Rose Ferrero School
March 20-31, 2023
QUOTES OF THE WEEK WE SHARED WITH OUR STUDENTS
LCAP GOAL 2: PROFICIENCY FOR ALL – Teacher Clarity
As the teachers at Rose Ferrero work more towards bringing the formative assessment process into their classrooms – a strategy that teams students with teachers in the learning process – it’s even more important that teachers spend their instructional time efficiently, focusing on instructional strategies that deliver the most educational value. Moreover, one approach to delivering instruction that stands out and plays a huge role in the formative assessment process is teacher clarity, an instructional framework that is purposeful, intentional, and well-organized. It employs multiple strategies that are known to positively impact student achievement. This kind of teaching, with an effect size of .75, can double the gains in student learning. That means a struggling student, lagging a year behind his peers in reading, writing, or number sense, for example, can make double the gains in a year of instruction.
The most critical component to teacher clarity begins by giving students a clear understanding of the learning expectations and helping them see what learning will look like when it’s achieved. One has always argued that students who know what they are learning (the learning target) and know when good is good enough (the success criteria) are much more likely to actually learn it. Unfortunately, classrooms are often focused on the task at hand rather than what we will learn from the task. In addition, this unfortunate situation was probably worsened in the pandemic when students were assigned a lot of work to do on their own, especially in asynchronous learning, and in many cases, students had no idea what they were supposed to be learning or what success looked like … they were just focused on getting the work done.
Therefore, to make teacher clarity effective, and to make sure the first step in the formative assessment process is in place, students need to know the answer to three questions for each lesson:
1. What am I learning in this lesson?
2. Why am I learning this?
3. How will I know that I have learned it?
The first question focuses on the learning target. And keep in mind the question refers to what the student will learn, specifically, in this lesson … not today, this week, or this trimester. Students need to know what they are learning in every lesson, every day, and that each lesson, each day, will expand on that learning. Thus, teachers need to communicate learning target to students during some point in the lesson. Teachers do not need to communicate the learning target at the onset of the lesson, but rather, at some point during the lesson. Here, your students should not have to guess or infer; they should be clearly informed regarding what it is they are going to be learning in this particular lesson.
The second question focuses on relevance (or purpose). Will your students understand the ways in which the information, the skill, the concept will be used? Will your students know when and how to they will apply this knowledge/skill/concept? Will your students get a chance to learn about themselves and their own learning strategies? If the answer is YES to any of these questions, then your students are more likely to experience the relevance or purpose of your lesson.
The third question focuses on success. What does it mean to learn something? At what level is success measured? When students can talk about their learning and know how they will know if they have learned something, ownership and responsibility are transferred to students, which is exactly what we want. However, for students to be able to answer this question, they will need to know the success criteria, and teachers have the choice to allow students to help co-construct the success criteria. More importantly, though, the answer is not how my teacher will know that I have learned (or mastered) the target, but rather how will I (the students) know I have learned (or mastered) the target.
In addition to this first important step of the process of teacher clarity (ensuring that students can answer the three questions above), teachers must clearly deliver explicit instruction on each targeted skill, strategy, or concept – the one derived from your grade-level’s essential standards. As written about in this bulletin weeks ago, and maybe the most under-rated of all instructional practices, teachers need to routinely model what they’re teaching using think-aloud strategies (as well as engaging the student throughout the modeling. When we speak of teacher modeling, we mean teachers “opening up their brains” and modeling their thinking in front of their students because students deserve, at some point in any lesson, to experience the curriculum from the experts’ (the teacher’s) perspective. This provides them with the opportunity to imitate the expert thinking, almost like an apprentice would learning a new skill. As we have written previously, modeling has two major components: the first is the use of “I” statements (not “you” statements or “we” statements), but “I” statements, as in “When I was reading this passage, it made me think …” The second component is metacognition (thinking about our thinking), and at minimum, it involves using a “because, why, or how”. Continuing the example above, “When I was reading this passage, it made me think that the author is saying ‘XYZ’ because … and now I am wondering how I can state my thoughts in my response.”
Teacher-guided practice also plays a role in teacher clarity, whether the teacher inserts himself/herself in a group, or creates small groups where students collaborate, communicate, and think critically about tasks directly related to the skill, strategy, or concept being taught. During guided practice (or learning), it is critical that we, as teachers, prompt and cue students in order to allow them to correct the misconceptions they may have, which plays an important role in a student’s learning process.
It is also important to provide our students with plentiful amounts of (truly) independent practice, which allows the student to demonstrate proficiency or mastery of the lesson’s expectation. Though we want to make sure students have ample opportunities to collaborate with one another and learn from each other, it is critical to ensure that the student can demonstrate mastery of the learning target independently – on his/her own without any assistance from his/her peers. The teacher assesses each student’s level of proficiency through their performance, determining how much additional teaching and practice needed. In this way, practice becomes a type of formative assessment.
For those students who do not master their essential standards the first time around, they will need reteaching and/or more practice. Reteaching is at the heart of our Tier II Intervention plan, which should be scheduled into your grade-level’s Essential Standard Unit Plan or Learning Cycle. Finally, throughout this approach to instruction, students should continually receive high-value feedback on their performance. Properly delivered feedback has an effect size of .73, and it is a perfect topic for another article in another Friday Bulletin sometime, somewhere.
Three Reminders:
1) During a Rainy-Day Schedule, teachers walk their students straight to the cafeteria and pick them up 30 minutes later. In addition, when relieved for a “break” (during recess), these breaks are only 10 minutes long.
2) Please make sure your Learning Target comes from your Essential Standard, it has a purpose, and it matches the task/activity you have your students engaged in.
3) Teachers: (as written about above) Please remember to use the What, Why, & How regarding your Learning Targets … explaining to students What we are going to learn, Why we are going to learn this, and How the students will know when they have learned it. Thanks again for all you do to make your students a part of the learning.