Curriculum Contemplations
Your One-Stop Shop for ELA & Math Happenings for November
Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say
No matter how fabulously designed a lesson is, if it is enacted as a ‘stand and deliver’ lecture, as students listen and take notes, we may have trouble reaching students who prefer to engage with the learning in a variety of ways. If students are to really learn, at the deep levels we want for them, the learning must be active. Students must be the ones explaining, and teachers must be the ones listening. We need to shift our definition of a good teacher from that of "one who explains things so well that students understand" to "one who gets students to explain things so well that they can be understood."
Getting students to explain their thinking and become actively involved in classroom discussions, however, can be challenging. In his article titled ‘Never say anything a kid can say’, Steven Reinhart offers some good advice to make this type of teaching a reality. Here are a few of his ideas:
1. Never say anything a kid can say. The next time you are tempted to tell a student something, think about how you can ask a question instead so that students can tell instead.
2. Ask good questions. Questions that require more than recalling a fact or reproducing a skill encourage students to think about what they are learning.
3. Ask ‘process questions’ rather than ‘product questions’. Process questions are open-ended and require students to think deeply in order to respond.
4. Replace lectures with sets of questions. Keep in mind this definition of a lecture, “the transfer of information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either”.
5. Be patient. …Wait time.
6. Never carry a pencil and don’t take the pencil from the student. Sometimes it’s just way too tempting to take over the student’s work if you have a pencil in your hand.
7. Require several student responses to questions. Have students decide which one is correct.
8. Make it clear that participation is not optional. If a student has no answer to a question you ask, require that person ask a question of the class to help get unstuck.
Change is not easy; it takes time and patience to guide students into maximizing their learning…patience with ourselves and our students. Check out the entire article here: http://courses.edtechleaders.org/documents/proportions/NeverSayAnything.pdf
We are smarter together - if you have excellent teaching strategies that “get students to explain things so well that they can be understood”, please let us know. We’d love to feature the success stories of outstanding Sunnyside teachers in upcoming issues of Curriculum Contemplations.
ELA ELABORATIONS
Reading Big Words
Reading Big Words
Read the following passage aloud.
It had been a long day. The gentleman pulled into his driveway and turned off the car. He climbed out of his vehicle and looked at his house. In the window, he saw his son playing with tinker toys. He could see the smoke rising from the chimney, and he knew that his wife had started a fire in the fireplace. He had news about his pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis that he couldn’t wait to share with his family. He quickly ran towards his house.
Were you able to read the entire text with speed and accuracy? Did you slowly analyze many of the words in a text? Was memory and attention needed for comprehension drained by any word analysis? What did you notice about your fluency when you came to the longest word in the paragraph? What strategies did you use to decode the word? What strategies helped you make sense of the word?
When skilled readers come to an unknown word while reading, they often process words automatically and rapidly, look for known word parts in unfamiliar words, and use context to confirm pronunciation and meaning. When you read the longest word in the passage before, you most likely slowed your reading as you came to the word and then broke the word apart based on the known word parts you saw. It probably sounded something like this: pneumono-ultra-micro-scop-ic-silico-volcano-coni-osis or even pneu-mo-no-ul-tra-mi-cro-scop-ic-sil-i-co-vol-ca-no-co-ni-o-sis.
Students use the same word analysis skills when they come to an unknown word. Research tells us that strong readers and spellers are more often able to use morphological knowledge when they read and spell than poor readers and spellers. These readers are not always able to note the base words or make sense of the prefixes and suffixes attached to the words. Word analysis/study activities in the classroom promote student use of these skills which become increasingly important as the text becomes more and more complex.
Teaching students to recognize the six syllable types and the rules for syllable division is one way to introduce strategies for reading multisyllabic words. The six syllable types are 1) closed, 2) open, 3)vowel-consonant-e, 4) vowel digraph, 5) final stable syllable, and 6) r-controlled. Students who know the syllable types in single syllable words then learn to apply these rules to multisyllabic words.
Students may also use morpheme patterns to read multisyllabic words. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit. According to Word Study by M.J. Herzberg, teaching students the most common morphemes, students are able to learn to decode words and in turn increase their vocabulary skills. The following link takes you to a list 12 common Latin roots, along with their Greek combining forms graph and ology provide the clue to the meaning of over 100,000 words. Link to Word List
The History of English Language
The English language has a long history and many layers. The base layer of the English language is Anglo-Saxon. Over 1500 years ago, West Germanic invaders began to settle in the British Isles. Germanic tribes known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes spoke a common intelligible language titled Old English, often called Anglo Saxon. The Anglo-Saxons were hunters and farmers, and their vocabulary consisted of simple, one syllable words. The language is still reflected in modern English words, such as cow, farm, fish, cook, family, and fire. Approximately 20-25% of the words we use today are Anglo-Saxon/Old English, and they are frequently used words. In fact, “The Most Common 100 Words in English Language” consist almost exclusively of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Perhaps the most influential event in the history of English Language was the Battle of Hastings in 1066. At this time, the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, invaded and seized England. After the invasion, the Normandy French imposed their language on the British natives. Multisyllabic words with prefixes, suffixes and base words penetrated the language. English became the language of the peasants and slaves while Norman French became the language of upper class (court and propertied classes). Approximately 60% of the words we use today are of Latin influence.
The next wave of influence in the English language came during the Renaissance. During the early 1500’s, the revival of classical literature also brought a revival of classical Latin and Greek words into the language. Exploration, philosophy and science became strong influences, and language once again grew. From around 1500–1650, some 10,000 to 12,000 words entered the English lexicon. Today, between 10-12% of our words are of Greek influence.
The English language continues to grow. As we engage in a world of technological expansion, new words enter our language at a rapid pace. We also adopt words from other languages on a regular basis. The English lexicon has far more words than any other language. Though the vast number of words we use can make English difficult to master, many agree that it also makes it an amazingly rich language.
MATHEMATICAL MUSINGS
Problem Solving Framework v7.3
Word Problems...the phrase carries such power and dread, some of you just got shivers down your back.
Many of us have memories of whipping through our math homework until we got to numbers 29 and 30, the two token word problems that were present in every assignment. We'd apply the day's learning, which didn't always work; the curriculum publishers were sneaky and sometimes used the word problems as review. Next, we'd manipulate the numbers in various ways, trying to get an answer that seemed to work. In some cases we just gave up, figuring it was only two problems and it didn't really matter.
Today's students have far more exposure to contextual math problems than we ever did. However, they have become adept at cherry picking values and applying the operation of the day - today's focus is on division, therefore divide one value into the other. When a big picture formative assessment (Illuminate) or the state test rolls around, many students' main strategy of applying the current learning is no longer valid - various concepts are represented, and the students' job is to distinguish what makes sense in each individual situation.
Students find themselves relating to the following:
The kids can do the math, but when it's in a word problem, they don't know what to do!
So, what can we do, as mathematics educators, to assist our students in making sense of problems (MP 1) and reason abstractly and quantitatively (MP 2) ?
Robert Kaplinsky's favorite tool for helping students solve problems is the Problem Solving Framework. He loves using this tool because it scaffolds students' often underdeveloped critical thinking skills and helps them develop their own problem solving techniques.
Here are six sections in the Problem Solving Framework as well as some thoughts about each one:
- What problem are you trying to figure out?
- This is where students write down the main task or question. If you discuss several potential questions during class, you might want to have students peek at their classmates’ paper to make sure that everyone has roughly the same question.
- What guesses do you have?
- Asking students to take a guess helps them engage with the problem solving process. The act of taking a guess makes you reflect on a possible strategy for solving the problem, and leads into the next row beautifully. Note that guesses could be “best guess”, “a guess you know is too low and a guess you know is too high”, or even “a guess you know is definitely wrong”. All of these will get them thinking.
- What do you already know from the problem?
- This is where students will start to inventory the information the already know from the problem. Sometimes it may have all the students need. Other times it may be nearly empty.
- What do you need to know to solve the problem?
- Students may have trouble with this section because many commonly used problems give students all the information they need. As a result, the ability to think about what information they need to acquire may be underdeveloped.
- What is your conclusion? How did you reach that conclusion?
- Even though this section is on the bottom of the first page, it is the last one completed. I put it on the front so it is easier to scan as a student work sample. It is filled in after students have solved the problem and recorded their work in the “Your work section”. This is where students marry the math content with the context from the problem. I tell kids that “this is where you get to show off” and how I want them to explain how they solved the problem. If two students got the same answer but using different methods, I would certainly expect that to be obvious in this section because the description of how they solved it should match the method they used.
- Your work
- This is the large section on the back of the double-sided sheet where students do the majority of their problem-solving and calculations.
http://robertkaplinsky.com/problem-solving-framework/
We'd love feedback from anyone who incorporates this tool in their classroom.
Understanding Math vs. Explaining Answers
I wouldn’t bet that the student with correct but unexplained answers understands nothing, but I wouldn’t make any confident bets on exactly what that student understands either.
Math answers aren’t math understanding any more than the destination of your car trip indicates the route you took. When five people arrive at the same destination, asking how each arrived tells you vastly more about the city, its traffic patterns, and the drivers, than just knowing they arrived.
Their other exemplar of understanding-without-explaining is strange also. Mathematicians advance the frontiers of their field exactly by explaining their answers – in colloquia, in proofs, in journals. Those proofs are some of the most rigorous and exacting explanations you’ll find in any field.
Those explanations aren’t formulaic, though. Mathematicians don’t restrict their explanations to fragile boxes, columns, and rubrics. Beals and Garelick have a valid point that teachers and schools often constrain the function (understanding) to form (boxes, columns, and rubrics). When students are forced to contort explanations to simple problems into complicated graphic organizers, like the one below from their article, we’ve lost our way.
See the previous blog post and subsequent comments for this conversation at http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2015/understanding-math-v-explaining-answers/#comment-2414098http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2016/the-explanation-difference/
ELL Essentials
How can I make sure that my students have the opportunity to practice speaking and listening and engage with the ELP Standards in their content classes?
One standard way to make sure that students are getting enough practice hearing and speaking in English during a whole class/direct instruction lesson is through engagement within the content classes. As you plan lessons that are focused on content, consider structures and activities that will help students practice English.
One simple way is the accordion-style of student responses; whole group-small group-individual-small group-whole group for practicing speaking. Another way is asking a student to rephrase what a classmate just answered. (“Great answer, what’s another way to say that?”)
Here are some other ideas that will help you align ELP Standards to the activities that will support discussion. The right hand column “Activities” lists several ways to increase student speaking & listening in your classroom.
Stage IV: Middle School (These ideas would work for High School too.) https://docs.google.com/a/susd12.org/document/d/1tJNe2tiA85aMYya9ZgNJX7eyppYXs5mgMXs9nGTo5vw/edit?usp=sharing
Stage III: Grades 3-5
Stage II: Grades 1-2
Stage I: Kindergarten
Tech Tools You Can Use
Recap is a free student video response and reflection app developed by the makers of Swivl. It gives teachers and parents insight into students’ learning and progress. Recap provides evidence of student thinking, improves formative assessment, and supports personalized learning.
Check out the quick informative video below, and then explore the website to see how you might use Recap in your teaching situation.
Teaching & Learning Department
Tammi Baushka - Literacy Program Specialist
Rebecca Ridge - Literacy Program Specialist
Julia Lindberg - LAD Program Specialist
Kristel Foster - LAD Program Specialist
Maggie Hackett - Math & Science Coordinator
Donna Rishor - Math Program Specialist
Email: margaretha@susd12.org
Website: susd12.org
Location: 2238 E Ginter Rd, Tucson, AZ, United States
Phone: 520-545-2000