Two Powerful Teaching Practices to Improve Student Learning

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Two PowerfulTeaching Practices to Improve
Student Learning

• MMS Staff Meeting
• December 10, 2008

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Powerful Practice 1 Check for Understanding

• The wording of the question is critical to engage
  students in the response.
• (Share ideas with partner)

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• Who needs more help?
• Vs.
• Who feels prepared to go home and teach their
  parents?

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Routines of a Typical Lesson

• 1.Warm-Up
• 2.Learning Target
• 3.Instructional Activity
• 4.Homework
• Checking for Understanding happens every step of
  the teaching learning process.

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What are the Benefits?

• Learning is our mission. If our students have
  misunderstandings or simply do not understand
  than we have not achieved our goal.
• If we are unaware of student learning, then we
  can not have an impact on the outcome of student
  learning.

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Powerful Practice 2Conversationsabout Common
Assessmentsby Jane L. David of ASCD

• In collaborative inquiry, teachers work together
  to identify common challenges, analyze relevant
  data, and test out instructional approaches.

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Whats the Reality?

• Contradicts traditions of teacher isolation and
  individualistic approaches to teaching.
• Lack of skills in collecting data, making sense
  of the information, and figuring out its
  implications for action.
• Little time and competing agendas.
• A common mistake of making raising test scores
  the primary goal, displacing the more important
  goal of gathering rich data that suggest what
  adjustments are likely to increase student
  understanding.

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Whats the Research?

• A growing body of evidence suggests that when
  teachers collaborate to pose and answer questions
  informed by data from their own students, their
  knowledge grows and their practice changes.
• The teachers gained greater understanding of
  their students reasoning and adapted their
  classroom practices to this new knowledge.
• Teachers not only deepened their knowledge about
  how to assess student understanding but also used
  the assessment results to guide their instruction.

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Creating conditions for collaboration is a tall
order.

• Student work products or individual teachers
  formative assessments are more relevant to
  instructional practices than standardized test
  scores are.
• Inquiry teams need sufficient chunks of time to
  meet, training in inquiry skills, protocols to
  guide data collection and discussion, and a
  skilled facilitator to keep the agenda focused on
  implications for instructions instead of war
  stories.

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Whats One to Do?

• Collaborative inquiry is among the most promising
  strategies for strengthening teaching and
  learning.
• Schools need to create a shared understanding of
  the purpose and value of collaborative inquiry
  among teachers and administrators.
• There must be time for teachers to meet regularly
  and adequate investment in training and
  facilitation.
• Becoming an effective inquiry team takes patience
  and persistence.

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Group Reflection Questions

• Tell your neighbor creative quick ways to Check
  for Understanding throughout your lesson?
• On YOUR YELLOW STICKY NOTE Record
• 2. How often does your Content Team engage in
  conversation about the results of a Common
  Assessment use that information to plan next
  steps in the teaching learning cycle?
• a. every time a Common Assessment is given
• b. half of the time a Common Assessment is
  given
• c. Never
• d. Other---explain