The Formative Mountain

"Climb every mountain....ford every stream...." Yes, The Sound of Music still rings inside my head a week after the all-school musical closed its doors. Its "man up and tackle the obstacles" advice worked for Maria, but as I sit in front of The Formative Mountain: 80 notebooks, and think how I have to climb that mountain to give feedback on the reading and writing process to each student, I feel myself quaking.

Yes, I believe in formative feedback. Yes, I believe in reading and writing notebooks as an authentic process that makes thinking visible. Yes, I believe in individualizing and adjusting instruction based on formative feedback. And yes, I believe that formative feedback helps learners know how to improve before they are summatively assessed.

HOWEVER! Formative assessment takes time, and I wonder how I can manage The Formative Mountain better so it is just a Formative Foothill or a Formative Mound (Formative Speedbump?). Our school is generous with shared planning time, department meeting time, and professional development time in the school day. I believe I probably have the best of all possible worlds when it comes to planning and prep time. And still I spent eight hours this weekend evaluating and giving feedback on notebooks. Sigh.

To put things in perspective, students turned their Writer's Notebooks in three times this quarter for evaluation. Two of those times (about once a month) they received a sticky-note comment on a self-selected "best entry" which gave a "Wow" about the entry as a validation of their thoughts and/or use of strategy, a formative grade on volume, variety, frequency, depth, and taking care of the notebook, and a general  "Wow" and "Next step" feedback comment. The third, in-between time they got an accountability score-- you kept up with all the entries, you did some of the entries, or you didn't do the entries. The Readers Notebook got one thorough review (as above) and an accountability score, because they also did two Discussion Thread postings in between which also received a formative grade (see previous post).

Am I over-assessing?

I have gotten good feedback from students and parents about my comments (I call them my "love notes", as in "Please read the love note I gave you in your notebook"). I have seen students make specific changes in their entries because of what I wrote to them. I have also seen students stay motivated and interested because they are getting positive feedback, especially the reluctant writers who need the practice the most and yet feel so discouraged when they have to write their thoughts on paper. That makes the "Wow" comment so much more important than the "Next Step".

So my eyes turn to The Formidable Formative Mountain of Notebooks, and trust that it will be worth it to "climb every mountain". But if anyone has any suggestions, I'm ready to put my alpine gear in the closet!

The Power of Formative Feedback

Teaching my second year of 8th grade English Language Arts is an opportunity to re-think and revise my first year stab-in-the-dark unit plans. I get to use a full year's worth of learning about the developmental range of 8th graders as I start this year's curriculum. I get to reflect on the student feedback from the end-of-unit reflections and comments I received last year so that I can make adjustments this year. I get to look at my model texts and think about the ones that worked well, and those that didn't seem worth the time they took to read aloud. This is one kind of formative feedback: from myself to myself as I look at student assessments and remember student comments.

We just finished our first full content unit: Short Story Interpretive Reading based on Lucy Calkins' A Curricular Plan for the Reading Workshop- Grade 8.(2010) Last year, I bravely taught big ideas like finding pivotal moments when characters made critical choices, looking at different perspectives, identifying multiple themes within one text, finding multiple texts with common themes and noticing character and setting differences between them. I taught types of sentences and literary devices like symbols and mood. I expected students to read short stories of their choice and practice these big ideas in their reading notebooks. I conferenced with students as they read, and tried to raise their level of thinking through our conversations. I was feeling pretty excited about the sophistication of this work, especially coming from many years of teaching sixth grade.

And then came the end of unit test, where I gave a new story to analyze along the very same strategies we'd been working with in class. It was something of a disaster. The students seemed confused, did not dig as deep as I'd hoped, circled around answers without really answering, and overall they seemed dismayed at "how hard" the test was. As I assessed their reading notebooks at the end of the unit, I understood why: their notebook work was, for many students, shallow, simple, and safe, with little practice on the strategies presented.

I was reminded of a common teacher saying, "Just because you taught it, doesn't mean they learned it."

Obviously the students needed more practice and better feedback in order to be ready for the test. This year I taught the same lessons, I conferred more often (because I'd practiced all year last year and my skill was better), and I had more frequent check-ins:

1. I set up a Discussion Thread on our Moodle site. I posted a spot for each of the short stories that were available for reading. After about 8 days of work, I required students to post "an interpretation" of their reading of one of their stories. Many students copied an entry from their Reading Notebook, which was fine, and some brought new thinking into the post. I gave them a formative grade and feedback on their interpretation.
2. I collected their Reading Notebooks at mid-unit. They marked their "best entry" with a sticky note. As I evaluated the notebooks, I looked for volume (how many stories had they read so far, how many entries, and how long the entries were), variety (were they trying the interpretation strategies or sticking with safe character charts or summary?), and depth (were they pushing their thinking by writing long about theme or character analysis?). I gave them specific feedback on their marked entry, more general feedback on their variety and volume, and a formative grade.
3. I asked for another Discussion Thread posting and two responses to others about a week later. I was looking for a lift in the level of their interpretation postings, and critical thinking in their responses to others. I was, in general, very pleased with the depth and detail, as well as the respectful and academic tone, of their responses. I could also tell that they were thinking about the stories a little differently by reading other interpretations and entertaining new ideas. Sometimes they agreed and added on, sometimes they disagreed and explained their perspective, and sometimes they admitted that this was a new idea to them and explained their new thinking. This, again, got formative feedback and a formative grade.
4. I gave them a study guide for the test. I told them the format of the test, how much time each section should take, I wrote the curricular performance indicators I was looking for, and I listed the terms they would need to know. Since this was a performance task test, and the performance indicators and terms were all the things I'd been teaching all along, I did not feel like I was "giving anything away". I made the mentor texts available to them on the Moodle site so they could practice.
5. I gave a formative "quiz" the day before the test so they could have a "taste" of what the test would be like. I stopped them after about 15 minutes, told them it was just for practice, and allowed them to work with a partner to discuss their answers, finish any of the unfinished questions, and go over the terms together. 

By the time of the test, students were much less stressed and much more confident than last year. The results of the test are much higher. Of course a few students still did not do well; I can look back on their formative scores and feedback, and see the gaps and lack of practice despite the attempts to support them. However, I feel that I did a much better job with my feedback as well as holding students accountable to do the practice work. This formative feedback made a big difference in their learning.

The Blunder

I traveled with three colleagues to Beijing this weekend to attend the Learning 2.012 conference. We were invited to dinner by a former colleague who moved here in August; he promised to send a driver to pick us up and bring us to his new house. The driver was to meet us in the lobby of the hotel between 4:30 and 5:00 with a sign saying the name of our school.

We were a little late returning from our afternoon at The Great Wall, arriving at about 4:40. No driver. No worries; we hung around the lobby, eying the Chinese man with car keys who was also hanging around the lobby, but he didn't have the magic sign. By 5:15 we started to worry.

A phone call to our dinner host explained what happened. Mr. Ren, the driver, arrived at the hotel lobby at 4:30 with his sign. A very old couple walked up to him looking expectant. He showed them the sign, and they nodded, so off they went together. What a surprise when my friend opened his door, expecting old friends and seeing, instead, old strangers! It took my friend about 10 minutes to explain the mistake to the somewhat senile couple and Mr. Ren. They piled back into the car and returned to the hotel. We met up with Mr. Ren, the old couple met up with Mr. Wong, their very worried driver, and we separated to our own rightful destinations.

Funny story! But also how I have been feeling during this technology conference. I am somewhat like that old couple, wandering off with the wrong driver and not realizing my mistake until someone meets me at the door to explain it to me. All of it is harmless, as was the driver mix-up, but an unfortunate detour nonetheless.

One of the big questions that has been bouncing around my head today has been this one from Heidi Hayes Jacobs and her Curriculum 21 work: What year are we teaching for? So much of what is driving our teaching is dated: SATs, IB exams,  College entrance requirements. We teach the 5 paragraph persuasive essay in grade 8 English Language Arts because they need to know how to do that in high school. We teach literary analysis essay in grade 8 because they need to know how for high school. And in high school, they still write the 5-paragraph essay because they need to do that on the SAT. And they teach annotating a printed text because they have to do it on the IB exam. But that is 1982 teaching because those exams haven't changed as the world of the learner has changed..

I am beginning to realize that even if we use technology to do some of those same things, it's still 1982 teaching. For example, typing an essay on Word rather than handwriting is still 1982 teaching. Videotaping a lecture and having kids watch it at home, AKA "flipped classroom", is still a lecture, and is still 1982 teaching. This is when I feel like the old couple standing at the door of my friend's house. I thought I was using technology; I thought I was on the right road to the correct destination. No harm done, but the bigger objective was not really achieved.

Jacobs' teaching point is that we have to "upgrade" (her word) our curriculum to make it relevant and responsive to the world 10 years from now, the world our students will encounter as adults. We need to re-think and re-imagine our learning targets and assessments to capture the multi-media, connected, globalized world. Some ideas I've taken away from my first long day here that could lift the level of teaching out of 1982 are:

• have students videotape themselves demonstrating and explaining their analysis of a poem and embed that video into their poetry reading portfolio instead of a written analysis
• have students make a Public Service Announcement (PSA) video after they've written their persuasive essay instead of "performing" it as an oral presentation
• have students blog about their Social Studies homework reading: What I know, what I think, what I wonder, instead of completing the reading comprehension questions

When I return to my school, I am going to make a sign to hang over my desk: What year am I teaching for? As I plan, I will use that sign to guide me into the right car so that I end up at my preferred destination.