You will see what you look for.

We will always find what we look for. 
How can you not applaud the efforts of a school which looks at how students are doing and puts specific actions into place to help students?  This RTI school has done just that.  Who wouldn’t suppose that as they focus more clearly on specific measures they will improve students performance on those measures?

“…all our professional development for the entire first semester is planned using the end of year summative data.”

Now some may argue that this is teaching to the test, and they are correct.  That is exactly what this is and it makes sense.  Whoa! Did I just say that?  Of course.  Really, if you want to get better at something, identify what to get better at, measure it and plan accordingly.  RTI or any other data-based decision making is not difficult it is just focused.

Lest you think I jumped ship, wait…

At some point a school needs to decide what is important and how to measure that.  And it is this step I would argue lacks follow through.  After all, no school or district mission statement reads  “It is the sole mission of our school for children to be proficient at all state measures.”   Faced with urgent need for change the question of what a school (and therefore community) should value often becomes framed within a predefined context of measurement, biasing the conversation from the word go and leaving other things aside.  And let’s face it, some things are very hard to measure.

Are reading, writing and math skills important to a school?  Absolutely.  Science and  Social Studies too?  Of course.  There are many available ways to get and analyze data about skills and content knowledge in these areas.  These measures and tools are not difficult.  But what isn’t being measured is difficult.  Are any RTI schools targeting creativity and innovation?  What measures are used to assess student’s connections to content?  What tools have been developed to assess students thinking processes to solve a problem and do (would) these tools allow for varied approaches across a variety of problems?  What is the spectrum of development of a self-directed learner and how do we measure that?  This is just the short-list.  (who noticed that I never even mentioned art, comprehensive technology, health, PE… ?)

There are arguments and data to suggest that the narrow focus on core subject skills does not negatively impact achievement in other subject areas. Does this suggest that it is ok to focus so narrowly on math, reading and writing skills? (is no negative impact what you want for your child?).  What isn’t being measured?

A recent article suggests that children’s cognitive development is strongly influenced by the valued cognitive skills of their culture.  We are certainly measuring important things already.  But do the things we exclude weigh equally on our values?

I wonder what this will turn up or you could look here?

Here is one

“A child muttered in class this week that she keeps knowing less than she thought she knew.

Success.”

The dismantling, disintegrating, demolishing, disassembling, trashing, throwing away, rooting out of misconceptions is hard work for teachers and students.

Seeing things that did not exist moments before is why I got into science in the first place.

I came across a reference to Adaptive Curriculum at Ed Tech for Science.  I wasn’t surprised to hear the usual “asleep for 50 years” story that has become so cliche in the push for more technology in schools.  New York city Ed Chancellor Klien is quoted as saying “It is time to use technology differently.”  And there-in lie our two diverging paths.

I spent some time looking over the Adaptive Curriculum site.  For the district level coordinator, what’s not to love?  A highly standardized, gated environment with clear assessments of the product’s ability to meet its own goals (this is sometimes referred to as achievement, that is another conversation).  Even better, students can just complete labs online.  There is no need to get out lab gear.  Besides, labs rarely produce the correct result with all the experimental noise that happens.

Before I go too far down this path I should reveal that I use modeling software with my students.  I have found the software to be very effective at meeting the learning goals that I have set for students.  But I only use it when a real lab cannot be done within reason.  For example looking at heat, energy and molecular motion.  If we need to understand temperature changes and state changes, we boil the real thing.  The same goes for pressure changes.  Make no mistake, kids get wet those days, lab gear gets broken and not everyone gets the same result.  But we also go to the whiteboard, in dynamic groups, and write, hypothesize, erase, draw, explain, test, fail, try again…

From the Adaptive Curriculum website

Adaptive Curriculum for Middle School Science is the ideal solution to student engagement and making science come to life in a virtual environment.

If you want to bring science to life, do science.  Get messy, fail, question, grow more questions.

More from the website

1. Real-World Experiments
   Aimed at improving student inquiry skills, these science Activity Objects create virtual experiments in a safe environment. Benefits of virtual experiments include::
   • Comprehension. Students can perform the experiment over and over.
   • Safety. Students are not exposed to dangerous situations and liability is reduced.
   • Cost Reduction. Virtual experiments do not require equipment or supplies and can be repeated as many times as necessary.
   • Resolution of ethical dilemmas. Virtual experiments eliminate objections to specimen dissection.

And there it is, hiding in the context of better comprehension (you know, if this didn’t work for you do it again and again until it does), this selling point has nothing to do with kids and learning and everything to do with ease of implementation, not having to think and of course, saving money.

I understand that there are things that cannot be taught through middle school labs.  I also understand how decisions regarding curriculum packages can shift values.

Are there good things in packages such as Adaptive Curriculum?  Sure, but these things worry me.  If a school or district choose to use this type of program, what steps would be put in place to ensure that real science still happened?  What discussions would be required to promote real solutions across all classrooms?  And most importantly, how will the district support students asking questions the software cannot answer?

Listen to Randy Olson’s appearance on NPR’s Talk of the Nation

On one level this could be about engaging students in content.  As a teacher I cannot take for granted the interests I have.

On another level, this could be about students creating engaging products.  These skills will help them get their message across.  Quality, accurate content is the real challenge here.

Sometimes I  wonder if the media dressing provides an opportunity to disengage from the actual ideas at hand?

NCLB, RTI, Common Core Standards, Race to the Top…  Urgent

When all of our conversation revolves around implementing these ideas, what becomes excluded?  What do we no longer talk about?

1. Why would a portfolio benefit students?
2. What would a good portfolio to show?
3. How can the core values be reflected in the portfolio? What school experiences could be included in the portfolio?
4. What type of work would you include from your class?
5. How could the portfolio be used as a tool for learning in your classroom?
6. How will we ensure that all stakeholders value portfolios as the central ongoing assessment piece?

So now I can say that the next new peice to my Earth-Sun System unit will include sending students on virtual field trips to watch the change in sunlight at their three locations.

From Teacher Provided Data to Online Data Gathering

Before

As a class we all studied temperature, sun altitude and the hours of daylight for three different locations on Earth.  There was one arctic and one equatorial location.  We also collected data for our own town.  All students worked with the same three locations.

I provided pre-made tables with the relevant data for three locations on Earth.

Students were provided with: latitude; longitude; relevant sun altitude, hours of daylight and temperature data.  Students were required to graph the data on graph paper, discuss the graphs and answer some questions.  I used an overhead transparency to display example graphs for our discussions.

Assessment involved students turning in graphs and questions.  I would go through these providing feedback then hand back as soon as I finished.

Present

Students are given a lists of equatorial and polar locations (cities or towns) and asked to choose location from  each.   They are then to find the latitude and longitude for each place.  I suggest a variety of resources they may use.

Students are then told to get the data for themselves.   I give some specific instructions on how to do this and provide a link to the database, but they are sent to the form to mine the database.  They also need to figure out the time zone for each location.  This requires them to know where the location is on the globe.  Again I suggest some tools for that.

All the data is stored on their Google Docs accounts.  Usually they graph with Google Docs, but the hours of daylight data is too sophisticated for Google Spreadsheets so they have to export that data and deal with it using a desktop spreadsheet (either Excel of Open Office).

Discussions take place in small groups with occasional regrouping and larger collective class discussions.  The latter are very short and focused, sharing student observations, routing out remaining misconceptions and dealing with the key learning outcomes.

Assessment involves me looking at their work with them at their computers.  All errors and omissions must be addressed.  Through conversation I can help students clarify their written ideas on the spot.  I can bring other students into the conversation and regroup based on immediate needs (technical problems, misconceptions, skill development…)

Science Lab Activities

We do a variety of hands-on science lab activities with this unit  some were originally middle school science labs while others I modified from some high school science lab activities.  These hands-on activities are pre-designed and meant to address key learning outcomes by demonstrating science content.  I did this before and I do it now.  These learning activities work.  The only significant change I have made over time is to use sensor technology.  Currently I am using the Vernier LabQuest as a platform.

Student Led Science Inquiry

One of the key science learning outcomes of my course is that students can ask a good question.  At every step of this unit, students are asked to write a research question.  While we do not have to time to address all of these, students are required to choose two questions of interest and find an answer.  One choice must involve an experiment, the other can involve online data gathering.  The results of these investigations need to be shared in some way.

Today my students still address the same science content they did when I began teaching this, back when I had only one computer in my classroom.  With more classroom access to technology, my students can now address this learning using 21st century skills.  Over the years I have been able to add in these new ways of learning or new learning outcomes, adjusting a bit more each year. As I have made changes I have observed an increase in student engagement.  More importantly, I have witnessed an increase in student independence.  They are becoming learners, becoming more capable of finding their own answers to their own questions.

“Everyone in government should be able to use modern technology… we should be able to figure out the policy to work with the technology.”

Everyone in education should be able to use modern technology.  This is students, teachers, administrators and support staff.  Too often policies are in place that limit the ability of members of each of these groups from utilizing technology to the fullest.

“The biggest potential threat is that we don’t try to figure out how to do this [use technology in government] at this time.”

And so too in the classroom.  Putting technology into place effectively involves taking risks, changing practice and moving towards a new vision of learning in our classrooms.  Along the way there will be lost days, extra hours, new managment challenges.  But there will also be new opportunities for students and teachers, new learning for everyone in the classroom.  Without the risk to find and adapt to new ways of learning where will we leave our students and ourselves?

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