EDR 628 Learning Log

May 9, 2014
Posted by Bridget Rieth at Friday, May 9, 2014 8:20:25 AM EDT

Before reading Choice Words write a learning log entry:
How do you see talk impacting student achievement and ability? That is, how do your words
(labels, questions, phrases, etc.) affect students and the classroom environment?

Having read Choice Words before, I am already under its influence. I believe people, and
children especially, internalize the names, labels, and directives they hear repeatedly, turning
this external text into internal dialog, which informs their perception of self. One part of this
seems due to the way we learn, i.e. by modeling our behavior after what we see and hear, what
Frank Smith calls social learning.

If a child perceives herself as someone who can achieve, someone who is able to be successful,
she is more likely to put in the effort that achievement requires, whereas the opposite self-
perception can quickly shut down the motivation and ability to work toward success. Further, it
is important to emphasize a child's ability to work to achieve success, rather than their inherent
talents and abilities. Carol Dweck's excellent work in Mindset, shows that children and adults
are more likely to persevere at learning when they are told that they can improve their
performance, indeed even expand their intelligence through a mindset of growth. Students
praised for perseverance and resourcefulness fare better in the big picture. Conversely, a
student who repeatedly hears that they are smart and talented becomes afraid of failure and
reduces the risks they take, thereby shunting their own potential growth.

I came across Dweck's work last summer and implemented a week of teaching about it to
my third grade class when school started in September. I was pleased with the reception
they gave it, and have been able to refer to a growth mindset and the work we do to create
pathways in our brain throughout the year in a way that it seemed many of the students
internalized. It seemed to make them less resistant to practice work and activities, and
I sometimes heard them using the language with each other. I plan to do more work with
this concept next year, including additional boosters of brain learning throughout the year.
Teaching children about their own learning process empowers them as independent
thinkers, and will hopefully plant the seeds of what educator Angela Lee Duckworth calls
grit.

I am looking forward to revisiting Peter Johnston's work, and was pleased to see it as a text
for this class.




UbD Intro, Ch 1,2,11
Posted by Bridget Rieth at Tuesday, May 13, 2014 4:48:43 PM EDT
Last Edited:Saturday, May 17, 2014 6:24:36 AM EDT
After reading the Introduction and Chapters 1, 2, & 11 from the Wiggins and McTighe
text, Understanding by Design (UbD), write a learning log entry about your first
impressions of UbD. Please include references to other types of curriculum design you have
encountered.
As I begin reading Understanding by Design, my initial thoughts are that I am fortunate to have
worked in environments and with colleagues who are goal and curriculum focused, so that this
design framework is very familiar to me, and as a matter of fact, I'm not sure I've worked to
design instruction without this mindset. That is not to say that I have not had to continually pull
my instructional focus back to goals throughout the planning process, but for the most part, my
teaching mentors, professors, and colleagues have taught me to think in this "Backward
Planning" fashion.
One of the things I am impressed by in the reading for today is the room for, and expectation of
instructional planning that has flexibility. When the learning target is clearly delineated,
considerations of student abilities, teacher strengths, constraints of time or materials, or
serendipitous opportunity can be woven into lesson planning to maximize learning. Packaged,
scripted programs are the death of excellent learning and teaching, and, in my opinion, are a
curse to the profession. I also agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Stolle that standardized testing
promotes the antithesis of this fluid, deep thinking model of teaching. A teacher's job is to know
well what is to be taught, who will be learning, and how best to guide each learner to
understanding.
I am feeling that my first run through this material was cursory and I'm looking forward to
digging a bit deeper into the design template, holding it up against some of my existing lesson
plans. I have been on a journey this year to transform my science teaching to a new model from
the existing curriculum. I think UbD is going to provide a useful lens through which I can view
and evaluate the process.

Choice Words Post-reading
Posted by Bridget Rieth at Sunday, May 18, 2014 3:39:58 PM EDT
I greatly enjoyed reconnecting with Choice Words and reflecting on my own
practice. Believing in the power of language and the social construct of self, I am aware of
how important a teacher's influence can be to students. In holding the text up as a tool to
examine my current practice, I think that I am doing fairly well in the areas of naming and
noticing, influencing identity, flexibility and transfer, and creating community. My main
growth area is in creating agency. I feel that I am on a constant journey to build invested,
independent students, and the agentic examples in Johnston's chapter 4 are good reminders
and tools. The more able I am to involve students in the examination and analysis of their
own work, the more likely they are to move intellectually to the next level, yet another
example of transactive learning.
An example comes to mind from a Jeff Anderson session I attended this year
through the Kent Literacy Council. Anderson gave an account of working with a middle
school student to reduce her use of run on sentences pinned to the word and. Instead of
directly instructing her not to use and so frequently, or worse, taking his red pen and
marking up all instances of the word, he called her over, commented on a strength in the
piece, then mentioned that he did notice that one word was used a lot. She quickly self-
identified the word, and was instructed to take a green pencil and underline all the ands in
the piece. After making it just half way through the piece, she returned to the teacher, ready
to work on revising. Anderson gently gave the student the agency to find and fix her own
weak spots.
Another aspect of student agency that I hope to capture is the peer influence that
happens as students listen to each other talk and teach, rather than me. Not only is the
agentic student more likely to attend and remember her learning, but others around her are
more likely to be closely attuned to their peer, than to me giving the same instruction. This
social side effect is an advantage and gives weight to my input.
I have ordered Johnston's follow up text Opening Minds, and will look forward to
reading it this summer, when the dust clears from this academic year.

Assessment
Posted by Bridget Rieth at Monday, May 26, 2014 8:45:46 PM EDT
Assessment is in the love/hate file of my teaching kit. I need and appreciate the opportunity to
gauge my students' understanding and growth, I need constant ongoing feedback in order to
tailor instruction to my individual students, I need information to make decisions about student
performance, I need ever more assessment data to satisfy the requirements of the governing
bodies in my industry. What I often feel I need is more time to fit this all in!
Assessment takes place throughout each day, from the thumbs up check-ins I gather from the
class, from careful listening and observing, what I call my "kid-reading" skills, from exit tickets,
written response, oral discussion, formal and informal testing, and yes, even from the bloody
standardized systems we must subject our students to throughout the year. (If I have to
administer the stupid things, I am certainly going to try to gain information from them.) The
information I gather through all these many channels helps me decide when it is time to move
on, go back and repeat, push kids to the next level, or skip over something entirely. It assists me
in refining, extending, supporting, and modifying content and instruction to meet individual and
group needs.
Authentic assessment gives me information over time about students' understandings and skills.
It allows me to find a child's best potential in ways that suit them best. It is never cookie cutter,
one size fits all. It is never simply a set of numbers, but it gives me the most complete picture
possible of a student's growth over time.
Bridget Rieth said
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 7:42:09 PM EDT
From our discussion, I re-composed this idea of authentic instruction:

In my experience authentic assessment is that which gives me a true picture of student growth
and understanding over time. It is a compilation of indicators, both formal and informal, that
show evidence of a students thinking or skills.

Holly's rewording sounded like this:

Instead of just a snapshot of a student, authentic assessment provides a teacher with the bigger
picture of what the student understands and has learned over a period of time. Evidence (whether
informal or informal) is a very important indicator of what the child is thinking or the skills that
have been achieved and can be transferred into other areas.

I believe we have to be very careful not to assume we can tell what a student is thinking,
although our day to day work requires us to attempt an educated guess. Ongoing interaction with
students via conversations, check ins, exit cards, performance tasks, quizzes, and tests can help
us get closer and closer to a correct guess. There is always that moment, though when a student
might surprise you and seem to know more or less than you anticipated.

I appreciate open ended assessment which allows me to explore and probe for understanding. I
like our reading assessment tool, the Benchmark Assessment System by Fountas and Pinnell
because it allows me to have a deeper conversation with students around their reading, it allows
me to look at multiple different aspects of a student's reading skills, and it allows me, as the
professional, much control over the pieces that I use with a particular student. While no system is
perfect, I believe this is one of the better tools I've seen.




Teaching and Learning Reflection
Posted by Bridget Rieth at Tuesday, June 10, 2014 12:07:49 PM EDT
Chapters 9 and 10 and our work around them mostly confirmed my own understanding of
teaching and learning, which is, of course ever-evolving. A couple of points that captured my
attention are as follows:
Equip- Certainly, I've always considered teaching as guiding a student to new knowledge,
understandings, and skills. The longer I teach, the more aware I become of the "before"
considerations. Before they can do _________, what else do they need to know how to do? A
technology example would be, before they can learn to create a Prezi, they need to know how to
log in, how to get to the website, maybe how to select elements and enter text, how to undo
errors, how and why to save, etc. An analog example: before they can final draft a persuasive
letter, they need to know how to set up the recipients address, how to write a formal greeting
and closing, how to properly punctuate these items, and even how to line up the text on a page. I
believe I am continually getting better at planning for these considerations, rather than
addressing them as the lessons unfold, which I think is where you start in your early teaching.
Meeting individual needs, changing groups from year to year, or changing grade levels brings
you back freshly to those considerations of what can this group/this student do, and what do they
need to learn before we move to the next level?
Rethink and revise-While absolutely believing in the power of rethinking and revising (I do it
every single day of my life), I suspect this is my weak area with students. I know that there are
too many times that I allow time limitations to steal away important reflection and revision
opportunities. And it is those opportunities that often allow students to construct their most
powerful learning. While I am continually striving to teach better, rather than more, the general
climate of education and my own dive-forward-to-the-next-excellent-idea personality sometimes
get in the way of my efforts. The task of walking through our unit, looking to identify each of the
WHERTO pieces, was helpful in that it forced me to look for and create space for the important
R step.

Final Reflections
Posted by Bridget Rieth at Sunday, June 15, 2014 8:02:53 AM EDT
While I still believe that most of the curricular planning Ive experienced and engaged in
has been, like UbD, goal oriented, end target focused, I have most definitely benefitted from
the extensive thinking that UbD engenders in the planner. I have worked hard to match my
teaching to the goals/standards that my students are expected to master, but have not necessarily
always analyzed the discrete steps so deeply.
Working toward the six facets of understanding felt much like my early experience with
Blooms taxonomy as an undergraduate pre-service teacher. After a few years, I think one
internalizes much of this work. While I believe I have continually tried to push toward higher
levels of thinking, the six facets have given me a fresh lens and reminder to deeply examine what
type of thinking we are developing in a unit.
Likewise, using the WHERETO tool allows a unit overview to reveal some strengths and
weaknesses. As I labeled the various days and parts of my plan, I was able to see what I am
naturally focused on (W, H, E-I had them nailed), and where I needed to work harder (R,
intentional T.) I love to hook kids interest, I believe strongly in always giving them an
understanding of where we are going and why we would go there (authenticity is a priority), and
I try hard to lead inquiry based explorations. Revision remains as my personal weak spot, as I am
an onward ho! person by nature, so it is excellent work for me to stop and intentionally look
for places to provide revision opportunities, as this is often where the deep learning occurs. I
have tried to use opportunities with students to record initial thinking and understandings,
whether in early samples, journal work, or shared thinking models on the SMART Board/chart
paper, and then making the time to go back and examine and reflect on how understanding has
changed. This is a newer awareness for me and I must be far more intentional in finding room for
it. The work in UbD has confirmed my suspicions that revision and rethinking is an important
part of the process. As far as tailoring the work, I sometimes do this more on the fly as I see
needs arise, and would like to be more proactive in this arena in the planning stages.
When we began EDR 628, I thought I would emerge at the end of class ready to use UbD
to revisit and analyze instruction that I have developed over the last 5 years of teaching 3
rd
grade.
As I am now going to be spending the summer transitioning to a new fall teaching placement, I
see that UbD will be a tool to create new units for the 5
th
grade curriculum I will be learning
once again. It would seem that my learning opportunity came at just the right time!