Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Planning a Spiraled Course

This year I am embarking on a new journey - I am working at a different school and have more math in my schedule than I have had since my first year of teaching. As a part of that journey our MHF 4U (Advanced Functions) course team is taking a crack at "spiralling" the course.

Over the summer I spent some time laying out the course to begin to plan. I started with the skeleton Overarching Learning Goals (OLGs) that were created last year for math to come up with OLGs for the course (I wrote about these skeleton OLGs here) so that I would have already wrapped my head around the overall themes of the course.

Then I created a new document to start the actual planning. I pulled the overall expectations (OEs) for the course and the front matter of the math curriculum (math processes (MP)) into the chart by strand and then created a new column where I put in only key words (content & skills) from those OEs and MP. From those words I looked for common themes in the skills/content that I noticed and colour coded them.

Through this process I noticed a major theme in recognizing characteristics of functions and making connections between representations of functions (numerical, graphical, and algebraic). This seemed to be the backbone of a large portion of the course so it made sense to make this into a group of expectations - and cycle 1 was born.

Here are images of that document (they are a work in progress, evolving as we work our way through the course):




Creating the other cycles became largely about noticing the layers involved in the course. I wanted to build the remainder of the course by adding on layers of difficulty, which would allow us to revisit the same concepts. You may have noticed that the second cycle adds on algebraic techniques but is still focused on the same things introduced in cycle 1. This is the purpose of spiralling - students are able to see the same things over multiple exposures to better build their understanding of the material.

Studies are showing that the use of spiralling techniques will help with long-term retention for learners. It is not necessarily about improved results within a particular course, but will help with the foundations moving forward for longer-term success. My hope is that this type of pedagogy can also help with engagement and mindset for learning in the mathematics classroom.

The planning process was somewhat time consuming but was worthwhile for moving forward into the course as I knew what the purpose of the first cycle was and could see the long-term goals. The difficulty was not being able to co-plan with my course team (complicated by it being summer, going into a new school, etc). Now that we are a few weeks into the semester the team is more on the same page and is starting to be able to see the long term plan more easily.

One of the ideas we added to this plan was to have students start and maintain a portfolio where they would put information as it is learned organized by type of function. We are also going to do part of our final 30% as a conference with students - so students have been told that maintaining their portfolio is to aid them with this conference at the end of the semester. The possibilities are exciting.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Finished with the Status Quo

I am currently making my way through Starr Sackstein's Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School. I will likely do a blog when I am finished and will include my takeaways in more detail but one of her lines has inspired me to bring up some provocative conversation.

As are many of you, I am tired of the argument "We have always done it this way." It may be true that there are some thing in our lives that can stay the same year after year and still be the most efficient way to do things but life changes, and often things need to change with it. Most of the stages of my life have come with pretty significant changes and I have also watched the world evolve - computers, internet, cell phones - and would be significantly behind in current knowledge if I had ignored those changes.

Of course, I have also watched the world fail to evolve (lack of change in carbon footprint despite the research and negative effects we are experiencing; decades long wars (in so many cases started by some misunderstanding and a failure to learn from history) that are sometimes ignored by the rest of the world; etc.

I can no longer watch education become something that does not change.

On page 28 Sackstein had me out loud proclaiming "Yes! This is the articulation I have been looking for!" when she said:
In the industrial era, schools were intended to train good workers, so students went to schools that prepared them to enter the work force. This model of education valued obedience, conformity, and rote learning.
We are no longer in the industrial evolution.

Of course, I will not pretend to believe that we do not need workers who can conform and follow specific steps to complete a task, but the majority of work that we need to prepare students for requires people who can be creative, who can think for themselves, and who can solve problems. This is the world I want to prepare my students for - I want them to find success in whatever passion or skill they find for themselves through the use of transferable, valuable skills (not rote learning they can look up on YouTube).

Hopefully my journey can help to bring along more teachers, students, parents, admin, and community members who want to see a change.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

SE2R Comments in Grade 9 Science

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

Our wonderful Instructional Coordinator, Assessment, Kristen Clarke, organized some assessment-related book chats on Twitter in the latter half of the school year. I was able to participate in two of them and helped moderate a third. One of the books we discussed was Mark Barnes' Assesssment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning. Mark is the pioneer of the Teachers Throwing Out Grades movement in education (check out #TTOG on Twitter).

[We also discussed Rethinking Letter Grades (which inspired mot of my Overarching Learning Goal and Learning Map blog entries) and Myron Dueck's Grading Smarter Not Harder (which inspired this entry related to reformatting tests and using learning goals).]

Barnes' book is largely about his feedback process that allowed him to go gradeless in his classroom. By giving students an appropriate avenue to find out what they had done and could improve on the traditional need for grades virtually disappeared. Reading his book has inspired me to make further efforts to reach for the same goal - a classroom of students who want to learn and grow (not students who want to do what they think I want and get marks). I want to build a community of students with a growth mind set that, therefore, believe in themselves as a learner and can reflect appropriately on their own work and the work of others.

Barnes' feedback method is referred to as SE2R. This means that every time he gives feedback he follows this pattern (and thus, teaches his students to do the same):

  • Summarize (what has the student done to meet the requirements of the specific assignment)
  • Explain (what mastery of skill/learning is shown)
  • Redirect (indicate what lessons should be reviewed to master concepts/skills not yet mastered)
  • Resubmit (encourage student to review and rework and give directions for resubmission)

I tried to put these ideas into practice a couple of times in the following weeks to test them out. Here is what I tried and how I did it:

  1. I put a paragraph writing question onto Edmodo as an assignment for students to answer that I told them would be on the unit test. Students were told what the learning goals were and were told that this was a chance to answer the question and get feedback before the test.
  2. I was able to practice writing comments that followed the SE2R model. Here is an example of what I wrote
    • :
  3. I created a "comment bank" using the SE2R model and based on the learning map I had created for the course. I sometimes had to modify comments to make them better fit an individual student work, but in the end I saved myself time AND was able to be more consistent and focus on the important areas only.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

LGs vs SC vs Task Requirements

Discussing assessment in the education world often leads to more questions than answers and creates a lot of discourse. I have learned that the questions and disagreements are a necessary part of change and that we need to acknowledge and tackle them, not shy away from them. It is easy to feel defensive when our practices are questioned or challenged. It is easy to feel like we are being told that what we have been doing was wrong.

I have also learned that when someone asks "why" they are usually genuinely curious OR they are trying to get me to think about what I am doing. It has taught me to always ask myself why.

I have brought this up because one of the things that has come up a lot recently is the discussion of comparing learning goals (LGs), success criteria (SC), and task requirements. It can be easy to write a a statement that may not clearly fit into one category or the other. But it is also important to try to understand and recognize the difference.

Here is my understanding of each:

LGs are statements that describe what a student should know and do that is specific to a lesson or set of lessons. In Ontario this will often be based directly from the overall expectations of the curriculum.

SC describe what the learning will look or sound like when the student is meeting expectations. They should be based on agreed upon statements formed with a course team but when employed in class may often be co-constructed with the students.

Task requirements are things that a student is asked to do that does not fall under that course's expectations but are necessary to help the teacher focus on evaluating the learning without distraction. These can not be evaluated but a students may be asked to resubmit work when they are not used/followed.

I will be the first to admit that through my journey this year there are times where these things were misused or mixed up. This exploration has allowed me to gain a much better understanding of them and why they are important and have forced me to rethink the what, why and how of my classroom assessment.

Through my use of overarching learning goals, learning maps, learning goals, etc I am hopeful to be able to spend more time giving feedback in the future and less time giving grades. By continuing to build my assessment literacy I can continue to build my students assessment literacy.

My hopes for the future include students who...

  • take ownership of their learning
  • can self- and peer-assess
  • question what we do and why we do it (purposefully)
  • enjoy class more
  • focus on and prioritize learning not marks
and include my hopes to...
  • bring focus to all classroom tasks and evaluations
  • shorten written evaluations
  • grade less
  • discuss more
Comments and questions are welcome and encouraged. Use the comment feature below or connect with me on Twitter :) 

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Math Learning Map Journey

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

Today I am hoping to share the process and evolution of my experiences working toward a learning map for a math course. I think this is a specific journey worth deprivatizing because it has been a complicated one that involved a lot of lengthy discussions.

This entry requires you to know what an Overarching Learning Goal (OLG) is: I described it in an earlier entry as big ideas that are written as board spectrum learning goals that marry the "know" and "do" that we hope a student leaves a course with. I have discussed OLGs in a number of other entries since this one that can show you some of my journey through understanding and using them as well.

Starting in early 2015 I dove into OLGs and started working with a colleague to write some for a math course. At the time we were both teaching Gr 10 Academic ("Mathematical Principles") so we tried to tackle it. This was both of our first attempts at the process for any course so it was an exploration of the process itself and a discovery that every time we tried to do it we wanted to make different decisions. [One thing I would critique us on looking back was our neglect of the front matter of the curriculum].

Here is a look at the 2 different sets of OLGs we landed on in our two attempts.

In 2016 I had the opportunity to gather with some math and assessment colleagues from around the board to take a real look at designing OLGs and a Learning Map (LM). [I showed a sample LM for my Science course in this entry earlier if you would like some context] A LM takes the OLGs and describes what the learning should look like at each level. This map can then be used for many purposes.

Over the course of many discussions with colleagues at my school, one of our math resource teachers (@MashelleKaukab), and the above mentioned gathering we went through a process of unpacking the MFM 1P (Gr 9 Applied - Mathematical Foundations) course and the Math Processes (Ontario math curriculum front matter). It involved a lot of debate with well-reasoned points - and a lot of learning! Oh how our brains hurt at the end of that day!

Our team decided to create "skeleton" OLGs that focused on the processes that could then theoretically be used to finish OLGs for any course at any level (perhaps with rewording needed). Here is where we landed:

Our team left that meeting still feeling like things were a work in process but I am sharing our draft of our work hoping that you will contribute to the discussion by providing feedback. Please visit a copy of the document here.

The hope is that this map will become the foundation for every decision, evaluation and report completed for the course. The hope is that it will be the backbone of my backward design for my course.

Thank you for reading and for joining the discussion!
Happy summer!

Monday, June 27, 2016

Triangulating Evidence - Formal Interview Attempt

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

I this entry I would like to share my first formal attempt at integrating conversation (via an interview) into my class.

As part of the Peel Teacher Assessment Working Team (PTAWT) we discussed triangulated evidence and worked together to create something to use this semester. At the time my Grade 9 students were in the middle of their Ecojar labs and had been asked to write a lab report and to do some research about the impacts they were studying in the local ecosystems. It was getting late in the semester so decided it would make sense to take the research part out of the report and try it as an interview.

I worked with a couple of others at the PTAWT meeting and we checked the Overarching Learning Goals (OLGs) that the assignment aligned with, pulled out the specific learning goals, and then created a Google Form to use to record the interviews. It was a good experience and it gave me another chance to use my Learning Map to make sure we were doing things that would align with our plan. Below are the questions that I used:

1. Student Name (in the future I would do this with a drop down menu so I can reuse and use an add-on to get the data to go into a student file instead of an assignment file to make reporting easier)

2. Wondering?
What are you wondering as a result of working on this lab?

3. Observations
Would you change the observations you chose? Why or why not?

4. Research - Pros/Cons
What have you found out about your impact in Ontario? What are we doing? Do things seem like they may change in the future?

5. Research - Appropriate?
What sources did you use to find your info? Why did you choose them? (What have you found out about your impact in Ontario? What are we doing? Do things seem like they may change in the future?)

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Learning Goals & Reflection on Quizzes in 1P Science

I have been distracted from blogging but am trying to catch up and am back to trying to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

In a more recent entry I blogged about the basics of using learning goals (LGs) in my Grade 9 applied science class. You can find this entry here. In today's blog you will find a little more about what I have tried to do with the LGs, particularly related to quizzes.

Here are some of the things I wish to share and/or reflect on:

Challenges of writing in student-friendly language:
It is not always easy to maintain the integrity of the vocabulary necessary for the course while making statements accessible to all students. I try to give them a chance to review the LGs and to ask for clarification if needed, but it is not always easy to get them to admit that they do not understand. And sometimes it makes more sense to revisit the goals at the end of day 1 when the vocab has been introduced through the lesson.

LGs vs success criteria (SC)
It was pointed out to me at one point that the statements I was using were better suited as SC than LGs. The more I have learned and discussed A&E with colleagues I am inclined to agree. I would now zero in on the overall expectations in the curriculum to help with LG writing more and let the types of statements I was writing become the success criteria. But what I was doing did serve these students pretty well as it (but having real learning goals would have benefited me a lot when determining grades for them, but so would editing and knuckling down to use the Learning Map that I started to create for the course as well). I discuss these ideas in this entry.

Quiz layout and using learning levels:
I was inspired by Myron Dueck's book Grading Smarter Not Harder to change the format I was using on written evaluations. I now group things based on learning goal. In addition I no longer give marks on them. Instead I have a grid with the learning goals at the top and I have students reflect on where they think they are (and then I show them where I think they are) and I give feedback within each question. This has led me to write evaluations that much better reflect what I want them to know and do (and I test what is valued without over-testing topics)

Now the unit test is essentially a "re-do" opportunity:
I use the unit test as a chance for students to show me what else they have learned and to give them a different way to show me the same learning goal. I make sure that the goal is tested using a different style of question (i.e. maybe it was a graphic organizer on the quiz and the next time they label a diagram). This was definitely time consuming the first time through, but it was worth it (and creating a brand new (good) unit test is time consuming anyway).

It is much easier to evaluate using levels now than when I gave "marks":
I have been trying to awhile now to think about levels when I mark. For instance, if I am looking at a Gr 11 physics test and the student has problem solved I want to know what level of knowledge and skill they have demonstrated. I then assign a mark based on this level (instead of "taking marks off" for mistakes made, which can be quite arbitrary). Going to levels has removed the idea of getting 1 out of 4 meaning 25% when really it showed the student is starting to get it, but isn't there yet.

Students need better feedback from me than I am giving:
It is still really easy to just circle things, use check marks and question marks. This is not good enough. There is not a level of description being provided when we do this and many students are not asking about them. I know this is something I need to work on, and I also think that by adjusting the LG vs SC aspect mentioned above that this could get easier as I wouldn't have as many things that I think I have to give feedback on.

Most of my 1P students were doing better at midterm than they thought:
There was a lot of surprise in the room that they were doing well. Many of them had never felt like they did well in science before (although they all like the subject). I did notice some of them thinking "oh I can try less now" but it also spurred some of them on to try harder. Some may think this means the course was made "easy" but I believe that they were actually showing knowledge and skill in the course. My practices had allowed me to remove the "noise" from evaluation (i.e. grammar was much less of a distraction) and it was easier to identify students to have conversations with to prove that they knew more than they had written down.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

We Need to Stop Testing and Start Thinking

I heard something that was music-to-my-ears today. Apparently there was a presentation to senior leadership in my board a few weeks ago that included a prof from UTM and one from UGuelph (both from math departments) that passed on this message (I am paraphrasing of course) that I hope makes its way around the board sooner rather than later:
"We need secondary teachers to stop using tests as a crutch claiming they need to "prepare students for University". Your students are coming to us as great test takers, but without critical thinking and problem solving skills. These skills are vital, and students who have these skills will be able to succeed no matter the assessment environment they are put in."
I have been saying for years now that we are graduating hordes of students who do not know how to think - even the ones getting 90s. This was confirmed by the numerous peers who have become math teachers and admitted that they now realize that they never actually understood the math they did in high school (until they started teaching it). We need to stop testing and to start giving students the opportunities they need to do some true learning and thinking.
To this I add....we need to bring back the Al Geo course! That had to be the course that I did the most thinking for in high school, without a doubt.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Using Learning Goals in 1P Science

It has been pointed out to me recently that I should try to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :) The first entry from this series can be found here.

I think that most teachers can agree that it is very difficult to focus on making major changes to more than one course at a time, and at my current job I am usually teaching three courses at a time. So of course, some things get neglected. This semester I made a conscious decision to try to make some changes to my Grade 9 applied Science course, particularly related to my assessment and evaluation practices.

I have been trying to find ways to help all of my students be more responsible, reflective, and to use metacognition constantly. I have also been making efforts to move toward not using marks to motivate students (I have read that studies show they discouraged struggling students and that most students motivated by marks can also be motivated by the learning). When I looked back at discussions I had with other teachers on the assessment working team I recalled some discussion about the use of LGs in vocational classes. And so, I decided to make an effort to make explicit use of learning goals.

This use of learning goals is another step to me attempting to throw out grades (follow the hashtag #TTOG to connect with others trying to do this as well). Here is what I am doing with my 1Ps as a first step:
At the start of class I put up three LGs that show the students what we will be learning that day (typically I am showing the same goals for 2-3 classes). I am using a model that was demonstrated to me by a colleague for professional learning goals (for PD) which involves having learning goals that describe:
1) What the student will know
2) What the student will do
3) What the student will be

Generally speaking the "know" is the core concept that is necessary to move onto higher order thinking; the "do" is usually some kind of application (such as calculating, using, drawing, etc); and the "be" is often related to a hands-on approach such as identifying actual objects/situations in a lab setting or showing confidence in interpreting drawings.

I am finding that doing this is helping me to see how each of the expectations from the curriculum we are tackling might fit into my overarching learning goals for the course. And in other ways, it is helping me reflect on those OLGs and think about how I might tweak them in the future. I try as often as I think of it to make sure that we also revisit the slide at the end of each class to make sure students at least have the opportunity to reflect on their learning.

Thank you for reading. Please join the conversation!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Overarching Learning Goals

I seem to have fallen off of the blogging band wagon recently. It has also been pointed out to me recently that I should try to deprivatize my practice more. And so, I am resolved to blog about my assessment practices (including failures and questions) and hope that I can spark conversation, collect some feedback, and crowd source some ideas. So I have one request - if you are reading these entries, please share them with someone else and/or comment at the bottom and join the conversation. :)

I have blogged a couple of times about creating and starting to use Overarching Learning Goals. The most recent one can be found here. If you are not sure what I am referring to please check that out (which also links to the first time I blogged about it - this one is where they are explained).

I am trying to build on my understanding and use of OLGs as the semester progresses. Sometimes this means simply thinking ahead to future semesters and things I hope to attempt, sometimes it means trying something new right now. I will blog about some of these specifics in the near future. Here is where I stand right now.

I see OLGs as a starting point for everything. I see it as having the potential to drive my backward design, influence my daily assessment practice, revolutionize my evaluation strategies...the list goes on.

I have been able to create OLGs for a few courses now and am feeling more comfortable with the idea. One thing I have learned (and I believe my colleagues would echo) is that it is a work in progress. As soon as I introduce it to my class and start to think about actual changes I realize there are things I do not like or think are missing. But perhaps this process is really the most valuable part.

Here is an image showing the OLGs that I came up with for SPH 3U along with some of the "rough work" that shows part of my process/thinking.


If you are a physics teacher I would appreciate your thoughts/ideas/feedback/questions about these OLGs as I have not had the chance to collaborate with other physics teachers around them yet.

Here is an image showing the Learning Map I created from our department SNC 1D/P OLGs. This is one potential application of coming up with OLGs. This rubric could be used to inform all course rubrics used for evaluation and could also help me determine a students final grade. This is great particularly if you are a teacher who is interested in joining the "Teachers Throwing Out Grades" (#TTOG) movement.


I would appreciate feedback/questions/comments/ideas from any subject/grade teacher about this one. This is my first full attempt at a full learning map.

To anyone still reading at this point, I would greatly appreciate you joining this discussion to help in my journey and/or to pass this blog entry onto a colleague who might be interested. I am still very new to all of this and am hoping to collect as many ideas as possible. Particularly as I will be presenting at OAME this Spring around these ideas.

Also, if you are interested in this process it is based on the book Rethinking Letter Grades. I have also recently read Myron Dueck's Grading Smarter Not Harder that I think every educator should read. Both books are by teachers for teachers out of British Columbia.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

My #oneword for 2016

This is my first time coming up with a #oneword as a professional new years resolution, and I am having trouble doing it. I had initially thought of using the word "basic" to try to get myself to focus on the basics, sleep more, and be a little less crazy. But let's face it, I wouldn't be very good at that. Perhaps the writing of this blog is proof enough of that.

And so I have settled on LEARNING as my word for 2016. Being a learner is something I have really grown to embrace since I started my career and I want to continue to build on this in 2016. My areas for being a learner:

1. Drive my own LEARNING.

Try to more consistently read blogs/articles/tweets that are related to things that I want to learn about. I hope to pay a bit more attention to #mathBoS and #TTOG so that I can focus on the things that drive my every day learning.

2. LEARN from my students, every day.

I am constantly reminding myself to focus on improving my communication with my students. I want to learn to be better at making connections with students every day.

3. LEARNING at some interesting PD opportunities.

I would really like to find an interesting conference to go to. Maybe even one that would require me to travel (such as #flipcon). I don't know if this really counts as part of a resolution since I am a PD nerd though :)

What is your #oneword?