This differentiation plan is based on a word-choice unit.
Based on responsed to the following Kahoot! quiz:
https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/a9f417c3-a6bb-49be-bcd6-1c4395ad4b61
Students will be differentiated according to this mindmap:
http://www.xmind.net/m/Rfa9/
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Sunday, September 20, 2015
High-Stakes Testing
I'm a bit torn on the idea of high-stakes testing. I have the normal, high-school teacher hatred of anything that provides a biased picture of a student's learning, especially for a student who I know is capable of more than her scores reflect, but I also embrace the more controversial (and interesting) opinion that high-stakes testing is both a necessary and in the end positive part of our educational culture.
First, high-stakes testing is built on the concept of benchmarking, which is the belief that students should be able to accomplish a certain type and number of tasks by the time they reach a certain level of schooling. Without this idea in place, there is no real way to ensure accountability in schools.
At the high school level, a principal decides, based on reports from the teacher and sometimes other sources, if the student deserves to have graduated high school. Based on that one person's decision, the student is judged to be ready for college and/or the workforce and sent on her way. The reports from the teachers are based on course grades, which often have little or no relationship to a single standard, and are determined differently by each teacher. For example, a student might pass one teacher's English class with less functional knowledge of English than one who has passed another teacher's English class; or worse, a student who would've failed one English class might pass another with a "B."
Required grades to pass are generally pretty low (a high 70% at my school), which means two students who "pass" high school can have as much as a 30% difference in functional knowledge, or even more depending on the effectiveness of the teachers and the rigor of their classes.
Add to this grade inflation, a situation wherein the grade of 'A' has gone from meaning "excellent" to "functional", and the grade of 'C', which used to mean "average" is a badge of shame for well-meaning parents, who tend to take umbrage with the teacher who "gave" the grade instead of the student who earned it.
In such a system, high-stakes standardized testing is intended to place all students on a single scale of achievement, based on independent benchmarks. These tests are meant to show how the reasoning processes of two students, maybe from different schools or even states, compare directly. Colleges can use these tests, along with other factors, to determine which students are more likely to be successful with their curriculum, and which should look elsewhere.
Other types of high-stakes testing are useful as well. Some schools require exit exams, which students must pass in order to graduate. This helps to normalizes the functional knowledge of exiting students, so that only students who meet the school's benchmarks are able to graduate. This helps schools to establish and advertise a standard that makes the school seem more legitimate to hiring and college recruiting organizations. It also helps to point out which teachers are not teaching effectively, since those teachers' students score predictably lower than other students in the same subject areas.
The biggest argument against standardized testing regards test anxiety, a phenomenon in which students who are otherwise very capable seem less capable in testing situations. (Fairtest, 2007) This is a very real phenomenon, and one I have witnessed firsthand on a number of occasions, but it also transferable to many real-world situations. For example, a student with test anxiety might grow up to be an adult with interview anxiety or presentation anxiety, conditions that might limit their ability to find work or achieve promotions. Therefore, students with test anxiety must seek help with this debilitating problem rather than avoiding the thing they fear. It is a function of the student's ability, rather than of the test's evil.
Our school doesn't do much high-stakes testing, but most of our students participate either in the ACT or SAT, both of which are useful, controlled measures of a student's general ability (Popham, 1999). The SAT in particular doesn't so much test knowledge, as functional reasoning ability, and it is often a good predictor of performance at the college level. This testing has little to no effect on class time, since it is done on the weekends and prep classes take place in the evenings; nor does it effect teachers much, except that teachers have the opportunity to teach prep classes to earn extra pay. Most of our students are college-bound, so they feel as though these tests are a necessary part of their college application process.
I spoke with a teacher at another high school that participates in various AP exams. She teaches AP English, and often feels as though she has to "teach to the test". She doesn't necessarily, however, feel that doing so is a bad thing, since the AP English class is rigorous and curriculum heavy, and though it essentially functions as a test preparation class, compares favorably to other English classes. At her school, AP teachers are given bonuses based on student test scores, and could conceivably be replaced if student scores aren't high enough. She has mixed feelings about this, since it puts the teachers under a great deal of pressure, but she believes it keeps standards and rigor high, and gives teachers incentive to work more closely with struggling students.
I personally believe that the current state of education makes the most of the high-stakes testing model by setting standards for curriculum that directly influence the skills that are taught in classes, and provide a benchmark that tests can target. Therefore, teachers can teach what students need to know to be ready for college and/or the workplace, and tests can test those specific skills.
References:
Center for Public Education (February 15, 2006). A Guide to Standardized Testing: The Nature of Assessment. Retrieved from: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Evaluating-performance/A-guide-to-standardized-testing-The-nature-of-assessment
Fairtest (December 17, 2007). The Dangerous Consequences of High-Stakes Standardized Testing. Retrieved from: http://www.fairtest.org/dangerous-consequences-highstakes-standardized-tes
Popham, W. J. (March, 1999). Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality. Educational Leadership, Vol. 56. Retrieved from: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/Why-Standardized-Tests-Don't-Measure-Educational-Quality.aspx
First, high-stakes testing is built on the concept of benchmarking, which is the belief that students should be able to accomplish a certain type and number of tasks by the time they reach a certain level of schooling. Without this idea in place, there is no real way to ensure accountability in schools.
At the high school level, a principal decides, based on reports from the teacher and sometimes other sources, if the student deserves to have graduated high school. Based on that one person's decision, the student is judged to be ready for college and/or the workforce and sent on her way. The reports from the teachers are based on course grades, which often have little or no relationship to a single standard, and are determined differently by each teacher. For example, a student might pass one teacher's English class with less functional knowledge of English than one who has passed another teacher's English class; or worse, a student who would've failed one English class might pass another with a "B."
Required grades to pass are generally pretty low (a high 70% at my school), which means two students who "pass" high school can have as much as a 30% difference in functional knowledge, or even more depending on the effectiveness of the teachers and the rigor of their classes.
Add to this grade inflation, a situation wherein the grade of 'A' has gone from meaning "excellent" to "functional", and the grade of 'C', which used to mean "average" is a badge of shame for well-meaning parents, who tend to take umbrage with the teacher who "gave" the grade instead of the student who earned it.
In such a system, high-stakes standardized testing is intended to place all students on a single scale of achievement, based on independent benchmarks. These tests are meant to show how the reasoning processes of two students, maybe from different schools or even states, compare directly. Colleges can use these tests, along with other factors, to determine which students are more likely to be successful with their curriculum, and which should look elsewhere.
Other types of high-stakes testing are useful as well. Some schools require exit exams, which students must pass in order to graduate. This helps to normalizes the functional knowledge of exiting students, so that only students who meet the school's benchmarks are able to graduate. This helps schools to establish and advertise a standard that makes the school seem more legitimate to hiring and college recruiting organizations. It also helps to point out which teachers are not teaching effectively, since those teachers' students score predictably lower than other students in the same subject areas.
The biggest argument against standardized testing regards test anxiety, a phenomenon in which students who are otherwise very capable seem less capable in testing situations. (Fairtest, 2007) This is a very real phenomenon, and one I have witnessed firsthand on a number of occasions, but it also transferable to many real-world situations. For example, a student with test anxiety might grow up to be an adult with interview anxiety or presentation anxiety, conditions that might limit their ability to find work or achieve promotions. Therefore, students with test anxiety must seek help with this debilitating problem rather than avoiding the thing they fear. It is a function of the student's ability, rather than of the test's evil.
Our school doesn't do much high-stakes testing, but most of our students participate either in the ACT or SAT, both of which are useful, controlled measures of a student's general ability (Popham, 1999). The SAT in particular doesn't so much test knowledge, as functional reasoning ability, and it is often a good predictor of performance at the college level. This testing has little to no effect on class time, since it is done on the weekends and prep classes take place in the evenings; nor does it effect teachers much, except that teachers have the opportunity to teach prep classes to earn extra pay. Most of our students are college-bound, so they feel as though these tests are a necessary part of their college application process.
I spoke with a teacher at another high school that participates in various AP exams. She teaches AP English, and often feels as though she has to "teach to the test". She doesn't necessarily, however, feel that doing so is a bad thing, since the AP English class is rigorous and curriculum heavy, and though it essentially functions as a test preparation class, compares favorably to other English classes. At her school, AP teachers are given bonuses based on student test scores, and could conceivably be replaced if student scores aren't high enough. She has mixed feelings about this, since it puts the teachers under a great deal of pressure, but she believes it keeps standards and rigor high, and gives teachers incentive to work more closely with struggling students.
I personally believe that the current state of education makes the most of the high-stakes testing model by setting standards for curriculum that directly influence the skills that are taught in classes, and provide a benchmark that tests can target. Therefore, teachers can teach what students need to know to be ready for college and/or the workplace, and tests can test those specific skills.
References:
Center for Public Education (February 15, 2006). A Guide to Standardized Testing: The Nature of Assessment. Retrieved from: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Evaluating-performance/A-guide-to-standardized-testing-The-nature-of-assessment
Fairtest (December 17, 2007). The Dangerous Consequences of High-Stakes Standardized Testing. Retrieved from: http://www.fairtest.org/dangerous-consequences-highstakes-standardized-tes
Popham, W. J. (March, 1999). Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality. Educational Leadership, Vol. 56. Retrieved from: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/Why-Standardized-Tests-Don't-Measure-Educational-Quality.aspx
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Formative Assessments
For the assignment that this blog post completes, I will be designing 3 formative assessments for a learning objective I created from the standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4.
The objective:
Students will be able to write an essay that makes an effective analytical claim, using the author's word choice as evidence, about the author's tone or purpose in a grade-level text.
This objective culminates in a summative assessment--an essay that will become part of the students' grades, but I will use various formative assessments to check in on their progress as they go.
Since this is early in the school year, all students will be writing on the same text, in this case, Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and we will work together as a class to determine the author's tone and purpose, and to discuss anything that may be interesting about Frost's word choice. This gives me an opportunity to assess before assessing, and confirm that the students understand what is required of them in the essay.
The first formative assessment I will use is a Do Now prompt that reviews the information from the previous day's class. It asks the students to compare and contrast mood and tone in a brief paragraph. Since this essay deals with tone, it will be important that students understand that it is a separate concept from mood. Reading these paragraphs will give me a strong idea of what the students understand and don't understand about the concept of tone. There may also be some red flags in the organization or mechanics of the paragraph that I can point out.
The second formative assessment will be our class discussion, which will give me plenty of informal opportunities to check in on students who are not volunteering lots of information, or to lead those who are volunteering false information onto the right path. This is a very informal assessment, and requires lots of withitness from the teacher to get all the assessment information he needs. Nonetheless, it is time effective and requires little preparation.
The third formative assessment, or rather set of formative assessments will be the writing process. Students will turn in outlines and multiple drafts of the essay so that I can be sure they are on the right track throughout the process. By the time they get to the graded essay, students will have had many opportunities, with detailed feedback, to rework and revise their efforts.
The objective:
Students will be able to write an essay that makes an effective analytical claim, using the author's word choice as evidence, about the author's tone or purpose in a grade-level text.
This objective culminates in a summative assessment--an essay that will become part of the students' grades, but I will use various formative assessments to check in on their progress as they go.
Since this is early in the school year, all students will be writing on the same text, in this case, Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and we will work together as a class to determine the author's tone and purpose, and to discuss anything that may be interesting about Frost's word choice. This gives me an opportunity to assess before assessing, and confirm that the students understand what is required of them in the essay.
The first formative assessment I will use is a Do Now prompt that reviews the information from the previous day's class. It asks the students to compare and contrast mood and tone in a brief paragraph. Since this essay deals with tone, it will be important that students understand that it is a separate concept from mood. Reading these paragraphs will give me a strong idea of what the students understand and don't understand about the concept of tone. There may also be some red flags in the organization or mechanics of the paragraph that I can point out.
The second formative assessment will be our class discussion, which will give me plenty of informal opportunities to check in on students who are not volunteering lots of information, or to lead those who are volunteering false information onto the right path. This is a very informal assessment, and requires lots of withitness from the teacher to get all the assessment information he needs. Nonetheless, it is time effective and requires little preparation.
The third formative assessment, or rather set of formative assessments will be the writing process. Students will turn in outlines and multiple drafts of the essay so that I can be sure they are on the right track throughout the process. By the time they get to the graded essay, students will have had many opportunities, with detailed feedback, to rework and revise their efforts.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Reflections on Standards Unpacking, Phase One.
Okay, so, the timing for this unit is either really good or really bad; I can't decide which.
Last week at school we did a PD on curriculum mapping, followed by a couple of days of applying that, and I can't help but think how useful this information would have been for me going in. Of course, I knew at the beginning of the week what this module would be on and what the PD would be on, and the PD didn't start until Wednesday, so, um...., the ball was really in my court for making a better choice. No?
Anyway...
The lesson on Unpacking a Standard was, I think, particularly useful in the scheme of things. The idea of big questions and how to break a standard into its skills, concepts, and questions is pretty fascinating to me. It makes me think about how we are trying to get students to a place of "literacy" which essentially means they can sit down and read anything they like and get themselves worked into a froth about purpose and audience and motivations and imagery and all that; yet, we still need this type of focused instruction just to read a sentence that tells us how to do our jobs. It's a little mind-blowing, but it's essentially true. The level of literacy that can be taught in a broad, public education system is simply the level that one needs to get through a regular day, make good decisions based on the information around one, and snuggle up with a worthwhile book at the end of it all. Everything beyond that is specialized, industry-specific literacy, which doesn't exist in any meaningful way outside of the industry we find ourselves slaves to. In many ways, what we're teaching is how to approach a difficult task without just throwing your hands up in the air and shaking your head, like high school students tend to do when they first sit down with Hamlet. We're teaching that skill of trusting that the thing we're looking at makes sense, and that the responsibility to make it comprehensible is on our shoulders. Each of these ELA standards, to some degree, says, "Look at something you don't know how to do, check in with the things you DO know how to do, and gain the skills to bridge that gap." But, I digress...
This simple activity of unpacking a standard is going to be incredibly useful in my teaching and curriculum-mapping life. And I'm pretty confident now that I know how it's done.
Backwards mapping makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When I first started teaching English (in the long, long ago of last year), my primary thought when I was determining what to teach was, "What do I want these students to experience?" I wrote lesson plans, and then almost made my brain explode trying to force standards in where they belong. Some of them were hit over and over again, while some were penciled in with targeted lessons at the end of the quarter that didn't connect to anything else we were doing. We covered some cool stuff, but students weren't getting out of that stuff what I anticipated they'd get out of it. They weren't meeting the standards because, while I expected the standards to be met, I wasn't teaching the standards. I could still apply this more consistently in my planning, and I will continue to improve, but in the meantime, I'll tweak it where I can to make it as much like Backwards Planning* as possible.
*I'd really prefer "Backward Planning" if anyone cares. Having grown up in a backwards little town in the foothills of the Ozarks, and struggling every day to be as little backwards as possible, the word has some connotations for me.
Writing SMART objectives is also something I'm sure I'll benefit from. Going back to that same distant last year (in the long, long ago), I often found that I really had no way to measure progress toward the goals I was setting. I guess starting with measurable goals would have gone a long way toward solving the problem. This is going to help me to build much better lessons.
Last week at school we did a PD on curriculum mapping, followed by a couple of days of applying that, and I can't help but think how useful this information would have been for me going in. Of course, I knew at the beginning of the week what this module would be on and what the PD would be on, and the PD didn't start until Wednesday, so, um...., the ball was really in my court for making a better choice. No?
Anyway...
The lesson on Unpacking a Standard was, I think, particularly useful in the scheme of things. The idea of big questions and how to break a standard into its skills, concepts, and questions is pretty fascinating to me. It makes me think about how we are trying to get students to a place of "literacy" which essentially means they can sit down and read anything they like and get themselves worked into a froth about purpose and audience and motivations and imagery and all that; yet, we still need this type of focused instruction just to read a sentence that tells us how to do our jobs. It's a little mind-blowing, but it's essentially true. The level of literacy that can be taught in a broad, public education system is simply the level that one needs to get through a regular day, make good decisions based on the information around one, and snuggle up with a worthwhile book at the end of it all. Everything beyond that is specialized, industry-specific literacy, which doesn't exist in any meaningful way outside of the industry we find ourselves slaves to. In many ways, what we're teaching is how to approach a difficult task without just throwing your hands up in the air and shaking your head, like high school students tend to do when they first sit down with Hamlet. We're teaching that skill of trusting that the thing we're looking at makes sense, and that the responsibility to make it comprehensible is on our shoulders. Each of these ELA standards, to some degree, says, "Look at something you don't know how to do, check in with the things you DO know how to do, and gain the skills to bridge that gap." But, I digress...
This simple activity of unpacking a standard is going to be incredibly useful in my teaching and curriculum-mapping life. And I'm pretty confident now that I know how it's done.
Backwards mapping makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When I first started teaching English (in the long, long ago of last year), my primary thought when I was determining what to teach was, "What do I want these students to experience?" I wrote lesson plans, and then almost made my brain explode trying to force standards in where they belong. Some of them were hit over and over again, while some were penciled in with targeted lessons at the end of the quarter that didn't connect to anything else we were doing. We covered some cool stuff, but students weren't getting out of that stuff what I anticipated they'd get out of it. They weren't meeting the standards because, while I expected the standards to be met, I wasn't teaching the standards. I could still apply this more consistently in my planning, and I will continue to improve, but in the meantime, I'll tweak it where I can to make it as much like Backwards Planning* as possible.
*I'd really prefer "Backward Planning" if anyone cares. Having grown up in a backwards little town in the foothills of the Ozarks, and struggling every day to be as little backwards as possible, the word has some connotations for me.
Writing SMART objectives is also something I'm sure I'll benefit from. Going back to that same distant last year (in the long, long ago), I often found that I really had no way to measure progress toward the goals I was setting. I guess starting with measurable goals would have gone a long way toward solving the problem. This is going to help me to build much better lessons.
Backwards Planning
This post is a backwards planning exercise built around Common Core Standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4, for an 11th grade English class. I chose this standard because I'm going to be spending a lot of time on poetry this semester, and this particular standard is pretty key to that whole experience.
The Text of the standard is as follows:
PROFICIENCIES:
At the end of this unit, students will be able to...
The students will demonstrate these proficiencies through...
The Text of the standard is as follows:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.) (corestandards.org)In my last exercise (not on this blog), I unpacked the standard to figure out what it was all about, and I'll be using that information as a starting point for what I'm doing here. The link to that presentation is https://www.emaze.com/@ALTTWWFZ/unpacking-a-standard.
PROFICIENCIES:
At the end of this unit, students will be able to...
- DETERMINE the denotation and connotation of a given word or phrase.
- ANALYZE the effect of an author's word choice on a text.
- USE word choice to adapt a text to communicate different moods and purposes.
The students will demonstrate these proficiencies through...
- Group discussion.
- Poetry re-purposing -- students revise word choice in a Shakespeare sonnet for a number of different purposes.
- Dictionary test -- students choose the correct dictionary definition to match a word as it's used in context.
- Human Glossary -- students act as a human glossary for a text they have prepared in order to help another student read it.
LEARNING EXPERIENCES
The students will learn these skills while engaged in...
- Teacher modeling. The teacher will model reading a Shakespeare sonnet, pointing out words that are unfamiliar or used in unfamiliar ways, using reference works and context to determine the appropriate meanings, pointing out words that have strong connotations and particularly beautiful rhetorical effect.
- Poetry re-purposing. Students will examine another Shakespeare sonnet and in pairs, use SIM and a glossary to determine its meaning. They will then rewrite it to be as boring as possible. They will then identify the differences between the mood achieved in the two versions of the sonnet, and discuss ways that word choice can make texts exciting. Students will then be given a dried out version of some piece of poetry and asked to make it more fresh, engaging, or beautiful by improving the word choice.
- Poetry re-purposing, part 2. Students will be given (appropriate) lyrics by a popular rap artist and in pairs, use SIM and a glossary to determine its meaning. They will then rewrite it to be as boring as possible. Students will once again discuss the difference between them. Next, students will rewrite the Shakespeare sonnet from part 1 in the style of the rap artist from part 2.
- Students will use reference works to gloss a contemporary poem, noting understandings about how the denotations of the words differ from their connotations. They will then act as a human glossary for a partner as she explicates the poem on the board. Students will switch places and the glossary will be the explicator of a different poem, while the former explicator glosses.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Classroom management techniques
Robert Marzano writes about using "graduated action steps" to deal with behaviors in the classroom. The process begins by silently alerting the student that you are aware of his or her behavior. He or she then has the choice to correct his or her behavior. [At this point in the writing of this blog post, Clay suddenly remembers that he works at an all girls school, and he doesn't have to play these silly pronoun games.] If the student chooses not to correct her behavior, the teacher walks toward her, closing the physical distance between the two of them. If the behavior continues, the teacher quietly reminds the student that she is being a jerk, while interrupting the class as little as possible. If there is a physical distraction involved, the teacher might take this opportunity to remove it. If the distraction continues further, the teacher can interrupt the class to apply a consequence, separate difficult students, or send the student to have a chat with a person of higher authority (Marzano, 2007). See the chart for an idea of what this process looks like with a pair of chatters.
Positive reinforcement is important, too. In our school, the general process is to let the student know that we like and appreciate what she's doing, and then report it forward to other people who can praise her for the same behavior. This process, in conjunction with the process outlined above, seems to work very well.
Cited:
Marzano, R. (2007). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
The Whole-Brain Chinese Roller Coaster
I believe, as the kind of teacher who wants to be a particularly "good" teacher, with, like, esteem and such, that the whole setting high expectations thing is about as important as it gets. It's fairly easy to run a classroom with low expectations. Students are generally bored and classroom management is a bit unwieldy, but there is no danger, at any time, of the teacher being the bad guy. Teachers and students in this situation exist in a kind of general passive ambivalence toward each other in which something resembling learning is done, most of the time, mostly for show. This more-or-less describes my first year of teaching.
Now, going into my second year, I am in rare and important position. I have the advantage of having seen the effects of my weaknesses and strengths from a position of self-evaluation, which is really about the most powerful tool any of us has for self-improvement. Normally, my answer to this observation would be to improve my weaknesses, through brute strength, as quickly as possible in order to fail less profoundly this year, but a larger window of self-evaluation has very recently revealed to me a truth that I wish I had had access to all along: Self-improvement takes time. With this in mind, I have resolved to build my class in a way that provides fail-safes for my weaknesses while allowing my teaching strengths to shine. With this in place, I can work slowly, consistently on my weaknesses without allowing them to open up any cracks through which students can slip.
But this assignment isn't about my methods; its about evaluating some tried-and-true methods of high-standardsing that are used around the world to give ALL students access to the top of the mountain (which, I believe, is the highest goal of any good teacher). These three methods are as follows:
- A Project-Based STEM lesson in roller-coaster building,
- The Chinese math(s) curriculum and methods, and
- The Whole-Brain learning phenomenon.
I'm going to go kind of out-of-order here for the sake of suspense, so bear with me.
First, the Chinese math system. My evaluation here is based in whole on a demonstrative (but not particularly informative) video, "3rd grade Chinese--math class.avi," and an article, "Explainer: what makes Chinese maths lessons so good?" by Beijing Normal University Associate Professor Kan Wei. The two reveal a fascinating system of choral answering and high-expectation individual demonstration founded on thousands of years of Chinese tradition. The system favors whole-class instruction over group work, and boasts highly involved parents and dedicated students. Test scores show the process to be very effective, so much so that the British government is bringing in 60 teachers from Shanghai to mentor British teachers (Kan, 2014).
In the Chinese system, expectations are quite high and there is seemingly little differentiation for different levels and modes of learning, resulting in a class in which all, or most, students are always at the same high-level. To an American teacher, this kind of undifferentiated, consistent success might be confusing, if desirable, but they key is apparent: Chinese tradition. China is a highly collective society, as opposed to the US and Britain's individualist societies. This means that there is little emphasis in China on individual success, but much on the success of the family, class, and nation (Hofstede Centre, 2015). Therefore, where American classrooms are dedicated to the success of each individual student, the needs of the individual student in China is considered less important than those of the class as a whole. The test scores, which we read as individual scores in the west, represent pieces of a team score in their country of origin.
Based on my observations of my own class and my reading on American teaching principles, I cannot but assume that the main ingredient that makes Chinese classrooms so successful is shame. Individual demonstrations of problem-solving is used widely in the west, but recent research has underscored the necessity of finding a balance between protecting the individual child's self-esteem and holding him accountable for high levels of learning, an idea which makes carefully selected groups and other forms of differentiated learning preferable. Where students in the US are motivated by individual achievement, those in China, I assume, are motivated by the avoidance of the shame that would naturally come from diminishing the pace of the class or lowering its scores, thereby also bringing shame on their classmates.
While Chinese educational systems are obviously very effective and have helped to produce a technologically advanced and highly organized society, I would argue that they are likely incompatible with many western ideals. I think Britain's experiment of using Chinese teachers as mentors is a little misguided and I don't see it being very successful. British tradition and values are very distinct from the traditions and values that created and support the Chinese system. In my classroom, I tend to focus on the individual learning experience, and I don't think the Chinese system would be very effective for me.
This is getting long-winded, so moving right along...
The Whole-Brain Teaching video showed some interesting techniques that I can see being useful in certain scenarios. My understanding of what was going on was certainly bolstered by the Whole-Brain Teaching website, which described what was happening in the video in a lot of detail. In the video, the students and teacher demonstrate Whole-Brain Teaching principles like "Students-yes," "Mirroring," "Teach-okay," and the "Scoreboard" technique of classroom management. These techniques are used to connect information to different centers of the brain in order to facilitate learning, while keeping a well-managed, shame-free classroom culture (Whole-Brain Teaching, 2015). This is very smart stuff, and I hope it continues to gain traction. The students were engaged and on task, and seemed to enjoy the activity built in to the lessons. I imagine students with attention disorders and who feel disconnected from classroom activity would benefit quite a bit from this methodology.
The Project-based STEM lesson was incredibly effective, and the video was structured well to impart the information needed to follow it. In fact, the video was successful enough that the accompanying lesson plan didn't really give me any new or necessary information. In general, students were engaged by the roller-coaster lesson and got to practice all of the STEM techniques simultaneously. The lesson started challenging, and the teacher consistently added elements to increase the challenge as student skills improved. Students were assigned roles within their groups to keep everyone focused and contributing. There was an economics and scarcity of resources element that added another dimension of realism and challenge. Students received immediate feedback on their designs both in computer simulations and in practical applications of their experiments, and they were motivated to succeed. It would be hard for me to imagine a more successful lesson than this one. I wish someone would demonstrate to me how to apply these principles directly in English. I'm working on it, but it's astounding how much one has to stretch to make the English standards applicable in such exciting ways.
By my personal standards, which prioritize the individual experience of education, healthy competition and collaboration, shame avoidance, and high educational standards, the roller coaster lesson was a huge winner among these three. Whole-Brain Teaching is interesting, but I feel like I would have been a bit put off by it in High School. That experience may fade with time among students, and as it becomes more mainstream it may not seem so silly to me, but I feel like buy-in in the single most important student-teacher communication tool. If the students don't buy in, and I feel confident that 16-year-old me wouldn't have, they are going to feel alienated and imposed upon. The Chinese math system, as described in the article, seems to have little to offer me. I feel that anything that is built so strongly on such specific cultural needs will be wildly successful, but only in that culture. If we are hindered by anything as American teachers, it is the lack of a cultural backbone to hang a method on. Personally, however, I feel that it is exactly our cultural diversity that is giving rise to so many new and exciting developments in the world of American teaching. China has a single, effective, national system, but we have an almost unlimited opportunity to experiment and grow.
Sources:
Chen, C. (2011, June 13). 3rd grade Chinese--math class.avi. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7LseF6Db5g
Kan Wei. (2014, March 25). Explainer: what makes Chinese maths lessons so good? Retrieved from
The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-makes-chinese-maths-lessons-so-good-24380
Mackens, R. (2011, May 31). Whole Brain Teaching Richwood High - The Basics. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iXTtR7lfWU&feature=youtu.be
Teaching Channel. (2015). Roller Coaster Physics: STEM in Action. Retrieved from Teaching Channel: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-stem-strategies#video-sidebar_tab_video-guide-tab
The Hofstede Centre. (2015). China in comparison with United Kingdom and United States. Retrieved from The Hofstede Centre: http://geert-hofstede.com/china.html
The Hofstede Centre. (2015). China in comparison with United Kingdom and United States. Retrieved from The Hofstede Centre: http://geert-hofstede.com/china.html
Whole Brain Teaching. (2015). Whole Brain Teaching. Retrieved from Whole Brain Teaching: http://wholebrainteaching.com/
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