Standard 2: Analyze learning to promote student growth.
I am
once again drawing from my learnings that I took away from Instructional
Strategies class. Where other classes like Action Research and Accomplished
Teaching did allow for me to analyze student learning, I feel this class had me
in a constant reflective state of mind, and thinking of ways to improve my
students learning. A lot of that came from the readings and discussions we had
about the text-Hattie and Dean on the discussion boards weekly.
Chapters 2 and 3 of the Hattie reading this
week really focus on the visible learning concept for both teachers and
students. He states that “when teaching and learning are visible, there is a
greater likelihood of students reaching higher levels of achievement” (21).
Which as educators, is what we all want with our lessons. Hattie explains that
teachers need to bring to the classroom multiple learning strategies for
students to access in order for students to build the different levels of
knowledge and understanding. One of the biggest lines I took from the text was
when Hattie says that teachers need to develop the skill to ‘get out of the
way’ when learning is taking place. I know that I personally struggle with this
as times. Releasing students into independent work and practice and watching
them sometimes struggle through the challenging question or problem. However,
Hattie says that challenge and feedback are two of the most essential
‘ingredients’ of learning. “The greater the challenge, the higher the
probability that one seeks and needs feedback, and the more important it is
that there is a teacher to ensure that the learner is on the right path to
successfully meet the challenge” (21). I loved this piece of information.
Giving students the freedom to grapple and struggle to solve something is
teaching them to do a couple of things: It is teaching them to become problem
solvers, making them access what they have already learned and apply it. It
also pushes them to become active learners to seek that feedback and help in
order to be successful. It is important for teachers to watch their students go
through that process. With my class this year, I have really had to train my
students to become hard workers. They have seemed to have developed a sense of
helplessness over the years and at first expected me to answer and do all the
work for them when it came to problem solving. BUT, I had to work with my class
and mold them into students who work hard, use their toolboxes of skills and
strategies and then seek feedback. I also appreciate the line of informing
teachers that students want to talk about their learning and how to improve.
That we should not expect them to know the criteria and expectations to be met,
without some direction and guidance from us.
These last few chapters of Hattie allowed me to be reflective on my
own teaching practice and interactions with my team for collaboration. I
develop close relationships with my students and tend to know a lot about them
as a learner and their personal lives outside the walls of our classroom. But I
think I need to take it even a step further in discussions with my students
when giving feedback. Allow them to voice their needs and noticing even more.
Take more ownership in their learning as a 4th grader.
I know when my students have dabbled with setting more goals and making their
learning more personal, their engagement with lessons and activities is
phenomenal. With collaborating with my team, we do this well, but I think there
is room to grow and for improvements. I think that we are very surface in our
PLCs with “this is a resource that I am using,” but not much more insight.
Hattie talks about the importance of sharing ideas and teaching practices with
each other in order for us as educators to continue learning and learn new ways
to teach to meet our student’s needs.
For Dean’s final chapters there was a couple take aways for me. The
first being in chapter 8, where he talks about students identifying
similarities and differences and their importance. He states that “identifying
similarities and differences helps learners gain insight, draw inferences, make
generalizations, and develop and refine schema” (118). There are 4 strategies
to do this: comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies.
The text states that “these strategies help move students from existing
knowledge to new knowledge, concrete to abstract, and separate to connected
ideas” (119). I never realized how much we use metaphors or compare things when
we try to explain a new concept to someone. I know for my students, due to
their backgrounds their schema or background knowledge to concepts is sometimes
very limited, so I have to search for an idea or concept that they can anchor
to. This sort of reinforces Hattie’s idea of knowing your students personally
in order for that true learning to happen. Another idea that was mentioned was
to ensure that students understand the process of comparing before asking them
to classify (134). I always tell my students that we need to build a solid
foundation of a skill or concept before we can build on top of it, unless it
will “fall over.” Same idea applies here. We cannot keep building if our
students do not have a solid or firm understanding of the starting point. Makes
it really difficult for them to grow in their solid if nothing is solid to
anchor to.
The Generating and Testing Hypotheses chapter I found very
interesting. It is an area that I am continuing to grow and have my students
participate in. I really enjoy introducing a new project to students who are
immediately engaged with the topic. When they are immediately engaged and
interested, it makes way for them to take on that personal aspect and them
taking on ownership of their learning. My big take away from this chapter was point
number 3 on page 150, it provides the tip of “to increase motivation and
interest, involve students in designing their own tasks and contributing to the
development of rubrics for explaining their hypotheses and conclusions. Provide
students with choices about how they are grouped, which type of task they
complete, and how they explain their results.”
I
chose the filming and supporting documents as artifacts for this standard
because it shows the resources and supports I put in place for my students to
use to try and be successful with their first lesson in the unit of geometry. I
was also very intentional about the feedback I gave on their classwork, pushing
them to think about why they classified something an “obtuse” angle. What properties
or evidence did they have to support that answer. Also with the implementation
of the success criteria and goal setting sheet with my class allowed for my
class to start taking ownership and analyze their own learning, and begin to think
of personal goals themselves for their learning throughout the unit. This form
has really help support me with analyzing my kiddos learning and seeing how
they are feeling currently with their learning and what they want their next
steps to be personally. Then I can connect with them and either give
individual, small group, or possibility revisit whole group if it is a common
pattern with their daily reflections.
References:
Block,
J. (2014, May 20). Let It Marinate: The Importance of Reflection and Closing.
Retrieved from
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/let-it-marinate-reflection-closing-joshua-block
Dean,
C. B., & Marzano, R. J. (2013). Classroom instruction that works:
Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Hattie,
J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers:
Maximizing impact on learning: London: Rouledge
Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington (In.): Solution Tree.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2011). The
understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Artifacts:
