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Does your school have a guaranteed and viable curriculum? How would you know? (Infographic)

A few months ago, we began working with a new principal who was in the process of getting to know her school. She knew that students came to school ready to learn, teachers were prepared to teach, and families were supportive of their school. The school was a welcoming place that served as a focus for community activities. But despite these positive supports, she explained, students were not meeting learning expectations. Academic progress in both English language arts and mathematics were below the state average, and she was concerned that families might soon lose confidence in the school’s ability to prepare students for the next level of learning.

During our consultation with this principal, we asked her if she knew whether the school has a guaranteed and viable curriculum (GVC). She wasn’t sure how to answer, so she responded with a question, “How would I know if the school has a guaranteed and viable curriculum?”

To determine whether a school has a GVC, we must first describe it. A “guaranteed” curriculum is often defined as a mechanism through which all students have an equal opportunity (time and access) to learn rigorous content. This requires a school-wide (or district-wide) agreement and common understanding of the essential content that all students need to know, understand, and be able to do. The word “all” needs emphasis; a guaranteed curriculum promotes equity, giving all children equal opportunity to learn essential content, and to provide this opportunity, curricular materials and instructional approaches must be grounded in research, implemented with fidelity, and must include vertical as well as horizontal alignment. Curriculum development is often regarded as a district function. However, schools (through teachers) implement the curriculum, and, if implementation varies significantly from teacher to teacher, then student outcomes will also likely vary significantly from classroom to classroom. These days, teachers have access to a variety of curriculum resources, such as open educational resources, playlists, digital textbooks, and teacher-developed curriculum. Having access to options is a good thing, but having many choices does not ensure all choices are well aligned to the school’s GVC.

For a curriculum to be “viable,” there must be adequate time for teachers to teach the content and for students to learn the content. A viable curriculum eliminates the supplementary or “nice to know” content. Does this mean that a GVC is a scripted, rigid curriculum? No! Does this mean that students and teachers are confined to a lockstep process of teaching and learning? Absolutely not! Teachers must have the flexibility to meet student needs through different methods of content delivery, helping students dive deeper into their passions. At its essence, a GVC represents the core non-negotiables of student learning. It’s what schools and teachers commit to providing for all students.

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To help school leaders and leadership teams self-assess the “guaranteed and viable” status of their curriculum, my colleagues and I developed the following questions that can be used by any school.

1. Does our school have an agreement and common understanding of the essential content that all of our students need to know, understand, and be able to do?
A principal might find written guidance, such as scope and sequence charts, aligned common assessments, and instructional guidance to help answer this question, and although written documents offer a good place to start, these documents might not reflect implementation in the classroom. Learning how teachers plan for instruction might be more informative. Are teachers involved in collaborative planning and is student work discussed during grade-level or department meetings? Additionally, during classroom visits, are students engaged in learning experiences requiring similar levels of rigor? During collaborative planning meetings teachers ask questions such as: 1) How will this learning activity help students access the essential content?; 2) Does this activity require the level of cognitive rigor described in the standards?; and 3) How will we know that students have learned the essential content?

2. Are performance criteria established and communicated to all of our stakeholders?
Having a mutual understanding among teachers as to what student performance demonstrates mastery, partial mastery, or entry level learning of essential content is a critical component of a GVC. Without this common understanding of performance criteria, students across a grade level or course could have widely different performance expectations.

As with question 1, a principal might look for written documentation and observe teacher practice to inform this question. For example, do teachers use common tools, such as learning guides and rubrics, to share performance criteria with students/families? Do students track their own progress toward learning goals and understand their strengths and areas for improvement? Do teachers engage in calibration exercises where a group of teachers assess one piece of student work individually and then discuss variations of teacher interpretations of performance?

3. Does our school have a process for monitoring implementation of the GVC?
To answer this question, a principal might look for established routines and processes. For example, are regular meetings established to review student progress data? During student data discussions, teachers might ask questions such as: 1) Are we on track to help all students learn the essential content?; and 2) What evidence shows we’re on track? If we’re not on track, what steps should we take?

Additionally, mechanisms should be in place to obtain teacher feedback on implementation of the GVC. Feedback can be gleaned through surveys, polls, or through collegial meetings in which teacher teams discuss implementation challenges and review student progress. Most importantly, when teacher feedback is collected, how is it addressed? Teachers must know that their input is valued and acted upon.

4. Does our school have structures that provide ongoing support to our teachers and school leaders for implementing the curriculum with fidelity?
For many teachers, implementation with fidelity can be a nebulous concept, and this is where a tool such as an innovation configuration (IC) map can be quite useful. IC maps clearly articulate stages of implementation so that teachers can distinguish between high, moderate, and low implementation levels. This tool helps teachers identify their own personal level of implementation and then take steps to increase implementation fidelity.

Ongoing implementation support for teachers and school leaders might also include allocated time for collaborative planning with colleagues. In fact, such support might be in response to feedback provided by teachers. For example, if teachers find that students perceive certain curriculum topics as lacking relevance, ongoing support might include collegial time for a deep dive into that section of the curriculum. Teachers could identify ways to better engage students and help students connect personally with the topics and underlying concepts.

Establishing and maintaining a GVC is a collegial process that requires established protocols and routines to keep the GVC agreement alive and meaningful to all stakeholders. It requires open dialog about learning activities, performance criteria, and student progress as well as the willingness of each stakeholder to reflect on their contribution to the process.

Kathleen Dempsey has more than 30 years of experience as a teacher and administrator. At McREL, she helps schools, districts, and state education agencies with strategic vision, program development, and delivery of training and coaching focusing on academic standards, curriculum, and instruction. She is also the director of the North Central Comprehensive Center, a federally funded regional center operated by McREL that builds states’ capacity to implement and sustain improvement initiatives.

A quality curriculum review will help your school or district refine its areas of effectiveness and identify high-leverage opportunities for improvement. McREL can help you ensure alignment of your curriculum, instruction, assessments, and standards, and can help you build the processes and protocols to make a GVC a reality in your schools. Learn more.

Teachers in Triad Teams: Three is not a crowd

Intense focus on accountability and teacher effectiveness in recent years has expanded the thinking around instructional coaching. While instructional coaching occurs at nearly every school, the purpose of coaching and the formats used vary widely among schools. It’s not surprising that such variety exists given that, while research suggests coaching supports the success of improvement initiatives (Hubbard, Mehan, & Stein, 2006; Stein & D’Amico, 2002), little evidence exists that explains how it happens.

What we do know, from researchers like Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers (2002), is that the most effective professional learning for teachers includes a combination of different types of learning opportunities: introduction of research and theory; demonstration of new practices; opportunities to apply new knowledge through deliberate practice; and instructional coaching that includes ongoing, descriptive feedback. Of these, Joyce and Showers found coaching was the one learning opportunity that had to be present for teachers to translate new knowledge and skills into their practice.

To support and improve the practices of all teachers in a continuous, systemic way, teachers must not only be coached but also become coaches—in other words, coaching happens from the inside out within an organization. An inside-out approach to instructional coaching is grounded in the belief that teacher-led teams are best prepared to respond to the instructional needs of students, and that using this approach better supports and motivates teachers in strengthening their instructional practice. With or without guidance from an instructional coach, teachers work collaboratively to identify and address problems of practice. This inside-out approach leverages existing “bright spots” within a school, using them as stepping stones for all teachers—from novice to experienced—to reach higher levels of performance.

Peer-to-peer coaching allows all teachers to investigate more closely issues that matter to them, resulting in deeper content knowledge, more proficient skill sets, and the transferring of knowledge and skills into practice. The inside-out approach is based on the idea that peer-to-peer coaching positively changes the trajectory for systematic, lasting improvements in teacher practice and student learning. The research on peer-coaching configurations strengthens the case for the use of triad teams to expand teacher discourse and learning (Hopkins, Munro, & Craig, 2011).

In Leadership for Powerful Learning (2015), authors David Hopkins and Wayne Craig describe the power of teachers working in triads. The opportunity for individual teachers to engage in collegial work with two other peers broadens the experiences of the team members, expands their professional conversations, and allows for multiple perspectives about topics and solutions. Teachers work in assigned or self-selected groups of three, taking turns participating in three distinct roles: coach, coachee, and observer. The critical role of “observer” adds an outside perspective that might be lost if teachers worked only in pairs, allowing teachers an opportunity to effectively provide descriptive feedback and ask skillful questions that encourage more reflective processing. This format requires active, rather than passive, involvement and gives all participants experience in giving and receiving feedback, and observing others’ teaching practices.

Benefits of working in triads:

The primary function of triad, peer coaching is to learn through observing and help colleagues by providing information about how students respond—not to give expert advice.
While working in triad, peer-coaching teams, teachers learn from each other as they plan instruction, develop materials, observe each other working with students, and reflect on how their own behavior influences student learning.
Peer-coaching triads commit to collecting and using data—to determine how to monitor implementation of new teaching/learning strategies, and how they will then determine the impact of the strategies on students and student learning.

Peer-to-peer coaching configurations need not be confined to grade-level or specific content-area teams; teacher teams are equally effective when built on common goals or needs. Once teams are in place, participants are responsible for building expertise among team members and reinforcing the elements of the inside-out approach.

Any number of actions can help improve working conditions and provide better support for teachers—from creating a respectful, trusting culture and establishing mentoring programs, to decreasing workload and helping with classroom management. But an inside-out approach to instructional coaching offers something no other action can: ongoing opportunities for all staff to receive the professional guidance they need and contribute to the growth of others.

Consulting director Dr. Bj Stone is a co-author of the second editions of McREL’s Classroom Instruction that Works (2012) and A Handbook for Classroom Instruction that Works (2012). A former middle and high school science teacher and central office administrator, she now trains, coaches, and consults with K–12 educators and district leaders on research-based instructional strategies, vocabulary instruction, curriculum development, and assessment design.

McREL can help your school or district create effective teacher teams that use peer observations and feedback to address specific instructional goals and spark innovative practices to improve overall instructional practice and support better classroom learning and management. Read more about our instructional coaching services and watch Dr. Bj Stone’s webinar on Powerful Instructional Coaching.

References:

Hopkins, D. & Craig, W. (2015). Leadership for powerful learning. Denver, CO: McREL International.

Hopkins, D., Munro, J., & Craig, W. (2011). Powerful learning: a strategy for systemic educational improvement. Camberwell, Victoria, Australia: ACER Press.

Hubbard, L., Mehan, H., & Stein, M. K. (2006). Reform as learning: School reform, organizational culture, and community politics in San Diego. New York: Routledge.

Joyce, B. & Showers, B. (2002). Student achievement through staff development (3rd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Stein, M. K., & D’Amico, L. (2002). Inquiry at the crossroads of policy and learning: A study of a district-wide literacy initiative. Teachers College Record, 104, 1313–1344.

Informal classroom observations – not just for principals anymore

Over the past 10 years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of principals and central office administrators about their successes and challenges with conducting informal classroom walkthroughs—observations that are done for professional development coaching and monitoring rather than for formal evaluation purposes. While many of these school and district leaders say that there are benefits to doing these walkthroughs—such as improving PD effectiveness, increasing collaborative staff dialogue, and building a purposeful school community—they often struggle to find time to conduct the walkthroughs because of how much else is on their plate during busy school days.

A solution I’ve seen many successful principals employ over the last few years is to bring other observers into the fold, engaging instructional coaches, peer coaches, and other teacher leaders in the process. What these principals found is that sharing walkthrough responsibilities with these additional staff not only saved time, but it instilled higher levels of trust and transparency throughout their building and helped more of their instructional team members understand and rally around common goals and initiatives.

Benefits for coaches and teachers

Walkthroughs provide real-time feedback and an opportunity for staff to learn and grow by observing their peers’ classrooms and having structured peer coaching conversations. Staff become stronger leaders, improve their own practices, collaborate and share ideas and suggestions, and provide feedback to their peers, creating a collegial environment that supports professional growth and improvement. Protocols and tools that leverage the data can help staff deepen their professional dialogue using evidence, develop and achieve SMART goals, and self-reflect on their practices for professional growth.

Conduct video walkthroughs for coaching

If lack of face-to-face time impedes the ability to conduct walkthroughs, teachers can record a classroom lesson and send the video to designated staff members for time-stamped formative feedback, not just compliments and praise, on their instruction. This gives teachers an opportunity to receive feedback, but also to self-reflect on practice—crucial to their own instructional growth—by seeing the lesson objectively. Follow-up coaching conversations, in which the lesson is discussed, feedback is shared, and suggestions for more effective classroom delivery are provided (a glow and a grow), can help increase teaching efficacy.

Driving better PD planning, monitoring, and outcomes

Ultimately, the data gleaned from your informal walkthroughs will help your coaching and leadership teams better determine the professional development needs of your staff, gauge the value of PD sessions already delivered, and document outcomes needed for grant proposals and district reports. Perhaps even more importantly, the honest conversations your team has about the walkthrough findings can also introduce ideas for systemic changes within the school, creating a growth-oriented culture among staff members.

A supportive, visionary leader can build a strong team of instructional coaches and teachers who can help ALL teachers identify what they are doing well and areas where they need support.

Lisa Maxfield is a program manager at McREL who works with clients of McREL’s EmpowerED Suite, which includes the Power Walkthrough® informal walkthrough software, on effective protocols for supporting educators’ professional growth. Listening closely to clients’ needs and successes, she also works with the application’s developers on enhancements to the walkthrough platform’s templates, ease-of-use, and dashboard reporting functionality.

McREL’s EmpowerED Suite helps educators, from the classroom to the central office, maximize their potential to improve professional practices and make a difference in student achievement. The EmpowerED Suite, which contains five powerful applications—Power Walkthrough^®, Coaching, Reflection, Evaluation, and Survey—collectively helps an entire school or district build a shared language and focus to deepen professional growth, expand skills, and improve instruction. Power Walkthrough can be used as an individual component or as part of the complete Suite. Learn more about McREL’s EmpowerED Suite.

Are great school leaders born or made?

When we think of great leaders, we often think of those who seem as if they were “born to lead.” But is leadership really a fixed trait, or is it an acquired skill? In the May issue of Educational Leadership, McREL’s Bryan Goodwin and Heather Hein explore the research on how school leaders become great leaders.

Recent studies support the idea that leaders’ performance does indeed change over time—though not always for the better. One study of 197 elementary schools found that significant changes in principals’ performance were linked to better school improvement capacity and higher student growth rates (Heck & Hallinger, 2010). However, a similar study of 39 elementary principals found that leaders changed how they spent their time over a three-year period—but that schools where principals focused more on managerial tasks had higher achievement, while those where principals focused more on instructional leadership had lower achievement.

Goodwin and Hein note that the results of the second study were correlational and not causal, and that perhaps low performance prompted the principals in those schools to focus on instructional leadership, rather than the other way around. How effective a leader is, it seems, depends largely on the situation. For example, Fiedler (1997) found that, in high-stress situations, experienced leaders were more effective, but in low-stress situations, those same leaders tended to rely on their experience and how they’ve always done things, which led to performance plateaus.

One final piece to consider, say the authors, is the role of coaching. Studies clearly show that principals who are coached by more experienced administrators become more reflective and proactive and perform better. In the end, Goodwin and Hein conclude, effective leadership—regardless of context—appears to require a balance of nature, nurture, and guidance.

Read the entire column.

Posted by McREL International.

Differences, not disabilities

Students who learn differently from most have often been defined as having disabilities, which has a profound effect on their experiences in school, their relationships with others, and even their sense of identity. But a growing movement is seeking to shift the paradigm from learning disabilities to learning differences—recognizing that no two students learn exactly the same and that all students deserve an education based on their strengths, not their deficits.

In the April issue of Educational Leadership, McREL’s Bryan Goodwin and Heather Hein examine these differences through the lens of learning styles, which focus on the ways students gather, process, and evaluate information—and how that can inform curriculum, instruction, and assessments.

Learning styles have been around for decades, the authors explain, but little hard evidence proves their existence, let alone their impact on learning. However, the concept continues to influence educators. The Every Student Succeeds Act, for example, calls for states to apply the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)—a framework for developing flexible learning environments that accommodate individual learning differences—when planning assessments and instruction. Why?

Perhaps it’s that the research has yet to catch up with an idea that, at its core, makes common sense. Learning styles have been hard for researchers to pin down: More than 70 different frameworks exist, much of the data relies on unreliable self-reporting, and the styles themselves appear to be changeable (i.e., people can have multiple styles and switch among them). However, say Goodwin and Hein, a new generation of neuroscience studies are using brain scans and eye tracking to support different learning preferences.

The key takeaway for educators, the authors conclude, is to reflect on their approach to instruction planning. Do you plan based on how you prefer to learn, or on how your students prefer to learn? Do you consider the preferences of some of your students or all of them? Getting inside your students’ heads is, ultimately, what learning styles—and effective teaching—is all about.

Read the entire column.

Posted by McREL International.

Can teacher curiosity assist in whole school improvement?

Countless times throughout my career as a teacher and school leader, I’ve paused to reflect and ask myself a question related to the work at hand. Why did I plan this lesson? Why aren’t some students making any progress? What is that team doing that’s leading to such great results?

Most educators are accustomed to pausing and reflecting on what they’re doing. Similarly, our youngest students ask many more questions over the course of a day than do their high school counterparts. At times, the questions might seem endless. Why does the sun hurt my eyes? Why do we learn math? What will happen if I put these wooden blocks in water? You’ve probably noticed, however, that this innate curiosity often tapers off as children grow older.

Curiosity is contagious. If I want others to be curious, I must, myself, demonstrate curiosity. I read widely and often engage in conversations with people from diverse backgrounds to gain insight into their beliefs about our world. Since my recent move from Australia to the U.S., I’ve connected with people—both inside and outside of education—to learn more about a concept, policy, or even the purpose of an activity or task that was foreign to me. These conversations have been incredibly enlightening, but they’ve also further highlighted for me how important being curious is to learning and improvement, no matter where you are on your path of lifelong learning. Our roles as educators and school leaders require us to continually nurture student curiosity, and also to revive teacher curiosity about their own everyday work.

As a classroom teacher, I encouraged students to ask questions related to our topic, using their musings as a springboard for our learning. Student curiosity was a catalyst for learning engagement. When I became an assistant principal, I continued this practice and encouraged teachers to ask questions and search for answers. Why were we using a certain program or textbook? What does this data actually tell us? What is that team doing that produces such great classroom engagement? After a short time, our teachers began to ask deeper questions, specifically about student learning and growth. Their initial curiosity led them to more closely examine the academic performance of students in grade levels, cohorts, and as individuals, and they wanted to know what teaching practices led to the best outcomes for students.

Together, we reviewed our existing professional learning community structure to establish three professional learning teams, each with its own focus. These teams met 8–10 times per school year to discuss and analyze a range of data collected from across the school, using the teachers’ questions to focus on student achievement in literacy and numeracy and to investigate the effectiveness of our school-based supports for student well-being and engagement. Membership on the teams was strategically engineered by our teachers to ensure that each grade level was represented and that each team included at least one specialist teacher. Reflecting on our data, the teams highlighted practices that they believed led to positive results. With guidance, they read and compared research on the practices that showed evidence of improving student outcomes. At the end of the school year, the teams referred to their research and findings to recommend future teacher practices and whole school goals for the next school year, engaging teachers in a process of continuous improvement to affect student learning.

Our schoolwide peer observation program also sprang from teacher curiosity. It began with ongoing classroom walkthroughs and observations conducted by our school principal, our two lead teachers, and me. Periodically, at our whole staff briefing, we shared our observations, highlighting bright spots that illustrated how high quality teacher practices demonstrably influenced student achievement. Our teachers became increasingly curious about what their fellow teachers were doing that resulted in positive growth for their students. Most of our staff asked if they, too, could participate in classroom observations to learn from their colleagues. We prioritized funding to develop a whole-school program for peer observations, focusing on building the capacities of every teacher using a research-based method for observation and feedback. Over time, we observed high quality practices becoming shared practices, reducing variability, and increasing student achievement levels across the school.

By embracing our teacher’s professional curiosity about effective practice, we created sustainable structures and processes that allowed teachers to work more collaboratively. By providing opportunities for teachers to increase their individual and collective efficacy through an extended course of collaboration, observation, and feedback, we fed their innate drive to learn and improve. Each activity served our shared purpose to ensure every child experienced success, and reinforced our shared belief that every child, with the right support, could learn.

What are your teachers curious about that might improve student performance at your school?

McREL helps schools and districts develop curiosity-based professional learning experiences for teachers. Learn more about McREL’s Curiosity and Powerful Learning and contact us to get started today.

McREL consultant Tonia Gibson is a former Australian teacher and school leader. At McREL, she focuses on Curiosity and Powerful Learning and implementing an inside-out approach to development for sustainable and continuous improvement.

What does it really take to personalize learning?

Emma is an 8th grader who loves horses. For a school project on animal behavior, she learned all about their intelligence and complex social dynamics—and then, with her teacher’s guidance, designed an experiment to see whether horses were smart enough to learn how to read. More specifically, she showed horses one board painted with a circle and another board painted with a rectangle to try to teach them to choose the circle in order to get a treat.

This is personalized learning at its best: Students learn what they need to learn (how to design a science experiment) while getting to choose how to go about it based on their interests (horses) and curiosity (are they smart enough to read?). But, asks McREL’s Bryan Goodwin in his latest Research Matters column in Educational Leadership, how effective is this kind of learning? Does it work for everyone? What does it take to implement it well?

Goodwin points to some promising studies that show benefits, particularly for low-achieving students. A 2015 RAND Corp. study, for example, compared achievement levels of 11,000 low-income and minority students in personalized learning environments with that of similar peers nationwide and found positive effect sizes for both mathematics (0.27) and reading (0.19). Perhaps most impressive was the fact that students who started off below average on national assessments were scoring above average just three years later.

But, Goodwin says, there’s a flip side: Rigorous research is limited and, in some cases, studies showed no effects or even negative effects of personalized learning on achievement—possibly the result of uneven implementation. For personalized learning to succeed, Goodwin cautions, a number of shifts must occur:

Teachers need to re-imagine themselves less as information providers and more as learning coaches
Curriculum must be rewritten as competencies or pathways that students can master at their own pace
Schools must embrace a “fail forward” mentality, allowing students to try and fail and try again

Only then can personalized learning help all students learn not only what they need to learn but also what they most want to learn—like whether horses can read (which, it turns out, they can).

Read the entire column.

Quality Questioning: Replacing monologue with dialogue

Who does most of the talking in classrooms? Whether you look to research findings or to your own experience, you’re likely to draw the same conclusion: teachers! In his book, Visible Learning for Teachers (2012), John Hattie laments this fact and exhorts teachers to adopt a mind frame that leads them to choose dialogue, not monologue. But how are teachers to engineer this challenging transformation? Begin with the acknowledgement that dialogue doesn’t just happen: It results from planning and forming teacher-student partnerships to create a shared understanding of the what and why of dialogue. Teacher planning and the purposeful engagement of students in this dialogical partnership are keystones to effective questioning as we define it in our book, Quality Questioning: Research-Based Practice to Engage Every Learner, 2nd Ed. (2017).

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Quality questioning is a process that begins with prior planning and involves intentionality in questioning to activate thinking of all students throughout a class period. The “6Ps Framework,” presented in our book, gives definition to this process and serves as a tool for teachers to use in both planning for and reflecting on their questioning practice. Consider the planning questions embedded in the first four components of the Framework: What questions will I ask? How will I engage all students in responding? What cues, prompts, or scaffolds can I offer if students don’t respond completely or correctly? How can I engage students in dialogue that deepens their thinking?

Plan questions that help students connect to content. Too many classroom questions are inert. They fall flat because they fail to ignite student interest or curiosity, to focus student attention, or to communicate a purpose for thinking and responding. They don’t challenge student thinking because a large majority are at the simple recall level. Quality questions catalyze student thinking and engage them in connecting what they think they know to the focus of the question. They invite students to use surface knowledge as they develop deep understandings through problem solving, analyzing or evaluating an issue, creating a new and personal response, or posing a question or wondering. Such questions enliven a lesson and enable students to make their own meaning of the content. When teachers plan 2–4 such questions in advance of class, they take the first step in stimulating dialogue. All questions do not have to be formulated from scratch; you can modify existing questions to meet criteria for quality questions. Access a template you can use to create or adapt questions as part of your lesson design process—ideally through collaboration with colleagues.

Identify response structures that engage all. If we are to move beyond student volunteers responding to our questions one at a time, we must select alternative response structures that are appropriate for our questions and our students. Paired response structures and other collaborative formats provide a context in which all students have opportunities to engage. The likelihood that all will participate in discussions increases when we select protocols that scaffold student participation. Think-Pair-Share provides a structure for pair response. Text-based protocols, including Save the Last Word for Me, scaffold participation and are appropriate for grades 5–12. Matching response structures with questions in advance of class—as a part of lesson design—is key to effective use. Without this advance planning, we too often revert to calling on those with their hands raised.

Be ready to prompt. As part of your lesson planning, anticipate possible student responses to your questions. Why is this be important? When we identify and share common student errors and misconceptions, we can prepare follow-up questions that help scaffold thinking, develop or deepen understanding, and keep a conversation going. Use a planning template designed to support collaborative thinking and planning that produces not only a quality question but also related prompts that we can keep in our hip pockets, just in case we need them.

Allocate time for student questions and dialogue. John Hattie reports that student responses to teacher questions average 2–3 words—or less than 5 seconds—70% of the time (2012, p. 73). He further notes that student questions are almost entirely absent from our classrooms. Think about your students. How many of them elaborate on ideas when responding? Raise their own questions? If the percentage is not as high as you’d like, it may be because so many of us do not make time and space for extended talk that might lead to student questions. We can begin by committing to use both think times 1 and 2—or “wait” times—pausing after questions are posed and before anyone (teacher or student) responds. This strategy affords everyone time to think about what they have to say in response to the initial question (think time 1). Pausing again after a student comment or response provides the speaker time to elaborate (going beyond the first 2–3 words that come to mind!) and gives other students time to process the speaker’s ideas and prepare a response or question (think time 2). Additionally, we can allocate time within our lesson designs for academic conversations, i.e., dialogue, to occur. If we value these outcomes, we need to plan for them.

Partner with students to help them understand the why of dialogue. Planning for the above four dimensions of quality questioning doesn’t ensure that students will engage. Many—we might say most—students choose to opt out of classroom discourse. They may not see the purpose for responding to questions or for engaging in dialogue with their peers. They may lack the skills to participate in extended dialogue. If teachers are to move from monologue to dialogue, students must buy into the shift. And teachers have to set new expectations, help students see the value of participation, and co-create with students a culture in which all students feel comfortable responding and voicing their ideas. Use this guidance for partnering discussions with your students.

It takes more than a magician’s wand to shift one’s classroom from a place where teacher monologue dominates to one where students’ voices are heard and valued. Such a transformation is a process that occurs over time when teachers engage in intentional planning and when they collaborate with their students to create a new set of norms for questioning and learning together.

Jackie Walsh is a co-author of Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learner, 2nd Ed. (2017). Walsh partners with educators across the country to enhance teaching and leading in classrooms, schools, and districts. Her passion and primary area of expertise is questioning—for both student and adult learning. Follow her on Twitter at @Question2Think.

Upcoming webinar on Quality Questioning

Register now for a free webinar hosted by McREL on February 28, 2017, presented by Jackie Walsh and Beth Sattes: “Quality Questioning: A Catalyst for Thinking and Learning.” Space is limited.

Post updated 4/7/17 to include link to archived webinar

View the webinar.

Supporting students’ growth mindset and effort

“What makes a student successful?” If you ask students in your classroom this question, how would they respond? Would they say that a student is successful because she is smart, or because the teacher likes him, or because she is lucky? Would students suggest that taking good notes, studying for tests, or doing homework can lead to success?

Often, students attribute success to things that they consider beyond their control, like luck or intelligence. But student effort is often overlooked or minimized as a factor in future success. The more immersed students are in a school and classroom culture where effort is a focus, the more the messages and examples of effort will resonate and bring about positive change for them.

How, then, can we establish an effort-focused classroom culture? First, when teaching students about the relationship between effort and achievement, be explicit. Share stories about people who worked hard to be successful and help students identify the specific actions that contributed to their success. Then, talk with students about what they want to succeed at; help them identify their steps toward success, providing explicit guidance about what it means to expend effort. Be clear about what is necessary for success in your classroom and help students practice those skills. Finally, ask students to keep track of their effort and achievement. Rubrics or graphs depicting effort and achievement can help students to see the correlation between the two.

It’s also just as important to remember that effort is not the only factor that influences student achievement. Students need to try new strategies and seek input from others when they’re stuck. They need a repertoire of approaches – not just sheer effort – to learn and improve. It’s VERY IMPORTANT to keep in mind that students need to be learning! If we’re praising students for working hard, especially when they’re not learning what they are supposed to learn, then something needs to change.

That’s the crux of the issue. When you help students make the connection between effort and achievement, they begin to see that intelligence is not a fixed attribute that some people have and some people don’t. They’ll also begin to recognize that expending effort with perseverance and resiliency will not only help them achieve their goals, but will also expand their intelligence through the processes of decision making and adaptation. Teachers who understand and demonstrate the connections between effort, a growth mindset, and achievement will help students unlock their own learning, leading to higher achievement and better success.

Terri Bissonette, Ed.D., is a consultant at McREL International and a former classroom teacher and teacher leader specializing in effective instructional practices and instructional coaching. At McREL, Terri primarily works with State Departments of Education and schools to improve student learning and close achievement gaps for underserved minority student populations.

Teaching our students to think critically in the era of fake news

Critical thinking has always been key to academic and career success. But in the information age, it’s more important than ever, as students struggle to keep up with and process the copious amounts of information coming at them constantly.

In the latest Research Matters column in Educational Leadership, McREL President and CEO Bryan Goodwin looks at what critical thinking really is and how it can best be taught. Its complexity—a mixture of dispositions and skills including valuing inquisitiveness and other points of view, using logical reasoning to support arguments, and examining our own beliefs and changing them based on new data—may explain why schools, and even colleges, often do little to develop it.

However, Goodwin says, research shows it can be learned, using two key approaches. First, critical thinking skills should be taught directly. Marin and Halpern (2011) showed that students in low-performing high schools who received explicit instruction in such skills (how to develop arguments, parse correlation from causation, identify stereotypes and mental models, and predict long-term consequences of decisions) demonstrated significant gains in critical thinking, while students who took a course in which critical thinking skills were embedded but not taught directly showed no gains. Second, critical thinking should be explicit but not taught in a vacuum. Abrami et al. (2015) found three elements needed to be in place: classroom dialogue and discussion; complex problem solving; and mentoring.

Goodwin concludes that perhaps the best approach, then, is to help students develop critical thinking skills through explicit instruction that is interwoven into course content, not as a standalone endeavor. This approach, combined with simple strategies such as asking students to support every answer they give with the word because, may be the best deterrent to fake news we can offer.

Read the entire column.

Posted by McREL International.

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