In This Issue:

1. The psychology of inequality

2. Focusing classroom visits on student learning

3. A teacher finds a better, faster way to comment on student writing

4. Escaping “red-pen mode” teaching grammar

5. Project-based learning in social studies

6. Less is more: projects in Advanced Placement Government

 

Quotes of the Week

“Student learning is the most meaningful measure of all instructional practices and must remain the litmus test, or gateway, to determining future teacher practice.”

            Dwayne Chism (see item #2)

 

“[T]he beliefs that students hold about their writing capabilities powerfully influence their writing performance.”

Frank Pejeres et al. (quoted in item #3)

“There is no word so haunted in English language arts as ‘grammar.’”

Michelle Devereaux and Darren Crovitz (see item #4)

 

“The issue isn’t whether to lecture or assign reading, but when… The best time is when students are already engaged in a task for which the information from the text or lecture will be useful.”

            Walter Parker in “Projects as the Spine of the Course: Design for Deeper Learning” in

            Social Education, January/February 2018 (Vol. 82, #1, p. 45-48),

http://bit.ly/2Gp9yOw; Parker can be reached at [email protected].

 

“Under the current system, administrators create the structures and administrators come up with the ideas about what might work. Teachers are then assessed on the results. We need to think about how to shift risks back to where they belong, which is with those who make the decisions.”

            Mark Dynarski in “Why Is Accountability Always About Teachers?”, a Brookings

Institution paper, February 15, 2018, http://brook.gs/2FbXnoV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. The Psychology of Inequality

            In this New Yorker article, Elizabeth Kolbert describes the moment when Keith Payne first learned he was poor. He was a fourth grader in a Kentucky school, accustomed to being waved through the cafeteria line every day because the attendant knew he qualified for a free lunch. But one day a new person behind the cash register asked him for $1.25, which he didn’t have. “He was mortified,” Kolbert says. “Suddenly, he realized that he was different from the other kids, who were walking around with cash in their pockets… Although in strictly economic terms nothing had happened – Payne’s family had just as much (or as little) money as it had the day before – that afternoon in the cafeteria he became aware of which rung on the ladder he occupied. He grew embarrassed about his clothes, his way of talking, even his hair, which was cut at home with a bowl.”

            Payne, who is now a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill, remembers the incident vividly. “That moment changed everything for me,” he says. “Always a shy kid, I became almost completely silent at school.” In a book he wrote about inequality, Payne argues that even though compared to people in other countries, low-income Americans have a lot (central heating, indoor plumbing, electricity, refrigerators, televisions, microwaves, cell phones), what matters is the subjective experience of feeling poor. A sense of relative poverty also affects other behaviors, including spending more money on lottery tickets, seeing oneself as less competent, poorer health outcomes, and being more likely to buy into conspiracy theories.

            What about those who feel wealthier than others? Researchers have found that there’s no psychological payoff – they don’t feel happier or more satisfied. In fact, those higher on the U.S. status hierarchy can feel poorer than their neighbors or co-workers. “Unlike the rigid columns of numbers that make up a bank ledger,” says Payne, “status is always a moving target, because it is defined by ongoing comparisons to others.”

            Kolbert relates these findings to another strand of research on inequality – children’s sense of fairness. In one experiment, pairs of preschoolers were allowed to play with blocks and then rewarded for tidying up: one child in each pair got four stickers, the other two, regardless of how helpful they were putting the blocks away. Researchers observed that the children who got shortchanged were visibly unhappy (unfair!) and those who were over-rewarded noticed the unfairness and in many cases handed over one sticker to their partner, evening the score. This acute sensitivity to fairness at such a young age suggests that it’s hard-wired, not socially programmed. Humans resent inequity.

Back to relative wealth and poverty, it’s not poverty itself, but the feeling of being poorer than others, that activates this sense of unfairness. Kolbert notes that the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. has been growing in recent years. “It’s not greater wealth but greater equity that will make us all feel richer,” she concludes.

 

“Feeling Low: The Psychology of Inequality” by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker, January 15, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/the-psychology-of-inequality; Payne’s book is The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die (Viking, 2017).

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2. Focusing Classroom Visits on Student Learning

(Originally titled “Excavating the Artifacts of Student Learning”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, Dwayne Chism (Omaha Public Schools) cautions against judging teachers’ effectiveness based solely on their actions during a lesson and students’ apparent energy level. “Student learning is the most meaningful measure of all instructional practices,” says Chism, “and must remain the litmus test, or gateway, to determining future teacher practice.”

            How can administrators, instructional coaches, and other classroom observers zero in on student learning? Chism suggests ascertaining the lesson objective and then asking several students two questions as they work independently. Here are some responses in a third-grade class on prefixes:

Question #1: What are you learning?

-   “I don’t know.”

-   “I am circling prefixes that I find in sentences.”

-   “I am learning what a prefix is and how words change.”

-    “We are looking at root words and how they change.”

-   “We are learning to find prefixes and to know how they give new meaning to words and to use them in sentences to help us be better writers.”

Question #2: How do you know you are doing a good job?

-   “When my teacher tells me I am doing a good job.”

-   “If I am doing my best work and complete my assignment.”

-   “If I have read each sentence to find prefixes and can show my teacher how I use them in a sentence.”

-   “When I have identified the new meaning of the root words and share my answers with a partner.”

-   “When I have found the prefixes in the sentences and know the new meaning of each word. If I can use a prefix in a sentence and can share the meaning of my word with a friend.”

These comments are an excellent starting point for a conversation with the teacher afterward, along with reviewing samples of students’ work. In this lesson, students were asked to select a prefix they learned, combine it with one root word, and use the new word correctly in a sentence. Two responses:

-   The thunder recaused my dog to bark.

-   I was unhappy with my brother when he disappeared with the last cookie.

This post-observation conversation would help the teacher follow up with students who weren’t successful, as well as improving the lesson next time – especially checking for understanding to catch some of these problems in real time.

           

“Excavating the Artifacts of Student Learning” by Dwayne Chism in Educational Leadership, February 2018 (Vol. 75, #5), http://bit.ly/2FdWgFk; Chism is at [email protected].

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3. A Teacher Finds a Better, Faster Way to Comment on Student Writing

In this article in English Journal, teacher/author David Narter (Leyden Schools, Illinois) recalls that ten years ago, a student in his AP Language and Composition class asked him for more feedback on a draft essay he’d already marked up with a great deal of red ink. “My first inclination,” says Narter, “was to simply direct her attention to the copious notes I’d already left her – the circled misspelled words, the calls for stronger verbs – but she clearly wanted something more.” After they talked, the girl seemed satisfied, which puzzled Narter; what had he added? “I don’t know,” she said. “When I see the writing all over the paper, it just sounds like you’re saying ‘you’re a bad writer.’ But now, I feel like I can actually write this.”

Huh? “All I’d done was read the comments back to her,” he says, “but somehow, getting the face-to-face affirmation, along with the informal affirmations that are part of casual conversation, completely transformed my message for her.” This made Narter reflect on the wisdom of a sentence from an article by Frank Pejeres et al.: “It has now been well established that the beliefs that students hold about their writing capabilities powerfully influence their writing performance.”

The obvious takeaway from this experience was that Narter needed to do more one-to-one conferencing with students – but he knew that just wasn’t going to happen: “150 students x 15 minutes per essay conference = no life and a sore hand.”

After several more years unhappily wrestling with this dilemma, Narter finally found a solution: giving screencast video feedback on students’ writing. Here’s how it works. Students submit their writing electronically (in-class essays are scanned); Narter pulls up each student’s work on his computer screen, reads it quickly, and then uses an app (Movenote, Screencastify, or Snagit) to record his comments; students can use their devices to view their writing and hear his commentary. In this way, says Narter, “I am able to suggest changes, compliment their strengths, present habits of writing in need of improvement in this particular assignment, and contextualize these comments within an understanding of their work overall and the esteem with which I hold them as human beings.” And there’s more:

-   He can change a simple mistake in their writing (they can see this happening), change it back, and note its appearances later in the same piece of writing.

-   He can open several of the student’s documents at once to compare features and note progress.

-   He can refer back to rubrics and exemplar essays to suggest where things might have gone awry and provide clearer pathways to improvement.

He reports that he’s able to do all of this much faster than he could with a stack of papers and a pen – about five minutes per student essay.

            But it isn’t just saving time that makes video feedback better: Narter has found that the quality and tone of his comments are much improved. Video comments have helped him more closely follow these criteria for responding to student writing (authored by Richard Straub):

-   Give priority to global concerns of content, organization, and purpose before getting overly involved with style and correctness.

-   Limit the scope and number of comments.

-   Do not take control of a student’s text.

-   Make frequent use of praise.

-   Select your focus according to the stage in the writing process.

-   Gear comments to individual students.

-   Turn comments into a conversation.

Narter did a side-by-side comparison of conventional red-pen grading with video feedback on the same student essay. Not only did the traditional grading take him three times longer (15 minutes versus five), but he could see that his red-pen comments were “vague, diagnostic, mechanistic, and… convince kids that they are ‘bad writers.’ More importantly, they emphasize the notion that writing is about the objective notion of getting it correct.”

After several years successfully giving video feedback, Narter realized he was providing only one side of what could be a dialogue: “Here I was talking about their writing when their perceptions are just as, if not more, valuable.” So he began asking students to submit brief video portfolios of their written work three times a year. Here’s the format students follow:

-   Review at least two different assignments.

-   Begin with an outline previewing the foci of the screencast, with two strengths and two weaknesses you’ll be identifying.

-   Choose from a list of foci, such as syntax, handling of source material, and paragraph unit.

-   Focus on one complex item (e.g., cohesion) that we’ve been studying in class.

-   Don’t simply summarize my video comments.

Narter says these portfolios are the highlight of his year: “I can’t wait to hear the students’ voices over their videos of their essays as they laugh about this or that stupid mistake they made over and over again on some essays they barely recognize as their own, or proudly present their best sentences, explaining to me why they’re good.”

            This year, Narter added a third innovation: he e-mails incoming students and asks them to submit a brief video introducing themselves and their writing. “I ask them to identify what they feel they do well, what they feel they need to work on, and what they want to learn about in the coming year,” he says. “The videos are creative and hilarious, and they remind me, as the school year begins, that the students sitting before me are on a path upon which they have had many successes and many failures, but they are anxious about this next oasis of knowledge and the skills they will acquire. Most importantly, their first communication with me is one in which they fully control the message.”

 

“‘The First Essay I’d Like to Show You…’: 1:1 Digital Video for Writing Assessment and Reflection” by David Narter in English Journal, January 2018 (Vol. 107, #3, p. 106-109),

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/1073-jan2018/EJ1073essay.pdf; Narter can be reached at [email protected].

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4. Escaping “Red-Pen Mode” Teaching Grammar

            “There is no word so haunted in English language arts as ‘grammar,’” say Michelle Devereaux and Darren Crovitz (Kennesaw State University) in this article in English Journal. “Utter it in a classroom and call forth a legion of negative associations. Endless arcane rules never mastered. The tedious trivia of worksheets and drills. Essays marked in frustrated teacher shorthand. Watch students resign themselves to another trek through the academic wastelands, self-doubts confirmed: I’m not good at this, I don’t know this, I’ll never get this.”

            Devereaux and Crovitz believe there’s a way to reframe the teaching of grammar. Rather than focusing on grammatical correctness, with its top-down, negative, schoolmarm associations, they suggest calling this part of the curriculum language study and focusing on grammatical fit, “with students recognizing the power of specific language choices and the range of rhetorical options for communication, whether academic, professional, social, or personal.”

“Language isn’t a matter of right and wrong,” continue the authors; “it’s about getting things done by knowing the context and acting intentionally on that information. We have to be confident enough as teachers to face the holes in our own grammar knowledge and curious enough to pay attention to how language works in myriad ways around us.” They believe that changing the label can make a significant difference in how grammar is seen in the classroom:

-   Language study helps students “crack the code” of Standard American English (a.k.a. Academic English), which can be seen as a foreign language in which none of us were raised as native speakers.

-   Language study focuses on the region between single words and the larger passage – the way writers, speakers, or composers express themselves in a line, stanza, or paragraph.

-   Language study aligns with ELA goals from kindergarten through college.

-   Language study accepts students as legitimate language experts in their own right.

Experts? Really? Yes, say Devereux and Crovitz: “Research indicates that by 18 months, children are mastering basic language structures. By the time they enter high school, students can be quite sophisticated – and even brilliant – with what they can do with words. They’ve used language to talk their way into advantageous situations and out of troublesome ones, to entertain and impress their friends, to counsel, console, and cajole. Their language use identifies them as members of specific communities and cultures, and whether consciously realized or not, they can shift between registers and dialects depending on the situation. They’ve had years of experience processing language, and while they may not know the terminology or be metacognitively practiced, they have a deep familiarity with the structures of English.”

The trick is for ELA teachers to acknowledge students’ inchoate language savvy and leverage it to make grammar an understandable and important part of the broader curriculum. The authors suggest several “low-risk forays into language options, playful experiments that position students as inquisitive and capable, able to draw usefully on the resources of experience:”

• Manipulating word endings and parts of speech – Show how adding –ish to the noun child produces an adjective, childish, how adding –er to the verb play produces a noun, player. “First-language speakers know innately which suffix belongs to which lexical category without formal instruction,” say Devereaux and Crovitz. “This can seem miraculous to students, as the meanings seem to emerge from their own minds.” A class might then Google search a list of noun and adjective suffixes, create amusing new words (monsterism, monsterful, monsterdom, monsterable, monsterless) and invent imaginative sentences (The monsterless house sat quietly in the woods. Monsterism is the process of creating creatures in the lab.)

• Understanding adjective sequence – Native speakers know intuitively that there’s an order in which adjectives should be used – for example, the sentence Madeline gazed up at the ancient, beautiful, round, big moon just sounds wrong. Students might be given a group of adjectives for nouns (opinion – best, ugliest; size – small, gigantic; condition – new, wet, torn; age – young, ancient) and asked to sequence them in a way that feels right. They’ll notice commonalities among classmates and see their intuitive grasp of how words interact.

• Thinking about phrases as language chunks – Our brains process language in phrases and clauses, say Devereaux and Crovitz, and this exercise helps students manipulate language chunks: a class is split into groups and each one must take a long, convoluted sentence and pluck out one, then two, then three words in turn so the sentence still makes sense. The process is then reversed, with groups experimenting with adding words while maintaining the overall sense.

• Using sentence modifiers can tweak the meaning – Students are asked to write a simple declarative sentence about a recent event and then change the wording of one clause in a way that changes the reader’s reaction to the sentence. An example: (a) The White House released a statement late Tuesday night, expressing disagreement with the judge’s ruling. (b) The White House released a statement late Tuesday night, blasting the judge’s ruling as an “egregious overreach.”

• Using complex sentences to nuance an argument – Devereaux and Crovitz suggest getting high-school students to think through a debate with their parents on driving to a party with friends on a weekend night (your points, their concerns, your counterarguments) and then framing a complex sentence like: The party is several miles out of town; however, I am familiar with the area, and you know that I’m very careful driving at night.

• Using the passive voice to emphasize or deemphasize responsibility – “Adolescence and adulthood involve negotiating episodes that deal with guilt, responsibility, and blame,” say Devereaux and Crovitz, “and by extension, personal integrity and honor… Most young people are skilled at manipulating sentence structure to highlight or hide their roles when describing particular events….” Students might be asked to write two versions of a note to a friend explaining that a borrowed Frisbee ended up getting lost in a lake. In the first note, you take the blame for losing the Frisbee; in the second, you tell what happened but avoid responsibility. A discussion of whether “the Frisbee got lost” is a lie or a half-truth can be extended to other statements:

-   I flunked the class vs. The teacher flunked me.

-   We broke up vs. I got dumped.

-   I got into an accident vs. I wrecked the car.

Once aware of these nuances, students can seek out other examples in media reports, celebrity statements, political non-apologies, and public confessions.

            • Using participial phrases as stage directions – Students are asked to imagine they are creating directions for actors in a play – for example, adding to the sentence John picks up the knife to capture anger and tension – Shaking with rage, John picks up the knife. Two others:

-   The young woman stands near the window. (mood: anxiety)

-   The president addresses the reporters (mood: determination)

What about students whose first language isn’t English? Devereaux and Crovitz suggest asking these students about nuances in their native tongues and being genuinely curious about how other languages work to create variations of meaning. For example, a first-language Spanish speaker would say me gusta, which literally translates to “it is pleasing to me.”

 

“Power Play: From Grammar to Language Study” by Michelle Devereaux and Darren Crovitz in English Journal, January 2018 (Vol. 107, #3, p. 19-25), http://bit.ly/2ByiOAZ; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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5. Project-Based Learning in Social Studies

            “Sitting in rows of desks listening to a teacher and doing worksheets and textbook assignments is not stimulating, and not how students learn best,” says John Larmer (Buck Institute for Education) in this article in Social Education. He believes project-based learning is far more likely to engage students and result in long-term retention of key concepts, knowledge, and skills. Sure, there’s a place for appropriate lectures (brief), textbook passages, and even worksheets, but Larmer says well-crafted projects should be the heart of a social studies curriculum, connecting students to their communities, preparing them for college and careers, and fostering democratic citizenship. Projects can be effective from K to 12, lend themselves to interdisciplinary units, and benefit students at all achievement levels and in all types of classes, including Advanced Placement.

There’s one more benefit: projects are much more fun to teach. “A good project not only engages students,” says Larmer, “it engages teachers, too.”

            The problem is that projects have a bad name in some quarters because they haven’t always been conceived and implemented in ways that garner these benefits. Some common problems:

-   Students working in groups with one student doing all the work;

-   Parents over-supporting their children;

-   “Make something” projects like building a model of the Alamo or a Civil War battlefield diorama or creating a poster of the solar system or a famous inventor;

-   Students using commercial materials for projects (in California, Target sells kits for a perennial 4^th-grade project that asks students to build a model of a Spanish mission);

-   Dreary PowerPoint presentations largely copied from websites with no critical thinking or creativity.

Projects like these don’t teach the central content of a unit but serve as a “dessert” or “side dish.”

            So what does a good project look like? In place of the low-rigor, low-effort California build-a-mission project (part of a unit on the Spanish colonial period), Larmer suggests giving students a mocked-up letter from the Archbishop of Mexico, dated 1818, that puts students in the role of advisors asked to decide where the 22^nd mission ought to be built and what it should look like. Students have two weeks to prepare a presentation for the archbishop demonstrating their knowledge, explaining their rationale, and using visual aids (including a model). This project gets students engaged in learning the history of California’s indigenous tribal people, the area’s geography, and European colonial expansion.

            Larmer and his colleagues have sketched seven elements of what they call a gold-standard project:

• A challenging problem or question – Students need to solve the problem or answer the question, which is posed at an appropriate challenge level.

• Sustained inquiry – Students are engaged in a rigorous, extended process of asking questions, finding resources, and applying information;

• Authenticity – The project includes a real-world context (or a good simulation), tasks and tools, and impact – or it speaks to students’ personal concerns, interests, and life issues.

• Student voice and choice – Students are asked to make some decisions about how they work and what they ultimately create.

• Reflection – The projects builds in opportunities to think about the effectiveness of learning experiences and products and how obstacles were overcome (or not overcome).

• Critique and revision – Students get detailed feedback on their process and products based on known standards and rubrics.

• Public product – Students present, display, and explain their work to an audience beyond the classroom.

Larmer concedes that not all projects have all these elements. “The Gold Standard is meant to be aspirational, not a barrier,” he says, “especially if teachers are new to project-based learning.” He lists some possible projects:

-   A debate, speech, social media campaign, or multimedia presentation on a current event or issue – the more local and personally relevant the better;

-   A museum exhibit about a historical time, place, person, event, or development;

-   A proposal for a monument that explains a historical event or development;

-   A simulation of a situation in which people in the past or present have to solve a problem, make a decision, or advise a leader;

-   A podcast, guided tour, field guide, or annotated online map about local history;

-   An action or service learning project to benefit the community.

 

“Project-Based Learning in Social Studies” by John Larmer in Social Education, January/ February 2018 (Vol. 82, #1, p. 20-23), www.socialstudies.org; Larmer can be reached at [email protected]; for more information on projects, see www.bie.org/resources.

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6. Less Is More: Projects in Advanced Placement Government

            In this article in Social Education, Katie Piper (Bellevue, Washington Schools) and Jerry Neufeld-Kaiser (Seattle Public Schools) say the jam-packed Advanced Placement curriculum “often leaves teachers catching their breath at the end of the year, hoping they covered all the content in enough detail by exam time.” Piper and Neufeld-Kaiser push back on the common belief that AP classes “have to be synonymous with frantic coverage.” Project-based learning, they say, is a way to deepen students’ understanding and skills while still covering the curriculum.

They go on to describe the Knowledge in Action curriculum, which uses simulations to engage students in the core content of AP U.S. Government. The course consists of five political simulations:

• Students are delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and debate the merits of the Constitution, study the tenets of federalism, and decide whether the federal government or state governments should make important decisions.

            • Students are candidates, campaign managers, media reporters, party operatives, and members of interest groups in a U.S. presidential election.

            • Students are members of Congress charged with passing laws.

            • Students are political advisors to interest groups charged with creating comprehensive political action plans for their clients.

            • Students are Supreme Court justices and lawyers holding mock court hearings on landmark cases.

            Piper and Neufeld-Kaiser describe how they tackle the Supreme Court simulation in their AP classes. This is a particularly daunting part of the AP curriculum; until this year, students were expected to be familiar with 40 to 60 Supreme Court decisions (now the number has been cut to 19). Piper used to divide students into groups and have them do PowerPoint presentations on all the cases (this was deadly). Now she focuses on one case for each major concept (e.g., freedom of speech, affirmative action) and students take roles arguing the case, critique and revise the legal arguments, and make connections to other cases, including some currently before the Court. Her students “know fewer cases better,” says Piper, “and more importantly, they learn an authentic skill – written and oral legal communication. They also have a lot more fun!”

            Neufeld-Kaiser uses a slightly different approach in his classes, choosing three major concepts (free speech, affirmative action, and separation of church and state), focusing on a landmark case for each one, and having students study the precedents established and argue the cases in a mock courtroom. “The student lawyers report that they feel a little nervous in our moot court simulations,” says Neufeld-Kaiser, “with the student justices interrupting to question them, and with half the class watching. But they also say this method works well for them to learn how free speech works, because they really have to understand what has been allowed and what hasn’t, and exactly why, to convince the justices… I also like this method because it’s more cognitively challenging than note-taking and memorizing.” Students are then asked to write a ruling as if they were writing for the majority of judges. This approach doesn’t cover all the cases, but students have a more in-depth understanding that they can apply to cases they didn’t study.

            Piper and Neufeld-Kaiser close with some practical tips for teachers new to project-based learning in AP Government:

-   Make the courtroom simulations as authentic as possible, perhaps by bringing in a legal expert from outside to act as chief justice;

-   Play up the drama by having judges wear graduation robes and student lawyers dress up (bring extra ties for students who forget).

-   Project an image of a court chamber and hang the U.S. flag.

-   Set a timer that buzzes to set limits on oral arguments.

-   Listen to a real court case on audio or video to know how justices and lawyers speak and behave.

-   Choose cases that have as much relevance to students as possible – for example, race in college admissions, prayer in schools, student rights in search and seizure, immigration, or criminal justice.

 

“Knowledge in Action: Social Studies Simulations as Project-Based Learning” by Katie Piper and Jerry Neufeld-Kaiser in Social Education, January/February 2018 (Vol. 82, #1, p. 30-34), www.socialstudies.org; the authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

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