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In traditional classrooms, we often see letter grades and students define themselves as that letter grade (B-student) and often there is not room for redemption. This article shows the philosophy of defining a "F"

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Teachers can rethink their grading practices to make them more mathematically fair for students and allow for redemption for a missed assignment.

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Educating for Social Justice article talks about how we need to incorporate essential questions to students and being aware of the world going on around them. In social studies we often talk about the past and influence of culture to nations, but we also need to take a look at current events as well as it can relate to students in present day

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"You have to remember that as an educator, you have the responsibility to build a community of scholars who will fight for what is right. You must distribute knowledge that permeates advocacy within your classroom. There's so much more to teaching than education; it is a fight for equitableness."

In the face of current incidents, it is evident that teachers have a responsibility to educate students by engaging with them to bring meaningful progress to the world, address real-life issues and different points of view, and build a classroom environment that fosters genuine empathy.

A lot of discussion has been generated about being a 'social justice educator.' What does this mean? I suggest it means taking action with a few basic classroom practices that allow educators to engage in unique teaching approaches while advocating for social justice in the classroom.

Social justice is an avenue to create change and is appropriate to engage in across all classrooms. Teachers play an important role in creating a culture of consciousness by developing rules which teach justice in both conversation and action in the classroom.

CLASSROOM PRACTICES

Teachers can enhance classroom culture by creating learning opportunities built from their students' varied backgrounds. Providing different viewpoints helps align new learning with the experiences of students.

Teachers should use books, articles, and lesson plans, which include diverse voices and cultures when choosing class materials. Educators may need to call on colleagues or community members from particular backgrounds to better understand student's culture. As the adult, working to understand your students, creates opportunities for students to feel comfortable and confident to develop critical thinking, collaboration, and self-reflection skills necessary to foster a better society.

Useful discussions can be generated by encouraging students to express their ideas and react to other ideas that allow for disagreement, while equally respecting the viewpoint of their classmates. Teachers can model questions and answers which illustrate how to engage in thoughtful conversation, rather than making their classmates feel badly or devalued. Teachers can also explain to students by presenting model responses that equip students to engage in critical discourse.

THE COMMUNITY WITHIN THE CLASSROOM

There are many different ways for you to be a champion of social justice in your classroom. It is also important to note that you do not have to do them all to orient yourself towards social justice. Try to find small ways for you and your students to incorporate the ideas in the practices that you know will work best.

Every member of a just society should have their basic needs fulfilled. They should be physically and mentally stable and secure, be able to develop their natural talents, and be willing to interact openly with others. Therefore, social justice is incompatible with prejudice or bigotry centered on ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, or capacity (Wade, 1997).

Criticism is an important element of social justice in the classroom, especially when addressing the origins of injustice in pedagogical practices, the school system, and community. Do not steer away from incorporating social justice because it makes individuals uncomfortable. After all, from being uncomfortable, you ultimately grow.
Your students might investigate the following types of questions in understanding how social justice works:

'Who is involved in decision making?'

'Who succeeds, and who does not?'

'What is a reasonable or unfair practice?'

'What options can we envisage to improve conditions?'

Progress will also occur from the development of tangible, meaningful and real democratic coalitions and the widening of one's understanding of the effects of racism, and how it affects not just Blacks and other communities of color, but also how it affects white citizens and how these things intersect (Adams et al., 1997).

Ultimately, social justice will not be taught in one lesson. It is a concept that is embedded throughout pedagogical practices and the action of educators. IT'S ON US. Educators can help students start asking the right questions by making them feel comfortable, motivated, and engaged in purposeful and constructive dialogue.

REFERENCES

1. Adams, L. A. Bell, and P. Griffin, eds., Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook(New York: Routledge, 1997).

2. C. Wade, ed., Community Service-Learning: A Guide to Including Service in the Public School Curriculum(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997).

Books on Social Justice:
Foundations and Resources for Social Justice:

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"You have to remember that as an educator, you have the responsibility to build a community of scholars who will fight for what is right. You must distribute knowledge that permeates advocacy within your classroom. There's so much more to teaching than education; it is a fight for equitableness."

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This posts shares ideas of how to make reading fun and enjoyable. Have students want to read and not read for a grade or assignment. This can also encourage conversations among classrooms, create dialogues, and possibly exchanging books

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From spooky read-alouds for Halloween to a spring Battle of the Books, middle schools can use these strategies to get all students excited about literacy.

If you walk into my eighth-grade language arts classroom during the first 15 minutes of the period on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you will see students spread across the classroom reading different books. The books, selected by students based on what they want to read, aren't assigned by the curriculum. This 15 minutes spent reading for pleasure isn't connected to any assignment or assessment. It's a calm and happy time for them and for me; sometimes I even read with them. Although this independent reading time doesn't require rigorous problem-solving or the creation of any kind of output, I'd argue that it is fundamentally important to students' future success.

Adolescents are more deterred from reading for pleasure than ever before. Schedules burdened with extracurricular activities and engrossing technologies like Instagram and TikTok consume students' attention and hamper their ability to develop sustainable independent reading habits. One 2018 survey of more than 50,000 teens in the United States showed a clear decline in independent reading habits. Over the 10-year period from 2006 to 2016, time spent using the internet, playing video games, or attending to social media doubled, while time spent reading books or magazines was reduced by more than half.

In spite of these external pressures, when teachers give students time in class to read books of their choice and you do not connect that reading time with an assignment, then even teenagers will ask for more time to read for pleasure. But getting teenagers to buy into reading for pleasure can be a challenge. Establishing a positive reading culture in the classroom has encouraged my students to make the most of their reading for pleasure time.

Building a Positive Reading Culture All Year long

I've come to describe a class that shares values around reading for pleasure as having a positive reading culture. In The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller writes, "Building lifelong readers has to start here. Anyone who calls herself... a reader can tell you that it starts with encountering great books, heartfelt recommendations, and a community of readers who share this passion." There are a number of practices that help create "a community of readers" with a shared passion around reading, including teacher-modeled reading habits, book talks, reading celebrations, and read-alouds.

Read-aloud theme weeks: Read-alouds are an excellent way to build shared values around reading for pleasure. I've found that having specific read-aloud theme weeks is a great way to take read-alouds up a notch and build student anticipation. One popular theme week among my students is "spooky story" read-alouds during the week of Halloween. Teenagers, I've found, can still get excited for read-alouds, especially when focused on age-appropriate themes.

As another example, the American Library Association and Amnesty International promote a Banned Books Week celebration every fall. I tell my students about Banned Books Week a week ahead of time, and we discuss historical information regarding the tradition of banning books in the United States. Then, during Banned Books Week, we will have a read-aloud from an excerpt of a different banned book each day of the week-recently, from popular challenged books like The Hate U Give, , and 13 Reasons Why.

Jólabókaflóð: A cozy holiday reading celebration: When I explain that this event is pronounced "yola-boka-flode," I often hear "Yola-boka-what?" More frequently, it is endearingly referred to as "that yola-boka thing" by both students and staff. Jólabókaflóð is an Icelandic tradition that coincides with the release of new books before the winter holiday season. Jólabókaflóð involves exchanging books with friends and loved ones and spending the day reading and drinking hot chocolate in comfort.

As a classroom activity, it's a reading celebration that usually takes place the day before winter break. Students come to school dressed in pajamas (sometimes bringing a pillow and blanket), exchange books with classmates, and spend the entire period reading for pleasure. I serve hot chocolate, turn down the lights in the room, and put a yule log on the projector. This reading celebration is incredibly popular among students and is frequently mentioned as a fond memory by former students. Students this year have even been lobbying me for an encore Jólabókaflóð!

A schoolwide "Battle of the Books": This is a great way to get a schoolwide conversation going about what both staff and students are reading for pleasure. Basically, Battle of the Books is a sports-tournament-style bracket in which popular books compete against each other to "win" instead of sports teams. The competition usually begins by surveying students to determine which books are most popular. Then, books square off against one another each round as students vote for the best book in each match-up. A Battle of the Books competition can be hosted around the time of March Madness to build enthusiasm and capitalize on the tournament's popularity.

One way to vary a Battle of the Books event is to have one side of the bracket focused on books picked by teachers and the other side of the bracket focused on books picked by students. The championship match-up will feature the most popular book picked by teachers and the most popular book picked by students. Dedicating one side of the bracket to teacher selections sends the message that reading for pleasure is a lifelong habit, and it's something that's valued by the adults in the building as well.

A positive reading culture is an important first step in helping students develop independent reading habits. In addition, students, especially teenagers, need time in class to read books of their choice for pleasure. With the time constraints of the curriculum and the demands of standardized testing, it can be difficult for language arts teachers to find time for these activities. However, few things could be more important for a student's long-term success.

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3 Ways to Build a Positive Reading Culture in Middle School

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From spooky read-alouds for Halloween to a spring Battle of the Books, middle schools can use these strategies to get all students excited about literacy. If you walk into my eighth-grade language arts classroom during the first 15 minutes of the period on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you will see students spread across the classroom reading different books.

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Tips and Tricks with teaching curriculum

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Tips and Tricks with teaching curriculum

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In this blog, it provides the toolbox of creating a great lesson plan that is appropriate for grade level

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How to Plan Transformational Lessons

1. Know the Standards, Curriculum, Core Concepts, and Strategies: For decades, many educators let a textbook's table of contents determine the scope and sequence of a course. Today, transformational teachers know their anchor standards by heart and recognize the difference between teaching strategies and learning strategies.

Teaching strategies are approaches that teachers use to improve student learning. Example: whole-class discussion or presentation.

Learning strategies are initiated and controlled by students to solve problems and increase their understanding. Example: using freewriting, brainstorming, and outlining to organize ideas.

Balancing teaching strategies with learning strategies keeps instructors and students actively engaged and focused on the same purpose.

2. Shift From Solo to Collaborative Lesson Design: As teachers gain fluency in using Padlet, Google Hangouts, Evernote, Skype, Dropbox, Hackpad, Google Drive, and Chatzy, collaborative planning is becoming second nature.

Additionally, more sharing of relevant curriculum is occurring via terrific open education resources (OER) like EngageNY, OER Commons, CK-12, and even iTunesU.

3. Create the Assessment Before Developing Content: Due in part to the influence of Understanding by Design (UbD) by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, transformational instructors no longer "teach then test." Instead, they " design the test, then teach." By building formative assessment and performance task checkpoints into their plans, instructors know when and why students don't understand a skill or concept.

4. Write Objectives for Students (Not an Administrator) to Read: A while back, teachers submitted lesson plans for their principals to check. In many cases, the administrator remained the primary audience for written objectives. Today, objectives are posted and made understandable to students. To ensure clarity, transformational teachers follow the Goldilocks rule. Objectives can't be too general ("students will learn about the Civil War") or too narrow, because narrow objectives "put you in danger of listing activities or assignments," writes Robyn R. Jackson in Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching.

Here's another objective hack: To add relevance to the curriculum, simply add the stem "so that _____" at the end of each posted objective as a way of describing how the skill and content will benefit students. Example: "Students will be able to evaluate the credibility of sources so that they can protect our democracy from the influence of those spreading misinformation."

5. Create Presentations That Do More Showing and Less Telling: On the rare occasion that transformational teachers lecture, they are sure to use visuals created with tools like Canva and Pic Monkey. Using pictures can "banish boredom," asserts Dan Roam, author of Show and Tell. To keep pace with the 30 percent of students who access online videos for homework assistance, teachers' materials have become more interactive and optimized for mobile device consumption.

6. Don't Forget the Introverts: "Introverts like to work autonomously," says Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, "but the trend in education over the past 20 years has been focused on group learning." Cain notes that popular teaching strategies like cold calling don't allow introverts time to process what they want to say. Adding a think-pair-share activity or increasing wait time to seven seconds after asking a question plays to the strengths of introverts.

7. Provide More Opportunities for Students to Choose How They Accomplish Tasks: danah boyd's research determined that teenagers' lives are over-programmed: "Contemporary teens often have little freedom to connect with others on their own terms." A boost to student motivation can occur, says Kevin Perks in Crafting Effective Choices to Motivate Students, if we let learners determine-when possible-whom they work with, content, due dates, where to work, and how they will complete tasks.

8. Plan Ahead: Transformational teachers plan at least a month ahead, building in flex time to absorb inevitable weather- or activity-related interruptions in the school schedule. Through careful design, each time a learner encounters skills and concepts, they are more challenging. The spiral curriculum approach increases understanding and retention.

9. Integrate Productive Struggle Into the Curriculum: Lubricating the learning process with frictionless turn-in-the-worksheet compliance denies students opportunities for productive struggle-a condition important for learning and retention, according to an article by Richard Schmidt and Robert Bjork in Psychological Science. When students struggle, relax. Don't lower the expectations of your next lesson plan. Instead, scaffold instruction and check to see that you're challenging students appropriately with Hess's Cognitive Rigor Matrix.

Quality curriculum planning-publicly unacknowledged, unglamorous, and taxing-is ultimately the golden road to areté (Homer's word for "exemplary effectiveness"). Undoubtedly the tenets of effective planning will soon change, because transformational teachers never stop learning.

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9 Ways to Plan Transformational Lessons: Planning the Best Curriculum Unit Ever

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1. Know the Standards, Curriculum, Core Concepts, and Strategies: For decades, many educators let a textbook's table of contents determine the scope and sequence of a course. Today, transformational teachers know their anchor standards by heart and recognize the difference between teaching strategies and learning strategies.

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Have you wanted to try out simulation games in your Ancient Civilizations class but weren't sure where to start? Or you didn't want to spend all of your free time putting something together? If so, this post will help! We'll share ideas about what makes for a great simulation experience and walk through some examples for each civilization your students might study throughout the year.

Teaching with Simulations

Why should you consider teaching with simulations? Simulations have the opportunity to bring a historical topic to life in a way that more traditional activities cannot. This is especially true when students are taking on new roles or actions that relate to how people might have lived or the choices they could have made in the past. Simulations can also present information in a new way that can be more exciting and engaging than traditional teaching methods. Because of this, and since they have more of a personal stake in the topic, students will be more likely to retain what they learned.

There are a lot of simulations out there, but we have found that from a teacher perspective, some simulations are simply too much work. We don't believe that a simulation should require teachers to purchase a bunch of supplies ahead of time, transform their whole classroom, and cut up or assemble supplies. That's too time-consuming, so we designed all of our simulations to require no additional supplies (besides printing out the student handouts), no assembly, and an effortless experience going through the guided slideshow!

We have also found that some simulations try to bring certain events to life that could be harmful to certain students, especially in the case of difficult historical events. Therefore, we do not recommend using simulations in these contexts.

Ancient Civilizations Simulations

Are you looking for simulations to use in your Ancient Civilizations class? Keep scrolling to check out each of the following simulations: Early Humans Survival Simulation, Persian Empire Simulation, Nile River Simulation, Mohenjo Daro Simulation, Silk Road Simulation, Ancient Greece Panhellenic Games Simulation, Roman Empire Archaeological Simulation, and Knighthood Simulation!

These are all game-based simulations that each cover a variety of rounds. While each simulation varies slightly, each round addresses a specific topic that is relevant to that simulation. Students will usually need to make a decision about what they might have done during that time period, or they may roll the dice to see what they might have experienced. Whether they make a choice, roll the dice, or even if they do both in a round, students will gain or lose points, which adds an extra fun and competitive element to the simulation! Most of our simulations also include explanation slides and trivia questions to help students better understand what happened during the round and why they might have received the points they did.

Students will learn what it took to survive during prehistoric times with this Survival Simulation! They will need to choose a location, prepare a shelter, find or create tools, find food, migrate to new places, and more. This will help students understand just how difficult it might have been to survive without the many conveniences that make life possible and quite comfortable today.

As Mesopotamia was made up of several different groups over an extended period, we chose to focus on the Persian Empire and its achievements for this simulation. Students will serve as administrators to a Persian ruler and complete a variety of professional duties related to the government, the economy, taxation, use of the Royal Roads, and the construction of Persepolis through different scenarios.

In this simulation, students will travel along the Nile River and learn about how it made life possible in Ancient Egypt. They will choose where they will live along the Nile River, set up a farm, trade their goods, and learn about the geography of the Nile River through different scenarios!

Mohenjo-Daro became a famous historical site as it was the largest city built by the Indus Valley Civilization, and it featured impressive urban planning and design elements. In this simulation, students will take on the role of an urban planner to design a city like Mohenjo-Daro. They will make choices related to the best building materials, adaptations to the climate, methods to keep the city safe and clean, and more!

To bring the study of Ancient China to life, students will travel and trade along the Silk Road in our Silk Road Simulation, collecting as many of the items as they can along their journey. Each round, they will choose a new city to travel to, get access to new traded goods, see what challenges they might have encountered, and answer a trivia question about the Silk Road!

The Ancient Greeks are well-known for their Olympic Games, so in this simulation, students will "compete" in several of the games popular in ancient times. These events or rounds include trumpeters and heralds, long jump, discus, footrace, javelin, wrestling, chariot race, and pankration. Students will participate in a classroom-friendly version of these games and also answer trivia questions about them. This could also be used as an activity prior to the modern winter or summer games, as it would provide more historical context.

As Roman Emperors conquered new territories, the size of the Roman Empire grew substantially. In this Roman Empire Archaeological Simulation, students take on the role of archaeologists to dig for artifacts at six different Roman sites. These sites include Roman Egypt, Gaul, Roman Britain, Pompeii, Rome, and Constantinople. Your students will have a great time learning about these different artifacts and locations!

In this simulation, students take on the role of working to become a knight. They will begin their training by becoming a page and becoming a squire, before they become a knight in a knighthood ceremony. There are also rounds pertaining to chivalry, life on a feudal manor, and fighting in the Crusades! How will your students fare as medieval knights?

We hope you give simulations a try with your students! If you are looking for other resources and teaching ideas for Ancient Civilizations, check out this blog post about setting up an Ancient Civilizations Word Wall!

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Simulation Games for Your Ancient Civilizations Class - Mr and Mrs Social Studies

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Have you wanted to try out simulation games in your Ancient Civilizations class but weren't sure where to start? Or you didn't want to spend all of your free time putting something together? If so, this post will help!

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Different ways to grade papers, student and teacher-centered 

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Different ways to grade papers, student and teacher-centered 

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Grading papers can be one of the most challenging and time consuming parts about teaching. If you're wondering how to grade papers more efficiently, you're in the right place! To help you out, we're sharing our best grading hacks and tips to help you save time and energy. It's absolutely possible to spend less time grading and still provide meaningful feedback to your students! While everyone may have different ways on how to grade papers, we're going to discuss the ways we've been able to simplify homework, projects, and assessments.

Grading Tips

Homework

Grading Completion

Depending on the assignment, sometimes a completion grade is all that's needed. Did the student complete the homework? If yes, then they get full points. When plugging in grades for completion, one thing we do is have our grading system open on our computer at the beginning of class. When students enter, we have them bring over their work to show it's complete, and put the grade in immediately. The great thing about this is that it doesn't take additional time away from class, and grading is already done. Additionally, since it's already graded, you can go over the assignment quickly, and students still get real-time feedback.

Grading Accuracy

On the flip-side, some assignments require grading off of it's accuracy. This allows students to see how well they're remembering or understanding content and how to improve. However, many times when grading for accuracy, we have students trade work and help grade each other. For one thing, this lessens the workload on us, but more importantly gives students instant feedback. They'll know immediately how they did, and what they need to work on, and learn how to grade papers properly. From there, you can easily plug in grades and only need to make small point adjustments if needed.

Grading Chart

A handy grading tool that we use is a chart that contains all our students' names in each class. This is very simple to create and easily personalized based on the number of classes you teach. For each class there are two columns, where one has student names, and the other is left blank for grades. So if you teach 4 classes, you would have 8 columns and so on. This way when importing grades, everything's there in one place and you can quickly load them in. This can also be a great tool for keeping track of other class management issues, like tradies, textbooks, or observations.

Interactive Notebooks

Another way to help lessen your grading is through interactive notebooks. Whenever we give out notes, maps, graphic organizers, etc., students physically have to put together these notebooks with their assignments. As long as they're keeping up with everything, it's very difficult for them to be missing anything. Then when we collect the notebooks every 2-3 weeks, we can upload every assignment at once. And depending on the number of classes you have, you can break up the amount of class grades you want to upload in one go. If you have six classes, you could grade three classes one night, and the next night the other three. This can also help prevent potential burnout, especially if you teach a lot of classes.

Google Classroom vs. Paper

A final note with homework is the debate of Google Classroom vs. paper copies. We know that not everyone teaches at a tech-savvy school, which is why it's important to note the pros and cons of each. We do use both methods in our classrooms, but they're not necessarily equal. Google classroom is wonderful for larger-scale assignments, like papers and projects. However, we do prefer to have our smaller-scale assignments on paper for multiple reasons. First off, it takes much less time to plug in those grades than having to find assignments on Google Classroom. Secondly, when it comes to learning things like vocab, students seem to learn better from their mistakes when they can physically change it on paper. In the end though, it all comes down to what you as a teacher are comfortable with and have access to.

Projects

Independent vs. Group

When assigning projects you'll need to grade, consider whether it's going to be an individual or group project. There's pros and cons to both, but overall group projects, or even just partner projects, significantly reduce grading time. Students also tend to enjoy group projects and they'll still learn what they need to. But again, this does depend on the actual assignment and if it makes sense to do so. If you're looking for group project evaluation forms, you can find a resource we created here!

Communication Skills

Another way to save grading time but also give students different skills is adding a speaking element to a project. This way, all we have to do is listen and take notes, which makes grading afterwards very quick. This works great with classroom discussion, debates, and presentations, because you can grade them on the spot. Just make sure that whatever rubric you're using to grade is simple and straightforward.

Quality Over Quantity

Finally, when it comes to grading projects, focus more on quality than quantity. As teachers, we're trying to teach different skills, but don't create a huge number of things you'll have to grade later. As long as skills you want to teach are met in the project, the project doesn't have to be time consuming.

Assessment

Trading or Self-Grading

Just like homework, an easy way to save time grading assessments is to have students trade work or self-grade. Grading them on participation or having them grade each other makes uploading grades much easier.

Google Forms

Google Forms is a great time saving tool for assessments. Having students do multiple choice or true/false questions that can be automatically graded online can be a huge lifesaver. Many important standardized exams have these kinds of questions, so it's also good to have students practice these skills.

Socrative

A good alternative platform to Google Forms for assessments is Socrative. You can easily make assessments and quizzes, monitor students, and it grades immediately. However, depending on personal preference, some people like how Socrative presents student grade information. Again, both are excellent tools for assessments and time saving, it just comes down to what you're comfortable with.

Other Tips

Be selective about what you collect to grade. We have smaller activities we do during class that we intentionally don't collect. You already did it together as a class, so it's not worth grading separately.

Don't grade more than a couple assignments per week. Give yourself a limit. If you're trying to grade more than that, it can become very overwhelming. It's possible to assess students without formal grades and still accomplish what you need to.

If students are working on independent work, just have them check it with you when they're done. You'll be easily able to spot check it and provide meaningful feedback right away.

Lastly, if everyone's working well on an activity or project, why not try to throw in some extra participation points? It's something quick to upload, and can be helpful if your school or district requires a specific number of grades.

Easy Grading

We hope you found these tips and hacks helpful on how to grade papers faster and save yourself time in the process! Grading is obviously an important part of being a teacher, but don't sweat the small stuff. Burning yourself out is never healthy, and you deserve to have a better work-life balance!

If you liked this list, consider watching the corresponding video here!

If you are looking to continue getting more organized with your teaching, check out our recent blog post about helpful classroom forms!

Are you looking for some new teaching ideas to engage your students in your social studies class? If so, you'll love our FREE guide: 5 Creative Projects to Ignite Student Engagement in Your Social Studies Class. These activities have both printable and digital options and can work for any social studies subject!

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How to Grade Papers (and Save Time!) - Mr and Mrs Social Studies

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Grading papers can be one of the most challenging and time consuming parts about teaching. If you're wondering how to grade papers more efficiently, you're in the right place! To help you out, we're sharing our best grading hacks and tips to help you save time and energy.

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How to Create an Inclusive Classroom: 12 Tips for Teachers

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What does inclusion actually mean, in the context of schools and education? What does inclusion look like in the classroom? And most importantly, how can teachers create an inclusive classroom that benefits all students, no matter what their individual needs?

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Inquiry based learning in Social Studies

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Inquiry based learning in Social Studies

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By letting students drive the conversation, schools can prepare them for a lifetime of civic participation.

Take a moment to consider how much you've really thought about the U.S. Constitution-a document that informs and influences a surprisingly large aspect of our lives. I teach middle school social studies, so I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it. But many adults rarely ask themselves why we need three branches of government, what would happen if we rewrote the Constitution today, or even how the amendments impact their own lives.

When students enter middle school, these concepts are almost totally alien. Yet, I didn't come up with the fascinating constitutional questions I just listed-which no doubt keep many lawyers busy-and I didn't pluck them from a textbook either. My seventh-grade students wrote them after a foray into inquiry-based learning, a pedagogical process that prizes curiosity and critical thinking. Through it, these students have taught themselves more than any textbook could.

Inquiry-Based Learning and the Civics Classroom

Inquiry-based learning doesn't put much stock in teacher lectures or worksheets, but instead it uses exploration and student agency to drive classroom routines and activities. Covering material is emphasized to a lesser extent than honing student curiosity, resourcefulness, and problem-solving skills.

This technique is particularly suited for the social studies classroom, since it teaches students how to interpret primarysources and engage in debate, rather than simply memorizing facts. Leading educational organizations, including the National Council for Social Studies and Educating for American Democracy, have placed inquiry at the heart of effectivepedagogical approaches to teaching history and civics. Indeed, research shows that youth engagement in civics correlates with the depth and quality of the civic education that students receive. In short, when we equip our students with quality education in civics and history, we prepare them better to preserve and uphold the ideals of democracy.

Curricular Inquiry as a Framework for Inquiry-Based Learning

As I brainstormed ways to revise my introductory unit to the U.S. Constitution, I decided to adopt Stephanie Harvey and Harvey "Smokey" Daniels's Curricular Inquiry Framework, an approach they outline in their book, Comprehension and Collaboration. Specifically, I was looking for a way to emphasize student voice and choice in a unit that had been more teacher-led and, therefore, less engaging for students than I had hoped.

The Curricular Inquiry Framework necessitates a slower pace, giving students ample time to devise questions, investigate, and eventually take action, while equipping them with the critical investigation skills needed to participate in our democratic process.

Following Harvey and Daniels's model, I broke the curricular inquiry down into four phases, which we called "immerse," "investigate," "coalesce," and "go public." Here's a snapshot of how each phase looks.

Immerse: In this phase, students dive deep into the topic, reading and researching whatever they can. They are given time and space to explore and develop their curiosity about the subject.

I began by gathering resources related to the Constitution. I wanted students to walk away with a basic understanding of the values and ideals present in a constitutional democracy, so I found print and online resources that explored both the Constitution and how it's shaped and reflected our government and society throughout the ages.

I was pleasantly surprised by how excited my students were to be given the freedom to simply explore at their own pace. During the two class periods that students immersed themselves in this topic, I also tasked them with formulating at least 15 questions that arose as they read, listened, and watched. I took some time to coach students on the value of rich questions and how to transform a question from basic to researchable.

Investigate: Here students work together to formulate an inquiry that will guide them through the research process-and start to find answers to their questions.

After each student had their list of questions, it was time to let the collaboration begin. Divided into groups, students wrote their questions on individual sticky notes and placed them on a large shared piece of butcher paper. I saw students ask thoughtful, mature questions, such as "Did the Founding Fathers promise liberty for all, or just for some?" and "How have we made changes to the Constitution over time?"

With their wonderings pooled, each group began to narrow down their collective questions to the one that would become the subject of their respective research. Students quickly began to peel off the questions that were either too obvious and would therefore not lead to a worthwhile inquiry or too hypothetical, so that there was no clear path for investigation. Once each group had selected and tweaked a guiding inquiry, they began the research that would eventually become the subject of their presentation.

Coalesce: Team members collaborate to refine and share their findings. They formulate a plan to present their work.

This third phase of the inquiry process called on students to establish group expectations, devise a timeline, and divvy up tasks. Their assignment was to create a poster that presented their inquiry question and the conclusions they'd reached in a compelling and easy-to-understand way. The idea was that students would be contributing to the wider community's awareness of civics by displaying their posters throughout the school. It was up to the students to consider how to present their inquiry, the results, and any further questions that arose as they completed their work. My role in the classroom quickly transformed into that of a coach, helping groups overcome challenges, refine their questions, and brainstorm ways to engage their audience.

Go public: Finally, students share their work with community members.This last phase can be framed as a pathway for student activism and contribution to a wider community.

By the final phase, it was clear that my students had taken ownership of their learning. What stood out to me most was that they could reflect on the process of inquiry. They were not fed information to simply transmit. Rather, they were genuinely curious to find the answers to the questions they had generated.

As a result, they confidently guided their school community through their complex inquiries, highlighting both the need-to-know facts and the nuances and tensions inherent in the study of the Constitution. Students recognized that while the framers of the Constitution strove to grant freedom to the citizens of their young nation, it would take decades for political rights to be extended to many living in the U.S. Realities such as this allowed students to grapple with the ideals and contradictions present in any study of our nation's past.

Reflecting on this process, I found that when I flipped my approach to teaching and allowed student curiosity to drive learning, not only did I cover roughly the same amount of curriculum, but my students were more in control of the knowledge they acquired and, therefore, more invested in it. I can't think of a better civics-or life-lesson than that.

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Strengthening Civics Education With an Inquiry-Based Approach

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By letting students drive the conversation, schools can prepare them for a lifetime of civic participation.

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For many educators, the end of the school year is near, which includes navigating how to communicate a lot of information with parents and other caregivers.

High school teachers are in the midst of processes such as state testing, graduation eligibility, and forecasting classes for next year. Middle and elementary school teachers are looking at transitioning students to the next grade level, and part of that process includes looking at math and reading indicators.

This is as good a time as any to revisit what and how we communicate with our students as well as the important people in their lives. We want to make sure we exchange test information (and so much more) with our students and their loved ones, not at them.

What it looked like for me

I often tell my students about my experiences in school. I struggled with motivation, perseverance, and engagement. Usually, that would result in the school reaching out to my parents. I always dreaded the phone call home and it happened more often than I like to admit.

We want to make sure we exchange test information (and so much more) with our students and their loved ones, not at them.

One reason for the dread: too often the call was about my deficits and my voice was not heard. It was usually about a low test score, a bad grade, or some missing assignment. Information was being told; my parents and I were not stakeholders in the process.

More than that, even if I had the opportunity to communicate about something school-related, I did not know how to talk about my issues in school. And conversely, my parents did not know how to discuss school with me other than a grade A-F or a particular score on a test.

Repeating the pattern

Even though I had such negative experiences in school, when I first began teaching, I did the exact same things to my students. I usually only communicated when I had concerning data to report home and boiled it down to numbers, often with an overemphasis on deficits, which can have a negative impact on learners' success, well-being, and self-efficacy. Negative impacts can look like students withdrawing, being reluctant to talk about school and schoolwork, or even not wanting to go to school.

Of course, I didn't mean to have this negative impact on my students. I had to learn more about responsive teaching and learning practices to figure out better ways to communicate learning information (more than test scores!) with them and their loved ones instead of at them.

Doing things differently

So what have I learned over the years? Here are 10 tips for exchanging test information with learners and their caregivers that have made a big difference for me:

What does this mean and what does this look like? Engaging caregivers and students about their culture, background, strengths, identities, needs, and other pieces from home. This can help the learning journey be accessible, inclusive, engaging, and successful for all learners.

This exchange also provides you with extremely valuable information that can potentially reduce the need for reactive measures. For example, in a recent unit, I noticed a student was starting to struggle to engage, communicate, and demonstrate movement along the learning path. With an email home describing the change and asking for their assistance, I got valuable information about the time of year coinciding with a family member's death. This helped me provide some socio-emotional supports for the student.

Tips

1. Have families meet with you as often as needed to discuss their child's progress.

2. Encourage them to have a quiet, comfortable place for their child to study at home, if possible, and free of digital distractions.

3. Remind them that it's important for their child to be well rested on school days and especially on the day of a test. Children who are tired are less able to pay attention in class or to handle the demands of a test.

Ask students and caregivers for help strengthening the learning culture in your room

Building the spaces, relationships, and routines of responsive teaching and learning processes is hard work yet highly impactful. It's ok to ask students and caregivers for help with it.

I do not want my students to feel like I did: helpless and resentful about bad news and the lack of clarity about how to use my strengths to achieve success.

Reaching out to hear how caregivers can assist extends the available time for practice and demonstration of learning outside the bell-to-bell. For example, over the course of my last two units, I realized a few students were close to mastery and needed some supplemental practice time. In a phone call, I exchanged information with their caregivers to figure out how to support students to use practice routines at home. Thus, we were able to extend the learning space, build relationships, and find a workable home routine. When it came time for the mid-unit assessment, the students demonstrated a significant increase in proficiency, which prevented the need for at-school interventions.

Tips

1. Suggest activities to do at home to help improve a child's understanding of schoolwork. For example, help families understand the importance of providing books and other materials for their child to read. Share with them our eBook How to support reading at home: A guide for families. Tell them about Bedtime Math.

2. Point out academic strengths and weaknesses and how they can help address areas of concern outside the classroom, particularly if assessment results point to specific things they can do.

Engage learners and caregivers in identifying quality assessment processes

Educators, learners, and caregivers working together can identify what will help increase motivation, engagement, and success and decrease unfairness or bias throughout the learning journey. Calling home, emailing, or having quick meetings about students' strengths can help increase the quality of assessment processes.

Ask about how students best show what they know and can do or even what time of day they are most awake. This information is golden and can be used to shape assessment processes that are "show me what you know" experiences instead of "gotcha" events. For example, in my time as a special education teacher, I had several students taking medication at certain times of the day. Sometimes medications impact students' abilities to feel awake or focused. When caregivers and I discussed this, we found best-fit options, such as arranging assessment processes that aligned with students' energy and focus patterns. Adjusting processes based on this valuable information resulted in fewer "problem" behaviors, such as reluctance, disruption, and absence, and more positive outcomes, such as success in meeting challenging learning goals.

Tips

1. Explain the purpose of the assessment, such as the difference between those used to inform classroom instruction and those needed to meet state requirements.

2. If your students are preparing to take MAP® Growth™, share our Family Toolkit with their caregivers (it's also available in Spanish).

3. Share which tests are administered in your classroom and how the results of each are used.

4. Send a communication about when tests are being given, when results will be available, and how families will receive the results.

5. Share their child's learning progress using assessment results as well as your classroom observations. Remind caregivers that assessment is just one data point, and that you always look at the full picture.

We can change

Thinking back to my high school years and those phone calls home, I do not want my students to feel like I did: helpless and resentful about bad news and the lack of clarity about how to use my strengths to achieve success. Emphasizing the value of communication exchanges about students' strengths (more than test scores!) can help you garner valuable information to create authentic learning partnerships with students and caregivers that are truly responsive, empowering, and effective.

Learning partnerships with students and caregivers can not only maximize students' success, well-being, and efficacy but also reduce the burden on educators. For more tips about communication exchanges, read "Last but not least: The role of communication in assessment empowerment." To learn more about assessment empowerment, read our eBook, Assessment empowerment 101: What it is, why it matters, and how to do it. Finally, here are some discussion prompts that can help you continue to think about this work:

What successful communication exchanges have you had with students and their caregivers this year?

How did successful exchanges inform your responsive teaching and learning plans, or "moves"?

Think of an upcoming learning goal. What information about learner context could you gather from caregivers or students? How could it inform success with the learning goal? How might you go about gathering that context?

In what ways can the tips shared in this blog post validate the hard work you're already doing?

In what ways can the tips in this post inform your next steps?

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10 Ways for Teachers and Parents to Communicate Better about Assessments

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Revisit what and how you communicate about assessment with students and families. We must exchange test information with them, not at them.

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An assessment is characterized as the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development. Through this process administers can gather assessment data to strategically plan and deliver individualized instruction.

Teachers use assessment data as one of the most powerful tools in their classrooms. An important piece of teacher instruction comes from how they utilize this data. Data needs to be collected, evaluated, and then put to use through instruction and student interventions. Learning how to effectively use assessment data will impact student learning in the best way possible.

How can technology help you access assessment data?

Educational technology, like Istation's Indicators of Progress (ISIP™), allows you to automate computer-adaptive testing (CAT) systems that automatically assign assessments to students.

These types of assessment tools should have the following features to promote success:

Monthly assessments are given the first time a student logs on during a calendar month. This is necessary to maintain a consistent stream of assessment data showing individual benchmarks for student progress.

On-demand assessments can be given at any time during the school year between monthly assessments. This feature provides a continuous progress monitoring tool that you can utilize to gather assessment data when needed.

Assessment reports with actionable feedback. This allows your teachers to not only analyze assessment data for an individual student but also share the data with administrators for additional progress monitoring. Teachers can also utilize these reports to observe assessment data patterns and adjust instruction.

5 ways to utilize assessment data

Once you've implemented an assessment tool that allows you to access the right assessment data, you can take the next steps in improving instruction in your classrooms.

Read through our five ways to utilize assessment data to determine these next steps.
1. Plan individual instructional intervention

Whether your school uses an MTSS or an RTI approach, the goal of delivering instructional intervention is the same: help students improve skills they struggle with.

Assessment data gives teachers the foundation for creating their own individualized plan for struggling learners. Personalizing a student's plan can look very different each time but may include a few similar criteria, such as...

skills that need emphasis in the classroom;

additional support strategies for teaching the student; and

a way to track and monitor progress for the student, teacher, and families involved.

Keep in mind that a personalized instructional intervention plan remains flexible. Real-time reporting tools, like Istation's personalized data profiles , provide formative assessment data and relevant statistics to guide instructional interventions delivered in the classroom.
2. Develop daily instructional strategies
Knowing where each student is performing helps teachers see the big picture when developing their daily instructional strategies. This allows them to move from assessing students to grouping students based on relevant assessment data trends.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to grouping students and you may hear teachers ask:

How many small groups should I teach?

How am I going to find the time to meet with them?

How do I manage the rest of my class while working with my small groups?

Where do I find resources to meet all of the instructional needs of my students?

Assessment data will provide you with everything you need to answer these questions and start grouping students. This data can help develop instructional strategies to meet the group's needs. Many online reading and math assessments save teachers time by linking ready-to-use resources for small- or whole-group instruction within the assessment reports.
3. Determine targeted goals for students and teachers
Short- and long-term goals guide success for teachers and students. District and campus leaders can analyze assessment data and use the information to set goals for teachers that are specific, measurable, relevant, and attainable. In return, teachers can work to make sure that student goals are aligned.

In a recent podcast , former educator and Istation professional development manager Julie Kalinowski said, "When students start taking ownership of their own goals and assessment data, that's when we see the biggest bang for our buck."
4. Monitor student and teacher progress
Progress monitoring provides leaders with valuable information regarding improvements in critical reading and math skills as well as classroom performance. This type of monitoring should take place often so that it becomes expected and familiar for all parties involved.

When conducting progress monitoring, consider using an all-in-one assessment tool for students. Having this type of assessment tool allows each student to be assessed in the area of content they need to show progress. When the tool adapts to the learner's ability, the student becomes less discouraged and frustration levels are lowered. This ensures that the assessment data gathered during progress monitoring is more accurate.
5. Discover professional development gaps
While many people believe that assessment data can only be utilized to help students improve, at Istation we are seeing another trend. Education leaders are analyzing assessment data and determining where students are seeing the least amount of improvement. This information points them to the overall professional development gaps for teachers.

Many leaders are looking for customized professional development sessions to fill these gaps. Educators are finding it easier to customize these development plans when they partner with their assessment technology provider.

An assessment provider like Istation offers customized guidance and insight into proven educational approaches. They employ specialists with real-world instructional experience that can help create the customized professional development sessions your teachers need.

To learn more about how Istation's program and assessment tools can benefit your students and teachers click here.

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5 Ways to Utilize Assessment Data in the Classroom

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An assessment is characterized as the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development. Through this process administers can gather assessment data to strategically plan and deliver individualized instruction.

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Middle school teachers can update their assessments by offering students authentic opportunities to display what they have learned.

Allison Shelley for the Alliance for Excellent Education

There are many mixed messages in education. For instance, there are tons of mandated tests to help schools identify and analyze data, but I believe there's also a moral imperative to ensure that learning is authentic and meaningful to students. These two principles, assessments and authenticity, need not be an oxymoron. They can support each other, but it does take 21st-century student-centered design.

The students of 2021 aren't the students of 2019, and our pacing guides, grading practices, and traditional assessments are showing the dust of inflexibility. The research on student engagement always showed the need for lessons and assessments to be meaningful and relevant, but as students returned to school, we're seeing evidence in behavior and academic issues that students aren't just hoping for more authenticity, they are demanding it.

Making Assessments More Authentic

To make your assessments more authentic, you don't need to start over. It's important, however, to ensure that student voices are heard. Many times, assessments exist as a task created by the teacher or a program, but authenticity considers each individual student.

Having students reflect on and assess their own work

Ensuring that there are audiences for their work beyond the teacher

Using assessments that focus on topics of real-world significance, structure, and problem-solving

Allowing students to select topics of focus

To make an assessment more authentic, just think of turning up the dial on any of the following ideas:

Here's a document I created with a list of options to help turn up the dial on authentic assessments.

Authenticity as a Part of the Classroom Culture

One of the ways to ensure that assessments are authentic is to use more elements from project-based learning (PBL) in the classroom. In PBL and in any of its many branches-design-based learning, inquiry-based learning, service-based learning, etc.-systemic authenticity is a prime directive. Assessments are utilized to help a teacher understand the students' trajectories, strengths, and growth areas without sacrificing authenticity.

For instance, Telannia Norfar, an Oklahoma high school teacher and coauthor of Project-Based Learning in the Math Classroom, uses a more authentic assessment system in her math classroom. This system is a cycle of formative assessments, each followed by critique and revision, that lead to a summative assessment, all of which are based in real-world scenarios. After interviewing a family, her students create an individual financial analysis for it. Formative assessments, like first explaining the basic compound interest formula, scaffold students toward their final presentation to their clients. You can view her authentic system of assessment in action on YouTube.

Then there's Sara Lev, a transitional kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles and coauthor of Implementing Project Based Learning in Early Childhood. In her latest project, students mimicked a recent touring Lego Art exhibit by creating their own. According to Lev, she assessed students throughout her project, sorting Legos "in different ways in order to organize them for their Lego Art Studio-by size, shape, color, number of studs, shiny/dull-as a means of assessing this standard: Classify objects into given categories; count the numbers of objects in each category and sort the categories by count."

So, rather than create an inauthentic test time when all students sat down solely for the purpose of being assessed, Lev used observation and walked around the students as they created their exhibit.

Creating a more authentic assessment experience isn't just about occasionally offering more choices of prompts or allowing students to write a letter to a principal. It's about creating a classroom culture that honors student voice and agency, where students know that what they are learning will make an impact on the world outside of school.

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How to Give Assessments a Boost With PBL

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Middle school teachers can update their assessments by offering students authentic opportunities to display what they have learned. Allison Shelley for the Alliance for Excellent Education There are many mixed messages in education. For instance, there are tons of mandated tests to help schools identify and analyze data, but I believe there's also a moral imperative to ensure that learning is authentic and meaningful to students.

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Considerations for DoK Question Stems for Social Studies

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Understanding DoK can help history teachers improve assessments. From level 1 to 4, let’s explore DoK question stems for Social Studies.

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Assessments that function close to classroom teaching and learning can play a powerful role in fostering academic achievement. Unfortunately, however, relatively little attention has been given to discussion of the design and validation of such assessments. The present article presents a framework for conceptualizing and organizing the multiple components of validity applicable to assessments intended for use in the classroom to support ongoing processes of teaching and learning. The conceptual framework builds on existing validity concepts and focuses attention on three components: cognitive validity, instructional validity, and inferential validity. The goal in presenting the framework is to clarify the concept of validity, including key components of the interpretive argument, while considering the types and forms of evidence needed to construct a validity argument for classroom assessments. The framework's utility is illustrated by presenting an application to the analysis of the validity of assessments embedded within an elementary mathematics curriculum.

Funding

Development of the conceptual framework described in this article and its application to assessments intended for classroom use was supported in part by grants to the authors from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (#R305A100475, #R305A090111), and the National Science Foundation (#0732090, #0918552, #0920242). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the funding agencies.

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A Framework for Conceptualizing and Evaluating the Validity of Instructionally Relevant Assessments

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Assessments that function close to classroom teaching and learning can play a powerful role in fostering academic achievement. Unfortunately, however, relatively little attention has been given to discussion of the design and validation of such assessments.

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Designing Assessments of Student Learning

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As educators, we measure student learning through many means, including assignments, quizzes, and tests. These assessments can be formal or informal, graded or ungraded. But assessment is not simply about awarding points and assigning grades. Learning is a process, not a product, and that process takes place during activities such as recall and practice.

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Monitoring Student Progress

Research shows that students make academic gains when learning is continuously monitored and adjusted. As a teacher assistant, you are in a unique position to evaluate the learning patterns of individual students so that the teacher can make planning adjustments to target the needs of students. Let's learn more about a teacher assistant's role in keeping records and assessing student progress.

Assessments

How do you know that students are learning? As you are monitoring seatwork and providing extra help to those who need it, you're able to track individual student performance. This type of informal assessment is called a formative assessment. Formative assessments are informal evaluations that occur throughout a learning experience that guide instructional decisions and provide feedback to students. The purpose of formative assessments is to gather information to meet the learning needs of students.

Some examples of formative assessments include anecdotal records, observation, and questioning techniques. Formative assessments are not intended to be used for students' grades, but provide information necessary to help teachers target instruction based on the needs of students.

Anecdotal records are notes that teachers keep to indicate student performance according to learning or behavior goals.

Observation is watching students perform a learning activity to determine strengths and weaknesses so that students may receive targeted remediation.

Questions provide insight about how much students understand.

Assessment Tools

Teacher assistants use assessment tools to turn the mental notes they make throughout a learning segment into useful records. Let's discuss some assessment tools that should become familiar to teacher assistants.

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record keeping & assessing student progress - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Record Keeping & Assessing Student Progress - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Research shows that students make academic gains when learning is continuously monitored and adjusted. As a teacher assistant, you are in a unique position to evaluate the learning patterns of individual students so that the teacher can make planning adjustments to target the needs of students.

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ISTE U

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

When I taught seventh grade language arts, one of my favorite things to teach was S.E. Hinton's book The Outsiders. Every year, we began the unit with a discussion about the cliques that formed in students' lives, how these groups interacted, the unwritten rules that governed their behavior, and what happened when groups clashed or people formed relationships across group lines. After we did some reflecting, writing, and talking, we were ready to start the book.

The reading went fine, more or less. Some chapters we did in class (I would read to them, then they would read silently), and others at home. Some students became as absorbed in the novel as I'd hoped they would; others, not so much. Predictably, some fell behind in the book like they did with all assigned reading.

I checked students' progress with occasional quizzes, we did some work on plot and characters, setting and theme, and then, after a unit test over the whole book-containing mostly questions that asked students to identify characters, setting, and key plot points-we spent nearly three class periods watching Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of the book. And I got to drool over Matt Dillon in the movie's opening scene again and again and again. From start to finish, the whole unit took about three weeks.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why it was my favorite. Seriously. I mean, even though I loved the book, my students' response to it was mostly lukewarm. Maybe it was just the idea of teaching it that I loved. Maybe it was the connections I was able to make to the stuff students dealt with on a day-to-day basis. I don't know. I taught that book a few times, and even though I looked forward to it every time, I always finished the unit a little unsatisfied.

And it's only now, years later, that I'm starting to understand that dissatisfaction: I can't say with any confidence that my students actually learned something from that unit. Upon deeper reflection, I'm not confident that any of my students learned anything of lasting value from at least half the lessons I taught.

This is a hard pill to swallow, because I wasn't half bad as a teacher. I had decent relationships with my students and I believe most of them had good experiences in my classroom, but real, durable learning? I can't say how much of that actually happened.

I don't love admitting that.

But at least now I understand why my teaching didn't produce a lot of actual learning: I never set clear, measurable learning targets.

Things would have been so different if I'd known about backward design.

When teachers talk to each other about the stuff they're teaching, they often say things like this:
"What novels do you do in 8th grade?""Oh that'll be perfect. I can use this when I teach the American Revolution!"
"I don't think I can fit that in; we're doing moon phases next month."

We tend to talk about our teaching plans in terms of the broad topics we cover. This shorthand is practical; we're not going to drill down into specific skill and knowledge objectives while waiting our turn at the bagel table. But when I think about the lessons I gave my students, the ones I observed in my colleagues' classrooms, and the work I've seen my own children do, I think this shorthand might be a pretty fair representation of what many of us are still doing: churning out lessons that keep students busy with our content without ever getting clear about what we want them to learn.

Instead of starting with a topic, we'd do better if we start with an end goal, and that's where backward design comes in.

Traditional vs. Backward Planning

Traditional Lesson Design

For many years, teachers have been planning lessons and units of instruction like this:

Step 1: Identify a topic or chunk of content that needs to be covered.

Step 2: Plan a sequence of lessons to teach that content.

Step 3: Create an assessment to measure the learning that should have taken place in those lessons.

Notice that in this approach, the assessment is created after the lessons are planned. Sometimes it isn't created until most of those lessons have already taken place. The assessment is kind of an afterthought, a check to see if students were paying attention to the stuff we taught them.

For most of my teaching career, this is how I planned. It's presumably how most of my colleagues planned. I believe it's still how many teachers plan.

So what's wrong with it? Well, when we plan this way, we're more likely to include content and activities that have questionable value. When teaching the American Revolution, for example, if our goal is just to "teach about the American Revolution," we can throw in anything that has any relation to that topic: a coloring page of the Boston Tea Party, a colonial flag craft project, or a worksheet where students unscramble words like minuteman, independence, and Hancock.

This random approach creates two problems.

The first and most important problem is a lack of durable, transferable learning. One reason so many of us don't remember much of what we learned in school is that we learned it through this haphazard, topic-driven approach. These random activities are taking up precious time that could be spent on much more valuable stuff.

The other is poor student engagement. Our students know when they're being asked to do something pointless. If they don't see the relevance of what they're learning or a direct line between the content of your course and a desirable outcome, they'll tune it out. Sure, many students will do what you ask anyway, because they want good grades and the benefits that come from them. But they're not learning. If you don't believe me, ask them.

Backward Design

In their book Understanding by Design, which was originally published in 1998, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced us to backward design, an approach to instructional planning that starts with the end goal, then works backward from there. The "full" version of Wiggins and McTighe's original approach is pretty complex and can be time-consuming to implement. If you're ready for that, I recommend digging into their book. For now, though, I'm just going to share the most basic version of backward design.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the learning cycle.

Step 2: Create an assessment to measure that learning.

Step 3: Plan a sequence of lessons that will prepare students to successfully complete the assessment.

The difference in order is significant: Plan the assessment first, then plan only lessons that will contribute to student success on that assessment.

I was first introduced to this concept in my sixth year of teaching, and the genius of it completely blew me away. I used it when planning my next unit and experienced the biggest spike in student success I'd ever seen. On top of that, I was actually excited about teaching the lessons I had planned. For the first time, it felt like none of my class was wasted; everything actually mattered. There was something a lot more satisfying about doing things this way.

Let's take a look at an example to illustrate the difference between a unit planned the traditional, topic-driven way, and the same unit planned with backward design.

Before and After: The Lunar Cycle

The Before, Where the Final Product is a Test

At some point in their school careers, students study the phases of the moon. One pretty typical way to teach this is as follows:

A lecture or video about the phases of the moon, followed by a worksheet to label the phases.

An interactive activity like scraping the filling out of Oreos to represent the lunar phases.

Following a teacher's sample, creating a physical model of the moon phases using something like styrofoam balls.

A unit test that requires labelling the phases of the moon from memory and answering multiple-choice questions about the lunar cycle, eclipses, and seasons.

In many classrooms, teachers also have students track the appearance of the moon over the course of a month, so that might be added as well.

Following this plan, a teacher would feel pretty satisfied that they "covered" the topic of moon phases. But if we look at the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the standard relating to moon phases says that grade 6-8 students will:

" Develop and use a model of the Earth-sun-moon system to describe the cyclic patterns of lunar phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, and seasons" ( MS-ESS1-1).

Note the language here: Students are meant to develop a model, then use it to describe these patterns. But in the plan above, students merely copied a model, and they didn't use it to describe anything; even if the model required some written captioning to explain what was going on, because the model was a copy, it can't be safely said that students were really the ones describing the system.

Then there's the test. If we assume that a large portion of a student's grade is based on the test, then students are not being measured on their achievement of that standard. The standard does not require students to memorize the phases of the moon. Nor does it ask them to "demonstrate knowledge" of how the whole system works. The standard wants students to develop a model and use it to describe the system.

It would be easy to blow off this distinction, to say Bah, same difference. The test asks students a lot of questions that would show an understanding of these concepts, so we're covered.

But not really. Asking a person to develop a model is a much higher-order task than asking them to copy a model. Describing systems and patterns is way more challenging than selecting the correct description.

Developing models and explaining things is the work of real scientists: They notice phenomena, study it, then figure out how to represent those phenomena in order to make it clear to other people. To say, "Look at this! It's interesting and it explains why things are the way they are!"

And that's exactly what the NGSS authors had in mind: "Any education that focuses predominantly on the detailed products of scientific labor-the facts of science-without developing an understanding of how those facts were established or that ignores the many important applications of science in the world misrepresents science and marginalizes the importance of engineering." (National Research Council, 2012, p. 43).

In other words, a superior education will teach students to think and practice like scientists. If we don't plan learning experiences that make that possible, we're giving them a sub-par education.

The After, Where the Final Product is a Model and a Presentation

So if we re-do this unit plan with backward design, we'll need to start by developing an assessment that would measure success with that standard. That means the assessment would not be a test where students merely label the moon phases, but a student-developed model of the moon phases along with some kind of presentation where students use that model to explain lunar phases, eclipses, and seasons.

When designing this final assessment, it's essential that the teacher crafts a rubric that clearly outlines specific, high standards for both the model and presentation. The rubric should list criteria for the accuracy and functionality of the model, plus the quality of the presentation itself. Here's an example of what that might look like:

With a good rubric in place, we then work backwards to determine what lessons students need to do excellent work on the final assessment.

Direct Instruction: Students still need to know the basics of the lunar system. Memorization is not the goal, so we're not grading for that, but students do need to know the information well enough to explain it and use the right vocabulary, so we can keep the lecture or video from the original plan. And having them work with the information a bit on some kind of worksheet or with some kind of online practice is fine, but I wouldn't give points for this work. If you need to motivate students to do it, require them to demonstrate proficiency (like scoring at least 80% on the match game with a set of Quizlet flashcards) before they can move on to the next step.

Active processing with models: Next, give students a chance to work with a model so that they experience the cycle in action. This will deepen their understanding of the earth-sun-moon system, which will better prepare them to give their own presentations. Something like this interactive model from CK-12 allows students to manipulate the time of day and the position of the moon to see how these variables change what we see in the sky. Working in groups, students could use the simulator to answer questions about the moon's appearance depending on what phase it's in and the time of day, then transition into making and checking predictions based on those variables.

Presentation practice: If students are going to do well on the final presentation, they'll need practice in explaining the lunar cycle in their own words. Using an existing model (such as the interactive mentioned in the previous step), have students explain the lunar phases, including information about the seasons and eclipses, to a partner or small group. Ask the listening partners to "coach" the presenter if their description has any holes or inaccuracies. Hearing their peers explain the system, along with attempting the explanation themselves, will help them use the language of the lunar cycle more fluently.

Model development: Now students begin developing their own models. The standard does not specify that this has to be a physical model, so you could offer students choice: The model could very well be made with styrofoam balls, but it could also be a hand-drawn diagram, a slideshow presentation, an animated video, a children's book, or even a short skit they present to the class or record on video. Many of these options, like the children's book, include the "presentation" piece right along with the model. Give students time in class to work on these models; this will ensure that they do their own work and will allow you to give feedback if a student is heading in the wrong direction. Remind them regularly that the explanation of the model is nearly half their grade, so they should consider scripting that out if their presentation is going to be "live."

Model presentations: Finally, students present their models. If you have a lot of students opt to give a "live" presentation this could take several class periods, which could be pretty mind-numbing since the subject matter is exactly the same for everyone. To cut down on that overall time, only have students present to the whole class if the class is actually participating in the model (like in some sort of skit or simulation). Otherwise, students can record their presentations on video or present to you one-on-one while their classmates work on something else independently.

With this "after" version, every lesson is designed to prepare students to give excellent presentations at the end. The whole time, they are using the lunar cycle vocabulary, correcting each other's misconceptions, and just like scientists, thinking about how to explain concepts to other people.

Some Questions About Your Lessons

Okay, so we've looked very closely at one small unit for a middle school science class. Now, take this same process and apply it to the things you teach.

1. What exactly do your standards require? Do they ask students to memorize and identify facts, or do they ask them to describe, explain, analyze, or create? (It's probably the latter.)

2. If it's the latter, how closely do your assessments measure those standards? Do they actually require students to do the describing, explaining, analyzing, or creating (which would likely require them to write, present, or create some product), or do they merely ask them to recognize when someone else does it in the form of an answer on a multiple-choice test?

3. Do you need to adjust your assessments so they more closely align with the standards?

4. If you do, the next step is to rework the lessons that lead up to that assessment. Does every lesson contribute to student success on that assessment? Could some of your lessons be omitted because they don't connect directly to the assessment? Are you missing anything? For example, if your assessment requires students to write in academic language and support their ideas with evidence, you should include some lessons that give students practice with that kind of writing.

5. Finally, will the assessment be weighted heavily in your gradebook? (It should be.)The lessons and activities leading up to the final assessment are there to give students exposure to the knowledge and practice with the skills necessary to perform on that final assessment; ideally, they should receive no grades at all on those activities. If you absolutely must assign some points, be sure the final assessment is worth a heck of a lot more than those smaller tasks.

Like I did, you probably also have some favorite lessons and activities. Some of these might turn out to be not just fun to teach, but also solid in terms of equipping students with knowledge and skills that will last.

If it turns out that those favorite lessons don't really align with any standards, you might be able to revise them so they do. Or you might keep them for other reasons-not every minute of class time has to be spent on standards-based instruction. Some activities have value because they help us get to know each other better, they help students develop social-emotional skills, or they simply offer a bit of fun. But if a lesson doesn't do any of these things, if it's disguised as learning but is doing little more than keeping students busy, it's time for it to go.

Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions. By making this approach part of our regular practice, we'll be able to look back on a day, a week, or a year of teaching and say with a lot more certainty that when they were under our care, our students learned.
Reference:
National Research Council (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13165.

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Are we planning with clear, measurable, meaningful learning goals in to guide us, or are we just keeping students busy?