I love sports... I love teaching geography to 7th graders... so is it any surprise I mix the two? It might be surprising to the old guard... you know, the teachers that approach geography class as an opportunity to assess teenagers' coloring skills and trivial knowledge of capital cities. But to me, sports and geography are on par with peanut butter and jelly, Stockton and Malone... woah, see? I can't even get through more than 2 great combos without naming one from the sports world. Mixing sports and geography should not be THAT surprising though. Think about it... sports teams are all associated with a specific location, often in a large population center. The team name often gives us major clues about the physical geography, weather or climate, history, culture, industries, indigenous species, or greater importance of that city. (See my "Chart of Indisputable Proof" below) Geography must be considered by sports franchises when it comes to designing and building a stadium, advertising, pricing their tickets and concessions, planning the logistics of parking, traffic direction and safety, partnering with corporate sponsors, and an endless list of other issues. It goes even deeper than that, though. The very fabric of the franchise, literally and figuratively, often depends on culture. Literally, uniform and logo design and color schemes often reflect the local culture and feel of an area. Sometimes there are obvious connections, like the NHL's Washington Capitals, which feature a red, white and blue color scheme with an eagle, stars, and an outline of the Capitol building itself... how very fitting to evoke so much nationalistic symbolism and imagery for a team located and named after the nation's capital. Personally, I have been doing this without even realizing it since I was in elementary school when I was shooting hoops or playing street hockey in my driveway, playing for my own made up teams in my own made up leagues. I was the "star" of the fictional National Inline Hockey League's San Diego Senile Surfers, a clear nod to the climate and culture of Southern California. I "played for" the fictional North American Basketball Association's North Carolina Flyers, an allusion to the Wright Brothers first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. In 6th grade my friend and I created the Seattle Fighting Salmon, an indoor, on-turf team suited for the rain of Seattle (sponsored by Starbucks, which I'm sure was a relative bargain since it was 1999) and the Bangor (Maine) Polar Jammers, a hard-nosed, power running, outdoor team suited for the cold of Maine. I drew up the Midwestern Kickball League freshman year of high school. I created the Alaska Christian University Polar Bears with a really sweet Black/White/Icy Blue color combo on NCAA Football 07. In Madden 08, I moved the Minnesota Vikings to Honolulu to become the Hawaii Defenders, boldly featuring the stock image P-40 fighter plane logo as a shoutout to the pilots defending Pearl Harbor... ...but I digress... back to my point. Figuratively, you sometimes hear the talking heads on sports broadcasts mentioning a team's roster, style of play or attitude reflecting the local area. For example, saying the Pittsburgh Steelers play tough, gritty, blue-collar football points out that a city full of fans that have worked in manufacturing can relate to them. If a very skilled player know for their flash and good looks gets traded to a team in Los Angeles (i.e. Wayne Gretzky in 1988) or if a Los Angeles team plays an exciting, entertaining style (i.e. the "Showtime" Lakers of the 1980's) they are regarded as a perfect fit for that city and its fan base, which often features actors and musicians in the stands for every home game. TOP ROW: Movie Stars such as Jack Nicholson are courtside fixtures at Lakers games in L.A., while Director Spike Lee and Actor/Comedian Chris Rock can often be seen rooting for the Knicks in New York City. BOTTOM ROW: Fans residing in blue-collar industrial cities with cold climates wear hardhats to games and embrace the cold How do I use this effectively?In my fourth year teaching, I came across an old notebook I had used for a class in college. As I was flipping through it to see if there was anything important for me to save or if there was blank paper I could salvage, I stumbled upon the North American Basketball League (NABL), a "bored-in-class" side project I had worked on in Edu305. Remember the NABA from my driveway? This was the official offshoot, re-branded as a LEAGUE rather than ASSOCIATION to distance it from the NBA. I smiled ear to ear remembering how much fun I had sketching out those uniforms and logos, including the reincarnated North Carolina Flyers. As I looked at the teams that I had created years before I knew I would teach geography for a living, I noticed just how much geography was actually involved. I had teams named for physical geography like the Aurora Hilltoppers. I had teams named for local industries like the St. Paul Lumberjacks, Topeka Combine (pictured here), Odessa Oilers and Vancouver Whalers. I had teams named for local history and culture like the Ciudad Juarez Aztecs and Honolulu Leis. I had teams named for what makes the city famous today like the Norfolk Admirals and Newark Jumbos. I had even marked city population stats on each page to make sure the cities were big enough to support a marginally large professional sports franchise with enough fans and revenue. Granted, not all my teams were SUPER steeped in geography... I mean, the Kalamazoo Fighting Kangaroos was not due to the thousands of wild Kangaroos roaming West Michigan... I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to draw a Kangaroo with boxing gloves and abbreviate them to the K'Zoo 'Roos. Nonetheless, an idea was born. What if the kids had to do this? Would there be enough geography to integrate where I could assess them on standards? I began to work out the logistics and realized I might have to NARROW DOWN the focus of the project to fit a manageable number of standards. There was more than enough geography to work with. So here it is... this is what we do. As a summative project in our North America unit, they create their own professional football franchises based in a city of their choice. All the student-created franchises are joined together in a fictional league called the Made Up North American Football League (MUNAFL). The student-created franchises are assessed on several different National Geography Standards. For more detail, you can check out the Standards page on my website and specifically focus on Standards 1, 10, 11, 15 and 18. To check out the glorious details of the project, you can find it on my TeachersPayTeachers site. When selecting their city, they need to analyze everything from metro area population and population density, major transportation routes, crime rates, median incomes, local businesses, early history, etc. Once they have determined they will have a good chance of success in a particular city based on that criteria, they move on to creating a nickname, logo and uniform combination with local ties. As a group, we look at real examples of sports teams that mix local flair into their names and logos for inspiration, and students have come up with some great ideas... for instance, the New Orleans Swing (tying to the history of Jazz), Los Angeles Lobos (Spanish for Wolves), Las Vegas Gamblers (based on the tourism and entertainment industry) and possibly my personal favorite, the San Francisco Criminals (due to the proximity to Alcatraz Island). With the name and color scheme set, they move on to selecting a suitable construction site for a new stadium, which forces them to use map skills as well as urban planning. With a site selected, they must design a stadium that fits with the climate (indoor vs. outdoor, artificial turf vs. natural grass), and demographics (seating capacity based on population, specialty stadium food based on local tastes, pricing of tickets and merchandise based on incomes) while perhaps selling naming rights for the stadium to a local business in exchange for a higher budget (ex: 3M Stadium in Minneapolis or Disney Field in Orlando). With their individual franchises taking shape and all the cities set, students take a list of each franchise in their class and analyze it to break into logical divisions based on region and relative location. What students may not realize by this point of the project is that every decision they have made up to this point is impacting their bottom line. Money becomes an issue, especially when it's time to sign players and create a competitive roster. If a student is in one of the largest cities, such as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, they are given a larger budget by the league office to simulate the impact their larger market would make in real life. Students that locate their franchises in smaller, more isolated cities are given less money and will have to be more creative to compete. In addition, students that forged partnerships with companies from their area and put their logo on their jersey or sold naming rights to their stadiums get a boost in their budget too. With budgets set, they go and look at real salary data and decide which players they can potentially sign. They must weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Signing better players may bring more success to the team, which means more fans, more TV games, and more money. However, as a brand new franchise, money can be tight and it's risky to sign a big-name player for big dollars. Granted, this is all theoretical and there is no way for us to actually project how successful one student's team will be compared to another in real life, but at least they are thinking about the potential economic impact. BEING SELFISH: Ok... am I doing this for me? Am I running this project because I like sports and because this is what I did for fun when I was their age? Well, kind of... But is that necessarily a BAD thing? I don't think so. If I am completely invested in a project, if it was a labor of love, if it ties to things I care about deeply and get me excited, then all of that positive energy gets transferred out to the students. I think it is especially important for me to use a project I care so deeply about because I KNOW all the seventh graders don't share my enthusiasm. The thing is, that would be true for ANY project we could possibly do. Some kids will get into it with no prompting on my part, others will need lots of convincing that what we are doing is worthwhile and could be fun. Before doing this project the first time, I thought long and hard about the kids that didn't care for sports. There was a 7th grade girl that flat out wrote "sports is my worst nightmare" on an advanced learning plan that gets shared with teachers in order to help us accommodate for their needs. Would I be torturing her with this project? Would I be disregarding one of the only requests she had about her educational experience? I worried about her reaction at first, but calmed down after thinking about all of the other avenues this project creates that aren't necessarily sports-focused. This particular student is a gifted artist and has ambitions to do animation and design as part of a future career. Her talents were very evident in the design of her logo, uniforms and stadium. That was complete validation for me because it proved even kids that hated sports had plenty of opportunities to enjoy this project in other ways and get something meaningful and valuable from it. Not to mention the fact that such a wide variety of geography standards are also being assessed in a non-traditional way with real-life applications. AS PROMISED: |
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO WEATHER/CLIMATE:
Carolina Hurricanes, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns (c'mon, these are fairly self explainatory)
Carolina Hurricanes, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns (c'mon, these are fairly self explainatory)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO HISTORY:
Chicago Fire (referring to the widespread fire of 1871) , Philadelphia 76ers (referring to the headquarters of the American Revolution beginning in 1776), San Francisco 49ers (referring to the California gold rush of 1849)
Chicago Fire (referring to the widespread fire of 1871) , Philadelphia 76ers (referring to the headquarters of the American Revolution beginning in 1776), San Francisco 49ers (referring to the California gold rush of 1849)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO CULTURE:
Chicago Blackhawks (Tribe originally living in the region), Houston Texans (evoking the Texas flag and independence movement), Montreal Canadiens (connecting to broad identity of all CanadiAn citizens, but with subtle reference to the French speakers of Montreal itself, hence, CanadiEns)
Chicago Blackhawks (Tribe originally living in the region), Houston Texans (evoking the Texas flag and independence movement), Montreal Canadiens (connecting to broad identity of all CanadiAn citizens, but with subtle reference to the French speakers of Montreal itself, hence, CanadiEns)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO INDUSTRIES:
Milwaukee Brewers (Milwaukee's production of beer), Green Bay Packers (team originally affiliated with meat packing company), Pittsburgh Steelers (Pittsburgh's history of steel production)
Milwaukee Brewers (Milwaukee's production of beer), Green Bay Packers (team originally affiliated with meat packing company), Pittsburgh Steelers (Pittsburgh's history of steel production)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO INDIGENOUS SPECIES:
Milwaukee Bucks, Seattle Seahawks, Miami Marlins
Milwaukee Bucks, Seattle Seahawks, Miami Marlins
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO OVERALL IMPORTANCE OF THE CITY:
Ottawa Senators (Capital of Canada), Orlando Magic (home of Disney), Houston Astros (Home of NASA)
Ottawa Senators (Capital of Canada), Orlando Magic (home of Disney), Houston Astros (Home of NASA)
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PART 2: Using Learning Targets to Achieve Standard Proficiency
If you read Part 1 of this blog entry already, hopefully you realize that using percentage-based, letter grading systems are antiquated and deserve reconsideration. I'm not going to go too deep into the reasons why I believe that system needs to change because the purpose of this entry is to focus on how to make it better. Before going any further though... small disclosure... I am not claiming to be anything close to an expert on Standards Based Grading and I am just starting my own journey with all of this. I just figured that if my colleagues and I have this many questions and concerns about how to transition in to Standards Based Grading as smoothly as possible, other people might have the same questions and concerns and I can at least give you my plan, reasoning, successes and failures along the way.
STANDARDS
The shift in grading philosophy taking place at the Turner School District in Beloit, WI and throughout the education community in general is focused largely on STANDARDS. The first problem with shifting the grading philosophy to focus on standards is that often they are misunderstood. Based on the definition, it makes it seem like our goal as educators might be to try and get all students to be the same, but that's only true in a very narrow sense. None of us want to force students to give up their individualism or their unique set of talents... all it means is that we want to make sure they all are able to achieve certain benchmarks and learn certain skills by the time we are done educating them. Of course, deciding what those benchmarks and skills are and when they should be accomplished by children is above my pay grade. Frankly I'm not sure it can be done perfectly by anyone, but I'm OK with that. In my opinion it is better to at least have something out there to shoot for, no matter how vague, to provide a sense of direction for curriculum and instruction. Without those standards, too many teachers would be wandering through the wilderness with no real accountability to live up to... and THAT would give WAY TOO MUCH ammunition to people that already harp on teachers.
Standards have been created for basically every grade level and every subject in schools. Some standards have been written at the local level by individual districts, some at the state level, some at the national level. Again, that opens standards up to criticism, and again, I think it's mostly unfair! People have problems with national standards because they aren't flexible enough when comparing different areas of the country. People have problems with local standards because it makes it too different from neighboring districts. People have problems with state standards because... well, I guess the same reasons ans the previous examples... but overall, people have problems with standards because someone else created them and it might bring change... and those are two things that Americans are often just not cool with.
So here's a problem as an educator starting this journey... There are so many standards and so little time, so which standards do I assess?
I can only speak to what my own school is doing with this right now, and can only give you the firsthand experiences of my own department, but like anything in life you need to prioritize.
Every teacher in our Middle School and High School has basically narrowed down their list of standards to find 4-6 they really feel deserve more attention than the others. The 5 prioritized standards I selected for 7th grade Geography can be found on the Geography Standards page of this website.
Great, I know which standards to assess, but how to I score it?
I'm going to try and give you an idea of where I'm at with this... but long story short: I have no clue! Well, let me rephrase that. I have a few ideas based on inservices and speakers and things that I have read, heard and seen, but there's so much debate out there surrounding the RIGHT way to do it. Here are essentially 2 ways I'm looking at it.
6 point proficiency scale
In this scale, I set the score of 5 as the benchmark for students to meet. Achieving a score of 5 means you know everything I need you to know, can demonstrate all the skills I need you to demonstrate. Back in the day, that would be an A. Since we use skyward to report grades in our district and that computer system uses the old average and letter grade system, I just enter any score of 5 as a 19/20 and kids get an A. A 6 means the student blew me out of the water, and that converts to a 21/20, but is also very difficult to achieve. 4 means you're close but possibly need a few tweaks, and so on and so forth down the list to 1 where you are clearly struggling with a limited ability related to that standard.
All the standards can be re-assessed and students can move up the scale, thereby showing more mastery and improving their grades.
I realize many people love and use 4 point proficiency scales, but I didn't think that was enough to differentiate as many skill levels as I thought might exist. How many times would I look at an assessment and think "hmmm, that kid deserves a 3.5 on a 4 point scale." The 6 point scale eliminates that to some extent because the indicators are more specific and the assessments are more easily slotted at different proficiency levels.
Beyond all that, the biggest reason I like a 6-point proficiency scale is that it also roughly breaks down to a scale of 3 major levels: Expert, Apprentice, and Novice. 5 and 6 go into the "Expert" level, 3 and 4 go into the "Apprentice" level where a 4 means you need just a little improvement to reach the expert level, and a 1 or 2 meet the "Novice" level, telling you your understanding is at a basic, beginner's level but there is a bridge from a 2 to the apprentice level to show your improvement.
But if a major reason I like a 6-point scale is because it so simply shows if a student could be considered a novice, apprentice or expert on any given standard, why not go to 3 levels of proficiency?
3 point proficiency scales: Maybe I'm changing my mind...
I got on board with the 6 point scale after hearing Myron Dueck speak on the matter at a presentation in Janesville. One of his colleagues in the realm of educational consulting and standards based grading showed us a 3-level approach done at his school at an inservice in Beloit later this year. The reason for a 3 point scale is to get EVERYONE on board with a widely accepted set of criteria. If all the teachers in your district can agree on language for 3 different levels, theoretically it should be simpler to report consistently across multiple classes.
It also reduces the workload during grading and streamlines the process overall. I could be looking at student assessments and be giving them a score based on if I feel they meet the LEARNING TARGETS leading to each standard. A 3 means they consistently accomplish the target, 2 means they sometimes accomplish it, and 1 means rarely. With several learning targets per standard, I could use that collection of 1's, 2's and 3's to assess their overall performance on each standard if I wanted to, while simplifying all the small reports for individual assessments throughout the grading term.
SIGH...
This is definitely a process, and I know my student teacher would love that I am using the word process right now because it's an overused educational buzzword that we love to make fun of, but man... they keep telling me it's a long process and I now see exactly what they mean.
I don't know what system will work long-term. If you are reading this as a parent or student, you're along for the ride whether you want to be or not. I assure you that no matter what system I use, I am doing my very best to assess accurately and fairly.
I am currently "piloting" standards based grading in our middle school, meaning I have some license to experiment with reasonable assessment methods with the goal of finding one that works for everyone across the district starting in the 2017-18 school year. Will one of these be the way Turner goes? Who knows... It's all part of the process.
6 point proficiency scale
In this scale, I set the score of 5 as the benchmark for students to meet. Achieving a score of 5 means you know everything I need you to know, can demonstrate all the skills I need you to demonstrate. Back in the day, that would be an A. Since we use skyward to report grades in our district and that computer system uses the old average and letter grade system, I just enter any score of 5 as a 19/20 and kids get an A. A 6 means the student blew me out of the water, and that converts to a 21/20, but is also very difficult to achieve. 4 means you're close but possibly need a few tweaks, and so on and so forth down the list to 1 where you are clearly struggling with a limited ability related to that standard.
All the standards can be re-assessed and students can move up the scale, thereby showing more mastery and improving their grades.
I realize many people love and use 4 point proficiency scales, but I didn't think that was enough to differentiate as many skill levels as I thought might exist. How many times would I look at an assessment and think "hmmm, that kid deserves a 3.5 on a 4 point scale." The 6 point scale eliminates that to some extent because the indicators are more specific and the assessments are more easily slotted at different proficiency levels.
Beyond all that, the biggest reason I like a 6-point proficiency scale is that it also roughly breaks down to a scale of 3 major levels: Expert, Apprentice, and Novice. 5 and 6 go into the "Expert" level, 3 and 4 go into the "Apprentice" level where a 4 means you need just a little improvement to reach the expert level, and a 1 or 2 meet the "Novice" level, telling you your understanding is at a basic, beginner's level but there is a bridge from a 2 to the apprentice level to show your improvement.
But if a major reason I like a 6-point scale is because it so simply shows if a student could be considered a novice, apprentice or expert on any given standard, why not go to 3 levels of proficiency?
3 point proficiency scales: Maybe I'm changing my mind...
I got on board with the 6 point scale after hearing Myron Dueck speak on the matter at a presentation in Janesville. One of his colleagues in the realm of educational consulting and standards based grading showed us a 3-level approach done at his school at an inservice in Beloit later this year. The reason for a 3 point scale is to get EVERYONE on board with a widely accepted set of criteria. If all the teachers in your district can agree on language for 3 different levels, theoretically it should be simpler to report consistently across multiple classes.
It also reduces the workload during grading and streamlines the process overall. I could be looking at student assessments and be giving them a score based on if I feel they meet the LEARNING TARGETS leading to each standard. A 3 means they consistently accomplish the target, 2 means they sometimes accomplish it, and 1 means rarely. With several learning targets per standard, I could use that collection of 1's, 2's and 3's to assess their overall performance on each standard if I wanted to, while simplifying all the small reports for individual assessments throughout the grading term.
SIGH...
This is definitely a process, and I know my student teacher would love that I am using the word process right now because it's an overused educational buzzword that we love to make fun of, but man... they keep telling me it's a long process and I now see exactly what they mean.
I don't know what system will work long-term. If you are reading this as a parent or student, you're along for the ride whether you want to be or not. I assure you that no matter what system I use, I am doing my very best to assess accurately and fairly.
I am currently "piloting" standards based grading in our middle school, meaning I have some license to experiment with reasonable assessment methods with the goal of finding one that works for everyone across the district starting in the 2017-18 school year. Will one of these be the way Turner goes? Who knows... It's all part of the process.
THE STANDARDS BASED GRADING TRAIN IS LEAVING THE STATION.... and YOU need to get ON BOARD
7/27/2016
PART 1: Percentage-based grading no longer makes sense
Ahhhh, the coveted "A"... the definitive mark on a report card that says... to paraphrase Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live... "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people (mainly my teachers) like me." It has been the benchmark for every student in America's schools for like, 80 years.
When you get an "A", it means you know your stuff. Many grading scales say A= Excellent. An "A" is what my parents always wanted to see... neigh... EXPECTED to see, but I wanted to see them too, because in Oshkosh, WI in the 1990s, each "A" you had on your report card was good for 5 tokens at Shakey's Pizza and Arcade.
After all, you need at least a whopping 93% to earn one! Well, unless you round up from the 92.5-92.99 range..... or if you slap a minus on the back of it for something in the 90-92.44% range.... sorry, rounding applies there too, so 89.5% and up and you are a golden child!
BUT WHAT THE HECK DOES IT REALLY MEAN!?!?!?!?
To me as a nine year old kid, an 89.5% meant I got an "A-" written on my report card, 5 tokens at Shakey's, and a pat on the back when my parents saw it. An 89.4% meant a "B+" written on my report card, 4 tokens at Shakey's and a line of questioning from my parents regarding anything I may have misunderstood, any extra assignments I could have done and whether my overall effort level had been sufficient.
So what was the difference between an 89.5 and 89.4 to a teacher? Probably one point on one assignment on one random day during that grading term that pushed the average above or below a completely arbitrary line drawn on a scale of 100%. Did I understand that when I was nine? Well, I got an "A" in math that year, so I guess I probably understood that all my points earned were weighed against all the points possible to calculate my final grade.
The real question is how traditional, percentage-based grading was making me behave as a student. Was an 89.4% pushing me to dig deeper into topics I didn't have a perfect grasp of? Was I finding out what my weakest areas were and how to improve them? Was I really concerned with MASTERING ANYTHING??? Nope... I just learned how to manipulate the grading system to work best for me.
I did my homework because a zero would really hurt my average. I studied for tests because the more questions I got right, the more points I would earn and the better my average would be. I vividly remember sitting on my bed with a social studies textbook in 5th grade asking myself why the heck I needed to know the year that British colonists established Jamestown, Virginia. Well, obviously if I filled in the bubble that said 1706, I get the question wrong and my score drops. If I filled in the bubble next to 1607, I get a point and my average goes up. That one question could be the catapult that launched me into A territory or the trap door that dropped me to a B.
Now as a social studies teacher myself, I can honestly tell you I do not care if a student memorizes that Jamestown was established in 1607...
...I'm pausing so you have time to gasp and contemplate whether I can be considered a "real history teacher"...
That date tells me nothing about the student's mastery of the content, and everything about their memory. I have the following Calvin and Hobbes strip posted proudly in my room to make sure I don't forget it too.
From day one of my career it has been clear to me that asking questions like this don't give me an accurate picture of what content and skills each student has mastered. In my efforts to avoid those types of questions, I filled tests with short answer questions and essays that made students explain the significance of events, look at cause and effect, and declare an opinion and back it up with reasoning. I didn't care as much about them knowing the year 1607, but I would care if they knew it was the first permanent English settlement after other failed experiments, and how the colonists relationships with the Native Americans evolved over time. I might even care that they can take their newly learned knowledge of Jamestown and juxtapose it to what Disney "taught" them in Pocahontas.
I patted myself on the back and told myself how much better I was than the teachers that gave me Scan-tron sheets full of multiple choice questions based on memory.
....Then something brought me back to reality... the kids turned the tests in and I graded them... still converting raw points into averages and averages into letter grades. Something still wasn't right.
If I gave students a short answer question and Student X gave me an opinion with some reasoning and a simple example but without going into what I would consider "sufficient detail", I might score that question a 4/6.
If Student Y gave me a strong answer acknowledging all parts of the question with multiple supporting pieces of evidence and reasoning, I would probably give them a 6/6.
(Insert vinyl record scratching noise here) HOLD UP A SECOND!
Student X is now missing 2 points on a 40 point test... aka 5%... aka half a letter grade. Student Y has those 2 points in their back pocket giving them more cushion for mistakes throughout the rest of the test. Does student X DESERVE to lose half a letter grade from that answer? They didn't answer the question as directly and fully as I would like, but did they only understand 2/3 of the concept??? Doubtful... but I only gave them 2/3 of the points, and that hurts when your test is scored using a raw average in a traditional grading system.
Now consider the same answers on a different scale... one proposed by Myron Dueck.
Imagine the 6 point value of the question broke down as follows:
6 and 5: Expert level, 4 and 3: Apprentice level, 2 and 1: Novice level
I think the reason I like this system so much is because I was basically doing it already, except I was doing it in a way that punished students for imperfection. My 4 was a "D", barely passing. Dueck's 4 means they are an "apprentice" just barely short of proving they are an expert. What does Student X deserve... a "D"? Or do they deserve a "4" that puts them as a "high level apprentice" knowing that they are almost an expert and just need a little more seasoning or a little more push to become an expert in that area. I know which one I would find more meaningful and motivating to receive as a student.
Look, the whole purpose of assessing a student in the first place is to give them meaningful feedback on their progress so they can figure out where to go from there. a 73% or a 91% or a 58% don't do that job well enough. It's arbitrary at best and pointless at worst.
OK... I know what the biggest argument is at this point...
"But Mr. Honish, aren't you being arbitrary by giving them a 4 on a short answer question regardless of whether it equates to a "D" or "apprentice"
As Phineas would say...
STANDARDS and LEARNING TARGETS will play a critical role in making sure the grades as relevant as possible. STANDARDS and LEARNING TARGETS are how I will be making sure a 4 out of 6 is not arbitrary at all and the student knows exactly where they stand on that topic.
That is EXACTLY what I will be talking about at length in my next post, so check back for updates when it's finished.
It's still summer though, so don't rush me!
That is EXACTLY what I will be talking about at length in my next post, so check back for updates when it's finished.
It's still summer though, so don't rush me!
Car Shopping and the Classroom: How my adult experience opened my eyes to an outdated system
7/7/2016
For over 2 years, we have been a one-car family. We moved a block away from my school so I was walking to work, and my wife was working from home. We simply did not need 2 vehicles... in fact, we weren't even putting 1,000 miles a month on the vehicles we had, a brand new 2013 Honda CR-V with space for us and our daughter. Fast forward 27 months and add another child, a golden retriever and 2 jobs my wife needs a car for, and it is time to buy a second vehicle.
Luckily, it has become my hobby to go used car shopping online. My theory was always no matter how reliable and new our CR-V was, as a one-car family we were only one accident away from realistically needing a second vehicle. My wife thought it was a bit much, but I was having fun with my mobile app equivalent of window shopping. Now, the time has come to actually FIND a second vehicle we will actually purchase, and I am READY.
Do you know WHY I am ready (and WHY this connects to the classroom and teaching in any way shape or form)? I have done EXTENSIVE RESEARCH! Research is a critical component of any classroom and obviously it is an important skill as an adult as well, like in car shopping. I found that my research PROCESS mirrored what students are taught to do in school almost exactly.
First I needed to find reliable sources. I downloaded apps for cars.com, Autolist and Autotrader to search for vehicles for sale in my area. I downloaded the Edmunds app to research specs and read reviews of different makes and models. I also downloaded the Kelley Blue Book app to compare prices with perceived values. Now I was armed with a wealth of information at my fingertips. All I needed to do was start sifting.
I started sifting through all that information in the same way I expect many students start researching... with only a vague idea of what I was looking for and more information than I could possibly digest staring me in the face as I looked at my screen. That brought me to the second phase of my research. Narrowing the field.
I had a little more time and freedom to narrow my results than most students are afforded over the course of a research project in school, and I had very few restrictions on my search. The only thing I truly cared about was keeping the price under 5 digits and making sure the car had never been in an accident. Everything else was fair game. Because of this, I went back and forth many times on what style of vehicle I was even searching for. I started with standard 4 door sedans and after a month or so, I had compared every available Accord, Camry, Fusion and Altima in a 150 mile radius (while eliminating Malibus, Impalas, Taurus', Passats, Sebrings and 200s through research of reliability as well)... but 4 door sedans seemed boring.
So I asked myself, "Is it possible to actually own a luxury sedan?" They could be had in my price range as long as I could accept slightly higher mileage. BMW is my dream car brand, and I became obsessed with the 3 series and 5 series, but also discovered some Volvo S80s and Lexus LS400s I could see myself in as well. Ironically, that brought me back to a standard 4 door sedan search once again, as I realized the luxury brands might be a little too impractical with high maintenance costs
After going in circles several times, thinking about what our CR-V couldn't offer (namely towing ability and 4 wheel drive for the snowy Wisconsin winters) and what would be most adaptable to the possibility of our needs changing again in a few years, the decision came down to the Toyota 4Runner or Honda Pilot...... or maybe Mitsubishi Montero..... or the Nissan Xterra. Crap Dang It! It was happening again!
But wait... are we sure those are the most important things for our needs? What do we need to tow? A bike rack every once in a while, a small trailer with awkward sized items from home improvement stores, certainly nothing over our CR-V's 1500 lb towing capacity... and we've never had a problem navigating the snow with its traction control, stability control and ABS. Back to the 4 door sedans?This time it was real though... no more messing around. We are buying a vehicle, like NOW! Decision time!
I started to do something that all my education professors told me would be crucial in my career... something they make you do in your Professional Development Plan for renewing your license... something I swore to myself I would never ACTUALLY do because I thought it was lame... I began to "reflect". Uggggghhh... reflection. It always sounded so cutesy and unecessary, yet here I was reflecting on the process I was using in my hobby and how it related to education. After some introspective reflection on the process I was using in my research, I was surprised to find that my reflection actually led me to a major observation.
As it turns out, I had proven to myself that the way research is conducted in school projects needs to change. Too many times, students are given a topic, the internet and some books, and told to go learn facts and present their findings. That often ends up being a PowerPoint full of facts they found on the internet and read to an audience. They then get an acceptable passing grade because they found information for all the categories deemed necessary on the directions sheet, stood in front of the class and reported them out while the teacher sat in back and checked boxes on a rubric.
That's not meaningful in the least.
If I had done my car research as a standard middle school level research project in school, I probably would have been given a handful of vehicles to research by my teacher and told to have at it! I could make a PowerPoint of the vehicles assigned to me and put their horsepower, cargo capacity, towing capacity, available features, safety ratings, and any number of other pieces of information. I could stand in front of a room and read those stats off. If that is what my teacher was looking for, then that's what I could give them... and it would be easy and meaningless. Edmunds gives me all those numbers and more. Cars.com takes up to 4 vehicles at a time and puts columns of those numbers side by side to directly compare. I can find them whenever I want with a couple taps on my smartphone. Clearly there were more meaningful ways of conducting research projects... now it was time for some MORE reflection.
I had to ask myself a tough question: "Is this what I am asking MY students to do?"
I would like to think that most research I give my students includes some element of student choice within the given topic and is not simply restatement of facts that can be easily found.
Students need to be able to find information, but not necessarily memorize it to tell others. They need to use it to solve problems, to evaluate scenarios, to compare and contrast things... and anyone that knows anything about Bloom's Taxonomy or best practice in secondary education SHOULD already know this! The problem is so many IGNORE IT!
We've all seen it so often... students spending weeks in the library filling out index cards and note sheets full of facts, then typing those facts onto slides, then standing in front of their peers and telling them the facts they found. We can do better. We NEED to do better because after they finish school, that will not be good enough for the purposes of their research in the "real world".
In my own search of how to get away from "Google-able facts" and help my students dig deeper, I have come across a few resources that have helped...
The most helpful starting point has been focusing on what kinds of questions students are asking in the early stages of research. A general guideline is to avoid "who", "what", "where" and "when" and focus instead on "why" and "how". I was unable to narrow the field of potential vehicles until I asked myself why we needed a 2nd vehicle and how we were going to pay for it and travel to pick it up.
I am promising myself right now that I will NOT force my students to do things that a google search can do for them already. I don't know how many horsepower a 2003 Honda Pilot has off the top of my head. I don't know the backseat legroom of a Mazda6 and I don't have a comprehensive list of every vehicle that features Electronic Stability Control. I have a rough idea because of all the research I did, and I know where to find the exact numbers if I ever did need it.
The more important thing for me to know is how to APPLY this info (like knowing the Toyota 4Runner can tow more than triple the weight of our CR-V with more interior cargo space, but would cost on average twice as much as a 4 door sedan and lose 30-40% on gas mileage, whereas a later model 4 door sedan with safety features like side airbags and EBS could be had for much cheaper while sacrificing any extra towing and space). Applying research to a given question or scenario leads to the best ultimate result. If it's a research project in school, you find explanations and reasons for the questions you set out to answer in the beginning of the process. If it's a decision on a major purchase, you come to the most informed decision possible for spending your hard-earned money!
Even after over 2 years of constant research though, you know what I have no clue about??? Minivans...
Do you know why I have no clue about minivans???
I don't like them, I don't care about them, and I sure as heck wasn't going to buy one...
Which brings me to possibly the biggest consideration when assigning a research project to students (especially if I want to truly be like Mr. Dude and make middle school as fun as possible!)...
GIVE STUDENTS SOME CHOICE!
Choice is probably the biggest motivator in a research project. If a student is not excited or interested in the topic (read: me with minivans), then how hard are they really going to work at uncovering the intricacies of that topic? Obviously it's not always possible to let them pick whatever they want as a research topic, or I would have had plenty of papers about the NBA or OneDirection throughout my career. What you can realistically do is give them smaller choices WITHIN the larger framework. The theme of the research is set in stone, but they can take it in a direction they are more comfortable with. Some examples of what I have done include our Cultural Fair project where students have choices regarding which country their group wants to represent and which subtopics they would like to dig in to individually. Another example is the Made Up North American Football League, which requires all students to meet certain requirements when researching city demographics and using physical geography for long-term planning, but allows individualism in selection of their city as well as nickname, logo, stadium, food and uniform creation.
Choice plays a big role in adult-life research as well. I chose to dig into the car research process fully because cars interest me. My wife fully admits she would be more inclined to visit a couple dealerships at most on a random Saturday, find a few vehicles to test drive, and just pick the one that felt best. On the other hand, she became a REALTOR in part because she loved digging through online house listings for all the details in order to find the perfect match for her clients' needs. Houses are not something I would choose to spend inordinate amounts of time researching.
Sometimes, especially in smaller research assignments, choice is not that easy to give and the content might be more simplistic. If my assignment requires them to find simpler facts, I try to ask them to ELABORATE on them and make connections with other topics or apply those pieces of information to draw conclusions about some sort of issue. However, there is always room to improve.
Luckily, it has become my hobby to go used car shopping online. My theory was always no matter how reliable and new our CR-V was, as a one-car family we were only one accident away from realistically needing a second vehicle. My wife thought it was a bit much, but I was having fun with my mobile app equivalent of window shopping. Now, the time has come to actually FIND a second vehicle we will actually purchase, and I am READY.
Do you know WHY I am ready (and WHY this connects to the classroom and teaching in any way shape or form)? I have done EXTENSIVE RESEARCH! Research is a critical component of any classroom and obviously it is an important skill as an adult as well, like in car shopping. I found that my research PROCESS mirrored what students are taught to do in school almost exactly.
First I needed to find reliable sources. I downloaded apps for cars.com, Autolist and Autotrader to search for vehicles for sale in my area. I downloaded the Edmunds app to research specs and read reviews of different makes and models. I also downloaded the Kelley Blue Book app to compare prices with perceived values. Now I was armed with a wealth of information at my fingertips. All I needed to do was start sifting.
I started sifting through all that information in the same way I expect many students start researching... with only a vague idea of what I was looking for and more information than I could possibly digest staring me in the face as I looked at my screen. That brought me to the second phase of my research. Narrowing the field.
I had a little more time and freedom to narrow my results than most students are afforded over the course of a research project in school, and I had very few restrictions on my search. The only thing I truly cared about was keeping the price under 5 digits and making sure the car had never been in an accident. Everything else was fair game. Because of this, I went back and forth many times on what style of vehicle I was even searching for. I started with standard 4 door sedans and after a month or so, I had compared every available Accord, Camry, Fusion and Altima in a 150 mile radius (while eliminating Malibus, Impalas, Taurus', Passats, Sebrings and 200s through research of reliability as well)... but 4 door sedans seemed boring.
So I asked myself, "Is it possible to actually own a luxury sedan?" They could be had in my price range as long as I could accept slightly higher mileage. BMW is my dream car brand, and I became obsessed with the 3 series and 5 series, but also discovered some Volvo S80s and Lexus LS400s I could see myself in as well. Ironically, that brought me back to a standard 4 door sedan search once again, as I realized the luxury brands might be a little too impractical with high maintenance costs
After going in circles several times, thinking about what our CR-V couldn't offer (namely towing ability and 4 wheel drive for the snowy Wisconsin winters) and what would be most adaptable to the possibility of our needs changing again in a few years, the decision came down to the Toyota 4Runner or Honda Pilot...... or maybe Mitsubishi Montero..... or the Nissan Xterra. Crap Dang It! It was happening again!
But wait... are we sure those are the most important things for our needs? What do we need to tow? A bike rack every once in a while, a small trailer with awkward sized items from home improvement stores, certainly nothing over our CR-V's 1500 lb towing capacity... and we've never had a problem navigating the snow with its traction control, stability control and ABS. Back to the 4 door sedans?This time it was real though... no more messing around. We are buying a vehicle, like NOW! Decision time!
I started to do something that all my education professors told me would be crucial in my career... something they make you do in your Professional Development Plan for renewing your license... something I swore to myself I would never ACTUALLY do because I thought it was lame... I began to "reflect". Uggggghhh... reflection. It always sounded so cutesy and unecessary, yet here I was reflecting on the process I was using in my hobby and how it related to education. After some introspective reflection on the process I was using in my research, I was surprised to find that my reflection actually led me to a major observation.
As it turns out, I had proven to myself that the way research is conducted in school projects needs to change. Too many times, students are given a topic, the internet and some books, and told to go learn facts and present their findings. That often ends up being a PowerPoint full of facts they found on the internet and read to an audience. They then get an acceptable passing grade because they found information for all the categories deemed necessary on the directions sheet, stood in front of the class and reported them out while the teacher sat in back and checked boxes on a rubric.
That's not meaningful in the least.
If I had done my car research as a standard middle school level research project in school, I probably would have been given a handful of vehicles to research by my teacher and told to have at it! I could make a PowerPoint of the vehicles assigned to me and put their horsepower, cargo capacity, towing capacity, available features, safety ratings, and any number of other pieces of information. I could stand in front of a room and read those stats off. If that is what my teacher was looking for, then that's what I could give them... and it would be easy and meaningless. Edmunds gives me all those numbers and more. Cars.com takes up to 4 vehicles at a time and puts columns of those numbers side by side to directly compare. I can find them whenever I want with a couple taps on my smartphone. Clearly there were more meaningful ways of conducting research projects... now it was time for some MORE reflection.
I had to ask myself a tough question: "Is this what I am asking MY students to do?"
I would like to think that most research I give my students includes some element of student choice within the given topic and is not simply restatement of facts that can be easily found.
Students need to be able to find information, but not necessarily memorize it to tell others. They need to use it to solve problems, to evaluate scenarios, to compare and contrast things... and anyone that knows anything about Bloom's Taxonomy or best practice in secondary education SHOULD already know this! The problem is so many IGNORE IT!
We've all seen it so often... students spending weeks in the library filling out index cards and note sheets full of facts, then typing those facts onto slides, then standing in front of their peers and telling them the facts they found. We can do better. We NEED to do better because after they finish school, that will not be good enough for the purposes of their research in the "real world".
In my own search of how to get away from "Google-able facts" and help my students dig deeper, I have come across a few resources that have helped...
The most helpful starting point has been focusing on what kinds of questions students are asking in the early stages of research. A general guideline is to avoid "who", "what", "where" and "when" and focus instead on "why" and "how". I was unable to narrow the field of potential vehicles until I asked myself why we needed a 2nd vehicle and how we were going to pay for it and travel to pick it up.
I am promising myself right now that I will NOT force my students to do things that a google search can do for them already. I don't know how many horsepower a 2003 Honda Pilot has off the top of my head. I don't know the backseat legroom of a Mazda6 and I don't have a comprehensive list of every vehicle that features Electronic Stability Control. I have a rough idea because of all the research I did, and I know where to find the exact numbers if I ever did need it.
The more important thing for me to know is how to APPLY this info (like knowing the Toyota 4Runner can tow more than triple the weight of our CR-V with more interior cargo space, but would cost on average twice as much as a 4 door sedan and lose 30-40% on gas mileage, whereas a later model 4 door sedan with safety features like side airbags and EBS could be had for much cheaper while sacrificing any extra towing and space). Applying research to a given question or scenario leads to the best ultimate result. If it's a research project in school, you find explanations and reasons for the questions you set out to answer in the beginning of the process. If it's a decision on a major purchase, you come to the most informed decision possible for spending your hard-earned money!
Even after over 2 years of constant research though, you know what I have no clue about??? Minivans...
Do you know why I have no clue about minivans???
I don't like them, I don't care about them, and I sure as heck wasn't going to buy one...
Which brings me to possibly the biggest consideration when assigning a research project to students (especially if I want to truly be like Mr. Dude and make middle school as fun as possible!)...
GIVE STUDENTS SOME CHOICE!
Choice is probably the biggest motivator in a research project. If a student is not excited or interested in the topic (read: me with minivans), then how hard are they really going to work at uncovering the intricacies of that topic? Obviously it's not always possible to let them pick whatever they want as a research topic, or I would have had plenty of papers about the NBA or OneDirection throughout my career. What you can realistically do is give them smaller choices WITHIN the larger framework. The theme of the research is set in stone, but they can take it in a direction they are more comfortable with. Some examples of what I have done include our Cultural Fair project where students have choices regarding which country their group wants to represent and which subtopics they would like to dig in to individually. Another example is the Made Up North American Football League, which requires all students to meet certain requirements when researching city demographics and using physical geography for long-term planning, but allows individualism in selection of their city as well as nickname, logo, stadium, food and uniform creation.
Choice plays a big role in adult-life research as well. I chose to dig into the car research process fully because cars interest me. My wife fully admits she would be more inclined to visit a couple dealerships at most on a random Saturday, find a few vehicles to test drive, and just pick the one that felt best. On the other hand, she became a REALTOR in part because she loved digging through online house listings for all the details in order to find the perfect match for her clients' needs. Houses are not something I would choose to spend inordinate amounts of time researching.
Sometimes, especially in smaller research assignments, choice is not that easy to give and the content might be more simplistic. If my assignment requires them to find simpler facts, I try to ask them to ELABORATE on them and make connections with other topics or apply those pieces of information to draw conclusions about some sort of issue. However, there is always room to improve.
So in the end, what started as a fun side project for my personal life has become a thought provoking examination of best practice in my secondary Social Studies Classroom. And isn't that what best practice should truly strive to accomplish? If students are researching in ways that mirror the skills they will need in real life applications, they will obviously be better prepared for adult life. If you're a teacher, hopefully you will take a hard look at your own research assignments and "get away from the google-able". If you are a student, hopefully you take a hard look at your research process and adjust to make it better. If you're an administrator... I can't believe I'm about to suggest this... but check up on the current projects being run in your building and make sure they align with best practice. If they don't, enforce some change!
When I was a kid, I lived for the show Recess on ABC's Saturday Morning cartoon lineup. As an upper-elementary aged student myself, I could easily identify with what was going on in the lives of the 4th graders featured in the show. As I got older though, I realized the show's creators had lots to offer an older audience as well. Pop culture references abounded, students were actually symbolic of cliques and subgroups found in everyday childhood, and episodes were fairly deep allegories commenting on the educational system and political, economic and social structures. Seriously... what kind of cartoon showed 4th graders emulating the 1912 Presidential election or taught the concept of the "Haves and Have nots" through a playground economy of "MonStickers"?
This show was such a staple of my Saturday mornings that it earned the distinction of being the only show I would bother to watch re-runs of. Since I watched the re-runs, I saw most episodes anywhere from 4-7 times on average, so the lessons the show was so subtly teaching me were filed away into my long term memory. This would become really important when I became a teacher myself and went through one of the most crucial parts of any teacher's career... figuring out my own personal "teaching style".
I don't really know if ANY teacher can say they have one and only one teaching style. So much of the profession is completely fluid and changes from year to year, day to day, class period to class period. However, I needed some kind of basic philosophy to hang my hat on, and finding that basic philosophy was made easier because of the show Recess.
On November 28, 1999 a new episode came out titled "The Dude". The episode was about a new student teacher, Franklin Dudikoff, coming to the school, but he was completely boring. I mean, he introduced his lesson with a cheesy joke about the "Shocking" field of electricity (OK, I would probably use something like that too) and then proceeded to read diagrams straight out of a science text book until the kids were asleep.
This show was such a staple of my Saturday mornings that it earned the distinction of being the only show I would bother to watch re-runs of. Since I watched the re-runs, I saw most episodes anywhere from 4-7 times on average, so the lessons the show was so subtly teaching me were filed away into my long term memory. This would become really important when I became a teacher myself and went through one of the most crucial parts of any teacher's career... figuring out my own personal "teaching style".
I don't really know if ANY teacher can say they have one and only one teaching style. So much of the profession is completely fluid and changes from year to year, day to day, class period to class period. However, I needed some kind of basic philosophy to hang my hat on, and finding that basic philosophy was made easier because of the show Recess.
On November 28, 1999 a new episode came out titled "The Dude". The episode was about a new student teacher, Franklin Dudikoff, coming to the school, but he was completely boring. I mean, he introduced his lesson with a cheesy joke about the "Shocking" field of electricity (OK, I would probably use something like that too) and then proceeded to read diagrams straight out of a science text book until the kids were asleep.
The main character T.J. soon realized that that the student teacher was once a playground legend known for his legendary pranks and nicknamed "The Dude". Once his past was exposed, Mr. Dudikoff changed course in the classroom, realizing that stories of his past pranks were much more engaging and interesting to the students. However, teaching as "The Dude" was not getting any content across to the kids. They were laughing, but not learning.
Ready to give up on the teaching profession completely, Mr. Dudikoff has an epiphany when T.J. refers to him as "Mr. Dude" after a heart to heart chat on the swingset. He realizes he needs to blend the fun goofy side with the serious content side to get the most ideal results. When the principal comes to see his class the next day, the kids are firing playground balls around the room simulating atoms in electricity, and are answering questions about what exactly is happening in the simulation.
The idea behind Mr. Dude stuck with me, and when I became a teacher I swore to myself I would always strive to be like him. Of course I have had my fair share of "Mr. Dudikoff" days where I could tell my class just wasn't very engaging, and I have also gotten off track sometimes and morphed into something similar to "The Dude". When I hit the combination right though, man is it fun to be a teacher!
Sadly, I know too many "Mr. Dudikoffs" out there that make school barely tolerable, and many classrooms are run by "The Dude" as well, trying to be a friend first and pushing standards and content far down the priority list. How do we fix it? Well, that's tough. Maybe making this episode of Recess mandatory viewing in teacher prep classes in Universities across the country would be a good start... or, maybe teachers could just make a commitment to honestly evaluate their teaching practices and find small simple ways to increase engagement and fun into lessons that just aren't holding student interest.
Author
John Honish:
8th grade Social Studies Teacher
DeForest Area Middle School
DeForest, WI, USA
Alter ego: educational hip hop superstar "H-Dub"
President of the D.P.R.H.
FANschool commissioner and presenter
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