Recently in Alberta there has been a large to-do over the suspension and subsequent dismissal of high school teacher Lynden Dorval. The main issue involved in the disciplining of Dorval was his refusal to follow his school's No Zero policy for student assignments that did not get handed in. Many people are referring to Dorval as a "hero" for standing up to what they view as watered-down, permissive education.
Ken O'Connor, an internationally recognized expert on evaluation and grading wrote a good defence of No Zero policies in the Edmonton Journal in June. I want to explain and expand on some of the issues he raised.
The first thing that Dorval's supporters do not realize is that teachers following best practices do not use averages to calculate final grades. When you don't use averages, then giving a zero or not becomes irrelevant. A student who has done work to demonstrate the learning demanded by the course curriculum deserves to be recognized for that learning even if he or she has not done all the work. A student whose missed work means that he or she has not met all course expectation should not be granted the credit, even if an average of his/her marks would give a grade above 50%.
Secondly, allowing a teacher to give zeros allows both teachers and students to avoid responsibility. A student can choose to not do work and "take a zero", avoiding his/her responsibility to do school work. A teacher can give a zero to that student and avoid the responsibility that I feel a teacher should have to follow up when a student has a problem so significant that work does not get completed. I ask parents out there, if your child did not do a school assignment, would you want the teacher to give a zero and forget about it or instead follow up with the student (and maybe you too) about what the problem was and how it can be fixed?
The third point that Dorval's proponents seem to be missing is the idea that grades and marks should try to accurately reflect student learning. If a student does not produce work, assigning any mark to it actually makes no sense. It would be a little bit like a meteorologist saying "On Thursday it rained most places in the city but because of a technical problem I did not get a rainfall reading so I will treat Thursday's rainfall as zero". Assuming that a measurement should be zero because you were unable to take the measurement is going to skew your data.
Now that you have read this post (and Ken O'Connors piece as well, I hope) you should have a better understanding that No Zero policies are not about watering down education or being permissive with students. No Zero policies are about trying to provide the best educational and learning opportunities possible to our young people based on what we know right now. If you are looking for more information on current best practices in assessment and evaluation, checking out Ken O'Connors books is a great place to start.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Friday, September 28, 2012
Why I don't average student marks
A short while ago Janice Kennedy of the Ottawa Citizen wrote a piece about teachers ignoring what she called "educational kookiness". Reading that piece, I realized that she was looking at the process of determining marks for students as if it had not changed since she was a teacher. In particular, she is assuming the teachers determine a student's final grade by averaging all the marks that student has earned. This prompted me to come up with an example of why current best practices recommend against using averages to determine student grades.
Imagine that two students have written the same series of tests in a course. Each test reflects the cumulative knowledge of the student for the whole course at that point. Student A scores 80% on the first test, 70% on the second test, then 60%, 50%, 40%. Student B scores 40% on the first test, then 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%. If we determine final grades based on averages, then both students get the same grade, 60%. But clearly student B is improving his/her learning while it looks like student A is understanding less and less. There are more statistically sophisticated methods than simple averages that can be used to try and capture the trend being shown, but they are tricky and have potential flaws. The reality is that any given statistical method for calculating final grade will have weaknesses, so Ken O'Connor, a recognized expert in student evaluation, offers this as Guideline #6 in his book How to Grade for Learning K - 12: "Crunch numbers carefully, if at all."
So instead of crunching student results into an average, best practices call for teachers to use their judgement based on the most consistent student results, with the emphasis on the most recent. In the example above, the lack of consistency would mean that a teacher should focus on the most recent results which are 50% and 40% for student A and 70% and 80% for student B. These most recent results suggest that student A may not have learned enough to pass the course while student B's learning can fairly be evaluated as being in the low 70s. That is a big difference from giving both 60%.
Imagine that two students have written the same series of tests in a course. Each test reflects the cumulative knowledge of the student for the whole course at that point. Student A scores 80% on the first test, 70% on the second test, then 60%, 50%, 40%. Student B scores 40% on the first test, then 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%. If we determine final grades based on averages, then both students get the same grade, 60%. But clearly student B is improving his/her learning while it looks like student A is understanding less and less. There are more statistically sophisticated methods than simple averages that can be used to try and capture the trend being shown, but they are tricky and have potential flaws. The reality is that any given statistical method for calculating final grade will have weaknesses, so Ken O'Connor, a recognized expert in student evaluation, offers this as Guideline #6 in his book How to Grade for Learning K - 12: "Crunch numbers carefully, if at all."
So instead of crunching student results into an average, best practices call for teachers to use their judgement based on the most consistent student results, with the emphasis on the most recent. In the example above, the lack of consistency would mean that a teacher should focus on the most recent results which are 50% and 40% for student A and 70% and 80% for student B. These most recent results suggest that student A may not have learned enough to pass the course while student B's learning can fairly be evaluated as being in the low 70s. That is a big difference from giving both 60%.
Monday, September 24, 2012
No voluntary activities, now what?
For those of you reading this in "real time" you may know that as a result of the Ontario Provincial Liberal Government's Bill 115 (supported by the Conservative Party) all teachers in Ontario have lost the right to bargain contracts or go on strike. My response to my MPP about Bill 115 is posted on this blog. This left "withdrawal of voluntary services", not doing activities or events that are not in our contract or the Education Act, as the only method of protest for teachers. The union has only recommended that teachers not participate in voluntary activities as the union is not allowed to order such job action without a strike vote. As a side note, the strike votes are happening pretty much as I type. However, for the moment the decision to withdraw voluntary services is being made teacher-by-teacher or sometimes school-by-school. This means that some schools in the Ottawa public board (Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, OCDSB) are offering all sports and clubs, some schools are offering none and some schools are offering a partial selection.
This has made students unhappy as some of them have been more affected than others and many are annoyed about being "pawns" in a teacher-government dispute. However, teachers are also unhappy. First of course, we are unhappy about losing bargaining rights. But many teachers are unhappy about how losing extracurricular activities means losing opportunities to connect positively with students and opportunities to help students who may be having difficulties at school or at home.
As I was thinking about this problem, an idea came to me. It will not work for every teacher but if it works for any, it is better than nothing. The idea is this: take some of the time and energy that would ordinarily be devoted to extracurricular activities and devote it to helping a student or students in a different way. Maybe find some more time to offer extra help. Maybe find a way to offer extra, extra help for someone who really needs it. Maybe make an extra phone call to a parent every day just to stay in touch and keep lines of communication open. Maybe help a colleague with their prep or their marking so that they have more energy for their students. Anything you can do with that "extracurricular" time will be some small improvement in someone's life. And if you are anything like me as a teacher, then that is why you are in the profession.
This has made students unhappy as some of them have been more affected than others and many are annoyed about being "pawns" in a teacher-government dispute. However, teachers are also unhappy. First of course, we are unhappy about losing bargaining rights. But many teachers are unhappy about how losing extracurricular activities means losing opportunities to connect positively with students and opportunities to help students who may be having difficulties at school or at home.
As I was thinking about this problem, an idea came to me. It will not work for every teacher but if it works for any, it is better than nothing. The idea is this: take some of the time and energy that would ordinarily be devoted to extracurricular activities and devote it to helping a student or students in a different way. Maybe find some more time to offer extra help. Maybe find a way to offer extra, extra help for someone who really needs it. Maybe make an extra phone call to a parent every day just to stay in touch and keep lines of communication open. Maybe help a colleague with their prep or their marking so that they have more energy for their students. Anything you can do with that "extracurricular" time will be some small improvement in someone's life. And if you are anything like me as a teacher, then that is why you are in the profession.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Teaching Works of Art
Many years ago when I was a student at Queen's University, I was fortunate to take four courses with Peter Taylor, a terrific Math professor. Dr. Taylor is a terrific mathematician but he also has side interests in Biology (I did not know theoretical biology existed until I heard him talk about it) and education.
Earlier this year, I was able to attend his "Last Lecture" entitled "God is a Mathematician", and speaking to him briefly afterward I heard about his web site. When I find time, I look through his web site to see what gems I can find, because he has so many fantastic ideas and makes so many neat connections. Yesterday, I found this Dialogue (it deserves the capital D) which sparked fireworks in my brain about some of the difficulties I have seen while teaching.
Dr. Taylor's point in the Dialogue is that if you look at the content of an English course, it is normally full of works of art. There are poems, novels, plays, short stories and more that all have been found to have value, a connection to life, by many people. So, an English course by nature contains subject matter that is intrinsically interesting. I think that we all understand that not every student is going to be impressed by these works of art, but it gives the course a starting point rooted in reality, the reality that there is merit to these pieces.
In Mathematics, we typically focus on the building of technical skills, mostly revolving around addition, subtraction, multiplication, division of different mathematical elements. First, we work with natural numbers, then we work with fractions, then we work with variables, then we work with algebraic expressions. In a sense it is the same stuff over and over again, and so there is little wonder that students get bored. The questions/problems/challenges that have an interesting connection to the students' curiousities and lives are often put in the "extra", "challenge", or "extension" portion of the textbook and are rarely assigned by the teacher, usually because they seem too hard. Dr. Taylor's point is that these problems are hard, the same way that writing or reading a good poem is hard, but we still find the time to do that in our English courses, so why not do it in Math?
As I said above, these ideas ignited some fireworks in my brain. I have made a first attempt to put together a mathematical challenge to students that is, in its small way, a work of art. If you are interested in having a look, it is called the "One Shot Challenge". It is intended for Grade 10 Applied Math (Quadratics strand) and you can find it here on my wiki.
I welcome any thoughts and comments on my "work of art" as well as other ideas from this post, or any other.
Earlier this year, I was able to attend his "Last Lecture" entitled "God is a Mathematician", and speaking to him briefly afterward I heard about his web site. When I find time, I look through his web site to see what gems I can find, because he has so many fantastic ideas and makes so many neat connections. Yesterday, I found this Dialogue (it deserves the capital D) which sparked fireworks in my brain about some of the difficulties I have seen while teaching.
Dr. Taylor's point in the Dialogue is that if you look at the content of an English course, it is normally full of works of art. There are poems, novels, plays, short stories and more that all have been found to have value, a connection to life, by many people. So, an English course by nature contains subject matter that is intrinsically interesting. I think that we all understand that not every student is going to be impressed by these works of art, but it gives the course a starting point rooted in reality, the reality that there is merit to these pieces.
In Mathematics, we typically focus on the building of technical skills, mostly revolving around addition, subtraction, multiplication, division of different mathematical elements. First, we work with natural numbers, then we work with fractions, then we work with variables, then we work with algebraic expressions. In a sense it is the same stuff over and over again, and so there is little wonder that students get bored. The questions/problems/challenges that have an interesting connection to the students' curiousities and lives are often put in the "extra", "challenge", or "extension" portion of the textbook and are rarely assigned by the teacher, usually because they seem too hard. Dr. Taylor's point is that these problems are hard, the same way that writing or reading a good poem is hard, but we still find the time to do that in our English courses, so why not do it in Math?
As I said above, these ideas ignited some fireworks in my brain. I have made a first attempt to put together a mathematical challenge to students that is, in its small way, a work of art. If you are interested in having a look, it is called the "One Shot Challenge". It is intended for Grade 10 Applied Math (Quadratics strand) and you can find it here on my wiki.
I welcome any thoughts and comments on my "work of art" as well as other ideas from this post, or any other.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Teaching like a champion
I did get Doug Lemov's book Teach Like a Champion and I was very impressed. Before I read trhe book, I had thought that I would already be doing many of the 49 techniques that Lemov was going to describe. As it turns out, I was doing perhaps 6 of the 49.
The bad news is that I have a lot left to learn. The good news is that Lemov has done a great job of spelling out his techniques and showing how to do them in a classroom. The book also includes a DVD of examples of the techniques in use. I have not yet had a chance to look at the DVD, but I will see if I can get to it over the summer.
The interesting thing about the techniques listed in the book is that many of them are very small techniques that might save a few minutes a day. But, as Lemov points out, a few minutes here, a few minutes there, times about 200 days in a school year starts to add up to dozens of hours of extra teaching. And that extra time can easily be the difference maker for your students.
I would recommend Teach Like a Champion to any teacher who wants to improve their ability to reach their students.
The bad news is that I have a lot left to learn. The good news is that Lemov has done a great job of spelling out his techniques and showing how to do them in a classroom. The book also includes a DVD of examples of the techniques in use. I have not yet had a chance to look at the DVD, but I will see if I can get to it over the summer.
The interesting thing about the techniques listed in the book is that many of them are very small techniques that might save a few minutes a day. But, as Lemov points out, a few minutes here, a few minutes there, times about 200 days in a school year starts to add up to dozens of hours of extra teaching. And that extra time can easily be the difference maker for your students.
I would recommend Teach Like a Champion to any teacher who wants to improve their ability to reach their students.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Single Gender Schooling in the news
The Ottawa Citizen had an editorial today on the Toronto District School Board looking at opening an all-boys public school.
This issue of single gender schooling and classrooms has been in the news a bit over the last few years as parents, teachers, and administrators try to find ways of reducing the "achievement gap" between boys and girls in school. Now, as I blogged about earlier, we need to be a little bit careful when we talk about gaps. Still, there is quite a bit of anecdotal and research evidence that at least some boys are not being well served by our current education system.
One idea that comes up is the idea of single gender classes (in coed schools) or single gender schools. I did some reading today about single gender classes and the overall research seems to be mixed. I think the best quotes that I saw talked about the need for teacher training if single gender classes are to have an effect.
from Gender based courses:
Dr. Leonard Sax, director of the National Association of Single Sex Public Education, a nonprofit organization that supports the availability of same-sex educational programs when appropriate, said segregating classes without extensive teacher training and parental input can quickly backfire on administrators.
“You can engage girls in computer science. You can engage boys in art and creative writing. But that doesn’t happen automatically,” he said. “Just putting girls in one room and boys in another accomplishes very little. In can actually have adverse effects if teachers don’t have appropriate training.”
Without the proper training and without enough parental and administrative involvement, Sax said, the classes can reinforce society’s gender norms, not circumvent them.
“If you simply put girls in one room and boys in another, and teachers have not had appropriate training, the result is that you end up reinforcing gender stereotypes,” he said. “You end up teaching girls with shopping analogies and boys with sports analogies. That’s not helpful, because not all boys like sports and not all girls like to shop.”
Another point that I remember reading several years ago, but could not find when I went looking, is that many teachers naturally connect better with either boys or girls. I wish I could find the article where I first read this, but personally, it seems to be true. Our first assumption would likely be that men are better at teaching boys and women are better at teaching girls, but this is not always the case. I know that in my teaching, I have typically had a better teacher-student connection with the girls in my classes than with the boys. I have also run across an all-girls class taught by a woman where there was clearly a major lack of connection between the teacher and the students. This means that schools looking at staffing single gender classes need to be aware of the fact that it can be tricky to put the right teacher in front of a room full of boys or girls.
A final point goes to my wife's experience teaching English this year. She has embraced a lot of technology in the form of using wikis and a SMARTBoard interactive white board. Using technology, along with some other ideas she picked up from professional reading, has allowed her to bring in more interesting resources (e.g. Google Earth instead of a photocopied map), get students doing different activities than they normally have in an English class, and offer more choice to students. The response has been that several parents of boys have told her "For the first time, my son is enjoying English class." Now, typically, my wife has not connected super well with boys, but her differentiated teaching as well as adoption of useful technologies has let her get a lot more interest, enthusiasm and participation out of the boys in her class. So, in the end, maybe the way to fix the "gender gap" is just better teaching, not anything structural or administrative.
This issue of single gender schooling and classrooms has been in the news a bit over the last few years as parents, teachers, and administrators try to find ways of reducing the "achievement gap" between boys and girls in school. Now, as I blogged about earlier, we need to be a little bit careful when we talk about gaps. Still, there is quite a bit of anecdotal and research evidence that at least some boys are not being well served by our current education system.
One idea that comes up is the idea of single gender classes (in coed schools) or single gender schools. I did some reading today about single gender classes and the overall research seems to be mixed. I think the best quotes that I saw talked about the need for teacher training if single gender classes are to have an effect.
from Gender based courses:
Dr. Leonard Sax, director of the National Association of Single Sex Public Education, a nonprofit organization that supports the availability of same-sex educational programs when appropriate, said segregating classes without extensive teacher training and parental input can quickly backfire on administrators.
“You can engage girls in computer science. You can engage boys in art and creative writing. But that doesn’t happen automatically,” he said. “Just putting girls in one room and boys in another accomplishes very little. In can actually have adverse effects if teachers don’t have appropriate training.”
Without the proper training and without enough parental and administrative involvement, Sax said, the classes can reinforce society’s gender norms, not circumvent them.
“If you simply put girls in one room and boys in another, and teachers have not had appropriate training, the result is that you end up reinforcing gender stereotypes,” he said. “You end up teaching girls with shopping analogies and boys with sports analogies. That’s not helpful, because not all boys like sports and not all girls like to shop.”
Another point that I remember reading several years ago, but could not find when I went looking, is that many teachers naturally connect better with either boys or girls. I wish I could find the article where I first read this, but personally, it seems to be true. Our first assumption would likely be that men are better at teaching boys and women are better at teaching girls, but this is not always the case. I know that in my teaching, I have typically had a better teacher-student connection with the girls in my classes than with the boys. I have also run across an all-girls class taught by a woman where there was clearly a major lack of connection between the teacher and the students. This means that schools looking at staffing single gender classes need to be aware of the fact that it can be tricky to put the right teacher in front of a room full of boys or girls.
A final point goes to my wife's experience teaching English this year. She has embraced a lot of technology in the form of using wikis and a SMARTBoard interactive white board. Using technology, along with some other ideas she picked up from professional reading, has allowed her to bring in more interesting resources (e.g. Google Earth instead of a photocopied map), get students doing different activities than they normally have in an English class, and offer more choice to students. The response has been that several parents of boys have told her "For the first time, my son is enjoying English class." Now, typically, my wife has not connected super well with boys, but her differentiated teaching as well as adoption of useful technologies has let her get a lot more interest, enthusiasm and participation out of the boys in her class. So, in the end, maybe the way to fix the "gender gap" is just better teaching, not anything structural or administrative.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Math education in the news
Today, The Ottawa Citizen ran two stories about Mathematics and Math education. One story talks about fear of math and the other story talks about how much math people actually need. Reading the stories in the Citizen got me to another link "You will never use this Math again".
These stories are interesting to me since Math is what I used to teach and is also where I get most of my supply teaching work.
The "You will never use..." story is interesting in that it asks some valid questions about just how useful is our math teaching program? I was pleased to note that of the less useful topics referred to in the story, imaginary numbers and conic sections are no longer on the Ontario high school curriculum and rational functions is part of the optional Advanced Functions Grade 12 course. It is completely possible to graduate from high school, and even to get a grade 12 math credit (Math of Data Management) without being forced to learn any of those abstract subjects.
One point that Citizen's stories make is that in the past high schools and universities have often used mathematics results for the purposes of screening students, deciding who gets into what program. But Bill Byers, a retired math professor makes the point "...unless we can assure that the teaching of mathematics is really top rate, then what's the point of using mathematics to screen students?" This point becomes particularly troublesome when you think about Byers anecdote of the PhD female biologist who said that she could not do math. I have to agree with Byers' assessment. Of course she can do math! Someone, or several someones over the years, have brainwashed her. How many other students are we brainwashing?
"Now consider the fact that the vast majority of elementary school teachers are women, many of them raised before the math enlightenment. " from the fear article.
"The teachers who teach math should be trained in the teaching of math. If it turns out that the people teaching math hated math as students, then you are only adding to the problem." (Byers says)
People are already too prone to think that they are flat out good or bad at things, and that those strengths and weaknesses cannot be modified. Worse, people assume that if they are weak at something, they should just avoid it, instead of working harder. Our education system, and the teachers in it need to work extra hard to not reinforce those harmful beliefs. We need to teach all students that they can learn any subject, and that difficulty in a subject requires more work, not avoidance.
These stories are interesting to me since Math is what I used to teach and is also where I get most of my supply teaching work.
The "You will never use..." story is interesting in that it asks some valid questions about just how useful is our math teaching program? I was pleased to note that of the less useful topics referred to in the story, imaginary numbers and conic sections are no longer on the Ontario high school curriculum and rational functions is part of the optional Advanced Functions Grade 12 course. It is completely possible to graduate from high school, and even to get a grade 12 math credit (Math of Data Management) without being forced to learn any of those abstract subjects.
One point that Citizen's stories make is that in the past high schools and universities have often used mathematics results for the purposes of screening students, deciding who gets into what program. But Bill Byers, a retired math professor makes the point "...unless we can assure that the teaching of mathematics is really top rate, then what's the point of using mathematics to screen students?" This point becomes particularly troublesome when you think about Byers anecdote of the PhD female biologist who said that she could not do math. I have to agree with Byers' assessment. Of course she can do math! Someone, or several someones over the years, have brainwashed her. How many other students are we brainwashing?
"Now consider the fact that the vast majority of elementary school teachers are women, many of them raised before the math enlightenment. " from the fear article.
"The teachers who teach math should be trained in the teaching of math. If it turns out that the people teaching math hated math as students, then you are only adding to the problem." (Byers says)
People are already too prone to think that they are flat out good or bad at things, and that those strengths and weaknesses cannot be modified. Worse, people assume that if they are weak at something, they should just avoid it, instead of working harder. Our education system, and the teachers in it need to work extra hard to not reinforce those harmful beliefs. We need to teach all students that they can learn any subject, and that difficulty in a subject requires more work, not avoidance.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Why we need a new school model
I was sitting in the Staff Room of Lisgar Collegiate Institute the other day and the conversation turned to the stresses and expectations placed on teachers by the students. In particular, one French teacher commented on how hard it is to teach when, in a class of 25 or so, you have a half dozen students who complete work quickly and ask for more while at the same time you have a half-dozen students who are struggling with the material and need help.
Thinking about this conversation supported my belief that the school model needs to change to allow more individualized instruction. In particular, I think we need to use computers and other technologies to make it possible for students to learn at their own pace. There is no reason other than practicality that all students in a course have to take 5 months (in a semestered system) to learn the material. The reality is some students can learn the material in a month or two and other students may need 7 or eight months. Putting everybody on a 5 month time frame bores the most talented students and forces the weakest students to struggle. This is not a recipe for good education.
Here are some quotes from a speech by Jeb Bush reported on the EdReformer blog. I am no Bush fan of any kind, but what Jeb is saying makes sense and fits with what I have seen about the education system.
"...in an individualized system, students wouldn’t necessarily take the same test on the same day. Testing would occur when a student had mastered the required skills."
"...students could take more advanced classes and dually enroll in college before even graduating from high school."
"How could we possibly do this for 50 million students? We need to harness technology to tailor lessons to each child’s learning style and ability. This concept was only a dream a generation ago. Now it can be accomplished."
"We have the ability to create the iTunes of the education world where teachers and students could access rich and rigorous content from different sources to create a learning experience that meets the individual needs of the students."
"Technology wouldn’t replace the teacher but it would redefine their role. Lectures might be given online to thousands of students, while classroom teachers might become more like coaches or tutors available to provide one-on-one support, again based on whatever the student needed."
When I agree with Jeb Bush society needs to pay attention. The model of schooling and education in North America needs to be modified and updated.
Thinking about this conversation supported my belief that the school model needs to change to allow more individualized instruction. In particular, I think we need to use computers and other technologies to make it possible for students to learn at their own pace. There is no reason other than practicality that all students in a course have to take 5 months (in a semestered system) to learn the material. The reality is some students can learn the material in a month or two and other students may need 7 or eight months. Putting everybody on a 5 month time frame bores the most talented students and forces the weakest students to struggle. This is not a recipe for good education.
Here are some quotes from a speech by Jeb Bush reported on the EdReformer blog. I am no Bush fan of any kind, but what Jeb is saying makes sense and fits with what I have seen about the education system.
"...in an individualized system, students wouldn’t necessarily take the same test on the same day. Testing would occur when a student had mastered the required skills."
"...students could take more advanced classes and dually enroll in college before even graduating from high school."
"How could we possibly do this for 50 million students? We need to harness technology to tailor lessons to each child’s learning style and ability. This concept was only a dream a generation ago. Now it can be accomplished."
"We have the ability to create the iTunes of the education world where teachers and students could access rich and rigorous content from different sources to create a learning experience that meets the individual needs of the students."
"Technology wouldn’t replace the teacher but it would redefine their role. Lectures might be given online to thousands of students, while classroom teachers might become more like coaches or tutors available to provide one-on-one support, again based on whatever the student needed."
When I agree with Jeb Bush society needs to pay attention. The model of schooling and education in North America needs to be modified and updated.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Tweaking to make things relevant II
My wife, Tania, told me this story yesterday.
Her Writer's Craft class is working on a research assignment where they find information about a certain historical period. The goal of the assignment is for the students to improve their research skills as writers often need to do research before writing, whether they are writing fiction or non-fiction. Tania has done this before and she and the teacher-librarian collaborate to put together the assignment and instructions for the students. As a side note, the teacher-librarian at my wife's school is terrific and exemplifies the combination of teacher and librarian that is so helpful to a school, its students, and its staff.
The best part of the story was how good use of technology allowed Tania and the teacher-librarian at her school to make the assignment more personalized and thus relevant and interesting for the students. Tania did sign ups for the various historical periods on Monday on her interactive whiteboard, which she saved as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file and emailed to the librarian. He then took the information from the PDF and added the student's names and chosen historical periods to his instruction sheet.
On Tuesday, when the students arrived at the library to begin their research, they received an up-to-date instruction sheet including the list of who had signed up for what. The students were impressed, which probably motivated them to work a little harder on their research.
Oh, speaking of technology, the results of the students' work will be posted to the class wiki. This means that anyone on the Internet can come across the students' work, read it, and use it. Compare that to a student handing in the research and only having the teacher read it, after which the work likely gets thrown out.
Stories like this are why I am such a big fan of appropriate use of technology in education.
Her Writer's Craft class is working on a research assignment where they find information about a certain historical period. The goal of the assignment is for the students to improve their research skills as writers often need to do research before writing, whether they are writing fiction or non-fiction. Tania has done this before and she and the teacher-librarian collaborate to put together the assignment and instructions for the students. As a side note, the teacher-librarian at my wife's school is terrific and exemplifies the combination of teacher and librarian that is so helpful to a school, its students, and its staff.
The best part of the story was how good use of technology allowed Tania and the teacher-librarian at her school to make the assignment more personalized and thus relevant and interesting for the students. Tania did sign ups for the various historical periods on Monday on her interactive whiteboard, which she saved as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file and emailed to the librarian. He then took the information from the PDF and added the student's names and chosen historical periods to his instruction sheet.
On Tuesday, when the students arrived at the library to begin their research, they received an up-to-date instruction sheet including the list of who had signed up for what. The students were impressed, which probably motivated them to work a little harder on their research.
Oh, speaking of technology, the results of the students' work will be posted to the class wiki. This means that anyone on the Internet can come across the students' work, read it, and use it. Compare that to a student handing in the research and only having the teacher read it, after which the work likely gets thrown out.
Stories like this are why I am such a big fan of appropriate use of technology in education.
The issue of homework
Well, last night my wife and I ran into our first piece of "homework from Hell". Our seven-year-old daughter who has just started Grade 2 in the regular, English stream brought home a review sheet about patterns. The sheet was double sided and contained approximately ten questions where the students were asked to work with patterns. Each question required the student to do more than one thing, for example in one question the students had to identify the pattern as increasing or decreasing, fill in the next two numbers, and write down the pattern rule. Each individual question was very reasonable but with all the questions and all the parts, this was a lot of work.
The upshot of all this is that after 40 minutes of work supervised by either me or my wife (we switched off twice because of how hard this was for us) the sheet was only about 2/3 finished. As my daughter asked plaintively if she could stop, I agreed. I wrote a little note to the teacher in my daughter's agenda about how long she had worked and how much got done. We will see how the teacher responds, if at all.
Now, the big deal about this is not the piece of homework and how long it took. I suspect that this will be an isolated incident. However, if we repeatedly get pieces like this, my wife and I will deal with it.
The big issue that I recognized is that my wife and I are both teachers. Not only do we have a good sense about how much homework is too much or too hard (most parents do, in my opinion) but we have the confidence and the means to express our opinions and make sure that they are heard by the teacher and the school. Just for starters, my wife and I are both on the school board email system so it is dead easy for us to fire off an email to the teacher.
But I started thinking about parents who do not have as many links and insights into the school system. What happens with them and their children if the teacher starts sending home too much homework, or work that is too hard? And I suspect that the answer is not good. I am willing to bet that when parents do not have the knowledge and/or the confidence to talk and negotiate with the teacher and the school about homework their children get buried under the mound of work they are told to do.
All this reminds me that, as a teacher, I need to be really careful and thoughtful about homework. There is a lot of debate in educational circles about the value of reducing homework. In my Honours Specialist upgrade course we had to do some research on the pros and cons of homework. Not every student benefits from homework while at the same time some students definitely do. If we want our students to get the maximum value out of their education we teachers need to find a way to build in some flexibility.
I am working on an idea to offer students choice in homework while still making sure that the homework is helping them. That however, is a topic for a future post.
The upshot of all this is that after 40 minutes of work supervised by either me or my wife (we switched off twice because of how hard this was for us) the sheet was only about 2/3 finished. As my daughter asked plaintively if she could stop, I agreed. I wrote a little note to the teacher in my daughter's agenda about how long she had worked and how much got done. We will see how the teacher responds, if at all.
Now, the big deal about this is not the piece of homework and how long it took. I suspect that this will be an isolated incident. However, if we repeatedly get pieces like this, my wife and I will deal with it.
The big issue that I recognized is that my wife and I are both teachers. Not only do we have a good sense about how much homework is too much or too hard (most parents do, in my opinion) but we have the confidence and the means to express our opinions and make sure that they are heard by the teacher and the school. Just for starters, my wife and I are both on the school board email system so it is dead easy for us to fire off an email to the teacher.
But I started thinking about parents who do not have as many links and insights into the school system. What happens with them and their children if the teacher starts sending home too much homework, or work that is too hard? And I suspect that the answer is not good. I am willing to bet that when parents do not have the knowledge and/or the confidence to talk and negotiate with the teacher and the school about homework their children get buried under the mound of work they are told to do.
All this reminds me that, as a teacher, I need to be really careful and thoughtful about homework. There is a lot of debate in educational circles about the value of reducing homework. In my Honours Specialist upgrade course we had to do some research on the pros and cons of homework. Not every student benefits from homework while at the same time some students definitely do. If we want our students to get the maximum value out of their education we teachers need to find a way to build in some flexibility.
I am working on an idea to offer students choice in homework while still making sure that the homework is helping them. That however, is a topic for a future post.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Old vs. new
Doing some reading I came upon this blog entry about our school system: School Year.
The author, Kateland, finds a lot of problems with our current school system and the way it is going. She singles out the Ministry of Education as being the major cause of the problem. Without agreeing or disagreeing with her assessment of the Ministry, I would like to look at one of her thoughts.
Here is one of her comments: "Apparently it is considered much improved to visualize a group of seven things filled with 8 items each and then count out the answer but I cannot imagine solving algebra equations when I do not know instantly that “X” times “Y” equals “N” without a moment’s thought."
As a Math teacher, I hear what she is saying, and certainly in the past many people have memorized their multiplication tables and learned to solve algebraic equations. But today anyone can do any multiplication on their calculator, or for most students, their cellphone, and I can teach people to solve algebraic equations using algebra tiles in a way that does not require knowledge of multiplication tables. So it does not seem necessary to me that we force all students to memorize their multiplication tables.
I want to be really clear here. I definitely recognize that for many students, memorizing multiplication tables will be useful. But education today has to be about trying to teach every student in the class in the best way possible. Teachers can no longer teach any skill just one way. We need to use all the tools at our disposal, multiplication tables, calculators, algebra tiles, computers, and more to find a way to teach students in ways that they will understand, value, and remember.
To me the key thing as a teacher is to recognize which students would really benefit from memorizing multiplication tables and which students will be fine doing everything on their calculators. Or who should learn to solve equations with algebra tiles and who will simply be faster with the old, more abstract way. That is what teaching has to be about in the new, flattening, globalized world.
The author, Kateland, finds a lot of problems with our current school system and the way it is going. She singles out the Ministry of Education as being the major cause of the problem. Without agreeing or disagreeing with her assessment of the Ministry, I would like to look at one of her thoughts.
Here is one of her comments: "Apparently it is considered much improved to visualize a group of seven things filled with 8 items each and then count out the answer but I cannot imagine solving algebra equations when I do not know instantly that “X” times “Y” equals “N” without a moment’s thought."
As a Math teacher, I hear what she is saying, and certainly in the past many people have memorized their multiplication tables and learned to solve algebraic equations. But today anyone can do any multiplication on their calculator, or for most students, their cellphone, and I can teach people to solve algebraic equations using algebra tiles in a way that does not require knowledge of multiplication tables. So it does not seem necessary to me that we force all students to memorize their multiplication tables.
I want to be really clear here. I definitely recognize that for many students, memorizing multiplication tables will be useful. But education today has to be about trying to teach every student in the class in the best way possible. Teachers can no longer teach any skill just one way. We need to use all the tools at our disposal, multiplication tables, calculators, algebra tiles, computers, and more to find a way to teach students in ways that they will understand, value, and remember.
To me the key thing as a teacher is to recognize which students would really benefit from memorizing multiplication tables and which students will be fine doing everything on their calculators. Or who should learn to solve equations with algebra tiles and who will simply be faster with the old, more abstract way. That is what teaching has to be about in the new, flattening, globalized world.
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