Instructional Innovations

As a kid growing up in the Eighties, I can't remember a scarier movie than any of those in the Poltergeist series. They. Freaked. Me. Out. Honestly, it still scares me a little (even though the special effects are a little sketch now-a-days). All of the nerves, excitement, and general anxiety I experienced while watching this movie made me think of the first few days of school for a teacher.

It doesn't matter if you're on year one or year 30 (RJW), the beginning of the school year is intense. There are so many unknowns that we don't have much control over--much like the ghosts in Poltergeist. Our biggest question often pertains to who will be sitting in our classrooms and how is that going to affect our teaching? Will they like you (you know you all worry a little about this; even you teachers who like to pretend you're tough)? Will they enjoy the content you teach as much as you do? Who is going to be your biggest discipline issue and how will you handle him/her? Stack all these questions up along with all the other information you've been bombarded with, and your odds of dying early from a stress related disease increases profoundly.

The good thing is that in a few weeks we'll have many of our answers and our anxiety level will decrease; however, I hope that the excitement that comes with freshly waxed floors and sharpened pencils ('cause you know someone will never have one) continues throughout the year. Because that's the fun part, the unknown (except when they're creepy ghosts because your house was built on a cemetery).

Do you remember your New Year's resolution? Did you keep it? I am notorious for making lofty goals that I just can't seem to obtain. Sure I will lose all that weight. Yep, I'm totally going to learn Spanish (I'm still working on this one, folks). I am going to be so super organized this school year that I will even surprise myself (have you seen my office lately?).

In truth, I am always setting goals for myself because I like a challenge and I like knowing I have accomplished something. There are a few problems with how I've gone about setting my goals. The first is that my eyes were bigger than my stomach. What I mean by this is that my goals are often way too large and looming for me to really get after. The other aspect of my goal failure is that my goals usually aren't SMART (on various levels).

As the new school year begins, we will all be setting goals or as John Hattie calls them, learning intentions--some more informal and some formal (TKES). While we brainstorm our own learning intentions, let's ask our students to do the same in regards to their learning. The effect size of student goal setting is 1.44 which correlates to about three years of academic growth in one (Hattie 2012). It can make a huge impact on student achievement (and we all like that). So here's some advice I've gleaned from the experts in regards to goal setting:

1. Set a learning intention that truly matters.

Students who have a solid idea of what they will learn in any given unit will be much more likely to set a goal that they care about. There are very few students who begin the school year thinking "I'm going to totally mess up this year so that I end up with zero credits. I don't want to graduate with my class, the freshmen are cooler." Feed on their enthusiasm now and fuel it as the year goes on by asking your students to create learning goals that are personally rewarding to them.

2. Make the learning intention attainable.

A goal should be kind of out there, right? But there's a point that "out there" becomes no longer visible. Most of you teach curriculum that is organized by units. Set your own learning intention of student achievement. "By the end of the cell unit, 90% of my students will be able to...." Then share this with your students. Ask them to break your learning intention up into smaller chunks that they can achieve. Maybe Petunia already knows a lot about cells, so she is going to set a goal to learn how cells are affected by cancer: how is each part of the cell mutated? Then you have Harold, he knows the word cell because he has a cellphone. Harold's goal might be more basic. "By the end of this unit, I, Harold, will know the various parts of the cell and how they function." These goals are a) both attainable and feed into the teacher's larger goal and b) differentiated to the student's own knowledge. Yep, the had to go all metacognitive, too which is another member of the "Big Effect Bang" crew. Don't you love it when you hit like twelve birds with one stone (side note: no birds were harmed in the writing of this article).

3. Make sure that you and your students are not only smart about your learning intentions, but that your learning intentions are also SMART. You've heard of this before, but it bears repeating. As you and your students set goals, ask yourself is this goal specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (e.g. end of the unit, end of the game, end of the school year, end of the season). If you shoot for a longer period of time, make sure that you break up the goal into smaller chunks as you go.

Setting learning intentions for your students and allowing students to set some for themselves, removes the curtain from your teaching (Wizard of Oz). Be clear with what you want kids to learn and the odds of them actually learning it increases tenfold.

John Hattie not only has an awesome accent, he is also an educational research guru. The administrators have been reading and discussing articles that pertain to the effect size of any particular strategy or action from the state DOE down to the student. .40 is the typical effect size that represents one year of student growth. Teaching practices with the largest effect size (representing multiple years of student growth) include setting learning intentions, giving valuable feedback, and ongoing formative assessments in the classroom.

In the above video, Hattie discusses learning intentions which is the instructional focus of this newsletter. Want to know more about Hattie? Check out his website Visible Learning: http://visible-learning.org/. He gives the top ten classroom practices that positively affect student achievement.

For those of you who didn't attend last year's workshop on technology and formative assessment, I will be offering another opportunity in September. We will look at: Kahoot!, Socrative, Lino, Plickers, and PearDeck (to name a few). I will also attempt to introduce you to some new options for you old-timers.

Please go to the form linked below and let me know if you're interested in attending the workshop and what you'd like to learn more about.

Formative assessment gives big bang for your bucks with both students and those who score you on the TKES rubric!

Have you noticed the bulletin boards as you walked around the school? Matt Berryman, Dallas Cowne, and Trent Wilkes have taken it upon themselves to spread the "MC Proud" theme throughout our school. Both Dallas and Trent are extremely student focused. They love our kids and it shows. To show our kids a little love, they have decorated some of the boards with highlights of our student achievements. Check them out. Tell your student featured that you saw him/her. Let Dallas and Trent know when you have something to celebrate about a student. Let's make these kids famous (for legit reasons). Also, remember that we teach a diverse group of kids and all of them have a skill that merits a spotlight. Each student deserves kudos even if they don't play a sport or an instrument.

Matt Berryman is also known for his affinity for our students. Growing up in Madison county, he knew he would make his home at MCHS in an effort to give back to kids in many of the same ways he was supported as a student. Matt also recognizes that it takes a village, and he loves our teachers. In the teacher workrooms, Matt has created "Brag Boards" highlighting the teachers on that floor. He even used ribbon, which concerns me a bit because I never saw Matt as the home decorator type. But seriously, I know that he would appreciate our own involvement with these brag boards by putting up our "brags" about our fellow teachers. So if you have something great to share, do it; and if you hear a kid say something wonderful about one of your colleagues, put that up on the board, too. Let's cover these boards with commendations, so much so that even that pretty ribbon is no longer visible.

August 23rd (Tuesday): Teaching Kids to Set Learning Intentions to Increase Achievement; Sign up with the link below to learn more about setting learning intentions in your classroom.

August 26th (Friday): Enrichment Sign Up; Meet with me in the 9th computer lab and I will help you sign up for the kids you need to see on August 31st's Enrichment.

August 30th (Tuesday): Enrichment Passes; Meet with me in the 9th computer lab and I will help you make passes for students in your advisement.