I divided this topic about tests and teaching into three parts because it was getting so long. This is part 3. It follows part 1 and part 2.
Teach well - After listening to some educators from Hutchenson schools come talk to use about how they had turned around their schools and got 100% of their students to proficiency in Math and Reading, I wondered how they did it. They talked about data-driven decision-making, Kagan Cooperative Learning, and Ruby Paine’s approaches to dealing with students in poverty. It basically came down to using the best teaching practices for each kid. A lot of my students last year qualified for free or reduced lunches because they were poor. The Ruby Paine talk got me thinking, so I told my principal that I was concerned about how to best teach my class so my poverty students would learn well. She essentially said that I should teach well so my students would learn well.
We know a lot about how students learn. We also know a lot about which teaching practices work the best. I have already blogged about this before. Part of my purpose of this blog is to explore best teaching practices. I think Robert Marzano has said it pretty well in this book, What Works in Schools. (I’m currently reading his book.) Marzano based his research upon which teaching practices raised test scores.
It comes down to integrating good teaching philosophy with good teaching practices. Learning needs to be taught at higher levels on Blooms Taxonomy - teach deeply. Learning needs to be child-centered - teach thoughtfully. Learning needs to be based upon effective teaching practices - teach well. Use these and test scores will rise.
- Teach deeply
- Teach thoughtfully
- Teach well
- And the test scores will take care of themselves
This sound like a good topic for a presentation. However, I feel like I need to back up my assertions with some statistics, facts, or something to give my opinions some credibility. Any ideas?
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
I divided this topic about tests and teaching into three parts because it was getting so long. This is part 2. It follows part 1.
Teach thoughtfully - “Boring” is the first word many students,
especially the ones who need it most, will use to describe school.
This is because the teacher-based tradition in school has often become
irrelevant to their lives. The industrial-based school system seeks to spit out cookie-cutter products that have been molded into joyless automatons.
None will be left behind. Schools have not changed to meet the changing needs of their products…uh…students.
Students are not widgets! Student come to school with different backgrounds, motivations, and needs. We cannot stuff them into a mold and hope they conform. We must meet them where they are, and bring them along on their learning journey to a point much farther than they could have dreamed coming to on their own. We must teach them what kind of person, what kind of learner, and what kind thinker
they are. The learning must revolve around the student, not the student around the learning. Students should be the primary focus of our classroom, not the content. The students will not care how much you know until they know how much you care, so teach thoughtfully.
Teach deeply…teach thoughfully, and the tests will take care of themselves.
(Thanks Durff for contributing this idea.)
“Teach to the test.” That is the message sent down to us from above.
Not the tests we use to inform and guide the instruction in our classrooms. But the end-of-year achievement test whose results we get after the students have already moved on. These tests are really for those farthest from our classrooms and our students. They are supposed to “hold us accountable” for teaching our students deeply, thoughtfully, and well. Is testing the silver bullet that will leave no child behind? I know that there is a legitimate need for those 
outside our classrooms to know how our students in our classrooms are doing. However, I think politicians have gotten the cart before the horse.
We do need to change the teaching in our schools. The old, industrial, transmission-based, teacher-centered approach to schools became obsolete half a century ago. Yet, it is the traditional approach many schools still cling to.
- Society has changed a lot since 1958.
- What we know about how student’s learn has changed a lot since then.
- Technology and teaching tools have changed.
- Our students are different than they were last century.
Yet, many classrooms look identical to how looked 50 years ago. We need to adapt to the changes or become irrelevant. (How much of what we learn in school has already become irrelevant to real life?)
Teach Deeply - We have so much to teach in the curriculum and so little time to teach it in, that school becomes an assembly line: read the chapter, take notes on the lecture, do the review questions at the end of the chapter, take the test, move on. Learning becomes shallow, mechanical, and soon forgotten.
We must move from a transmit-and-test model to in-depth teaching. We’ll need to teach thematically so that several of the too-numerous curriculum objectives can be grouped into a unit project. Reading and writing can be integrated into social studies units. For example, students could learn about government and economics by writing a play about establishing first colony on Mars. What if they then worked together in a virtual simulation of the Mars surface to design the station? Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy places creativity and it’s root, create, at the highest level of learning. Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind (on my reading list), tells us that emphasizing design changes the whole conversation about how we learn. Learning based around projects and problem-solving, PBL, gives the students experiences that they will learn from and remember way beyond their school career. Teach deeply and the tests will take care of themselves.
I divided this topic about tests and teaching into three parts because it was getting so long. This was part 1.
Last week I found this podcast called the 
SMARTBoard Lessons Podcast. I know I don’t have a real SMARTBoard, but I want my students to use my new interactive Wiiboard. I needed to find resources for it, and I found them on this podcast. Canadians Ben and Joan, the clever hosts of the podcast, include a SMARTBoad lesson each week. I love that the lessons are build upon Robert Marzono’s pedigogical research in his book Classroom Instruction That Works. I already found a couple lessons I want to use.
What are the best practices of teaching. This top ten list of best principles of learning comes from New Zealand is the summary of a full report that is a synthesis of research-based teaching practices.
Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES) - Education Counts
1. Quality teaching is focused on student achievement (including social outcomes) and facilities high standards of student outcomes for heterogeneous groups of students. Research-based characteristics.
learning processes. Research-based characteristics are specific to curriculum context and the prior knowledge and experiences of the learners.
2. Pedagogical practices enable classes and other learning groupings to work as caring, inclusive, and cohesive learning communities.
3. Effective links are created between school and other cultural contexts in which students are socialised, to facilitate learning.
4. Quality teaching is responsive to student learning processes.
5. Opportunity to learn is effective and sufficient. Research-based characteristics
6. Multiple task contexts support learning cycles. Research-based characteristics
7. Curriculum goals, resources including ICT usage, task design, teaching and school practices are effectively Research-based characteristics
8. Pedagogy scaffolds and provides appropriate feedback on students’ task engagement. Research-based characteristics
9. Pedagogy promotes learning orientations, student self-regulation, metacognitive strategies and thoughtful student discourse. Research-based characteristics
10. Teachers and students engage constructively in goal-oriented assessment.
I found the study on a link from Tom Hoffman’s presentation at a educon2.0 workshop on the Coalition of Essential Schools Ten Common Principles The ten principles are:
Tuttle SVC: The Historical Role of the CES Common Principles
- Learning to use one’s mind well
- Less is More, depth over coverage
- Goals apply to all students
- Personalization
- Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
- Demonstration of mastery
- A tone of decency and trust
- Commitment to the entire school
- Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
- Democracy and equity
Lists don’t do as much for me as stories. I’ll look for stories that will help illustrate what best practices in teaching look like.
My thinking so far on best practices includes:
- Helping my students be the best they can be, whether they want to of not.
- Make learning centered around the student, not around the textbook.
- Cooperative learning makes learning fun, and helps everyone in the group to learn more if done properly. Kagan cooperative learning structures are an excellent, but proprietary example.
- Hands-on, minds-on learning is the best for all students.
- It’s Ok for learning to be fun. Games focused on objectives are a fun way to reinforce learning.
- Technology tools can amplify learning if used to categorize/organize, communicate, collaborate, and create.
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