Saturday, September 26, 2009

Redesigning lesson plans and grading sheets

I'm trying to redesign my lesson plans, so that I'm doing them the right way.  I'm writing them out as unit plans--starting with what students need to know and be able to do, moving on to how I'll know if they can do it, then worrying about how to get them to do it, and what to do about it if they can't.  So my order of operations is: Objectives, Formative Assessments and Summative Assessments, Instructional Activities, Interventions.  Once I have all of that, I can teach my students to manipulate the time necessary to do the activities.  We can do station work (which a lot of my students like and are shockingly good at it), practice transition procedures, spend less time worrying about learning activities and more about learning.  It will also help move away from the text book.  In short, I'm working on making my lessons do all the things they're supposed to do.

This is as opposed to my de facto method of lesson planning--fill 60 minutes of class time a week, make it as informative and interesting as possible, and give the book-generated test afterwards.  This is a survival-level-teacher technique, and I'm trying to get beyond that now.  I've survived, I'm in year 4, I need to stop being a mediocre teacher.  And the ability to plan seems more and more important to that.

It isn't easy--I still have to fill the 60 minutes a day, I still need to make it as interesting and informative as possible.  Right now, I have a sort-of cross between the two--I have a unit outline (in a format given me (not personally, she was a presenter at a conference) by Helene Curtain) in which I try to include all the information, but down below, I have a much more learning-project-oriented list organized by communicative objective.  Besides which, the form includes a BEGINNING activity, a MIDDLE, and an END.  I'm not certain I know how to divide a unit of study into that.  I can do it for an individual learning goal, but not for a whole unit.

At the same time, I'm trying to make my grading process more in line with the principle of standards based grading, and not just a traditional gradebook with an extra column for standards.  The high school used to use a program called Standards Score (formerly WebGrader), but we don't anymore.  WebGrader has difficulty taking into account anything besides standards, and the high school divides its grades into Standards (no less than 80%), Employability Skills (10%), and Final Exam (10% plus all the standards you can grab).  That's how I figure it works out, anyway.  If any of my readers from our school want to argue with me about that, I'll happily post corrections here.


I also have to be able to assess most of my standards more than once.  It's not just that students', say, speaking skills need to be getting better.  They should also be able to perform a growing number of communicative tasks in a growing number of contexts.  (A portfolio is obviously where I'm going with this, and I've said this before.  We're still working on it.)  So, how do you figure the idea of multiple standards assessments into the notion of "you get the standard or you don't"?  The answer, I think, is that you have to be able to do (and have done) each standards some percentage of the time (75%, maybe?), and then you've gotten the standard.  Another really hard change.

But, I keep slogging through the hard work of being a good teacher.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Why teach

Last week I was sick.  I was gone two days and had two terribly sub-par lesson plans that day.  This was week 2 of school, and we hadn't established norms or talked about substitute behavior. 

On the first day, I asked my interim itinerant educator (hey, I was a sub for years, and I'm here to tell you that they deserve a better title.) to ask my Spanish 2 students to review last year's vocabulary.  I asked them to do this by drawing a picture of 10 vocabulary words from a single vocabulary group, and provided page numbers where they could find the vocabulary.  (If there are any communicative theory practitioners out there, you'll see why this was a sub-par plan.)  They did such a TREMENDOUS job of it that I took their assignments, photocopied it onto goldenrod paper, gave each of them a copy, and used it as the core of their review.

Another class had to make themselves ID cards, but the e-mailed form lost its formatting in transition.  There was supposed to be a little box in the corner for picture or drawing of themselves, but that box was entirely missing from the 5-line. 1x2 inch assignment.  On the assignment the students actually got, there was no space for anything.  AJ drew a little smiley face next to the "foto" line anyway.  Made me smile after a loooooooong, tiring day.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child:

Social networking and teacher/student relationships

The Century of Web 2.0 has made children of us all.  Like children, we all want to play with the shiny new toys that an inexpensive worldwide network of communication (and music videos!  And clips from Bollywood-style films starring Natalie Portman!  And the latest gossip about the latest subject of gossip!  [Not to mention metagossip!]  And recipes--my god, the recipes! etc.) provide for us.

And, like children, some have no mechanism for deciding what's appropriate behavior in this completely unprecedented situation.  The stories of otherwise intelligent, professional, well-educated and well-intentioned adults getting themselves into trouble by posting pictures on Facebook or MySpace are rampant.  This behavior isn't just limited to teachers, either--I seem to remember something about a meteorologist or something getting fired from the TV station she worked for after posting semi-nude pics of herself somewhere. 

There seems to be an added element of terrifying when teachers get involved, though.  After all, we're supposed to be professional role models.  What does it do to classroom management if a student finds out that his teacher likes a good fart joke?  For that matter, what does it do to fart jokes?



And so, some school districts are left in the bizarre position of deciding for their teachers what is okay for them to put on the Internet on their own behalf.  The last thing a superintendent needs to discover is that the award-winning second-grade teacher had a great time at last week's Hash Bash, or whatever the polemic issue of the community is.  So, the superintendent may quietly draw up a draft that says something like, "Technology can be a powerful tool for education, and social networking can be a great way of building relationships.  We encourage the use of technology, both amongst our students and our staff.  But so help me, if I find your cleavage online, it's ring-a-ding-ding for you, bozo." Then she runs it past the school board, which harrumphs for a while until Mrs. Flanders cries, "The children!  Won't someone think of the children?!" and the motion passes unanimously.

That isn't what anybody signed up for--superintendents never intended to be censors of teachers' personal lives; teachers didn't agree to surrender out-of-school rights that everybody apparently has.  (Behaving like a jackass in front of the whole world evidently isn't illegal, even for teachers.)  Monitoring teachers' behavior is a particularly thorny issue because technology CAN be powerful juju.

So where does this leave us?  Are we stuck with the choice between not acting like idiots and the threats of termination from High Command?  Or to put it another way, the choice between self-censorship and external censorship?  I don't know.  I just try to remember not to write anything down that I wouldn't want someone else reading, and to compartmentalize my personal, professional, and political lives.  And while we I wait for Web 3.0 and the inevitable rise of the machines, I'll let Louie Armstrong speak for me.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Duncan on "Face the Nation"

Secretary of State Arne Duncan spoke to Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation on Sunday.



He gets a lot of it dead right, I think, and says a lot of the things that a Secretary of Education ought to say.  I like particularly that he made a point of praising the national union heads for their efforts in education reform.  As always, the charter school thing is niggling at me.  He likes them, I don't understand them.  He explains them thus: "I'm not a fan of charter schools, I'm a fan of good charter schools."  What does that mean?  Schieffer says that charter schools don't have some of the restrictions of other public schools.  Really?

But from the premise that charter schools drive innovation, a premise that I think is at best unfounded, he says a lot of things that sound really familiar to me.  And I like the idea of a government official helping other people to do what everybody knows works.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Spanish I Rubrics

If you're just stopping by:  What follows is really World-Language-Teacher specific.  If you're a WL teacher, I'd like your feedback on the trimester-level breakup of performance.  If you know anything about rubrics, I'd love your thoughts on the format.  Otherwise, feel free to skip this; it's long in the tooth.

My reader will remember that, a few days ago, I tried to identify the gradeable elements of the various communication tasks.  (The other branches of the expectations will have to wait.)  After several days of making stuff up, I think I have a few useable rubrics.  I present them for your consideration and commentary.

SPEAKING

Communication
END OF SEMESTER I:  Expresses ideas, in familiar contexts, by selection from a list
END OF SEMESTER II:  Expresses ideas, in familiar contexts, using memorized words and phrases
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Expresses ideas, in familiar contexts, using memorized words and phrases, including some studied in other contexts.


Pronunciation
END OF SEMESTER I:  Forms Spanish sounds appropriately when they're similar to English
END OF SEMESTER II:  Forms Spanish vowel sounds appropriately
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Forms most Spanish sounds appropriately

Syntax
END OF SEMESTER I:  Word order always resembles English word order, even when it's different
END OF SEMESTER II:  Uses correct word order in the context of adjectives and questions
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Uses correct word order much of the time

Fluency
END OF SEMESTER I:  Short (3-5 word) utterances, long pauses in between
END OF SEMESTER II:  Medium (6-9 word) utterances, short pauses in between
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Medium (8-12 word) utterances, almost no pause in between them

WRITING

Communication
END OF SEMESTER I:  Expresses ideas, in familiar contexts, by selection from a list
END OF SEMESTER II:  Expresses ideas, in familiar contexts, using memorized words and phrases
END OF SCHOOL YEAR: Expresses ideas, in familiar contexts, using memorized words and phrases, including some studied in other contexts.

Spelling
END OF SEMESTER I:  Frequently makes spelling errors based on English spelling conventions
END OF SEMESTER II:  Occasionally makes spelling errors based on English spelling conventions.
END OF SCHOOL YEAR: Rarely makes spelling errors.  Some of them are based on Spanish spelling conventions.

Syntax
END OF SEMESTER I:  Word order always resembles English word order, even when it's different
END OF SEMESTER II:  Uses correct word order in the context of adjectives and questions
END OF SCHOOL YEAR: Uses correct word order much of the time


Fluency
END OF SEMESTER I:  Few sentence types, mostly short
END OF SEMESTER II:  Combination of short and medium sentences
END OF SCHOOL YEAR: Combination of short and medium sentences, with some compound ("and" statement) sentences



Listening / reading comprehension
Big Idea Comprehension
END OF SEMESTER I:  Identify the main idea of a simple oral presentation, in a familiar context
END OF SEMESTER II:  Identify the main idea of a medium-length oral presentation, in a familiar context
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Identify one or two main ideas of a medium-length oral presentation, in a familiar context

Detail Comprehension
END OF SEMESTER I:  Identify one or two supporting details of the main idea
END OF SEMESTER II:  Identify three or four supporting details of the main idea
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Identify five to eight supporting details of the main idea

Word Comprehension
END OF SEMESTER I:  Identify a few familiar words and cognates
END OF SEMESTER II:  Identify several familiar words and cognates, and define a previously-unstudied word
END OF SCHOOL YEAR:  Identify most familiar words and cognates, and several previously-unstudied new words


COMMENTARY:

I'm well familiar with the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines.  They were written by people way smarter than me.  Our state standards and benchmarks are based on the ACTFL Standards and the Proficiency Guidelines.  It's also based on the assumption that a secondary school student can attain the Novice-High level of proficiency after two years of skilled study.  What I'm trying to do with these rubrics is picture how to break that process down into six trimesters.

I'm shooting to stride the line between high expectations and realistic achievement, but I'm afraid I may be underselling my students a bit. 

Some of my language is a little squishy--how long is a short utterance?  Is it the same length if a student is listening to it or speaking it?

This is really content-specific, but I think the rubric is open to commentary from any educated educator.  I'm slow to the coming of rubrics, and can use help making them.  If you have any thoughts, please let me know.  If you know anybody who might know more about this than me, please send them my way.  If you know of performance rubrics broken down into sememsters or trimesters, I would REALLY like to see them.