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S. Chapter 1: A Tool for Effective Teaching

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S. Chapter 1: A Tool for Effective Teaching

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William James:
- recommended to start lessons at a point just beyond the child's level of knowledge/understanding to stretch child's mind
John Dewey:
- children learn best in doing
- education should focus on the whole child
- all children deserve to have success in education
E.L. Thorndike:
- assessment and measurement
Instructional Strategies:
- constructivist approach: learner-centered; individuals constructing their knowledge and understanding with guidance from the teacher.
- direct instruction approach: structured, teacher-centered approach; teacher direction and control; maximize student learning time
Educational Research
- descriptive: observation, interviews, questionaires, standardized tests, case studies...etc.
- correlational research: relation between two or more characteristics
- experimental research: random assignment, examining the influence of at least one independent variable, one or more control groups

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What Is Educational Psychology? 6 Examples and Theories

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Educational Psychology is one of the oldest branches in the field, with roots dating back to Plato. We take a look into this growing & diverse topic.

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S. Chapter 2: Cognitive and Language Development

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S. Chapter 2: Cognitive and Language Development

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Development: the pattern of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes that begins at conception and continues through life.
Piaget's Theory:
Cognitive Processes:
- Schemas - actions or mental representations that organize knowledge
- Assimilation - the incorporation of new information into existing knowledge (schemas)
- Accommodation - concept of adjusting schemas to fit new information and experiences
- Organization - grouping isolated behaviors into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system' the grouping or arranging of items into categories
- equilibrium - as children experience cognitive conflict, they shift from one stage of thought to the next and eventually resolve the conflict to reach a balance of thought
Stages of Cognitive Development:
- sensorimotor
- preoperational
- concrete operational stage
- formal operational
Vygotsky's Ideas
- Social constructivism
- zone of proximal development, language, dialogue, tools of the culture
- education plays a central role, helping children learn the tools of the culture
- zone of proximal development: Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with guidance and assistance from adults and more-skilled children
Language Development:
- morphology (units of meaning involved in word formation), syntax (ways words are combined in sentences or phrases), semantics (word and sentence meanings), pragmatics (appropriate use of language in context), phonology (sound system of a language)

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S. Chapter 3: Social Context and Socioemotional Development

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S. Chapter 3: Social Context and Socioemotional Development

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Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory: development is influenced by five environmental systems
Erikson's Life-Span Development Theory: Trust v. Mistrust, Autonomy v. Shame and Doubt, Initiative v. Guilt, Industry v. Inferiority, Identity v identity confusion, intimacy v isolation, generativity v stagnation, integrity v despair
Family Factors:
Parenting Styles: authoritarian, authoritative, neglectful, indulgent
Montessori Approach: children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities
Identity Development
- diffusion: individuals have neither explored meaningful alternatives nor made a commitment
- foreclosure: individuals have made a commitment but have not explored meaningful alternatives
- moratorium: are in the midst of exploring alternatives but have not yet made a commitment
- achievement: have explored meaningful alternatives and made a commitment
Kohlberg's Theory of moral development
- Preconventional Reasoning (focussed on reward and punishment)
- Conventional Reasoning (individuals internally abide by certain standards, but the standards are of others such as parents/societal laws)
- Postconventional Reasoning (morality is more internal)
Domain Theory of moral development - moral development includes domains of social knowledge and reasoning
Moral Education Approaches
- hidden curriculum
- Character education
- Values clarification
- cognitive moral education

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Intelligence Tests:
- Binet Tests: Mental Age compared to Intelligence Quotient
- Wechsler Scales: Verbal and Nonverbal subscales
- Group intelligence tests
Intelligence theories
- triarchic theory: Sternberg's view that intelligence comes in the forms of: analytical, creative, and practical
- Gardner's Eight frames of mindset: verbal, mathematic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist
Emotional Intelligence: ability to perceive and express emotion, understand emotion, monitor one's and other's feelings, discriminate among them, use information to guide thinking/action.
Learning and Thinking Styles
impulsive vs. reflective
deep vs. surface
optimistic vs. pessimistic
The Big Five personality (descriptive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the way an individual adapts to the world)
-Openness
-Conscientiousness
-Extraversion
-Agreeableness
-Neuroticism (emotional Stability)
Temperament (a person's behavioral style and characteristic ways of responding)
- easy child: positive mood, regular routines, adapts easily
- difficult child: reacts negatively, cries frequently, irregular daily routines, difficulty accepting change
-slow-to-warm-up child: low activity level, someone negative, low mood intensity

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S. Chapter 7: Behavioral and Social Cognitive Approaches

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S. Chapter 7: Behavioral and Social Cognitive Approaches

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- Behaviorism: the view that behavior should be explained by experiences that can be directly observed, not by mental processes
- Classical conditioning: when an organism learns to connect, or associate, stimuli (generalization, discrimination, extinction, systematic desensitization)
- Operant conditioning: a form of learning in which the consequences of behavior produce changes in the probability that the behavior will ever occur (reinforcement and punishment)
Increasing desirable behaviors
- Choose effective reinforcers (high probability activity can serve as a reinforcer for a low-prob activity)
- Make reinforcers timely and contingent
- Select best schedule of reinforcement (fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, variable-interval)
- Contracting (agreement in writing)
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory: all three of these aspects influence each other
- Person/Cognition
- Behavior
- Environment
Self-efficacy: the belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes
Observational learning (attention, retention, production, motivation)
Self instructional methods (students can improve their performance by monitoring their behavior)

Self-regulatory learning (self-evaluation and monitoring, goal setting and strategic planning, putting a plan into action, monitoring outcomes and refining strategies)

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S. Chapter 8: The Information-Processing Approaches

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S. Chapter 8: The Information-Processing Approaches

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Information Processing Approach: children manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it
Cognitive Resources: capacity and speed of processing information
Mechanisms of change that all work together to create change in children's cognitive skills: encoding, automaticity. and strategy construction
Attention: focussing of mental resources
- selective attention
- divided attention
- sustained attention (vigilance)
- Executive attention
Memory: retention of information over time, which involves encoding (information into memory), storage (retention over time), and retrieval (information out of storage)
- encoding processes: rehearsal, deep processing (better memory), elaboration (extensiveness of information processing involved in encoding), constructing images, organization (one method = chunking)
- storage; 3 types of memory: sensory (holds information from the world in its original form for only an instant); short-term memory (memory span and working memory [phonological loop, visuospatial working memory, and central executive]); long-term memory
Retrieval
Forgetting (cue-dependent, interference, decay)
Expertise
Metacognition
- metamemory improves through childhood
- good processing model: competent cognition results from several factors (strategies, content knowledge, motivation, metacognition)
- help students learn a rich repertoire of strategies that produce solutions to problems

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S. Chapter 9: Complex Cognitive Processes

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S. Chapter 9: Complex Cognitive Processes

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CONCEPTS: groups of objects, events, and characteristics on the basis of common properties
- Ways to promote concept formation:
1. features of concept
2. define with examples
3. Hierarchical categorization and concept maps
4. Hypothesis Testing
5. Prototype Matching
THINKING: manipulating and transforming info into memory (concepts, reason, critical thinking, decisions, creativity, problem-solving)
Executive Function: encompasses higher-level processes linked to development of the prefrontal cortex; managing one's thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and exercise self-control
Reasoning
- Inductive reasoning: reasoning from the specific to the general
- Deductive reasoning: from general to specific
Critical thinking
- Mindfulness: being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life's everyday activities and tasks
Decision making
- confirmation bias - tendency to search fro and use info that supports our ideas rather than refutes them
- belief perseverance - tendency to hold on to a belief in the face of contradictory evidence
- overconfidence bias - tendency to have more confidence in judgments and decision than we should have, based on probability or past experience
- hindsight bias- tendency to falsely report, after the fact, having accurately predicted an event
Creativity
- convergent thinking (one answer) vs. divergent thinking (multiple possible--creativity)
PROBLEM-SOLVING
1. find and frame problems 2. develop good problem-solving strategies (subgoals, algorithms, heuristics, means-end analysis) 3. evaluate solutions 4. rethink and redefine problems and solutions over time
TRANSFER
- near - to a situation that is similar to the one in which the initial learning took place vs. far - situation is very different from initial
- low-road - automatic, unconscious vs. high-road - conscious and effortful
- forward-reaching - ways to apply info to future situation vs. backward-reaching - previous situation for info to solve a problem in new context

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S. Chapter 10: Social Constructivist Approaches

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S. Chapter 10: Social Constructivist Approaches

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Social Constructivist (Vygotsky):
- teachers are facilitators
- social factors contribute to students' construction of knowledge and understanding
Ways teachers and peers can contribute to children's learning:
1) scaffolding: challenging levels of support over the course of a teaching session, with a more-skilled individual providing guidance to fit the student's current performance
2) Cognitive apprenticeship: expert stretches and supports the novice's understanding of and use of a culture's skill
3) tutoring
4) Cooperative learning: students work in small groups to help each other learn
- works better for complex tasks
- different approaches: STAD, jigsaw classroom, learning together, group investigation, and cooperative scripting
- heterogeneous groupings recommended
Structure small-group work
- give students opportunities for team-building exercises
- assign students specific duties/jobs to keep the group on task to function more smoothly

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Just about everyone loves the idea of cooperative learning. Think of kids working productively and excitedly in groups, everyone getting along and enthusiastically helping one another learn. Think of kids completing great projects together, encouraging one another, and forming friendships. In this ideal scenario, all students are engaged, active, and minds-on. They are learning cooperation itself, an important life skill. Cooperative learning: how pro-social, how liberating-and how does anyone really accomplish this?

Cooperative learning can be wonderful. Students often love working this way. I've heard comments like, "An explanation is easier to understand if it's coming from another kid" or "My teammates ... make sure I understand the work." But for many teachers who've tried it, cooperative learning is a noisy mess rather than a stairway to heaven. One student might be doing all the work while the others socialize, for example. Kids may ignore or belittle group mates they perceive to be low achievers. Some students may think cooperative learning is party time rather than learning time. This is why studies find that most teachers don't use cooperative learning regularly, despite extensive research supporting it (Gillies, 2014; Roseth, Johnson, &amp; Johnson, 2008; Slavin, 1995, 2013; Webb, 2008).

It is the "learning" in cooperative learning that is too often left out. But it needn't be. Using these five strategies, teachers can get the greatest benefit possible from cooperative learning and ensure that collaboration enhances learning.

An effective cooperative group is not a collection of kids thrown together for a brief activity. It's a team composed of diverse students who care about helping one another learn-and about the success of the team itself. All members must know they can depend on one another for help.

In the forms of cooperative learning we've used for years at Johns Hopkins University and at the Success for All Foundation in elementary and secondary schools (Slavin, 1995), we group students into four-member teams (if the class doesn't divide evenly, we have a few five-member teams). A foursome provides flexibility. Some activities can be done in pairs and some with the whole team. Teams work together daily for 6-8 weeks; after that period, teachers assign new teams.

Team members move their desks together and choose a team name. At the beginning of the team's work, members engage in group bonding activities, like creating a motto or coat of arms to express their team personality.

In middle or high school, groups might investigate careers that interest them and colleges known for majors tied to those careers. Their research often culminates in each team giving a presentation about why they recommend a particular college, and teams sometimes name themselves after the school they recommend. Even if students choose Duke because of basketball fame, they've spent time helping one another learn something new, shared what matters to them, and met a deadline.

It's best if teams are composed of a cross section of the class: high and low achievers, boys and girls, students of different ethnicities. Groups definitely won't have such diversity if students choose their teams, so the teacher should make team assignments.

Too often in cooperative learning, students are put into teams and instructed to "help one another." Helping one another is a good thing, but kids will do a lot more of it if they share a team goal.

A team goal is a target, product, or indicator that shows a team has done a good job of getting every member to perform at his or her personal best. A team goal could be increasing the average score on a quiz that all students take individually after they help one another prepare. It could be one overall product with individual components that each team member clearly contributed to, such as by coding a specific part of a computer program or contributing essential data to a group lab report.

In each case, a teacher both looks at the team average and evaluates the individual products. Teams whose work meets certain criteria are awarded certificates or small privileges. This helps team members see their joint work as achieving something important. Teams that don't have a goal are like sports teams in a game where no one knows, or cares, what the score is-not the sort of game in which all players do their best.

This is the essential element most often left out of cooperative learning-and when it is, teachers lose a lot of cooperative learning's potential.

Individual accountability means that to reach the team goal, all team members must master the targeted content or skills. Team success should depend on the hard work-and therefore the learning-of all members.

To understand why this is important, consider a team working together without individual accountability. Imagine that a team studies together and then takes one quiz, on which all team members can help one another. This arrangement will likely produce two undesirable outcomes: the free rider and the know-it-all.

Free riders do little work. They may chat with others, but they don't try much to learn or help others learn. "The others will do it anyway," they reason. "Why should I try?" Students who have doubts about their own skills may be shy or reluctant to participate if they know others will do the work.

The know-it-all is another story. A know-it-all (or two) may dominate the group and tell others the answers. I once saw a group of middle schoolers trying to solve a complex math problem together. (Their task was to solve the problem and give the answer as a group.) Two kids were doing most of the talking. When one of their (usually quiet) teammates ventured an opinion, both know-it-alls shushed her and told her to wait for them to deliver the answer.

How can teachers ensure individual accountability? First, make sure the team goal requires the learning and participation of all team members. For example, if the team goal is to score an average of 80 percent or better on a quiz, all students need to do well. Or a goal might be to write an outstanding report on a given country, with each chapter signed by a team member. Never choose an outcome one student could do alone. In addition, frequently reinforce the idea that the purpose of the team is to make sure that all members are learning, not just to get the right answers or complete the project. Explain why individual accountability is fair; students will readily understand why no team member should get a free ride.

During lessons, use informal cooperative structures that reinforce the idea of individual accountability. Teachers we work with in Success for All programs, for example, make frequent use of a technique called "random reporter." Each student is given a number from 1 to 5. When teachers ask a question, they direct it to a team and then pick a number at random. The student on that team with that number has to respond for the whole group-and the team can earn points based on the answer.

Practices like random reporter communicate consistently that teams must make sure all their members learn. Potential free riders understand that they will be held accountable and that they can't wait for their teammates to make all the effort. Know-it-alls realize that if they don't engage, teach, and give feedback to every team member, their team won't succeed. One middle school math teacher noted, "Students ... know they need to work hard on math problems and be ready to explain them. If they aren't ready, they can't get off the hook easily."

Finally, it's important that the teacher lets the work be challenging and doesn't step in too early to do the work for students who struggle. Doing so not only undermines teammates' developing interdependence, but also teaches students that if they feign helplessness, display apathy, or work slowly, the teacher will soon step in and complete the tasks. If kids instead learn to make appropriate levels of effort and to persist, they will build confidence in their ability to improve and learn. They'll realize that asking for help-not the answers-helps them learn. Letting students struggle constructively and safely in their teams enables each student to reflect on his or her thinking, compare it with others' ideas, and refine that thinking before sharing it with the class-or on a test.

Setting up structures that promote effective cooperative learning is not enough. Team members need to know how to make good use of the opportunity to work with one another; this means they need to learn about, practice, and refine key interpersonal skills.

Active listening. Active listening skills are essential in good group work-and in life. When students are listening well, their eyes are on the speaker and they occasionally nod. Active listeners avoid interrupting but periodically summarize what they hear and ask for clarification when needed. These practices communicate respect for the speaker and enable the listener to learn as much as possible from that speaker's words.

Explaining ideas and opinions. Team members need this skill to communicate and persuade in cooperative interactions. Explaining must go beyond single-word answers; students must be able to identify sources or reasons for their personal opinions or conclusions. They must explain their ideas to others so that peers can understand them too. This demands metacognition, evidentiary thinking, summarizing, paraphrasing, and listening to others thoughtfully.

Encouraging teammates. Effective team members know how to encourage and support teammates, disagree with dignity, and help maintain a positive, prosocial tone within the group. Tell students you expect them to make sure that all team members are actively participating in the thinking parts of the group's tasks. Teach them how to make that happen.

Explaining your own ideas while also encouraging others is a complex skill that demands that students respect one another. Guide kids to make teamwork time a safe environment in which to speak, receive feedback, and admit what they don't understand. Once students establish a productive working relationship, they can set goals together, monitor their own progress, and solve learning problems together.

Completing tasks. Students should be expected to work on the group's tasks until they are finished to a high standard and to ensure that at the end of a team study session, all participants have learned the class objective.

When students know what constitutes great work within their team, and reach that standard, they can be proud of themselves and of any recognition their group receives.

Cooperative learning should be seen as a key part of each lesson, but not the whole lesson. Effective class lessons might also include teacher instruction, media- or computer-based activities, and individual assessments of various kinds. Informal cooperative-learning activities such as random reporter or think-pair-share may also be used, but these shouldn't be the only cooperative activity.

The best way to use cooperative learning is to replace individual work, which in traditional lesson cycles happens after lessons and before assessments. Individual, isolated practice is boring and ineffective for most students, especially if they struggle. Cooperative learning makes practicing to mastery engaging and social and gives all students "study buddies" to help them when they run into difficulties.

Sometimes team activities may come before teacher instruction, as when teams are conducting experiments in a discovery learning format. But at some point, a teacher needs to explain the essential objectives and give students parameters and guidance for their group work so they can move forward.

I once observed a class of 9th graders who started the school year reading significantly below grade level. Their first-year teacher worked hard to provide a research-based cooperative learning model in which they would read a wide variety of complex texts, discuss them in teams, and prepare one another to participate in class discussions. However, students weren't making the desired progress. As the teacher looked for what was missing, she noticed students were sloppy in their work and slow to complete tasks. Although they often talked to one another, they weren't helping one another.

The first change this educator made was holding each student individually accountable for the work. The second was providing and discussing with the class rubrics for high-quality answers or comments in discussions. Students and teachers practiced scoring sample answers and exchanged feedback.

Then she made the task more interesting, challenging, personal, and relevant. She asked students to read closely and compare several journal articles about the science of emotions. Team members were to help one another answer questions that required more than recitation of facts from the articles, but to individually form their own hypotheses about the author's intent in writing the articles-and support those hypotheses with evidence from the texts.

In a few days, when the students realized that the teacher wasn't going to dilute this work to save time, they dug into the articles. Discussions flourished. Well-structured cooperative learning and recognition of work that met the standards of the rubrics ultimately transformed this class from remedial to advanced. When the students were asked what they thought about how their class was changing, one girl summed it up: "When I work with my teammates and we use the rubrics and our brains, we know we have a good answer. We're proud to show what we know-we are ready for any of us to report out."

Used properly, cooperative learning is an exciting way for all kids to learn. Research finds that if teachers make the five elements discussed here part of group learning, students learn more, feel more successful, love school, and enjoy the subject they're studying-and like and accept one another (Roseth et al., 2008; Slavin, 2013; Webb, 2008). For outcomes like these, it's worth the effort.

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Five key practices bring out the tremendous potential of this approach.

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S. Chapter 12: Planning, Instruction, and Technology

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S. Chapter 12: Planning, Instruction, and Technology

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PLANNING
- teachers make plans for different time frames (yearly, term, units, weekly, daily)
TEACHER-CENTERED PLANNING
- behavioral objectives: statements the propose changes in student's behavior to reach a desired performance level; given task
- task analysis: breaking down a complex task that students are to learn into its component parts; steps to do a given task
- Bloom's taxonomy (see graphic)
TEACHER-CENTERED INSTRUCTION
- direct instruction: structured, teacher-centered; teacher direction and control, high expectations for students' progress, maximum time spent by student on academic tasks; this can include:
- orienting students to new material
- lecturing, explaining, and demonstrating
- questioning and discussing
- mastery learning: learning one topic or concept thoroughly before moving on to a more difficult one
- seat work (students work independently at seats)
- homework
LEARNER-CENTERED PLANNING
- APA's learner-centered psychological principles: cognitive and metacognitive, motivational and emotional, developmental and social, individual difference
LEARNER-CENTERED INSTRUCTION
- problem-based learning: real-world problem solving; small-group discussion; students identify issues, teacher guides and monitors efforts
- essential questions
- discovery learning: students construct an understanding on their own; guided discovery (teacher-guided questions and directions)
- more effective for social sciences and humanities; not so much for math/science
TECHNOLOGY
- can be used in the classroom to support being an: empowered learner, digital citizen, knowledge constructor, innovative designer, computational thinker, creative communicator, global collaborator (ISTE standards)

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S. Chapter 13: Motivation, Teaching, and Learning

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S. Chapter 13: Motivation, Teaching, and Learning

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MOTIVATION
- includes behavioral, humanistic, cognitive, and social perspectives
Extrinsic motivation: doing something to obtain something else (a means to an end) or avoid an unpleasant consequence
Intrinsic motivation: internal motivation of doing something for its own sake (an end in itself)
- self-determining: increased by student choice and personal responsibility
- tends to drop during middle school years
Rewards:
- can sometimes undermine learning
- should convey information about task mastery rather than external control
Attribution: individuals are motivated to discover the underlying causes of their own performance and behavior (locus, stability, controllability)
Helpless vs. mastery orientation mindsets
Factors that increase student achievement: self-efficacy (belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes); specific, proximal, and challenging goals; delayed gratification; high expectations; values and purpose
SOCIAL MOTIVATION
- students have varying needs for affiliation
- approval from teachers, peers, friends, and parents are important
- parents need to be enlisted as partners with the teacher in educating the student
- differences in achievement are more closely related to socioeconomic status than to ethnicity (both are still important)
ACHIEVEMENT DIFFICULTIES
- failure syndrome: having low expectations for success and giving up at the first sign of difficulty
- students protect their self-worth by avoiding failure: nonperformance, procrastination, and setting unreachable goals (perfectionist)
Other contributing factors: students with high anxiety, uninterested, alienation

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Getting off to the right start:
- establish expectations for behavior and resolve student uncertainties
- make sure that students experience success
- be available and visible
- be in charge
Focus: developing and maintaining a positive classroom environment that supports learning; proactive management strategies; "beehive of activity"
Management Goals:
1. Help students spend more time on learning and less time on non-goal-directed activity
2. preventing students from developing academic and emotional problems
Authoritative: engaging in considerable verbal give-and-take with students; caring attitude; behavior limits when necessary; sensitive to ethnic and socioeconomic variations
Management Characteristics: withitness, coping with overlapping situations, maintaining smoothness and continuity, engaging students in challenging activities
Classroom Rules should be: reasonable, necessary, clear, comprehensible, consistent with goals and school rules
Being a Good Communicator: speaking skills (clear, connect with audience, talking speed), attentive listening skills, nonverbal
Problem behaviors:
- minor interventions: nonverbal cues, keep the activity moving, proximity to students, redirecting the behavior, directly telling to stop, give student choice
- moderate interventions: withholding privilege/desired activity, isolating/removing student, penalty/detention; teachers should have supportive resources (mediators, parent calls, principal, student mentors)

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S. Chapter 15: Standardized Tests and Teaching

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S. Chapter 15: Standardized Tests and Teaching

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Purposes: provides information about a student's progress, diagnoses strengths/weaknesses, provides evidence for specific program placements, planning/instruction, accountability
Evaluating St. Test:
- norm-referenced: comparing a student's performance w/ scores for a group of individuals previously tested
- criterion-referenced tests: student's performance is compared to established criteria rather than norms; designed to assess skills and knowledge in specific areas
- validity (extent to which it measures what it is intended to measure; extent of accuracy of scores), reliability (extent to which a test produces consistent, reproducible measure of performance; test-retest, alternate forms, split-half) fairness (unbiased, non-discriminatory)
Aptitude: predicts student's ability to learn, or what the student can accomplish with further education and training
Achievement: what the student has learned; mastered skills
St. Achievement types: batteries (individual subject matter), specific subject areas (skill in a more detailed, extensive way), diagnostics (pinpoint specific learning needs)
Descriptive Statistics: mean, median, mode, SD, range, percentile
Although standardized tests can be useful, they also do not encompass all of the knowledge and skills a student may have

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Testing, Testing | Linda Darling-Hammond | TEDxStanford

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S. Chapter 16: Classroom Assessment and Grading

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S. Chapter 16: Classroom Assessment and Grading

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Preinstruction, during-instruction, and post-instruction assessments are integral to teaching
Rising trends: assessment for learning, not an assessment of learning; self-assessment; students' learning portfolios; using technology; integration of skills; lots of feedback; multiple methods
High-quality assessments are valid, reliable, and fair.
Traditional tests:
- multiple choice (stem and options)
- construct-response and essay questions
Alternative Assessment: evaluating knowledge and skills in context that approximates real-world/life
- performance assessment: higher-level thinking with more "doing"; guidelines (establish clear purpose, identify observable criteria, provide appropriate setting, judging/scoring the performance)
- portfolio assessment: a systematic and organized collection of student's work to demonstrate skills and accomplishments; can document growth or showcase outstanding work
GRADING
- purposes: informational, administrative, motivational, guidance
- components: standard of comparison (norm-referenced vs. criterion-referenced), aspects of students' performance, the weighting of different kinds of evidence

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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- Productive Struggle: When the learner has developed the necessary strategies for working through something difficult. The mental activity that takes place when students are in their zone of proximal development.
DEPENDENT vs. INDEPENDENT LEARNERS
- dependent: rely on the teacher for instruction
- independent: can overcome struggles on own
- learning partnerships
- information processing
- community building: creating a safe and comfortable learning environment for students

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H. Chapter 2: What's Culture Got to Do with It?

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H. Chapter 2: What's Culture Got to Do with It?

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Culture levels:
- surface: observable, concrete elements; food, dress, music, holiday
- shallow: unspoken rules around everyday interactions and social norms
- deep: tacit knowledge and unconscious assumptions that govern our worldview
Cultural archetypes: universal patterns across cultures
- collectivism (interdependence, relational, collaborative, harmony) and individualism (independence, achievement, self-reliance, competitive)
- Oral and written traditions
Sociopolitical context: series of mutually reinforcing policies and practices across social, economic, and political domains that contribute to disparities and unequal opportunities for people of color in housing, transportation, education, and health care. result in unequal outcomes along racial and class lines
Implicit Bias: unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that shape our responses to certain groups
Structural Racialization: A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity.

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H. Chapter 3: This is Your Brain on Culture

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H. Chapter 3: This is Your Brain on Culture

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- all brains come with a default setting: Avoid threats to safety at all costs and seek well-being at every opportunity
- Reticular activating system (RAS)- responsible for alertness and attention; within reptilian region
- LIMBIC REGION- emotional brain; emotions, behavior, and cognition together
Limbic Brain Three structures:
- Thalamus - communication dispatch hub
- Hippocampus - background knowledge storage; working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory
- Amygdala - guard dog (fight, flight, freeze, appease); contains stress hormone (cortisol)
NEOCORTEX REGION
- home to executive function
Neurons - nerves that are the brain's building blocks
Neuroplasticity - the brain's ability to grow an unlimited amount of gray matter in response to our continuous learning
"neurons that fire together, wire together!"
Myelination - process of wrapping the body of the neuron with layers of fatty substance called myelin; makes it easier for brain to do complex work-->the fat allows the chemical and electrical impulses to travel across the neuron faster.
NERVOUS SYSTEM
Automatic Nervous system:
- parasympathetic nervous system - relaxed; seeks well-being
- sympathetic - alert; ready to react and avoid danger
- polyvagal - social engagement system; connection; oxytocin (bonding hormone)
Culturally responsiveness to keep in mind:
- the brain seeks to minimize social threats and maximize opportunities to connect with others in community
- positive relationships keep our safety-threat detection system in check
- culture guides how we process information
- attention drives learning
- all new information must be coupled with existing funds of knowledge in order to be learned
- the brain physically grows though challenge and stretch, expanding its ability to do more complex thinking and learning

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H. Chapter 4: Preparing to Be a Culturally Responsive Practitioner

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H. Chapter 4: Preparing to Be a Culturally Responsive Practitioner

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Internal tasks teachers need to work through to uncover implicit bias and prepare to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students:
1. Identify your cultural frame of reference
- Work your way through your surface, shallow, and deep culture
2. Widen your cultural aperture
- Deficit Thinking Paradigm --
3. Identify your key triggers
-  "We can help students consciously select culturally different ways of speaking or interacting that are still appropriate to the situation" (Hammond 61).
- Mindful Reflection Protocol:
(1) Explain the attributions that you have about the student
(2) Write out or reflect on your feelings and thoughts when working with a student. Take into account the potential for misinterpretation resulting from deficit thinking, prejudice, and over-generalizations.
(3) Consider alternative explanations by reviewing your documentation and reflections.
(4) Check your assumptions. Share your reflections with a colleague, parents, and/or community members. Meet with parents to learn more about expected and observed behaviors in the home.
(5) Make a plan.
(6) Continuously revisit this process and reassess your attributions and your progress with a student.
- Identity your triggers through the 5 social interaction elements that activate threats in the brain (standing, control, certainty, connection, equity)
- Practice emotional self-management through (a) remembering that our brain has a negativity bias (b) identifying what sets us off (c) labeling feelings when they arise, and (4) creating an "early warning system"
S.O.D.A. -- Stop, observe, detach, awaken

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Instructions

Getting Started

Bring to mind a challenging interaction (or series of interactions) with a student.

Draw on the following framework to begin unpacking your assumptions about your experiences with the student.

Use the steps and questions below to practice distinguishing objective description from interpretation and evaluation (both of which are influenced more by culture and experience).

For example, description is about what actually occurred-what you see or hear (e.g., Shelley raised her hand five times during the lecture and talked with her seatmate two times), while interpretation (inferring meaning behind the behavior) and evaluation (attributing positive or negative significance to the behavior) can be influenced by our past experiences and cultural lenses. "Shelley really needs attention" or "Shelley is really interested in this topic" (interpretation), and "I don't like that," or "I appreciate her energy and initiative" (evaluation).

Keep in mind-evaluation assigns a positive or negative attribute to the behavior, while interpretation makes an assumption about what the intent was behind the behavior. Evaluative statements are inherently interpretative.

Step 1: Explain the attributions that you have about the student.

Describe what you and the student said and did.

How did the student react to your actions or comments?

Collect notes on multiple days and at different times of the day.

Step 2: Write out or reflect on your feelings and thoughts when working with the student.

Take into account the potential for misinterpretations resulting from deficit thinking, prejudice, and overgeneralizations.

How does this student make you feel? What are your worries or fears?

What are your assumptions? Why do you find the student problematic?

Have you evaluated, interpreted, or described the behavior?

Try to rewrite the examples in descriptive terms.

Step 3: Consider alternative explanations by reviewing your documentation and reflections.

Review the explanations and reflect on why the student may be doing what he or she does. Look for patterns in your behavior and the student's behavior.

What are your expectations for the situation? How is the student not meeting your expectations? In what way is the behavior interfering with learning?

List alternative explanations or interpretations of the student's behavior.

What external factors and/or personal factors could be influencing the student's behavior? What recent changes have occurred in the student's life, disability, acculturation, and so forth?

Step 4: Check your assumptions.

Share your reflections with a colleague, parents, and/or community members. Meet with parents to learn more about expected and observed behaviors in the home.

Share your list of alternative explanations or interpretations of the student's behavior with a colleague, parents, and/or community members.

Meet with the family to learn more about their perspective in understanding the behavior. Do they notice the same behavior at home? Do they find it problematic? How do they interact with the student at home? Have there been any major changes or upsets in the home?

Be open and responsive to the family's ideas and perspectives.

Seek to understand rather than to judge.

Step 5: Make a plan.

How will you change or respond differently?

Brainstorm ideas on how to change the environment, your actions, and/or expectations for this student.

Experiment with responding differently. Note what happens.

Reflect on your feelings as well as the student's response.

Frequently communicate with the family. Ask whether family members have noticed a difference. What have they been trying that works?

Consult with colleagues, parents, and/or community members while you experiment to check your assumptions and interpretations.

Step 6: Revisit this process to reassess your attributions and your progress with the student.

Notice when you are overgeneralizing, attributing behavior within a deficit perspective, or behaving in prejudiced ways toward certain students.

Remember that this process is a continuous one, so revisit the steps periodically to continue your growth and understanding of students.

Source

Dray, B. J. & Wisneski, D. B. (2011). Mindful Reflection as a Process for Developing Culturally Responsive Practices. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 44(1), 28-36.

Teaching Tolerance describes Dray and Wisneski's Mindful Reflection Process in this article, and it is also featured in Chapter 3 of Zaretta Hammond's book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.

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Mindful Reflection Process for Developing Culturally Responsive Practices | Greater Good In Education

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Getting Started Bring to mind a challenging interaction (or series of interactions) with a student. Draw on the following framework to begin unpacking your assumptions about your experiences with the student. Use the steps and questions below to practice distinguishing objective description from interpretation and evaluation (both of which are influenced more by culture and experience).

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H. Chapter 5: Building the Foundation of Learning Partnerships

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H. Chapter 5: Building the Foundation of Learning Partnerships

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Building Trust - paves the way for us to lead students into their zone of proximal development
1. Listening
- 70% of communication is nonverbal
2. Trust generators (selective vulnerability, familiarity, similarity of interests, concern, competence) to build rapport
3. Building trust takes time and patience -- it will not happen overnight
Rapport building
- affirmation - intentionally noticing and admiring the uniqueness of culturally and linguistically diverse students

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In this post, I've put together a list of affirmations for students from teachers for a couple of reasons;

The first is that teaching is tough, I know this first hard. So, finding good motivational techniques can go a long way to helping both teachers and students succeed.

The second is that being a student is tough, I also know this first hand! I also know how important and influential the right affirmations can be to personal academic success.

Hopefully, you'll find the perfect affirmations in these lists for both you and your students.

Affirmations for Students From Teachers
Here are some affirmations to give to your students to repeat either together in class, or in their own time:

I have a desire to learn something new every day.

I have a passion for learning and enjoy expanding my knowledge.

I am a good student and always try my hardest.

I learn something new every day and am always getting smarter.

I am well prepared for my tests and will be able to stay calm and do my best.

I am ready for any tests and will do well.

Today I did my best and tomorrow I will do even better.

I am grateful to have the education available to me.

I am grateful for my teacher trying so hard to help me succeed.

Everyone around me is helping me to succeed and believe in me.

Working hard now is planting the seed for success later in life.

I am always open and willing to learn new things.

I am clever, I am smart.

Life is all about learning and growing as a person.

The harder I try, the easier things will be.

I have a support network of friends and family if I need them.

Here are some affirmations to say directly to your students:

You are all brilliant in your own individual ways.

You all have the talent, knowledge, and dedication to achieve all of your goals.

Today you learned a lot.

You always do the very best you can.

Through dedication and hard work, you will meet all of your academic goals.

Learning is part of who you are.

Today was great, tomorrow will be even better.

Never doubt yourselves, you're all more than capable of achieving your goals.

The harder you all try today, the easier tomorrow will be.

Related - Have an exam pending? Check out these affirmations for test anxiety.

Affirmations for Teachers to Use Themselves

I am making a big difference in the lives of my students.

I am thankful to have an important, challenging, and rewarding job.

I take pride in my work and will be successful as a result.

I am peaceful and calm in the classroom and am always able to give my best.

I have high professional integrity and always do my best for my students.

I love my job and get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing my students do well.

My students respect me and value the work I do.

I am constantly developing as a teacher and improving.

I know I am a good teacher.

My colleagues respect me, and I respect them.

Every day is going to be better than the previous day.

Today is going to be the best day I've had teaching.

I teach because I enjoy making a positive impact on my students'.

I am not alone in this journey.

I am where I'm supposed to be, I was destined to be a teacher.

Why Affirmations Are Important to Students and Teachers

Using affirmations in the classroom is a technique a lot of teachers have used and seen it help students make improvements academically, socially, and personally.

It helps to create an environment where students support one another and builds confidence. As well as strengthening the relationship between teachers and students.

Using affirmations helps change students' attitudes, makes them more aware and mindful, and ultimately helps them absorb information better.

Do you have any affirmations you would like to share with the community? Please drop me a message below so I can add them to the list for the benefit of others, thanks.

Image credits - Header photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

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39 Affirmations for Students From Teachers - Self Development Journey

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In this post, I've put together a list of affirmations for students from teachers for a couple of reasons; The first is that teaching is tough, I know this first hard. So, finding good motivational techniques can go a long way to helping both teachers and students succeed.

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H. Chapter 6: Establishing Alliance in the Learning Partnership

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H. Chapter 6: Establishing Alliance in the Learning Partnership

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Marginalized dependent learners need an ally -- why?
- dependent learners fall in the mentality of learned helplessness
- stereotype threat leads to amygdala hijack
- internalized oppression
ALLIANCE-BUILDING
- Creating a pact (formal agreement to work on a learning goal and relational covenant)
- Becoming a Warm Demander (cultivate skills to push students into their zone of proximal development while helping them manage their emotional response so they don't set off their amygdala); pairs active demanding with personal warmth
- Help students take control of learning
FEEDBACK
- use of formative assessment
qualities of effective feedback:
- needs to be accepted as valid and actionable by the learner
- requires several conversations
- Instructive and corrective (actionable information that will help the student improve)
- specific in the right dose
- timely
- delivered in low stress, supportive environment
- wise feedback does not downplay the severity of the errors, but reassures the student that they are not viewed in the light of a negative stereotype; conveys faith in the potential of the student while being honest about where they are right now

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H. Chapter 7: Shifting Academic Mindset in the Learning Partnership

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H. Chapter 7: Shifting Academic Mindset in the Learning Partnership

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ACADEMIC MINDSET: the beliefs, attitudes, or ways of perceiving oneself in relation to learning and intellectual work; components:
- I belong to this academic community
- I can succeed at this.
- My ability and competence grow with my effort.
- This work has value for me.
Culturally responsive teachers need to focus on shifting mindsets rather than trying to force engagement or cajole students' motivation. The need to become self-motivated (independent learner)
*Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset*
Impacts on Academic Mindset: microaggressions (microassaults, microinsults, microinvalidations) and negativity bias.
Set the stage for a mind shift through validation, self-efficacy, the Feedback loop, reframing mistakes as information
Education reality: "structural inequities in our school systems negatively influence the academic mindset of our culturally and linguistically divers students" (119)

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H. Chapter 8: Information Processing to Build Intellective Capacity

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H. Chapter 8: Information Processing to Build Intellective Capacity

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ACTIVE PROCESSING
1. Input (short-term memory)
2. Elaboration (working memory); our brain can do active processing for 12-20 minutes, slows down for a few minutes, then another 12-20 minutes
3. application (long-term memory): use it or lose it
Building intellective capacity
- Ignite: cue the brain to pay attention: activate RAS (call and response, music, provocations, talk
- Chunk: feed the brain right-sized pieces of information
- Chew: help the brain process the content (unstructured time and cognitive routines)
- cognitive routines: basic mental maneuvers the learner uses for information processing, especially when doing higher order thinking and creative problem solving (sequence of interval learning moves, specific structures and protocols used in sequence)
examples of ways to help student chew on concepts:
- talk and learn (instructional conversations, rhythmic mnemonics in song or spoken word poetry, story-ify the content, recursive graphic organizers, infographics, metaphors/analogies, wordplay/humor
- review: to strengthen new neural pathways (games, solve a mystery, long-term projects)

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Resource Summary

From the back cover:

How can classrooms become places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed not in test scores but in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners? Making Thinking Visible offers educators research-based solutions for creating just such cultures of thinking. This innovative book unravels the mysteries of thinking and its connection to understanding and engagement. It then takes readers inside diverse learning environments to show how thinking can be made visible at any grade level and across all subject areas through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called "Thinking routines". These routines, designed by researchers at Project Zero at Harvard, scaffold and support one's thinking. By applying these processes, thinking becomes visible as learners' ideas are expressed, discussed, and reflected upon. Making Thinking Visible includes a DVD of instructive video clips featuring Visible Thinking strategies being applied in a variety of classrooms. ISBN: 978-0470915516

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Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding,

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From the back cover: How can classrooms become places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed not in test scores but in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners? Making Thinking Visible offers educators research-based solutions for creating just such cultures of thinking.

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H. Chapter 9: Creating a Culturally Responsive Community for Learning

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H. Chapter 9: Creating a Culturally Responsive Community for Learning

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Questions to ask yourself:
- What values do we want to communicate through our environment?
- How do we want children to experience their time in our classroom?
- What do the artifacts on the wall communicate to students, parents, or me about what is important?
- What do we want the environment to "teach" those who are in it?
Classroom asethetics and symbols
- find authentic cultural elements that add real value to the classroom; these help us communicate with our collective unconscious mind
- Routines: help create positive energy and the classroom's ethos; design common routines to emphasize interdependency and social connection; talk with students why routines are important
- Rituals: combine emotional vitality and spirituality; the brain learns to associate sensory experiences with the spiritual practice; can reinforce desired behaviors
Student agency and voice: students narrate their lives=naming own competences; social talk structures (participatory and interactive); academic talk structures (instructional conversation)

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It's that time of year again: the beginning of the school year! This can be a time of excitement and anticipation, but it can also be a time of stress and anxiety. One of the most important things you can do to set your students up for success is to create a great classroom culture. In this blog post, we will discuss seven ways to do just that!

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7 Ways To Create A Great Classroom Culture At The Beginning Of The Year

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It's that time of year again: the beginning of the school year! This can be a time of excitement and anticipation, but it can also be a time of stress and anxiety. One of the most important things you can do to set your students up for success is to create a great classroom culture.