get outside the cocoon of sympatico views and evaluate what they see and hear in the media. Some helpful questions:

-   Who made – and who sponsored – this message, and what is their purpose?

-   Who is the target audience and how is the message specifically tailored to that audience?

-   What are the different techniques used to inform, persuade, entertain, and attract attention?

-   What messages are communicated (and/or implied) about certain people, places, events, behaviors, lifestyles, and so forth?

-   How current, accurate, and credible is the information in this message?

-   What is left out of this message that might be important to know?

Botzakis suggests the following resources to help hone students’ critical skills. These are especially helpful in a raucous election year.

            • The Living Room Candidate www.livingroomcandidate.org - This site has TV commercials from every U.S. presidential election since 1952, with background information on each one, a visual display of how each electoral college vote turned out, and suggested lesson plans.

            • FlackCheck.org www.flackcheck.org - A compendium of resources on the techniques used in political advertising, including a section on “Patterns of Deception.” There’s also an analysis of the 1844 campaign pitting Abraham Lincoln against George McClellan, posing the question, “Could Lincoln be reelected today?”

            • Settle It! www.politifact.com/settleit - Produced by the fact-checking website PolitiFact, this site has a section titled The Argument Ender, a searchable collection of political statements about a variety of issues, with a full analysis of why they are true, mostly true, false, and outrageously false.

 

“Visual and Digital Texts” by Stergios Botzakis in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, March/April 2016 (Vol. 59, #5, p. 599-601), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/1SqJPpX

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6. Science Teachers Who Know Students’ Misconceptions Get Better Results

            In this article in American Educator, Philip Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) report their research findings on the types of teacher knowledge most likely to produce student learning in middle-school science classes. It turns out that teachers’ content knowledge is necessary but not sufficient; the teachers who got the best student results had solid content knowledge and were able to identify likely student misconceptions.

Here are two examples of physics questions showing the number of students who opted for the misconceptions (the correct answers are in italics):

• Eric is carefully watching a burning candle. After all the candle has burned, he wonders what happened to the wax. He has a number of ideas; which one do you agree with most?

-   The candle wax has turned into invisible gas. [chosen by 17 percent of students]

-   The candle wax is invisible and still in the air. [6 percent of students]

-   The candle wax has been completely destroyed after burning. [8 percent]

-   All of the wax has melted and dripped to the bottom of the candle holder. [59 percent]

-   The candle wax has turned into energy. [10 percent]

• A scientist is doing experiments with mercury. He heats up some of the mercury until it turns into a gas. Which of the following do you agree with most?

-   The mercury changes into air. [chosen by 12 percent of students]

-   Some of the mercury changes into carbon dioxide. [26 percent]

-   The mercury changes into steam. [14 percent]

-   The gas is still mercury. [38 percent]

-   The mercury is completely destroyed when heated. [10 percent]

Sadler and Sonnert provide other key concepts with a common misconception for each one:

Properties and changes of properties in matter:

Concept: A substance has characteristic properties.

Misconception: Boiling point varies with the amount of material.

Concept: Substances react chemically in characteristic ways with other substances to form new substances.

Misconception: Burning produces no invisible gases.

Concept: All substances are composed of one or more elements.

Misconception: Matter is not conserved.

Motions and forces:

Concept: Position can be used to represent an object’s motion.

Misconception: Objects that are speeding up cover the same distance per unit of time.

Concept: An object’s position, direction of motion, and speed are interrelated.

Misconception: Graphs of motion versus time are similar to the physical path followed

by the object.

Concept: Forces can act in the direction opposite to an object’s motion.

Misconception: Force is always in the direction of an object’s motion.

Transfer of energy:

Concept: Objects come to the temperature of their surroundings.

Misconception: Some materials are intrinsically cold.

Concept: Light propagates and interacts with matter, and it is passively detected.

Misconception: Light travels in a straight line even when it interacts with matter.

Concept: Electrical circuits provide a means of transferring electrical energy when heat, light, sound, and chemical changes are produced.

Misconception: Electricity behaves in the same way as a fluid.

 

“Understanding Misconceptions: Teaching and Learning in Middle-School Physical Science” by Philip Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert in American Educator, Spring 2016 (Vol. 40, #1, p. 26-32), http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/ae_spring2016sadler-and-sonnert.pdf

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7. Teacher Teams As Powerful Engines of Change

            In this article from Usable Knowledge, Leah Shafer reports on a study by Susan Moore Johnson, Stefanie Reinhorn, and Nicole Simon (Harvard Graduate School of Education) on what makes effective teacher teams. The research took place in six Massachusetts schools and involved content teams – focused on curriculum, lessons, and pedagogy – and cohort teams – focused on behavior, individual student needs, and school culture. The researchers found that five factors consistently contributed to a team’s success:

-   There was a clear, worthwhile purpose to meetings.

-   Teams met on a regular schedule, there was enough time for the business at hand, and the time was considered sacred.

-   Trained teacher leaders facilitated team meetings.

-   Administrators offered ongoing, engaged support and attention to the meetings and held teachers responsible for what they were supposed to accomplish.

-   Administrators looked for collaboration skills when hiring and gave teachers continual feedback that augmented the substance of team meetings.

Effective teacher teamwork had a positive impact in each of the schools, including:

-   Greater curriculum consistency across classes and grades;

-   Sharing the work of lesson planning;

-   Increased rigor and expectations for students – getting them to think “bigger and deeper about tough concepts”;

-   A support network for new teachers;

-   Opportunities for skill-sharing between veteran and novice teachers;

-   Frequent feedback from peers on lesson plans, behavior management, and pedagogy.

“Many factors contributed to these schools’ success,” says Johnson, “– careful hiring, frequent feedback on instruction, strong norms for both students and faculty, student supports, and skilled management – but it was teams that knit these components together for the good of students.”

 

“Teaching Together for Change: Five Factors That Make Teacher Teams Successful – and Make Schools Stronger” by Leah Shafer in Usable Knowledge, February 29, 2016,

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/02/teaching-together-change

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8. Robert Slavin on the Success and Promise of Reading Recovery

            “One of the very, very few unquestioned success stories of evidence-based reform is Reading Recovery,” says Robert Slavin (Johns Hopkins University) in this article in Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk. First brought to the U.S. from New Zealand in 1984, this one-on-one reading program for at-risk first graders now involves about 6,000 teachers and 47,000 students in 42 states. Slavin attributes this going-to-scale success to three factors:

            • Evidence – Studies have established the success of Reading Recovery since the 1980s, says Slavin: “What this means is that in schools throughout the United States and in other countries, there is a well-defined group of struggling readers that can readily be taught to read. The evidence establishes, beyond any doubt, that nothing about these children means they are doomed to fail in reading.” Of course not all children succeed after 12 or so weeks of Reading Recovery, but that provides an excellent diagnostic indicator of out-of-the-ordinary reading problems requiring more-intensive interventions.

            • Professionalism – The key to Reading Recovery’s spread has been high-quality professional development (including behind-the-glass observation and critique of every teacher conducting lessons), well-defined procedures, and adaptation in light of new data.

            • Community – Reading Recovery works through district partnerships with 19 universities around the U.S., with teachers and professors, says Slavin, “engaged in a process of learning and contributing intellectually to a whole that is bigger than themselves.”

            The problem, Slavin concludes, is that Reading Recovery and other primary-grade remedial programs are reaching only about 6 percent of the approximately 800,000 first graders nationwide with moderate to severe reading difficulties. “In a country as wealthy as the United States,” he says, “why should every struggling reader not have access to Reading Recovery or a tutoring program with equal evidence of effectiveness? The reading success of first graders is far too important to leave to chance, yet in this as in many other areas of education reform, vulnerable children are left to chance every day. Why can’t educators use what they know to solve the problems they can solve, while working at the same time to expand their knowledge?”

 

“Getting to Scale: Evidence, Professionalism, and Community” by Robert Slavin in an issue of Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk devoted to Reading Recovery, January-March 2016 (Vol. 21, #1, p. 60-63), http://bit.ly/1ZGmK5R

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9. How a Cultural Experience Can Change a Student’s Life

            George Martin, who collaborated closely with the Beatles throughout their years of musical creativity and innovation, died earlier this month at the age of 90. Growing up in a working-class family in England, Martin was inspired to embark on a musical career by a single event: a symphony orchestra gave a concert at his elementary school and he was instantly fascinated.

 

“Sir George Martin, the ‘Fifth Beatle,’ Dies at 90” by Douglas Wolk on NPR, March 9, 2016

http://n.pr/1ZH8kST; for a detailed New York Times article on Martin’s contributions to five Beatles songs, see http://nyti.ms/25t2sRp.

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