Teachers sell their lesson plans. School districts ask for a piece of the action.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/education/15plans.html?_r=1
I don't really know what I think about this. I've bought stuff from people who are better at making stuff than I am. I don't really have anything I'd want to sell, but I have stuff I probably could sell, if I format it differently. So I don't really see anything wrong with it.
But the music industry just lost the "selling content you can find for free on the internet" fight. The movie industry is ripping itself apart over the same issue. I'm not sure that I'd want to wade into waters that somebody else has already filled with chum.
So I'm not sure where this goes.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Meta-assessment
The other day I wrote a quick blog post from school, making noise about assessments and a new format and the like. As I was finally assembling the tests, I was having second thoughts. It wasn't a grammar-and-vocabulary test, which is what I think of by force of habit as a test. This assessment was only communicative skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing. I keep telling students that I don't care if they memorize vocabulary lists or whether they can conjugate verbs or not, that what matters to me is their ability to communicate. In the first year class, the emphasis is strongly on the comprehension skills, with production being fairly limited in length and scope. This is in line with language acquisition theory, which says that comprehension will develop before production, and will always occur at a higher level. It's also in accordance with the ACTFL national standards and the corresponding levels of performance for Novice-Mid to High.
But my tests haven't really reflected that--until this year, the tests have always been (1) listening comprehension (2) reading comprehension with a cultural trivia component (3) grammar and vocabulary sections. Largely, this is because I took as much of the text-book-provided tests as my students could reasonably do in a day, copied them off and stapled them together. But I've started redesigning my unit plans the way they're supposed to be designed (see here and here)--which means my assessments needed to be re-written to match learning goals. And if I don't care if they can memorize vocabulary words, I shouldn't test them on memorizing vocabulary words.
I've hesitated to do this, for three reasons. 1. It marks a dramatic departure from what I think of as a Spanish test, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. 2. I was worried that a sampling of communicative tasks would overestimate students' abilities to use the language comprehensively. 3. I wasn't really sure that I was good enough at communicative assessments and using rubrics to assess communicative ability to create a reliable assessment.
I've learned to live with (1) in other contexts--the job of professional educator is not at all what I thought it was. It's a great deal deeper, more exciting, and science-based than I expected it to be. (If I'd known what my job was actually going to be, I would have taken a lot of laboratory science and social science classes, and not, for example, Astronomy, Ocean Systems, or Health and Well-Being.) So, I'm just kind of getting used to the idea that almost everything I thought I'd be doing is the wrong thing, on some level, to do. (Still trying not to throw out the baby with the bath water...)
Having run a couple of tests, I can now address (2) fairly accurately. When the learners are participating in good faith in the assessment, their communicative performance gives at least as accurate picture of their language skills as the previous test formats. And, of course, it has the added advantage of, y'know, actually testing what I want them to know. So we can pretty well set (2) to bed.
Concern (3) remains a concern. I'm not sure that this first communicative-based exam I gave really gets to the heart of the matter. But neither did what I was doing before, and change and learning have to start somewhere. I've changed, and now I'm learning. A greater sampling of communicative tasks is probably in order, although the format is about right. My primary concern is with the speaking/listening section. The first time I tried this, I asked the students a question, and graded them on how well they answered it. They then had to ask me a question, and write down the answers. It was the first chapter test of a high school Spanish I class, so an open-ended question probably would have been too much. But that section as it stood was much more reactive than creative, I think.
The other part of that is the rubrics I'm using. Given the nature of a limited testing scenario, I don't think I can break the comprehension skills up the way I did. So, I'll be looking for another way of doing it, so that the comprehension grade really tells the learners what they need to know in order to improve.
But my tests haven't really reflected that--until this year, the tests have always been (1) listening comprehension (2) reading comprehension with a cultural trivia component (3) grammar and vocabulary sections. Largely, this is because I took as much of the text-book-provided tests as my students could reasonably do in a day, copied them off and stapled them together. But I've started redesigning my unit plans the way they're supposed to be designed (see here and here)--which means my assessments needed to be re-written to match learning goals. And if I don't care if they can memorize vocabulary words, I shouldn't test them on memorizing vocabulary words.
I've hesitated to do this, for three reasons. 1. It marks a dramatic departure from what I think of as a Spanish test, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. 2. I was worried that a sampling of communicative tasks would overestimate students' abilities to use the language comprehensively. 3. I wasn't really sure that I was good enough at communicative assessments and using rubrics to assess communicative ability to create a reliable assessment.
I've learned to live with (1) in other contexts--the job of professional educator is not at all what I thought it was. It's a great deal deeper, more exciting, and science-based than I expected it to be. (If I'd known what my job was actually going to be, I would have taken a lot of laboratory science and social science classes, and not, for example, Astronomy, Ocean Systems, or Health and Well-Being.) So, I'm just kind of getting used to the idea that almost everything I thought I'd be doing is the wrong thing, on some level, to do. (Still trying not to throw out the baby with the bath water...)
Having run a couple of tests, I can now address (2) fairly accurately. When the learners are participating in good faith in the assessment, their communicative performance gives at least as accurate picture of their language skills as the previous test formats. And, of course, it has the added advantage of, y'know, actually testing what I want them to know. So we can pretty well set (2) to bed.
Concern (3) remains a concern. I'm not sure that this first communicative-based exam I gave really gets to the heart of the matter. But neither did what I was doing before, and change and learning have to start somewhere. I've changed, and now I'm learning. A greater sampling of communicative tasks is probably in order, although the format is about right. My primary concern is with the speaking/listening section. The first time I tried this, I asked the students a question, and graded them on how well they answered it. They then had to ask me a question, and write down the answers. It was the first chapter test of a high school Spanish I class, so an open-ended question probably would have been too much. But that section as it stood was much more reactive than creative, I think.
The other part of that is the rubrics I'm using. Given the nature of a limited testing scenario, I don't think I can break the comprehension skills up the way I did. So, I'll be looking for another way of doing it, so that the comprehension grade really tells the learners what they need to know in order to improve.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Zoom zoom zoom
Things that didn't die tonight because my car is sweet:
3 horses
1 coyote
1 neighborhood cat
3 neighborhood teenagers
1 neighbor who was burning leaves in the middle of the night
Any number of unseen deer
3 horses
1 coyote
1 neighborhood cat
3 neighborhood teenagers
1 neighbor who was burning leaves in the middle of the night
Any number of unseen deer
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Speaking / listening assessment strategies
Today is the first time I'll assess speaking and listening as part of a larger summative assessment. Already, I can see that the rubric by trimesters that I gave the students will be insufficient to the task of assessing their conversation accurately in this context. The fundamental conflict is that the assessment task doesn't reflect the grading scale, and the grading scale doesn't accurately reflect the learning objectives.
I remember that creating the comprehension rubrics were particularly difficult; I may need to revisit them in light of these difficulties. More clarity when I'm not actually at school.
I remember that creating the comprehension rubrics were particularly difficult; I may need to revisit them in light of these difficulties. More clarity when I'm not actually at school.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Reteaching behavior through video clips
Today for the first time, we tried re-teaching and supporting positive behavior through showing students video clips and having them process what they watch. This is a technique we got from the High School PBS summit in Lansing; local giant Kalamazoo Central High School presented the idea.
We'll have a more formalized look at perceptions later. Both the students and the teachers will have a poll to express their ideas about it. But my initial perceptions are these: our initial attempts earn three stars out of five. There were the logistical difficulties, of course--any time you do anything for the first time, particularly things that involve moving students from room to room or getting 20 copies of a DVD out to teachers, some things are going to go wrong. Despite the logistical difficulties, the strategy of using high-interest video clips as instructional tools is sound.
The post-video conversation was mixed. Some classes really got into it, especially at the high school level. The middle school students started getting some good reflection, but they were too often derailed by other students goofing around. I don't think that, universally, we achieved the level of student buy-in and ownership we wanted. In my class, a lot of my students looked like they felt they were being lectured at. That was the opposite of the point. Hopefully, I'll get better at asking questions in a way that inspires the students to talk, and I'll sit down and shut up. (Maybe I'll just sit down and shut up anyway; let the kids stew in silence for a little while.)
We'll have a more formalized look at perceptions later. Both the students and the teachers will have a poll to express their ideas about it. But my initial perceptions are these: our initial attempts earn three stars out of five. There were the logistical difficulties, of course--any time you do anything for the first time, particularly things that involve moving students from room to room or getting 20 copies of a DVD out to teachers, some things are going to go wrong. Despite the logistical difficulties, the strategy of using high-interest video clips as instructional tools is sound.
The post-video conversation was mixed. Some classes really got into it, especially at the high school level. The middle school students started getting some good reflection, but they were too often derailed by other students goofing around. I don't think that, universally, we achieved the level of student buy-in and ownership we wanted. In my class, a lot of my students looked like they felt they were being lectured at. That was the opposite of the point. Hopefully, I'll get better at asking questions in a way that inspires the students to talk, and I'll sit down and shut up. (Maybe I'll just sit down and shut up anyway; let the kids stew in silence for a little while.)
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Driving test on the redesigned lesson plans
I've now sketched up three unit plans in the format I described in my last blog entry--two for Spanish II, and one for MS/HS Spanish I. I also differentiated it for a 6th grade class, in which we cover a lot of the same "immigration" materials. (Once I get the unit plans down onto paper, and curricula written and aligned to standards, articulating the curricula is on the agenda. Which makes it an action item over the summer of 2011.) I've written 3 weekly plans for Spanish II, based on the unit plans, and 2 weekly plans for Spanish I. This provides a place to start thinking about how well it's going, I think.
So far, having an overarching plan really helps clarify my thinking, and it makes it much easier to decide what's important about an activity and what's not. This means that when reality happens, as it so often does, I have a much better idea of what part of a lesson plan I can jettison to account for, say, 25 minutes of grade-A teenage emotionally-driven angst. (Not all at once, of course, nothing I'd feel comfortable kicking anyone out of class for. It was just a constant drone. As I'm sure it was for the students involved.) Or having to re-establish, review, and re-teach respectful classroom behavior. Again. It's much easier now to make snap decisions--"Give 3 examples of ways Hispanic Americans come to live in the United States--" and what can wait for another day, lesson, or year--"Why do such a high percentage of Cuban Americans live in Miami? En español, por favor"--in order to accommodate the limited time and frequent de-railings of a class. (I'm still working on keeping on task all the time, too, but "big picture" ideas are helping me identify what "on task" and redirection skills I need to develop. That's another blog post.)
Having an overarching picture helps write the weekly plan, too, but the translation isn't flawless. In an ideal practice, my unit plan would contain all of the assessments, all of the practice activities, all of the guideposts that my students will pass along the way to doing whatever it is they're supposed to be doing--comparing baseball in Puerto Rico to baseball in the United States, for example. What I'm finding is that when I write the unit plan, I'm only including some of the learning activities. The daily lesson plan contains many more learning activities per learning goal, they're divided up a little bit differently, and they're still based in large part on the book.
In fact, one of my great weaknesses remains a dependency on my textbook to guide instruction. For example, I just finished writing the next unit outline, about weather. We're going to review what students know about weather systems in Spanish; talk about how to dress appropriately for weather around the word; examine weather in Michigan, Puerto Rico, Spain, and various locations in South America; and try to find some patterns based on the information we get. For reasons that are not immediately obvious, the book contains a lesson on direct object pronouns. This grammatical construction doesn't tie into any of our learning goals directly. There's no reason to use it in terms of most weather conversations. Sure, it's useful when talking about clothing and other kinds of stuff, but the book contorts itself pretty heavily to make it work. As I'm going from the unit plan to the weekly plan, the unit plan doesn't say anything about direct object pronouns. But the students need to know them before they can do indirect object pronouns. (I believe they do, anyway. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I need them to know DOP's before I know how to teach them IOP's.) So what wins? The less-book-based (but still book-influenced) unit plan I presumably wrote all by myself, like a big boy, or the text book? (Have I written any "evils of textbook thinking" posts recently? We're probably due).
In this instance, the book wins--I'm going to teach direct object pronouns. And I'm going to revisit the unit plan to see that the gratuitous grammatical structure makes it in there. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to make it more obvious why it's there, and integrate it better into the "big question" learning goals.
So far, having an overarching plan really helps clarify my thinking, and it makes it much easier to decide what's important about an activity and what's not. This means that when reality happens, as it so often does, I have a much better idea of what part of a lesson plan I can jettison to account for, say, 25 minutes of grade-A teenage emotionally-driven angst. (Not all at once, of course, nothing I'd feel comfortable kicking anyone out of class for. It was just a constant drone. As I'm sure it was for the students involved.) Or having to re-establish, review, and re-teach respectful classroom behavior. Again. It's much easier now to make snap decisions--"Give 3 examples of ways Hispanic Americans come to live in the United States--" and what can wait for another day, lesson, or year--"Why do such a high percentage of Cuban Americans live in Miami? En español, por favor"--in order to accommodate the limited time and frequent de-railings of a class. (I'm still working on keeping on task all the time, too, but "big picture" ideas are helping me identify what "on task" and redirection skills I need to develop. That's another blog post.)
Having an overarching picture helps write the weekly plan, too, but the translation isn't flawless. In an ideal practice, my unit plan would contain all of the assessments, all of the practice activities, all of the guideposts that my students will pass along the way to doing whatever it is they're supposed to be doing--comparing baseball in Puerto Rico to baseball in the United States, for example. What I'm finding is that when I write the unit plan, I'm only including some of the learning activities. The daily lesson plan contains many more learning activities per learning goal, they're divided up a little bit differently, and they're still based in large part on the book.
In fact, one of my great weaknesses remains a dependency on my textbook to guide instruction. For example, I just finished writing the next unit outline, about weather. We're going to review what students know about weather systems in Spanish; talk about how to dress appropriately for weather around the word; examine weather in Michigan, Puerto Rico, Spain, and various locations in South America; and try to find some patterns based on the information we get. For reasons that are not immediately obvious, the book contains a lesson on direct object pronouns. This grammatical construction doesn't tie into any of our learning goals directly. There's no reason to use it in terms of most weather conversations. Sure, it's useful when talking about clothing and other kinds of stuff, but the book contorts itself pretty heavily to make it work. As I'm going from the unit plan to the weekly plan, the unit plan doesn't say anything about direct object pronouns. But the students need to know them before they can do indirect object pronouns. (I believe they do, anyway. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I need them to know DOP's before I know how to teach them IOP's.) So what wins? The less-book-based (but still book-influenced) unit plan I presumably wrote all by myself, like a big boy, or the text book? (Have I written any "evils of textbook thinking" posts recently? We're probably due).
In this instance, the book wins--I'm going to teach direct object pronouns. And I'm going to revisit the unit plan to see that the gratuitous grammatical structure makes it in there. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to make it more obvious why it's there, and integrate it better into the "big question" learning goals.
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