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"If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of good... Speed trumps perfection. And the problem we have in society at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake. ... The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure."
- Michael Ryan , Executive Director, World Health Organization

COVID-19 has forced us all to pause. The planet is being given an unexpected break and we are all forced to pause, too. Certainty has been derailed. Systems are under strain. The mechanisms of routine are broken. And we mourn these things, feeling natural anxiety, vulnerability and loss at where we will go next. The unknown is unfamiliar ground for most of us. As the pandemic turns the world upside down, more than a billion young people are contending with closed schools. When future generations and historians reflect on this moment in time, one wonders which narrative will prevail? How did we respond? Most importantly, what did we learn from this experience?

We will recover from this. When we do, how might schools be changed for good? Here are some things we are learning. Some of these things many of us already knew or at least sensed or believed, but not with the clarity that these times demand. Some of us are fortunate to work in schools where many of these beliefs are embraced. We are obliged to give serious consideration to the implications of each in the months ahead.

Community is the most important thing. Learning is ultimately social. We need to be together.

We need to trust teachers to do what is best for kids. They will not let us down.

Isolation is hard going. Learning on a screen all day is exhausting. Wellbeing is a real priority now.

A school day does not need to have 7-8 hours. There are different ways of being together.

Sharing our experiences, resources, time, emotions and skills is good for all of us.

Our instincts of caring and empathy are being re-established.

The obsession with testing and measurement is giving way to a new consideration for the psyche.

We will emerge with a greater appreciation for the arts, creativity, resilience and critical thinking.

A hybrid of quality, tech-based distance learning and social interaction will be in great demand.

New student-first business models for schools will be required in the future.

Our vulnerability as a society has been exposed. The inclination to place each aspect of the learning process into the neat compartments of an age-old system can't simply be returned to without a significant re-think. We have to view our current circumstance as an opportunity to reconsider where we have been with a greater capacity for agility, imagination, and resilience going forward. This may not be a one-off disruption. A new value proposition will emerge. It is clear that we need to take better care of the planet, ourselves, and each other. This requires change. The possibility that we might fail to reflect on these needs seems unimaginable right now. Let's hope we do not lose this opportunity to complacency or fear.

When future generations and historians reflect on this moment in time, one wonders what narrative will prevail? How did we respond? Most importantly, what did we learn from this experience?
If we need to be right before we move, we will never win.
[Guest post by Mike Crowley, @crowley_mike, Middle School Principal and Assistant Director of the International School of Brussels, Belgium]

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"If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of good... Speed trumps perfection. And the problem we have in society at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake. ... The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure."

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Being an Anti-Racist Educator Is a Verb - NCTE

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This post was written by NCTE members Keisha Rembert, Patrick Harris, and Felicia Hamilton, members of the NCTE Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English. The Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English has produced a series of educational videos for teachers in order to motivate us all to anti-racist teaching.

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With summer and fall planning top of mind for educators across the country, one stubborn challenge is students' online attendance and engagement-or, precisely, the lack of it. In many schools and districts, half or less of their students participate in remote learning.

Many students are unable to participate virtually due to resource constraints. For those who can, it's become abundantly clear that grades alone are insufficient to motivate learning.

Take, for example, the distance learning plan created by Chaffey Joint Union High School District in California, which says that schoolwork completed by students through the end of the year can only preserve and improve grades, but not lower them. According to Rocky Bragg, a high school English teacher in the district, this policy has created some havoc. Many teachers watched their students brush off assignments and disappear from class.

The policy is pragmatic, responding to the fact that many students are dealing with stress, trauma, and extra family responsibilities that impact their ability to focus on school. But it also illuminates just how little value schoolwork has, from some students' perspectives, except to feed a grade.

But Bragg has witnessed a different reaction in his classes. He's consistently seen high attendance in synchronous online classes since the school closed, and almost all his English students submitted the epic poems they'd been working on for the last few weeks.

What's behind this rare level of engagement during such a traumatic and trying time? One factor is student agency. As it turns out, nurturing students' abilities to contribute and lead can have big payoffs as schools face ongoing uncertainty.
Agency as both a learning outcome-and a precious resource
Agency is generally defined as an important learning outcome, characterized by the ability for students to set and pursue their own learning goals. It is an ingredient for their success through college and careers, and it is also a frequently cited goal among educators working to reimagine teaching and learning. Our Canopy Project, which documented student-centered learning plans in schools, found that three-quarters of them are designed to foster student agency.

But in addition to being an important outcome, student agency may also be an undervalued resource for schools, especially when they have less control over how to structure students' time and attention. The impacts of COVID-19 are highlighting at least three ways in which schools can benefit from nurturing students' agency:
1. Benefits to student engagement and learning
Bragg shares his classroom with dozens of other teachers: his own students. In a four-week unit on Albert Camus' "The Stranger," his senior year English students helped design guiding questions and themes, decided on daily and weekly assignments, determined how assessment and evaluation would be conducted, led each day's discussion, and held each other accountable to mutually agreed-upon expectations.

With students largely running the show, what was there left to do? Bragg described his duties as "back-seat driving"-synthesizing, challenging, questioning, and giving feedback. In cases where Bragg did have a role, like generating discussion questions, they were assigned by his students. In essence, responsibilities between the teacher and the learner flipped.

Shifting to this approach wasn't easy. "It was stressful, it was difficult, and it required a ton of energy and patience," Bragg wrote. But it also wasn't just one more responsibility on top of everything else teachers must do. Instead, Bragg's focus on agency eventually rebalanced the responsibilities in his classroom so that duties became shared between students and the teacher. In turn, students retained greater motivation to continue their learning even during the shift to remote instruction.

In a similar vein, Phyllis Lockett, founder and CEO of the education nonprofit LEAP Innovations, has argued that the charter network Distinctive Schools has had a smoother transition to at-home learning, due in part to a longtime focus on student-directed learning pathways.
How to start:
Teachers can use school closures as opportunities for what Bragg calls "unlearning" of conventional roles and protocols. Building this kind of learning culture won't happen overnight, but there are ways for teachers and parents to nurture it. Teachers can:

introduce more student control over activities, schedules, and assessments during remote learning.

invite students to develop homegrown projects related to their own curiosities and interests, or host a "skill share" to teach something new to their peers.

2. Benefits to social and emotional well-being
The benefits of nurturing agency can extend beyond academics, too. As educators across the country scramble to support their students' social and emotional needs during this time, they may find that students themselves can also play a big role in helping one another.

Bragg's district has restricted the use of Zoom by teachers due to privacy concerns. But he encouraged his students to set up their own video conferences for peer support. This isn't just friends getting together to chat-the students are deliberately planning the calls for all their classmates to discuss how the pandemic is affecting their learning and well-being.
How to start:

Teachers and school administrators can incorporate students into their efforts to check in with families. Having students call each other and report back could supplement staff efforts to reach all families.

Students can contribute or take the lead on strategies to raise morale and support well-being. For instance, students at Van Ness Elementary school in Washington, D.C. are recording videos that their teachers quickly compile into a remote-learning version of the school's daily morning routines for community-building.

3. Benefits to school operations
Even before COVID-19, teachers and staff were being asked to do more than they had time and energy for. Now, in short order, most schools have to rapidly adapt their instructional models and operations. Even with the CARES Act financial stimulus, school leaders are having trouble making the math work when facing existing capacity constraints, ongoing uncertainty about how schools can reopen, and a looming recession.

But some schools have taken the opportunity to invite students-usually considered the beneficiaries of resources-to pitch in and become resources themselves.

In Miami, students at Hammocks Middle School in Miami are responsible for managing a Genius Bar to support their peers and teachers with tech help, including remote support during the pandemic.

Similarly, in Massachusetts, Burlington High School has long been lauded for its student-run technology help desk, where students provide tech support and earn credit for doing so. In the chaos caused by stay-at-home orders, the school didn't immediately have structures in place for students to respond to tech issues remotely. But the requests for help are coming in fast, and they recently created a Google Classroom tutorial video for teachers.

In addition to creating applied and relevant learning experiences for students, programs like Burlington's enable schools to rely on students to help and contribute in meaningful ways-rather than shouldering new costs for those supports.
How to start:

Teachers, staff, and students can work together to identify operational needs-like tech support, attendance, peer tutoring, or class planning-that students can take the lead on.

Administrators and policymakers can pave pathways for student contributions to be valued, such as formalizing them through courses that count for school credit. Creating these pathways helps reduce the risk of student contributions remaining peripheral or haphazard if not embedded thoughtfully into the core of the school's model.

In a recent Medium post where Bragg described his student-driven classroom, he wrote that conventional education wisdom "has embedded in our curriculum and infrastructure a natural tendency to save and to do for our students." There's no question that schools must equitably provide support to struggling students. But school leaders focused on building student agency during and beyond COVID-19 may see increased engagement and attendance.

And over time, they'll find that students can contribute to running the school in increasingly valuable ways.
This piece was originally published here on EdSurge.
Chelsea is a research fellow at the Institute focusing on blended and personalized learning in K-12 education, where she analyzes how innovation theory can inform the design of new instructional models.

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Now is the moment to lean into student agency - Christensen Institute

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With summer and fall planning top of mind for educators across the country, one stubborn challenge is students' online attendance and engagement-or, precisely, the lack of it. In many schools and districts, half or less of their students participate in remote learning. Many students are unable to participate virtually due to resource constraints.

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I've learned that the term-and related terms, such as "self-regulated learning"-has a rich lineage of researchers and practitioners who have carefully defined it.
This article is the first part of a two-part series exploring student agency as it has been defined through decades of research and how we can apply the lessons learned in a culturally-competent frame.
What the heck is "student agency"?

Those like me who frequently invoke the phrase don't always identify it as edu-jargon. If you know what it means, kudos. But, if you try rattling it off around your everyday friends, you may discover blank stares, empty head-nods, or worse, misunderstandings. Even frequent users like me tend to kick up dust around it when we are less intentional with our words.

When trying to explain the concept in layman's terms, I have used a hodge-podge of half-right descriptions. I might say, "It's when students take ownership and responsibility for what they learn." Or sometimes, I have described it as, "When students take an active role in their education rather than having school 'done to them.'" Whenever someone else defines it as "voice and choice" or "autonomy," I have nodded my head in agreement without really pausing to wonder if that definition is right.

But, are all these things really the same? My mom-of-a-toddler brain hears "taking responsibility" as if it's a behavior issue that a solid timeout will solve. "Voice and choice" conjures the meme of the shotgun guy, American flag in hand, fighting for his free will. And, what do we really know about what "active" versus "passive" looks like when it comes to the inner contours of the mind? My off-the-cuff definitions are adding to the noise.

It's only recently that I've become much more disciplined in my use of the term "student agency" and how I apply it. Thanks to a research assignment on behalf of the Center for Innovation in Education's Assessment for Learning Project, I've learned that the term-and related terms, such as "self-regulated learning" -has a rich lineage of researchers and practitioners who have carefully defined it.

There is no broad consensus on the definition of student agency...That said, by looking across researchers, practitioners, and other thought leaders, common elements arise that begin to suggest a consensus.

Some definitional efforts are relatively new but many are much older. And, meditating on this question-what is "student agency"?-has given me a more sophisticated understanding of what "student agency" really means and how to develop it in students.

First, I should say, there is no broad consensus on the definition of student agency. Many different words are used to describe the concept, and sometimes the same words are used to describe different concepts. That said, by looking across researchers 1, practitioners, and other thought leaders 2, common elements arise that begin to suggest a consensus.

From these sources, the dust seems to settle on a concept of "student agency" that involves four distinct components. The first three are temporally linked covering future, present, and past:

Setting advantageous goals;

Initiating action toward those goals; and

Reflecting on and regulating progress toward those goals.

Several sources also agree on a fourth dimension, that undergirds the others-a belief in self-efficacy. That is, whether one believes they can act with agency actually enhances or diminishes that agency.

For me, this multi-part definition clears the air by allowing me to situate related terms-like voice, choice, and ownership-as valid pieces that fit within a larger whole.

More importantly, this definition demystifies what it means to seek agency as an outcome for students. It's not a binary "you have it or you don't" quality. In Education Reimagined's lexicon, Learner Agency is the " methodological development of both the capacity and the freedom of learners to exercise choice regarding what is to be learned and to co-create how that learning is to take place" (italics mine). Meaning: educators can work with young people to intentionally and progressively develop each of the four components.

Setting Goals

For example, one can help students become more adept at setting goals. Educators can design pathways of learning that promote students' awareness of their current strengths and weaknesses relative to a developing sense of where they want to go. They can provide opportunities to practice, self-assess, and receive feedback on specific skills such as forethought, intentionality, and "planful competence."

Of course, the point isn't to set goals willy-nilly but to drive toward goals that are advantageous to the student. This is a value statement that calls into question what gets counted as a worthwhile goal and who gets to make that determination. The way we answer these questions has important ramifications on equity-a point I'll dwell on in the second post in this conversation.

Initiating Action

Once a direction is set, students don't just gaze out the window of the bus. They drive. This second part of the definition-initiating action-invokes existential concepts such as voice, choice, free will, freedom, individual volition, self-influence, and self-initiation.

Educators can help students develop these capacities by providing choices or open-ended opportunities to select strategies and tactics for meeting a goal, allowing students to diverge from their peers as they explore something relevant to them. Educators can encourage independent learning by teaching effective learning strategies, such as organization, note-taking, rehearsing, and so on. Educators can also encourage initiative by creating learning environments that optimize motivation and engagement.

By providing students autonomy over "time, task, technique, and team" as they tackle learning objectives; or by making learning social through group work or community-based projects, educators can help students develop a sense of voice, ownership, and self-determination.

Reflecting and Redirecting

Even the best-laid plans and most meticulous follow-through can't guarantee results. So, students with agency not only plan and act but also reflect and redirect. This involves perseverance and grit. It requires skills such as reflection and self-discipline. It is something that educators can encourage by structuring opportunities for students to externalize their thinking, self-reflect, and offer and receive feedback with adults and peers.

From an equity standpoint, it is also an opportunity for educators to complement the development of self-reflection and perseverance with practices focused on building critical consciousness as a way to understand and situate one's agency within a "broader collective struggle for social justice."

Internalizing Self-Efficacy

The fourth and final component of the definition-beliefs about self-efficacy-is less outwardly apparent but no less important to instill in students. Research on "growth mindsets" by Carol Dweck has shown if students understand they aren't born "smart" or "dumb" but have capacity to get smarter, they put in the extra effort necessary to achieve more.

Researchers have similarly applied the concept to agency, associating one's belief in their ability to succeed with their level of effort and their ability to persist when facing challenges. Conversely, students with low self-efficacy exhibit learned helplessness, a belief they "have no power over what goes on around them, and nothing they do contributes to their success or lack of it."

Educators can help students overcome learned helplessness and reinforce their self-efficacy through several tactics, such as providing multiple opportunities for students to develop and showcase mastery of their learning (as in a competency-based system); stretching students by targeting their zone of proximal development; sharing about peers and role models who overcome hurdles; instructing about and reinforcing growth mindsets; and explicitly attending to students' physical and emotional states.

Using the research available to us, let's be clear with one another about student agency...In doing so, we can better develop strong young adults capable of effecting positive change in their own lives and the world around them.

Keeping this four-part frame in mind has enabled me to more proactively focus on building student agency through my work, such as in ensuring all four components are expressed in self-assessment rubrics guiding educator practice.

Using the research available to us, let's be clear with one another about student agency. It is not a fleeting behavior or an innate personality trait.

It is not (just) a manifestation of free will, or an exercise of one's vocal chords, or a "buck up and be responsible" mentality. Rather, it is a multi-faceted skill-and disposition-invoking past, present, and future. It is students' abilities to set advantageous goals, initiate action toward those goals, and reflect and redirect based on feedback, all the while internalizing the belief they can have agency.

The next time someone asks you about the meaning of "student agency," will you consider all four components in your response? And, when you're working with students and schools to develop agency in students, will you intentionally build skills and mindsets in each component? In doing so, we can better develop strong young adults capable of effecting positive change in their own lives and the world around them.

Hitlin and Elder, Bandura, Zimmerman and Schunk, Heritage, Andrade, the National Research Council, and the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, among others

Education Reimagined, Summit Public Schools, New Tech Network schools, the Next Generation Learning Challenges, Students at the Center, the Hewlett Foundation, Transforming Education, Transcend, and the Assessment for Learning Project grantees

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Part 1: What Do You Mean When You Say "Student Agency"? - Education Reimagined

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Education buzzwords are a dime a dozen, but just one of them, like student agency, can have limitless interpretations or definitions depending who you speak with. Let's clear the air on what student agency is and is not.

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The first days of school should be centered around building community through authentic relationships. We believe that students need to trust their teacher in order for the relationship to give way to learning and growth. It is important for teachers to build these relationships responsibly by treating their students with respect and using a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP).

NCTE's Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English turns to this pedagogical stance as one of the columns of our foundational beliefs because we aim to meet the needs of all students in our classrooms considering the demographic shifts taking place throughout our country's public schools.

Authors Dr. Django Paris and Dr. Samy Alim explain, "CSP seeks to perpetuate and foster-to sustain-linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the schooling for positive social transformation." One critical way to enact a culturally sustaining pedagogy is through the design of a classroom's physical space.

Think about what it's like to walk into and through your classroom before class has begun. What do students see on the walls? What do they hear? What welcomes them? These spatial elements are important and set a clear tone even before the bell has rung.

Here are some of our committee's suggestions on how to achieve a space that indicates a culturally sustaining pedagogy:

Your library: Think about which books students will see when they first walk to the shelves. Will all of your students see themselves? It is critical to feature texts that represent ALL students on your bookshelves. Make sure books face forward or outward in a way where they strategically catch students' attention. Reflecting student identity through literature is a strong bridge to learning more about who your students are and building relationships with them.

Share your reading journey: Show your students that you are actively engaged in reading texts that highlight the stories and experiences of people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, women, and other groups that have been historically silenced throughout US history and English class text selections. You can hang a sign on or near your desk that says "I am currently reading ______." It is critical to update this regularly. This will help to invite a conversation with students about what you're learning.

Communicate intentions: Write a "safe space" commitment and list on your syllabus. Or hang a sign that shows why your room and curriculum are safe spaces for students. Make sure they know, visibly, that they are welcomed and that their identities will be affirmed.

Intimate spaces: At some point in the first day or week, try removing all the chairs and desks and have circle time. It can work across all grade levels. In that circle time, ask students what they like about your subject, what they like about school, how the day is going, and create space for a positive moment in your community. A student-centered moment within a shifted physical space communicates that this is their room and that you want to hear their voices. You might have students brainstorm the ways the physical space should look and what it should include. Teachers should prioritize student voices from the first day. You can engage in dialogue by asking what they value and then ensuring that those values have a place. You might visualize this by leaving your "rules" poster half empty as a way to show students that the rules are not done because their voices are still missing.

The walls: Consider waiting to fill up the walls until after the first day of school. Leave room for students to contribute their works. Be intentional with what you put on the wall on the first day. You may want to use images featuring real people representing the students in the room, but also the ones who are missing. Posting those pictures versus cartoons or animals demonstrates intentionality in wanting to be inclusive. Post poetry or quotes that are from authors of color, women, LGBTQ people, and be intentional about the art in the room. You might even start the year off with a poem. Having students begin with "Where I'm From" poems is a great way to build community and allow the voices of their families to permeate the classroom space. After they're done writing, students can create broadsides of their poems that can be displayed in class for the first month, semester, or quarter of the year. This shows students that teachers care to learn about their community and/or other places that are important in their lives.

Stickers & More Art: Consider using stickers that are representative of multicultural people groups, too, such as Robert Liu-Trujillo's art. Think about what is displayed on your desk and how that communicates that you love and respect all of your students and their home communities, and are sharing some of yourself.

Sounds: If possible, you might feature some music that comes from marginalized communities. That might be music from the Caribbean or hip hop, for example. You can play it while students are doing some ice breakers or a short writing prompt. We know that there is power in music and that creating a space in your room where students are welcomed could be enhanced by them hearing music that comes from their country, for example. You could ask students to send you links to favorite music so that you can broaden your listening repertoire.

Free goodies: Have the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English's up somewhere on the wall and have ready to be handed out on that first day. Send them home with a free gift from your classroom!

Curriculum: Have a PowerPoint (or some visual) where you feature the texts you'll cover with pictures of the authors. Share topics you'll be covering this year and how students will get to have in-depth and challenging conversations. This shows students your commitment to featuring texts and authors who are people of color, LGBTQ, women, and others during the school year.

We hope that this list has been useful and that you are ready to think about how to set up your classroom in a way that is culturally sustaining.

If your year has already begun, don't hesitate to slow down the pace and try some of these changes. Communicate to your students why you're making these modifications and use that as a conversation starter. It is important for these changes and physical elements in your classroom to be ones you've made out of your own interest to connect with them and genuinely welcome their voices. If it's performative and simply a way to seem "hip," students will sense this, and it won't build true relationships or understanding.

Our nation's tensions and ongoing social conflicts require that we take a stance and be intentional about fighting against racism and bias in the teaching of English. We are rooting for you!

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First-Day Actions for a Culturally Sustaining Classroom Environment

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Suggestions for planning your classroom space to support culturally sustaining teaching

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here. Maybe you ended up here because you were doing a Google search for culturally responsive teaching practices

Or maybe your school is reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain in a book study and you wanted to know more about this Zaretta Hammond chick who wrote it.

It doesn't matter how you got here. What's important is that you and I are now connected.

Since you are an equity-minded educator like me, you are probably waging your own private movement to bust the myths behind student engagement (or the lack of) among low performing students of color, poor students, and English learners.

Well, you are in the right place. This is a blog where we can get answers to our collective and individual questions about how we can help students become confident and competent learners. In this space, I want to highlight what I am learning from being out in schools and classrooms with teachers who are successful with diverse students. I want to focus on how we can take everyday strategies and practices and put them to work in their classrooms to be more culturally responsive.

So, again, welcome!

Just to let you know, on average, I publish a new post every other week - two times per month at the least (sometimes a few more). That gives me time to be in schools and to write. If you don't want to miss updates on what I am seeing and learning, sign up for my newsletter by pushing that button below.

Binge-worthy Posts and Podcasts

Books are good, but sometimes you want your knowledge in bite-sized doses. That's what I like to deliver: consumable, usable, and entertaining food for thought (and action). Here are some of the most popular blog posts and guest podcast interviews to sample.

About Zaretta Hammond

It's funny. These days a lot of folks are calling me "Dr. Hammond" since the book has become required reading in many teacher education programs and school districts. Well, to set the record straight, I am not a PhD. I do have a Master's degree, but I consider myself a "boots on the ground" teacher. I call myself a former writing teacher turned equity freedom fighter. My heart is forever with children and teachers in the classroom, not in an ivory tower, even if these days most of my "students" are new leaders and pre-service teachers. [ A quick note: Not throwing any shade at all the PhDs out there doing the work.]

When I was in the classroom back in the day, I taught composition (expository writing). It was where I started to understand how important literacy was to equity, and how neuroscience and culture should inform our instructional practice.

Since leaving the classroom, I have done work as a curriculum designer and professional developer at organizations such as the National Equity Project and the Annenberg-funded Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in the San Francisco-Bay Area. I am a trained facilitator in anti-bias processes and have facilitated groups focused on learning to talk about issues of racial politics and privilege.

My primary work has been linking instruction, equity, and literacy. I have spent time as an adjunct instructor at Saint Mary's College in Norther California where I taught Adolescent Literacy and trained tutors and parents in reading support strategies for struggling students of color.

As an undergraduate, I attended University of California, Berkley before finishing up my degree at New York University where I majored in English Literature with a minor in Writing. I completed my Masters in Secondary English Education, with a Concentration in Writing Instruction at University of Colorado, Boulder where I simultaneously did my teacher certification program (starting three months after the birth of my son. I do not recommend this).

For the past 25 years, I've maintained a small, independent education consulting practice from which I do my research and writing as well as support schools doing deep instructionally-focused equity work.

Stay in touch

I hope this blog inspires, motivates, and challenges you to try some new practices that move you toward being more culturally responsive. If it does, send me a note. I'd love to hear from you. The best way to keep in touch with me is to sign up for free email updates (where you get all kinds of exclusive goodies).

Other Ways to Connect

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About - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching: 4 Misconceptions | Cult of Pedagogy

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In some cases, teachers think they’re practicing culturally responsive teaching, when in fact, they’re kind of not. Zaretta Hammond helps clear things up.

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When COVID-19 hit our society, a wave of teachers was thrown into distance learning with little preparation. Many educators whose districts had the infrastructure to support e-learning jumped right in, navigating the abundance of free resources that peppered the internet overnight. I, too, sought out tasks online, excited for my students to drive their own learning.

But one critical piece was missing: the personal connection with me, their teacher. For the students in our class to whom their teacher is everything, even the most engaging worksheets, videos, projects and animated websites are nothing.

As Maribel Valdez Gonzalez pointed out in " A Healthy Reminder to Educators During School Closings," now is the time to focus on student well-being, not to prioritize academic compliance. Since I work in a district that provides one-to-one technology for our second through 12th graders, I knew I was lucky enough to be able to use the turn to online courses as a way to connect with my students and support them through this crisis.

When I logged on to my first Zoom meeting, seeing the joy on my students' faces and hearing 17 voices simultaneously sharing all that had happened in the few days since we'd all been together was priceless. We spent the first 20 minutes of our meeting just chatting, reconnecting and discussing our needs. I read aloud, and we discussed the reading. We ended with more questions from students about our new learning environment. I attempted to answer as truthfully as I could. I hope I put to bed some of their fears and anxieties in the process.

After our Zoom, I realized that our meeting included several of the hallmarks of culturally responsive teaching: building trusting learning relationships, creating opportunities for student-centered discourse and meeting the cognitive needs of communal learners. At the heart of culturally responsive teaching is the idea of being responsive to students' academic and social emotional needs. With care and planning, any educator teaching online can create a culturally responsive virtual classroom, one that can provide a space where every day, students feel welcomed and valued.

Here's how I'm building on what I learned to ensure I'm meeting the needs of marginalized students even as we shift to a new learning environment.

Building Learning Partnerships Online

Building trusting learning relationships is a cornerstone of culturally responsive instruction. Researchers including Geneva Gay, Sonia Nieto and Gloria Ladson-Billings all stress its importance. In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond explains that high-trust, low-stress environments can help marginalized students effectively process and retain learned information. When students feel safe and trust that we have true learning partnerships with them, they will be more likely to take the necessary risks needed to learn.

Online, these relationships looked different than they did in the classroom. Conducting school from our homes, we were all more vulnerable in our learning environment. In effect, taking 20 minutes to talk to students about their lives at the beginning of our meeting built deeper connections with my students, helping us to strengthen our relationships. The fact that they were seeing me in my home helped show them I was willing to share and trust them, too. This reciprocity helped to create a high-trust environment.

Each day since that initial meeting, I changed the location in my home where I met online with students. These reveals entertained my students while also letting them get to know me better. But there are many ways educators can use online spaces to build trusting relationships. One day we did a show and tell by sharing and discussing items from our homes. The next day we tried a scavenger hunt, where I named things: a pet, a sibling or a roll of toilet paper, for example, and students brought them to the camera to show off. We close each Zoom classroom meeting with a sharing or team building activity giving us an additional opportunity to connect with one another.

Centering Students Online

As in traditional classroom settings, culturally responsive teaching online depends on empowering students through learner-centered lessons. Zaretta Hammond maintains that culturally responsive teaching is about creating trusting learning partnerships with students. When teachers act more as facilitators than lecturers, Gloria Ladson-Billings explains, students from marginalized groups are more likely to participate and succeed. Learner-centered lessons are collaborative and allow students to redirect learning to topics that are culturally and socially relevant to them. Students can become more self-confident through the learning process.

During our initial class meeting, I began by presenting all of the topics that we were planning to cover and asking students what they were motivated to learn about first. We talked about which topics are important to them. And I asked for feedback on the types of learning they enjoyed most: projects, games, flip grids or others. That way, when I redesigned my plans to suit distance learning, I could design lessons around my students' interests. Now, I use our interactive classroom time to let students share questions, comments and concerns and to connect with and motivate them.

Supporting Communal Learners

Hammond clarifies a distinction between individual learners and communal learners: Our cultural values, she says, can shape whether we learn best by exploring on our own or collaborating with others to build understanding. Current practices of assigning distance learning packets and independent online projects skew toward independent learners. But students who are communal learners can struggle with traditional distance learning.

To better engage communal learners in the classroom, Hammond suggests making lessons more social and utilizing gamified teaching. By adding a live streaming classroom component to my e-learning plan, I added a social layer that helped engage communal learners. While reading a selected text, I asked students questions and had them respond with some of the features on Zoom: thumbs up, "raise your hand" or emojis. Assigning different values to these elements gamified the learning by making it interactive. For example, if the students heard a simile or metaphor, I asked them to give me a thumbs up, but if they heard me read a personification, I asked them to give me a thumbs down.

After our initial e-learning sessions, I realized the importance of the social aspect of students checking in with their teacher and their friends. Now I am looking for more ways to incorporate collaborative work time into our e-learning environment, including using Zoom's break outs feature for smaller groups. I am also exploring new engaging gamified options like the use of annotation and whiteboard features to have students draw their responses in real time. I plan to use the polling feature to collect student responses, and I have also been trying to implement the chat function as a relay race where students take turns answering questions.

Time for Responsiveness

At the heart of culturally responsive teaching is the idea of being responsive to students' academic and social emotional needs. As teachers, we provide so much more than the lessons we share. For many of our students, we provide a guided path to successfully navigating those lessons, to security and to reassurance.

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Online Teaching Can Be Culturally Responsive

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When COVID-19 hit our society, a wave of teachers was thrown into distance learning with little preparation. Many educators whose districts had the infrastructure to support e-learning jumped right in, navigating the abundance of free resources that peppered the internet overnight. I, too, sought out tasks online, excited for my students to drive their own learning.

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This tool helps schools determine if they are following the guiding principles developed by the Department of Education regarding improving school climate and equitable disciplinary practices.

Download: School Climate Checklist - Discipline

Three of our Equity Audit tools combined into one file: Criteria for an Equitable School, Criteria for an Equitable Classroom, and Teacher Behaviors that Encourage Student Persistence.

Download: Equity Audit 2020 - accessible

This tool helps school leaders assess whether or not a classroom provides students with the processes and information that create a positive learning environment so students can perform at their highest level.

Download: Criteria for an Equitable Classroom-2020-accessible

This tool helps school leaders assess whether or not the school provides the processes and information which create a positive learning environment so students and staff can perform at their highest level.

Download: Criteria for an Equitable School-2020-accessible

This tool helps teachers measure their strengths in encouraging students' persistence in learning and marking areas for self-improvement.

Download: Teacher Behaviors that Encourage Student Persistence-2020-accessible

This journal by the Equity-Centered Capacity Building Network (ECCBN) addresses systems capacity building approaches that drive both equity and excellence. ECCBN's mission is to increase the visibility and impact of capacity-building approaches that promote deep and sustainable school and system change. ECCBN is a cadre of national experts uniting their efforts to share resources and... Read More "

Link: http://capacitybuildingnetwork.org/table-of-contents/

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This tool helps schools determine if they are following the guiding principles developed by the Department of Education regarding improving school climate and equitable disciplinary practices. Download: School Climate Checklist - Discipline Three of our Equity Audit tools combined into one file: Criteria for an Equitable School, Criteria for an Equitable Classroom, and Teacher Behaviors that Encourage Student Persistence.

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228 Accelerator trains designers for equity at all levels within schools and communities to take the lead in redesigning relationships in our society. We create the capacity and conditions for their work to be successful, and we catalyze permanent change among people and communities.

228 Accelerator's mission is to empower a new generation of school designers to build a new generation of schools that redesign relationships for equity. We give them the time, networks, and experiences to design radically new and better ways of learning together, working together, and - ultimately - living together.

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228 Accelerator trains designers for equity at all levels within schools and communities to take the lead in redesigning relationships in our society. We create the capacity and conditions for their work to be successful, and we catalyze permanent change among people and communities.

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NCTE - National Council of Teachers of English

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As the pandemic grinds on and protests against police brutality and systemic racism continue, young people are coping with high levels of stress and uncertainty, writes Dr. Pamela Cantor in " The Stress of This Moment Might Be Hurting Kids' Development" for Education Next. With the likelihood that remote learning will continue in some form this fall, many children will once more be separated from the support systems that help balance their lives by keeping them connected to routines-and to the people outside their immediate families who care about them. It's a difficult set of circumstances that Cantor, founder and senior science advisor of Turnaround for Children, calls "the Covid-19 paradox."

"In order to be safe and keep others safe from the virus, we must be physically distant. But that means disrupting the communities and relationships in our lives-classrooms, teachers, teams, coaches, churches, friends, extended families-that are the very connections we need to feel safe, to cope with stress, and to surmount this crisis," writes Cantor. "On top of this, there is a crisis of trust, particularly for young people of color, because of what they are witnessing: Officers who should protect them, but don't, won't, or can't."

When people experience stress, the hormone cortisol is released in the body, producing the fight, flight, or freeze impulse. Some stress may be useful in preparing kids for challenging tasks like tests and performances. "This is the limbic system in the brain at work-attention, concentration, focus, memory, preparation," writes Cantor. But persistently high levels of stress can become toxic, affecting attention and memory. The hormone oxytocin, however, can help protect children from these harmful effects. "Relationships that are strong and positive cause oxytocin's release, which helps produce feelings of trust, love, attachment, and safety," Cantor writes. "This not only helps children manage stress, but also offsets the damaging effects of cortisol and produces resilience to future stress."

As students head back to school this fall with the possibility of hybrid learning models and rolling school closures, educators and parents will play an important role in helping to "inoculate us against the intolerable stress of the scary, uncertain world we now live in," she writes. Cantor suggests adults focus on a new take on the "Three Rs": relationships, routines, and resilience.

Relationships: When students are learning from home, teachers can maintain relationships by connecting through virtual advisory groups and individual online meetings. Cantor recommends a strategy called two-by-ten: A teacher makes a specific goal of talking one-on-one with a struggling student for two minutes for a 10-day stretch. These quick, focused interactions can build relationships and provide emotional boosts that may produce oxytocin.

To reinforce connections with families, teachers can check in with them regularly via video chat. If needed, a set of predetermined questions can help educators gain insight into how students and families are coping with issues like homework, organization, and keeping up with the daily routine of online classes.

Another way to encourage caregivers and kids to stay connected at home-Cantor calls them "oxytocin boosters"-is by suggesting they pursue activities together, like cooking a family dinner as a unit or calling a grandparent. One New York teacher even organized "Tasty Tuesdays" during which her 2nd grade students share breakfast via Zoom.

Routines: Our brains, writes Cantor, are "prediction machines that like order, and when our environments are orderly, the brain is calmer." To establish predictable routines at home, families can create weekly schedules that include time alloted for academics, unstructured time for playing or working on projects, and even regular family meetings. Schools can support families by encouraging routines like healthy family meals, daily exercise, and mindfulness practices such as deep breathing and journaling.

During distance learning, teachers can create fun activities that address both emotional and academic needs and map to the students' schedules. For example, a second-grade teacher "dresses up in superhero costumes to read students bedtime stories that include vocabulary and comprehension lessons," Cantor writes.

Once schools reopen, "the primary focus should be physical, emotional, and identity safety"-the necessary precursors to academic work-writes Cantor. Teachers can continue to establish routines in the classroom with lists and sticky notes.

Resilience: Built over time, the skill of resilience "begins with learning how to regulate emotions and behaviors from role models through a process called co-regulation," Cantor says. During remote learning, teachers can foster resilience by reminding students that we all "need to manage ourselves and our fears every single day," and families can help by encouraging teamwork and creative problem-solving, celebrating successes, and modeling healthy strategies for managing anxiety and stress. Guiding kids so they develop the ability to recognize their emotions and strengthen their resilience during distance learning will help prepare them for the return to physical school in the new year.

When kids do return to the classroom, educators should strive to create a "safe, supportive environment; strong, developmental relationships; and integrated and rigorous academic, skill, and mindset development," Cantor concludes. When these elements are prioritized, they provide an "ecological vaccine, rich in protective factors that ignite the developing brain, promote wellness, and protect children from the damaging effects of stress."

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3 Ways to Reduce Stress and Build Connections During Distance Learning

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As the pandemic grinds on and protests against police brutality and systemic racism continue, young people are coping with high levels of stress and uncertainty, writes Dr. Pamela Cantor in " The Stress of This Moment Might Be Hurting Kids' Development" for Education Next.

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New research sheds light on the effects that childhood experiences-both good and bad-have on the developing brain. But are schools keeping up?

"The 20th-century education system was never designed with the knowledge of the developing brain," says Pamela Cantor, MD, who is part of a cross-disciplinary team of experts studying the science of learning and development. "So when we think about the fact that learning is a brain function and we have an education system that didn't have access to this critical knowledge, the question becomes: Do we have the will to create an education system that's informed by it?"

Contrary to the long-held belief that brain maturation is largely complete by the age of 6, we now know that our brains are malleable and continue to change dramatically well into our 20s. This has profound implications for learning throughout the school-age years.

Because our neural tissues change in response to our environment, our experiences, and our relationships, a young child who faces persistent adversity at home, for example, will frequently retreat into "fight or flight" mode to protect themselves from violence or abuse. Over time, the brain's circuitry rewires, favoring aggressive or anxious tendencies at the cost of cognition, reasoning, and memory. These children are also more likely to be placed in special education programs, be held back a grade, and have behavioral issues at school, according to recent research.

The good news is that while toxic stress and abusive relationships can inhibit learning, positive and supportive learning environments can stem the tide. A trusting relationship with an adult-a teacher or school counselor, for example-can be a protective buffer against the negative effects of stress.

And because the brain is malleable and continually developing well into adulthood, a student can still meet his or her full potential, despite initial-or even ongoing-negative experiences. According to a 2015 Harvard report, having at least one adult in a child's life who provides a stable, caring, and supportive relationship is one of the strongest ways to build resilience and help stack the scale against adversity.

Another key takeaway for teachers is that the science confirms that variability in a developing brain is actually the norm, not the exception. A room full of 5-year-olds spans the gamut of skills, developmentally speaking, and that continues to hold true for 10- and 16-year-olds. But while we are all highly variable, we are all on similar paths-eventually acquiring the same sets of skills in roughly the same order.

What Schools Can Do

"The science says to us that, in fact, the way the brain functions and grows, it needs safety, it needs warmth, it actually even needs hugs," explains Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond. "We actually learn in a state of positive emotion much more effectively than we can learn in a state of negative emotion. That has huge implications for what we do in schools."

According to Darling-Hammond, there are a few ways school can shift to better align with these insights.

Seize the opportunity: Because of the amount of time children spend there, schools have an incredible opportunity to shape the developing brains of their students. Strong, long-lasting relationships between grown-ups and children in schools can override persistent negative experiences, priming a developing brain to learn and acquire more complex skills.

Expect variability, and embrace it: Our brains do not mature on precisely calibrated schedules, and students throughout the school-age years arrive in classrooms representing a wide spectrum of cognitive, social, and emotional development. Personalization is understanding where each student is developmentally, and scaffolding a learning experience that begins at their current level.

Integrate practices that explicitly address belonging and safety: We now know that when schools are safe, supportive places that affirm individual identity, create paths for belonging for every student, and intentionally build strong, long-lasting relationships, they open the opportunity for greater intellectual learning because our brains are more responsive and open to learning in safe environments.

Both pedagogical and social strategies can be integrated into classrooms and school systems in ways that are consistent with the emerging science. According to a 2018 study, starting the day off with a simple relationship-building activity-welcoming students at the door-can increase academic engagement by 20 percentage points while decreasing disruptive behavior by 9 percentage points. And at King Middle School in Maine, for example, eighth-grade English language arts teacher Catherine Paul teaches talk moves -short sentence starters such as "I disagree because..."-to build a culture of tolerance and respect while maintaining rigorous academic standards. "I do talk moves because, in order to have a great discussion, everyone has to feel like they're a part of it, and valued," Paul explains. "And when they walk away, they really have bridged a gap with someone that maybe they wouldn't necessarily have talked to, or talked to on that level."

Other strategies from diverse schools representing a broad range of grade levels can be found in our video series on the science of learning and development, How Learning Happens.

What we now understand about human development and learning has come a long way since we began designing schools, and a shift can better align the way we teach with the way students learn. It should be noted, however, that for years great teachers have been doing things in classrooms that embody what the science now confirms. In a nutshell: Relationships matter deeply, learning happens when the brain feels safe and supported, and no child is a lost cause.

"What is so true in the science of human development is that it is an optimistic story," Cantor says. "It tells a story that no matter what a child's starting point is, that development is possible if it is intentionally encouraged in the experiences and relationships that children have."

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Bringing the Science of Learning Into Classrooms

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New research sheds light on the effects that childhood experiences-both good and bad-have on the developing brain. But are schools keeping up? "The 20th-century education system was never designed with the knowledge of the developing brain," says Pamela Cantor, MD, who is part of a cross-disciplinary team of experts studying the science of learning and development.

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_[Shared] Where I Am Instructions (1).pdf

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Entrepreneurship in a Global Context Lookbook Template

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In her beautiful book Radical Presence: Teaching as a Contemplative Practice, Mary Rose O'Reilley writes, "Hospitality defines a space for a visitor-the student-to be herself, because she is received graciously.... Hospitality calls me to consider the singularity of each person... to try [to receive each student] with unconditional presence." O'Reilley describes a way of teaching that is both practical and personal, grounded in preparedness and presence.

I've taught in both traditional and nontraditional settings for nine years. However, only recently have I begun to understand hospitality as part of that work. When I started to reframe teaching as the work of welcoming, of stewarding a space, of receiving my students with unconditional presence, my classroom and my students' learning changed.

Incorporating the Practice of Hospitality in the Classroom

There's a sign on my classroom door that reads: "We value your class, color, gender, and orientation. This is a safe space." The sign indicates that I care about the story each student brings to the classroom; however, the building of class culture is what carries through on that promise of safety. My effort to cultivate an inclusive classroom culture has three components.

1. Assign seats-and switch them around: Like a host at a formal gathering, I make a place for each student. I assign seats daily. I consider the social dynamic of the classroom and prepare a space for my students to work with different people and to hear different stories.

2. Work with students to build a class conversation contract: Early in the semester, my students do an exercise called the Perfect Conversation. Students rank a number of values-based statements from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." They then pair up, with each pair finding their point of greatest difference and sharing the stories that led them to their answers. While one partner talks, the other listens. When the listening partner is able to accurately summarize the talking partner's points, the listening partner takes their turn to share.

After the exercise, partner groups discuss the experience of listening and being listened to and discuss how we can work as a class community to set guidelines that encourage productive and empathetic discussion. This activity sets the groundwork for my class to create a class conversation contract.

3. Develop rhythms and routines that support the sharing of stories: Prior to working with high school students, I taught elementary and middle school students in schools where each day began with morning meeting. In my current classroom, I've adapted this practice to the needs of high school sophomores and juniors.

We begin each class period with a question, usually related to the content of class that day. When students feel ready to answer aloud, they gather in a circle at the front of our classroom. I have a ball, and I toss it to the first person who's ready to share; after that person has shared, they toss the ball to someone else. This routine of sharing ideas and stories, as well as gathering in a circle and sharing a physical connection with each other-through the tossing and catching of the ball-creates community, fostering a welcoming and supportive classroom culture.

Building Inclusive Curriculum

In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer writes, "Hospitality in the classroom requires that we not only treat our students with civility and compassion but that we also invite our students and their insights into the conversation. The good host is not merely polite to the guest, the good host assumes the guest has stories to tell."

Part of hospitality is honoring what students bring to the classroom, while also inviting them into a new experience. This aspect of hospitality also has three parts.

1. Rethink participation: Limiting contributions in class discussions to those students confident enough to raise their hands would limit my capacity to welcome everyone's voice into the conversation. During a given class period, we might do a chalk talk, journal, draw, hold a Harkness discussion, or engage in serial testimony, all in an effort to let every voice be heard.

2. Provide both mirrors and windows: The readings, art, and videos used in class should include both mirrors and windows for students: Mirrors allow them to see themselves in the class content, and windows give them the opportunity to understand the perspective of another. I incorporate a diversity of races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and physical abilities in the authors, artists, and speakers whose work I assign.

3. Share space in class conversations: I work not to prioritize my voice over the voices of my students through established rhythms and routines-for example, I ring a chime rather than raise my voice above my students' voices when I need to interrupt conversations and bring us back together as a group. I also work on this through the way I structure lessons.

Because I'm the teacher, my voice is often privileged over the voices of students. By sharing space in the conversation, stepping back from my own place of power into a space of humility and hospitality, I not only demonstrate generosity and justice but also learn from my students and hear their stories, empowering them to do the same for each other both inside and outside the classroom.

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In her beautiful book Radical Presence: Teaching as a Contemplative Practice, Mary Rose O'Reilley writes, "Hospitality defines a space for a visitor-the student-to be herself, because she is received graciously.... Hospitality calls me to consider the singularity of each person... to try [to receive each student] with unconditional presence."

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GOA Designing for Relationships - First Week

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Culturally Responsive Teaching in Today’s Classrooms

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Valentina Gonzalez offers a number of recommendations to ensure a culturally responsive classroom and respecting each student’s unique culture.

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Hey, Junior Psychs! Please complete the attached form so I can have the most up to date information on your situations.

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Wednesday Update - Designing for Online Learning: Relationships

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norms chart shared by a participant in the course

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Giving their classmates feedback on writing is a complex skill for students to master, but it can be taught with scaffolded modeling.

Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock Photo

When I first share with my ninth graders that peer review will be part of our writing process, the response is almost universally negative. Unfortunately, many of my writers have not had the best experience with this activity.

My stronger writers say that they almost never receive feedback that goes beyond basic conventions, while my emerging writers say they feel a lack of confidence in providing feedback beyond basic conventions. This frustration should be no surprise: As educators, we recognize that effective teaching is a complex skill that requires deliberate practice. Likewise, when we ask students to give each other feedback, this too is more complex than simply exchanging papers and locating errors.

To make peer feedback more focused and meaningful, I've found it helpful to define quality feedback, provide structured routines, and teach feedback as I would any other core skill.

Defining Effective Feedback

In my experience, few high school freshmen have mastered the conventions of writing well enough to function as reliable editors. For this reason, I direct my students to reflect upon each other's work-not correct it.

This is confusing because I cannot follow your topic.

I am confused about who "they" are in this sentence.

Explain a little more about why you chose this example from the text.

I like how you repeated key words from your hook here in your conclusion.

My students focus on idea development, clarity, and arrangement to make sense of the writer's text. Of course, scrambled grammar can impact a reader's experience, but rather than have them try to correct a peer's confounding syntax with editing marks, I ask students to write full sentences to one another:

Specific: Comments are linked to a discrete word, phrase, or sentence.

Prescriptive: Like a medical prescription that aims to solve an ailment, prescriptive feedback offers a solution or strategy to improve the work, including possible revisions or links to helpful resources or examples.

Actionable: When the feedback is read, it leaves the peer knowing what steps to take for improvement.

Referenced: The feedback directly references the task criteria, requirements, or target skills.

Kind: It's mandatory that all comments be framed in a kind, supportive way.

I also offer kids a specific acronym to remember what constitutes quality feedback: SPARK. For feedback to be useful to a writer, it should meet as many of these criteria as possible:

Some groups I've taught took to SPARK quickly, while others have needed more practice. For these groups, I create student-friendly versions of a consultancy protocol or tuning protocol to ensure focused discourse, allowing room for all voices.

I also set a guideline for a minimum number of quality comments, but I tell students that less is often more.

Modeling SPARK Feedback

As with any other skill I teach, I begin by modeling SPARK feedback on sample student writing. I interact with students, explaining my thought process as they help pinpoint what about a text is effective or ineffective, as well as how to offer quality SPARK-based comments. From there, as a class we examine other example feedback statements before evaluating their potential usefulness to a writer.

To also give students the chance to practice giving feedback independently, I distribute the same example paragraph. We use group and class discussions to share the variety of feedback offered.

When it's time for live peer review, I assess performance by giving students feedback on their feedback. After that, students share particularly useful examples. Before students leave class, they share on exit tickets what they feel was the best feedback they offered, as well as the best feedback they received.

In the end, good peer review should provide the writer with meaningful information for improvement, while developing the reviewer's ability to analyze a text's effectiveness.

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Giving their classmates feedback on writing is a complex skill for students to master, but it can be taught with scaffolded modeling.

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Adam Lavallee is a math and economics teacher at The Episcopal Academy. He is also a GOA teacher and Learning Design Coach.

When I talk about online learning with mathematics teachers of core courses (Algebra 2, Precalculus, etc.) the most frequent question I get is: What is a model of a successful online learning space for my course? The truth is, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution: each school is different, each teacher is different, and each student is different. We must design our math courses by leaning into best online learning practices, which are not discipline-specific but rather a menu of pedagogical strategies.

Rather than simply show one model, which would only serve to create imitator courses and stifle innovation, I've developed a list of six shifts for teachers, with math teachers specifically in mind. I've gathered some examples from teachers who participated in GOA's Designing for Online Learning course and Design Bootcamp to help illustrate these ideas.

These shifts consider a transition from a traditional math classroom to an engaging online course with a robust community of learners that allows for student choice, timely feedback, content coverage, and student mastery. While I focus on math courses here, all teachers will find applications relevant to their own classes and curricula.

1. Content

Shift: Examine each component of your course content to determine which content is essential and whether students should master it, explore it, or be exposed to it. Then, choose to allot time (both teacher time and student time) as appropriate,. If the goal is for lasting understanding, spend more time. If the goal is mechanical fluency (i.e. factoring) then make that public, drill, revise, and revisit.

Mathematics curriculum is packed full of content. Because content is traditionally spiraled, teachers (and departments and schools) must be intentional about which content needs significant time for students to learn, understand, and master. Other content can be eliminated or limited to observation or exposure.

Consider this approach to Algebra 2, which could serve as a framework for discussing content with colleagues:

The fantastic Larson Algebra 2 textbook contains four sections in chapter 3 devoted to matrices (and applying Cramer's rule to solve systems). From my perspective, this is a piece of content that is non-essential. This method for solving a system of equations does not do matrices justice. Matrices can do so much and deserve a course of their own (see Linear Algebra). Thus, barely scratching the surface with a mechanical- or calculator- process does not do this content justice. I would eliminate this content from my course in order to focus on content students will need to master to move to precalculus.

In the same course, a piece of content that I want students to observe, but not do (I don't even have them take notes) is using completing the square to derive the quadratic equation. I will record this derivation in an EdPuzzle, ask students a few questions for accountability, and move on.

Logarithms is a concept I want students to have exposure to and practice with, so that they can work for greater understanding in a subsequent course. I will not have a summative assessment, but will ask students to master a few fundamental concepts (i.e. logarithms are inverses of exponential functions, are used to convert between exponential and logarithmic form, and are used to solve exponential equations).

A component that is essential to Algebra 2 is functions. After carving out space and time on the first three bullet points, I can ask students to spend more time mastering and reflecting on functions. I can try to assess for understanding in multiple applications, and most importantly, I can allot synchronous time to helping students work toward competency.

2. Content Delivery

Shift: Move content delivery to asynchronous, online, and on demand videos for students. Then, use synchronous time (in small groups if possible) to work through example problems, extending problems, and misconceptions. The key strategy is a structure where students know their objectives, and they have the ability to check for their own understanding along the way.
Example:
The following post from GOA's Design Bootcamp by participant Emina Alibegović ( Rowland Hall) gives a sense of possibilities within a math classroom:

"I think that delivery via video is one of the ways to present ideas that students can't necessarily discover on their own. If you choose to 'deliver' the material through video, the issue is that you don't know what the students gained from it, what questions they still have, and what they actually understand. Edpuzzle is a really good tool that allows you to:

Ask questions of students during the video presentations.

Provide notes you may want the students to have, or maybe remark on something that is important in the video that you want to emphasize.

Allow them to ask a question of you and for you to respond."

Another tool for mathematics classroom is Geogebra. You can make experiences in which you embed activities and follow it up with questions such as the one I list below. You can have a conversation with your students. Here's an example.

Students could then submit the entire problem set to a public discussion board. Many discussion boards allow students to only see replies once they have submitted a response (for example, here's how to do it in Canvas LMS). If the first "response" they see is a completed solution set, then they can check their own work and that can be the assignment that is graded. Assess students not on their first draft of homework or their final product, but on their revisions and reflections. Let them see the final solutions, then focus on, assess, and incentivize the revision process.

4. Feedback

Shift: Use automation to give instantaneous feedback to students. Broadcast feedback to address the whole class (this is an aspect that transfers particularly well from face-to-face to online). Allow students to submit work, then see the solution set (as in a discussion board with responses hidden until submitted). Require students to self-assess. Make the self-assessment an assignment and learning outcome of its own. Let students provide support for each other. They can become experts at a certain problem or type of problem and create tutorials both to grow and help others.
Example:
In the Design Bootcamp, Scott Britton ( Woodstock School) created an EdPuzzle video with embedded questions. While this example is for a chemistry class, the opportunity for two-way asynchronous feedback is relevant to math teachers. First, as students progressed through the video, they answered questions and were able to have a sense of their understanding. Then, the teacher is able to see student responses both individually and in aggregate to gauge next steps. Students can then be grouped by accuracy, or a synchronous session could be designed to incorporate questions on which the class struggled. For an explanation of EdPuzzle, see this overview I made.

5. Interaction

Shift: On a video call, it's much harder for a student to ask a question or lean to a classmate to make sure they are on the right track. It's much harder for a teacher to "walk by" and connect with students doing individual practice. Teachers need to intentionally design for interaction in online formats and create structures that empower student voices in online and hybrid classrooms like those outlined in this GOA Relationships by Design Playlist.

Below are two contributions from math teachers.
Example 1:
Marianne van Brummelen ( The Masters School) shared in a recent GOA Design Bootcamp a video loaded with practical examples of relationships, agency, and feedback. Most importantly, students are interacting with each other and interacting with math.

3. Homework

Shift: Eliminate "homework," and just call it learning. Students need practice. We need to incentivize authentic practice, so students take that work seriously. So, let's take a page from our writing colleagues and treat homework as a first draft and "assess" the revision process. Then, there is no need to give students points just for completing their homework.
Example:
Student work does not have to be linear or in lock step. GOA teachers Jim Wysocki ( Catlin Gabel School) and Andy Talmadge ( Metairie Park Country Day School) share this flexible timeline here:

Six Shifts for Math Teachers Moving Online

And while students complete work, problems can be grouped to clarify expectations for students. Consider how math teacher Avery Pickford reframes categorizing problems in this tweet:

Online Interactions in Math

Marianne van Brummelen

Example 2:
Rebecca Swanson ( American Community School, Abu Dhabi), a participant in GOA's Designing for Online Learning course, shared her approach:

"I assigned each student a focus problem once a week. Their job was to create a video explaining the problem as though we were in class and their partner didn't understand and I was unavailable to help. These were formative assessments, but if I heard something I didn't like, I was able to arrange a tutorial session with that student to clarify. The added benefit is that there were video explanations for loads of the practice problems, so students who were stuck had an additional resource for support. The first couple of weeks of doing this, I recorded my own example videos, too, just to give them a better idea of what I was looking for. They were a big hit."

6. Assessment

The online environment supports a diverse set of assessment strategies. I prefer a three-fold approach to summative assessment in an online math classroom.

Example:

Automate some assessment. Thoughtful multiple choice problems like the following assess student conceptual understanding. Create 20 and have an assessment that randomly chooses 10 for students to complete in 15 minutes.

Use student oral exams to have students walk through a solution to a multi-stepped problem. These can last 5-10 minutes and teachers can ask questions and provide support when needed. This allows students to describe their thinking and conceptual understanding.

Use Capstone Projects. Let students demonstrate their understanding with choice. Each unit can conclude with students exploring an authentic application of their choosing. Topics can include regression, parabolic motion, and optimization.

Shifting to online teaching can feel overwhelming. It's important to consider these shifts carefully and focus on the work most relevant to your students and your context. Then, incorporate more and more shifts over time. As with any new skill, mastery of online teaching requires practice, time, and patience.
GOA has several opportunities for educators to develop their online teaching and design skills. Explore our educator courses and programs. For more articles and resources on using online spaces in teaching and leadership, visit our COVID-19 hub.

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Six Shifts for Math Teachers Moving Online

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Adam Lavallee is a math and economics teacher at The Episcopal Academy. He is also a GOA teacher and Learning Design Coach. When I talk about online learning with mathematics teachers of core courses (Algebra 2, Precalculus, etc.) the most frequent question I get is: What is a model of a successful online learning space for my course?

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Sponsored by Pear Deck and Participate

As a middle school English teacher, I incorporated plenty of group work into my instruction. I did it for a number of reasons. Sometimes it was because a task seemed like a natural fit for cooperative learning, like days when I wanted students to brainstorm ideas together. Other times it was just to mix things up and do something different. And then there was the "fewer grades" principle: If I had 120 students and I gave an assignment to groups of four, that meant I would only have to grade 30 final products, rather than 120.

It didn't always go well, though.

Student contributions were uneven. Some groups were better at staying on task than others. A lot of time got wasted. Personalities conflicted. Absences created logistical headaches. Not only did I observe these problems as a teacher, I had also experienced them plenty of times as a participant in group projects. I was the classic "just let me do it all" person: Sensing early on in most situations that other group members weren't going to add much value, I ended up taking on most of the work myself.

Despite it all, I never quite gave up on cooperative learning as a teacher. Not only did I believe in its inherent value-that as humans, we need regular practice in working together on things-but I knew that research said it was a good thing. At least, I was pretty sure it did.

As I talk with teachers about this, I'm finding that my experiences have been fairly typical: Many of us want to use cooperative learning in our classrooms, but we wish we could get it to work better. So I went in search of answers by taking a look at the research and asking for help in this tweet and this one.

And now I have the answers to two questions.

First, Is cooperative learning worth it? What does the research say? Beyond academic research, are there philosophical, "human" reasons we should keep taking it on?

Second, How do we solve some of the most common problems with cooperative learning? After seeking input from scores of teachers and mining my own experiences, I've settled on a list of four of the most pressing issues with cooperative learning. For each one, I'll share some of the most effective solutions coming from practicing classroom teachers and organizations that have developed formal systems for collaborative work.

Let's begin.

Is Cooperative Learning Worth It?

If most of the cooperative learning we implement only gives us lukewarm results, it makes sense to ask if we should even bother. Why not just have students work alone all the time?

What the Research Says

I'm going to keep this brief: Rather than dig through piles of studies on cooperative learning, I found one big overview of decades of research that has been done on the subject (Gillies, 2016).

Here's the big takeaway: In general, when students work together, they make greater academic and social gains than when they compete against one another or when they work individually. But merely putting students into groups is not enough to realize these gains. To be effective, cooperative work needs to be structured so that it embodies five key components:

positive interdependence: Group members must work together to achieve a common goal.

individual accountability: Each member is responsible for doing his or her part.

promotive interaction: Group members help, support, and encourage each other.

effective interpersonal skills: Students are taught how to communicate, solve problems, and resolve conflict effectively.

group processing: Groups are given time to reflect on how well their group functioned and to make plans for improvement.

Beyond Research: Why Cooperative Learning Matters in the 21st Century

Apart from the academic and social gains cooperative learning has offered for generations, we now find ourselves in an era where it may be more essential than ever before.

For one thing, it gives students practice in the kind of skills that are becoming more desirable in the workplace. P21's Framework for 21st Century Learning includes collaboration as one of its essential skills. As manufacturing is automated and information can be obtained with a few clicks, higher-level skills like communication, creativity, and collaboration are more valued-these are skills computers can't really replicate. The work of human beings is going to involve more and more of those kinds of skills in professional spaces, higher education, and community life.

On a deeper level, we need cooperative learning because technology is really starting to limit our face-to-face communication. Even when we're in school together, we are on devices so much of the time. This can be wonderful and efficient, and it offers so many more opportunities to expose ourselves to new ideas, but it is stunting our ability to have regular conversations and robbing us of all the gifts that come with those interactions. Giving students regular opportunities to share physical space and actually talk through complex problems is a gift they may not get anywhere else, so yes, it's worth it.

Four Common Problems with Cooperative Learning

Problem 1: Student contributions are uneven; sometimes vastly uneven.

It came as no surprise to me that this was the most frequently mentioned drawback teachers experience with cooperative learning. This problem shows up in different ways: The academically strong students end up doing all the work, while others slack off or give up because they can't find a way in. Or maybe students contribute an equal amount, but they don't actually work together; instead, they just divide up the work, then copy off each other's papers.

Unfortunately, many teachers assume this problem is caused by students not wanting to work together, but I think it often comes down to two larger issues: First, students haven't been taught collaborative skills. And second, the task has not been structured for true collaboration.

Solving this problem is not simple or one-dimensional. It will most likely require several different approaches: explicitly teaching collaborative skills, using some type of structure so that roles and procedures are more clearly defined, and setting norms and expectations ahead of time.

Explicitly teach collaborative skills.
If students are going to do good collaborative work, they need to be explicitly taught collaborative skills.

Teach these skills in the same way that you'd teach academic material. Do role-plays, model the behavior you want to see, do demonstrations of what not to do. If needed, re-teach the skills throughout the year. Do not assume students have already been taught how to collaborate or that they should know better. Chances are very good that neither of these are true.

Train students on collaborative skills by working on shorter, easier projects at first, then have students reflect on how well they collaborated. Only have them tackle a bigger project after they have mastered the collaboration skills.

If you're going to teach collaborative skills, you need to identify what the skills are. One great set of resources comes from PBLWorks, where you can download rubrics for assessing collaborative work. Whether you use the rubrics to actually perform assessment or not, they can help you identify the skills needed for effective collaboration.

Use cooperative structures.
In my own classroom, I rarely did anything to actually structure group work. I was barely aware that formal structures existed for this type of thing. Since then I have learned that quite a few of these have been developed to provide a framework for collaborative tasks. To implement most of these well, some training or professional development will likely be necessary. Some of the structures that were recommended by teachers are listed here:

Team-Based Learning
Learn More
Popular in medical schools but applicable for K-12, this method groups students into heterogeneous teams that stay the same over the course of a whole semester. It includes steps that ensure each team member has prepared ahead of group work with pre-reading and other tasks, and has built-in structures for individual accountability. Team-Based Learning seems to be most appropriate for courses where students are expected to demonstrate learning of and think critically about a large body of content.

Agile Project Management
Learn More
This approach to managing large, complex projects comes from the world of software development. It breaks large projects into shorter cycles, where parts of the project are developed and then assessed for quality so the team can make changes as they go. Two of Agile's most well-known formats are Kanban and Scrum, which is now available in a version made specifically for schools called eduScrum. Agile seems most appropriate for project-driven courses, where students need to come up with creative solutions to problems, rather than courses driven more by knowledge acquisition.

POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning)
Learn More
This structure is most often used in science courses, but can be done in other content areas as well. In assigned, self-managed teams, students are given specific roles to carry out as they work through an activity designed to deepen their understanding of the content. Just like with Team-Based Learning, this seems to be best suited for courses that are more content-driven than those that focus on individual creativity or skills.

Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures
Learn More
Dr. Spencer Kagan's work on cooperative learning has been a teacher go-to for decades, giving us structures like Quiz-Quiz-Trade and Numbered Heads Together. The company offers professional development and lots of other resources, but probably the best (and most affordable) place to start would be with their book, Kagan Cooperative Learning, which provides a full overview of the structures and how they work. These are appropriate for all content areas and grade levels, but the artwork of the site and book suggests they are geared more toward grades K-8.

Solve in Time
Learn More
This structure was created to help teams solve problems with a design thinking approach. Students work through steps of clearly defining a problem, researching and understanding it, coming up with a solution, then sharing it.

Jigsaw
Learn More
This strategy isn't necessarily designed for projects, but rather for having students learn a discrete body of information together. Each group member is tasked with learning a chunk of the material, then teaching it to the rest of the group.

Establish norms and expectations ahead of time.
Rather than solve problems only when they come up, many teachers have students create group contracts before starting work. Developed with input from all group members, contracts outline members' expectations and describe how students will respond when problems arise. These resources can help you get started with developing contracts:

Problem 2: Interpersonal conflicts interfere with productivity.

Sometimes students just can't get along well enough to work together. These conflicts sometimes exist prior to a group's formation; students may have a history with one another that has nothing to do with your class. Personal problems can also arise after group work starts, as students discover personality traits that create irritation or conflict.

These kinds of conflicts should not be treated lightly. When students don't feel socially or emotionally comfortable with other group members, they won't be willing to take the kinds of risks that are necessary for learning. In a 2-year study, Google interviewed hundreds of its employees to determine what qualities made some teams more successful than others. They identified 5 key traits, and the one they said was most important was psychological safety. Similarly, a 2017 University of Washington study reported that students who "felt more comfortable" in their group showed a 27% increase in content mastery over those who did not (Theobald, Eddy, Grunspan, Wiggins, & Crowe, 2017).

Here are some ways teachers have optimized interpersonal dynamics in groups:

Start with team-building. For teams that will stay together for more than a class period, it's worth it to delay the academic work at first and focus on building the team relationship. One way to do this is through team-building games and activities. The website Playmeo has lots of these you can try.

Survey students ahead of time. Before creating groups, have students complete a form indicating which classmates they would prefer to work with and if there are any they would rather not. Recognize that for some students, the reasons for not wanting to work together could run deep with painful memories; do not dismiss preferences as students "just wanting to work with their friends."

Survey students during group work. Some teachers have students complete daily reflection sheets where they indicate how well they felt their group worked together that day. These can help you detect problems early on so they can be addressed right away.

Work with students to problem-solve. In some cases, rearranging groups or allowing some students to work independently may be the most logical solution. But at other times, the teacher can work with students who struggle in groups to develop better social and collaborative skills.

Elementary teacher Erin Gannon used some of the above solutions with a student whose dominant personality and poor impulse control made others ask to not be grouped with her. Gannon worked with the student one on one to practice strategies for giving others more opportunity to lead. She also talked privately with the other group members.

"We ALL came up with a plan together for what would happen if she started to 'feel prickly,'" Gannon says. "(The student) wasn't perfect but they genuinely cheered her on when she had good days. It took a lot of work but I would have devoted the same attention to an academic need. She was an excellent student, very sweet, with great leadership abilities, but that trouble working with others could really have hurt her down the road. I think my other students really needed to better understand the situation and not just shun her. If students are working in teams there should be a sense that we are all responsible for each other's success. Empowering them to be part of the solution is pretty powerful."

Problem 3: Off-task behavior wastes time.

Whether it's excessive talking, inappropriate device use, or general fooling around, a lot of cooperative time can be wasted when students just aren't doing the work they're supposed to be doing. Here are some ways to tackle this problem:

Do check-ins. Establish specific tasks or benchmarks that groups need to complete and show you when they're done. Breaking the larger project into smaller tasks not only keeps everyone moving, it can also tell you which groups are starting to fall behind the others. These check-ins can be required for individuals or for whole groups. Some teachers assign points or grades for these to add extra incentive.

Use a timer. Several teachers said that setting a timer for the completion of certain tasks helped keep groups on track.

Look at the assignment. Students may have trouble focusing on the task because it doesn't really engage them. Maybe it's not personally meaningful to them, maybe it's too easy, maybe it's too confusing. Any of these shortcomings can make it much more difficult for students to stay on task, and no matter how many checks you put in place, if it's an uninspired or poorly designed assignment you'll be fighting an uphill battle.

Problem 4: Student absences can throw everything off.

Ideally, all group members will be present for the whole lifespan of a project. But things happen, and the longer the project, the more likely you are to have absent students. One missed day is usually not a big deal, but if a student misses multiple work days when the group should be actively collaborating, it becomes much harder for that person to make an equal contribution. Here are some ways teachers have found to work around this issue:
Plan ahead.

Design projects where some components require all group members' participation, but others are done by individuals and might even be considered "like to have" rather than "must have." That way if one person is unable to do their part, that part can just be dropped without impacting the whole project.

Make sure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined ahead of time for each student so that the "work" doesn't just get pushed around randomly. If a student is absent for a few days, it's clear what they need to do to catch up, and if they are unable to do it, the other group members can decide who takes on their tasks.

If students set goals together and include contingencies for absences in a group contract, then there will already be an agreed-upon plan to put into action.

Leverage technology.

Have students use a platform like a shared Google Drive or a HyperDoc for keeping all project materials in one cloud-accessible place. As long as the absentee has home internet access and is well enough to work, he or she can keep at it from home.

Some teachers allow groups to use Skype, Facetime, or Google Hangouts to video chat with the missing group member during regular class time.

If live video chat isn't an option, students could still document their meeting with video and share that with the absent student later.

Course correct.
If a student's absence lasts long enough to impact the group and the above solutions aren't working, the teacher may redistribute the workload among remaining members, remove the student from the group, and give that student an individual assignment to replace the group task. If you spell this out in the contract and/or rubric ahead of time, the process should be fairly straightforward.

A Few More Tips

Don't send work home. Because home environments vary so greatly and students have different access to materials, transportation, etc., it's best to keep all collaborative work in the classroom. Moreover, expecting students to meet outside of class time, especially if they are younger and don't have their own transportation, will automatically create problems within groups and from group to group.

Keep groups to 3-4 students. This seems to be the general consensus from expert readings to talking with individual teachers. Once a group gets larger than 4 it becomes easier for students to slip through the cracks.

Check out collaborative tech. While many schools are already using Google's collaborative tools, other tools have collaboration features that you may not be aware of. Some are built specifically for collaboration and project management, like Trello, Asana, Kanbanchi, and Slack. Other tools like Wakelet for curation and Canva for graphic design allow students to collaborate on projects from anywhere they have internet access.

The bottom line is this: If cooperative learning hasn't really worked for you in the past, don't lose hope. There are so many people out there who have come up with fantastic ways to get it right, so pick yourself and your students back up, try some of the stuff we've covered here, and see if you can make it better next time.

References:

Gillies, R. M. (2016). Cooperative learning: Review of research and practice. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 41(3). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2902&context=ajte

Theobald, E.J., Eddy, S.L., Grunspan, D.Z., Wiggins, B.L., & Crowe, A.J. (2017). Student perception of group dynamics predicts individual performance: Comfort and equity matter. PLOS One, 12(7): e0181336. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181336

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Solutions for four of the most common problems with collaboration.

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Template for using Google slides for student work & feedback

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Designing for student voice & student feedback. Template at https://bit.ly/2BGx4da

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PZ’s Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The problem wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class discussion looked like. They didn't know any other "formats." I have only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently asking for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand alone. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: A statement that has two possible responses-agree or disagree-is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise-recording their ideas and arranging them into categories- without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: One variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circle to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "coach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape-specific activities you do with students-the strategies in this section are more like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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Protocols By Tag | New Protocols | Spanish Protocols | Portuguese Protocols | Protocols For Youth Engagement

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Online learning is now a permanent part of school life.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to move online quickly, with little preparation. As weeks and months passed, two things became clear: 1) an "emergency" approach to online learning was not sustainable or advisable and 2) schools needed clarity and guidance in defining and designing for high-quality online learning.

The issue of quality is an important one. After several months of doing their best in a crisis, schools now face higher expectations from students, their families, and teachers about how to design, deliver, and support online learning. Defining what online learning should look like in terms of core elements like relationships, rigor, assessment, and the roles of students and teachers is the first step in ensuring learners have the best, most meaningful experience possible.

To support schools in getting clear on how to define and assess high-quality online learning, GOA has created five norms and five rubrics. We created these resources to set a clear standard for assessing online learning experiences and to provide educators and school leaders concrete, actionable ideas and strategies. At the core, the norms and rubrics should drive 1) decisions about online curriculum and instruction 2) educator self-assessment and coaching conversations on online learning design and 3) thoughtful and intentional use of technology to support student learning outcomes. We have already created a program for educators based on these norms and rubrics, GOA's Design Bootcamp, and we will continue to flesh out these guidelines with new offerings and resources in the coming months.

Defining High-Quality Online Learning

Let's begin with GOA's definition of high-quality online learning: It is an intentional, learner-centered blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning that offers students the chance to connect with teacher and peers, to do their best work as defined by learning goals, and to be active participants in the learning process.

GOA's learner-centered approach comes from what we know from research and what we know from a decade of data and feedback: empowering students to do cognitively complex work that matters to them in a relationships-based environment is the key to learning and to engagement.

Five Norms for High-Quality Online Learning

Designing for online learning begins with understanding and adopting five norms. These norms should inform all of our work as educators whether we are planning, building, or facilitating online learning experiences. For some, this may require a shift in mindset about why and how we teach. For others, these may be a reflection or an extension of work they already do in person.

These norms highlight a key feature of online learning environments: fast-paced content coverage where students play a primarily passive role simply does not work online. Deep practice of core ideas supported by a trusting, caring community works far better.

Five Educator Competencies for High-Quality Online Learning

How do we translate these norms into skills and strategies for teachers? GOA has articulated five competencies for high-quality online learning and aligned them to concrete outcomes.

These five competencies are:

Know your online infrastructure.

Use online tools to know, support, and empower students.

Design online assessments that lead to high-quality student work.

Design online learning experiences that students can navigate on their own.

Facilitate online learning experiences to support student engagement.

If you remove the word "online" from these competencies, you'll find that these skills translate well to in-person learning environments. This is not a coincidence. Online spaces are merely a platform, they are not pedagogy. What we know to be true about effective teaching remains true online: the particular tools and tactics may change, but the approach and strategies thrive in any learning environment. This point is especially critical now, as many schools consider hybrid or blended scenarios for the coming months.

To support educators designing for online learning, we've created five rubrics, each with five learning outcomes aligned to the competencies. These outcomes are design moves teachers can make to develop their own online learning skills as well as increase student engagement.

We've chosen a single-point rubric format because it supports ongoing communication, reflection, and narrative feedback. In GOA's Design Bootcamp, educators use the rubrics to decide which strategies are most important to their work and their students. The Bootcamp's design challenges are aligned to the rubric's learning outcomes, GOA coaches use the rubrics in conversations with participants, and participants refer to them in their reflections and presentations of learning. They equip all of us with common language to use when discussing online learning.

Most importantly, these norms and rubrics are a way to align school communities around a core set of values, skills, and outcomes for online learning. In schools where students work with multiple educators, learn in multiple classes, or are moving between online and in-person spaces, consistency and clarity are essential.

The way we design spaces, experiences, and expectations reflects our beliefs about learning. Those of us who have worked in brick and mortar schools for years might take this for granted, yet our physical spaces, our schedules, and our rituals and routines all reflect choices we make as a community. The design of online spaces and experiences is no different. How does what we present to students online show them who we are and what we care about?

Ready to use these resources at your school? We've made GOA's Norms and Rubrics for Online Learning available as a free download.
These norms and rubrics form the foundation of our Design Bootcamp, a five-day intensive program for educators. For more information on online learning, explore our COVID-19 landing page and our educator courses.

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Five Norms and Five Rubrics for High-Quality Online Learning

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Online learning is now a permanent part of school life. The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to move online quickly, with little preparation. As weeks and months passed, two things became clear: 1) an "emergency" approach to online learning was not sustainable or advisable and 2) schools needed clarity and guidance in defining and designing for high-quality online learning.

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On any given day in schools across America, many students exchange warm greetings with a smiling teacher, then perhaps move on to a morning check-in, followed by a quick mindfulness exercise to start the day grounded and mentally focused. Surrounded by peers they've known for months, or perhaps even years-and a teacher they see daily-kids feel connected.

In spite of some critics who downplay the importance of social and emotional learning and the value of belonging-the number of such skeptics is falling, to be sure-the research is clear and has been for some time: When kids spend their daytime hours in safe, supportive schools where adults work every day to build strong relationships with every student, they are simply better, more engaged learners.

But how should educators foster that sense of belonging in this new, decentralized world-with teachers and students tethered loosely together via Wi-Fi and cellular networks?

"Right now, it's all about the technology-the mechanics of how to teach remotely. But when I speak to my colleagues who are high school teachers, it's about: 'How are we going to hold our students' hearts?'" says Mays Imad, a professor of pathophysiology and biomedical ethics at Pima Community College.

So we asked dozens of teachers, and peeked in on Instagram and Twitter threads, to find some of the best ideas that teachers are experimenting with to maintain the relationships that drive engagement and learning.

1. Try to Say Hello Frequently, If You Can

Try to make sure your kids know you are thinking of them, care for them, and miss them. For kids with access to technology, simple daily hellos via video might be the only time the student sees the teacher on some days-and that sense of connection is important to sustain.

First- and second-grade teacher John Thomas' masterful, fun hello video to his students is a great example.

For students without internet connectivity, try calling by phone; consider rotating through small groups of students each day to make this a more manageable task. "Taking the time to reach out and call each kid takes forever," says sixth- and eighth-grade English teacher Cathleen Beachboard, but she's seeing a big impact: "The first few days, I had only a few kids logging on, but now I have almost 98 percent attendance," she says.

2. How to Maintain Morning Meetings

Routines that foster connection are a core part of classroom life, and finding ways for students to experience these at home will go a long way toward easing students' transition to home-based learning. "If you do morning meeting, reflect on the elements you have in your meeting and what could be completed virtually at home," writes Thomas. "If technology allows, record and share daily video announcements and read-alouds."

Margaret Shafer, a third-grade teacher, has kids respond to daily prompts during her morning meetings. Kids can see each other's responses and react if they want to. "My relationships with my students are part of my instruction, and their relationships with each other are critical to their enjoyment of school," she says, underscoring the fact that maintaining relationships is not an afterthought. "So when I planned (very quickly!) to start distance learning, the first thing I wanted to start daily was a way to comfort the kids and let them know that I still care about them and their friends are still out there."

3. Reimagine Temperature Checks

Routine, everyday check-ins- roses and thorns or selecting an emoji to match your mood, for example-shouldn't fall by the wayside. Keep it quick and simple: "I posted on Schoology to give me a thumbs up, thumbs sideways (meh), or thumbs down to describe their day.... I encourage them to take selfies of their thumbs," says high school teacher Javier Rivera via Twitter.

Along with checking in with her students herself, Imad is making connecting with peers part of her students' homework: Each student is assigned the task of connecting with one classmate. "Then, I'm asking them to write to me and tell me how, say, Jackie is doing today. They can decide how they want to check in-email, text, Skype," she says, adding that she sets up guidelines and models the practice for her students first. "This exercise might work even better with K-12-'My homework is to check on Allie.'"

4. Try Snail-Mail Pen Pals, Phone Pals, or Virtual Turn and Talk

We learn better in social contexts. For many students, transitioning to learning from home is complicated by the impact of being cut off from peers-even though many older students might communicate with friends via social media and texting.

"If technology doesn't allow, create pen pals or other paper-and-pen activities by sending home envelopes, paper, and stamps if your school is able," says Thomas. "Or mimic 'turn and talk' by setting up phone pals where students call each other on the phone several times a week to discuss specific topics or prompts."

Third-grade teacher Michael Dunlea follows his whole-group instruction via Zoom with breakout rooms so that peers can reflect on the learned material together. Then he seeks deeper connections with students individually: "I keep one student on for a one-on-one conference and ask them to read out loud for a few minutes. This time also provides an opportunity to check on their emotional well-being and see if they need clarification on assignments."

5. Create Virtual Tables (but Don't Just Group Friends)

For older kids, says Kasey Short, an eighth-grade English teacher at Charlotte Country Day School in Charlotte, North Carolina, teachers can set up virtual table groups. Short uses Google Classroom for this because her students are already familiar with the platform. "I will set up discussion threads with four to five students so they can discuss assignments, ask each other questions, and stay connected," she says.

Though many kids will stay in touch with their circle of friends, she says it's important to think about pairing kids with peers who aren't in their immediate social circle-and then mix up the groups weekly. "There will also be spaces for whole class discussions, but I know many students will feel more comfortable sharing ideas in a smaller group setting," she says.

6. Consider Including Parents

Dunlea, the third-grade teacher, asks students to invite a parent online, giving the adults an opportunity to ask questions, express concerns, or request advice.

Beachboard, the sixth- and eighth-grade English teacher, connects with parents each day-she uses the messaging platform Remind, or a dedicated Google Voice phone line for parents who don't have text messaging. She also connects with families by email. "I check in with them once a day with a 'How are you?' and 'Do you need anything?'" she says. "It's important at this time, more than any other, that we are looking out for the mental health of our families and students."

7. Get Kids to Name-and Process-Their Own Emotions

Writing assignments, says Short, the English teacher, offer valuable opportunities for students to process the complex mix of emotions they may be experiencing as a result of their upended routines and schedules, social isolation, and the challenges of being cooped up at home.

"I am going to use some writing opportunities for students to get their thoughts, feelings, fears, and questions down in a creative format of their choice," she says. "I will give them an option to share with the class, or only share with me. This will not only allow them to share out their feelings but also give me a place to check on them and follow up if I see any of them expressing sadness, fear, etc., that their parents may need to know about."

Most important, says Short, "I am going to be honest and as understanding as possible to let students know we are all in this together and will likely all need a little grace."

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7 Ways to Maintain Relationships During Your School Closure

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Suddenly, you're not in the same physical space as your students. We asked teachers to share strategies for maintaining relationships-both peer-to-peer and student-teacher-when everything's gone remote.

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The ISTE Student Standards guide educators toward student-driven learning practices that prepare students to thrive in an evolving technological landscape.

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Student-teacher discussions are a centerpiece of any learning experience, regardless of the environment. Seasoned educators are familiar with the basic expectations of in-person discussions, but what happens when conversations move from a classroom to video calls online? How does the new format affect how to design an effective discussion? What's important to remember and communicate to students as you establish expectations that keep everyone feeling connected, safe, and comfortable?

Below are GOA's five tips for making these conversations work for you and your students:

1. Know your goals.

Know why you are meeting on video. Just because most of your discussions in a brick-and-mortar class are synchronous does not mean that you should strive to replicate that same approach online. Video calls, whether one-on-one or in small groups, should be about connection.

As GOA's free course, Designing for Online Learning, recommends, educators should decide in advance which elements of each learning experience will be synchronous (happen in real time) and which will be asynchronous (happen at different times). Asynchronicity allows students time to work at their own pace, to take time to compose ideas, and to express themselves in ways that might not be possible in real time. In addition, asynchronous work allows students to absorb content, prepare assignments, and complete projects offline: it's a way to avoid hours of staring at screens.

The key questions to consider are these:

What types of learning experiences require synchronous connection?

Which synchronous experiences can be turned into asynchronous experiences?

Part of knowing your goals is also choosing the right tool. Start with what you know and what your school will support. In the Designing for Online Learning course, teachers mentioned Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, among others. If your whole school is moving to video, try to use the same tool across teachers and courses. You do not want students to have to master multiple tools just to learn. If you're on your own, find out which tools best support group conversation, have strong and stable technology, are accessible to all students, and are user-friendly.

2. Plan your pre-call and post-call logistics.

Setting up the call is the first step. If a designated time to meet has already been established, send students a calendar invite (with instructions for how to join the call) so they have a calendar notification on their devices as well. If you need to find a mutually available time, save yourself the back-and-forth of email and use a scheduling tool. GOA teachers and staff like Calend.ly and youcanbook.me for setting up one-on-one meetings (some GOA teachers use these tools with campus-based students for booking "extra help") and Whenisgood.net and Doodle for group meetings. If you and your students are in different timezones, make sure to investigate if the tool you use needs you to "enable different time zones."

If there are students who cannot attend a large group call, consider how they can learn from the experience afterwards. Will you record the full call to share with those not in attendance? If your school has a business account with a platform like Zoom, will you share a transcription of the call? Or, will you ask students in attendance to capture and share their key takeaways for others to review?

3. Review your school's communication policies.

You and your students are still in school even if your location for learning has changed.

Now is a good time to review your school's policies on student-teacher communication practices regarding social media, texting, and calling. Assume your school's policies have not changed and check with an administrator if you're unsure. Be aware that there may be gaps in your school's communication policies because distance learning was an unanticipated scenario for your school. For example, if your school has a policy that there are no closed-door private conversations with students on campus, it would be best to ask students to attend video calls in a communal space where others are present.

4. Be intentional about environment and conduct.

Being mindful of one's environment and conduct are key to establishing a comfortable and safe environment. Remind students that, just as we do at school, we aim to bring our best selves to video calls and all online learning environments. All video call participants should be considerate of what their environment is communicating to others.

Before the call, ask students to:

Be punctual and prepared. Keeping on a schedule can be difficult. Do your best to keep track of your meeting times.

Be focused. While it may not always be possible to find a completely quiet place to have your meeting, try to find a place that will be least distracting to you and other attendees.

Be seen and heard. Position yourself near strong wifi, in a front-lit space so everyone can see your face, and stay in one place for the conversation. Movement can compromise your connection with others on the call as well as your wifi!

Be respectful. Wear clothes that adhere to your school's dress code, sit or stand at a table rather than lounging on a couch or bed, find a neutral background, and remember that everything in your camera frame is visible to those in your meeting, so be mindful of what you're communicating.

5. Name it.

Video calls can feel awkward at first. You and your students may be used to using video for calls in social settings, but using video calls in a professional, academic context might be new. Expect that the beginning of the call may feel a bit strange, expect that people will fumble with the audio and video settings the first few calls, expect that your first conversations will include some co-navigating of the features your chosen tool offers (ie. screen sharing, text chats, break-out rooms, etc.). Being a bit vulnerable and naming the fact that everyone is figuring this out together goes a long way in mitigating awkwardness.

Finally, remember that having a video meeting means you've identified connection as a top priority. Take a few minutes at the beginning of the call to check in with students the way you normally do when they trickle into your classroom. Don't underestimate the value of this time to connect; it establishes the tone for the whole conversation and the learning that follows. Most importantly, it's what you've done naturally at school all along. Keeping that routine (whether it was intentionally designed or not) is a comfort for students and aids the goal of maintaining strong relationships. Skipping this step and immediately "getting down to business" can actually undermine your efforts to connect.

Finally, remember that everything you've read here aligns with guidelines you have followed as an educator your entire career. While the format and location for student-teacher discussion may be new, the skills to design and facilitate meaningful, relationship-based conversations are ones you already possess.
How are you approaching video calls? Tell us on Twitter. For more resources on online learning, visit our COVID-19 resource page, where we have collected articles, infographics, and online courses for educators and students related to remote learning.

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Five Tips for Designing Excellent Video Calls

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Student-teacher discussions are a centerpiece of any learning experience, regardless of the environment. Seasoned educators are familiar with the basic expectations of in-person discussions, but what happens when conversations move from a classroom to video calls online? How does the new format affect how to design an effective discussion?

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April 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 7
Deeper Discussions Pages 45-50

Zaretta Hammond

When I taught expository writing as a classroom teacher, I found the fastest path to improving my students' writing was to build their capacity to engage in deep discussions so they were able to work through their thesis or arguments-testing their claims and hearing their peers' perspectives. This pushed them to revise their own thinking. John Hattie's research around academic conversation and discussion confirms what I learned by direct experience: Academic conversation is one of the most powerful practices we can bring to our classrooms to promote higher achievement (Hattie, 2012).

So now, as a consultant, when I go into classrooms as part of an equity audit or as a coach supporting school teams to incorporate more culturally responsive practices, one of the first things I look for is who is doing most of the talking during instruction. As the old adage has it: "Whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning." This notion is supported by the growing evidence from researchers such as Aida Walqui and colleagues and their work with English learners at WestEd (2019), and Ron Ritchhart and his work around the cultures of thinking out of Harvard's Project Zero (2015). This body of research highlights that talking in all its forms- conversing, discussing, debating, and dialoguing -helps increase students' brain power so that they are able to take on more rigorous work and engage in deeper learning down the road.

But to grow students' brain power using academic conversation as a strategy, we need robust talk structures that allow more students to join in the conversation confidently, especially English learners, introverted students, disengaged students, and historically marginalized students. These are all students whose communication styles and funds of knowledge are not typically leveraged in classrooms.

For the most part, schools have limited the range of everyday talk structures and processes in our classrooms. I often see teachers only using turn and talk as a discussion strategy, sometimes alternating it with think, pair, share. These two strategies have become instructional staples. But while useful, they are not sturdy enough for deeper discussions that facilitate deep thinking or what I call "cognitive chewing."

Free-Flowing Structure

In addition to adding more robust discussion practices, we also want to make these practices more culturally responsive by centering them around the principles of youth culture and collectivist practice. I encourage teachers to find talk structures and tools that:

Honor the funds of knowledge each student brings to the conversation.

Give marginalized students greater access to the flow of the discussion.

Give students more agency in directing the conversation.

Give students a more robust cognitive workout by leveraging their everyday modes of communication.

That's why I suggest that a good starting point for facilitating deeper, more equitable discussions is to use structured protocols. Protocols are more than a fancy word for strategies. Made popular in the early 1990's by the Coalition of Essential Schools and promoted by the National School Reform Faculty, discussion protocols are rules or procedures that provide a structure and process so everyone has time to think, talk, and listen.

Protocols are now widely used in adult learning communities and a growing number of classrooms across the country. They come in a variety of formats, from techniques to gather focused feedback on a project or piece of writing before revising-like a tuning protocol-to interactive processes like the gallery walk protocol, in which students build on each other's knowledge about a topic or content to promote higher-order thinking through cooperative learning. The good thing about protocols is that they can be modified to suit multiple purposes and different types of discussions. Despite their variety, they have common features: There is structured turn taking during a discussion, and speaking and listening are usually timed so more students can participate.

The overly structured nature of protocols might seem counterintuitive to the goal of encouraging a free-flowing discussion that welcomes all students. In reality, it is just the opposite. Protocols create ways into the discussion for students typically left out. We often see the same students talking in class, namely those who are comfortable conversing in English, have mainstream background knowledge, or are more extroverted.

Five Steps to Support Protocols

The following five steps will enable you to begin creating the conditions for incorporating protocols into your classroom to increase engagement and access for all students:

1. Offer structures and time for small talk that paves the way for social-emotional safety later in academic conversations. Building a culture of academic conversation begins with building a culture of connection. Creating opportunities for students to talk to each other and get to know each other sets the social-emotional stage for them to engage collaboratively during academic discussions.

Protocols such as dyads can offer a container for a social-emotional grounding to the school day or beginning of the class period. Made popular by math equity educator Julian Weissglass and community organizer Ana Becerra (2004), a dyad is a listening and talking exchange between two people that provides a structure for constructivist listening-a process in which the speaker is listened to for a dedicated amount of time without being interrupted.

For more interactive group protocols try the tea party, which can be used with quotes and images that students help curate, or diversity rounds, which explores personal identity. Both of these protocols provide students a fun but structured way to learn more about each other and build relational trust.

2. Use protocols to shake up inequitable participation patterns during academic discussions. One of the dynamics I often see in classrooms is unequal participation. Even when we use powerful strategies and structures such as Socratic seminars, we see the same students doing much of the talking. This leads to inequitable outcomes for English learners, introverted, or struggling students who don't feel confident enough to actively engage in free-flowing class discussions.

Well-defined protocols can make discussions more egalitarian by providing time for everyone to get practice talking about their ideas about the content. For example, the typical protocol is done in "rounds" with a small group of 3-5 students. Each protocol round has three important steps that foster equitable participation. First, the process begins with 3-5 minutes of uninterrupted time for one person ("the presenter") to talk. When that person is finished, the other members of the discussion group have a set amount of time to reflect on and respond to what the presenter shared. The presenter has a final moment to respond to on the advice given by his partners. Then a new presenter from the group is invited to share his or her thinking and is given the same 3-5 minutes to talk. This process continues until everyone in the group has had time to talk.

Two protocols that should be staples in classrooms are the tuning protocol to help students revise and improve on a piece of student work in preparation for larger group discussions and the text-rendering protocol, which can help students access grade-level text by starting with noticing and naming what is familiar or what sparks one's curiosity in the text.

3. Use the elements of hip-hop culture to modify protocols and make them more responsive to students' interests and knowledge base. Many of our middle and high school students are steeped in hip-hop culture, regardless of racial background or socioeconomic status. Hip-hop has grown up and become mainstream. Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop actually refers to a complex culture organized around the values of social justice, respect, self-worth, community, and having fun.

While maintaining the integrity of the discussion protocols you choose to use, think about ways to include fun as a design principle in classroom discussion. As Chris Emdin (2013) reminds us, much of today's students' schema-the brain's network of knowledge, associations, allusions, references, and connections that give content meaning-is influenced by hip-hop culture. So why not leverage interactive hip-hop structures like the cipher and rap battles to help students access their existing funds of knowledge? These features of hip-hop culture have dialogic qualities that we can use to help students see that they are competent at deep thinking. How to do this? Consider a mash-up of a traditional protocol and one of the hip-hop structures:

Remix the fishbowl protocol as a cipher. The fishbowl protocol has a small number of students seated in an inner circle discussing a topic or text and using specific academic conversation skills the class is practicing, while the remaining students sit around them in an outer circle. The students in the outer circle listen to the discussion and take notes. At a designated point, the students in the inner circle rotate out, join the outer circle, and a new group of students comes into the inner circle. This has a lot in common with a hip-hop practice called cipher, in which a crowd of spectators and onlookers surrounds rappers engaged in "freestyling" as each rapper steps into the cipher to share their rhymes. In a remix or mash-up of these formats, you can introduce a more free-flowing type of fishbowl, building on collectivist, participatory elements common to hip-hop culture. For example, students in the outer circle can more actively engage and comment on what they're hearing from within the fishbowl with finger snaps. Or, you can make movement between the outer circle and inner circle more free flowing by letting students tap each other in.

Use a cipher-style protocol like the kiva to help students focus on "cognitive stitching" as they build on each other's ideas, In a kiva, rather than having an inner and outer circle, four students are positioned in a square, and four more seats are lined up behind each of them so that the pattern resembles a wheel spoke. The four speakers in the square discuss the topic and questions of the lesson. After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation, building on what's been said. The goal is seeing who can take the discussion deeper, make interesting text-based connections, or find real-life connections to academic concepts, depending on the subject area.

Reconfigure the chalk talk protocol as a graffiti tag billboard. Invite students to "tag" the "billboard" using elements of sketchnoting, doodling, collage, and written word to stimulate thinking before a discussion begins or to deepen it afterwards. The idea is to leverage students' comfort with multimodal expression as a way into dialogue, discussion, or debate.

4. Invoke performance elements of spoken word poetry for deeper thinking during discussions. Like hip-hop, spoken word is part of youth culture and flows out of the oral traditions of many indigenous communities and communities of color. Spoken word is a poetic performance art that is word-based, and it can center around either poetry or prose. It looks like fun, but the fluid use of word-play and metaphor makes it serious cognitive work. According to Rick Wormeli (2009), metaphor is a powerful tool for making meaningful connections and demonstrating understanding of complex concepts that changes the structure of our brain, allowing us to do more rigorous thinking as a result. The lyrical nature of spoken word techniques can give in-class discussions energy and flow, which increases engagement.

5. Give students the power to facilitate. Because culturally responsive teaching is about building student agency and brain power, it is important to train students to self-facilitate discussions. Protocols offer the needed structure and procedural "wireframe" to get them started.

Teach them to "hand off" the conversation to each other rather than have it always flow through the teacher.

Pick an MC for the discussion. In street parlance, MC stands for the "master of ceremonies." In hip-hop culture, when a number of rappers have gathered for a performance, the MC manages the energy of the crowd and the flow of the set. Help students channel their inner MC as facilitators in protocols. They need to focus not just on the procedural aspects, but also on the social-emotional climate of the discussion or debate to ensure norms are being following and a positive vibe is maintained.

Making It Work

Incorporating protocols into your classroom routines takes some planning and guided facilitation to build all students' capacity to engage in powerful discussions that lead to deeper learning. Here are a few additional tips to keep in mind:

Rethink how you use time. Discussions that go beyond the surface of a turn and talk take time. Do a time audit. How are you currently using instructional minutes? Maybe two to three days out of the week you can combine guided practice time and independent work time to make more room for academic conversations using protocols.

Be patient. Remember the rule of the first pancake. Recognize that, like the first pancake, deep discussions are going to be a bit messy in the beginning. But after making some adjustments, the pancakes will come off the griddle round and ready to eat. Similarly, over time students get used to using protocols to take their discussions deeper. This is where the design thinking principles of prototyping and iterating are important.

Teach the value of code switching. You need to have norms in place to effectively implement protocols. But resist the urge to police students' use of language, like slang, non-mainstream English like African American Vernacular English, pidgin, or creole dialects like "Spanglish."

Let students talk in the language most comfortable for thinking. Be aware of the number of different languages and dialects spoken in your classroom. As a culturally responsive educator, find ways to leverage this linguistic diversity. Early in the school year, talk with students about the positive connection between discussion, thinking, and their home languages. In addition, teach them to "code switch" across registers. A register is defined as the level of formality in language that's determined by the context in which it is spoken or written. We have three common registers-a social or community register, a "business" register, and a more formal "academic" register.

There is a big difference between moving back and forth across registers (code switching) and having to abandon one's language assets. This isn't about modulating. Rather, it is a matter of "both/and". Students should not feel like they have to abandon their home and community language when they come to school. It is actually one of their assets.

On Equal Footing

Protocols can be a powerful equity tool. Leveraging protocols in our classroom can ensure equal participation in discussions that grow understanding and brain power for all students, as well as help them access their funds of knowledge, using practices from youth culture to ignite engagement.

References

Becerra, A., & Weissglass, J. (2004). Take it up: Leading for educational equity. Santa Barbara, CA: National Coalition for Equity in Education.

Emdin, C. (2013). Pursuing the pedagogical potential of the pillars of hip-hop through sciencemindedness. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 4(3), 83-99.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. (2016). Visible learning for literacy: Implementing the practices that work best to accelerate student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers. London: Routledge.

Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating cultures of thinking: The eight forces we must master to truly transform our schools. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Walqui, A., Bunch, G., et al (Eds.). (2019). Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners (Language and Literacy Series). San Francisco, CA: WestEd.

Wormeli, R. (2009). Metaphors & analogies: Power tools for teaching any subject. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Zaretta Hammond is a national education consultant who advises school districts and nonprofit organizations across the United States on issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive instruction. She is a former high school and community college writing instructor and the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (Corwin, 2014). Follow her on Twitter.

KEYWORDS

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April 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 7 Deeper Discussions Pages 45-50 Zaretta Hammond When I taught expository writing as a classroom teacher, I found the fastest path to improving my students' writing was to build their capacity to engage in deep discussions so they were able to work through their thesis or arguments-testing their claims and hearing their peers' perspectives.

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This is an excerpt from the book Project Based Teaching by Suzie Boss, with John Larmer (ASCD/Buck Institute 2018), chapter 1, on the Project Based Teaching Practice "Build the Culture."
Protocols and routines are commonplace in education-and for good reason. Familiar procedures increase efficiency and improve classroom management, preserving time and attention for the business of learning. Through repetition, routines become automatic, requiring little instruction or oversight from the teacher (Lemov, 2015). For example, teachers often have routines for how students turn in homework or how they pass out materials.

Protocols are structured processes that encourage active listening and reflection while keeping a conversation focused on a specific topic or problem. Used effectively, protocols ensure that all voices in a group are heard and valued (Mattoon, 2015). That makes them useful for building a collaborative culture.

In PBL, it's important to adopt routines that reinforce the culture of student-centered learning. If you don't want the teacher to be the class expert in all things, then encourage students to turn to one another as information sources with the routine

"Ask three before me."

When students are new to PBL, they may question why school "feels different." That's a fair question that goes to the heart of classroom culture, and it deserves a thoughtful response. One PBL veteran makes a point of helping each new class of 4th graders unlearn routines that emphasize compliance and passivity (e.g., raising hands and sitting quietly until called upon). He encourages a more conversational classroom where students talk and learn together as they engage in projects. That doesn't mean he invites chaos. With simple hand signals, he helps students recognize when they need to moderate the noise level or transition from teamwork to a whole-class activity.

Like routines, protocols matter in PBL. By using protocols such as gallery walks to focus their feedback, students learn how to give and receive criticism and how to use feedback to make their own work better in subsequent drafts.

In addition to gallery walks, PBL veterans leverage a variety of protocols and routines that build and reinforce a positive classroom culture. Try your hand at these ideas (many of which you will hear more about in coming chapters).

Morning meetings

These are regularly scheduled, low-risk opportunities to check in with students at the start of class. Morning meetings (sometimes called circles) are helpful for building community, strengthening relationships, amplifying student voice, and sup- porting students' social and emotional learning. (Learn more about structures for morning meetings from Responsive Classroom.)

Thinking routines

Thinking routines, such as "think, pair, share" or "see, think, wonder," develop habits of mind important in PBL, such as curiosity, along with content understanding. (Find more examples at Harvard's Project Zero.)

Fishbowl

A fishbowl is a discussion protocol that can be used for modeling, discussions, or peer feedback. A small group inside the fishbowl actively participates while a larger group listens and observes from an outer circle. Students can then swap positions so that everyone eventually has a role as both participant and observer. (Learn more from Facing History and Ourselves.)

Closers

End-of-class routines provide opportunities to bring everyone together to focus on the accomplishments and challenges of the day and reinforce shared norms. During projects, students are often working on different learning activities or with small teams for most of class. Closing routines bring everyone back together, even if briefly, to reconnect as a learning community and anticipate what will happen next in the project. Teacher Erin Brandvold closes each class period by saying, "You're brilliant. Hardworking. Perseverant."

Reflections

Reflection prompts and protocols invite students to think about their own learning. When used consistently, reflection becomes a habit of mind. Not surprisingly, reflection is an essential element of Gold Standard PBL.

Celebrations

Celebrations of learning shouldn't wait until the end of projects. High-fives, shout-outs, fist bumps, and other simple routines celebrate the small but important accomplishments that unfold along the way.

When introducing protocols that are new to students, take time to explain their purpose. For example, a gallery walk gives students a chance to see other students' works-in-progress and offer constructive feedback to inform the next draft. Consider using a role-play or fishbowl to model how a protocol works. Introduce sentence stems to keep the protocol focused. Encourage students to compare and contrast effective responses with responses that are not so helpful.

To emphasize the authenticity of PBL, help students see that the skills they are developing through the use of protocols-such as being able to give and receive critical feedback or understand others' perspectives-are important not only in school but also in contexts out- side the classroom.
Want to learn more about PBL? Check out our books. Register now for PBL World 2019.

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Protocols and Routines: Habits for a Student-Centered Classroom

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An excerpt from the book Project Based Teaching, with several examples of strategies teachers can use to build a productive PBL culture in the classroom.

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Social Contracts Foster Community in the Classroom

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When students and teachers collaborate to create shared behavior expectations, the whole class is invested in the norms.

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Title

Feedback Principles

Attribution

Developed in the field by educators.

Description

Constructive feedback is indispensable to productive collaboration. Positive feedback is easy to give and receive; when the response highlights a need to improve, it is harder to say and much harder to hear. When it is done properly, feedback is a very specific kind of communication: it focuses on sharing with another person the impact of their behavior, and its purpose is to help that person become more effective.

Last Updated

March 30, 2017

[acf_ProtocolInfo_Related Tools]

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Title Feedback Principles Attribution Developed in the field by educators. Description Constructive feedback is indispensable to productive collaboration. Positive feedback is easy to give and receive; when the response highlights a need to improve, it is harder to say and much harder to hear.

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Stay-at-Home Bingo for Middle Schoolers: Round One -- Public Edition

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"How are you doing right now?" That's the question I've been defaulting to on the phone, over text, and over Zoom chats during this time of ballooning, Covid-19-fueled communications.

It was a useful question at first-an assumption-free signal of care. But it's become a query that seems to now inspire a scripted, reflexive response. This often includes an acknowledgment that someone is "hanging in there" despite the circumstances, while also feeling gutted for the folks who are struggling more than they are, or risking their lives to save others-the healthcare workers, the food deliverers, the parents who are homeschooling and working at the same time, the single mothers who have the virus, being tended to by their toddlers.

When we keep asking the same question, or no questions at all, we lose out on a chance for deeper connections with our conversation partners, who also happen to be the people we care most about. We are tricked into believing we know how they're feeling or what they're thinking, when we haven't even scratched the surface.

Even in the best of times (read: when we're not in the middle of a global pandemic) "How are you doing?" is more likely to be a conversation stopper than a conversation starter, the journalist and author Warren Berger argues in The Book of Beautiful Questions. As Berger notes, "A rote question often evokes a rote answer followed by an echo of the original rote question ("How are you?" "Fine. How are you?")"

In this challenging moment, let's move beyond "how are you doing?" and get more serious about the questions we're asking our colleagues, friends, and family. It's not just a matter of enlivening phone, text and Zoom chats (after all, there are all kinds of filters for that). It's a matter of keeping our relationships strong and solvent during what may be a long stretch of healthy spacing ahead of us. Fundamentally, learning how to ask questions of ourselves and of the ones who we love can help us to embrace, rather than avoid, the uncertainty that envelopes our lives. To paraphrase the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, we are all now living our questions -dozens of them, everyday-whether we like it or not.

The research on the power of questions to strengthen our relationship with others-and ourselves-is clear. They are interpersonal relationship magnets, compelling us to reveal personal information that builds mutual trust. They can make us more likable, seem more competent, and even increase our ability to empathize.

And crucially, the relationship-deepening benefits of questions stretch beyond friends and family. They also can help newly remote work teams stay strong and cohesive, preventing physical distancing from introducing emotional rifts that complicate collaboration.

Below are a selection of questions, from those that invite levity to others that prompt more serious reflection, that you can ask your conversation partners to get beyond "how are you doing?" and perhaps into some uncharted emotional territory. Of course, being a great question-asker isn't just about posing a single, powerful question. It's about listening deeply before and after you ask. It's about asking out of genuine curiosity versus obligation, and posing follow-up questions that show you've been listening. It is both a mindset and a skillset.

Eleven questions for making a true connection or maintaining team cohesion

Here are some sample questions for getting beyond "How are you?"

How are you taking care of yourself today?

What part of your shelter-in-place residence have you come to appreciate the most?

What surprising thing have you been stocking up on (that isn't toilet paper)?

What's a story - from a book, a movie, an article, a conversation - that you've been gripped by recently? Why did it capture you?

What habit have you started, or broken, during the quarantine?

Which specific place in your neighborhood are you most looking forward to visiting once this is all over?

What's the easiest part about the quarantine?

What are some things you have realized that you don't really need?

What's something you own that feels useful?

What is your Covid-19 nickname/alter-ego?

What problem-either yours, or something more global -do you wish you could solve?

Nine questions for taking things a step further

These are questions to consider if you're interested in deepening connections in your 1:1 meetings or virtual coffees, or with people outside of your work life:

What's something that you miss that surprises you? What's something that you don't miss that surprises you?

Which member of your family/ friend group have you been thinking about the most during this time? Why?

What's the most generous act you've seen recently?

What's the last thing you experienced that made you laugh, or cry?

What times of the day or the week are hardest?

What's giving you hope right now?

What's the best thing that happened to you today?

How do you want this experience to change you? How do you think it will?

What do you hope we all learn or take away from this experience?

If you use these questions, I'd like to know: What conversations did it spark? Reach me on Twitter at @elizabethw723 or email me at eweingarten@ideas42.org, and let me know what other questions have you found inspiring.
Elizabeth Weingarten is the managing editor of Behavioral Scientist magazine and a senior associate at the nonprofit behavioral design lab ideas42, where she applies behavioral science to improve workplace gender equality issues and sustainable transportation.

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20 great questions to ask instead of "How are you doing?"

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"How are you doing right now?" That's the question I've been defaulting to on the phone, over text, and over Zoom chats during this time of ballooning, Covid-19-fueled communications. It was a useful question at first-an assumption-free signal of care. But it's become a query that seems to now inspire a scripted, reflexive response.

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Tips for bringing the unique learning opportunities of small-group discussions to online class sessions.

Small-group discussions can be difficult to manage, but this collaboration is essential for learning. And because students are likely to spend at least part of next year learning at home, it's especially important for teachers to plan opportunities for them to engage with their peers online, Rhonda Bondie of Harvard's Graduate School of Education writes in ASCD.

"Small peer-group discussions enable students to practice academic language, gain feedback on their ideas, and further understanding," Bondie notes. "Students need to engage with their peers to know that they belong and are valued members of many communities, especially their school community."

Bondie suggests that teachers use three tools in facilitating and monitoring small-group conversations to ensure that they're productive and to measure learning when students are in breakout rooms.

Note-Catcher Document

A Google Doc can be used as a central location for students to take notes during discussions in breakout rooms, and teachers can monitor and help guide discussions in real-time. "Teachers can provide feedback efficiently by inserting comments and questions into the note catcher," writes Bondie. "When the teacher sees a group having difficulty getting started, then the teacher can enter that breakout room to help."

Use the same discussion structure techniques you rely on in the classroom. Leave directions for students in the note catcher, using graphics or pictures to provide simple, clear directions. Include links to helpful resources and model discussion notes so expectations are clear. Set the standard for student responses, Bondie advises, by including "high-quality criteria in the note catcher as a means for students to monitor their responses and to add challenge to the discussion."

Pre-assignments

Teachers can help students prepare for online peer work via pre-assignments designed to help them formulate questions and collect ideas and comments in one place. Bondie suggests teaching students to use a variety of free tools such as Google Slides to create slide shows, Flipgrid to record short responses to a query, and VoiceThread to collaborate on slides with video, voice, or text comments.

Review these before class and group students "in ways that support productive discussions," Bondie writes. Then, "direct students to discuss a specific slide or look for patterns across the class and report their findings to the whole group."

Feedback Survey

Gauging student perceptions of their collaborative work can be difficult when working online. Bondie suggests reserving five to 10 minutes at the end of each session-while the work is still fresh in students' minds-for gathering feedback via a brief Google Form questionnaire. "Students have a tendency not to complete surveys after class, so incorporate the survey into lessons," she suggests, adding that teachers can switch this part up by alternating between using a questionnaire and requesting group feedback in the note catcher. "Students generate incredibly useful ideas that often solve technical problems and promote better learning for everyone," she writes.

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3 Ways to Deepen Student Engagement in Online Discussions

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Tips for bringing the unique learning opportunities of small-group discussions to online class sessions.

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A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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Relationship building is key to good teaching. This system will help you quickly get to know students and benefit from those connections all year long.

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Giving students some say over what happens in class can promote engagement and a strong sense of community.

Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo (16)

One of the most powerful ways to impact achievement is to actively engage students in the life of the classroom. Although educators know that our students' contributions are vital to the learning process, educator and author Alexis Wiggins was surprised to observe that many students "feel like a bit of a nuisance all day long." As teachers, we have the capacity to change our students' experiences if we design lessons that prioritize student voice and participation.

Elevating student voice is critical for many reasons. For one thing, as Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey write, "The amount of talk that students do is correlated with their achievement." There are strategies teachers can use to elevate student voice in order to strengthen relationships, foster a sense of belonging, increase engagement, and inform instruction.

Begin Class With a Welcoming Ritual

Students arrive to class with their minds swirling about failed quizzes, mounting pressure about homework assignments, and concerns about interactions with their peers. In order to help them clear these distractions from their minds, we might begin class with a predictable routine.

Students might share "breaking news" or "what's on the top of your mind?" in pairs, with small groups, or with the whole class. This welcoming ritual allows students to release their most pressing thoughts and create space for new experiences. It also builds relationships between students as they share a little bit of themselves with their peers. Welcoming rituals foster a sense of belonging as the classroom becomes a place that accepts students not only for who they are but where they are at a particular moment.

This brief share might transition directly into an opening activity that connects to the learning of the day. Together, students might consider an essential question, share responses to a short quote or passage, or take time to reflect on the previous day's learning. Opening class with an emphasis on student engagement rather than passive compliance prioritizes student voice and places students at the center of the learning experience.

Plan Consistent Opportunities for Student Voice

When will students collaborate to problem-solve, devise higher-order questions, contribute to the creation of a product, or otherwise actively grapple with a lesson's meaning?

How often are students offered the opportunity to speak at the front of the room, write on the board, or conduct demonstrations on the document camera?

When are students writing for an audience beyond the classroom?

Do students have choices regarding the work they're doing?

If (and in what ways) are students prompted to connect what they're learning in the classroom to their lives outside of school?

During the planning stage, prioritize active engagement and student voice by asking yourself:

Ideally, our classrooms would be places where students not only gain knowledge but also discover who they are and who they want to be. The only way students will come to these realizations is through both independent and collaborative explorations in which they add their voices to the conversation. Prioritizing student voice strengthens a sense of belonging, as the learning experiences are co-created by students and teachers.

Ask Students About Their Lives Beyond The Classroom

We need to show our students that we value who they are and understand the complexities of their lives. Some students will clearly make themselves known while others will fade into the background if we let them-so we need to intentionally interact with all students. These moments of listening and sharing with students reinforce belonging and build relationships.

We can do this while greeting students when they enter the classroom, while conferring with small groups, and while conferencing with individual students. We can schedule "lunch and learn" sessions or invite students to help us hang student work or otherwise contribute to the logistics of the classroom during their study halls or lunch periods.

When students know we value what they have to say, they're more likely to share their thoughts and insights. It may seem like we don't have time to engage with every student, but we don't have time not to. As John Hattie reminds us, "A positive, caring, respectful climate in the classroom is a prior condition to learning." Strong teacher-student relationships bolster students' confidence to share their voices.

Ask for Student Feedback-and Use It

Another important way to elevate student voice is to ask for feedback. As much as we wish we could, we will never know what it really feels like to be a student in our classrooms, and our students hold many of the answers we seek. We can ask them for feedback throughout the year and (when feasible) implement their suggestions. Student feedback not only informs instruction, it conveys that we value their insight, and that their voices are at the center of the work that we do.

When we listen to and honor our students, we can show them that their voices can be powerful instruments of learning for themselves and others-and levers of change in their classrooms and beyond.

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Simple Ways to Promote Student Voice in the Classroom

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Giving students some say over what happens in class can promote engagement and a strong sense of community.

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When I was a kid, I loved watching reality TV. Okay, it wasn't really reality TV. It was PBS. However, I would watch an entire season of This Old House, as Bob Vila walked viewers step-by-step through a cumbersome restoration process. This never included a "choose these three options" or "surprise ending." Instead, the homeowners were part of the process; and, on some level, so were the viewers. Although the progress was slow, I felt like I actually learned how home improvements happen. True, you didn't get the "big reveal" that you get on HGTV shows.

This was the same way I felt watching Bob Ross paint happy little trees. I knew there were better artists out there. My mom had taken us to museums with famous paintings. But I loved watching Bob Ross. The more I watched Bob Ross, the more I wanted to paint on my own.

The same goes with the segments on Wonderful World of Disney, where I got the chance to see how they animated the films. I loved seeing the painstakingly slow process of animation. I also loved watching the field trips with Mr. Rogers, when we would leave his neighborhood and visit a factory or a shop to learn about how they made crayons or built a table.

You would think this demystifying element would destroy the magic, but that's not what happened. Instead, I realized that making is magic.

I felt inspired.

I remember as a child looking around my house at one point and realizing, "Holy crap, someone made this stuff. Someone started with an idea and made a design and now it's in our house." I wanted to learn more about how things were made. And, ultimately, that curiosity inspired my creativity.

On a much more shallow level, we watched the Tiger Tomato channel with pancake art:

We spent twenty minutes watching this together as a family before my son looked at me and said, "Dad, we're going to do this, right?"

I nodded and grinned. An hour later, we were at the store buying pancake supplies and figuring out what kind of bottle we would need. Our pancakes were less than impressive. But that's okay. For a week, we made pancake art and explored the best methods for getting the textures and colors right.

Showing Your Work

Austin Kleon describes this as "showing your work." It's the idea that we should share our creative journey with others. It's what happens when you make videos showing your creative process or when you share snapshots of your work on social media. It's what happens when you put yourself out there in a creative community. I love this quote from Kleon's book Show Your Work:

You see this with kids who engage with an online community centered around their interests. I saw this when a girl in my eighth-grade class showed me the five novels she had already published on Wattpad and then shared her Tumblr where she asked for feedback in the characters and plots she developed. I noticed this when my kids started playing Minecraft and began watching and creating Minecraft videos.

Henry Jenkins describes these as "participatory cultures." He includes the following elements:

Low barriers to participation

Strong support for sharing

Informal mentorship

Members who believe their contributions matter and value the participation of others

Social cohesion

Participatory cultures are often creative and open rather than consumer-oriented or closed. They are multi-age, interest-based, and centered on shared interests. They are, in many respects, the opposite of an industrial school model.

Participatory cultures remind us that creativity isn't a solitary endeavor. It is nearly always to and from a community. Great ideas rarely happen in isolation. Instead, they are a part of the constant sharing back and forth of what we are learning, doing, and making. This is why it's so valuable to show our work.

I've been thinking about this idea of "showing your work." A few weeks ago, I wrote a post describing how I refine my lessons. I almost didn't post it, because, honestly, who wants to read a post describing how to modify a unit plan. To my surprise, it was one of the most read posts the entire month.

1. Showing your work encourages metacognition.

When you show your work, you are forced to communicate what you did and how you did it in a way that others understand. It becomes a chance to reflect on your work but also clarify misconceptions and catch any blind spots.

If you look at the entire metacognition cycle mentioned in the video, you'll notice that the last part of metacognition is the reflection piece. When students are sharing their journey, they are more reflective on their process and better able to plan a new approach in the future.

2. Innovation skyrockets when people show their work.

I've written before about what Pixar can teach us about creativity.

Edward Clapp, a researcher at Project Zero, reminds us to look at creative ideas as stories with their own biographies. Instead of focusing on a single founder, what you see is that great ideas are often the result of a network of information in a community of transparency. When you show your work, you are helping to build this type of community. In the process, you are sharing your mistakes and building trust through vulnerability.

3. They become mentors.

You see this when students share their process with the world. As they realize that others are watching and noticing, they internalize the idea that they are creative thinkers and problem-solvers. I've seen this with my pre-service teachers. When they work on their professional educator blogs, they often move from simply writing introspective posts to sharing ideas of what works in their classrooms. As this happens, they are able to help others in the larger educational community.

In other words, they begin to mentor other teachers.

Think of the last time you were stuck in how to do something. Where did you go for an answer? It's possible you called someone on the phone, but there's a higher likelihood you went to YouTube or you visited a website. When this happens, there's an informal mentoring process going on. Too often, we think our work isn't anything special, because it doesn't seem new or impressive. But there's a good chance it's new and impressive to someone.

4. It can lead to collaborative partnerships.

When I think of my favorite collaborative projects, I notice a trend. They are nearly all people I met years ago on Twitter. What began as an exchange of ideas eventually became a chance to show our work and that morphed into a collaborative relationship. In some cases, these fellow educators have become close friends.

I saw the same thing two years ago when my son was encouraged to share his work and his process with his classroom peers. He not only began to view himself as an author, but he also saw his peers as fellow authors in a sort of author's guild. That summer, he organized an online writer's workshop, where they all shared their unfinished pieces with one another. Here, they also shared their journey, engaged in goal-setting, and talked about their frustrations. It was chaotic and informal but it was also powerful.

At one point, they began co-writing stories and persuasive posts together. The sharing of their craft led naturally to collaborative projects. In the following video, I share the distinction between collaboration and cooperation:

When students share their journey, they are engaging in meaningful cooperative learning. But often, this leads to more trust and ultimately collaborative learning.

5. You can change the narrative.

This is especially true of teachers. There are so many stories of how awful schools are and how out-of-touch teachers are. However, when students share their learning journeys with the community, it changes the narrative by showing evidence of the great things happening in your classroom. My friend Tim Lauer use to walk around taking snapshots of the creative work his students were doing. This affirmed the creative voice of the students but it also honored the creative work of the teachers who worked as architects of innovation in his school. It wasn't self-promotion. Nor was it branding. It was simply storytelling at its core. And it was awesome.

There is a powerful narrative right now telling the world that our schools are all broken and teachers are merely powerless pawns in the system. Cogs in a wheel in a factory style education system. It's a popular theme in articles and news stories and even keynotes. But I don't buy it. I think there are amazing creative things happening all around us if we're willing to look . . . and when we're willing to share.

6. Sharing your journey can help build courage

When you share your journey, you are being courageous. You are saying to the world, "I'm not afraid to be known." But you're also modeling humility. You're saying, "I know that my learning journey is filled with bumps and bruises and scraped knees, but I'm going to share that with you." This begins with teachers choosing to share our own journeys. This can feel arrogant. You might be feeling like your work isn't all that awesome. But I guarantee you it's awesome to someone. When you choose to show your work, you are not only participating in the creative culture of education, but you are actually redefining it. You are helping other teachers become better at their craft. You are transforming education for students you don't even know.

The same is true for students. When they share their process with other students, they learn how to give and receive peer feedback. This can feel scary but the critical feedback is how they improve their skills and grow as creative thinkers. We use the 20-minute peer feedback system.

You can check out the process below:

7. Students embrace the revision process.

When students only share their highly polished, finished work, they miss out on the opportunity to improve their work through multiple revisions. However, when they actively share their process and their progress, they begin to internalize the idea the idea that creative work is all about iterations.

While sharing your journey makes a lot of sense, we have tight schedules, rigid curriculum maps, and valid concerns about the issues of privacy / oversharing publicly. Here's where it's helpful to have conversations about where and when to share your journey. So much of this is dependent on age and human development. For example, older students might want to share globally or with peers but are less excited about sharing with parents while younger students might want to share with their parents but shouldn't share too much to a global audience. Context and subject also make a difference. But you can think about audiences in layers:

Level 1: Private
Students reflect alone. Even the teacher doesn't get a chance to read their reflections and insights.

Level 2: Semi-private
Students might share with their pairs, small groups, or teacher. In some cases, the students might share their work with their family at home. For the most part, the sharing stays within the confines of the classroom walls.

Level 3: Semi-public
Students engage in multi-class collaboration (global projects), the whole school, or other classes within their school (other class periods). Although it's not totally public, the audience is still bigger than the immediate classroom.

Level 4: Public
Students share with the world.

The sharing varies from class to class and subject to subject. In a math class, students might share their problem-solving strategies or they might create tutorials showing people how they solved a problem. In a language arts class, it might involve a writer's workshop or peer feedback on their process. For P.E., music, or art, it might involve documenting the skill development with a video montage and reflections. In a science course, it might involve a podcast documenting the stages of a scientific experiment, with students sharing insights during the experiment rather than just at the end. In social studies, you might have students share what they are discovering as they go through an ongoing blog. I've seen teachers use social media to have students document their journey as they go or, for a more private option, they send emails or SeeSaw links to their parents or guardians.

I'd love for you to share ideas of how students could share their journey. Please consider sharing your ideas in the comment section below.

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Students Should Share Their Process, Not Just Their Product

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When I was a kid, I loved watching reality TV. Okay, it wasn't really reality TV. It was PBS. However, I would watch an entire season of This Old House, as Bob Vila walked viewers step-by-step through a cumbersome restoration process. This never included a "choose these three options" or "surprise ending."

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Hammond distinguishes the differences between culturally responsive education, multicultural education and social justice education. Each is important, but without a focus on building students' brain power, they will experience learning loss.

When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires "remixing" education by borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, project-based learning, etc.) in a way that repositions the student as the leader of his own learning. By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge.

"It's going to stretch us a little out of our own comfort zones, but it's worth it in the long run if we can get students to continue to do that thinking," said Hammond.

She advises three strategies to help students gain that independence:

1. Deepen background knowledge

Many educators are understandably wondering whether they should teach new content or review familiar material. Hammond encourages educators to do the latter because cognitively dependent learners often have gaps in their background knowledge . "A lot of our students are compliant learners," she said. "They're having a hard time shifting right now [because] they're used to the worksheet, but that doesn't mean they're always processing information."

She advises teachers to help students connect new things they're learning to their brain's existing schema - also known as background knowledge - that comes from home, their community, their interests. Teachers can then give them authentic tasks that help them make meaning and connections. This helps turn new inert information into usable knowledge. "You cannot give another person background knowledge," she explained. "They have to acquire it, but as teachers we can help guide the process." This can be done by building upon student interest.

"Survey your students if you don't know what they like," said Hammond. Ask them what books they enjoy reading or what topics get them super excited. She said It doesn't matter if their interests are broad or narrow; it's important to learn what interests them so that you can use that information to:

Assign non-fiction books that build on student interests.

Create a "Netflix" playlist of documentaries, nature shows, historical events, etc.

Encourage kids and parents to do a walk-about, if that's possible in their community, following social distancing guidelines. Encourage parents and students to seek out community curiosities (landmarks or interesting sights) relevant to students' interest.

With each of these activities, it's important to give the students direction so they know what to look out for. "You have to tell the brain what to pay attention to," Hammond explains. She suggested questions like, "What was your biggest surprise from this book/show?" or thinking routine sentences like "I Used to Think ___. But, now I think ____."

She said to always make sure that students do something with the knowledge as well. She suggested having them share interesting facts they learned either during video conferences or via an audio/video clip. For those students with limited internet access, encourage them to share what they learned with their parents.

2. Cultivate cognitive routines

Growing students' brain power during distance learning starts with building cognitive routines. These routines are essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain.

"Be the personal trainer of their cognitive development," Hammond said. To do this, she suggested having a routine set of prompts in each packet that become a regular part of the way students think. That way, students begin to think that way even when you're not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking.

One example is to ask students to connect the "unknown to the known" or across concepts by asking questions like, " What's the relationship or connection between these things?" or "How does this part fit into the whole? What are the parts of this whole?" These may seem simple, but these questions are critical when it comes to processing information so that students internalize these prompts until they become almost instinctual.

She said students should also be encouraged to sketchnote or doodle to actively process what they're learning as an alternative to note-taking. Sketchnoting can encourage people to make deeper connections to what they're hearing.

3. Build word wealth

Building a student's vocabulary is a key tool in equity strategies for schools. "Kids have different interests in words so find out where their energy is. You can have a differentiated assignment around word collecting, but the idea is to get them actively involved in word consciousness," said Hammond. She said there are many small but high-leverage ways to do this, such as introducing robust word study. A teacher can help students engage in wordplay, word consciousness and word knowledge. This should not happen through a worksheet assignment, but rather begin with building word consciousness of words in their community, home and home language.

Word games like Scrabble, Heads Up, Taboo or even word searches are small familiar but high-leverage activities because they're fun but also require a high cognitive load. You can create your own versions of these games and have students do this in any language. Students can also do word collecting activities like scavenger hunts, or make poetry using magnetic poetry. Students can also do a contrastive analysis, by comparing words they might find in Urban Dictionary to those they might find in a standard dictionary.

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How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning | KQED

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Culturally responsive teaching is a powerful way to help students become independent learners, and it can be especially valuable during distance learning.

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The mobiles hang from the ceiling like jewelry, filling Ms. Jackson's language arts classroom with bright, twirling colors. They make a pretty canopy over the room, and if you look closer at the individual dangly bits on each mobile, you'll see that they contain words: Alliteration, says one, and below it hang four more pieces of paper that give examples of alliteration. Personification, says another. Simile. Metaphor. Onomatopoeia. They're figurative language mobiles. Ms. Jackson's students spent two full class periods working on them, and many even took theirs home to finish them before they were put up for display.

When she wrote those two days into her lesson plans, Ms. Jackson thought she was adding higher-order thinking to her students' learning. After all, they were creating something, weren't they?

Well, yes and no. Yes, they created mobiles with wire hangers, construction paper, markers, and glue. But they didn't actually create anything with figurative language, like a piece of original writing, for example.

The mobiles, in fact, represent no higher-order thinking at all.

It's kind of a given that most teachers want their students to be doing rigorous, challenging work. Ask any teacher, "Is it your goal to simply have students regurgitate facts in your class?" and every time, the answer will probably be no.

And yet, that exact thing is happening more often than we realize.

It's not for lack of trying: For years, teachers have consulted their Bloom's flip charts and DOK wheels to choose the verbs that are meant to represent higher levels of thinking. In a lot of cases, though, while the right verbs are being used, the tasks they represent aren't actually on the level teachers think they are.

Over the years I've seen teachers make two specific mistakes with higher-order thinking tasks more often than any other, so I'm going to drill down and focus just on those two mistakes here.

Defining Our Terms

First, let's make sure we're on the same page: When people talk about higher-order thinking, what do they mean, exactly? The answer can be different depending on who you ask.

First, there's the question of which framework you're using. Bloom's Taxonomy is commonly used by teachers to classify learning outcomes, as is Webb's Depth of Knowledge framework. Other teachers prefer the SOLO Taxonomy created by John Biggs.

For the sake of efficiency, I'll stick to Bloom's for this discussion; specifically, I'll be referring to the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, which was first published by Anderson and Krathwohl in 2001.

So if we just look at Bloom's, which levels would be seen as representing "higher-order" thinking? Logically, it would seem that any task that goes above the Remember level-where students simply recall information-would be considered "higher" because it's higher than that lowest level. But in many discussions of higher-order thinking, this label is often reserved for the three highest levels: Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.

So for now, when I say "higher order," I'll be referring to those three levels.

By the way, there is nothing inherently wrong with the lower levels; taking in information, understanding it, and applying it are all necessary and vital parts of a good education. But if our students work only at those levels day in and day out, they aren't becoming good thinkers. Without regular opportunities to pull ideas apart, evaluate texts and situations, and use what they learn to develop new ideas, they aren't going to be able to do much with the information they learn at the lower levels, especially once they're out of school.

On top of that, a course that only asks students to receive information and spit it back out is really, really boring. If we want engaged students who actually care about what they're learning, we have to ask them to do more than just regurgitate.

Two Common Mistakes

When teachers I have worked with plan learning experiences, and they want to include higher-order thinking activities, they most often tend to make two particular mistakes. Avoiding these two errors should go a long way toward making the "higher-order" label more accurate in all schools.

Mistake 1: Thinking a task is at the "Analyze" level when it's really at the "Understand" level

Because we use the word "analyze" so often in conversation, its meaning has gotten slippery. Someone could say "analyze that painting," and another person might answer by giving a basic description of the painting and offering an opinion about its meaning.

True analysis goes deeper, breaking a whole into parts and looking at how those parts impact the whole, differentiating relevant from irrelevant information, organizing ideas within a particular structure, or recognizing underlying bias, values or point of view.

"To truly analyze a painting, for example" says author and instructional coach Julie Stern, "we would require that students do one of the above, such as discussing how the use of colors, materials, or other artistic technique impact one another, or how they impact the overall meaning of the painting."

For the analysis to be legitimate, Stern adds, we also have to be careful that the situation presented is one that we have not previously taught in class. "We have to be sure that students are not merely remembering and repeating our analysis of the painting, novel, war, etc., that we studied together in class." Instead, students can demonstrate their analytical skills by analyzing a completely new painting.

Because we don't always think of analysis with this tighter definition, we sometimes think certain tasks are at the "Analyze" level, when they are actually at the "Understand" level.

It's not surprising that we make this mistake: The "Understand" level encompasses a surprising number of cognitive tasks that go well beyond simple recall of facts: Anderson & Krathwohl's revised taxonomy includes interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining within this level. Understand-level work can be rigorous and challenging; it should be a regular part of the work students do. But there are much higher levels of thinking that we can build into our classroom routines on a regular basis.

Mistake 2: Thinking a task is at the "Create" level when it's actually a "Remember" or "Understand" task with a pretty package

Teachers assign all kinds of projects that they believe hit the Create level of Bloom's: posters, dioramas, booklets, and so on. While it may appear on the surface that students are actively creating something new, in a lot of cases they are still working at a very low cognitive level, merely reassembling facts and delivering them in a pretty package.

Technology can make this problem worse: Students may be tasked with creating a video, a Prezi, or even a digital game, but if the content of the end product is little more than a rehashing of facts, that task is still at a lower level.

"Create, according to the Revised Bloom's," Stern explains, "requires students to organize elements into a pattern, structure, or product that is new, or has not previously existed. One way to think about it is that 'analysis' is breaking elements apart to discuss how the parts impact each other or the larger structure. And 'creating' is putting the elements back together in a new way or in a new situation."

So when studying animal habitats, having students build a clay model of a habitat for an animal you studied in class might feel like a creative project, but in reality, students are just making a 3-D representation of facts they already learned.

"When we ask students to 'create' a poster, brochure, video, or digital game that creatively explains the main points discussed in class," Stern says, "we are not reaching a higher level of thinking. Again, it might be helpful to think about a new context or situation, even a hypothetical one, not simply a new product. If we want students to create a habitat for an animal, it should be a different type of animal than ones we previously discussed."

Here's another way to look at it: Work at the Create level doesn't really need glue, markers, scissors, or technology to qualify as a "Create" task. If you remove all the "creative" trappings and just look at the mental work students are doing, it should still involve creating something new with the content they're learning.

Sample Lesson: Bill of Rights

Now let's take a look at these mistakes within the context of a more complete set of lesson plans, followed by another set that does a better job of building in higher-order thinking.

Tony is an 8th grade social studies teacher who is designing a set of lessons on the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. His state standards say that students should be able to do the following in regards to the Bill of Rights:

Identify and explain the rights granted to all citizens by the Bill of Rights

Identify and evaluate contemporary issues that involve the rights granted by the Bill of Rights

We'll start with Tony's original lesson plans, the ones he's used to teach the Bill of Rights for several years now. Then we'll look at another set of plans from the Bill of Rights Institute that tackles the same basic goals, but pushes students to higher levels of thinking about the material.

Time frames are based on class periods of about 45-60 minutes.

Bill of Rights Lesson Plan: BEFORE

(Duration: 1 week)

This activity is at the Remember level of Bloom's: Students are simply taking in the information and recording it.

Tony believes this activity is at the Create level, because students are creating their own websites, but because they're just defining the amendment, giving examples, and linking to other examples without commentary, the work never rises above the Understand level. Unfortunately, because students are learning new technology in order to do this project, it takes most of the week to complete, which makes it a strong candidate for the Grecian Urn label: a task that consumes far more time than it gives back in terms of learning.

While most of this test is at the Remember level, Tony believes the final question is at the Analyze level, because students are "analyzing" the relationship between the Bill of Rights and their own lives. In fact, they are really just giving examples of the rights in their own lives, and exemplifying is at the Understand level.

Bill of Rights Lesson Plan: AFTER

(Duration: 1 week)

This revised version contains more higher-order thinking. It comes from the Bill of Rights lesson plan offered free as part of the Being an American series offered by the Bill of Rights Institute. Although the original plan says it's for a single day, it relies heavily on homework to make that happen. Moving the homework activities into class time would make this about a 1-week set of lessons.

This task is at the Understand level, because students are interpreting the rights into their own language. Again, some lower-level thinking is going to be a part of any learning cycle, so this set of plans will also include some activities in the lower levels. With that said, work at the Understand level is still more cognitively complex than the Remember level: This activity does push students to do more than simply copy down the information.

This is at the Evaluate level, because students are making judgments about the relative importance of the amendments.

This activity is at the Understand level, because students are being asked to classify each scenario as an example of a specific right.

4: The Bill of Rights Today (1 class period)Students must locate five current news stories related to the Bill of Rights. For each one, they will need to summarize the story, identify which amendment is related to the story, and discuss how the issue might touch their own lives. 5: "Life Without..." Stories (1-2 class periods)After reading a short story, "Life Without Rights for the Accused," which illustrates life in a society where government does not honor the criminal procedure protections in the Bill of Rights, students write their own stories about what life would be like if citizens didn't have one particular right.
Although this activity is similar to the one before it, having students classify stories by the most relevant amendment, this task is a bit more complex because the scenarios here are not pre-screened for them: Students will have to find their own articles and dig through irrelevant details to determine which amendment is most clearly illustrated in the articles. That kind of work takes this activity closer to the Analysis level.

This is at the Create level. Students are using their knowledge of our current rights and how they play out in everyday life to imagine a different society where those rights are not present.

Even though both sets of plans take about the same amount of time to teach, the "After" set gives students many more opportunities to engage deeply with the content, and students in that classroom are more likely to finish the week with an enduring, transferable understanding of their constitutional rights. If you were walking past both classrooms, it might look like the kids making their own websites are doing more engaging, 21st-century work, but cognitively, those websites don't demand much from students at all.
What do I want students to be able to do with this knowledge once the lesson is over?
Beyond the Levels, Beyond the Verbs

When we are striving to develop deeper, more rigorous learning experiences for our students, it's easy to get bogged down in trying to figure out exactly which level a task fits into or which verb is the most accurate. If you find yourself spending way too long on the labeling aspect of planning, it's time to stop and refocus on a different question...

In other words, why are they learning this stuff, how do I want them to transfer that learning to real life, and how can I replicate those uses in a classroom activity?

Let's consider the Bill of Rights. We want our citizens to understand their rights so that when their rights or the rights of people they know are violated, they'll recognize it and be able to take action. This is one of the ways we participate in a democratic society, right? So an activity where students look at sample situations and identify which rights are being infringed upon is one way to have them transfer their knowledge of the Bill of Rights into new situations, cases that might be similar to things they may experience themselves. Finding more articles from current publications can extend that learning even further.

And what about the Create task in the "After" lesson? What is the value of having students write a story about life without one of the freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights? This kind of activity deepens their understanding of their rights. Rather than simply recopying the same information into a new package, they are being asked to actively imagine a different life from the one they're living, with one significant right removed from it. That kind of exercise gets them to think more about how these rights actually impact their day-to-day lives, which is a far more complex task than recalling the list of rights from what they were taught.

The "After" lesson presented here is just one example of how to build more higher-order thinking into students' learning experiences. It can be done in lots of ways, and the goal isn't to always hit every level; instead, choose activities that will get students working with the material in ways that will serve them later in life.

The next time Ms. Jackson teaches figurative language, she can skip the wire hangers and just have students use figurative language in their own personal narratives, poems, or essays. The writing won't necessarily make the classroom any prettier, but for the rest of their lives, those kids may be more likely to use better metaphors, personification, and alliteration to make their writing more powerful: college essays, professional presentations, even love letters.

Which is kind of the point, isn't it? ♦

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Is That Higher-Order Task Really Higher Order?

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Ask any group of teachers if their goal is to simply have students regurgitate facts, and every one of them will say no. Despite that, it keeps happening.

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April 22-26, 2021

In 2020 the Catalyst Conference, an exhibition of student learning

and advocacy efforts on behalf of real world problems,

brought together 350+ students from 76 GOA schools

in 18 different countries and 27 US states.

In 2020 the conference took place during the current global pandemic, which has affected almost everyone everywhere and has moved many schools from physical campuses to online spaces.

Explore the students' projects and watch two special events:

a conversation with four GOA Bioethics students, who used a bioethics lens to look at COVID-19 in their conference projects

highlights from a series of interviews where Climate Change students discovered the incredible and varied ways adults are working on climate change solutions

These student efforts give us hope. They also assure us that young adults will thrive and enable others to do the same in a globally networked society. We are all in this together.

Based on the topics of GOA courses and courses at member schools, the diverse student work illuminates:
how opportunities for advocacy exist in myriad areas of our lives and studies, right in our own communities and neighborhoods.

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In 2020 the Catalyst Conference, an exhibition of student learning and advocacy efforts on behalf of real world problems, brought together 350+ students from 76 GOA schools in 18 different countries and 27 US states. In 2020 the conference took place during the current global pandemic, which has affected almost everyone everywhere and has moved many schools from physical campuses to online spaces.

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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Reflect is what educators do. College professors give value to reflecting on pedagogical practice. Administrators expect us to reflect on our practice in instructional evaluations. Inservice instructors ask us to reflect on what we learned from each training session.

As teachers reflecting on ways to enhance our daily instruction, we ask: How did the students respond to the day's lesson? Were the objectives met? How could we better manage our time? What methods might engage our students?

As a middle school teacher, I found myself asking similar questions until I realized: who better to ask than the students themselves? After all, I might believe a lesson was absolutely wonderful-it seemed as though every student was attentive and focused on the classroom activity-but what if I was wrong? What if my students weren't getting all that I hoped they would from our time together?

So, I implemented student reflection as a weekly component of my classroom instruction. Every Friday, students spent 10-15 minutes reflecting on our week together. They responded to four key questions that prompted personal reflection:

What did you learn this week?

What activities helped you to learn?

What activities did you find engaging?

What questions or comments do you have for me?

Student reflections guided my classroom teaching and lesson planning as I had hoped, but I was surprised by the unexpected benefits it brought to the students. An activity intended to suit my own instructional needs became an activity that inspired connection, openness, diversity, metacognition, and sense of community for my students.

Here are some of the ways reflection benefits students.

Recognition of Mastery

To start their weekly reflection, students took stock of what they learned in our class that week. They could look through their class notebooks and calendars for a quick reminder of the daily objectives and activities. Then, they focused on what they, personally, took from the week's classroom activities.

For the most part, students shared an aspect of class content that really resonated with them. For example, after a week dedicated to plot structure and character development, Mary shared how she learned about the steps of characterization along with key ways to develop a relatable character. Meanwhile, Thomas discussed how he learned more about climax and the way in which a text can hold the reader's attention.

By reflecting on what they learned, students were able to identify their newfound knowledge and see their own growth and awareness of the content.

Self-Awareness and Character Development

In educating the whole child, we hope to reach beyond content and grasp the heart of the student. In addition to sharing content knowledge, students often shared what they learned in terms of their own self-awareness and inner character.

For instance, during the discussion of a short story in which the main character was bullied by his older brother, a student volunteered to share his own experience at the hands of a bully. Students engaged in a deep, impromptu conversation regarding bullying. As a result, many of them reflected on this discussion in their weekly reflection log. They discussed in detail what the classroom conversation taught them about the lives and experiences of their classmates.

In addition, they expressed what they believed the conversation revealed about their role in such a situation, or their personal experience with bullying. It opened their eyes to the realities of bullying and inspired them to reflect on ways in which they could reach out and help someone in need.

Diversity and Relationships

In the same vein, students sometimes reflected on what they learned about the cultures and life experiences of their classmates. As students engaged in group discussions, they shared personal connections and insights into their own lives and experiences.

In reflecting on the week, students shared what they learned about how the life and culture of a classmate was different from their own. They considered the implication of knowledge for them both inside and outside class.

Thinking About Learning

We want our middle level students to think about their own learning, to identify their own learning needs and the manner in which their individual needs are addressed in the classroom. In this way, they can grow in their sense of autonomy and self-efficacy. Which strategies seem to work best in helping them master content? Are they visual, auditory, or perhaps kinesthetic learners? How do they learn best?

After identifying what they learned, students reflected on how they learned. What activities seemed to help them the most? Which component of the day's lesson was the most effective in drawing and holding their attention? For instance, was it the daily bell work that seemed to help them understand and master course material? Did the foldable actively engage them? Did they prefer to work independently or in a small group setting?

Students shared the strategies and activities they believed helped them master the course content as well as the class activities they found to be the most engaging. In this way, they reflected on their own learning, strengths, and needs.

Dialogue

Finally, student reflection is an effective way to inspire and enhance dialogue between the teacher and student. So often, students are hesitant to ask essential questions or engage in important conversation with the teacher. Through weekly reflections, they have the opportunity to ask questions and share information through written dialogue. Through written reflections, students often shared things that confused them about the week's content or lessons. They asked extended questions about the week's objectives, or sought clarification on information shared during class lessons.

In addition, students occasionally reached out for support or encouragement. For example, I noticed a student was not quite himself in class but I couldn't identify the problem. In his reflection, he shared that there was trouble at home, and family turmoil was causing him to fall behind in his coursework. Consequently, we were able to provide him assistance and support in class and through our guidance department.

Tools for Growing

Weekly student reflections provide students the opportunity to grow in their content knowledge, metacognition, and self-awareness, and to strengthen a sense of class community. In addition to providing insight into my own classroom instruction, it gave me a chance to really know and appreciate the diversity within each of my middle level learners.

Their reflections demonstrate the many aspects of learning and development taking place in the middle school classroom every day. Student reflection on learning is a powerful tool in any middle level classroom.

Brooke B. Eisenbach is an assistant professor of secondary education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. beisenba@lesley.edu Published inAMLE Magazine, February 2016.

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Student Reflection: A Tool for Growth and Development

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Reflect is what educators do. College professors give value to reflecting on pedagogical practice. Administrators expect us to reflect on our practice in instructional evaluations. Inservice instructors ask us to reflect on what we learned from each training session. As teachers reflecting on ways to enhance our daily instruction, we ask: How did the students respond to the day’s lesson?

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