Learning Through Reflection

We don't learn from experience.  We learn from reflecting on experience.

- John Dewey

We know that teaching students to reflect on learning is one of the most powerful things we can do to improve learning outcomes and to instill habits that will help students become critical and evaluative thinkers in all aspects of their lives.

At York Middle School, our student-led conferences provide an opportunity for students to share the reflective process with their parents.  The conference itself, is a culmination of months of reflective work.  Our student-led conferences immerse students in the process of goal setting and reflection as an integral part of their school experience.  

The conferences provide students with the opportunity to talk with adults about their
progress. Student-led conferences reflect the belief that students should be actively involved in their learning and assume responsibility for the learning process.   The conferences are facilitated by students and follow an agenda that has been developed prior to the meeting.  During the meeting, students share examples of evidence that show their strengths and weaknesses for the purpose of goal setting and continuous improvement.  This process helps students to become more motivated, reflective, and evaluative learners.  They also become more critical in their approach to learning and self-diagnostic. Research strongly supports the connection between these practices and improved learning outcomes.

At York Middle School, we have shifted our focus from merely covering curriculum to ensuring that students have learned it. Reflection is no longer optional - it's an essential component of a student-centered environment in which students are empowered to take ownership over their own learning.

The following link is an except from Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick's Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind. The authors write about the importance of learning through meaningful and active reflection (for both teachers and students).

Enjoy the article!

Learning Through Reflection

Seven Practices for Effective Learning

In this week's post, we are sharing an article that was originally published in Educational Leadership in 2005.  It's an excellent article that describes many of the practices that are now common place at York Middle School.

With the release of our new reporting system, the collective conversation has shifted to the way we are grading students and how their new scores can be interpreted.  These conversations are important. Reporting on proficiency levels in disaggregated standards is radically different than using a composite grade based on an average.  There will be a learning curve and it will take time for all of us to adjust.

With all the conversation surrounding grades, I don't want to lose sight of the effective and powerful strategies that teachers are implementing at the classroom level.  This is where the real impact of Proficiency-Based Learning is felt.  When all is said and done, the end goal is to improve our instructional and assessment practices so that all students achieve to their potential.

This article details many of the practices that teachers must execute at high levels in order to be successful in a proficiency-based learning model.  These are some of the things we have been working on as we prepared for this transition.

We hope you enjoy the article.

Seven Practices for Effective Learning

The Importance of Good Learning Targets

At YMS, we have been spending a great deal of time talking about learning targets.  Teachers use them in the form of "I can" statements on a daily basis.  A teacher's ability to write good learning targets is far more complex than it may appear on the surface.  It's more than just posting  daily objectives on the board.  Good learning targets should describe what students are expected to learn, why the learning expectation is important, and what the work will look like when the target has been met.

Writing good learning targets is a critical skill that teachers must practice in order to master.  In the following article, Susan Brookhart and Connie Moss write about the importance of good learning targets.  Brookhart and Moss assert that components of effective learning targets will:

• Describe exactly what students will learn by the end of a day’s lesson.
• Use language students can understand.
• Be stated from the point of view of a student who has yet to master the knowledge or skill being taught.
• Contain a performance of understanding that translates the description into action – what students will do, make, say, or write during the lesson.
• Include student look-fors or criteria for success in terms that describe mastery of the learning target, not a score or grade.

  Please take the time to read their article that was published in the Educational Leadership journal, October, 2014.  I hope you enjoy the article.  

Learning Targets on Parade

Red Bandana Run & Student Leadership Retreat

This week's blog post tells the story of a great collaborative unit taught by our 8th grade Kodkod team.  It's this kind of work that really exemplifies sound, student-centered, middle-level practice.  It was an inspirational unit that will have a lasting impact on our eighth graders.  The following description was written by members of the Kodkod team.  

Red Bandana Run & Leadership Retreat

Kodkod Team

Great learning happens when students, teachers, and parents share their ideas and collaborate.  As eighth graders begin the school year, they learn about the events of 9/11.  Most of our students were just infants at that time.  An understanding of the events that occurred and our nations’ response to them is essential to understanding America’s current role in the world. 

Our study of this era includes an exploration of who we are as a people, who we are as individuals and who we are as Americans. What are the values we hold dear? How do we act on those values on a personal, domestic, and foreign policy level? Who were our leaders during 9/11 and how did they lead? 

While we were studying this era, a few students mentioned the story of “The Man in the Red Bandana,” the inspiring  ESPN documentary about Welles Crowther.  Crowther was a Boston College graduate who was at work in the towers on 9/11 and spent the last hours of his life aiding and rescuing others. It is an amazing story, but we were not sure how best to bring this to our students until Open House.  That evening, Todd and Jane Adams stayed late and chatted with our team’s teachers. During this conversation, the idea of conducting and participating in a run with our students was proposed and an offer to provide Red Bandanas to all our students was promised. 

From there, we located an amazing curriculum at the Welles Crowther’s Foundation and decided to use portions of that curriculum to hold advisory discussions and study qualities of leadership. 

On October 14th we held a Remembrance Run which began at 9:11 and had students moving nonstop for 102 minutes. They went through stations where the entire advisory worked together for a run/walk, carried 40 pounds of potatoes up and down a relay ramp and more. The highlight was a visit from the York Fire Department where each student had the opportunity to suit up, walk to a cone and return wearing the weight of a firefighter. Students worked cooperatively to help one another in and out of the equipment and even assisted the team teachers as they competed to get the equipment on.

At the end of the day, students participated in a leadership retreat session. In advisory groups, they reflected and wrote about how the actions of Welles Crowther inspired them, how they serve others, and what leadership qualities they would like to develop in themselves. Each student has a Red Bandana as a tangible reminder of the capacity each of us has to make decisions to follow our passions, to serve others, and to live our lives to the fullest.  

Thank you to Dr. & Mrs. Adams for their generous support and to Sue Bruno and the York Fire Department for making this such a special experience for our students.  

We've included the documentary about Welles Crowther below.

- 8th grade Kodkod Team  

Teacher Mindset and Student Success

If you've been following the transition that is taking place at York Middle School, you would have heard reference to the impact this transition is having on the work of teachers.  One piece that is often overlooked is the shift in mindset that many teachers must undergo in order to be successful in a proficiency-based learning model.  Identifying standards, posting learning targets, and reporting out on a 4-point scale certainly aren't enough to improve student achievement.

The impact on teachers is significant and multi-faceted.  For me, one of the most profound implications is the shift in emphasis from covering material to making sure students have actually learned it.  In the world we all grew up in, it was common for a teacher to assign work from a chapter in a textbook, deliver instruction from the front of the room (often in the form of notes), assign classwork and homework, and give a test or quiz.  Then it was time to move on: whether students learned the material or not.  Feedback was minimal and often in the form of brief affirmations of performance, "Great Job!", "Excellent!", "Needs Improvement!".  The quality of feedback was poor and sporadic.  If students did poorly they were often encouraged to study harder next time.  Sometimes extra-help was offered in the form of re-teaching the material in the same way it was taught in class.

The emphasis was on the coverage of material and the grades students earned.  Not learning.  This is powerful because it was just as true for students as it was for teachers.  Students were much more concerned with getting good grades than they were with the actual learning that was taking place.

Now, the emphasis is placed squarely on student learning rather than the grade or the coverage of material.  This concept is central to the philosophy of proficiency-based instruction.  Students know exactly what they are expected to learn, how they are going to get there, and what success will look like.  Assessments are both formative and diagnostic.  Students are given opportunities to reflect on their progress, and they know where they are in relation to a learning target.  

It's the work and the mindset of teachers that makes this possible.  I've included a short video that highlights the eight mind frames that researcher John Hattie believes all teachers must hold.  I couldn't agree more.  I truly believe that these belief structures are essential to both teacher and student success.  I hope you enjoy the video.

Redos and Retakes at YMS

At York Middle School, we believe it's important for students to make mistakes, to reflect on their failures, and to persevere to meet their goals (learning targets!).  Perseverance, in fact, is one of our school's core values.  We are striving to create a student culture that values hard-work and recognizes when students learn the most: When they make mistakes and when they persevere to do better.
Teachers have historically placed a high value on work-ethic and with good reason.  Intuitively, we have always known that learning improves when students persevere when faced with a challenge.

Now, we actually have the science to back up our intuitions.  The neuroscience that supports the research is fascinating.  We now know, irrefutably, that students actually get "smarter" by being allowed to fail and having the opportunity to make corrections.  The research couldn't be any more powerful.  Here is what we know to be true:

When students are given descriptive feedback on their failures, time to reflect in meaningful ways, and the opportunity to make corrections, learning WILL improve.  Period.  Having kids formally reflect on their academic setbacks is the single most powerful thing teachers can do to improve learning in their classrooms.

In order to encourage this new mindset, teachers have been working to create redo/retake policies within their teaching teams and classrooms.  Creating a formalized redo/retake policy is something new for most teachers.   A formalized policy helps students to prepare a plan of action if they do poorly on an assessment.  A good policy also helps teachers manage time and the workload that comes along with new and improved classroom practices.

Please follow the link below to read an outstanding article by Rick Wormeli called Redos and Retakes Done Right.  In this Educational Leadership article, Wormeli provides the philosophical argument for allowing redos in schools then goes on to offer practical strategies for implementation.  I'm proud to report that many of the practices he describes are now becoming increasingly common at YMS!

Redos and Retakes Done Right

Managing Standards in a Proficiency-Based Math Classroom

This week, I'm sharing an article that Assistant Principal Soucy wrote in 2011.  The article was originally published in Middlelink, the Maine Association for Middle Level Education's periodical.

In the article, Mrs. Soucy reflects about her experience as a seventh grade math teacher in a proficiency-based classroom.  At the time, Mrs. Soucy was working with a team of teachers that were pioneering proficiency-based instruction at Massabesic Middle School.  She writes about the profound change that she experienced in her classroom during the transition.  Mrs. Soucy provides us with some great insights into what proficiency-based classrooms can look like.  I hope you enjoy the article.

Managing Standards in a Proficiency-Based Math Classroom

Marie Soucy

As students begin working, I take a step back for a minute to monitor the activity of the class. One student is at the board teaching a peer how to solve two-step equations. In another area a few students sit together and work on solving probability problems. Several others are using a website (ixl.com) on their laptops to practice finding the measures of unknown angles. A few others have chosen to utilize their math books to work on the same skill. Although they are not all working on the same standard, there are still some commonalities among the students; they all know what they are expected to learn, how they’re going to learn it, and what comes next.  

This year, a performance-based system of education has been implemented at Massabesic Middle School. In this system, the focus is on the learning; what we want students to know and be able to do is what drives instruction. Grades are no longer averaged together and represented by a 100-point scale. Rather, students earn a 1 to 4, which represents their progress towards meeting the standard.  

In my 7^th grade Math class, students are able to progress through the standards at a pace that matches their needs and abilities.  In order for this process to happen successfully, the learning needs to become transparent for students.  The standards are made very understandable and accessible to students.  Each of the Math standards is listed on a learning matrix with the simpler skills below it.  By looking at the matrix, students can identify what they need to know and be able to do in order to show proficiency in each of the standards.  

Many different tools and procedures are used to help students navigate their way through the standards.  One such tool is a flowchart outlining the different pathways students should take when they get stuck, where they can find resources, or what they need to do next.  Students also use a wall chart to find classmates who can assist them in learning a skill.  Students are offered multiple avenues to demonstrate their learning. The textbook is not the only reference material used.  Laptops and the Internet are valuable resources in class.  If students don’t quite understand a skill the first time through, they can keep trying until they've mastered it. When they have demonstrated proficiency in a learning target they move on to another one.

There is still teaching happening, just not the “one size fits all” that has been the norm. At times there are whole group lessons, but the majority of the lessons taught are small group and one-on-one. This type of instruction allows for more differentiation and enables me to tailor lessons to the specific needs of the students. The grouping of the students is fluid, as students move through the learning targets at their own pace.  Students also teach one another and learn from online tutorials when it’s appropriate.  

The environment in my math classroom has changed. Students are taking ownership of their education. They are collaborating, sharing ideas and strategies, and communicating effectively with one another.  The culture of the classroom is changing.  It is becoming one where students can make mistakes, which is part of the learning process.  Students are especially learning some significant skills that they can take beyond the math classroom.  

Homework in a Proficiency-Based Classroom

One of the most common misconceptions around proficiency-based learning is that teachers will no longer assign homework.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Although the way we think about homework may change, working at home will remain an integral part of our students educational experience.

Once teachers have identified learning targets, any work they assign should be intended to help students hit those targets.  In some classrooms, the notion of "homework" may change.  It's just work. Some of the work will be done at school and some will be done at home.  The reality is that if students are off task in school, they will likely have more work to do at home.

Likewise, if students are struggling to meet a learning target, they may have alternative or additional assignments that they need to complete to help them get there.  Again, some of this work will be done at school, and some will be done at home.

In the following short article, Rick Wormeli writes about various ways teachers can make homework more meaningful for students.  It's a great little article and he is spot on.  The practices he presents are universal, and they ring true in any classroom: proficiency-based or traditional.

It's interesting to note;  I've observed teachers use many of these strategies in their classrooms. In the classrooms in which teachers use them most frequently, we always see high rates of homework completion.  In classrooms where these types of practices are absent, we find relatively lower rates of homework completion.  It's no accident.

Click below to read the article:

13 Ways to Make Homework More Meaningful

The Value of Failure

This week I had the pleasure of observing our assistant principal, Marie Soucy teach our math/science enrichment class.  Marie and I are co-teaching the class to our 5th and 6th graders.

When students arrived to class they began a "do now" question that dealt with calculating average speed.  As Marie was reviewing the answer to the question, she asked the class, "who got the answer wrong?".   I was surprised by how many students eagerly raised their hands.

Marie went on to ask students to explain their thinking, the algorithm they used, and the process they followed to arrive at the wrong answer.  I often observe teachers going through a similar process when students answer questions correctly.  It's common for teachers to ask students to explain their reasoning for a correct answer.  This was a bit different.

The discussion that followed proved to be extremely valuable to all students in the classroom. Through dialogue, students who answered incorrectly were able to share their thought process, explore alternative ideas and arrive at a new understanding of the concept.  This is where true learning takes place.  In order to learn something effectively, students must make mistakes and learn something from those mistakes.  There is a huge body of research that supports this.

Students who answered the question correctly also benefited from this discussion.  Several students in the class could select the correct algorithm (speed = distance/time) and do the computation.  The discussion however, helped these students develop a deeper conceptual understanding of the concept of speed. The rate at which an object covers distance - a scalar quantity.

The real value in what I observed had very little to do with students developing a conceptual understanding of the concept of speed however.  The value was in students recognizing that it's okay to fail.  This is about fostering a classroom culture in which students feel empowered to share and learn from their mistakes.  This really is the only place where true learning takes place.  Students must have the opportunity to fail, to reflect on their mistakes, and to revise their thinking.  Failure should be seen as a necessity - a celebration of learning.

Check out this video by Derek Sivers to learn more about the value of failure:

Toxic Grading Practices

Here's a short video of Doug Reeves talking about what he calls "toxic grading practices".  We've already eliminated these practices from what we do at YMS but I think the video may be helpful to parents who are still developing an understanding of the rationale for this transition.  I love his take on student accountability and "getting the work done".

What are Power Standards?

Parents frequently ask, "What are power standards and how are they different from other standards"?

Power Standards describe the essential content and skills that students are expected to acquire in each subject and at each grade level. At York Middle School, teachers have collaborated to develop a number of power standards in each content area and grade level. Teachers have derived the power standards from the Maine Learning Results, which include the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics.

We believe that it's far more important for students to develop a deep understanding of the most critical content rather than a superficial understanding of an extremely broad set of standards. This approach enables teachers to teach for true learning rather than "coverage" of material.

Check out this helpful link to a much more detailed and thorough description of power standards:

Glossary of Ed. Reform: Power Standards

Jen Etter Recognized by the Department of Education

Jen Etter Recognized by the Department of Education

Congratulations to Music Teacher, Jen Etter for the recognition she has received from the Department of Education for the work she has done with the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative.  Last spring, Jen's classroom was highlighted in a video recognizing the exemplary work she is doing with standards-based education.  

Jen has been an integral part of the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative (MAAI) http://maineartsassessment.pbworks.com since it's inception.  Established in 2011 by the Maine Department of Education, the MAAI has provided professional development opportunities in standards-based student-centered education. Jen is one of 52 arts educators who have participated in summer institutes focusing on assessment, leadership, technology and creativity.

This fall Jen will be sharing her expertise with fellow educators as a presenter at the annual Maine Association of Middle Level Educators (MAMLE) conference.  

The impact of Jen's work at York Middle School extends far beyond the music classroom.  She is a teacher-leader and a champion of the proficiency-based learning model.  A consummate professional, Jen leads by example and always puts the needs of her students first.  York Middle School is fortunate to have Jen as part of our staff!