Head Fake

I hope you are rested and recovering from giving thanks. 

By the way, I did a little light research and found out that the “Turkey Coma,” supposedly caused by the tryptophan in turkey is a myth.  I have no intention of letting facts get in the way of my after-meal tradition and would advise the same for you when Thanksgiving rolls around on the calendar again next year.

And speaking of the calendar, I’m sure you are aware that we have only 15 school days to the end of the semester.  The last three of these, of course, are dedicated to final exams.  Since I was in the research mode, I typed into Google “Cramming vs. Studying” and came up with 149,000 hits.  I looked through the first five links, and it was fascinating reading.  There is overwhelming evidence and research about preparing students for final exams.  Two things jump out: 1) Depending how much sleep you get, cramming may help for one isolated test—sort of.  2) Cramming has no long-term benefits for learning.

If the goal is to have students pass the final exam and then forget the material, encourage them to stuff it in just like we did with the turkey this past week.  Give them a study guide a day or two before the test, and encourage students to put in as much time as possible in the days leading up to the test cramming (thus the name) their heads with information for the exam.  After the test, they can go take a nap on the couch and everything they just “learned” will fade away.

Another option is to take into account the way our brains actually function and build in review as part of daily lessons.  For the past few weeks, I have been creating a short list of best practices that teachers at HSHS are using right now to help students develop good studying habits.  The research is crystal clear that distributed practice leads to long-term retention, and the good news is that many of you are being proactive in your approach to studying for exams.  For example:

• Begin or end each day with a few review questions or quick discussions about key course content.
• Have students take a few minutes occasionally to go back through their notes and find one topic where they might be confused.  Have several students give a quick share-out to the class and then clarify the misconceptions.
• Add one or two questions from previous units to quizzes, tests, and/or homework.  Then discuss these questions when you hand back results.
• Have students make connections to previous learning as a regular part of lessons.  Take two minutes for pair-and-share during which students connect today’s learning to something—anything—in previous lessons.  This helps to solidify the day’s lesson and review previous lessons.
• Create a study calendar for the next three weeks, where students make their own schedules for studying for the final exam.  Make sure key content is included and distributed over time.

I’m sure there are many more ways to include distributed practice in daily lessons, but these are ones I have seen in practice during the past few weeks.

We have incredible kids at Hamilton Southeastern High School.  The vast majority of them want to do well.  We should share with them the brain research and the value of distributed studying.  Realistically, the odds are good they won’t implement these strategies completely on their own.  We can, however, teach our motivated students ways to avoid the need for cramming.  This is a skill that will pay dividends for them now and in the future. 

Of course, other students are less motivated for a wide variety of reasons.  For some, the lack of motivation is cumulative from years of school being difficult, from lack of academic success, and/or from poor study habits.  The practices listed above just might help.  These approaches are what Randy Pausch in his “Last Lecture” called a head fake, teaching a deeper lesson under the pretense of teaching something simple.  Planning distributed practice into your lessons can help all students, even Intentional Non-Learners, use good study habits—and they may not even recognize it as studying.  

We never know what impact one instance of success can have.  It just might be the spark that lights the fire.

Thanks for all you do for the students and for the school.  Time is always precious, and especially so near the end of a semester.  Plan carefully to use it well, and find ways to teach your students how to get the biggest return on their investment of time spent studying.

Have a great week, HSE.  I hope it is crammed full of joy, laughter, and learning.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of you helping students prepare for next week’s End of Course Assessments.  These high-stakes tests are stressful for everyone.  Thanks to all of you who take the time to teach skills and to reassure students.  All of us benefit when students do well on these tests.

Hey, What's the Big Idea? Second in a Series on UbD

I have a brother-in-law who is a dreamer and an inventor.  His vocation is that of a computer specialist, but his avocation is creating, transforming, and thinking outside the box.  He gets a great deal of energy from deconstructing ideas (and physical items) and reconstructing them in innovative ways.  His grandest dream involves a whole new kind of building.  It is one in which humans create part of the energy needed to power the facility.  His plans include walking paths that generate energy, solar power, fish farming, and hydroponics as part of a self-sustaining restaurant and recreation center.  Putting together this concept required him to take many different ideas and reconfigure them in whole new ways.

He has ideas on a smaller scale as well.  For example, he created an air filtration system which combines live plants, charcoal, and a small fan.  He also built a heavy-duty custom trailer that he pulls with his bike.  The last time I talked to him, he had bought a welder and was piecing together his own version of a recumbent bicycle.  Perhaps he will use his new bike to pull a previous invention, the collapsible canoe, behind him down to the river.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.  I know he rides his bike to work year round, and he recently hauled home a dishwasher from Lowe’s on his bicycle trailer.  (Check out the picture below and imagine a trailer attached to the back.)

Actually, I enjoy the way he thinks.  He is always looking at new possibilities and making unusual connections. His ideas have merit and often cause me to pause and reconsider previous assumptions.  And his enthusiasm is infectious. 

Big Ideas and Enduring Understanding: Transfer

I tell you about my brother-in-law because he is the guy who soon came to mind as I was learning about Stage 1 of Understanding by Design: Identify the Desired Results. 

This is what Wiggins and McTighe say about Stage 1:

Learning priorities are established by long-term performance goals—what it is we want students, in the end, to be able to do with what they have learned.  The bottom line is transfer.  The point of school is not to simply excel in each class, but to be able to use one’s learning in other settings.

These two educators urge us to see our priorities as going well beyond what will be on the end of the unit test or final exam.  (Certainly these tests are important, but we need to start the process with something bigger, something more audacious, in mind.)   For this first stage of UbD, we need to be—and to create—dreamers.  In five or ten years, what do we want students to be able to transfer to new situations well after the lesson, unit, and course is only a faint memory?  The answers to this question are the Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings. 

Knowing vs. Understanding

The difference between knowing and understanding is at the heart of this discussion.  There are lots and lots of “things” that we would like students to be familiar with and that are even important for them to know.  Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings, however, require us to go beyond the level of knowing to identify those understandings that are at the core of our content.  The understanding has to be deep enough that students will be able transfer the learning to new situations and connect the learning to other contents and to life.

This doesn’t happen every day in every class.  It may not happen every week, but this level of understanding is essential if we want students to transfer learning.  When it does happen, it takes more than memorization, telling, or coverage of content.  It takes finding ways for students to connect with something larger.  In reading through the work of Wiggins and McTighe, I found a variety of descriptions for the Big Ideas and Enduring Understanding.  Some are metaphors, and others are more concrete definitions. 

According to the designers of UbD, Big Ideas and Enduring Understanding…

• Are “deliberate choices” about the “top priorities”
• Include concepts and skills that “connect the dots for learners”
• Become the “linchpin” that holds the wheel on the axle of student understanding
• Are knowledge and skills chosen for their “power to explain”
• Are not self-evident, but rather need to be “uncovered” so students see the “core of the subject”
• Require “teacher-led inquiry” and “student self-reflection”

Our Dreamers

We need our students to be dreamers.  It doesn’t take long reading the paper or browsing the web newscasts to realize that we are in desperate need of a generation of students who can deconstruct, reconstruct, and co-construct ideas in order to create something new.  We need creative and innovative thinking now more than ever, with no end in sight.

We are in a unique position to help develop this exact kind of thinker, but we absolutely must start by helping students go beyond knowing to understanding.  Our students must learn to look beyond the unit tests and final exams in order to make independent and innovative connections.  To help them in this process, UbD suggests at least some of the time we must connect student learning to the Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings that prepare them to create something new in the future.  This “something new” might be an innovative building, a different kind of bike, a folding canoe, or something as yet unknowable.  Whatever the innovation, it will likely start as a series of connections to past learning, maybe learning that took place in your classroom.

And that, HSE, is a really big idea. 

Have a great week.

Phil

Kudos this week to those of you who promoted the food drive with your kids.  The canned goods are a mountain in our lobby.  A school-wide effort like this helps in ways we may never know and people we may never meet.  It also reminds us all that we do, indeed, have much to be thankful for.  

Open Doors

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in a wonderful and thought-provoking Ted Talk, makes the point that culture is composed of many, many overlapping stories.  In fact, the title of her speech is “The Danger of the Single Story.”  Adichie argues that if we listen to only the single story about a person, we run the risk of misunderstanding.

The past few weeks Della has been collecting the door signs that you are creating.  Occasionally, I have paged through these documents. It is a beautiful thing to look through your pictures, the bits of information you chose to include about yourselves, and the quotes that relate to you in some way.  In doing so, I have been reminded that Adichie is absolutely correct.    

Certainly, all of us are educators, but that is only a single story.  These door signs provide a glimpse of other possible narratives about our lives.  Look at the examples below which were gleaned from your submissions.  Take a moment to imagine some of the backstories that led to these statements.  Then enjoy trying to guess which teachers chose to include these details about their lives.

• I am a Crossfit Competitive Athlete and Level 1 Instructor.
• I enjoy fixing vintage bicycles, playing old country music, and watching black and white Samurai movies.
• I participate in geocaching and prepare for the zombie apocalypse.
• I spend time metal detecting and recovering lost artifacts.
• I played the clarinet and was a drum major in high school.
• I enjoy acting in musicals and plays.
• I enjoy herding cats and defeating socialism wherever it rears its ugly head.
• I create crafts I see on Pinterest.
• I sing, play guitar and bass, and record music.  (Not a music teacher!)
• I’m learning to swing dance.

Of course, this list only scratches the surface.  To get the full picture would take more time and conversation.  If we had these discussions, more stories would emerge and individual threads of dialogue would begin to weave a rich tapestry, creating a more vivid picture of the individuals.

A Door Opens Both Ways

Perhaps these signs will open the door to conversations that enable students to see past the single story of you as “teacher.”  Of course, conversations like this work both ways.  This past week I have heard of student stories about the joys of academic accomplishments, the sadness of losing a loved one, the fear of rejection, and of an incredible act of kindness from a teacher.  I know that many of you have had similar experiences this week.  In the give and take of these conversations, we have the opportunity to move beyond our single stories and deepen our understanding and appreciation of each other.

Near the end of her Ted Talk, Adichie says, “I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging in all of the stories of that place and that person.  The consequence of a single story is this: It robs people of dignity.  It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult.  It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

Our door signs might be a good reminder that we are much more than a single story.  They also can be a daily reminder to us that we should find ways to hear the multiple narratives of our students.

Have a great week, HSE.  Tell your stories and listen to others.  It is an important part of what we do and who we are. 

Phil

Kudos this week to all of the students and staff involved in the Fall Play.  The production, according to all accounts, was frighteningly good.

If you are interested, this is the link to Adichie’s Ted Talk: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of the Single Story

Primary Purpose

An essential question for Hamilton Southeastern High School: What is the primary goal of our school?

In our professional discussions, we ask this question in a variety of ways.  Recently, one discussion has been around Understanding by Design, which makes the distinction between knowing and understanding.  In this framework, understanding has a specific meaning that goes well beyond merely knowing. 

Over the next few months, this weekly memo will return to this topic occasionally and take a closer look at parts of the Understanding by Design framework.  Feel free to read them now if they are helpful, or save them for future reference. 

Background Information

As a way to provide background and a solid foundation, a good place to start is with “Seven Key Tenets of the UbD Framework,” stolen and/or paraphrased directly from Wiggins and McTighe.  Note the words in bold because these are key concepts in UbD.

1. Learning is enhanced when teachers think purposefully about curricular planning.  UbD provides a framework for this process, but it is neither rigid nor prescriptive.  Use the framework but do what works for you and your students.
2. The focus of UbD is transfer.  Teaching must help students to deepen their understanding so they can effectively use the knowledge and skills in new situations.  Our purpose is more than simply helping students do well in school; our purpose is to prepare them to do well in life.
3. Understanding is revealed when teachers plan authentic performance tasks for students.  These tasks allow students to make sense of their learning and practice the transfer their learning in a supportive environment.
4. Effective curriculum uses backward planning through a three-stage process (Desired Results, Evidence, and Learning Planning).  This process avoids common problems of treating the textbook as the curriculum and/or providing activity-oriented teaching with no clear priorities.
5. Teachers are coaches of understanding, not mere purveyors of content knowledge, skill, or activity.  Learning, not just teaching, is the focus of a teacher’s work.
6. Regularly reviewing units and curriculum against UbD design qualities enhances learning and provides engaging professional discussions.
7. UbD involves a continual improvement approach to student achievement and teacher craft.  Reflection and revisions are part of the framework.

If our goals are only to have students do well in our classes and to get good grades, knowing is probably enough.  If, however, our goal is for students to take the learning beyond our classes, outside the halls of HSHS, and into new situations, making sure students understand is essential. 

The bottom line is that students who understand can and do apply learning to new situations.  With UbD, we know this to be true because we have designed learning opportunities that provide practice in doing so as part of the classroom experience.  Simply put, students can transfer learning because we have provided opportunities for them to understand by design.

I hope your week is designed to be a good one.

Phil

Kudos to our technology people.  During the past few weeks they were hit with the Perfect Storm of technological issues.  It was incredibly frustrating for everyone, but the techies put in long hours trying to identify the problems and come up with solutions.  Persistence in the face of frustration may not be fun, but it is an admirable trait and worthy of note.

Fog Lights

The Bad News: Fog Warning

New learning is always a bit messy.  As teachers, we recognize this reality with our students, but it doesn’t make it any easier to be on the other side of the experience.  We like being experts and tend to be uncomfortable as beginners.  You are likely feeling some of this discomfort with Understanding by Design.  This feeling of discomfort is compounded if you feel uncertain about the final destination.  It may feel like driving in heavy fog, seeing only what the headlights illuminate.

The Good News: The Right Road

Administratively, we spent time this past week looking at the first drafts of UbD units that you worked on last Thursday in an attempt to assess where we stand in the process.  It may or may not feel like it right now, but we are heading in the right direction.  The “Understandings” you are developing and the “Essential Questions” you are asking are spot on.  The “Performance Tasks” are especially interesting, and we are excited to think about how HSE students will benefit from this type of assessment. 

Awareness and Exploration: Lifting the Fog

Remember that the district goal for this year is awareness and exploration.  At this point, if you are getting glimpses of how Understanding by Design weaves together all of the various topics we have been working on this year (and in previous years) you are right on track.  If you already see many of the natural connections to school-wide and district-wide initiatives, you are out ahead of the timeline.

As examples, below are three ways in which the pieces of the professional development puzzle fit together:

• The Teacher Effectiveness Rubric:  We spent most of last year’s professional development time looking at the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.  The TER includes direct references to UbD planning.  The rubric lists good questioning techniques, student engagement, formative assessments, differentiation, and higher order thinking as part of the “Effective” and “Highly Effective” categories.  All of these are included in a solid UbD unit.
• Professional Development Sessions: We spent time in the first release day working on integrating technology into classroom instruction in order to increase student engagement.  The HSE21 Committee introduced inquiry-learning during the second release day.  Engaging students and asking “Essential Questions” fit seamlessly into UbD units. 
• Best Practice Instruction: The four quadrants of HSE21 are 1) Student-Centered Approaches, 2) Cognitive Curriculum, 3) Fundamental Classroom Conditions, and 4) Transfer of Learning.  Read through the HSE Best Practice Model and you will see that UbD units hit all four quadrants.

To Repeat…

The goal with UbD for this year is awareness and exploration.  This first semester the focus is on awareness.  Next semester it switches to exploration.  If you find yourself saying, “It’s too much, too soon,” or if you are thinking, “It’s something new—again,” please give yourself permission to relax.  All of the work we have been doing is leading us in the same direction.  In time, the lines between the initiatives that seem so bright and bold now will begin to blur and blend as you make more and more connections between UbD, HSE21, Inquiry Learning, and TEDS. 

The UbD products you created last Thursday are another step forward in this process, and they are a solid indication that we are heading in the right direction.

Essential Questions for Right Now

• Do you have at least a beginning understanding of the UbD framework?
• Do you see how asking Essential Questions, focusing on Big Ideas, and requiring Performance Tasks might help students transfer learning beyond your classroom? 
• Do you understand that we have until 2017 until full implementation if the UbD framework? 

If so, the rising sun may be breaking up the fog bank.

I would be interested in hearing back from you about what would help you as we continue down the road of implementing UbD across the district.  If you have time, hit “reply” and tell me what might deepen your understanding and/or what you need as a next step on the journey.

Have a great week.  I hope the sun shines brightly in your part of HSHS.

Phil

Kudos this week to all of our marching band students—and their directors.  They started practicing in the blistering heat of summer and finished last weekend in the cold and wind of the Ben Davis High School stadium.  Their performance and perseverance is commendable.

This picture doesn't do justice in capturing the impact of the performance, but it may give you a feel for the cold and wind!