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Resource Round-Up

Every Monday we're sharing a round-up of resources that might be helpful as you develop opportunities for learning to share with your students.

If you are interested in history and architecture, take part in the virtual York Street Heritage Quest. You can also, go to York Street and view the architecture as it is now in person.

Parlay is library of ready-made discussion prompts that encourage higher-order thinking and connect learning to the events and ideas shaping our world. This is free to teachers until the end of this academic year. It can be done as online round table discussions or in class Socratic Seminar style discussions.

As the largest not-for-profit exclusively for young people and social change, Do Something's millions of members represent every US area code and 131 countries.

The Encyclopedia of Gear, created by Outside Magazine, is described as "187 amazing stories about everything we use."

This School Library Journal feature by Mahnaz Dar provides links to 19 webcomics for middle-grade and young adult audiences.

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Every Monday we're sharing a round-up of resources that might be helpful as you develop opportunities for learning to share with your students. If you are interested in history and architecture, take part in the virtual York Street Heritage Quest. You can also, go to York Street and view the architecture as it is now [...]

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Exploring a range of Thinking Pathways allows teachers and students to move beyond surface learning that focuses on the memorisation of knowledge and facts, to more deep and reflective learning that is focused on developing understanding through more

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Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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Working in small teams, high school teachers offer each other support and feedback for improving in their work.

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Checking for Understanding without Creating Mountains of  Marking

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Checking for Understanding without Creating Mountains of  Marking

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The Australian Society for Evidence Based Teaching

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Checking for understanding is an essential aspect of teaching. You need to check that your students have understood what you taught them. It's how you know what to do next.

However, if you are like most teachers, your time is already stretched thin, and you don't want to be creating even more mountains of marking to take home with you every night.

The good news is that you don't have to. Checking for understanding can occur within the flow of your day-to-day lessons. The key, according to Dylan Wiliam, is in learning to listen.

What Do You Listen For When Checking for Understanding?

You listen to see if your students 'get it', whatever 'it' might be in a particular lesson. This requires you to be very clear about what 'it' is that you want them to learn and master.

For example, you may want your students to be able to describe the energy transfer and transformation involved in simple scenarios, such as dropping a ball or releasing a mousetrap.

However, you also listen to the thinking behind your students' responses, and especially for any misconceptions that they may hold.

If, as in the above example, you wanted students to be able to describe the energy transfer and transformation involved in simple scenarios, you would listen for common misconceptions such as:

Stationary objects have no energy.

Gravity is the only form of potential energy

Things use up energy

Only stretched objects have elastic potential energy

These are not just 'nice words', 'noble intentions' or 'meaningless platitudes'. As you will see when you read on, they drive how you subsequently go about assessing your students understanding within the lesson.

Checking for Understanding by Listening?

In order to check for understanding, you need to get students to talk to you, and you achieve this through asking them questions. However, the nature of your questions matters - in fact, it matters a lot.

When using questions to determine what to do next, you need to ask ones that gauge the level of understanding for your whole class, not just individual students. This requires using some form of what Wiliam calls an all student response system. Here are some examples of such systems.

All of these systems involve asking your students some form of a multiple-choice question.

Multiple-choice questions do have some inherent limitations. However, if constructed thoughtfully, they are an ideal way to check your students' understanding at the end of a lesson.

Crafting Thoughtful Multiple-Choice Questions

The first step in crafting thoughtful multiple-choice questions is to consider what it was that you wanted them to learn and master.

Continuing our example where we wanted students to be able to describe the energy transfer and transformation involved in simple scenarios, you could use a true-false statement, such as when you hit a golf ball, energy is transformed from the club to the ball, and have students to indicate true or false using the thumb's response. This particular question determines whether students understand the difference between transferred and transformed.

Alternatively, you could present your students with a short series of true-false statements:

When you hold a ball, the ball contains energy.

When you let go of the ball, potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy.

A stretched rubber band has potential energy.

When you hit a ball, the energy is transferred from the club to the ball.

You could also include a multiple-choice question specifically designed to warn you about student misconceptions. For example:

In the above diagram, which spring has potential energy? The ...

1. Spring at rest

2. Stretched spring

3. Compressed spring

The correct answer is 2 & 3. Obviously, you need to get your students used to the idea that there will sometimes be more than one right answer. Assuming you have already done this, the question helps to raise flags about the common misconception that only stretched objects have elastic potential energy.

You could present all of these questions in just a few minutes, and with nothing more than your students' fingers, you have found out enough about their understanding to make a sound decision about what to do next.
How do you go about checking for understanding?

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Checking for Understanding Without Creating Mountains of Marking

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Checking for understanding is an essential aspect of teaching. You need to check that your students have understood what you taught them. It's how you know what to do next. However, if you are like most teachers, your time is already stretched thin, and you don't want to be creating even more mountains of marking to take home with you every night.

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Why Modeling Engagement in the Classroom Matters

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Why Modeling Engagement in the Classroom Matters

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Why Modeling Engagement in the Classroom Matters

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The Unexpected Power of Reading Conferences | Edutopia

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A high school English teacher has a single accountability measure for her students' choice reading: talking to them about it.

Teachers face many challenges when it comes to helping students develop a love of reading, some of which I wrote about in " Putting an End to Fake Reading," but one of the most daunting is the accountability piece. How do we know if students are actually reading? How do we assess the learning students are gaining from choice reading? How do we include this in our grade books?

I've tried many accountability measures over the years, including reading logs of various formats, book reports, assorted handouts, and reading quizzes on Accelerated Reader, but Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer and Penny Kittle's Book Love helped me realize why those assessments were so unsatisfying. If I wanted my students to become authentic readers, why was I assigning them activities that real readers-including me-would never voluntarily engage in?

I had to ask myself: What do real readers do? And one important part of my own reading life is talking about what I read with others. So I decided to try an experiment and do away with all accountability measures for choice reading except for one-on-one conferences with me.

The results were profoundly positive.

The Logistics of Conferencing

Although the idea of talking about books with students is appealing-honestly, it's one of the main reasons I became an English teacher-the first thing I had to tackle were the logistics of the conferences.

In my on-level 10th grade English classes, I allot 10 to 15 minutes of our 55-minute periods for choice reading, and my students range widely in reading ability and motivation. I was worried that juggling everything going on in my classroom would be overwhelming, but with some structure and fine-tuning, I was able to have great discussions with two to three students each day, and to talk with each of my students at least once a month.

At the beginning of the period each day, I greet students and quickly take down the page number they're on in their books. This serves several purposes. First, it's a reminder for students to have their books out and open for reading right at the beginning of the period. Also, it gives me a quick way of assessing their progress through their book. If a student has read only a few pages over the course of the week, I know they're probably in need of some help in either getting into their books or choosing a new one, and a conference is a perfect way to work out which it is and find a solution.

I then grab my reading conference binder and sit down in one of two chairs I've arranged in a comfy corner of my room, calling over a student to begin our chat. I've established norms for independent work in my classroom, so with occasional reminders, students know that this is a time to work quietly on their own.

Keeping Track of Conversations

To keep track of conferences, I keep a binder with dividers for each class and a note sheet for each student where I record the details of our conversations for future reference.

I always start out by asking each student to remind me what they're currently reading and what page they're on, and I ask what rating they would give their book and why. This gives us a jumping-off point for what to talk about next. I also have some reading conference questions to refer to if I'm stuck for something to ask, but the more I conference with students, the easier it is to know what to talk about. I only need to remember my purpose for reading conferences: supporting students in thinking about their books and helping them find books they enjoy.

Assessing Choice Reading

Real-life readers don't get scored for reading for pleasure, but I do want to encourage students to find books they enjoy and to give them a way to keep track of their own reading progress, so I created a simple sheet for them to record the books they finish, along with their thoughts about what they read. When students finish a book, they complete this sheet and bring it to our conference, and we use it to talk about the book and what they might like to read next.

I don't have a requirement for how many books students must finish, and these sheets are not scored in any way. I simply save them in the student's class file for reflection at the end of the grading period. The only score my students receive for choice reading is this reading reflection each six weeks, in which they write their thoughts and feelings about the books they've read and what they'd like to read next. I give them completion points, not a grade, for doing the reflection.

The Results of My Choice Reading Experiment

When I began this experiment, I was concerned that, without the accountability of points entered in the grade book, my students would not be motivated to read. My fear, however, was proven beautifully unfounded.

More of my students read far more books than ever before, and with our regular conversations, it's far easier to notice and support students who are struggling with finding a book they enjoy. I'm able to tap into some student interests-sports fiction and poetry collections among them-and, most importantly, I've noticed my connections with students strengthening. And that's probably the most important thing a teacher can do to improve learning in the classroom.

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The Unexpected Power of Reading Conferences

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A high school English teacher has a single accountability measure for her students' choice reading: talking to them about it.

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10 mindframes self-reflection tool August 28th 

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10 mindframes self-reflection tool August 28th 

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Dear Teacher: Heartfelt Advice for Teachers from Students

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A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned

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A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned

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Listen to my interview with Marisa Thompson (transcript):
Sponsored by Peergrade and 3Doodler

Check out information about Marisa Thompson's Ultimate TQE Course at the bottom of this page!

So much of the learning we do comes from texts: articles, textbooks, novels, and all kinds of online publications. Sometimes, those texts come in less traditional forms; in fact, our use of the word "text" has broadened over time to include things like films, images, and even diagrams. Regardless of what form they come in, texts make up the bulk of how our students experience learning.

But too often, when we assign texts to students, we find that they don't experience them with much depth. One reason for that may be that we don't set them up to do that. In many text-based classes (English, history, science), the learning cycle often consists of (1) consuming a section of the text, (2) answering teacher-created questions about the text, (3) taking a test after several sections have been completed.

For years, high school English teacher Marisa Thompson followed this same programming, and got typical results: Some students did the required work, but never seemed particularly invested in the books themselves. Others completed the questions unevenly, sometimes not answering them all, other times copying work from their peers. And when students didn't do the work, they got calls home and office referrals.

As this pattern repeated itself year after year, Thompson became more frustrated: The texts themselves were wonderful, but students weren't experiencing them the way they were meant to be experienced. Instead, they had shallow interactions with them, doing whatever surface work had to be done to get a grade.

Finally, she started experimenting with a different approach, and the way she teaches texts now is completely different from the way she used to. Her current approach, which she calls TQE, is similar to Socratic Seminar, where students lead a discussion on a given text, but with a few twists. Since implementing this new approach, Thompson has seen her students reading much more than they used to, and with much more depth than ever before. They are having college-level conversations about books in class, and for the first time, they seem excited about the books they're reading.

On top of that, Thompson's prepping and grading work for these class sessions is down to almost nothing.

What I love about this method, and why I'm sharing it here, is that I think it could be applied in a lot of different areas, not just with the study of novels. In any class where students need to read a text in order to learn, something along these lines could be implemented, and I think you'll find that the learning in your classroom gets much richer as a result. So as you read about TQE, think about how you might be able to apply it in your content area.

The Problem

As an English teacher, Thompson found that her students were experiencing books in a very shallow, grade-focused way.

"(I would) send students home, maybe get them started on Chapter 1, and then, Hey guys, go home and read Chapter 2. Come on back and we'll talk about it, and here's your list of questions; you're going to have a reading quiz. I realized I wasn't really assessing their reading with homework and quizzes. I was assessing whether or not they did their homework questions."

This method not only diminished the value of the books students were reading, it also led to other problems. "It made reading seem like a hassle," Thomspon says. "I started getting a bunch of cheating. One year I had 10 kids copy off each other. It turned this amazing story-this beautiful novel that everybody should read and enjoy and love-into a discipline problem."

Early Changes

Knowing something had to change, Thompson decided to try grading students only on whether their participation in class indicated that they had read the book.

"I said, 'Look. We're going to read this book, and we're just going to read it and talk about it. You're not going to have study questions. You're not going to have any reading quizzes. But I'm going to know if you read or not. I'm going to know.'"

These early discussions were similar to Socratic Seminar, where students came with questions and Thompson mostly observed. When a student participated in a way that demonstrated that he or she had read the book, their names would be crossed off of a chart. "And that was it," Thompson says. "The standard says, Be able to read and analyze at grade level. And if they're doing that, I mean, yeah, cross their name off. Move on."

For students who scored low on the discussion or who weren't initially comfortable with active participation, Thompson offered alternative means of assessment. "I said, hey, if I'm wrong with your score, then we need to come up with some sort of alternative: They were used to taking annotations, taking notes on their thoughts while they read-you can show me those. You can sit down and have a conversation just one-on-one, or you can take a test. So if you got an eight out of 10, and you're like, 'No, I want the 10 out of 10,' I have a multiple-choice test on the book."

Most of the time, Thompson's initial score on the discussion turned out to be accurate. "I did have a lot of students who had a B for their assessment, and they're like, No, I want the A. Great. And they took the test and then it was cute, because they were like Yeah, I didn't really read all of it. So my assessment was, on average, about 3 or 4 percent higher than what they were normally getting on their tests."

Right away, Thompson started to see changes in how her students were reading. "I had students who started reading more than they were assigned, and they were finishing the book early," she says. Some were even reading ahead.

Over time, Thompson refined her approach, adding small-group time before the large-group discussions, offering scaffolding to help students develop better questions, and structuring student contributions so that the richest questions got the most discussion time.

These changes have so elevated the level of discourse that Thompson sometimes feels like she's teaching college class. "And that's exactly what I tell them: 'What we just did, that was a collegiate literature course. That was amazing. You could walk into a college course and have this discussion.' And you can see that they're enjoying it."

The TQE Method

Here is the approach Thompson uses now, step by step:

1. Students Complete Assigned Reading at Home

Usually, this will be a segment of a longer text, like a few chapters in a novel. Students who show up having not completed the reading are invited to finish up in the hall during small group discussion (step 2) to catch up. They are welcome to return to class for the discussion when they finish.

2. Small Group Discussions (15 minutes)

When they arrive in class, students get into small groups, where they have 15 minutes to share thoughts, lingering questions, and epiphanies (TQEs) they have about the reading. Early in the year, Thompson provides stems to help students generate these (see below), encouraging them to move from the more simplistic ideas on the left to the more complex ones on the right.

3. TQEs on the Board

By the time the 15 minutes is up, each group needs to choose their top 2 TQEs from the group and write them on the board. Although these are meant to serve as the basis for the group discussion, they are not necessarily used as is.

"If they put something on there that is not at the quality or as thought-provoking as we need it to be for the class to discuss, we'll edit it together, the 40 of us," Thompson explains. "So it becomes a writing lesson."

Thompson also insists that when discussing a text, students use the author's name. When discussing Of Mice and Men, for example, she started by having students repeat the name "Steinbeck" five times. "I love Lenny and George. I love Lenny," she told them. "but he's totally fictional. So when you start asking questions like, 'Why did George do that?' George doesn't exist."

Instead, she has students practice asking questions like, "Why did hat theme is Steinbeck have George do that?" "W Steinbeck trying to convey to the rest of us by having his character do that?"

"It's not about the character," she explains. "It's not about the character's motivation, it's the author's purpose in providing that motivation for the character."

4. Class Discussion of TQEs

Thompson then moderates a whole-class discussion of the reading, using the TQEs that have been written on the board. This takes about 40 minutes of class time-she teaches on a block schedule, so there's plenty of time to dig in. When the class is actively studying a novel, they will have these conversations in every class meeting.

As for grading, Thompson simply records when students participate, and that's it. "I have a chart with their little pictures," she explains, "and I cross them off as I go. So I'm not necessarily grading them every single day. My student Sally might have participated a ton one day, and skipped the next day. But my standard-based grading says she is reading and analyzing at at least grade level. I don't need to score each of my 40 kids every single day."

"And the amount of planning is nil," Thompson adds. " I'm not creating, I'm not copying, I'm not collecting, I don't need to waste my time. My prep is reading before bed every night."

What Student-Centered Learning Looks Like

"We have all these really great aphorisms, these quotes about, 'Students should own their learning,' and 'Empower students,'" Thompson observes. "And it's like, well that's great, but how in the heck do we do that?"

Since starting the TQE process, Thompson has seen true student-centered learning in action: Students are in charge of the content of the discussions, and the ability to participate fully has become its own motivator for completing the homework.

"The peer pressure of Everyone's discussing this book- that becomes cool. To have an idea, to have an opinion. So the student comes in, and all of a sudden it's, "Wait, I read that part, and I think this," you know? And you want to talk about empowering a student? You just turned that student into a part of the classroom community." ♦

If you are a fan of the TQE method and you want to take it further, check out Marisa's Ultimate TQE Course. This course will revolutionize your reading and writing instruction and assessment through student-led inquiry, intentional teacher guidance, feedback that is immediately useful to students while eliminating the need for at-home grading, even for essays, and a personable approach to teaching and learning that leaves everyone in the room energized and engaged.

Cult of Pedagogy receives a portion of the Ultimate TQE Course sales that come through the link on this page.

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Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method

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Want your students to have rich, complex conversations about the texts they read? This method leads to the kinds of classroom discussions you thought only happened in college.

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How A Culture of Improvement Goes Hand in Hand With Coaching Teachers | MindShift | KQED News

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Students build English-language skills in math class by talking and writing about their understanding. (Teaching Channel)

Helping high school students with only basic English improve their speaking, writing and listening skills requires that language be a focus of every content area. The ENLACE Academy at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts serves students who have been in the country only a few years and are just beginning to learn the language. English and content are the twin goals of every lesson.

"Coaching is a big part of what we do here because our mission and our model is really about building language through content," said Allison Balter, principal of ENLACE Academy. "But what we find is that not a lot of teachers come with both of those skill sets."

To continually improve their instruction, content area teachers meet once a week to get feedback from one another on upcoming lessons. Then Balter observes the lesson, video-records it, and meets with the teacher afterward to highlight strengths and ideas for improvement. Balter said learning together is part of the teaching culture within the academy, which is especially important since this style of teaching is new to many teachers.

"I get better; my students get better; and this program is just getting stronger," said Keila, a second-year teacher shown receiving coaching in this Teaching Channel video. "I am not the teacher I was last year, and if it wasn't for the support I don't think I'd be where I'm at today."

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How A Culture of Improvement Goes Hand in Hand With Coaching Teachers

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Students build English-language skills in math class by talking and writing about their understanding. (Teaching Channel) Helping high school students with only basic English improve their speaking, writing and listening skills requires that language be a focus of every content area.

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The Power of Collective Efficacy - Educational Leadership

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March 2018 | Volume 75 | Number 6
Leading the Energized School Pages 40-44

Jenni Donohoo, John Hattie and Rachel Eells

In the 1970s, Albert Bandura, a psychologist at Stanford University, uncovered an interesting pattern in working-group dynamics. He observed (1977) that a group's confidence in its abilities seemed to be associated with greater success. In other words, the assurance a person places in his or her team affects the team's overall performance. Researchers have since found this to be true across many domains. When a team of individuals share the belief that through their unified efforts they can overcome challenges and produce intended results, groups are more effective. For example, in communities where neighbors share the belief that they can band together to overcome crime, there is significantly less violence (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). In companies, when team members hold positive beliefs about the team's capabilities, there is greater creativity and productivity (Kim & Shin, 2015). And in schools, when educators believe in their combined ability to influence student outcomes, there are significantly higher levels of academic achievement (Bandura, 1993).

Bandura named this interesting pattern in human behavior "collective efficacy," which he defined as "a group's shared belief in its conjoint capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment" (Bandura, 1997, p. 477). There have been many studies investigating collective efficacy in schools-this is not a new topic. By the turn of the century, collective teacher efficacy had been operationalized, and instruments had been developed to measure it (Goddard, 2002). Models for collective efficacy in schools have been tested and refined, with researchers finding that as successes and support strengthen teachers' confidence in their teams, student achievement increases as well (Goddard, Hoy, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2004; Adams & Forsyth, 2006).

Rachel Eells's (2011) meta-analysis of studies related to collective efficacy and achievement in education demonstrated that the beliefs teachers hold about the ability of the school as a whole are "strongly and positively associated with student achievement across subject areas and in multiple locations" (p. 110). On the basis of Eells's research, John Hattie positioned collective efficacy at the top of the list of factors that influence student achievement (Hattie, 2016). According to his Visible Learning research, based on a synthesis of more than 1,500 meta-analyses, collective teacher efficacy is greater than three times more powerful and predictive of student achievement than socioeconomic status. It is more than double the effect of prior achievement and more than triple the effect of home environment and parental involvement. It is also greater than three times more predictive of student achievement than student motivation and concentration, persistence, and engagement (see fig. 1).

Source: John Hattie

Cultural Beliefs

Since collective efficacy influences how educators feel, think, motivate themselves, and behave (Bandura, 1993), it is a major contributor to the tenor of a school's culture. When educators share a sense of collective efficacy, school cultures tend to be characterized by beliefs that reflect high expectations for student success. A shared language that represents a focus on student learning as opposed to instructional compliance often emerges. The perceptions that influence the actions of educators include "We are evaluators," "We are change agents," and "We collaborate." Teachers and leaders believe that it is their fundamental task to evaluate the effect of their practice on students' progress and achievement. They also believe that success and failure in student learning is more about what they did or did not do, and they place value in solving problems of practice together (Hattie & Zierer, 2018).

When efficacy is present in a school culture, educators' efforts are enhanced-especially when they are faced with difficult challenges. Since expectations for success are high, teachers and leaders approach their work with an intensified persistence and strong resolve.

In addition, collective efficacy influences student achievement indirectly through productive patterns of teaching behavior. Such behaviors include implementing high-yield strategies-for example, integrating literacy instruction in content-area classrooms (Cantrell & Callaway, 2008), soliciting parental involvement (Kirby & DiPaola, 2011), and finding productive ways to deal with problem behavior (Gibbs & Powell, 2011). Clearly, collective efficacy has a large ripple effect.

Conversely, if educators' perceptions are filtered through the belief that there is very little they can do to influence student achievement, negative beliefs pervade the school culture. When educators lack a sense of collective efficacy, they do not pursue certain courses of action because they feel they or their students lack the capabilities to achieve positive outcomes. The culture reflects a solemn satisfaction with the status quo. School communities experience an inclination to stop trying, decreased expectations, and lower levels of performance (Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004). In addition, when collective teacher efficacy is lacking, educators are more likely to ascribe failure to students' lack of ability, seek exclusion for challenging students (Gibbs & Powell, 2011), and experience higher levels of stress (Klassen, 2010; Lim & Eo, 2014). Conversations are often reflective of external blame, or an "us" versus "them" mentality.

The Role of Evidence

So how do school leaders build collective efficacy? The primary input is evidence of impact. When instructional improvement efforts result in improved student outcomes that are validated through sources of student learning data, educators' collective efficacy is strengthened. Evidence of collective impact, in turn, reinforces proactive collective behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motivations. Bandura referred to this as "reciprocal causality" (Bandura, 1993), noting that collective efficacy is a social resource that does not get depleted by its use; it gets renewed.

It is essential, therefore, to help educators make the link between their collective actions and student outcomes. To understand collective impact, teams need to determine if changes in classroom practice positively influenced student outcomes by examining specific evidence of student learning. They need to hear from students about their learning, their progress, their struggles, and their motivation to keep learning. They need to examine student artifacts such as assignments, tests, portfolios, and other indicators of daily progress. With all these activities, the key is making the link between teachers' actions and student outcomes explicit, so that teachers understand that the factors behind student progress are within their collective sphere of influence.

School leaders play a key role in creating non-threatening, evidence-based instructional environments. By promoting a culture of collaboration focused on "knowing thy collective impact," leaders have the potential to support school improvement in ways that positively influence teachers' collective efficacy beliefs and thus promote student achievement. Leaders do this by engaging in conversations with teachers about the meaning of impact, about the difference between achievement goals and progress, and about the use of dependable evidence. These conversations help to shift educators' thinking from task-related concerns (for example, "How much of my time is x going to require?" or "How will I manage x as part of my daily routine?") to broader impact concerns ("What was the impact when I did x?" "How did x affect the students in my classroom?" "How can we work together to make x even better?"). Teachers can increasingly orient their work around outcomes: "Did the students gain the essential understandings and skills?" "How do we know?" "How can we use evidence of student learning to improve classroom instruction?"

Leaders can also influence collective efficacy by setting expectations for formal, frequent, and productive teacher collaboration and by creating high levels of trust for this collaboration to take place. "Productive" means that teachers' collaborative efforts can help to account for consequences in the classroom. The emphasis should be on identifying student learning needs and detecting problems that need to be addressed in classrooms, using a variety of evidence to determine if approaches made a difference, and making adjustments as necessary. When leaders ensure that dependable, high trust, collaborative structures are in place, teachers learn from and with one another and build common understandings. Teachers need to see how collecting evidence fits into their daily routines, how they can use daily evidence to determine impact, and how they can make adjustments to their classroom practices when results aren't demonstrating increases in student outcomes.

Building common conceptions of progress requires more than just the structures that increase forms of collaboration. Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) warn about "administrative contrivances" that become artificial and short-lived. In addition, the collective impact typically only occurs where there are high levels of social sensitivity among the group members. Therefore, school leaders must foster empathy and effective interaction among teams. Administrators can model social sensitivity by paying close attention to verbal and nonverbal clues and exercising situational awareness-including heightened awareness of the undercurrents that have the potential to derail joint problem-solving (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). When leaders have a pulse on the emotional tone of the team, they can anticipate potential pitfalls that might occur during collaboration, sense when tensions rise, and not only have the fortitude to address the issues, but do so in a way that is respectful to the feelings and viewpoints of others.

Resetting the Narrative

Team members' confidence in each other's abilities and their belief in the impact of the team's work are key elements that set successful school teams apart. Publicly seeking evidence of positive effects on student learning does not happen serendipitously or by accident and neither does a sense of psychological safety. School leaders must work to build a culture designed to increase collective teacher efficacy, which will affect teachers' behavior and student beliefs. The power and promise of collective efficacy is that it can be influenced within schools, so focusing on it as a change point is a viable path to greater student achievement, greater commitment to learning, and a more inviting place to come and learn.

The greatest power that principals have in schools is that they can control the narrative of the school. If the narrative is about bus timetables, tweaks in the curriculum, and test schedules, this percolates through the school as the purpose of schooling-compliance to procedures. In such schools, students think learning is coming to school on time, sitting up straight, keeping quiet, and watching the teacher work. But if instead the narrative is about high expectations, growth in relation to inputs, what it means to be a "good learner" in various subjects, and what impact means, then teachers and students will think about learning in a different way. They will believe that learning is about challenge, about understanding and realizing high expectations, and that setbacks are an opportunity to learn. Students will also believe that coming to school means investing energy in deliberate practice.

Success lies in the critical nature of collaboration and the strength of believing that together, administrators, faculty, and students can accomplish great things. This is the power of collective efficacy.

References

Adams, C. M., & Forsyth, P. B. (2006). Proximate sources of collective teacher efficacy. Journal of Educational Administration, 44(6), 625-642.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.

Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologist, 28(2), 117-148.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

Cantrell, S., & Callaway, P. (2008). High and low implementers of content literacy instruction: Portraits of teacher efficacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(7), 1739-1750.

Eells, R. (2011). Meta-analysis of the relationship between collective efficacy and student achievement. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Loyola University of Chicago.

Gibbs, S., & Powell, B. (2011). Teacher efficacy and pupil behaviour: The structure of teachers' individual and collective beliefs and their relationship with numbers of pupils excluded from school. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(4), 564-584.

Goddard, R. D. (2002). A theoretical and empirical analysis of the measurement of collective efficacy: The development of a short form. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 62(1), 97-110.

Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2004). Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments, empirical evidence, and future directions. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3-13.

Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. New York: Teachers' College Press.

Hattie, J. (2016, July). Mindframes and Maximizers. 3rd Annual Visible Learning Conference held in Washington, DC.

Hattie, J. A. C., & Zierer, K. (2018). Ten Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success. Routledge.

Kirby, M., & DiPaola, M. (2011). Academic optimism and community engagement in urban schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 49(5), 542-562.

Kim, M., & Shin, Y. (2015). Collective efficacy as a mediator between cooperative group norms and group positive affect and team creativity. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 32(3), 693-716.

Klassen, R. (2010). Teacher stress: The mediating role of collective efficacy beliefs. The Journal of Educational Research, 103(5), 342-350.

Lim, S., & Eo, S. (2014). The mediating roles of collective teacher efficacy in the relations of teachers' perceptions of school organizational climate to their burnout. Teaching and Teacher Education, 44, 138-147.

Marzano, R., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. (2005). School leadership that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277(5328), 918-924.

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Barr, M. (2004). Fostering student learning: The relationship of collective teacher efficacy and student achievement. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 3(3), 189-209.

Jenni Donohoo is an education consultant currently working with the Council of Ontario Directors of Education. She is the author of Collective Efficacy: How Educators' Beliefs Impact Student Learning (Corwin, 2016). John Hattie is director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, chair of the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leaders, and co-director of the Science of Learning Research Centre. He is the author of Visible Learning (Routledge, 2009). Rachel Eells is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Concordia University, Chicago.

KEYWORDS

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March 2018 | Volume 75 | Number 6 Leading the Energized School Pages 40-44 Jenni Donohoo, John Hattie and Rachel Eells In the 1970s, Albert Bandura, a psychologist at Stanford University, uncovered an interesting pattern in working-group dynamics. He observed (1977) that a group's confidence in its abilities seemed to be associated with greater success.

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Schools are comprised of teams, and these teams working together create the "team" that is the entire school. Although teachers are often stereotyped as preferring to work alone isolated in their classrooms, most teachers love working within a team-at least within a strong team. Weak or ineffective teams can be frustrating and potentially toxic. Because of this, the aspects of a strong team are critical for teams and leaders to know and understand.

There isn't a step-by-step list of how to develop strong teams, but there are some universal guidelines and expectations that can help teams to become more effective. Here are some of the key ingredients for a strong team:

Strong teams start with trust. Trust comes first before anything else. Teams that work well together know this and make sure that trust exists before moving forward. At times, this means that teams create norms of behavior that they all agree they will adhere to. Some teams don't formalize this, but it still exists. The old adage of "do what you say you will do" is the linchpin for trust within strong teams.

Strong teams welcome newcomers. New team members should never be seen as a threat or challenge to the original team. But in dysfunctional teams, this is sadly sometimes the case. Strong teams not only welcome newcomers, they see new ideas as a strength-not a threat.

Some of the strong teams have common goals. I've worked with teams that are extremely diverse and extremely effective. One important key to the strength of these teams is the common, clearly defined goal they are working toward. Even with differing styles or opinions, teams that can focus on working together can make a huge impact for students. This doesn't mean that teachers don't have individual goals for their own classroom, but that the team goal supersedes the individual goal when it comes to working together.

Strong teams work to improve. Some of the best teams that I have worked with always have a new idea, a new challenge, or a new strategy for the year. This isn't because of a lack of effectiveness, but more of an intrinsic need to improve. These teams work together to improve as a group.

Strong teams like what they do. This isn't one that can be changed overnight, but it can impact our hiring practices. All teachers and principals should like what they do, or we shouldn't hire them. When it comes to teams, it can become more about having the right people in the right places in order to create a strong team. Teachers who are naturally better with primary aged students may not "like" a 5th grade teaching assignment. By getting all the team members to enjoy the content and the grade level, it helps to strengthen the team.

Strong teams listen. Within the team, this really connects to the trust building that is required for strong teams. But outside of the team, it is critical to listen. School teams don't operate in a vacuum and should listen to the other teams and leadership in the school. We don't define "listening" as just paying attention during a meeting, but to seek to understand the point of view of others that are involved. The same is true when meeting with others outside of the school system (i.e. parents). Listening to parents to partner with them is vital to students' long-term success.

Strong teams know how to delegate, how to share the workload, when to slow down, and when to speed up. This one can be tricky, but the best teams do it with ease. There are times when teams need to put their collective heads down and get things done. There is also a time for team building and connecting. Team members have strengths, so as long as a shared workload is fair and manageable, delegation can be critical for being productive. It also takes time to develop, so be patient if you are part of a team that hasn't mastered this one yet.

Strong teams know they're strong, but may not be able to define what it is that makes them strong or how they got there. This one is kind of like asking a great teacher to break down their teaching to say what makes him or her a great teacher-it can be hard to do. Really strong teams are built over time and have worked through issues of personality, priorities, and preferences.

So, where is a team to start? Maybe by reading this article together, the team can reflect on where they want to improve and what strengths they already have. There are many solutions to helping teams improve-some involve frank conversations, some involve setting the collective goals, some involve delegation and workload, and some involve communication and camaraderie. Regardless of the current status of the team, there is always room for improvement!
For more tips to inspire your teachers and students, be sure to subscribe to our Educator blog.

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Schools are comprised of teams, and these teams working together create the "team" that is the entire school. Although teachers are often stereotyped as preferring to work alone isolated in their classrooms, most teachers love working within a team-at least within a strong team. Weak or ineffective teams can be frustrating and potentially toxic.

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videos on: descriptive feedback, assessment for learning, grading, goal setting,

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Accurate evaluation relies on having a body of valid and reliable evidence of student learning. This video library contains resources that show how to gather evidence to determine a grade. The same principles and concepts of validity and reliability apply from kindergarten through grade 12.

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Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool : NPR

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The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is.

"Before printing someone would read the books to everybody who would copy them down," says Joe Redish, a physics professor at the University of Maryland.

But lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it's a waste of time. Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it.

When Eric Mazur began teaching physics at Harvard, he started out teaching the same way he had been taught.

"I sort of projected my own experience, my own vision of learning and teaching - which is what my instructors had done to me. So I lectured," he says.

He loved to lecture. Mazur's students apparently loved it, too. They gave him great evaluations and his classes were full.

"For a long while, I thought I was doing a really, really good job," he says.

But then in 1990, he came across articles written by David Hestenes, a physicist at Arizona State. Hestenes got the idea for the series when a colleague came to him with a problem. The students in his introductory physics courses were not doing well: Semester after semester, the class average never got above about 40 percent.

"I noted that the reason for that was that his examination questions were mostly qualitative, requiring understanding of the concepts rather than just calculational, using formulas, which is what most of the instructors did," Hestenes says.

Hestenes had a suspicion students were just memorizing the formulas and never really getting the concepts. So he and a colleague developed a test to look at students' conceptual understanding of physics. It's a test Maryland's Redish has given his students many times.

Here's a question from the test: "Two balls are the same size but one weighs twice as much as the other. The balls are dropped from the top of a two-story building at the same instant of time. The time it takes the ball to reach the ground will be..."

The possible answers include about half as long for the heavier ball, about half as long for the lighter ball, or the same time for both. This is a fundamental concept but even some people who've taken physics get this question wrong.

To get to the answer, Redish went to the second floor of the physics building. A group of his students was on the sidewalk below. When he reached the top, he dropped two balls from the roof.

The two balls reached the ground at the same time. Sir Isaac Newton was the first person who figured out why. He came up with a law of motion to explain how two balls of different weights, dropped from the same height, hit the ground simultaneously.

While most physics students can recite Newton's second law of motion, Harvard's Mazur says, the conceptual test developed by Hestenes showed that after an entire semester they understood only about 14 percent more about the fundamental concepts of physics. When Mazur read the results, he shook his head in disbelief. The test covered such basic material.

"I gave it to my students only to discover that they didn't do much better," he says.

The test has now been given to tens of thousands of students around the world and the results are virtually the same everywhere. The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works.

"The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students," Arizona State's Hestenes says. "And I maintain, I think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own."

He says that listening to someone talk is not an effective way to learn any subject.

"Students have to be active in developing their knowledge," he says. "They can't passively assimilate it."

This is something many people have known intuitively for a long time - the physicists just came up with the hard data. Their work, along with research by cognitive scientists, provides a compelling case against lecturing. But with budgets shrinking and enrollments booming, large classes aren't going away. You don't have to lecture in a lecture hall though.

Mazur's physics class is now different. Rather than lecturing, he makes his students do most of the talking.

At a recent class, the students - nearly 100 of them - are in small groups discussing a question. Three possible answers to the question are projected on a screen. Before the students start talking with one another, they use a mobile device to vote for their answer. Only 29 percent got it right. After talking for a few minutes, Mazur tells them to answer the question again.

This time, 62 percent of the students get the question right. Next, Mazur leads a discussion about the reasoning behind the answer. The process then begins again with a new question. This is a method Mazur calls "peer Instruction." He now teaches all of his classes this way.

"What we found over now close to 20 years of using this approach is that the learning gains at the end of the semester nearly triple," he says.

One value of this approach is that it can be done with hundreds of students. You don't need small classes to get students active and engaged. Mazur says the key is to get them to do the assigned reading - what he calls the "information-gathering" part of education - before they come to class.

"In class, we work on trying to make sense of the information," Mazur says. "Because if you stop to think about it, that second part is actually the hardest part. And the information transfer, especially now that we live in an information age, is the easiest part."

Mazur's approach is one of many developed in response to evidence that traditional lectures don't work. Among the advocates of these approaches there's an increasing sense of urgency about how to help more students do better.

"We need to educate a population to compete in this global marketplace," says Brian Lukoff, an education researcher at Harvard. "We can't do that by just sort of picking out 10 percent and saying, 'Oh you guys are going to be the successful ones,' and you know we need a much larger swath of that population to be able to think critically and problem-solve."

But ask anyone involved with efforts to lose the lecture and they'll tell you they encounter resistance. Sometimes the stiffest opposition comes from the students.

"Revamping my entire education, you know, philosophy for this one class was a bit daunting," says Ryan Duncan, a sophomore in Mazur's class.

But he adapted and says he learned more in Mazur's class than he did in his other physics course at Harvard.

Maryland's Redish says when he lays out the case against lecturing, colleagues often nod their heads, but insist theirlectures work just fine. Redish tells them - lecturing isn't enough anymore.

"With modern technology, if all there is is lectures, we don't need faculty to do it," Redish says. "Get 'em to do it once, put it on the Web, and fire the faculty."

Some faculty are threatened by this, but Mazur says they don't have to be. Instead, they need to realize that their role has changed.

"It used to be just be the 'sage on the stage,' the source of knowledge and information," he says. "We now know that it's not good enough to have a source of information."

Mazur sees himself now as the "guide on the side" - a kind of coach, working to help students understand all the knowledge and information that they have at their fingertips. Mazur says this new role is a more important one.

American Radioworks is the documentary series from American Public Media. You can find more of their reporting on this issue at "Don't Lecture Me."

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Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool

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Lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique, and now that information is everywhere some say it's a waste of time. Now, physicists have the data to prove it. But efforts to lose the lecture encounter resistance - sometimes from students.

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Strategies to Help Your Students Feel Heard | Edutopia

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

One way to cultivate a classroom culture in which students feel valued and respected is to focus on listening to them.

©Shutterstock/Monkey Business Images

One of the many wonders of being a teacher is that we affect children's lives both in ways we understand and in ways we can't begin to comprehend. But many of the demands of being a teacher can eclipse the fact that students are the center of our profession. We can easily become fixated on adhering to state standards, district initiatives, and departmental guidelines while we busily attend meetings, pore over lesson plans, and grade piles of student papers.

Yet we must remain focused on the needs of our students and remember a John Hattie phrase: "A positive, caring, respectful environment is a prior condition to learning." Regardless of how busy we are, we cannot underestimate the importance of cultivating a classroom culture in which students feel valued and respected because if our students aren't learning, the other tasks are meaningless. And one way we can build this solid foundation for learning is to listen to our students.

Eliciting Students' Thoughts

What are you thinking? When I want to elicit responses from my students, I give them time to clarify their thoughts through writing. This time to reflect prepares them for class discussion. As hands go up, I say each student's name and ask, "What are you thinking?" After I listen to the response, I follow up with questions such as, "Can you tell me more about that?" or "What led you to that conclusion?" Sometimes I'll add my own thoughts, but often it's enough just to hear theirs.

My students know that I care about what they think because their insights lead us all to deeper understanding. Fostering real conversations ensures that our classrooms become places of academic inquiry and collaboration founded on a sense of fairness and mutual respect.

Do you remember when _____? I often circle back to students' contributions to show them that their thoughts and efforts matter to me. I'll remind Sam how I loved his frequent and enthusiastic reading of Romeo this year, and I can always get a rise out of Hope if I compare a character to Odysseus-she'll cringe and groan, "Ugh! He's infuriating! I can't stand him!"

Sometimes, I'll repeat memorable lines from student presentations: "Katie, that reminds me of when you recited, 'Too old to cry, too young to work full time,' and Tom, when you read aloud, 'I don't know what I want to be or who I want to be.'" Students follow my lead in recounting favorite moments from the year, which builds community and strengthens relationships.

Can you give me some feedback? In an attempt to improve students' experience in my class, I ask for their feedback during the year using exit tickets or questions in Google Classroom or Google Forms (here's my end-of-year survey). I've learned that many students appreciate that I don't give pop quizzes, and that they think my reading quizzes are too hard. I've learned that it helps if I use the due date option in Google Classroom because it sends them reminders, and that they wish we would spend more time reviewing common mistakes on essays because the feedback really helps.

Listening as a Way to Create a Positive Class Culture

Be responsive to students' needs: The week prior to the school musical, many students stay at school every night until 11, and sometimes our football team plays away games on weeknights and doesn't return to school until almost midnight. My students know I don't want them staying up until 2 a.m. to complete their homework, so they're not afraid to ask for an extension.

When we're responsive to our students' needs and they know they'll be treated with kindness and respect, we're teaching them to advocate for themselves.

Seek out the students you haven't connected with: It's important to try to forge a connection with each of our students, so when I realize there are some to whom I haven't spoken, I know it's time to reach out.

Sometimes I'll greet the student when they enter the classroom and ask a question tailored to something I know about them to encourage a brief exchange. At other times, I may ask if they can help me with a task or ask their opinion about something we're doing in class. Or if I'm doing conferences, I'll spend a little more time with my more reticent students. It doesn't have to be much-I simply try to create a moment when they're speaking and I'm listening.

A tacit agreement must exist between teachers and students: Teachers will accept students for who they are, so students can feel safe to make mistakes-because mistakes are how we learn. Our students need to understand that we don't measure their worth by the sum total of their grades or their behavior because we know them as individuals. And if we want our students to listen to us, the way to begin is to listen to them.

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Strategies to Help Your Students Feel Heard

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) One way to cultivate a classroom culture in which students feel valued and respected is to focus on listening to them. ©Shutterstock/Monkey Business Images One of the many wonders of being a teacher is that we affect children's lives both in ways we understand and in ways we can't begin to comprehend.

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3 Tips on Student Self-Reported Grades – Connected Principals

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Last week a teacher told me how excited she was to see the seemingly endless strategies teachers can use in helping students grow ( see previous post).

As we talked about John Hattie's list together, I began to think about how helpful it may be to focus on some of his specific strategies for more clarification.

Let's start at the top of the list: The first strategy from Hattie's list is "self-reported grades", so here are three takeaways I wanted to pass along-one from a Hattie summary, one from my own experience, and a third from teachers at my school:

Tip #1: Have Students Set Expectations For Performance

On the website, Visible Learners, you can find a helpful summary of Hattie's first strategy:

Self reported grades comes out at the top of all influences. Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform. In a video Hattie explains that if he could write his book Visible Learning for Teachers again, he would re-name this learning strategy "Student Expectations" to express more clearly that this strategy involves the teacher finding out what are the student's expectations and pushing the learner to exceed these expectations. Once a student has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, he or she gains confidence in his or her learning ability.
Example for Self-reported grades: Before an exam, ask your class to write down what mark the student expects to achieve. Use this information to engage the student to try to perform even better.

Tip #2 Help Students Set Goals For Overall Learning

Another way to engage student expectations is through goal setting at the beginning of each course. Here's an example from my classroom years. At the start of a semester, I would have this conversation with my students:

"How many of you love to play a sport or compete in an activity? Any soccer players in the room? Great. Now imagine you show up for a soccer game. You're in your uniform, your teammates are on the field. The other team is warming up. The clock is set, the officials are on the field, and the whistle is blown to begin play."

"Suddenly, you realize there are no goals. The ref blows a whistle and the search begins. What will be impossible to do without goals? That's right. I will be impossible to score."

"So often we show up to classes because they're on your schedule. You go through the motions, you may even do what you're told, but without a goal, you look as effective as a soccer team without a goal for scoring."

"So what is your goal for this lesson? Or what is your goal for this course? I want to you write yours down on a sheet of paper for me. Tell me what you plan to accomplish, what grade you'd like to earn, and what goal you would like to reach by the end of our time together?"

After giving them time to reflect, I would collect these goals. Later I would share them to remind students what goals they had set for themselves.

Tip #3 Share Rubrics for Self-Assessment

Hattie also mentions self-assessment as a powerful strategy. Last week, three English teachers were telling me of how they have begun having students write essays using Google Docs. Our teachers share Chrome Carts so that our students can each have a device to use during writing assignments.

When the teachers log in to read the students' essays, the teachers can leave comments on notes tabs within the Google Doc. They also share their grading rubric ahead of time so that students can check and mark their own work for accuracy before it is graded.

This kind of collaboration is so much more powerful than simply having the student responding to a prompt. Knowing their writing goals ahead of time and getting quick feedback directly on the document they've created makes it easier to correct and master the writing process.

Conclusion

Whether students are predicting how they will perform, setting goals before learning, or self-assessing as they learn, the key is that they are engaged in their own learning. They aren't just passive "receivers" of information.

Whether you're leading a classroom or an entire school community, we can all encourage student academic growth when we avoid going through the motions and instead have meaningful conversations about what we expect to learn.

Now It's Your Turn

What are some other suggestions you would add to the list of ways to have students set expectations for their performance?

Posted originally at WilliamDParker.com Copyright 2015 by William D. Parker, Connect through Twitter with handle @williamdp or at www.williamdparker.com

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Last week a teacher told me how excited she was to see the seemingly endless strategies teachers can use in helping students grow ( see previous post). As we talked about John Hattie's list together, I began to think about how helpful it may be to focus on some of his specific strategies for more clarification.

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Summary of the book:Visible Learning for Teachers

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Summary of the book:Visible Learning for Teachers

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Hi there, I am Kristi Mraz. Former literacy consultant with Teacher's College, co-author of Smarter Charts (with Marjorie Martinelli) and Writing Non-Fiction Chapter Books (with Barb Golub and Lucy Calkins), and current kindergarten teacher. This blog is a place for me to share what is...

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What are the potential effects and problems of feedback? on Vimeo

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Visible Learning: How to Apply the Research

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Professional educators should always seek out best practices. Because this term is thrown around a lot, teachers can feel confused and overwhelmed by all the “research” that is available about what we should do (or not do) in our classrooms. It can make our collective heads spin.

One solution to assist teachers with this is John Hattie’s research on Visible Learning. This resource can be very beneficial in keeping our heads on straight, but Visible Learning can be a bit overwhelming, too. There are 252 different categories of research sorted into a number of domains and subdomains. This is a lot of information to sift through, and if you’ve read the book, it is a formidable experience.

I think this same feeling of being overwhelmed is familiar to many teachers. Where do we start? What is most important? What is least important? Which strategies should we try first? Which are the easiest? Which are the cheapest? Again, our heads spin.

Simplifying the Research

So, here is an approach to help keep it simple—or at least manageable—for teachers to understand. In the table chart available on the Visible Learning website, it breaks down the different areas, and the research is sortable by that area. If a teacher wants to focus on teaching, leadership, or prior background knowledge, they can sort the sheet for that area to see which of the indicators have the largest effect size (ES).

Because the scope of his work is vast and deep, there isn’t room here for a full, in-depth analysis of all of it. In order to demonstrate the overarching ideas and give teachers a taste of how the research looks, here is a specific focus on an instructional area.

For this specific area, “Strategies Emphasizing Feedback,” we can unpack the specifics and see how we could use it to see what to do, and what not to do, based on research and best practices. Each topic listed here has a title, the number of its overall ranking, and then the effect size (ES) impact that the meta-analysis showed. The higher the ES, the more effective the strategy. An ES of 0.40 or higher is considered an effective practice, or one that will make a difference with student engagement.

Response to intervention (#5, ES 1.29): This is the number five overall strategy that can impact student achievement, so it is considered very powerful. The response to intervention system, or RTI model, is a system-wide approach to putting students in tiers to meet their needs. Students with the most needs receive the most amount of intervention.

Classroom discussion (#15, ES 0.82): Discussions with students are typically higher level, engaging, and allow for critical thinking and speaking skills to be present. When students talk and write, they are thinking at a higher level than just listening and receiving knowledge.

Feedback (#32, ES 0.7): Teachers providing feedback is one of Robert Marzano’s nine effective instructional strategies, which can be found in his Classroom Instruction that Works resource. Feedback to students should be specific, timely, and ongoing to be most effective.

Formative assessments (#87, ES 0.48): Using assessments to guide instructional decisions has a positive impact on student learning. Formative assessments are more effective than traditional assessments at showing student achievement gains.

Questioning (#88, ES 0.48): Like formative assessments (with the same effective size), questioning of students has a positive impact on student learning. Questioning at higher levels helps students to think critically. Plus, classroom discussions are more robust because of how the students are engaged.

Different types of testing (#212, ES 0.12): Although this area is somewhat broad and non-descript, it sends a clear message to teachers. Tests don’t necessarily increase student achievement. As we think about this in the area of feedback, it makes sense. How many times are our classroom tests glanced at and thrown in the trash? Students don’t see tests as an opportunity to learn more, but a message that “learning has finished.” Formatives, classroom discussions, and feedback to students is much more impactful.

Though this small breakdown, I hope teachers can see how this research can form our instructional practices. Are we using the best strategies most frequently in our classroom? If we are not, why are we not? If we are, do we agree about the impact that these practices can have on learning? I would encourage educators at all levels to look more closely at the research from Visible Learning to help us all improve at our craft each and every day.

For more insightful teaching tips, and to stay up to date with the latest education news and trends, be sure to subscribe to our Educator blog

Subscribe to Our Educator Blog

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Visible Learning: How to Apply the Research

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Visible Learning can be very beneficial in keeping our heads on straight and knowing what best to do, but it can make your head spin, too. Here is an approach to help keep Visible Learning simple—or at least manageable—for teachers to understand.

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Relationships Matter More Than Rules | Edutopia

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But after sharing rules and expectations, how about transitioning into sharing a few slides and artifacts that tell students about you? There's general information you can share (details about your family, where you went to school, jobs you had before teaching, etc.), but you can add a few more vulnerable glances into your life:

What struggles did you have growing up? As a student?

What do you value?

What do you love to do?

What would you change about the world if you were able?

If you knew it would work out, what are some risks you would take in life?

How about sharing some artifacts? A few of your all-time favorite books? What was your favorite at 12 years old? At 16? At 20? Bring copies of those books to show your students. Bringing in photos from your life is always a hit as well.

Why share yourself in this way? Showing our humanity to students allows us to be people and not just The Teacher. And in my observations and experience, to be loved by those whom you teach, you have to show vulnerability, at times reveal who you are, your feelings, challenges, hopes, cares, and dreams. We ask students to write essays and poems and speeches in which they share vulnerable aspects of themselves. As teachers, as members of a classroom community, shouldn't we do the same?

Students Learning About Each Other

Once you've presented aspects of who you are, invite students to do the same. You've set the stage, showing some vulnerability and openness with them, so they see that this matters to you and that as a group you're a class not simply of teacher and students, but of people.

Here are a few worthwhile activities for students to get to know each other and begin building relationships:

Good Things: Ask students to pair and share a good thing that happened for them or something that they're looking forward to. It doesn't have to be anything major-it can be something as simple as, "It's taco night at my house tonight." Perhaps someone's sister just got married or someone's birthday is in a week. Start each day or class period with Good Things, and as students get more comfortable with it, expand the groups to four or five students to help forge more community connections. You share too.

Create an "All About Me" Bag: Provide each student with a paper lunch bag. Ask them to decorate the outside with words or images of things they like or what others can easily see about them. Have them place several objects in the bag that represent or symbolize things not easily known about them (e.g., a pet toy that belongs to their cat, a photo of them playing soccer, etc.). If you make one yourself, you can share it in your introduction-it can serve as a model. Give class time for them to share with a partner and in small groups.

Just Like Me: An oldie but goodie, this community-building strategy allows students to see those students they have things in common with, or with whom they share similar traits. The teacher makes a statement, and those students it relates to stand up. For example, "Pizza is my favorite food," "I'm glad to be back in school," or "I am the youngest in my family." After making a statement, ask students to look around to note those they have this in common with before sitting down. (You can do this activity over several days or sporadically, with new statements and ones that may go a little deeper.)

Artifact Sharing: Just as you might bring in some of your favorite childhood and teen books, invite students to bring in artifacts from their lives-photos, books, and awards-and share one-on-one, in small groups, or with the whole group.

Student Information Survey: Create a survey with age-appropriate and subject-appropriate questions. Have students complete it. Share with them that this is for you, the teacher, to get to know them. Before collecting it, however, ask students to choose two or three responses they'd like to share with others. Provide time for them to pair up or get in groups of three and share, for example, their favorite music, food, and subject in school.

Meaningful relationships matter for learning. The rules and policies you enforce are important for keeping a well-managed class. But rather than emphasizing control over your students, developing community and connection is a surefire ingredient for a good school year for all.

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But after sharing rules and expectations, how about transitioning into sharing a few slides and artifacts that tell students about you? There's general information you can share (details about your family, where you went to school, jobs you had before teaching, etc.), but you can add a few more vulnerable glances into your life: What struggles did you have growing up?

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How to Plan and Implement Continuous Improvement In Schools | MindShift | KQED News

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The basic tenets of the process involve understanding the problem, defining a manageable goal, identifying the drivers that could help reach that goal, and then testing small ideas to change those drivers. When done in a network, this cycle of improvement is expedited as various participants test different change ideas and share their findings with the group. Through a constant interplay of these elements a few change ideas will rise to the top and can be scaled across a system.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
Many of the biggest problems of practice have been around a long time and aren't easy to solve. Too often when trying to improve something leaders jump to solutions before properly examining the problem. Understanding the problem requires valuing many types of knowledge. It means doing empathy interviews with participants in the system including teachers, staff, parents, and students. It involves bringing the best research literature to bear on the problem. And sometimes representing the processes involved in the problem can illuminate areas that are breaking down.

Biag said this stage is crucial and shouldn't be rushed. He's seen improvement projects that require up to a year of study to fully understand the problem, its root causes and the levers of change available to leaders. Often an improvement network will know it's time to move on when participants feel saturated -- they aren't turning up any new perspectives or information.

"Sometimes it's good to stop doing the research and try something," Biag said. Implementing some change ideas often helps inform the problem and may even necessitate that the team revisit and revise the problem statement.
DEFINE THE GOALS AND FOCUS COLLECTIVE EFFORT
Once the group has a "good enough" understanding of the problem it's crucial that they write a clear, succinct aim statement. It should be specific, measurable and focus on a challenging problem, but it should be doable.

The crucial question, Biag said, is "What's within your span of control and what's not? So when you act on this problem you aren't wasting your time on the things that aren't in your control."

He often sees people define the problem too broadly. If the problem is an achievement gap between student populations, a group might say the root problem is inequality or poverty. Those things may contribute to the problem, but they aren't within the control of teachers or principals or even districts to solve. A more manageable aim statement might be: "By June 2020 we're going to increase from 45% to 90% the number of male students enrolling in credit bearing math courses at community colleges."

"It has to be motivating enough for people to continue working on it for several months," Biag said about the reach goal. But it must be specific and concrete enough that the group can see if change ideas are helping progress towards the goal.

"While an aim statement can look deceptively simple, you need to build trust and get on the same page with everyone in your network to even agree on where to focus your efforts," Biag said. The network itself is important because it accelerates the pace of learning about potential solutions.

Once the aim is clear, the group brainstorms three to five primary drivers of the problem. These are the things the group believes provide the most leverage to meet the goal, and that are within the span of control. It's crucial to only have a few of these, not twenty, because the network must work on all of them in tandem. Staying focused allows for more progress.

After identifying the most important drivers, network participants brainstorm change ideas that might affect those drivers. "The word change is very specific to improvement science," Biag said. "It means an actual change in how you do work." In other words, the focus is on the process and results in action. Change ideas are not things like "more money" or "more staff." "It's an actual change of a process or the introduction of a new process," Biag said.
TEST AND BUILD EVIDENCE
Once the group has a good understanding of the problem, its root causes, what drives it and some ideas that will directly affect those drivers, it's time to start testing them. Carnegie uses a "Plan, Do, Study, Act" (PDSA) cycle for testing ideas. The changes should be fairly small and the tester collects data along the way. It doesn't have to be complicated data, just something to help analyze and track whether the change is moving the needle.

"Most schools and districts plan plan plan, then do, and then they never study," Biag said. He advocates that planning include a prediction because participants are more likely to compare a new strategy with the expected effect. If the change idea didn't function as expected there's a lot to learn there.

Many of the best change ideas come from looking at what Carnegie calls "positive deviants" -- the bright spots in a network. For example, if a network sets the aim of improving college readiness for English language learner students, when leaders are assembling their knowledge base they should talk to teachers who seem to be achieving better than average results with that population. Those teachers are "positive deviants" and networks should try to learn from the ways their practices differ from colleagues.

For example, High Tech High Charter Network leaders identified that they wanted to increase the number of African American and Latino males applying to four-year colleges. When they looked at drivers, they realized school attendance was lower for this group and hypothesized that the way teachers communicated with parents might be part of the issue. To try to eliminate variation in parent-teacher communication they tested a change theory that involved using a set of protocols for interacting with families.

They went through several iterations of the protocols, but when they hit on one that seemed to work they spread it throughout their network of schools. Now, when teachers meet with parents around achievement or discipline they all try to make it positive, share data about the student, and co-construct an action plan with the parent, among other things.

The key thing about working in a network is that different people can be trying different change ideas and sharing their data. "The idea is that you're not all working on all the same things at the same time," Biag said. "So you leverage the network, and the power of the network, to increase change ideas."

Some ideas won't work and will be abandoned. Others might seem promising, but more data is needed, so others in the network might try them too. Over time the change ideas that seem to really impact the drivers rise to the top.

"As you're testing and building evidence you're going to find ideas that work and then you can talk about spreading those ideas," Biag said.
SPREAD AND SCALE
Even with the best ideas implementation can be hard. Biag said leaders need to weigh several factors when thinking about how to spread an idea that seems to work. How costly will it be to implement? What are the consequences of failure? How reluctant are the people involved? How confident is the leader in the change idea?

For example, if the change is a parent meeting protocol and the leader doesn't think it's a great idea and that the cost of failure will be high, perhaps she only tests it on her sister first. But, if teachers are ready for the change and there's nothing to lose, then maybe the idea can scale up more quickly. This is where knowing one's own system and culture becomes important.

It's also worth thinking about who within the system needs to be on board for the plan to go well. Those folks can be powerful advocates if convinced that the change idea is a good one. "The best people are those who were pretty skeptical in the beginning and you were able to change them," Biag said.

Another strategy is to roll out the idea with those eager to try it and then demonstrate success to those who are more fearful. It's also necessary to be humble and willing to go back and test new ideas if the ones that seemed to work in the smaller group don't work when scaled. Perhaps the aim statement needs to change, or maybe the drivers aren't actually the most impactful.

"Our theory is possibly wrong and definitely incomplete; that's kind of a Carnegie saying," Biag said. He doesn't want anyone to think this process is linear, rather it's a cycle. And when people get comfortable with the cycle they build it into everything they do naturally. The biggest strength of continuous improvement is that it offers a path for systemic change, a way to build the capacity within the system, rather than building whole new systems.

"What we're trying to do is implement these tools and ways of thinking to empower people to engage in this work," Biag said. And that means having a bias towards action.

"You have to start before you feel ready. Your understanding of the problem will change over time and when you act on that problem the problem will change and so your understanding of that problem will change," Biag said.

People learn how to think about continuous improvement through the process of doing it. They get better at narrowing in on motivating, but achievable aim statements. They learn to include more voices in the information gathering stage. The "Plan, Do, Study, Act" cycles become second nature, and analyzing data gets less scary.

Perhaps one of the best parts of continuous improvement is that it helps empower those within a system to see themselves as the drivers of change. The ideas come from practice as does the data. And while data is often associated with accountability requirements, this improvement process offers practitioners the opportunity to think about and evaluate data that are important to their practice.

In this process, the data is only worthwhile if it shines light on whether the change is working. And when data is used this way, it's easier for educators to be transparent about what they're seeing. Improvement is not about judgement, it's a constant, normal aspect of professional life.

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How to Plan and Implement Continuous Improvement In Schools

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The basic tenets of the process involve understanding the problem, defining a manageable goal, identifying the drivers that could help reach that goal, and then testing small ideas to change those drivers. When done in a network, this cycle of improvement is expedited as various participants test different change ideas and share their findings with the group.

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Self-Assessment in Middle School | Edutopia

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Inspired by John Hattie, a middle school math teacher encourages students to articulate and measure their own learning.

©Shutterstock/Diego Cervo

Four years ago, I was introduced to the work of John Hattie, which changed my vision of my role as an educator. Hattie convinced me to think of myself as a change agent who could apply the tools of Visible Learning to guide my students to succeed in math beyond their own expectations.

To do this, I had to create a classroom where my students knew exactly what they were learning, how well they were doing, and where that learning would take them.

Learning Targets

Some teachers don't appreciate objectives or learning targets, but I would urge them to consider the following question: How can we expect our struggling students to succeed if we don't tell them what it is that we want them to learn?

I now begin my lessons with an "I can" statement that pinpoints the skill and/or knowledge that I aim for my students to gain-e.g., "I can describe the movement of three basic rigid motions on a coordinate plane" or "I can calculate the missing side lengths of similar shapes." The precision of my learning targets sharpens and streamlines my lesson plans, and allows me to create formative assessments that shape my planning going forward.

However, the primary benefit of using learning targets is that they allow students to articulate and measure their own learning. For me as a math teacher, there's nothing more rewarding than witnessing my students engaged in a mathematical discussion, and learning targets offer the language to begin these discussions.

After sharing a learning target, I display for two or three minutes all of the learning targets in the unit we're studying. I use this broad overview to conduct a brief class discussion on what we've learned thus far and where this learning is taking us.

This is an opportunity for me to ask a few review questions and build vocabulary, allow students to articulate their own understanding of the concepts covered, and give meaning to these ideas by describing where our work is taking us.

Checkpoints and Self-Assessment

When it comes time to monitor my students' understanding, I ask checkpoint questions aligned with our learning targets. Such checkpoints are ungraded quizzes, formative assessments that allow me to gauge where my students need help. They also give students the opportunity to track their own understanding of the learning targets as we progress through the unit.

I correct the assessment using a highlighter, and the lack of a grade along with the strategic use of the highlighter allows students to focus on what is most important about the assessment-the learning targets where they need to improve.

The ultimate goal of learning targets is to build self-regulating, articulate students who can boost their own progress through self-assessment. So after a checkpoint, I provide students the opportunity to assess their own progress using a rubric where they can rate their proficiency on our learning targets.

Within a unit, I give students three or four checkpoints (including one that covers the full unit), providing them with several pieces of data to assess their own learning, learn from their mistakes, and improve in preparation for the final, graded unit assessment.

Retakes

Of course, some students still struggle to succeed. Therefore, I offer them what they need most-more time. When a student scores below proficient on the unit assessment, I ask them to come after school, and I use that time to review the concepts they're still struggling to grasp.

The most important part of this retake process is getting students to articulate their mistake and their new understanding of how to solve the problem correctly. If there's time, I'll give them a new assessment to further show their progress. However, most often the retake is an in-depth discussion that I have with a student or a small group of students that allows them to fortify their understanding of the learning targets they missed, assures me that they have the skills they need to move forward in the curriculum, and earns them a passing grade for the assessment.

The Portfolio

In my final piece of assessment, I ask students to do my job and assign themselves a grade, using evidence to support their claim.

This evidence comes in the form of a portfolio with three elements. The first element asks students to submit one or more checkpoints to demonstrate growth in understanding of a math concept we've covered. These submissions are accompanied by a written paragraph articulating the student's journey to deeper understanding. The second element of the portfolio is a piece of either homework or classwork that helped the student contribute to a class or small group discussion, with a paragraph detailing the ideas discussed. In the final element, students write about a concept we've covered, explaining how they could use it in the real world, how it connects to their understanding of other mathematical concepts, or what they find cool about the mathematical ideas behind the concept.

My learning targets are posted online for students to review, and they have their checkpoints and unit assessments to display their progress. I give them a few minutes each week to think about their portfolios, make notes, and put work aside for possible use. I then use students' statistical grades alongside their own self-assessments to generate their grade.

Providing my students with clarity through the use of learning targets has been a priority for me over the past four years. This practice has helped my students better articulate their ideas in math and strengthened their ability to self-assess, which in turn has increased their success in math.

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Inspired by John Hattie, a middle school math teacher encourages students to articulate and measure their own learning. ©Shutterstock/Diego Cervo Four years ago, I was introduced to the work of John Hattie, which changed my vision of my role as an educator.

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NEW 60-Second Strategy: Build community in the classroom with "Appreciation, Apology, Aha!"

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NEW 60-Second Strategy: Build community in the classroom with "Appreciation, Apology, Aha!" https://t.co/l5dqifw2XG

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NEW 60-Second Strategy: Build community in the classroom with "Appreciation, Apology, Aha!" pic.twitter.com/l5dqifw2XG
— edutopia (@edutopia) August 14, 2018

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NEW 60-Second Strategy: Build community in the classroom with "Appreciation, Apology, Aha!" https://t.co/l5dqifw2XG

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NEW 60-Second Strategy: Build community in the classroom with "Appreciation, Apology, Aha!" https://t.co/l5dqifw2XG

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NEW 60-Second Strategy: Build community in the classroom with "Appreciation, Apology, Aha!"

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10 Ideas for Building a Formative Assessment Toolkit - TeacherVision

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10 Ideas for Building a Formative Assessment Toolkit

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Every teacher needs a range of formative assessment strategies to help determine how to shape instruction.

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Know thy impact: 4 questions to help you pin down what children are really learning | Visible Learning

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You might think you know everything that happens in your classroom, but the research says otherwise. Deb Masters has four questions that will help you pin down what children are really learning...

When Professor John Hattie stands up and says "Know thy impact", he is saying this is possible and, in the best schools and classrooms, that is exactly what teachers are starting to do. How does he know? Because he has the results from studies involving over 250 million students at his fingertips, the analysis of which enables him to reach some quite startling conclusions. However, what everyone needs to remember is that John Hattie's 'Visible Learning' research is only the start of the journey. There are three stages schools must follow if they are to make use of his discoveries:

Simply jumping from the research findings to adapting classroom practice is not at the heart of Visible Learning. It's the way you think about your role as a leader or a teacher that defines the way you work and the impact you will have.

So what does this mean for our schools? It means we need to refocus our efforts to ensure that any actions we take have maximum impact on learning and achievement. To support this process, here are four questions you can ask when looking to reframe teaching and learning from an evidence-based perspective.

1. Does your school discuss, in detail, precisely what you want the impact of any changes to be?

The assessment industry provides us with many ways to track our impact on student attainment. But the first part of any discussion needs to be about what you actually mean by 'impact' and how this can be accurately measured. What student outcomes does your school value and why? In this time of high accountability, we tend to place our focus on raising standards in academic attainment. We have a plethora of tools to measure this and we need to think carefully about which ones we use, why we use them and what we do with the information.

We are great at adding new tools, but we don't always stop to discuss their purpose; which give us the most useful feedback and which should we drop because they do not supply the information we need to track our impact? Once we know which tools we want to use, we then need to decide on the magnitude of the impact we expect to see - how good is good enough?

Having a shared understanding of impact among staff is all the more powerful if it is also shared by students. This is why so much attention is paid to 'success criteria'. The Visible Learning work indicates that if learners understand the nature of success from the outset, they are more likely to move efficiently towards this.

2. Do your teachers have common conceptions of progress?

One thing we know from our work in schools is that teachers do not have a shared understanding of progress. We have worked with hundreds of teachers with curricula from around the world and when we ask teachers to identify levels of the curriculum based on evidence of what students can do, the variance in their estimates is frightening. Only by focused discussion and collaboration do teachers begin to understand how curriculum progression works.

This lack of consistency by teachers can have a massive impact on students, with learning becoming more random as a result. But robust discussion can help to reduce the variance in the way teachers identify progress and help them develop a more informed understanding of the curriculum continuum.

Schools need to understand how students' progress through a curriculum and it is likely that different students might progress in different orders and at different times. Having a clear idea of what impact means involves an understanding of progression, where students are in this progression, and not prescribing one progression for all. This knowledge must be shared otherwise if a student meets a new teacher in the school with a different conception of challenge and progression, this may lead to disruptions in learning.

3. Do all educators in the school believe their main role is to evaluate their impact?

When everyone in a school believes that together they can make a difference, the impact on student attainment can be almost quadrupled (Eells, 2011). This notion of collective efficacy across the school is a powerful precursor to student success. Combine this with having a collective and collaborative focus on teachers evaluating their impact and the results on student attainment can be even greater.

This relentless focus on impact, discussed regularly, is the real holy grail of the Visible Learning research.

4. What is the impact of teaching in your school and how do you know?

The next time you go into a classroom in your school, don't worry about what the teacher is teaching. The only reason you should go into a classroom is to watch what the students are learning - it is the impact of the teaching that is of interest. We work in many classrooms where there is no connection between what the teacher is doing and what the students are doing. In fact, Graham Nuthall's research (Nuthall, 2007) found that teachers have no awareness of between 60-80 per cent of what happens in their classroom every day. He also discovered students already know between 40-50 per cent of what the teacher is teaching. These are scary statistics.

The research came from years of evidence collected by Nuthall where he visited classrooms daily and put microphones on students to get right inside what was happening. Each night he went home and analysed the activities and discussions. Teachers pride themselves on having a well-organised and orderly classroom - we know what happens in the public world of the classroom (most of the time), we know some of things that happen in the semi-private world of the classroom (between peers). But most of the time we have no idea what happens in the private world of the classroom (the heads of our students). By focusing on learners and having strategies for finding out what they are learning, we can start to know the impact we are having as teachers.

In our work, we simply ask students to tell us what they are learning that day. We get some interesting responses. Many students have no idea at all - even when we probe for information. Many of them can at least tell us what they are doing, but few can tell us what they are learning. There is a big difference between the two.

The next time you go into a classroom, focus on the learners and the learning. Only then will you know the real impact teachers are having. Anything other than that is guesswork.

The message from the Visible Learning research is clear. We should focus on the things that can have the greatest impact and stop being distracted by the things that don't matter. Let's rethink some of the great myths in our profession and focus on impact and our role as evaluators of our impact. We have the evidence. Let's use it.

For those interested in learning more about the Visible Learning approach outlined in this article, visit www.visiblelearning.com or contact Osiris Educational, which is the exclusive agent for Visible Learning Plus with John Hattie across the UK.

About the Author:

Debra Masters is the Director of Visible Learning and works closely with John Hattie to bring the Visible Learning research to life in schools around the world. Follow her on Twitter here.

References

Eells, R. (2011). Meta-analysis of the relationship between collective efficacy and student achievement. Unpublished Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement, Routledge. London

Nuthall, G. (2007). The Hidden Lives of Learners. New Zealand Council for Educational Research Press. Wellington

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Know thy impact: 4 questions to help you pin down what children are really learning

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You might think you know everything that happens in your classroom, but the research says otherwise. Deb Masters has four questions that will help you pin down what children are really learning... When Professor John Hattie stands up and says "Know thy impact", he is saying this is possible and, in the best schools and classrooms, that is exactly what teachers are starting to do.

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Nancy Frey Presentation about Visible Learning

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Nancy Frey Presentation about Visible Learning

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Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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John Hattie Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

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01 Keeping the Learning Visible - Stonefields School - Accelerating Learning

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John Hattie on the Educator Mindframe and Why It Matters

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10 Mindframes for Teachers

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John Hattie: 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning Webinar

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"Don't smile until Christmas," "Don't let your papers pile up," "Stick to what works. Don't take any risks." Does any of this sound familiar? New teachers receive a lot of advice about how to "survive" their first year.

But is surviving really what we want for new teachers? And is a teacher who merely "survives" best for the learners in our classrooms?

Gravity Goldberg writes about the best advice she received as a new mom-and it applies to new teachers, too:

"Trust your instincts. You will know what is right for your [students]. Don't overthink it. And don't take everyone's advice. Listen to yourself."

This advice is the foundation of what it means to Teach Like Yourself. Yes, teaching is really, really hard-but what makes it easier is finding ways to make it work for you and your students.

On the new Teach Like Yourself Facebook group, we asked teachers what the best advice was that they received as a new teacher-what advice really helped to make their classrooms places where they and their students thrive. We collected all of that advice and summarized it in the poster below. Click on the poster to download it for yourself, and share it with new teachers!

All educators are welcome to join the Teach Like Yourself Facebook group, and join the discussion using the hashtag #teachlikeyourself.

See you there!

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Advice for New Teachers From Teachers [FREE POSTER] - Corwin Connect

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"Don't smile until Christmas," "Don't let your papers pile up," "Stick to what works. Don't take any risks." Does any of this sound familiar? New teachers receive a lot of advice about how to "survive" their first year. But is surviving really what we want ...

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Short Video

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John Hattie's Visible Learning For Teachers

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Top Ten Influences on Student Achievement

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November 2014 EL Show & Tell: Conversational Moves

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See how a 4th grade teacher strategically guides students into a close-reading discussion in this video accompaniment to Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey's November EL column.

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Thinking Pathways - Generate Sort Connect Elaborate Concept Map

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The Generate Sort Connect Elaborate Concept Map routine helps learners to:

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"How would you teach differently if you couldn't give students a test until a year later?"
- Ron Ritchhart

Information on this page includes educational resources that were presented to the Reuther Middle School staff during professional development and/or collegial conversations. Suggestions can be given for additions to the page.

How does John Hattie's video relate to
Ritchhart's 8 Cultural Forces?

The following resources and thinking routines are from the Visible Thinking research of Ron Ritchhart and Harvard Project Zero and are available at www.visiblethinkingpz.org.

8 Cultural Forces
That Define a Classroom

8 Cultural Forces - These forces define classrooms and provide goals for the environment we create.

Websites Worth a Visit

Telling our Stories of Learning:
"This website is part of a three-year project inviting teachers from around the world to tell the stories of learning unfolding in their classrooms. These writings combine action research, assessment documentation, and personal reflection with a focus on thinking and learning."

A comprehensive list of protocols to use with students to help further a culture of thinking

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Ron Ritchhart ﻿ Principle Investigator For The Culture Of Thinking Project and Author Of Making Thinking Visible ﻿

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Great Expectations!: Co-Constructing Classroom Rules to Build Community (Virtual Tour)

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Co-creating success criteria, Sara Carroll

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What can co-constructing criteria look like in a classroom?

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Visit Troy's class as he co-constructs success criteria for writing with his students.

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Success crieria: setting goals to improve student learning. 

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Success crieria: setting goals to improve student learning. 

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video

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Success Criteria: Setting Goals to Improve Student Learning

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Identifying and displaying the expectations for a given task guides student learning and helps students understand what they need to do in order to achieve the learning goal. For more information go to full lesson plan at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Recipe/00184/.

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Great example of practical application of Hattie’s work.

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Great example of practical application of Hattie’s work.

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Like many literacy educators, last year I found myself reading Visible Learning for Literacy, by Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey and John Hattie. The book breaks down the process of teaching and learning into three phases: teaching for surface learning, deeper learning and ultimately for transfer. And for each phase, it recommends specific teaching practices based on their effect size, i.e., "the impact a given a approach has" on accelerating student learning.

Being someone who tends to want to get to the deep stuff right away, I was curious about what the authors had to say about surface learning, along with what practices pack the greatest punch. They believe that surface learning is the foundation on which deeper learning is built, and among the recommended practices for that phase, I saw direct instruction, which comes with an effect size of 0.59.

That led me to watch one of the videos that can be found on Corwin's resource page for the book. If you go to the link, you'll see a teacher providing direct instruction on how to punctuate dialogue to her 9th grade class. Clearly, she adheres to the features of direct instruction as stated in the book, but I couldn't help thinking that something was wrong here. These were 9th graders who, I'd be willing to bet, had been taught to punctuate dialogue ever since third or second grade.

This seemed to be another case of students having been taught something they didn't fully learn, which can happen for a number of reasons. They might not have had enough time to practice for the learning to take hold. They might not have found "correctness" important. Or, as I suggested last week, there might have been something in the top-down teaching practice that didn't fully engage them because it didn't positioning them to be protagonists in their own learning.

But what would that look like when it comes to something like punctuating dialogue?

It just so happens that I wrestled with that very question last year, as I worked with several schools whose upper grade teachers wanted to teach writing and punctuating dialogue in their narrative units. In each case, the teachers had noticed that their students didn't know how to punctuate dialogue, despite it having been taught the year before.

So here's what we did: I asked the teachers to gather up the mentor texts they'd used to help their students develop a vision of narrative writing. And among them was Maribeth Boelt's popular book Those Shoes, about a boy who longs for the expensive sneakers that all the popular kids were wearing. Immediately we noticed that Boelt constructed her dialogue, using a variety of sentence structures- as in, it wasn't always "___________," I or a character said. That variety, which we recognized as a craft move, helped give the book its voice, and we also recognized that it presented the potential for an inquiry into how writers write dialogue.

To implement that, we decided to invite everyone to the rug to look at the following four samples from the book, which we projected on the SMART Board. I read each of the sentences out loud, then invited the kids to turn and talk, using the basic thinking routine I shared in another post, What do you notice and what do you make of what you noticed?

In a sense, you could call this a rich task, as it offered multiple points of entry for students to engage in their thinking. Of course, some students at first only noticed what seemed the most obvious to them: that what was being said made the sentences different. In those cases, I acknowledged that was true, but then asked them to take another look at just the first two sentences to consider if there was anything else different between them. That led students to notice that the writer didn't say who was talking in the first one (though they knew it was the narrator), while in the second the writer clearly told us. Noticing that, I then invited them to compare those two with the last two.

The first thing most of the students noticed was that, like the second sentence, the writer said who was speaking, but many also noticed that where the writer named the speaker was different in each sentence. That made them think that in addition to writers not always telling you exactly who was talking, they could also decide to name the speaker before, in the middle or at the end of the dialogue. And noticing that, they also noticed that the writer shared additional information in the last two sentences. In the first, she gave us more information about who the speaker was (as in their job), while the last shared where the person was when they spoke.

With that all charted, we sent the students back to their desks and asked them to pull out the drafts of their narratives. Then in groups of two and three, we gave them a packet of sentence strips with other sentences from Those Shoes that including dialogue, such as these:

And we invited them to sort and categorize the sentences to see if there were even more ways that writers set up dialogue.

That led them to even further discoveries. They noticed that sometimes writers used boldface for dialogue if the speaker was saying something urgent or forceful. They sometimes used words like asks and announces, instead of always using say. And they sometimes told where the speaker was AND what they were doing, in addition to the dialogue

With these new understandings added to the chart, we then invited the students to make some decisions about how they might revise the dialogue in their own drafts to reflect what they'd learn-and everyone was eager to do that. Many, for instance, wanted to add boldface to underscore a line of dialogue's importance, while many others wanted to try placing the dialogue tag in the middle of the sentence because they thought that was cool.

Feeling empowered by being the protagonists in their own learning, no one blinked an eye when we added a final direction: Once they made those revisions, they needed to go back and find a sentence that was similar to one in Those Shoes, and then punctuate theirs the same way Maribeth Boelt had done. And as the students got to work, the teachers decided to start the next day by revisiting all those sentences to co-construct another chart about how dialogue was punctuated.

To be sure, this lesson took much longer than the one from Visible Learning for Literacy. But here's the thing: If you go to the book's appendix, you'll find a list of practices arranged according to their effect size, from the most impactful to the least. And there you'll see that Number 2 is Piaget's approach. Hattie describes those as focusing "on the thinking processes rather than the outcomes and do not impose the adult thinking process on to children," which is precisely what happened here. And Piagetian practices come with an effect size of 1.28, which means they have more than twice the impact on student learning as direct instruction does. And if you believe the words of Piaget I shared last week, you have to also think that these students will understand and retain far more by discovering how dialogue works on their own.

I'll surely have more to say about this approach in future posts. But if you want more bang for your instructional buck, consider letting your students be the protagonists of their own learning by letting them discover and explore.

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Letting Students Be the Protagonists in Their Own Learning

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Like many literacy educators, last year I found myself reading Visible Learning for Literacy, by Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey and John Hattie. The book breaks down the process of teaching and learning into three phases: teaching for surface learning, deeper learning and ultimately for transfer.

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By practicing and applying metacognitive strategies, students will become good readers, capable of handling any text across a curriculum.

Because metacognitive strategies appear obvious, some teachers might believe that students in intermediate grades begin the school year cognizant of these strategies and experienced in using them. The truth is, most students are unaware of the metacognitive process. Yet only through "thinking about thinking" and using metacognitive strategies do students truly learn. With that in mind, consider the following three main reasons to teach metacognitive strategies.

(Fogarty 1994):
1. To develop in students a deeper understanding of text
Good readers know how to use cognitive and metacognitive strategies together to develop a deeper understanding of a book's theme or topic. They learn or "construct knowledge" (using cognitive strategies) through a variety of methods, and then recognize (using metacognitive strategies) when they lack understanding and, consequently, choose the right tools to correct the problem.
2. To take students' thinking to a higher level
For many students, explaining their thought process is a daunting task. They may think, "How do I explain what I think? I don't know what to say. My teacher usually helps me out." These students need opportunities to take their thinking to a higher level and express themselves clearly. Small-group activities, especially those with a teacher's guidance, provide them with the right opportunities.
3. To steer students into adulthood
Once metacognitive strategies are grasped, students will transfer use of these skills from their school lives to their personal lives and will continue to apply them as they mature.

Metacognition is a three-part process (Fogarty 1994). To be successful thinkers, students must:

1. Develop a plan before reading.

2. Monitor their understanding of text; use "fix-up" strategies when meaning breaks down.

3. Evaluate their thinking after reading.

Good readers plan before reading, and K-2 students must learn the steps needed to accomplish this task. Through modeling and practice, teach them to:

Think about the text's topic.

Think about how text features can help in understanding the topic.

Read the title and author, front and back cover blurbs, and table of contents.

Study illustrations, photos, and graphics, including labels and captions.

Skim for boldfaced words, headings and subheadings, and summaries.

Think about what they know, what connections they can make, and what questions they might want answered.

Think about the way the text might be organized, such as:

cause and effect

compare and contrast

sequence of events

problem and solution

description

a combination of these text structures

Good readers take charge of their reading by monitoring their own comprehension, and K-2 students need direct instruction on how and why to do this. The first step is recognizing whether or not confusion exists by asking "Do I understand what I just read? or What does the author really want me to know about this text?" Readers who take responsibility for their own comprehension constantly question the text and their reactions to it.

Other ways that readers monitor comprehension during reading are to:

make connections

make predictions

make inferences

use context clues

use text features

identify text structures

use graphic organizers to pinpoint particular types of text information

write comments or questions on self-stick notes or in the margins

Readers become confused during reading for a variety of reasons (Tovani 2000):

1. The voice inside the reader's head is not talking to him any longer about the text. It may simply be reciting the text.

2. The reader's mind begins to wander; he is no longer reminding himself to "pay attention."

3. The reader can't remember what has been read.

4. The reader can't answer his own questions.

5. The reader re-encounters a character but does not remember how or when the character was introduced in the story.

When good readers finish reading, they reflect on the strategies they used to determine whether their plan worked or whether they should try something else next time. Because this evaluative component of the metacognitive process is so valuable, model and practice it with your K-2 students at every opportunity.

At first glance, teachers might think that students automatically use metacognitive strategies. However, when one child was asked what she was thinking about while reading, she replied, "I'm not thinking. I'm reading." Unfortunately, that simple, honest statement is true for students in all content areas who see reading, writing, math, science, and social studies as "subjects" rather than opportunities to think and reflect. Yet only through using metacognitive strategies can they truly learn. With this thought in mind, let's look at two compelling reasons to teach metacognitive strategies in the primary years (Fogarty 1994):

1. Good readers learn how to use cognitive and metacognitive strategies in conjunction to develop a deeper understanding of a content-area topic, a character's motives, a book's theme, and the like. They construct knowledge through a variety of different venues (cognition), and they identify when they no longer understand and what they can do about it (metacognition). Therefore, constructing understanding requires both cognitive and metacogntive elements.

2. The ultimate goal of strategy instruction is transfer - to be able to use any strategy at any time and for any purpose. Teaching for metacognitive strategies assures that students will be able to successfully use these strategies well into adulthood.

Modeling through think-alouds is the best way to teach all comprehension strategies. By thinking aloud, teachers show students what good readers do. Think-alouds can be used during read-alouds and shared reading. They can also be used during small-group reading to review or reteach a previously modeled strategy.

Wilhelm (2001) describes a think-aloud as a way of:

creating a record of the strategic decision-making process of going through a text

reporting everything the reader is aware of noticing, doing, seeing, feeling, asking, and understanding as he or she reads

talking about the reading strategies being used within the content of the piece being read

There are multiple ways to conduct think-alouds:

The teacher models the think-aloud while reading aloud, and the students listen.

The teacher thinks aloud during shared reading and the students help out.

Students think aloud during shared reading and the teacher and other students monitor and help.

The teacher or students do think-alouds in writing on an overhead, with self-stick notes, or in a journal during shared reading.

Students think aloud in small-group reading and the teacher monitors and helps.

Students do think-alouds individually during independent reading using self-stick notes or a journal and then compare their thoughts with others.

When introducing a new comprehension strategy, model during read-aloud and shared reading by following these steps:

1. Decide on a strategy to model.

2. Choose a short text or section of text.

3. Read the text ahead of time and mark locations where you will stop and model the strategy.

4. State your purpose by naming the strategy and explaining what the focus of your think-alouds will be.

5. Read the text aloud to students and think aloud at the designated points.

6. If you are utilizing a read-aloud, continue in the same way. If you are conducting a shared reading experience, have students help pinpoint the words and phrases that help you identify your thinking by underlining or using self-stick notes.

7. Reinforce the think-alouds with follow-up lessons in the same text or with others. (Wilhelm 2001)

The following are a variety of language prompts to use during think-alouds:
Planning

I'm going to read a book about a nonfiction topic, and I really don't know much about it. I think I should read slowly. If I still don't understand, I may need to reread or skim the text.

I wonder why...

I already know something about this topic. It is...

I know the word __________, but I don't know what ________ and ____________ mean.

I've seen this before when I went to...

I see lots of graphics and charts. I'll need to use those to help me understand what I'm reading.

Are there any clue words and phrases that might help figure out what text structure I'm reading?

Before I continue reading, I need to stop and think about what I just read and make sure I understand it. If I don't, I need to stop and plan.

Monitoring

The author gives me a picture in my mind when he describes...

What might happen next? Why do I think that?

What was this page about?

Maybe I should reread this part again and look for specific information.

How does the graphic on this page help me understand the text?

Since I don't understand this word, I may need to...

This wasn't what I expected. I expected _______ because ___________.

What can I write or draw that might help me remember and understand what I just read?

Evaluating

How well did I read and understand?

What strategies worked well for me?

What strategies did not work for me?

What should I do next time?

Do I need some help for next time?

How will I remember what I read?

Part 1 Model the metacognitive strategy.
Say: "Have you ever been reading a book and found yourself staring off into space? Whether you knew it or not, you were probably wondering about what you read. Often, when you pause in your reading, you find yourself thinking about a character in the story or an amazing fact about a topic. You're revisiting some of the ideas in your reading and asking yourself what they mean.
"When I get to the end of a book, or even to the end of an important page, I pause and consider what I've just read. Putting the author's ideas in my own words helps to fix them in my head. I am monitoring my own comprehension."
Read aloud a few pages of a big book while students follow along. Try to anticipate ideas and words in the text that indicate good places to pause. Stop and think aloud about what the author might be saying.
Part 2 Have students try the strategy in the same text.
Continue reading the big book, and ask students to think about the topic as you read. After you are finished, ask students to write or draw in their reader-response journals, expressing ideas or questions that they have about what the author was trying to say. After students are finished, ask them to share their responses and to discuss why these ideas were important to them as they read.
Part 3 Have students apply the strategy to another text.
The goal of the lesson is for students to be able to apply what they have learned to future readings. Ask: "What are we going to do as we read the next book?" (Think about what we are reading so that we can record our ideas in our journals.) Have students listen carefully as you read aloud or conduct another shared reading session. Ask them to record at least one major idea in their journals and then share their responses in a small group or with a partner. If students have questions about the text, encourage other students to suggest answers.

Your room environment defines the instructional atmosphere of your classroom. Many teachers base the arrangement simply on the furniture they have available and the materials they know will be on hand. For a room environment to be effective, you must think far beyond those narrow parameters. The classroom environment is evident to students on the first day of school. Students' expectations for the school year will be based on what they see in the room and how they perceive you on the first day. If students walk into an unorganized, chaotic setting, they will brace themselves for a year of instruction following those patterns. However, if they walk into an environment that is well organized, with meaningful spaces and materials, they will look forward to a year of quality instruction within an organized format.

In order for your classroom environment to reflect your instructional needs, you must first define these needs. This requires examination of every piece of furniture in your classroom:

What is it used for?

Does it need to be there?

How will it benefit instruction for my students?

Is there a way I could use it other than the way I used it last year?

These are difficult and time-consuming questions, but they can lead you to design a thriving classroom environment.

When setting up the physical environment of your classroom, consider classroom logistics, student areas, teacher areas, wall space, and teaching materials. Consider the items that are present or not; take action to create a more conducive physical room environment.

On the first day, students are most concerned with the bottom level of Maslow's hierarchy (safety, love, esteem, physiological). They want the teacher to be confident, kind, and competent. Once this level is established, they can move to higher levels of thinking.
Am I in the right room? Where am I supposed to sit? What are the rules in this classroom? What will I be doing this year? How will I be graded? Who is the teacher as a person? Will the teacher treat me as a human being? Will the teacher respect me and understand my culture, background, and needs?
Students need to feel safe in the school environment. Students will learn better if they feel welcome and important in your classroom. It is up to you to make sure you meet the emotional needs of your students in the classroom. This means carefully considering the details of the physical environment and its effects on the emotional culture of the classroom. The following four elements will assist you in creating a supportive emotional environment for learning:

What message did you send to your students when they walked into your room today? Often, the only buildings more stark and uncomfortable than schoolrooms are prison cells! Does your home have hard plastic chairs, fluorescent lights, white cinder block walls, and someone else's laminated posters on the walls? The way you attend to the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of your room directly influences how students behave. Help students realize that you care about their comfort and learning. Bring in lamps (available for pennies at garage sales), pillows (with removable covers for sanitary reasons), music (instrumental for quiet working periods, lyrical for transition times or to enhance a lesson), and fresh flowers or potpourri. Research on the brain has shown that these details make classrooms more conducive to learning.

Students and quality instruction should be at the heart of any decision you make in designing your classroom environment. Students must feel safe and secure. There should be an underlying emphasis on learning. Just as the physical environment demands meticulous planning, the emotional environment of your classroom is of utmost importance. Class-building activities and class meetings are one way to ensure that you are supporting the emotional needs of your students. During class meetings, students are given the opportunity to give and receive compliments and appreciation. Class problems that arise are solved through discussion and brainstorming of possible solutions as a group.

Class meetings follow the following format:

1. Compliments and appreciation

2. Follow-up on prior solutions

3. Agenda items

1. Share feelings while others listen

2. Discuss without fixing

3. Ask for problem-solving help

4. Future plans

(Nelson, Lott, and Glenn, Positive Discipline in the Classroom)

With class building and class meetings as an integral part of your day, you will see the relationships among your students grow. They will become more positive and supportive of one another. The students will realize how good it feels to receive praise for doing a good job! They will become gracious and learn to accept praise and to appreciate that praise. You have set the stage for increasing intrinsic motivation in your students.

The physical environment deserves a great deal of thought and attention. Let the students and their needs drive the organization behind your classroom.

"Effective teachers introduce rules, procedures, and routines on the very first day of school and continue to teach them the first week of school."

Harry and Rosemary Wong, The First Days of School

Effective discipline is evident in classrooms that have set procedures. When students are able to self-monitor their behaviors, they are able to address the learning issues at any grade level. Students must have a firm, set plan for discipline. Although procedures are necessary for effective discipline, there is a difference between a discipline plan and procedures.

Discipline concerns how students behave.

Procedures concern how thing are done.

Discipline has penalties and rewards.

Procedures have no penalties or rewards.

In your discipline plan, consider all the different places in the school where you need to control students' behavior. Consider classroom rules, playground rules, hallway rules, and cafeteria rules. Explore other places and rules as you think about your school and the expectations you have for your students.

An important principle for new teachers to understand is the difference between general rules (respect others) and specific rules (do not use vulgar or offensive language). While experienced teachers may be able to run a well disciplined class using general rules, it is often best for new teachers to start with specific rules. As students learn more about the behavior you expect, you can revise your rules to make them more general.

General rules are broad and flexible, encompassing a wide variety of behaviors. The following are examples of general rules:

Respect others.

Take care of your school.

Be polite and helpful.

Keep the room clean.

Behave in the library.

General rules must be explained explicitly; otherwise, students will not understand what behaviors are acceptable in the classroom. For example, what does it look like to keep the room clean?

Specific rules are to the point and clearly cover the expectations of one behavior. The following are examples of specific rules:

Be in class on time.

Keep your hands, feet, and belongings to yourself.

Listen to instructions the first time they are given.

Do not use vulgar or offensive language.

Have all materials ready to use when the bell rings.

Specific rules have the advantage of clearly stating expected student behaviors. The downside to specific rules is that you should limit your rules to just five. You must know exactly what behaviors are important to you to ensure your students' success throughout the year.

Another important principle is the need to limit the numbers of things you expect your students to memorize to three to five items. Phone numbers, credit cards, social security numbers, etc.-all have numbers clustered in no more than five per set. This is because people find it easier to remember numbers in groups of three to five. If you post a list of rules that is twenty items long, students will not be able to recall and follow them all.

Wise teachers choose their battles carefully. Decide upon three to five important, specifically stated rules if you are a new teacher. Post these rules before the first day of class and introduce them the first day of school. Distribute copies to students on the first day and refer back to the rules numerous times throughout the first week and beyond as necessary.

While students need to understand clearly why the rules were selected, their involvement in this process does not need to be democratic. Rather than having students create the high-priority rules for the class, have them create lists of behaviors that would increase their ability to learn in class. This helps them share in the responsibility for behavior but still allows the teacher to have the final word regarding which rules are non-negotiable.

Your classroom rules are as unique as you are as a teacher. It takes time to decide what works best for you and determine how to present those rules to your class. Stand, with conviction, behind each rule you enforce. Determine how the rule changes the environment of your classroom. If you can justify your rules with instructional benefits, you are on the right track. Change your vision and discipline plan each year that you teach, depending on the students you have in your classroom. The end goal is effective discipline, which leads to optimal instruction.
If you do not have a plan, you are planning to fail.
Harry and Rosemary Wong, The First Days of School

Procedures are the heart of an organized classroom. Harry and Rosemary Wong define procedures and routines in the following manner: "A procedure is what the teacher wants done. A routine is what the students do automatically." Procedures are the beginnings of routines in our classrooms. We all want to have classrooms that run efficiently. Teachers who have well defined and understood procedures rarely have any discipline problems. These teachers' classrooms seem to run on their own. In fact, they do. Students know what to do and how to do it because the teacher has explicitly taught each procedure. The procedure is practiced and practiced until it becomes a routine. It becomes the way tasks are accomplished.

Before the first day of school, teachers should take time to determine the procedures that organize the classroom environment. These procedures can be as simple as how students enter the room and as complex as what their options for work are when they have completed the main assignment. Teachers are encouraged to plan these procedures in advance in explicit detail. At first you might think that your students are too old for this type of direct instruction. Remember they are your students for the first time, not the same students you trained to be efficient the year before. Classroom management and organization run more smoothly if students are given the opportunity to learn the classroom procedures through direct instruction rather than through trial and error.

There are procedures for:

Operation of the classroom and school

Discipline

Instruction

You have to find the appropriate time to introduce and teach these procedures to students. Make a list of your procedures and then sort them by importance. Which ones do you have to teach in the first five minutes of the day, within the first hour, within the first day, within the first week, or within the first month? Sorting your procedures this way is important so that you don't overwhelm your students. They need to absorb the information and begin the process of moving from procedure to routine. In addition to studying procedures, take the time to study the supply list and its intended uses. This will save you time and confusion when your students bring in their supplies. It will also facilitate the beginning of meaningful instruction and the proper use and storage of materials.

Students need to know exactly what is expected. They must know what proper behavior/action is and is not. This requires time and role-playing during the first weeks of school. These role-playing experiences should be specific and teach a certain procedure. Procedures take time to teach, but you will regain the time during the year. You will not have to stop instruction in order to handle procedural concerns. Once you are past the first two weeks of school, your students will move from procedure to routine.

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K-8 Metacognitive Strategies - Benchmark Education Company

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By practicing and applying metacognitive strategies, students will become good readers, capable of handling any text across a curriculum. Because metacognitive strategies appear obvious, some teachers might believe that students in intermediate grades begin the school year cognizant of these strategies and experienced in using them.

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Co-constructing criteria with students is one of the most powerful facets of assessment for learning. By engaging them in the process of defining the learning goal and what success looks like, teachers are often amazed at how much MORE learning happens. Students begin to speak the language of assessment and take ownership of their own learning journey.

Educators of students with Special Needs are often experts at this process. They are used to working as a team with other professionals to identify the challenges of individual students and are very clear about each one's specific learning targets. Their systems of keeping track of evidence of learning for these students are typically based on more qualitative data (using multiple sources over time) rather than relying on numerical data.

Many teachers model the language of assessment for their students with Special Needs by involving them in co-creating criteria to show what the learning will look like for each of them. Being able to communicate about what they have learned helps students become more confident and capable of learning on their own.

A group of educators in Ohio have seen such outstanding results from co-constructing criteria with their students (elementary, middle, and high school) that they offered to share their stories with us. Check them out in the article below, "Vignettes of Co-Constructing Criteria".

"A guiding question for me is 'What qualities and skills do I, as an educator, want our students to have?'... Mostly, I want them to have a belief in themselves that they are capable of great things."
~ Philip Divinsky

Phil Divinsky teaches high school students with Special Needs. His chapter, *Creating the Classroom Culture* describes his strategies for developing students' communication skills so they get to know their peers and work together, sharing specific feedback for learning. Read more in Quality Assessment in High Schools: Accounts From Teachers.

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Co-constructing criteria with students is one of the most powerful facets of assessment for learning. By engaging them in the process of defining the learning goal and what success looks like, teachers are often amazed at how much MORE learning happens. Students begin to speak the language of assessment and take ownership of their own learning journey.

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Preparing a child for the world that doesn't yet exist is not an easy task for any teacher. Step back and look at that picture from a broad perspective. What are the critical 21st century skills every student needs to survive and succeed in our world? What abilities and traits will serve them in a time that's changing and developing so rapidly?

No pupil in the history of education is like today's modern learner.

This is a complex, energetic, and tech-savvy individual. They want to be challenged and inspired in their learning. They want to collaborate and work with their peers. They want to incorporate the technology they love into their classroom experiences as much as they can. In short, they have just as high a set of expectations of their educators as their educators have of them.

How Are Educators Responding?

The New Zealand Ministry of Education defines five key competencies for living and lifelong learning listed below:

Thinking

Using language, symbols, and text

Managing self

Relating to others

Participating and contributing

The International Baccalaureate is a non-profit educational foundation created in 1968. It designs its programs to develop crucial intellectual, personal, emotional, and social skills. Their IB Learner Profile suggests that students should be conditioned by their learning to be:

The Common Core Standards Initiative also states primary areas of focus for their development. These are based on teaching our students the same kinds of 21st century skills. This excerpt is from their website:

The standards were drafted by experts and teachers from across the country and are designed to ensure students are prepared for today's entry-level careers, freshman-level college courses, and workforce training programs. The Common Core focuses on developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful.

Our Big List of Essential 21st Century Skills

We've given hundreds of presentations to educators and administrators in several countries over the years. Each time we've spoken, we have asked them what they feel are the most important 21st-century skills students need above all others. The answers that we've received most often are narrowed down below.

This list comes from our book Literacy is Not Enough(Crockett, Lee et. al.; 2011). You'll be able to see it correlates rather well with both New Zealand's list and the IB Learner Profile. They certainly cover the Common Core's bases, too. It's good to know we're all on the same page, isn't it? That's great news for our students!

So, according to the folks we've asked, the consensus is that students need transparency-level skills in these areas:

Problem solving

Creativity

Analytic thinking

Collaboration

Communication

Ethics, action, and accountability

This 21st century skills list is purposefully embedded within the Essential Fluencies. In the meantime, let's talk more about why these skills are important. We'll go through each point separately and talk about it in detail.

1. Problem Solving

Students need the ability to solve complex problems in real time.

Why it's important:In the future, complex problems that we can't even conceive right now will be everywhere. As society advances, so will the complexity of its manageable conflicts. The more we focus on students' ability to devise effective solutions to real-world problems, the more successful those students will become. This is what Solution Fluency is all about. It means solving complex problems effectively in real time using unique and carefully designed solutions.

In addition to this, problem-solvers can work independently from higher supervision. They are initiative takers and enjoy risk, and they aren't afraid to get their hands dirty and make mistakes. They also learn from those mistakes, and habitually debrief their processes to create more efficient and economical solutions.

No pupil in the history of education is like today's modern learner. This is a complex, energetic, and tech-savvy individual.

These are the kinds of people who will be successful in a global marketplace like ours. Such an individual is an asset to any workforce. It's worth mentioning that in this future we're talking about, workers who are unable to think proactively towards solving problems will have a hard time finding employment.

2. Creativity

Students need to be able to think and work creatively in both digital and nondigital environments to develop unique and useful solutions.

Why it's important:Our digital students are in a constant state of stimulation and neural development with technology use. They are natural producers and consumers, or prosumers, of information. Problem-solving is a skill that comes naturally to them and this can be advanced profoundly with the proper engagement in their learning. This comes from doing rewarding projects and meaningful tasks that give them challenges to overcome in imaginative ways.

Ask any student about what they like to create and you'll get a myriad of different answers. They are constantly searching for ways to express themselves and their uniqueness. Through social media, they display this creative edge and are given constant and instantaneous feedback from their peers. This same level of creative power is used as they face interesting challenges and figure out how to meet them with ingenuity and vision. This is why Creativity Fluency is one of the Essential Fluency skills.

Creativity is a vital outlet that inspires students to see who they are and what they can do, and to realize what they can accomplish.

It is fundamental that this side of any student is allowed to shine forth in their learning.

3. Analytic Thinking

Students need the ability to think analytically, which includes proficiency with comparing, contrasting, evaluating, synthesizing, and applying without instruction or supervision.

Why it's important: Analytic thinking means being able to use the higher end of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy or higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).

Tasks that require linear thinking and routine cognitive work are being outsourced more and more. So it's essential to guide students towards being able to perform analytic thinking. It is crucial to their ability to succeed in life after the classroom. Analytic thinking is a significant part of what makes up Information Fluency.

Analytical thinkers see data and information in many different dimensions, and from multiple angles. They are adept at conceptualization, organization and classification, and knowledge synthesis. These types of skills are invaluable because they allow students to deal practically with problems of a social, mathematical, and scientific nature. It empowers them to make effective and level-headed decisions in their lives and relationships. It's easy to see why critical and analytical thinking skills are important to success beyond school.

4. Collaboration

Students must possess the ability to collaborate seamlessly in both physical and virtual spaces, with real and virtual partners globally.

Why it's important: Students of the digital age are social by nature. They text, post, update, share, chat, and constantly co-create in technological environments with each other. When they are unable to do this in school, they become disengaged and unattached to their learning.

Connection and collaboration with others are essential not only to their learning but their mental and emotional health.

It is a skill that educators must exercise with them regularly, and understanding Collaboration Fluency will assist with this.

Problem-solving is a skill that comes naturally to learners and this can be advanced profoundly with the proper engagement in their learning.

The work forces of the future (and even our present day) are globalizing due to the Internet. It is now the norm to communicate and market for global demographics instantaneously and effectively. An organization's business partners are now halfway across the world, and yet they meet and work with each other every day. The ability to collaborate and communicate in these situations is essential.

This kind of interaction goes hand-in-hand with the mindset of global awareness that is part of Global Digital Citizenship. Simply put, better collaborators make better students-and better citizens.

5. COMMUNICATION

Students must be able to communicate not just with text or speech, but in multiple multimedia formats. They must be able to communicate visually through video and imagery as effectively as they do with text and speech.

Why it's important:Communication is a broad term that incorporates multi-faceted levels of interaction and sharing information. Students love to communicate using technology. This is an essential part of Media Fluency. But it's more than just being able to effectively use digital media. It's about personal interactions as well.

We must remind our students that responsible communication practice puts forth their best representation of who they are as individuals in every relationship and alliance they make in their lives.

Whether talking face-to-face, blogging, texting, or creating a visual product, their values and beliefs are defined by how well they communicate with others. Encouraging them to develop and hone every aspect of their communication skills will serve them well in both their personal and professional lives.

6. Ethics, Action, and Accountability

This includes adaptability, fiscal responsibility, personal accountability, environmental awareness, empathy, tolerance, and global awareness.

Why it's important:These are among the many characteristics of the Global Digital Citizen. A well-rounded and responsible global digital citizen practices personal, global, and online responsibilities geared towards creating a better world for everyone. This is a selfless, helpful, and caring individual who is respectful of other cultures and belief systems, and diligent about being at their best with interactions of all sorts, both online and offline.

Teaching our kids about global awareness and Internet safety have become mainstream practices in education. It's great to see such skills garnering the attention they deserve. Wabisabi Learning continues to create resources to help educators all over the world incorporate these practices into their own teaching strategies.

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The Critical 21st Century Skills Every Student Needs and Why

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Preparing a child for the world that doesn't yet exist is not an easy task for any teacher. Step back and look at that picture from a broad perspective. What are the critical 21st century skills every student needs to survive and succeed in our world?

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Making Students' Thinking Visible During Active Learning

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Jenni Donohoo, July 2016 - Click on the following link: http://corwin-connect.com/2016/07/fostering-collective-teacher-efficacy-three-enabling-conditions/

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find resources and journal publications on many visible learning strategies and topics.

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We are professors at San Diego State University in Educational Leadership and focus on policies, classroom practices, and school leadership. For over two decades, our work has been dedicated to the knowledge and skills of caring teachers and school leaders needed to help students attain their goals and aspirations. Our shared interests include instructional design, curriculum development, and professional learning. We are co-authors of articles and books on literacy and leadership, including Teaching Reading Playbook, How Leadership Works, and The Restorative Practices Playbook.

In 2007, with our colleague and friend Ian Pumpian, we founded Health Sciences High and Middle College, an award-winning open-enrollment public school in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. There we learn from students, teachers, and families every day. We strive to have an impact in everything we do.

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Books, Workshops, and all of the resources needed to facilitate literacy and reading proficiency for students.

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8 Strategies Robert Marzano & John Hattie Agree On

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8 Strategies Robert Marzano & John Hattie Agree On

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June 17, 2015

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By Shaun Killian (MEd, MLead)
Robert Marzano and John Hattie have both reviewed the research on which teaching strategies work best. While they used different methods and terminology, they agreed on these 8 powerful strategies.

Strategy 1: A Clear Focus

John Hattie highlights how important it is for you (and your students) to be clear about what you want them to learn. According to Hattie, teacher clarity is one of the most potent influences on student achievement. Robert Marzano agrees! He includes lesson goals in his top 5 list of factors that affect how well students do at school.

Hattie states that lesson goals:

Clarify what you want your students to learn

Can focus on surface or deep learning (or both)

Must be challenging for the students relative to their current mastery of the topic

May be grouped (i.e. a single lesson may have more than one goal)

Need to be shared with the students

Marzano also found that posing questions at the start of a lesson is an effective way to focus students. For example:

How do you add mixed fractions with different denominators? That's what you must know by the end of this lesson.

What is the difference between elements and compounds?

Why is Persuasive Essay A better than Persuasive Essay B?

When (what period) were Egypt's great pyramids built?

Hattie suggests using questions in a slightly different way:
How To Set Lesson Goals To Boost Student Achievement

What are today's lesson goals?

What do I already know that will help me achieve these goals?

What actions will I need to do to ensure I achieve these goals?

Strategy 2: Offer Overt Instruction

Robert Marzano claims it is important to explicitly teach your students the things they need to learn. In fact, he found it was the most critical factor (teacher controlled) affecting students' success. You need to:

Tell them what they need to know

Show them how to do things they must be able to do for themselves.

John Hattie did not review explicit teaching per se, but he did find that Direct Instruction was very effective. Direct Instruction involves explicitly teaching a carefully sequenced curriculum. And, it has built-in cumulative practice.

Hattie also highlighted the power of giving students worked examples. More specifically, you should use worked examples when explaining how to multi-step tasks. Marzano also highlights the importance of providing examples and non-examples of the concept you are teaching. For example, when teaching prime numbers it would be useful to highlight:

2 as an example

9, 15 and 21 as non-examples

This helps to avoid confusion with odd numbers.

Marzano also found that you can explicitly teach deeper levels of understanding. How? By using graphic organisers. You should use graphic organisers to show how different ideas were related to each other. For example, you should use them to show steps, cause-effect, hierarchy, lists, comparisons, etc.

.

Neither Hattie nor Marzano believes that great teaching is nothing more than standing out the front of the class and imparting knowledge. However, both agree that telling students what they need to know and showing students what they need to be able to do are essential aspects of teaching.

For an example of explicit teaching in context see the I Do, We Do, You Do model.

Strategy 3: Get the Students to Engage with the Content

You must teach students what they need to know and be able to do. But, it is also essential to get them to actively engage with the content.

Marzano and Hattie agree that this starts with students' prior knowledge. You need to help them link new information to their prior knowledge of the topic. Students need to engage with the content as soon as they hear it by:

Adding it to what they already know, or

Using it to clarify some of the faulty assumptions they currently hold

Engaging at the Surface Level

When students are relatively unfamiliar with what you are teaching, engagement strategies include:

Generating questions while reading

Taking and organising notes

Summarising

Rehearsal

Marzano also found getting them to work with physical manipulatives is helpful. And, he found that the simple act of asking students simple recall questions works well.

All these strategies are useful, but they only allow students to engage with the content at a surface level.

Engaging at a Deeper Level

Hattie and Marzano also found several ways for students to engage at a deeper level. These include exploring relationships between things using:

Marzano also recommends using analogies, such as:

Persuasive devices are to a writer what tools are to a tradie, or

The Magna Carta offered citizens what a referee offers a game of soccer

These are practical strategies that exemplify the higher levels of the SOLO taxonomy. This is an alternative to Bloom that Hattie advocates.

For further information, see 7 High-Impact Learning Strategies You Must Teach Your Students.

Strategy 4: Give Feedback

It is vital that you give your students feedback after they engage with any new material. This involves:
See How to Give Feedback to Students: The Advanced Guide

Highlighting what is right and wrong, or good and bad about their work

Helping students to see how they can improve

Robert Marzano found that you need to give your students feedback while they still have time to improve. John Hattie agreed with this but went further. He found that:
See The Value of Feedback Infographic

Novice or struggling students need immediate feedback

More experienced and capable students do better when they receive delayed feedback

Hattie also highlighted that feedback is a two-way street. Student results provide the basis for both feedback to:

Students on how they can improve

You on the impact your teaching is having

Strategy 5: Multiple Exposures

If you want students to internalize new information, you need to expose them to it several times.

Robert Marzano explored ways to enhance students' vocabulary. He found that it was critical for teachers to expose students to the same word multiple times.

John Hattie picks up on the significance of multiple exposures. He talks about the critical importance of techniques such as rehearsal and review.

Rehearsal means going over the material until you can remember it

Review involves going over things you have learned previously

He also stresses the merit of giving students time to practice doing the things they have learned to do. When spaced out over time, Hattie found that having students practice things led to a 26-percentile improvement in their marks.

On a more cautious note, Hattie warned that practice without feedback could be dangerous. Why? It leads to students internalizing the wrong things.

Strategy 6: Have Students Apply Their Knowledge

Robert Marzano found that helping students apply their knowledge deepens their understanding.

A Deductive Process

Knowledge application is a deductive process. Put another way, students apply general principles to specific case studies or problems. Marzano found that deductive thinking helps students to generalise their learning beyond the topic or task at hand. He advocates:

Teaching students how to think deductively

Giving them guided practice in doing so

Hattie confirmed that deductive processes are much more useful than inductive teaching (i.e. asking students to discover general principles from observing particular situations).

Problem-Solving

Knowledge application also involves problem-solving. Robert found that problem-solving had a significant effect (d = 0.54) on students' understanding. Marzano believes that problems should require students to apply previously learned knowledge and skills. Hattie agrees. When problem-solving is used in this way, Hattie found a similar effect size (d = 0.61) to Marzano. However, when a problem is used to stimulate discovery learning, the opposite is true (d = 0.15). Hattie also emphasized the importance of teaching students how to solve problems.

Strategy 7: Get Students Working Together

Robert Marzano and John Hattie agree that getting students to work together is a good idea. It helps them to achieve better results. The use of cooperative learning groups adds value to:

Whole-class instruction (d = 0.41)

Individual work (d = 0.59-0.78)

They also agree that inter-group competition can increase the effect of cooperative learning even more.

However, neither Marzano nor Hattie believes that cooperative learning should replace whole-class instruction. Nor should it replace individual learning activities.

Hattie highlights the importance of individual students' competence. If students haven't gained enough mastery of the material, they cannot actively participate in cooperative learning tasks.

Marzano adds that if students are to master what they are being taught, they also need opportunities for individual practice and feedback.

Finally, Marzano and Hattie agree that cooperative learning is only useful when you:

Structure it carefully

Keep groups small

Teach students how to work in groups

For further information, read Group Work That Works.

Strategy 8: Build Students' Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to a student's belief about their ability to successfully complete a task. It is situation specific. For example, a student may feel confident that they can dance well on stage but be insecure about public speaking.

Hattie & Marzano both found that students' self-efficacy had a substantial impact on how well they did at school. Students who:

Believed they would master fractions were more likely to do so

Saw themselves as poor readers were less likely to improve their reading

Marzano found that you could build students' self-efficacy through praise and expressing your belief that they can do well. However, to be effective, such praise must:

Be genuine - i.e. only given when students have made a real improvement

Refer to specific accomplishments related to the task

As Carol Dweck noted, if you praise lavishly and liberally, you end up praising mediocrity. In turn, this sends a message that you believe that this is all they are capable of.

Hattie highlighted the reciprocal nature of the link between self-efficacy and achievement

Achieving genuine success influences self-efficacy

Self-efficacy influences success

Marzano & Hattie In a Nutshell

John Hattie and Robert Marzano have each conducted significant reviews of what works best in the classroom.

There are some apparent differences in their work.

They use different terminology to each other.

Marzano uses more isolated strategies, while Hattie combines strategies into broader approaches

Marzano's findings are based heavily on teacher-designed assessments. Yet Hattie's findings make more use of standardized tests

However, as you can see, there is significant agreement between Robert Marzano and John Hattie when it comes to what works best in the classroom.
Updated December 2016
References

John Hattie. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement.

John Hattie & Gregory Donoghue. (2016). Learning Strategies: A Synthesis and Conceptual Model.

Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering & Jane Pollock. (2001). Classroom Instruction That Works.
[+Ceri Dean, Elizabeth Hubbell, Howard Pitler & BJ Stone. (2012). Classroom Instruction That Works. (updated)]

Robert Marzano & Debra Pickering. (2010). The Highly Engaged Classroom.

Robert Marzano & Mark Haystead. (2009). Meta-Analytic Synthesis of Studies Conducted at Marzano Research Laboratory on Instructional Strategies.

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Marzano & Hattie Agree on These 8 Strategies

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By Shaun Killian (MEd, MLead) Robert Marzano and John Hattie have both reviewed the research on which teaching strategies work best. While they used different methods and terminology, they agreed on these 8 powerful strategies. John Hattie highlights how important it is for you (and your students) to be clear about what you want them to learn.

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Glossary of Hattie's Influences on Student Achievement 

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Glossary of Hattie's Influences on Student Achievement 

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February 21, 2013

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This Glossary explains influences related to student achievement published in John Hattie's Visible Learning for teachers (Hattie 2012; 251ff). You can find an older list of influences related to student achievement in Hattie (2009) Visible Learning.

1. Student Self-Reported Grades

Self reported grades comes out at the top of all influences. Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform. In a video Hattie explains that if he could write his book Visible Learning for Teachers again, he would re-name this learning strategy " Student Expectations " to express more clearly that this strategy involves the teacher finding out what are the student's expectations and pushing the learner to exceed these expectations. Once a student has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, he or she gains confidence in his or her learning ability.
Example for Self-reported grades: Before an exam, ask your class to write down what mark the student expects to achieve. Use this information to engage the student to try to perform even better.
Hattie cites five meta-studies:

Mabe/West (1982): Validity of self-evaluation of ability (Abstract)

Fachikov/Boud (1989): Student Self-Assessment in Higher Education (Abstract)

Ross (1998): Self-assessment in second language testing (Abstract)

Falchikov/Goldfinch (2000): Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education (Abstract)

Kuncel/Crede/Thomas (2005); The Validity of Self-Reported Grade Point Averages, Class Ranks, and Test Scores (Abstract)

2. Piagetian programs

Piagetian programs are teaching methods based on Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development and his concept of children's stages of learning. The meta-study of Jordan and Brownlee (1981) that Hattie cites found that in primary school age there is a close correlation between the performance on Piagetian tests of the thinking level and achievement tests in mathematics and reading.

The Piagetian stages include:

Sensorimotor stage (new born - 2 years old): Infants learn by the basic senses including seeing, hearing and touching and construct an understanding of the world by coordinating those experiences with physical, motoric actions.

Pre-operational stage (2 - 7 years old): Children are able to understand basic concepts and symbols, but do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information.

Concrete operational stage (7-12 years old): Children in these ages start solving problems in a more logical fashion but abstract, hypothetical thinking has not yet developed.

Formal operational stage (12 years old onwards): Children and adolescents develop abstract thinking and are able to perform hypothetical and deductive reasoning.

Watch this video to find out and see how children in different ages think differently.
Example for Piagetian programs: Focus on the thinking processes rather than the outcomes and do not impose the adult thinking process on to children.
Hattie cites one meta-study: Jordan and Brownlee (1981) Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Piagetian and School Achievement Tests. ( Abstract)

3. Response to intervention

Response to intervention (RTI) is an educational approach that provides early, systematic assistance to children who are struggling in one or many areas of their learning. RTI seeks to prevent academic failure through early intervention and frequent progress measurement. Watch this video to learn more about Response to intervention.
Examples and more information for Response to intervention: www.interventioncentral.org
4. Teacher credibility

According to Hattie teacher credibility is vital to learning, and students are very perceptive about knowing which teachers can make a difference. There are four key factors of credibility: trust, competence, dynamism and immediacy. In an interview Hattie puts it like that: "If a teacher is not perceived as credible, the students just turn off."
Examples for teacher credibility: Earn trust by showing trust towards pupils. Appear highly organised in the presentation of the subject matter. Develop a powerful style of speaking that uses few verbal hesitancies such as "OK" or "you know". Reduce distance between teachers and students by moving or moving away from barriers (e.g., desk, podiums). Source: cie.asu.edu
5. Providing formative evaluation

According to Hattie (2012) and Black & Wiliam (2001) formative evaluation refers to any activity used as an assessment of learning progress before or during the learning process itself. In contrast with formative assessment, the summative assessment evaluates what students know or have learned at the end of the teaching, after all is done. Watch this video to learn more about the difference between formative and summative assessment methods. In another video you can learn from teachers who describe their experience with formative evaluation.
Example for formative evaluation: Spend the same amount of time or even more on formative assessment as you spend on summative assessment. Give descriptive feedback to students: What is the goal? Where are you in relation to it? What can you do to close the gap?
Hattie cites two meta-studies:

Fuchs & Fuchs (1986): Effects of systematic formative evaluation (Abstract)

Burns & Symington (2002): A Meta-analysis of Prereferral Intervention Teams: Student and Systemic Outcomes (Abstract)

6. Micro-teaching

Micro-teaching is a video recording of a lesson with a debriefing. The lesson is reviewed in order to improve the teaching and learning experience. In Visible Learning Hattie describes micro-teaching as a practice (often in laboratory settings) that "typically involves student-teachers conducting (mini-) lessons to a small group of students, and then engaging in a post-discussion about the lessons" (Hattie 2009, 112). You can find plenty of microteaching videos on Youtube to get an idea of this method ( example). Technical aspects are less important than the later analysis which allows teachers to get a microscope-view on your own teaching. Under the guidance of a supervisor, the student-teacher is first asked to present a self feed back of his mini lesson, then the team gives feedback to provide positive reinforcement and constructive criticism.
Examples for micro-teaching: Since its invention in the 1960s at Stanford University by Dr. Dwight Allen, microteaching has become an established teacher-training procedure in many universities and school districts. You can find more information on micro-teaching here or here.

Hattie cites four meta-studies:

Butcher (1981) An experimental investigation of the effectiveness of a value claim strategy unit for use in teacher education (Unpublished M.A. Macquarie University Sydney)

Yeany/Padilla (1986): Training science teachers to utilize better teaching strategies (Abstract)

Bennett (1987): The effectiveness of staff development training practices (Unpublished Ph.D. University of Oregon)

Metcalf, K. K. (1995). Laboratory experiences in teacher education (Abstract)

7. Classroom discussion

Classroom discussion is a method of teaching, that involves the entire class in a discussion. The teacher stops lecturing and students get together as a class to discuss an important issue. Classroom discussion allows students to improve communication skills by voicing their opinions and thoughts. Teachers also benefit from classroom discussion as it allows them to see if students have learnt the concepts that are being taught. Moreover, a classroom discussion creates an environment where everyone learns from each other. In this video by Heather Joseph-Witham you can see how to lead a classroom discussion effectively.
Examples for an effective classroom discussion: Create a series of questions for the students to think about. Allocate enough time in the lesson for an elaborate discussion. Make sure that students can freely express their opinion without being laughed at or ridiculed. You can find helpful tips on planning, moderating and reflecting on classroom discussion in a paper by William E. Cashin (PDF).
8. Comprehensive interventions for learning disabled students

The presence of learning disability can make learning to read, write, and do math especially challenging. Hattie admits that "it would be possible to have a whole book on the effects of various interventions for students with learning disabilities" (Hattie 2009, 217) and refers to a meta-study of Swanson, Hoskyn and Lee (1999). To improve achievement teachers must provide students with tools and strategies to organize themselves as well as new material; techniques to use while reading, writing, and doing math; and systematic steps to follow when working through a learning task or reflecting upon their own learning. Hattie also discusses studies which found that "all children benefited from strategy training; both ths with and those without intellectual disabilities."
Examples for effective interventions for students with learning disabilities: One strategy discussed in a paper by Neil Sturomski: "Teaching Students With Learning Disabilities To Use Learning Strategies" (PDF) is called "DEFENDS". This strategic approach helps secondary students write a composition in which they must take a position and defend it (Ellis, 1994). Each letter stands for a strategic step: You can find further information in a papber by H. Lee Swanson and Donald Deshler (2003): Instructing Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: Converting a Meta-Analysis to Practice (PDF)
D ecide on audience, goals, and position
E stimate main ideas and details
F igure best order of main ideas and details
E xpress the position in the opening
N ote each main idea and supporting points
D rive home the message in the last sentence
S earch for errors and correct
9. Teacher clarity
Examples for teacher clarity, learning goals and success criteria: This short video provides a great example for a lesson intended to let students write a good "How-to book". The teacher explains how to develop and set clear learning goals and success criteria before the students actually start the writing activity.
Hattie defines teacher clarity quoting the (unpublished) work of Fendick (1990) as "organization, explanation, examples and guided practice, and assessment of student learning - such that clarity of speech was a prerequisite of teacher clarity." (Hattie 2009, 126) One of the main points of Hattie's books about Visible Learning is the importance to clearly communicate the intentions of the lessons and the success criteria. Clear learning intentions describe the skills, knowledge, attitudes and values that the student needs to learn. Teachers need to know the goals and success criteria of their lessons, know how well all students in their class are progressing, and know where to go next.

Hattie cites one meta-study:

Fendick (1990): The correlation between teacher clarity of communication and student achievement gain (Unpublished Ph.D. University of Florida)

10. Feedback
Examples: Related to the notion of "feed up, feed back and feed forward" teachers must answer three feedback questions: "Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?" Constantly ask the students in order to maximize the feedback from the learner back to the teacher. Create a classroom climate where error is welcomed. In this short video John Hattie talks about what feedback means and how to make feedback work effectively for learning in the classroom.

According to Hattie and Timperley (2007) feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement, but this impact can be either positive or negative. They developed a model of effective feedback that identifies the particular properties and circumstances that make it work. Feedback on task, process and self regulation level is far more effective than on the Self-level (e.g. praise wich contains no learning information). Descriptive feedback is closely related to providing formative assessment (see above). In an interview Hattie emphasized that the most powerful feedback is that given from the student to the teacher. This feedback allows teachers to see learning through the eyes of their students. It makes learning visible and facilitates the planning of next steps. The feedback that students receive from their teachers is also vital. It enables students to progress towards challenging learning intentions and goals.

Glossary by Sebastian Waack. Follow me on Twitter. Always happy to talk!

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Glossary of Hattie's influences on student achievement - VISIBLE LEARNING

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This Glossary explains influences related to student achievement published in John Hattie's Visible Learning for teachers (Hattie 2012; 251ff). You can find an older list of influences related to student achievement in Hattie (2009) Visible Learning. 1. Student Self-Reported Grades Self reported grades comes...Read more ›

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Educational Leadership, 2012

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Jenni Donohoo (click on "look inside" to read the first few pages of the book

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Jenni Donohoo Blog Post (January 9, 2017)

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When teachers believe that together, they are capable of developing students' critical thinking skills, creativity, and mastery of complex content, it happens! Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) refers to a staff's shared belief that through their collective action, they can positively influence student outcomes, including those who are disengaged and/or disadvantaged. Educators with high efficacy show greater effort and persistence, a willingness to try new teaching approaches, set more challenging goals, and attend more closely to the needs of students who require extra assistance. In addition, when collective efficacy is present, staffs are better equipped to foster positive behaviour in students and in raising students' expectations of themselves by convincing them that they can do well in school.
The Effect Size Research
With an effect size of 1.57, CTE is ranked as the number one factor influencing student achievement (Hattie, 2016). Collective teacher efficacy, as an influence on student achievement, is a contribution that comes from the school - not the home nor the students themselves. According to the Visible Learning Research (Table 1), CTE is beyond three times more powerful and predictive of student achievement than socio-economic status. It is more than double the effect of prior achievement and more than triple the effect of home environment and parental involvement. It is also greater than three times more likely to influence student achievement than student motivation and concentration, persistence, and engagement.

Table 1. Factors Influencing Student Achievement and Their Effect Size

Source: Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge; and Hattie, J. (2016, July). Mindframes and Maximizers. 3rd Annual Visible Learning Conference held in Washington, DC.

An effect size emphasizes the difference in magnitude of given approaches for purposes of comparison. An effect size of 0 reveals that the influence had no effect on student achievement. The larger the effect size, the more powerful the influence. Hattie (2009) suggested an effect size of 0.2 is relatively small, an effect size of 0.4 is medium, and an effect size of 0.6 is large.

Efficacy beliefs are very powerful because they guide educators' actions. Goddard, Hoy, and Woolfolk Hoy (2004) noted that efficacy beliefs "directly affect the diligence and resolve with which groups choose to pursue their goals" (p. 8). If educators' realities are filtered through the belief that there is very little they can do to influence student achievement, then it is very likely these beliefs will be manifested in their practice. However, if a school staff shares a sense of collective efficacy, then they have a greater likelihood of positively impacting student learning, over and above any other influence.
Six Enabling Conditions
School characteristics associated with CTE, documented in the research, helped in identifying six enabling conditions for collective efficacy to flourish (Donohoo, 2017). While enabling conditions do not cause things to happen, they increase the likelihood that things will turn out as expected.

Advanced teacher influence is defined by the degree to which teachers are provided opportunities to participate in important school-wide decisions.

Reaching consensus on goals not only increases collective efficacy, it also has a direct and measurable impact on student achievement (Robinson, Hohepa, & Lloyd, 2009)

Teachers' Knowledge About One Another's Work

Teachers gain confidence in their peers' ability to impact student learning when they have more intimate knowledge about each other's practice.

Cohesion is defined as the degree to which teachers agree with each other on fundamental educational issues.

Responsive leaders show concern and respect for their staff and protect teachers from issues that detract from their teaching time and focus.

Effective Systems of Intervention

Effective systems of intervention help in ensuring that all students are successful.

Fostering collective teacher efficacy is a timely and important issue if we are going to realize success for all students. Fostering collective teacher efficacy should be at the forefront of a planned strategic effort in all schools and school boards. Attending to the six enabling conditions outlined in this blog is a step toward realizing the possibility of collective teacher efficacy in schools.
References:
Donohoo, J. (2017). Collective efficacy: How educators' beliefs impact student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Goddard, R., Hoy, W., & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2004). Collective efficacy beliefs: Theoretical developments, empirical evidence, and future directions. American Educational Research Association, 33(3), 3-13.

Hattie, J. (2016). Third Annual Visible Learning Conference (subtitled Mindframes and Maximizers), Washington, DC, July 11, 2016.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

Robinson, V., Hohepa, M. & Lloyd, C. (2009). School leadership and student outcomes: Identifying what works and why. Best evidence synthesis iteration [BES]. New Zealand: Ministry of Education.
About Jenni Donohoo
Jenni Donohoo is a Provincial Literacy Lead, seconded to the Ontario Ministry of Education's Curriculum and Assessment Policy Branch. In this role she works with system and school leaders in order to support high quality professional learning and improve adolescent literacy. Jenni earned a doctorate in education from the Joint Program at the University of Windsor, Brock and Lakehead in 2010. Since then, her passion for research and writing has grown. Jenni has written three books for Corwin. Her most recent book, Collective Efficacy: How Educators' Beliefs Impact Student Learning, was released in November 2016.

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Collective Teacher Efficacy: The Effect Size Research and Six Enabling Conditions

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When teachers believe that together, they are capable of developing students' critical thinking skills, creativity, and mastery of complex content, it happens! Collective teacher efficacy (CTE) refers to a staff's shared belief that through their collective action, they can positively influence student outcomes, including those who are disengaged and/or disadvantaged.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF VOLUNTARY READING
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Andrew Johnson

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Human Being, Professor of Literacy

Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D.

Minnesota State University, Mankato
A reading teacher's number one job is to help students fall in love with books.
andrew.johnson@mnsu.edu

This is an excerpt from my book, 10 Essential Instructional Elements For Students With Reading Difficulties: A Brain-Friendly Approach, published by Corwin Press (2016).
READING PRACTICE
Of all the research-based strategies described, wide reading is perhaps the most effective and the easiest to implement. Extensive reading has been linked to improvement in general knowledge, vocabulary, spelling, verbal fluency, and reading comprehension (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001; Krashen, 2004). Also, the amount of reading students do is positively correlated with word identification skills, academic achievement, comprehension, reading fluency, and writing (Cunningham & Allington, 2007; Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 2004). Finally, increasing the time spent reading independently has been shown to be an effective way to reduce the gap between high and low achieving readers (Allington, 2012; Krashen, 2004).

A teacher's number one job is to help children fall in love books. After that, most of reading "instruction" is a matter of making good books available and providing time for students to read.

Practice reading every day. Just as one practices a musical instrument or an athletic skill; students need daily reading practice if they are to improve their reading skills. Students in the primary grades generally need a minimum of 15 minutes of independent reading practice each day (although more is always better). Students in the intermediate grades generally need a minimum of 20 minutes of independent reading practice every day. Students in high school generally need a minimum of 30 minutes of independent reading practice every day. These times are merely suggestions to give you a sense of where to start. It may take time initially to develop the reading stamina necessary to read this for long, especially if students haven't had experience with independent reading.

Reading practice should occur every day (Allington, 2012). It shouldn't be bumped or impinged upon by other activities or special events. Also, reading practice should be used just for reading. It shouldn't be used to catch up on other work, to test, to conference, to grade, to study, to do homework, or to do anything other than read and enjoy books. As well, daily reading practice should reflect the types of reading that adults do in the real world when we read for pleasure. Thus, students should be able to choose the books they will read and they should be able to read independently without the threat of comprehension worksheets, book reports, or quizzes. There are other times and places to assess comprehension.

RELATED MINI-LECTURES

Voluntary Reading 1: Amount

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zgY0P46d9o

Voluntary Reading 2: Some Data

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XM72PlHzgU

Voluntary Reading 3: Voluntary Reading and Achievement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ5ZX7QneNI REFERENCES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MxKRH3F65k

Voluntary Reading 4: Ways to Promote

Allington, R. (2012). What really matters for struggling readers: Designing research-based programs (3/e). New York: Longman.

Cunningham, P. & Allington, R. (2007). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Cunningham, A.E. & Stanovich, K.E. (2001). What reading does for the mind. Journal of Direct Instruction, 1, 137-149.

Guthrie, J.T., Wigfield, A., Metsala, J.L., and Cox, K.E. (2004). Motivational and cognitive predictors of text comprehension and reading amount (pp 929-953). In B. Ruddel and N. Unrau (Eds.) Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (5th ed.) Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Krashen, S.D. (2004). The power of reading: Insights from the research (2nd ed.) Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Human Being, Professor of Literacy

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THE IMPORTANCE OF VOLUNTARY READING Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Minnesota State University, Mankato andrew.johnson@mnsu.edu This is an excerpt

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Resources that go along with the book

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Visible Learning for Literacy, Grades K-12 | SAGE Companion

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Welcome to the Companion Website "Every student deserves a great teacher, not by chance, but by design" - Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, & John Hattie

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Teaching Literacy in the Visible Learning Classroom 6-12

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Teaching Literacy in the Visible Learning Classroom 6-12

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resources that go along with the book

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Figure 1.2. The Relationship Between Visible Teaching and Visible LearningFigure 1.3. High-Impact Literacy Approaches at Each Phase of LearningFigure 1.4. Lesson Plan Template

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Teaching Literacy in the Visible Learing Classroom K-5

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Teaching Literacy in the Visible Learing Classroom K-5

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Resources that go along with the book.

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Figure 1.1 The Relationship Between Visible Teaching and Visible LearningFigure 1.2 High-Impact Literacy Approaches at Each Phase of LearningFigure 1.3 Sample Time Distribution in a Two-Hour Block

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deep learning strategy