Rigor, Relevance, Relationships

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Rigor,Relevance,Relationships

• Increasing Achievement for Area 6 Students

Michelle Curry, Lisa Hendrix, Ashley Jimerson
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Todays Challenge

• Addressing the growing needs of disadvantaged,
  at-risk students
• Addressing the needs of low performing schools
• Closing the achievement gap
• Pedro A. Noguera, Ph. D. NYU

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How do schools contribute to under achievement?

• Disconnect between teachers and students
• Cemetery method of instruction is dominant
• Lack of strategies to change
• Underachievement is rationalized and normalized
• Tracking is used to reinforce privilege and deny
  educational opportunities
• Learning is not viewed as applicable or FUN
• Race is perceived as determining achievement
• Some teachers buy into this
• Pedro A. Noguera, Ph. D. NYU

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At-risk Males

• Females out perform males
• Black and Latino males are more likely to
• Be suspended or expelled
• Drop out
• Be placed in Special Education
• Be missing from honors, gifted, and advanced
  placement
• Be under-represented among school personnel
  (except as custodians and security guards)
• Pedro A. Noguera, Ph. D. NYU

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Media and Societal Influences

• Greater influence is placed on sports,
  entertainment, and being a player
• Nerds are harassed and looked down upon
• Stereotypes undermine achievement and aspirations
• Pressure to conform to peer expectations is great
• Pedro A. Noguera, Ph. D. NYU

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How do WE work together to change this
ever-growing epidemic?
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RIGOR

• How do your students view challenging work?
• How do teachers make work more rigorous?
• How can rigor increase achievement?

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What is RIGOR and why is it important?

• the goal of helping students develop the
  capacity to understand content that is complex,
  ambiguous, provocative, and personally or
  emotionally challenging.

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Rigor is NOT

• A special program or curriculum for select
  students
• About severity or hardship
• Punishment
• A measure of the quantity of content to be covered

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Have you heard this? Or said this?

• Our students are so far behind, we cant expect
  them to do even more.

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How to increase Rigor

• R Ratchet up the complexity of the task
• I Increase scaffolding
• G Guide your students
• O Offer assignments and projects that stimulate
  open-ended thinking
• R Raise expectations for completion

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Ratchet up the complexity of the task

• What it IS
• Performance-based assignments
• Performance-based assessments
• Higher-level, critical thinking
• How and Why questions

• What it is NOT
• Doing more work
• Drill and practice
• Knowledge level questions
• What and When questions

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Increase Scaffolding

• Raise expectations with added support
• Tier assignments- Bump it Up or Bump it Down
• Complexity (level of difficulty)
• Processing (the way students get to the end
  result)
• Product (the end result)
• Multiple exposure to critical skills
• Higher-level reading content
• Audio version
• Guide-O-Rama (small groups)
• Extending and Refining

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Guide Students

• Effective, higher-level questioning
• Bloomin Bingo
• Extending Refining
• Students have a do something with their
  knowledge
• You are the facilitator
• Do NOT do the work for them

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Offer assignments and projects that stimulate
open-ended thinking

• Project-based learning
• Bloomin Table From Top Down
• Apply what they learn in a variety of ways
• Cross-curricular transfer

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Raise Expectations for Completion (Not Yet)

• A, B, Not Yetoptional C
• Revise until its satisfactory
• When you require students to finish an assignment
  at an acceptable level, you show them that you
  believe they can complete the work.

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Gabrielle

• For people who dont understand as much.. They
  should be in higher level classes to understand
  more because if they already dont know much,
  you dont want to teach them to not know much
  over and over

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Summarizer
With your grade level group, brainstorm 2-3 more
strategies you have used or could use to increase
RIGOR for your students.
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How and why should I make instruction real to my
students?
Relevance
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Activator

• On a note card, write down what you taught
  yesterday and why you taught it.

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What does Relevance mean?

• Making standards and curriculum meaningful to
  students lives.

My School
What I Know
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The World
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Whats In It For Me?

• What will I learn?
• Why is the information important to me now and in
  the future?
• How does this information relate to what I
  already know or what I have experienced?
• Will I be treated with respect by my teacher and
  peers?
• 
  -LeeAnn Nickelsen

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Making It Real
I just dont see the point in why I need to know
this junkYou say if I dont learn it, then
surely I will flunkBut I need a better reason
for leaning all this stuffIts boring and its
pointless, so learning it is rough Annet
te Breaux
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R
RELEVANT
E
ENGAGING
A
APPLICATION TO
L
LIFE
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The Brain

• Students as empty vessels
• Pattern-seeking device
• Learning involves the whole physiology
• Emotions and cognition occur simultaneously

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Strategy1 Background Knowledge
Map Skills
Grammar
Plant Life
Fractions
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Ways to build background knowledge

• SSR
• Teach Vocabulary
• Field Trips or Virtual Museums
• Artifacts connected with the content
• Guest speakers who are enthusiastic and at ease
• speaking with kids
• Video clips and pictures related to topic
• Homework

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Strategy 2 PBI
The Research Project-based instruction provides
one way to introduce a wider range of learning
opportunities into the classroom. It can engage
children from diverse cultural backgrounds
because children can choose topics that are
related to their own experiences, as well as
allow them to use cultural or individual learning
styles (Katz Chard, 1989).
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Summarizer
With your grade level group, brainstorm 2-3 more
strategies you have used or could use to increase
RELEVANCE for your students.
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Relationships

• How do we form relationships with our students?
• Why should we have learning communities?
• Where do we start in forming a learning
  community?

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Fill in the blank

• A significant relationship is like a ___________
  because it ___________.
• (noun)

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Lost Within a Shout

• You yelled at me and I yelled back
• What else was there to do?
• We yelled some more, our throats got sore
• And the tension grew and grew
• And finally, in exhaustion, we both ran out of
  steam
• Left standing in embarrassment, no pride left to
  redeem
• What point is there in thinking that being
  right we must
• And pushing on till all involved just lose
  respect and trust?
• Maybe if wed listened, we could have met halfway
• Lets talk next time and really hear what the
  other has to say.
• For if we both could do that, maybe wed find out
  
• that never has a point been made when lost within
  a shout.
• Annette L. Breaux

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Classroom Scenario

• Everyone read the classroom scenario
• Grades 3-5 read Whats Effective first
• Grades K-2 read Whats Not Effective first
• Complete T-Chart as a grade level
• Compare teacher A to B
• What kind of relationship do you believe they
  exhibited to their students?

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Relationships

• Creating a bond with others which allows you to
  know them individually
• How do I create a bond with you?
• Talk with your neighbor about how you formed a
  bond with a significant person in your life.

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Relationship Elements

• Attitudes
• Values
• Beliefs
• Culture
• The morale of teachers and students has an impact
  on student achievement.

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NCLB

• Teaching the whole
• child
• Health
• Well-being
• Safety
• Achievement

• Ask the questions that
• matter
• Have you eaten breakfast?
• How is your family doing?
• Do you understand the assignment?

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Building Learning Communities

• Why should we have them?
• Where do we start in forming a learning community?

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What are learning communities?

• Learning Community
• A commitment to the learning of each child.

• Professional Learning Community?
• A group of collaborative teams whose members work
  interdependently to achieve common goals linked
  to the purpose of learning for all.

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Strategies for Building Relationships

• Class Meetings a time to establish group norms.
  Meetings should be daily/several times weekly
  scheduled and impromptu.
• Affirmation collections of student work
  (portfolios) making it more visible to
  teachers, parents and students
• Affiliation work which permits, encourages and
  supports opportunities to work interdependently
  with others
• (Schlechty 2002)

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Summarizer
With your grade level group, brainstorm 2-3 more
strategies you have used or could use to increase
RELATIONSHIPS in your classroom.
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Grade Level Break-Out Activity

• Work with your grade level to develop a
  standards-based lesson plan incorporating the
  3Rs.
• Hints
• Performance-based
• Authentic to YOUR audience
• Collaborative

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School Break-Out Activity

• With your SIP goals in mind, create a plan for
  your school which addresses the 3Rs.
• Hints
• Performance-based
• Authentic to YOUR audience
• Collaborative

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School Follow Up

• Use your School Plan for Increasing 3Rs graphic
  organizer to redeliver this conference to your
  teams.
• Please forward a copy of your team minutes to
  Michelle, Lisa, or Ashley after your discussion.

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Resources

• Blackburn, Barbara R. Classroom Instruction from
  A to Z, How to Promote Student Learning
• National Youth at Risk Conference, Savannah,
  Georgia
• Noguera, Pedro A. Ph. D., New York University
• Southeastern Conference on Differentiated
  Instruction, Birmingham, Alabama

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