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The 2x10 Method - Building Relationships with Students

Posted by Scott Habeeb on February 25, 2011 at 8:34am

The 2 x 10 Method: Building Student Relationships One Kid at a Time

January 10th, 2011, By: Diane Trim in Articles, Classroom Management

This has been reposted from Inside the School. Click here to read it in its original location.

In a recent online seminar with school psychologist Dr. Allen Mendler, Mendler talked about the 2 x 10 method of connecting with students, especially tough students. Here’s what he suggested:

Take two minutes a day for 10 consecutive days to engage the student in personal conversation.

I haven’t tried this myself, but I can see how this 2 x 10 method would work well to improve classroom management. Personal connections are so important to learning. If a student knows the teacher cares, the student is more likely to be engaged in class. If the teacher and student have created a personal bond, it’s harder for either one to depersonalize and disrespect one another.


The two minutes need to be personal and not about math, science, or business communications. What did you do over the weekend? is always a good start. So are: Did you catch last night’s game? What do you think about the new movie? Could you recommend a video game my son might enjoy? The conversation should be about the student, not about the teacher. Listen and learn. Respond. Smile. Treat the kid as if she is the most interesting kid in the room.


If I were to use the 2 x 10 method, I’d first target my influential student leaders – the ones who are more likely to lead the class in mayhem, like Tim or Ashley, rather than those who edit the yearbook, like Charisse or Karen.Charisse and Karen already tell me all about their weekends and show me their yearbook layouts. They connect with everyone. Tim and Ashley connect with their peers just fine, but love to strengthen the us-versus-them students-versus-teachers mentality.


It might be an interesting experiment to use 2 x 10 on the student leader’s buddy first rather than approach Tim or Matt head on. Clint feels more approachable to me than Tim does; at least he’s more predictable. Hannah is less likely to be fashionably rude to me than Ashley. Winning over the best friends could be a good first step to winning over the student leaders.


I’d also use the 2 x 10 method on those kids who are hard to reach, like Aaron, who doesn’t come to class very often, or Kurt, who rarely puts pen to paper.


I’m sure that the 2 x 10 method isn’t a miracle cure for classroom management. But I have two minutes to strengthen a bond between myself and a student. One caring adult can make a huge difference in a student’s life. And maybe, my two minutes over 10 days will yield benefits beyond the personal connection: improved classroom management and more student learning.

Allen N. Mendler, PhD, is an educator, psychologist., and author. His most recent book published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Connecting with Students (2001), provides numerous practical strategies that help educators to connect effectively with their students. He can-be contacted at: Discipline Associates, phone: 1 /800/772-5227; fax: 773/549-6515; e-mail: tammy@disciplineassociates.com; Web site: www.disciplineassociates.com

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Communicating AFL to Students and Parents

Posted by Scott Habeeb on February 13, 2011 at 10:00pm

Many of the posts on this Ning have dealt with how to communicate with students and parents about AFL practices.  Let's face it, just like AFL concepts are new to many educators, they are definitely new to many students and parents.  It's important to properly communicate with students and parents so that they understand what we we're doing and why we're doing it.  This increases the likelihood that they will benefit from your AFL methods.

 

As additional resources for communicating AFL are added to the Ning, they will also be added to this blog.

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Interactive AFL Faculty Meetings

Posted by Scott Habeeb on February 13, 2011 at 9:00pm

For the past several years at Salem High School we have focused on assessment for the staff development portion of our faculty meetings.  The Assessment Network has played an integral role in those faculty meetings.  The Forum feature has enabled us to make our discussions more interactive and collaborative as well enable us to archive our activities for future use.

 

This blog post is a list of the AFL Forum discussions we at SHS have had during those faculty meetings.  They are included here so that other schools can benefit from our exploration of AFL.  We encourage you to feel free to use our Forums as you see fit.  Furthermore, please be encouraged to use the Forum feature to create your own interactive staff development discussions.  Don't look at this as just Salem's page - it belongs to all members.  This Network is for any educators interested in exploring AFL.  If your faculty has an assessment discussion on this Network it will only serve to benefit the rest of us.

 

As we have additional AFL Forum discussions at SHS we will add links to them to this post.  

  • 9/03/09 - The relationship between assessment and grading
  • 9/23/09 - Grading v. Assessment
  • 10/28/09 - An example of AFL - GPS
  • 1/13/10 - An example of AFL - Whiteboards
  • 3/10/10 - Results of AFL Survey
  • 5/12/10 - Plans for AFL Objective
  • 12/8/10 - Use AFL Rubric to set mid-year objective
  • 12/14/11 - Building a Culture of Failure
  • 3/23/12 - Homework
  • 10/24/12 - AFL Discussion Question: Non-graded assessment to make sure students understand content
  • 11/28/12 - AFL Discussion Question: Using a summative assessment for a formative purpose
  • 1/22/13 - AFL Discussion Question: Quick AFL-activities to use at the end of class
  • 11/12/14 - Pretend You're A Grade Coach
  • 2/25/15 - Standards Based Learning and the Inchworm
  • 2/24/16 - Using AFL/SBL to Analyze a Common Assessment Practice: Earning Points Back on a Test
  • 4/13/16 - Tools for the Standard 7 Teacher
  • 1/11/17 - Applying SBL Philosophy
  • 1/10/18 - Incorporating Assessment into Lesson Plans
  • 1/08/20 - Compensation, Consequences, and Compliance
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The Philosophy of AFL

Posted by Scott Habeeb on February 12, 2011 at 11:00am

This AFL site has grown to the point where that it now contains many different blogs and discussion that get to the heart of the philosophy of AFL.  In order to most effectively implement AFL strategies into the classroom, it is helpful to have a strong understanding of the overall philosophy and goals behind AFL.  These ideas are scattered throughout the site. To make this site easier to navigate, this one blog will include links to all of the blogs and posts that deal with the philosophy of AFL.  

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Students understanding the value of assessment - nice to see!

Posted by Scott Habeeb on February 12, 2011 at 10:29am

Recently I spent a few minutes in the classroom of SHS Marketing teacher Michelle Kovac.  Her Marketing students had just turned in projects that day.  

 

When I came into the class the students were in the process of evaluating similar projects turned in by last year's students.  Mrs. Kovac had given her students a rubric when they started the project.  Now she was having them use that rubric to assess the projects that had been turned in last year.  After the students assessed last year's projects they told Mrs. Kovac what grade they had assigned to the projects.  Mrs. Kovac then told them what grade she had given.  By doing this, the students learned 2 things:

1. They realized that they were harsher graders than Mrs. Kovac was, and

2. They realized exactly how Mrs. Kovac would be grading their projects.

 

This led to the students falling right into Mrs. Kovac's "trap".  After truly understanding how their projects would be graded, the students asked exactly what Mrs. Kovac wanted them to ask - "Can we have some more time to work on our projects?"  Mrs. Kovac smiled and told them that they had the rest of the class period to finish their projects.  With their new assessment-elicited data in mind, the students literally sprinted to their projects to add finishing touches.  It was joy to watch students so eagerly wanting to work on a project, and it would not have happened if Mrs. Kovac hadn't taken the time to train them how to assess.

 

A student named Zac then made a statement that "one-upped" Mrs. Kovac's excellent lesson plan.  Zac told Mrs. Kovac that next time she should let them assess the old assignments either at the beginning or half-way through their work on their projects.  That way they could learn from the assessment and make sure they had the best possible project ready to turn in on the due date.

 

Mrs. Kovac liked Zac's idea and told the class that that was exactly what she would do.

 

What a great AFL idea.  Can you apply this to your classroom?  Is there a way you could give students examples of the work you are asking them to do?  Could you then train them to assess it the way you do?  Would this have any impact on the quality of the work the students did for you?  In my opinion, the answer to all of those questions is "Yes".

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AFL Flashcard Review

Posted by Scott Habeeb on January 18, 2011 at 2:28pm

It's pretty common for a teacher to finish a lesson and still have a few minutes left until the class period ends  Here is an extremely easy and practical way to turn those remaining minutes into a meaningful AFL opportunity.  

Instead of allowing students to sit and talk quietly until the bell rings, these few minutes can be used as a chance for the teacher to assess his or her students so that the teacher and the students know how well content was mastered that day - and so that they can identify areas that need improvement.  The use of AFL flashcards is a simple way to do this.

You will need to create a set of flashcards for each desk in your room.  There will be 2 cards per desk.  Card 1 will have an A on the front and a B on the back.  Card 2 will have a C on the front and a D on the back.  You might want to make a pouch out of paper and tape it to the edge of the desk.  The 2 flashcards can go in this pouch so that the students always have them handy.

Have you ever finished a lesson by asking questions about the lesson only to have very limited response from students?  Perhaps a small handful of students are answering your questions or even asking additional questions, but many in the room have mentally "checked out" and are just waiting for the bell to ring.  It seems as though the following question, "Do you have any questions about what we learned?" in student-language means "Go ahead and pack up and start forgetting everything we did".  Your new flashcards should change this situation.  

Ask all students to pull out their flashcards.  Begin asking the entire class questions about the day's content.  You could even ask about content learned on previous days.  Ask easy question, hard questions, simple questions, and complex questions.  Ask the type of questions you expect them to know for a test.  They will answer by holding up the appropriate flashcard.  You will be able to see how the class as a whole is doing and also how each individual student is doing.  The students will gain a more useful review than they would have from the normal question/answer period at the end of class, and, therefore, will be better able to assess their own level of understanding.

You could use the cards to represent various types of answers.  For example:

  • A,B,C,D could be multiple choice answers.  
  • A could equal true, and B could equal false.  
  • A could equal "I can answer that", and B could equal "I am unable to answer that".  
  • A could mean "I completely understand that topic". B could mean "I sort of understand but am not ready to take a test on it", and C could mean "I do not understand the topic".    

 

 

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Part 2 - What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do

Posted by Scott Habeeb on December 14, 2010 at 3:30pm

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post. It will make the most sense if read in that context.

After reading over my recent post entitled What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do, I began to hear in my mind (yes, I sometimes hear voices) questions that some people might have as a result of what I had to say.


The more I think about and experience AFL, the more I feel that I am challenging many of the norms of teaching. In fact, I often end up wishing I could go back to the classroom and do things differently. While I feel I was a very good classroom teacher, much of what I did and many of my practices were:

1. examples of what my favorite teachers had done, and/or

2. examples of the conventional wisdom of education.


Very few of my own teaching practices came about as a result of an overall educational philosophy. I am convinced that AFL is a sufficiently large and all-encompassing enough philosophy as to be worthy of being used by teachers to govern how they teach and create lessons.


As I learn more about AFL, therefore, I continue to find new challenges to the merit of the practices that many of my favorite teachers used and/or that are the conventional wisdom of teaching. Since I know I am not the only one out here whose practices developed from a combination of these 2 factors, I know that posts such as the one I recently made end up raising questions in the minds of many teachers. They are questions worth asking and worthy of answers. Here are some attempts to answer some of those theoretical questions:


1. You talk about internal v. external motivation, but isn't it human nature to be motivated by rewards? Are you saying we should completely change human nature and remove external motivations from our classrooms? Isn't that unrealistic?

I firmly believe that there is a role for external motivation in all aspects of life. As a believer in capitalism, I know that people are naturally motivated by their own good, and I have no problem with this. The Pilgrims learned a long time ago what happens when there is no incentive to work, and the same holds true today. The problem that I perceive lies in the overuse of rewards - in particular the overuse of grades as a reward. I would recommend reading Whale Done by Ken Blanchard. It compares the methods used by Shamu's Sea World trainers to family and business life - which parallel nicely with the classroom. Even when training animals to do tricks, multiple rewards are used. The trainers don't want Shamu to learn that fish are the only acceptable reward for a job well done. When grades are used as the sole or primary motivator in the classroom then the grade begins to become more important than the learning.

2. Are you saying we shouldn't give grades at all?

I am absolutely not saying that we should not give grades. What I am saying is that grades should not be used rewards - ex. do this and get a good grade. There's no reason to turn the whole world on its head by getting rid of grades. Perhaps there might be an idealistic benefit to it, but it's an unrealistic goal that doesn't seem worthy of my time. Grades are a part of schooling. They are not all bad. They should be used - PROPERLY.

3. So what's the proper way to use grades?

Grades should not be used as rewards. The way I see it, grades should be used for 3 main reasons:

1. To communicate how well a student is mastering content/skills so that the student can guide his or her learning.

2. To communicate how well students are mastering content/skills so that the teacher can guide his or her teaching.

3. To summatively communicate the students' final level of mastery.

When I first started teaching I did what my favorite teachers - and what the conventional wisdom of teaching - told me to do. I gave lots of grades so that no one assignment hurt my students.


Today, I would say that giving lots of grades is a good thing IF AND ONLY IF the grades are used for the first 2 reasons listed above. The problem with my grading was that all the grades went into the grade book. I rarely - if ever - used the feedback I received from the grades to guide my teaching. And I hardly ever attempted to train my students to view their grades as feedback that could help them guide their learning. These grades were simply used to average together and get a final grade.


The problem with that is that if I had been honest with myself I would have realized that many - if not most - of the grades in my grade book didn't reflect mastery. They were "practice" assignments or assignments whose outcome was negated by a later similar assignment. Therefore, there was no guarantee that the summative grade to which they averaged was representative of mastery.

This is why I am so thankful for AFL. It's much more than just another professional development effort that my school/system is undertaking. Instead, it is a philosophy that, when truly adopted, turns much of the conventional wisdom on its ear. It is a philosophy that, when applied to a classroom, will lead to teachers being more aware of student needs, students being more likely to take ownership of their progress, and grades that better reflect what they are meant to reflect - mastery.

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What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do

Posted by Scott Habeeb on December 9, 2010 at 5:26pm
Here is a conversation you will probably never hear:

Sea World Trainer 1: "I am so tired of these seals. They always want a fish every time they do anything!"
Sea World Trainer 2: "Tell me about it. It's like they don't understand how important the show is. They only care about getting fish!"
The other day I was talking with Jamie Garst, a Chemistry/IB Biology teacher at Salem High School. He mentioned that he recently decided to use Smart Pals (a plastic sleeve that allows an ordinary piece of paper to be used like a small dry erase boards) as a way to review in his classroom. (See previous post on using white boards to review) This was his first experience doing this with his students. As he was instructing them on what to do he told them that they would also need a blank sheet of paper. As he started to tell them the reason why, the kids said, "We know - it's to keep track of what we don't know." This was the first time Jamie had done this with his students. Therefore, their knowledge of what to do is evidence of the fact that someone had trained them. It's not natural for students to get out paper to assess their understanding. These kids had been trained by another teacher or other teachers in the school.
As educators, what do we want students to do?

We want them to learn for the sake of learning.
We want them to work hard because it's the right thing to do and because it leads to learning.
We want them to be internally motivated to do their best.
We want them to care more about learning than they do grades.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher who wouldn't agree that he or she wants those previous statements to be true for his or her students. However, we train them quite differently.

We train students to learn for the sake of getting a grade.
We train them to work hard or else they'll get a bad grade and because it leads to good grades.
We train them to be externally motivated by grades.
We train them to care more about grades than learning.

Think about it for a moment. The typical classroom at any grade level is not all that different from the seal show at Sea World. The student does the work; he gets a grade or points. The seal does the trick; he gets a fish. The student doesn't do the work; he doesn't get the grade or the points. The seal doesn't do the trick; he doesn't get the fish.

Have you ever assigned something and had students say, "Is this graded?" Have you ever felt like your students wouldn't work as hard if they weren't getting a grade? Have students ever complained that you weren't grading them after they put effort into an assignment or activity? Does it ever seem like all the students (and parents) care about is the grade on the report card or transcript?

Look back at the start of this post. Wouldn't it be ridiculous for the Sea World trainer to complain about the seal always wanting a fish for the tricks it does? Why is it not just as ridiculous for an educator to complain about a student always wanting to know if something is graded or about a student being motivated by grades rather than learning?

Perhaps the answer is because unlike the seal, the student is capable of rational and logical thought processes and should, therefore, know better. However, think about how students have been conditioned from day 1 in school. Do the work - get a reward. Now consider that this has been the case for generations. Is it any wonder that our students tend to be more externally than internally motivated? Is it any wonder that they tend to focus so much on grades and lose sight of the bigger picture of learning?

So what can be done about this? Is it possible to change years of conditioning to get to what we really want from students? Of course, if all teachers in the educational system made a change then we could definitely alter the situation; however, that's probably (definitely) a bit of a stretch. So can students be trained to be more internally motivated and to look at grades differently?

The story of Jamie and his students tells me that the answer is "yes". From my experience, the typical student expectation of a review activity is that the teacher will tell the student everything he or she needs to know - or ask all the questions he or she will eventually be asked - and then the student goes home and studies everything that will be on the test. (Or in some cases, doesn't study at all.) However, what Jamie found out was that his students were being conditioned to expect something different. They now expected that when a review was finished each student would leave class with a personalized list of what that student had not yet mastered. This personalized list would become the student's unique study guide. What Jamie experienced is an example of the fact that student expectations can be changed.

So what if teachers in your building stopped practicing AFG? AFG is Assessment FOR Grading. AFG is what I did very intentionally as a new teacher. I assigned lots of graded assignments so that I could have lots of grades in my grade book. The main purpose of my assignments and my assessments was to get grades in the grade book which could then average together to get a final summative grade. I used points as rewards and withheld points as a consequence. This use of AFG would naturally lead to my students thinking that everything they did had to be graded. I was training my seals - I mean, students - to work hard for the fish - I mean, grade.

AFL is so different. AFL is about assessing and assigning to gain feedback. It's about teachers and students using that feedback to guide learning. The whole point of the assessments and assignments is learning - thus the name, Assessment FOR Learning. This site is full of resources and ideas for applying AFL principles to the classroom.

I think that we can train kids to think differently about grades. It will take effort and a lot of change on our part. It will take great consistency, but it can be done. Until we truly begin applying AFL principles with this goal in mind, does it make sense for us to complain that students react exactly as we have trained them to react?

The best part of this is that if we alter their view of grades, we will ultimately increase their level of learning.
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A student AFL conversation overheard in the library...

Posted by Scott Habeeb on November 23, 2010 at 10:29am
A few days ago I happened to be walking through the library before school. Two female students were sitting at a table doing homework.

One of the students was working on a Math assignment. I heard her ask the other student, "Did you already do your Math homework?"

The other student replied, "No. I wait until after the 'check-up' and then decide if I need to do the homework."

Not knowing the class, the teacher, the exact content, the student, or the student's progress, I can't say definitively that the student was making the wisest decision for herself. However, I LOVE the fact that the student's teacher has obviously been training his or her students to use assessment-elicited feedback to guide their decision-making. It's evident that the "check-up" (what I would assume to be a quiz in traditional educational lingo) is viewed by this student not as an assessment FOR a grade but instead as an assessment FOR learning. Perhaps the student made the wrong decision to not do homework in this instance, but this student is being guided by her teacher down an important path. This student is being taught to assess herself and make decisions based on that assessment.

Are you providing your students with opportunities to assess their learning so that they are aware of what they know and what they do not yet understand?

Kudos to the Salem High School Math teacher who is providing his or her students with regular check-ups!
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An AFL Homework Practice

Posted by Scott Habeeb on November 22, 2010 at 11:21am
Sitting this morning in a Student Support Team meeting I heard Beth Moody, a math teacher at SHS, explain her homework practice. It was a wonderful example of AFL in action.

First of all, homework did not count against you. After all, why should practice count against you? Not doing homework or not doing it well does not inherently indicate how well students are mastering content.

Secondly, doing your homework assignments will lead to you receiving an extra grade for the grading period. This is a nice reinforcement of the idea that practice leads to learning. Unlike extra credit, an extra grade does not overly inflate the summative grade, but it does provide an incentive to practice.

Finally, and most AFL-ish, was the fact that Ms. Moody gives students practice problems for homework and then tells them to do as many or as few from each section as they need to do to ensure that they understand the concept. She is putting the students in charge of their own learning by giving them a means to assess themselves and tailor their practice accordingly. Rather than simply assign students 10 practice problems, the students might instead be given 5 examples of one type of problem and 5 of another. Then the students are told to do as many of each type as they need to. So while one student might do 1 of each, another might do 2 of 1 type and 3 of another, and still another students might do all 10.

What a great way to individualize the practice process and give students ownership of their learning!
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The "Oh, I'm getting it!" moment

Posted by Jenn Shannon on November 19, 2010 at 8:40am

I think I'm finally, after 6 years of teaching, having an "ah-ha" moment that should really be an "oh, duh" moment! In working to use AFL more and more in my daily class activities, I have really been focusing on using technology to reinforce learning.

Yesterday in one of my Algebra I Part 2 classes, I had a student say, "Oh, this is totally making sense now." He wasn't using technology at the moment, but merely working out of a textbook while at one of my station activities. I loved it! Today in my Algebra I Part 1 class, I heard a girl say, "Oh, I'm getting it." She was using an online game to review solving multi-step inequalities. We had worked the two days prior on learning this material and today was a chance for me to watch each student individually work at their own pace to reinforce what had already be taught. It wasn't for a grade, but for me to see what I needed to do on Monday before their Tuesday test.

It isn't hard to use AFL - I bet you are already using it! And let me tell you how rewarding it is to see a student have that lightbulb moment after you have taught it and they are practicing their skill in your classroom. I rarely have a student say, "Oh, I'm getting it" or "Oh, this is totally making sense now" in the midst of my typical class lecture.

Use AFL and get the chance to watch your students have those "Ah-ha" moments!!!

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A great reminder for students

Posted by Scott Habeeb on November 15, 2010 at 10:30am

Kudos to Salem High School math teacher, Erin Stenger, for thinking to put a sign like this right next to her doorway where students will see it each day as they leave her class.

It has been noted before on this website that for AFL to truly have its greatest possible impact, the students need to be using assessment-elicited feedback to measure their own progress and guide their own learning. Like most things that we want students to do, though, we must train them to do it. This is especially true for AFL since most students (just like most parents and most teacher) tend to look at grades from a summative position.


If we want students to view grades as feedback that guide their learning rather than just get averaged together to determine a grade, then we must 2 things:


1. We must grade and assess in a formative manner rather than just collect a bunch of scores to average.

2. We must train our students.


This picture in Mrs. Stenger's room is a subtle but important example of this. Most importantly, it reveals the fact that AFL is a core philosophy that permeates the way Mrs. Stenger runs her classroom.


Here are some other blog posts that deal with the same idea of students knowing what they know:

1. Do They Know If They Know?

2. Did AFL Guide My Instruction Today?

3. Assessment FOR Learning - A quick and easy indicator

4. AFL - It's about students taking ownership of learning

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How do you really know if you taught "it"?

Posted by Scott Habeeb on November 11, 2010 at 10:00pm
Note to teachers from Salem High School: This is a post about teaching, teachers, and students in general as opposed to a post about specific situations at Salem High School.
So after all the lesson plans have been created, all the class time has been spent, and all the papers have been graded, how do you really know if you've taught your content well?
I might get under some people's skin with this post, but I want to get us to really think about our profession and WHY we teach.
So what's the answer to the question of how we know if we have taught our content well? If we're really going to live up to our calling, we must answer it this way: We know we have taught our content well if all our students have learned it and their grades reflect this.
Let's clear up one misconception before it has a chance to grow - our job is not to make sure all students get good grades. Our job is, however, to make sure that all students learn our content. That's the whole point of being a teacher - to get students to learn. It's also our responsibility to grade in a way that reflects the amount of learning. So while good grades are not our focus, learning is. And when learning occurs, if we grade properly, good grades will follow.
Ok, let's clear up another misconception before we proceed - saying that it's our job to make sure that all our students have learned does not absolve students of their role in the learning process. Obviously poor decisions by our students will end up impacting the amount of learning that occurs. However, we cannot control their decision making. We can, though, control how we teach and how we grade. Therefore, if what we are doing is not leading to the mastery of content, and if our grades are not accurately reflecting the level of mastery reached by our students, then it is incumbent upon us to do something about it. There is no room in education for complacency. Our attitude must be that IF THEY HAVEN'T LEARNED IT, THEN WE HAVEN'T TAUGHT IT.
I remember taking Macro-economics in college. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that while the professor may have "known his stuff", he was an absolutely lousy teacher. There must have been about 400 students in the class. I was only taking the class Pass/Fail. I really felt bad for my classmates as I looked at the posted grades after each test we took. I remember earning a 60 on the mid-term and having it curved to a B+. I really didn't care since it was Pass/Fail, but I remember thinking what a joke it was to say that this person was teaching. Obviously many of the students - myself included - were not putting the amount of effort into the class that we should, but how could that professor be satisfied with himself knowing that almost none of his 400 students were mastering the content in his course?
I envisioned this professor sitting with his colleagues in the departmental office complaining about "college students these days". While I wasn't around in his day, I really doubt there ever was a time when college students enjoyed boring lectures, no descriptive feedback, and undecipherable tests. We didn't learn it, and he didn't teach it.
So what is an appropriate level of failure for your students? Should you be satisfied if 70% master your content? 80%? 90%? While it's important to keep a certain level of reality mixed in with your idealism so that you don't go crazy, WE MUST HAVE THE ATTITUDE THAT WE ARE GOING TO STRIVE FOR 100% MASTERY. Notice I said strive. This means we will not be complacent. We will continue to tweak, change, try, experiment, etc. to always try and bring more students to mastery level.
This is where Assessment FOR Learning has it's greatest power. To some degree, it saddens me when teachers have difficulty incorporating - or worse, don't try to incorporate - an AFL philosophy into their teaching. The reason is because an AFL philosophy will lead to greater content mastery. To not incorporate AFL strategies into one's teaching is to be satisfied with the fact that you're not doing the best that you can to teach your students. Let me give an example of what I mean:
If you "teach" content and then give a summative assessment (a traditional test, for example) without lots of assessment along the way, you know what will happen. The students who are very dedicated workers and/or the students who can sit in class and "get it" will do very well on the test. The students who do little to no work outside of class or who can't just sit in class and "get it" will do very poorly. Another group of students will score somewhere in between. For years, teachers have satisfied themselves with this outcome by "blaming students". In other words, because some students almost always do well, the teacher convinces himself or herself that all students could have done well if they had either worked harder, paid more attention, or were more academically gifted. The teacher "knows" he or she taught the content because SOME students have mastered the content. This is a convenient defense strategy for teachers as it absolves teachers of the responsibility of making sure that students learn. YES, students have a role in it (as stated earlier), but we can't control all of their decisions. We CAN control how we teach, though.

The scenario in the above paragraph is very common in schools. Essentially, it is being satisfied with the bell curve of life. As educators, we have the privilege of smashing the bell curve. We have the opportunity to be the "difference-maker" in a kid's life. Too often this opportunity is squandered as we sell short our ability to alter the outcome of a student's learning. AFL - formative assessment - can be a powerful tool in our attempt to maximize that opportunity. And it really doesn't require much additional work on our part.
Take the example from 2 paragraphs above. If instead of "teaching" and then giving a summative assessment, the teacher would instead assess EVERYDAY, then an incredible difference could be made in the typical bell curve outcome. For example:
  • If everyday the students left class knowing what they know and being aware of what they have not yet mastered - this happens because of specific classroom assessment activities led by the teacher - then students will perform better on the summative assessment. Have you ever experienced a situation as a student where you thought you knew what was going on until you took the test? You studied, and you thought you understood the content. Then you took the test and realized you didn't know it at all. This is all too common - but it shouldn't be. If this is happening to students in your class then you need to apply more AFL strategies. This is a clear sign that you need to provide activities that require your students to assess themselves throughout the learning process so that they are acutely aware of how well they're doing and what they need to do to prepare for the summative test.
  • If students were quizzed/tested/assessed repeatedly leading up to the summative assessment, then the summative assessment would not catch them by surprise. Do you ever hear your students complain that they understood the content but were surprised by the types of questions on the summative test? Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence as well. It's a clear sign that a teacher has not employed an AFL philosophy. AFL is about using assessment FOR learning. Teaching and then giving a summative assessment only is AFG - Assessment FOR Grading. It's using assessment to find out how much people know. While this has to happen eventually - there is nothing wrong with a summative assessment - it does little to help the learning process. If students are assessed regularly - DAILY - then the feedback from the assessments will actually help them learn - thus the name, Assessment FOR Learning.
Let's clear up 2 more misconceptions:
  1. But what about students who still refuse to work? They could still come into class completely unprepared and fail the assessment? Of course. But they are also the outliers. Let's focus on the majority of students - the ones who do what we ask. Let's not lose a good strategy just because a few students continue to make bad decisions. HOWEVER, I would contend that those poor decision-making students would learn more if they were assessed daily and provided with opportunities to assess themselves - even if they didn't work hard outside of class.
  2. But what about rigor? Shouldn't a rigorous class by its very nature lead to a bell curve of sorts? The rigor in a class should not be demonstrated by the student grades that result. The rigor of the class is inherent in the difficulty of the content. However, assuming that the students who are in the class have been properly prepared and have academic strengths on par for the class, then there is no reason that students shouldn't enjoy great success in a rigorous course. Our job as teachers is to get students to learn. That is no less true in a rigorous class than it is in a "general level" course. Unfortunately, it is common for teachers in rigorous classes to feel that the rigor of the course justifies the lack of success of some students. Again - grades aren't the goal. Learning is. But if AFL strategies can lead to students in rigorous courses getting higher grades that are reflective of increased learning, then how could we not employ those strategies?
So, how do you know if you've taught your content? You know it if your students have learned it. And AFL strategies will help increase that learning - which is, after all, WHY we teach.
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AFL and Learning to Drive

Posted by Scott Habeeb on October 22, 2010 at 12:30pm
Have you ever watched a teenager prepare for the DMV Learner's Permit test? If you have, then you'll know what I mean when I say that it is an excellent example of Assessment FOR Learning.

(As an aside, I'm having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that my oldest child is now learning to drive a car. Kaitlin is everything I could ask for in a daughter with one exception - she has moved beyond the age of 8!)

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles has what amounts to an online textbook. They also have online practice tests. Kaitlin began by studying the materials online and then quickly moved to the online practice tests. As soon as she finished each practice test she was immediately given her score. In the week leading up to her DMV visit, she must have taken 100 practice tests - each one slightly different than the one before. The big day finally arrived and her mother took her to the DMV where she passed her actual Learner's Permit test with a score of 100%. On the one hand I was proud of her, but on the other hand I was wishing she had failed so that I would have had a good excuse to not let her drive!

I hope that all readers of this are familiar enough with AFL to see right away the "AFL-ishness" of this example. I'll go ahead, though and highlight a few key points:

1. After each assessment (the online practice tests) Kaitlin received immediate descriptive feedback. This descriptive feedback from the teacher (the website in this case) was given for the purpose of helping her learn for the next attempt rather than simply describe what her grade was.

2. Kaitlin used the assessment-elicited feedback to alter/guide her learning. Over time (remember she took about 100 tests) she began to realize her strengths and weaknesses. This enabled her to study the online material more purposefully and, therefore, to learn better.

3. The more she was tested, the more she learned. This relates back to a recent post on this site called Test 'em more. That blog post referenced a study that was detailed in the NY Times. That study found that the act of taking a test - of being assessed - actually led to more learning. Therefore, many assessments/tests are better than fewer.

4. Finally, the end result, the grade that comes from the eventual summative assessment (the one taken at the DMV) truly reflected Kaitlin's level of mastery. The practice was not counted against her. The practice was important. In fact, it was essential. But in the end, it was just practice. Learning was what mattered most. Kaitlin passed with a 100%.

Now comes the fun part - I ACTUALLY NEED TO LET HER DRIVE ON THE ROAD!
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Do they know if they know?

Posted by Scott Habeeb on October 13, 2010 at 2:52pm
Here's a quick and easy way to analyze how well you are applying AFL principles in your classroom:

If a parent were to ask his or her child how they were doing in your class, could the child give an accurate, detailed, and specific answer about his or her progress?

If you are regularly providing descriptive feedback to students then they should be able to tell their parents not only if they are doing well or not, but also what their strengths are, what they have mastered, and in what areas they still need improvement.

Of course, many young people - because they are young people - will tend to answer with a simple "Fine" or "I don't know". However, if we could magically control for the idiosyncracies of youth, the question remains, could your students specifically and with detail tell their parents how they are doing in your classroom?

If the answer is "No" then it probably means you are not giving enough feedback - which in turn probably means that you are not assessing them regularly enough. Or perhaps it means you need to focus on training your students to better use the feedback that you are giving.

Don't confuse a student being able to report on his or her grade with a student being able to answer the question in detail. Being able to say, "I'm making a B" is very different from being able to say, "I've mastered grammar but am having trouble with analyzing poetry."

So what can you do to give your students more descriptive feedback so that they can better answer the question?
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An Assessment Becomes a Learning Tool

Posted by Scott Habeeb on October 8, 2010 at 11:30am
Today I had the privilege of observing a Salem High School Algebra 1 Part 1 class being taught by Jennifer Shannon. I watched a teacher very intentionally make sure that her classroom assessment - in this case the test she had given the previous day - was used as a LEARNING TOOL instead of simply a GRADING TOOL.

Essentially Mrs. Shannon allowed her students to make corrections to their tests and earn partial credit as a result. This practice is fairly common. However, Mrs. Shannon added a few wrinkles to this common practice to ensure that students were doing more than just going through the motions of making corrections and instead were actually learning content not previously mastered.

To give some context, this was a 9th grade Algebra 1 Part 1 class taught in a traditional 50 minute class period. Algebra 1 Part 1 students at SHS - there are only about 30 - are the students who struggle the most with learning math concepts.

At the start of class Mrs. Shannon divided her 14 her students into groups. She explained to them that the groups were based on the types of errors made on the test given the previous day. So for example, one of the groups consisted of students who had had difficulty on the section of the test that dealt with properties. Another group consisted of students who had had trouble simplifying radicals. Another group of students all had what Mrs. Shannon termed as general problems. A fourth group had done quite well on the test.

Mrs. Shannon had one of the groups move to a separate area of the room and work with her student teacher. Another group moved to another area of the room and worked with the special education professional that cooperatively teaches with her. Mrs. Shannon worked with the remaining two groups, which included the one that had done well on the test.

In their groups, students were to rework the problems they had missed and ask for help as it was needed. They were allowed to use their notes to help them.

The students who only had a few corrections to make were given laptops. When they finished their few corrections they were to ogin to Quia and begin working on an enrichment activity that would prepare them for the next unit of study.

So what was especially AFL-ish about this that made it stand out? Good question. Here are some answers:
  1. Typically teachers will tell students that they can take their test home and do corrections on their own. Some will. Some won't. Some will do it just to get back points but won't actually learn the content better. Some might even cheat to get the right answers. Mrs. Shannon made sure that this assessment was a learning tool by having the corrections be a classroom activity guided by teachers.
  2. Mrs. Shannon clearly used assessment-elicited evidence to design her lesson. It was from the test results the day before that she was able to group her students so that they would receive the help and instruction that they need in order to learn.
  3. The entire activity occurred because Mrs. Shannon realized from the test that the students as a whole had not mastered the content. This test gave her the feedback she needed to know that if her goal was to increase learning she was going to need to find a way to reteach some of the material. The beauty of this activity was that it then allowed her to reteach to each student only what he or she needed.
  4. The idea of earning back points was not the major focus of this activity. The major focus was learning the material. In fact, because Mrs. Shannon made this a class activity I would bet that the outcome would have been almost identical if students hadn't been able to get points. In other words, this was about learning. The test the day before was used by Mrs. Shannon NOT as a way to determine the students' grades but rather as a way to determine their learning so that she could adjust her instruction with the ultimate goal of having her students learn.
In the hands of a skilled practitioner even a traditional and a routine activity like making test corrections can become a powerful AFL learning moment.
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Practical Examples of AFL to Try in Your Classroom

Posted by Scott Habeeb on October 1, 2010 at 2:30pm

The Assessment Network has grown to the point where that it now contains many different examples of how the power of assessment can be maximized in the classroom. These ideas are scattered throughout the site. To make this site easier to navigate, this one blog will include links to all of the other classroom AFL examples. It's sort of like an AFL Wal-Mart - everything you need in one blog!

 

Please note that while these blog posts are grouped by content area, the vast majority of them can be used in any content area. So be sure to explore examples listed in content areas other than your own.
Also, please note that as more examples are added to this site, they will also be added to this blog.
Art
English
Guidance
History
Marketing
Math:
Music
Physical Education
General Examples
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An everyday activity can become an AFL tool - (Ancient World History)

Posted by Scott Habeeb on September 24, 2010 at 2:00pm
Assessment FOR Learning reaches its most effective level when students are able to use assessment feedback to guide their own learning. Many activities that teachers are already using in their classrooms have great potential for this type of use. What makes the difference in the "AFL-ishness" of an activity is often not as much the activity itself as it is the way the teacher communicates its purpose to the students.

Pam Carter, an Ancient World History teacher at Salem High School, has taken a traditional activity and increased its AFL capacity by very purposefully training her students how to use the activity to assess their level of mastery.

As Pam teaches her students about the time period from the Paleolithic Era to the Agricultural Revolution she stops periodically to have students assess their level of understanding. They do this by completing portions of a 2-sided worksheet called the Ancient World History Guild (see images below or click on link below to download a pdf version of each page). As they move through the lessons/unit, students have to use their knowledge to answer the questions.

What makes this particularly "AFL-ish" is the fact that the questions are grouped into categories. Based on what you can answer you may have reached Apprentice Level, Journeyman Level, or Master Level. Students are trained to do more than just answer questions. They are trained instead to also assess how well they have mastered the content by the level they have reached. Students can use this worksheet as a study guide that will compare for them what they currently know with what they need to know to reach the goal of Master Level. In other words, they can use assement-elicited data to make decisions about their learning - AFL in a nutshell.

This is a perfect example of how AFL is not really about what assessment you use - it's about HOW you use the assessment.

Page 1
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Test 'em more - NY Times article and the research on how assessment helps learning

Posted by Scott Habeeb on September 16, 2010 at 10:30am

As we at Salem High School have been exploring AFL, we have begun to realize the power of testing students for the purpose of learning. So often we think of assessment as simply giving a traditional test at the end a unit of study for the purpose of determining mastery and calculating a grade. The principles of Assessment FOR Learning would instead lead teachers to assess along the way - to use tests, quizzes, and other assessments as a means to help students learn. Assessment is much more powerful than teachers often realize. It is a learning tool.

Here is how assessment is applied in what I'll call a traditional classroom:

1. Teach Content
2. Practice Content
3. Teach Content
4. Practice Content
5. Assess Mastery of Content
6. Move on to New Content

Here is one example of how assessment could be applied in the AFL classroom:

1. Teach Content
2. Assess Understanding
3. Practice Content
4. Assess Understanding
5. Teach Content
6. Assess Understanding
7. Practice Content
8. Assess Understanding
9. Assess Mastery of Content

A recent NY Times article seems to back up this AFL approach. The article (Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits, Benedict Carey, September 6, 2010) discusses studying content multiple times over a period of days v. cramming. Not surprisingly, several major studies have found that cramming does not work as well, in general, as studying material in multiple chunks over time. But what research is also showing is that the act of taking a test on material actually helps people remember the material for a longer period of time.

I have copied and pasted below an excerpt from the article. Follow this link to read it in its entirety.

Begin Excerpt

Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.

“With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”

When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.

No one knows for sure why. It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.

“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”

That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.

Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring one property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example): “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.

In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, also of Washington University, had college students study science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods. When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.

But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.

“Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”

Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,” is evident in daily life. The name of the actor who played Linc in “The Mod Squad”? Francie’s brother in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”? The name of the co-discoverer, with Newton, of calculus?

The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.

End Excerpt


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Fair and Unbalanced - reposted blog written by Nancy Flanagan for Teacher Magazine

Posted by Scott Habeeb on August 12, 2010 at 11:15pm

Here is a thought-provoking blog on the idea of giving students credit for work turned in late. You can read it and other comments about it online at Teacher Magazine.


Any thoughts?



Fair and Unbalanced

By Nancy Flanagan on July 18, 2010 3:46 PM

A couple years ago, I gave a major assignment to all my music students. It was a culminating project--designed to incorporate bits and pieces of what we'd been learning all semester. On the due date, I had projects from about 93% of my students--all but 20-odd kids. Running down the list of these delinquents, they were pretty much the kids you'd expect to be tardy or negligent with assignments. Knowing that it would take at least two weeks to grade the projects and give written feedback, I publicly offered students who hadn't turned in their project amnesty. I said I would accept carefully done projects during the next week, with no reduction in credit.

All but two of the students turned projects in. The majority were somewhere between good and excellent in quality. I got two thank-you calls from parents, grateful for a second chance. I was careful to tell all the students that this was a one-time offer, that teachers had deadlines and homework policies for good reasons. I wasn't trying to sell out colleagues; I was simply interested in what would happen if I encouraged everyone to finish, without penalty.

My job is teaching students as much as I can about music. By making it worth their while to turn a project in, many kids chose to do just that--and deepened their music learning. For most of those kids, it was also the difference between a good final grade and a poor one. Students who fail to turn in a major assignment are often so deep in the hole, grade-wise, that they effectively stop producing in class.

I shared the story in an on-line teacher community. The reaction was surprisingly swift and virulent. Teachers thought the real lesson I was teaching was that kids could get away with not following the rules. Students need to have consequences for their actions, teachers said.

Some shared their own complex policies--30% credit here, 50% credit there, with/without doctors' excuses--as if I were a novice teacher who had been co-opted by crafty 12-year olds. What startled me most, however, was this repeated message: giving late assignments full credit is not fair to the kids who turned their work in on time.

Of all institutions on the planet--government, businesses, clubs and churches--schools are perhaps the "fairest" of them all. It is in school that we first learn to take turns, stand in line and share equally. We want that level playing field for all kids. Real life, of course, isn't fair at all.

Some kids are born with material things, others to parents who have love but not money. Some kids are talented athletes; others are always chosen last. Some go to Ivy League colleges on their parents' dime. Others make their own way, through hard work and persistence. Some start out so far behind the 8-ball that it's a miracle they survive, let alone succeed.

All our efforts to make school perfectly fair and neutral are doomed to fail. I don't buy the argument that we're preparing kids for "real life" when we dole out punishments and rewards. My experience with real life tells me that things are pretty random out there--some people get second, third and seventeenth chances to get things right and others are gone with the first mistake.

The more teachers know about their students, the better they can tailor instruction and support for students' unique needs, the further they can push them to reach their potential. Paying attention to individual kids is a better strategy than making an inflexible rule. Better, but vastly more difficult.

Offering some kids a second chance was not harmful to the students who had successfully completed the assignment on time. Granting an extension might increase the overall number of good grades, but would not decrease the achievement or recognition of those who turned their work in by the due date.

The negative reaction came from an artificial concept of success-- for some kids to shine, others must fail--and from a deep-rooted sense that school is always a competition, that letting some kids take an academic mulligan was cheating. There was also censure: admonishment for breaking ranks and re-thinking traditional teacher policies.

I thought of this when reading the recent story about Harvard dropping exams--a non-event that educational traditionalists seem to find appalling. Is the brouhaha about accurately measuring learning? Or is it about who's on top?

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