Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Dealing with Boredom in the Classroom

In this Education Week article, Sarah Sparks reports on a study in the October issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science on student boredom in the classroom (about 65 percent of students say they are bored in school at least once a day). “I think teachers should always try to be relevant and interesting,” says lead author John Eastwood of York University in Toronto, “but beyond that, there are other places to look. By definition, to be in the state of boredom is to say the world sucks out there in some way. But often that’s not the case; often it’s an interior problem…” In other words, being “bored” might be a proxy for other things – finding the work too difficult, thinking about a fight with Mom last night, being distracted by a loud air conditioner, ADHD, or thinking about that D in math last year. All these can interfere with the brain’s executive function, which resides in the prefrontal cortex just behind the student’s furrowed brow, allowing the emotional center, the amygdala, to take over – hence the feeling of being tired, anxious, or depressed or the desire to act out or zone out. Students who feel bored may doze off and then try to keep themselves alert by doodling (which is actually helpful). What should teachers do to minimize student boredom? A study conducted in Germany by Ulrike Nett of the University of Konstanz compared coping strategies used by grade 5-10 students confronted with a math problem that was difficult and potentially boring: Avoiding the task by studying a different subject or talking with friends; Criticizing the task and asking for more interesting material; Reappraising the situation, thinking about how to make it relevant, and fighting boredom. The third approach produced more enjoyment, less stress, higher academic achievement, and less boredom down the road. “Although teachers try to create interesting lessons, they must be aware that despite their best intentions, some students may still perceive interesting lessons as boring,” says Nett. “What is imperative to underscore at this point is that both teachers and students must take some responsibility for boredom, and both must be involved in finding an adequate way to reduce this emotion in their classrooms.”

“Researchers Argue Boredom May Be ‘A Flavor of Stress’”

by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, Oct. 10, 2012 (Vol. 32, #7, p. 1, 16), http://bit.ly/RjyjPF

Stephen Anderson

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Ways to Help ADHD Students

(Originally titled “Ferrari Engines, Bicycle Brakes”) In this Educational Leadership article, psychiatrist Edward Hallowell describes the rocky time he himself had in school because of ADHD and dyslexia, and the huge difference a first-grade teacher made when she put her arm around him as he read in class. “No one laughed at my stammering and stuttering, because I had the Mafia sitting next to me!” he says. “Such a simple intervention, but profound in its impact.” Hallowell now works with children and adults with ADHD and dyslexia, and has two recommendations for teachers: • Create a safe environment for all students. “Fear and humiliation, which once upon a time were standard teaching tools, should be relics of the past,” he says. “It is a neurological fact that feeling safe opens up the brain, whereas feeling anxious and afraid clamps it down.” • Adopt a strength-based model. Hallowell says to an ADHD student, “I have great news for you. I’ve taken your history, and I’ve read what your various teachers have had to say about you… After putting all this information together, I’m now able to tell you that you have an awesome brain. Your brain is very powerful. It’s like a Ferrari – a race car. You have the power to win races and become a champion. However, you do have one problem. You have bicycle brakes. Your brakes just aren’t strong enough to control your powerful brain, so you can’t slow down or stop when you need to… But not to worry! I’m a brake specialist, and if you work with me, we can strengthen your brakes.” So what can teachers do to strengthen students’ brakes? First, explain ADHD the way Hallowell does. Second, establish yourself as a caring member of a team devoted to helping the student succeed. Then, when a student is disruptive, set limits in a non-shaming way: “Joey, your brakes are failing you now.” Other key steps: Set up predictable schedules and rules. Have ADHD kids sit near you. Break down large tasks into bite-size chunks. Relate new material to previous learning. Balance structure with novelty. Make sure the class gets recess and provide frequent brain breaks. “Physical exercise, even for one minute, presses the rest button on the brain and refreshes students mentally,” says Hallowell.

“Ferrari Engines, Bicycle Brakes” by Edward Hallowell in Educational Leadership, October 2012 (Vol. 70, #2, p. 36-38), http://www.ascd.org; the author is at drhallowell@gmail.com

Stephen Anderson

School Wide Service Project

We are planning to conduct a school wide service project on the two half days in November (14th and 15th) the Report Card Conference dates. This will facilitate parent involvement and encourage community building. All members of the central High School community, including parents are asked to donate a food item for the Connecticut Food Bank. For that week, November 13-November 15, we will be holding a non-perishable food drive. Students and staff will be encouraged to bring in food and leave it at the Main Office. Bags for classroom collection of food items will be distributed by BuildOn personnel that Tuesday. The focus for the service project will be “Hunger and Homelessness.” The BuildOn staff will be generating curricula for the first period on the 14th related to the theme of hunger and homelessness. If you prefer to prepare your own lesson on that theme, you may do so. If you wish to use the lesson in all your classes for the day, you may do that as well. My request is that at least for period one, all students are exposed through a variety of disciplines to a thoughtful exercise on hunger and homelessness. On the 15th, about 60 BuildOn students will be leaving the school to do a service project at United Congregational Church. Thanks for your support of this community initiative.

Steve Anderson

Teaching Struggling High-School Students to Write

In this important article in The Atlantic, author/foundation staffer Peg Tyre tells the story of how New Dorp High School on Staten Island, New York addressed students’ writing deficits. In 2006, 82 percent of freshmen entered the school reading below grade level, and most students did poorly on the state Regents exams. “Many would simply write a sentence or two and shut the test booklet,” says Tyre. The staff had watched the principal, Deirdre DeAngelis, get rid of some bad-apple teachers, win foundations grants, and break the school into small learning communities – but student achievement didn’t budge. “Although New Dorp teachers had observed students failing for years, they never connected that failure to specific flaws in their own teaching,” says Tyre. The prevailing belief was that the students weren’t smart enough to write at the high-school level. One teacher said, “It was my view that these kids didn’t want to engage their brains. They were lazy.” Because of its rock-bottom results the school was in danger of being closed down, and DeAngelis led a last-ditch effort to identify the root causes of student failure. Staff members zeroed in on writing. “Students’ inability to translate thoughts into coherent, well-argued sentences, paragraphs, and essays was severely impeding intellectual growth in many subjects,” says Tyre. “Consistently, one of the largest differences between failing and successful students was that only the latter could express their thoughts on the page.” The school began to do its own action research on why students’ writing was so poor. Was it a lack of reading skills? A few teachers administered diagnostic reading tests and reported that students with low writing skills could read fairly well. But a history teacher noticed that struggling students’ sentences were mostly short and disjointed, whereas more-successful students used coordinating conjunctions to link and expand on simple ideas – words like for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Another teacher gave a quick quiz to see if students knew how to use these simple words, and the results astonished the staff: most could not. “The harder they looked,” says Tyre, “the teachers began to realize the harder it was to determine whether the students were smart or not – the tools they had to express their thoughts were so limited that such a judgment was nearly impossible.” As teachers continued their search for answers, they noticed that the best-written student paragraphs contained complex sentences with dependent clauses like although and despite, signaling a shift in logic within a sentence. Struggling students, on the other hand, were unable to complete a complex sentence. After reading Of Mice and Men, teachers asked them to complete the sentence, “Although George…” What they expected was a sentence like, “Although George worked very hard, he could not attain the American Dream,” but they got variations on, “Although George and Lenny were friends.” Tyre says that New Dorp had an epiphany: “These 14- and 15-year-olds didn’t know how to use some basic parts of speech. With such grammatical gaps, it was a wonder they learned as much as they did.” Prose like that of the Gettysburg address was way beyond them. They hadn’t learned that the key information in a sentence doesn’t always come at the beginning. How had students gotten to high school without these basics – without knowing how to use the word although? Tyre says this lack of basic writing skills is actually quite common in American schools. Twenty-five years ago, she says, schools shifted from the old-fashioned approach to teaching writing to the theory that writing should be “caught, not taught.” The theory was that if students were given creative assignments, put in a social context, and told that writing was fun, they would become good writers. Formal grammar and sentence-structure lessons were passé. But this approach didn’t work for all kids – especially those who grew up in poverty, had learning difficulties, and had weak early instruction. Then in 2001, No Child Left Behind de-emphasized writing, and it was taught less and less. “Writing as a way to study, to learn, or to construct new knowledge or generate new networks of understanding has become increasingly rare,” says Arthur Applebee of the University of Albany. Desperate for a program, DeAngelis took a group of New Dorp teachers to visit the Windward School, a small grade 1-9 private school in White Plains, NY known for a writing approach developed by former teacher Judith Hochman. After the visit, DeAngelis said, “I had one question and one question only: How can we steal this and bring it back to New Dorp?” She invited Hochman to a series of meetings with her staff, and they became convinced that there was a close link between writing, thinking, speaking, and reading. They concluded that improving writing would be a gateway to boosting achievement in the other three areas. In the fall of 2009, with Hochman’s guidance, New Dorp began a complete revamp of its curriculum, with a laser-like focus on a highly structured approach to teaching students to write expository essays. “The thing is,” said Hochman, “kids need a formula, at least at first, because what we are asking them to do is very difficult. So God, let’s stop acting like they should just know how to do it. Give them a formula! Later, when they understand the rules of good writing, they can figure out how to break them.” Teachers began to teach students how to construct complex sentences from simple ones by using three prompts: but, because, and so. Students learned how to use appositive clauses to vary sentence beginnings – for example, in a chemistry class, students were guided to write sentences beginning with three words: “Although hydrogen is explosive and oxygen supports combustion, a compound of them puts out fires.” “Unless hydrogen and oxygen form a compound, they are explosive and dangerous.” And “If hydrogen and oxygen form a compound, they lose their original properties of being explosive and supporting combustion.” Later, students learned how to recognize sentence fragments, pull the main idea from a paragraph, and write the main idea. By the sophomore year, students were learning how to map out an introductory paragraph and then how to write body paragraphs. One student said, “There are phrases – specifically, for instance, for example – that help you add detail to a paragraph. Who could have known that, unless someone taught them?” Teachers assigned more homework at a more demanding and rigorous level. And there was less emphasis on creative, narrative writing. In classroom discussions, students were required to follow specific prompts posted on the wall: “I agree (or disagree) with ____ because….” “I have a different opinion….” “I have something to add…” “Can you explain your answer?” In a discussion of the play Death of a Salesman, students responded to the teacher’s question about why the protagonist seemed tired. “Willie Loman seems tired because he is getting old,” said one student. Why? asked the teacher. “The stage direction says he’s 63,” said another student. “That’s old!” Another said, “I agree that his age is listed in the stage direction. But I disagree with your conclusion. I think he is tired because his job is very hard and he has to travel a lot.” Another student joined in: “I disagree with these conclusions. The way Willie Loman describes his job suggests that the kind of work he does is making him tired. It is repetitive. It can feel pointless. It can make you feel exhausted.” The Hochman curriculum quickly produced results. As students developed a better understanding of the parts of speech, their reading comprehension improved dramatically. “Before, I could read, sure,” said one student. “But it was like a sea of words. The more writing instruction I got, the more I understood which words were important.” Students who entered New Dorp in 2009 had an 89 percent pass rate when they took the English Regents as sophomores – up from 67 percent for the preceding class. The Global-History pass rate went from 64 to 75 percent. Regents-repeater classes shrank from five classes of 35 students to two classes of 20, and the number of students in college-level classes went from 148 to 412. And last spring, the school’s graduation rate was 80 percent – up from 63 percent before the writing program was introduced. “In a profoundly hopeful irony,” concludes Tyre, “New Dorp’s reemergence as a viable institution has hinged not on a radical new innovation but on an old idea done better. The school’s success suggests that perhaps certain instructional fundamentals – fundamentals that schools have devalued or forgotten – need to be rediscovered, updated, and reintroduced. And if that can be done correctly, traditional instruction delivered by the teachers already in classrooms may turn out to be the most powerful lever we have for improving school performance after all.”

“The Writing Revolution” by Peg Tyre in The Atlantic, October 2012 (Vol. 310, #3, p. 96-101), http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/

Stephen Anderson

Measures for Teacher' Evaluations

The MET Project Combines Three Measures for Teacher Evaluation ​In this Education Next article, Harvard professor Thomas Kane describes the work of the Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, which, under his direction, is “searching for tools to save the world from perfunctory teacher evaluation.” MET’s 2012 report recommends that three tools should be used to evaluate teachers – test-score gains, classroom observations, and student surveys – to compensate for the built-in weaknesses of each. Here is Kane’s analysis of their strengths and shortcomings: ​• Test-score gains – Looking at a teacher’s track record of producing student-achievement gains is better than the other two measures at signaling whether a teacher will get similar gains in the future, especially if the same test is used. The correlation between a teacher’s value-added in one year with another is .48 in math and .36 in English language arts. Interestingly, MET researchers found that gains on lower-level multiple-choice tests correlated well with gains on higher-level constructed-response tests and with students’ success in non-cognitive areas. But value-added analysis of test scores has significant weaknesses: only about one quarter of teachers work in grades with standardized ELA and math tests; the scores that are available don’t provide much help in improving classroom practices; and ELA scores are considerably less reliable than math scores. ​• Classroom observations – The MET researchers hired and trained observers and studied the efficacy of six different rubrics to score 7,500 classroom videotapes. Observation of lessons did better than the other two measures at improving classroom practice, especially if the observers were well trained and honest with their feedback. But lesson evaluations have numerous disadvantages: the evidence of impact on student achievement is unproven; classroom creativity may be stifled if teachers feel they have to conform to one rubric’s definition of good teaching; there’s considerable variation in ratings from lesson to lesson and observer to observer; and getting several observations by several different observers, which MET considers essential to reliability, is expensive. ​• Student surveys – MET researchers administered the Tripod survey to students in grades 4-9 (see item #3 below), making sure students trusted that their feedback was confidential. The questions, developed by Ron Ferguson of Harvard and his colleagues, ask students to rate their teachers on a 5-4-3-2-1 scale on specific, observable characteristics, for example: - In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes. - Our class stays busy and does not waste time. - Everybody knows what they should be doing and learning in this class. Data from the surveys showed that students see clear differences among teachers, and ratings of teachers were quite consistent across different groups of students (.66 correlation). Students’ evaluations of their teachers were a better predictor of ELA and math achievement gains than classroom observations, but not as robust as value-added test-score analysis. “Even if the typical student is less discerning than a trained adult,” says Kane, “the ability to average over many students (rather than one or two adults), and having students experience 180 days of instruction (rather than observe two or three lessons), obviously improves reliability.” Student surveys have the additional advantage of being quite inexpensive. ​Kane uses the analogy of the way his 6-year-old son picks a team of superheroes with different strengths: the way to deal with the various strengths and weaknesses of these three approaches to teacher evaluation is to use all three. Combining test-score analysis, classroom observation, and student surveys produces evaluations that are less volatile and have greater predictive power. Plotting predictive power against reliability (see the graph in the linked article below), combined ratings are significantly better than any single measure. The MET team weighted the three tools .758, .042, and .200 respectively. (Although classroom observations were given the least weight, the team hopes that feedback to teachers will end up being an important contributor to improved teaching and learning.) “The use of multiple measures not only spreads the risk but also provides opportunities to detect manipulation or gaming,” says Kane. It also allows administrators to take a closer look when results from the three tools don’t line up – for example, a teacher might be using unconventional classroom methods that don’t produce high rubric scores, but still show high student achievement value-added.

“Capturing the Dimensions of Effective Teaching” by Thomas Kane in Education Next, Fall 2012 (Vol. 12, #4, p. 34-41), http://educationnext.org/capturing-the-dimensions-of-effective-teaching

Stephen Anderson