Speed Dating

I thought I'd end with a fun activity that I saw at Tyee last week.

The teacher stood at the white board with an overhead projector and revealed, one by one, a series of questions based on The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which the class had just finished reading. The list included a variety of questions: some interpretive, some strictly factual and some very open-ended.

Describe the narrator.
Who is Penelope?
What is at stake during the basketball game?
What genre is this work?
What did you get out of reading this book?

The students were seated in two rows of eight or nine chairs facing each other. The teacher would read out a question and allow the students a few minutes--not too long--to discuss it. After a pretty short interval, the instructor would call out, "Switch!" and one of the rows would shift over a seat, creating a new set of pairs. The process would repeat, punctuated by crisp, non-negotiable cues to "Switch!"

This was a small-ish class, with a significant number of students who spoke English but whose first languages were Spanish, Amharic or Vietnamese. The overhead enabled everyone to verify they'd understood the question. The unveiling of the question also contributed a certain element of suspense.

At the end of the list, the teacher reviewed the questions with the whole class, calling on students to share the answers they'd just developed in pairs. It was a requirement that each student paraphrase the last response before answering the next question. This kept the students responsible for listening to each other and for putting other people's ideas into words.

The teacher ended the activity by naming positive behavior he'd noticed while the students were working in pairs: "Santiago, I heard you pronounce the word 'denoument' perfectly." "Ali, I heard you encouraging your partner to speak." "Maria, you seemed really comfortable with literary terms when you were describing Junior's fight with Rowdy." I was struck by this matter-of-fact coaching. The teacher let each of these kids know they'd been seen without heaping on a whole lot of "praise."

Tyee Visit

Last week Melody and I visited the Tyee Educational Complex, which is a cluster of three small high schools housed on a campus in the Highline school district. We both came away impressed with the the professionalism, dynamism and strong chops of the teachers we saw there--and also a bit sobered by the challenges that these teachers take on.

In the classes I saw, the students appeared engaged and productive and often quite communicative with the strange lady visiting their classroom. This was pretty impressive just weeks before the end of the school year. It is perhaps more impressive if you consider that between 65-75% of the students qualify for Free or Reduced Price lunches. One of the students I met had had to leave school in October, moved back a few weeks ago and is ineligible to receive credit for this academic year. He comes to school because he likes it. Global has informally agreed to this arrangement, as has the teacher who corrects his papers and works with him.

In order to serve a broad variety of students, both ACE and Global have adopted a workshop model, which builds in a lot of room for student choice. Instead of having a "class novel" which serves as the point of departure for organizing the class, students work towards a "learning outcome" for each unit: for example, Use Academic Discourse to Articulate, Revise and Defend My Thinking about a Book--or Use Outside Sources of Information to Help Me Understand a Current Event. The teachers I spoke to acknowledged that assembling a library for this model requires an initial investment of time. Though you don't have to read all the texts concurrently with the students, you have to be familiar with the material--and it works best if the material is organized according to some sort of unifying principle: e.g., Love Stories or Identity or Social Justice. You then create small groups to discuss and write about the texts they have chosen. (This model also works just fine with using a single class text.)

The main virtue of this system, of course, is how nicely it can accommodate differentiation--working with a broad range of learning profiles in the same classroom. In a mini-lesson (10-15 minutes), all of the students are introduced to the same purpose--Understand Dramatic Structure--and given a task to help them achieve this purpose: apply Freytag's model to a text. You then allow them time for independent work, which can be organized in whatever way best meets the students' needs: students working on their own, working in pairs, working in small groups or signing up for conference time with the teacher. The period ends with a Share Out of some kind, which makes the students responsible for a result and gives them experience presenting and defending an idea.

Obviously, the workshop model requires a double period to work with. It is a bit of a radical model in that significantly prioritizes skills over content and minimizes teacher-centered time.

Teaching So Students Remember

The first TESOL workshop I went to was given by Kathy Olson, an educational consultant who reminded me of a veteran elementary school teacher--in a goood way. Her presentation outlined ways for teachers to capitalize on basic brain-research findings.

Naturally, she cited the alarming statistic that most of us forget as much as 80% of what we read and 90% of what we hear within 24 hours. However, she offered lots of ideas for working with this in the classroom.

Her first suggestion was about attention. She is WAY into stimuli, the more intense the better. She points out that students don't learn anything if you don't have their attention...so she recommends music, movement, humor, emotions, costumes, surprise. She points out that most of us love to guess and apparently, we try harder to remember information we've guessed wrong.

Olson recommends visuals, as vision trumps all other senses in the impact it makes on the brain. Even simple things like color can make a measurable difference: colored paper, highlights and of course pictures. (Evidently, groups using illustrated texts performed 36% better than groups using text alone.) She touted the great return you get by accessing prior knowledge. Connecting new information to information already stored in long-term memory enables the brain to process more effectively.

Her main idea is that once you have the students' attention and introduce some new material, it is important to "rehearse" or "manipulate" the information right away. This will move the new input from short term memory--where it will stay for fewer than 24 hours--to long-term memory, where it actually becomes useful to the student.

She offered lots of ideas about ways to do this: paraphrasing, summarizing, personalizing, predicting, repeating, mapping, classifying--especially classifying. The brain loves identifying patterns, charting differences and similarities, connecting ideas to each other or to personal experiences. I tried and failed to attach her powerpoint, but if you're interested, look her up on the web (Kathy Olson and "Teaching So Students Remember").

At times during her presentation, Kathy seemed a little grade school--or perhaps old-school: costumes? Really? However, I overheard a bunch of juniors yesterday fondly reminiscing about the 9th grade lecture Daniel gave dressed as Theodora of the Byzantine Empire. It's true that they remembered the costume better than the lecture, but at least two out of three remembered that there was a Byzantine Empire, with Theodora and Justinian on the throne.

Facing History

JB recently sent me a link to Facing History, which is an amazing resource for Humanities teachers. It offers ideas on everything from teaching strategies to lesson plans to complete units on topics which are already part of our curriculum: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Identity, Stereoptypes, Civic Participation. (The list goes on and on.)

As part of his work with Teacher Education, JB saw a colleague in South Africa present some of the techniques featured on this website. These included a "Quaker Read," a "Shadow Read" and a "Silent Discussion."

The Quaker Read involves reading a text together in class silently, taking time to note words or passages which stand out. Students then offer up their impressions in the manner of a Quaker meeting--if they feel so moved. This sharing can be shaped into a full-on class discussion.

Shadow Reading involves dividing the class into pairs and reading two primary source documents. On the day JB was there, the pairs read two accounts of growing up in the USA in the 50's and 60's: one from the point of view of a black woman from Baton Rouge, LA and one written by a man who grew up in Enid, OK and Hiram OH. Each member of the pair read one of these accounts and responded in writing to a short set of parallel questions. The pair then shared their answers. Finally, they collaborated in writing a script for an imagined meeting between the two authors.

The Silent Discussion format also involved pairing students and having them respond in writing, this time to a primary source which could be either an image or a short text. The pairs wrote their reactions down on a piece of paper without speaking. Maintaining their silence, the pair left their work on the table and circulated around the room, reading and contributing to other "silent discussions." This too was followed by a full-on class discussion.

You can imagine how rich any of these formats could be. Thank you, JB, for sending this suggestion from Cape Town. We look forward to hearing lots more from you when you rejoin us in Quint V.

Retreat Wrap-up

We just had our annual department retreat and I thought it would be useful to post the results so that we can keep these ideas in mind as we move forward with our planning.

One of the goals of the retreat was to identify qualities of a Successful Integration Experience. It was an interesting review.

Folks confessed to a certain amount of fatigue with the amount of planning which goes into each activity; a consensus seemed to emerge that intermittent single or double-period activities may not deliver much value proportionate to the preparation they require. Support seemed to grow for more sustained projects that bring groups of students together for longer periods of time (at least 3 days). These longer projects have the virtue of being deeply woven into the curriculum instead of just tucked in the corners. This is important in terms of making the activities feel authentic and relevant and not just "tacked on." Because more sustained projects bring the same students together for several days, they offer more opportunities for students to get used to each other and for the teacher to assess and improve the model. Best of all, these projects may not require much more team-planning time than activities which only last one period.

There was also some discomfort expressed with student groups which are organized wholly according to teacher criteria. Might it increase student investment if their interests factored into the way the groups were organized? Would international students participate more actively if there were more of them in each group--and only one or two regular program kids? This would mean that some groups would be domestic-students only, but it might lead to international students taking the lead in the groups where they found themselves in the majority.

In general, some of the commonalities of integration projects which felt successful were:

• These are substantial projects which unfold over a period of days
  


• They are highly structured.
  


• Each student plays a specific role, which they have to prepare on their own.


• Each student is evaluated for their own contribution.

In addition, we also clarified our priorities in terms of the kinds of integration experiences we want to offer in Humanities and in terms of the skills we feel it makes sense to emphasize for English Language Learners in our department. We all acknowledged that it is somewhat artificial to separate these skills. As Adina and John observed, ideally, we would be creating a shared background for our students by offering all of these experiences and skills in concert.

However, I pushed folks to prioritize what is most important to emphasize, given the limits on our time and given that Humanities, while important, is not the only opportunity international students have to arrive at these outcomes.

Overwhelmingly, it seems, the department would like to see skills be our first priority, then content understanding and finally a shared experience.

In terms of skills, many commented on the inter-connection between reading and writing, listening and speaking. However, it was interesting that reading and writing were the clear top priorities, with reading coming in first according to all voters, except one. Speaking came in third and listening was in last place in terms of how the Humanities program should focus its efforts when working with international students.

New Sections

In the Upper School, we'll all have a new group of students next week. There are advantages and disadvantages to mixing things up in this way, but a clear consequence is that teachers need to re-establish class expectations, just like we did in September. As Ellen never fails to mention, these first two weeks are an important window. It's always easier to start off a bit strict. I have concluded over the years that students like a bit of rigor in the classroom. It lets them feel that they are stepping up to something, instead of just carrying on in a comfortable slouchy way. It's a balance, of course. You want your classroom to be somewhere your students enjoy being.

I was reviewing the files that Heather created last year and came across a number of ideas for working with new students. Daniel sometimes groups the students in a few different configurations on the first day so that the class has seating options during the quint: students arrange themselves alphabetically by first name, alphabetically by last name and also in the order of their birthdays. During the first few days of class, Tim sometimes does a version of Two Truths and a Lie: students write down on an index card two facts about themselves and a falsehood. These can be read aloud and guessed at, several right away and the rest from time to time during the quint. I think I will avail myself of Scott's "Find Someone Who" idea: I will distribute index cards with names of figures we have studied written on them and have students find a partner whose figure is linked to their own: Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, for example, or Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas. The pairs of students can then explain the connection. This enables us to do a warm-up while also reviewing the year so far. For me, it makes more sense to do this mixer on the second day of class. For one thing, the content of the curriculum is serious at the beginning of Quint III and the tone of our first meeting needs to reflect this. Secondly, having a focused and business-like first day is one of the ways I implement Ellen's September reminder about setting expectations. I find the energy at school tends to be high and loose enough on the first day without my doing anything to stir it up.

In Praise of Primary Sources

The other day, I spied a book on Daren's shelf: Aspects of Western Civilization: Problems and Sources in History, edited by Perry Rogers. As I was flipping through this text, I was reminded of the value of primary sources. Primary sources provide students with a strong particular viewpoint on history. Purportedly objective or blatantly biased, they offer a vivid picture of a slice of time. And best of all, many primary source documents are short--or can be excerpted.

Recently, we included a New Deal cartoon from one of Daniel's lectures on an 11th grade test. Students were asked to analyze the point of view expressed in the drawing: what issue is this artist referencing? what is the cartoonist's critique?

On a more sober note, consider the Balfour Declaration:

His majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

This single sentence is a goldmine of information which students can discover for themselves in a fairly short amount of time.

Decoding primary source documents can easily be turned into a hands-on collaborative exercise. Besides their inherent value, primary source activities offer a low-cost way to reduce homework load on any given night. They support all kinds of productive classroom activities that require no preparation for the students--and they can really animate material presented in lecture.

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School has a huge selection of primary sources from 4000BCE to now. I have a few other sources for primary sources in the "Random Great Stuff" section of my Teacher Page, though these are mostly geared to the 20th century. The ABC-CLIO database that Nancy is test-driving this year includes primary sources for almost any unit. Our Northwest School Library also has (among other things) a multi-volume set of primary source documents entitled Daily Life through World History in Primary Documents and a Witness to History series which features lots of primary sources as well. See Nancy for other primary sources.

Elements of Successful Integration

This week during our department meeting, we had a summit between the Humanities and International departments to review the first year of integration and to set goals for the coming year. As part of this conversation, we brainstormed various activities that had been successful with groups of domestic and international students. We discovered that they had certain elements in common:

• an opportunity to prepare

• clear goals for every task
  

• opportunities for each participant to contribute
  

• some form of accountability for each participant
  

• grids, charts, graphic or visual organizers

• opportunities for hands-on work

These are elements to keep in mind when you are planning classes for a mix of international and domestic students.

Architectural Tour

Today I went with the 10th grade on a walking tour of public architecture in Seattle. We visited Town Hall, the Seattle Public Library and the Court House.Again, the students worked within their cohort groups, walking downtown in groups of 8-9.

At Town Hall, students identified Neoclassical elements in the building's architecture and discussed how these elements served the building's functions as meeting place and as a place of worship).

On the steps of the courthouse, the students considered the strikingly different buildings on both sides of 5th Avenue--the library and the courthouse. They brainstormed adjectives as they took in the buildings in their sites; there was lively disagreement within the groups. (Some students love the exuberance and edginess of the library; some students find it confusing and repellent.)

They also considered how the architectural styles of the buildings serve or do not serve the functions of the building. Some students appreciated the rationality and seriousness of the courthouse facade; some considered it forbidding . Everyone commented that the Seattle Public Library seemed to want to convey a very non-traditional message about the nature of information and knowledge.

Though it took a while to get to the buildings, it was very useful to see them as they actually interact with the city. Simply showing some slides would have been faster but would not have captured the dramatic way the library juts out over the street nor the striking separation of the courthouse from the hectic life of the street.

Qu'est-ce que c'est "un cohort?"

Cohorts

A cohort is a group of 6-7 students, a mix of male-female, international-domestic and when know-able, extroverted-introverted personality types. Cohorts are assembled from all the different sections and will be grouped together all year, both in academic settings and on camping/field trips so the students get very used to working with each other. Today I had an opportunity to observe a cohort in an academic setting.

Name cards were provided so that the students had no trouble remembering each others’ names. They got seated in their small groups and set to work on a structured task, based on the previous night’s homework assignment.

• Students took turns reporting their responses to a set of three questions and other members of the group took notes on what was being said. This kept all the students active and gave each a turn to speak.
• When they’d finished this, the students were then asked to divide the responses they’d heard into three categories.
• The teachers circulated and answered questions.

Students made excellent observations like, “Democracy consults the general will” and “Civil rights are granted by the Constitution” and they asked great questions like:

“Where do Human Rights come from?”
“How would you discover that?”
“What if you’re an escaped convict on the loose?”

I heard great discussions on-going for a good 25 minutes—all the way up until 5 minutes before lunch. It doesn’t get much better than that.