“The Big Four: A Framework for Improving Instruction That Leads to School Completion”
National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities
“The Big Four: A Framework for Improving Instruction
That Leads to School Completion”
Dr. Jim Knight
February 13, 2007
MODERATOR: Today’s National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with
Disabilities program is titled, “The Big Four: A Framework for Improving Instruction
That Leads to School Completion.” And at this time, it’s my pleasure to first
introduce Dr. Loujeania Williams Bost. She is the director of the National Dropout
Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities. Dr. Bost holds a Ph.D. in special
education from Pennsylvania State University. She has an extensive background in
working with students with disabilities and was the chief of statewide compliance,
monitoring, and technical assistance for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
She has been a public school teacher and program administrator for agencies serving
both adults and adolescents with mental retardation, and also a researcher. Dr. Bost,
welcome to the program.
DR. LOUJEANIA WILLIAMS BOST: Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to
the first of our series this year on Dropout Prevention for Students with Disabilities.
Student engagement has been described as the key to preventing dropout, and as
the bottom line in interventions to increase school completion. As applied to school
completion and dropout, the process of engagement works as follows: Participation
leads to successful performance and promoting feelings of identification or belonging
at school, which in turn, promote ongoing participation. In this conceptualization,
dropout is viewed as the gradual process of disengagement from school that includes
impaired or reduced participation, less successful outcomes, and reduced
identification and belonging that culminate in the student’s early departure from
school.
To this end, while interventions to promote school completion address engagement
comprehensively and do not focus solely on academic or behavioral skill deficits,
effective instructions in this area are central to enabling students with disabilities to
achieve levels of school success that lead to school completion.
One way to enable students, more students to be successful is to improve the quality
of instruction that they receive. If more students successfully acquire the content,
skills, and strategies they need to succeed, and if more students achieve success,
then more students will graduate.
In today’s presentation, we have Dr. Jim Knight, Research Associate from the
University of Kansas, Center for Research on Learning, to present to us these Big
Four in engaging students academically.
These Big Four include classroom management, content knowledge, direct
instruction, and formative assessment. Dr. Knight, as I mentioned earlier, is a
research associate at the Kansas Center for Research on Learning. He has spent
more than a decade studying instructional coaching. Jim directs a comprehensive,
district-wide school reform project—Pathways to Success—in the Topeka, Kansas,
school district. Pathways to Success employs school-wide curriculum reform, led by
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instructional coaches, to achieve wide-scale implementation of content
enhancement, learning strategies, and positive behavioral interventions across all
middle and high schools in the district.
We’re pleased today to welcome Jim to our program to discuss The Big Four in
improving academic engagement that leads to school completion. Jim?
JIM KNIGHT: Hi there. I’m looking forward to speaking with all of you today, and
especially hoping you’ll have some questions we can work our way through. I’m
assuming people have the PowerPoint, and so I’m just going to sort of walk my way
through it, but to say that just what Loujeania said is exactly correct. There are four
big components we’re going to talk about—classroom management, content
knowledge, instruction, and formative assessment. And you can kind of hang your
learning or your listening around those four big things, and kind of be looking at
what those key pieces of information are. There’s a semantic map I’ve got that lays
them out, and we’ll just keep coming back to that semantic map as we work our way
through.
I’ll just give you a little bit of background, which is that we started doing the work on
instruction in schools—it’s close to 20 years, now. We were continually trying to say,
“Where is the focus that we should have with teachers?” I really believe in two core
concepts—focus and leverage.
And by focus, I think that if you zone in on the most important things, and you have
intensive attention to what matters, it’s going to make a difference.
And then leverage is looking for, “What is the part of a system, or the part of what
you’re doing, where if you tweak that part, or work on that part, you’re going to
have the highest impact?” And as we look at what we do with teachers, and
particularly when we coach teachers, we have continually asked our selves, “What
are the things that are going to make the biggest difference? What are the areas we
have to focus on?” And at this point, we’ve said it’s classroom management, content
knowledge, instruction, and formative assessment.
Now, there’s a quote I wanted to start with that many of you might be familiar with,
and it’s from Haim Ginnot, and it really captures kind of the way we see the
importance of instruction. And he said this; I’ve come to the frightening conclusion
that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that
creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I
possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a
tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it’s my response that decides whether a child will be escalated or
de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized.
In our focus at the Center for Research on Learning, where I work on our project,
Pathways to Success, and in our work with coaches across the country, [inaudible
phrase] say “What can we do to get better outcomes, more respectful, more
engaged classes, more and more generative learning where kids are really learning
new ideas and excited about the aspects of learning so that they’re going to be more
inclined to stay in school?”
Now just as a little bit of background, where I work is called the Center for Research
on Learning. It’s been around for almost 30 years and done an awful lot of research
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on different types of instruction, particularly learning strategies and content
enhancement. And I’ll come back to some of the things we’ve done at the center, but
today I’m not really just focused on the center’s materials. I want to talk about other
aspects of instruction that other people have done work on as well.
The framework I’m going to share with you isn’t really tied to any particular
interventions or teaching practices. It’s just a way of thinking about instruction. And
there are other ways, too, but it’s one way of saying, “Well, where do we need to
emphasize? What do we need to focus on?”
So let’s start with the first part of the Big Four, which is behavior. What I mean by
targeting high leverage variables related to classroom management, probably you
could get a clearer picture of that by my just telling you about some interviews I did
yesterday with teachers. I worked with three teachers and did brief, 30-minute
interviews for a project we’re doing. They had been working on classroom
management with their instructional coach. And each one of them, you could say two
things if I had to summarize what I heard in the interviews.
One of them was that they were much happier about being teachers this year than
they were prior to working with the coach. They saw it as an enriching and fulfilling
job, as opposed to one that was kind of burning them out, because their coach had
helped them get a grip on some core variables that make a huge difference in
managing the classroom.
Now, some teachers have had great instruction to prepare them for classroom
management. Some teachers have learned along the way things that really work
well, and they handle it really well. But some teachers, somehow, miss the chance to
learn how to manage behavior in the classroom. And if you don’t understand the
basics of classroom management, it can make it really difficult to be a successful
teacher. I mean, you can really feel defeated and demoralized by the fact that you
don’t have a safe environment.
One of the teachers I spoke with yesterday talked about how before she worked with
the class, kids would get up and move around, they’d throw things about the class,
they were disrespectful. And now that she learned how to manage the classroom
[inaudible], she said, “I feel like a real teacher. I feel like I’m making a real
difference.”
[Inaudible] really emphasized the importance of building relationships with the
students, too. And some of the kids were completely not engaged. One student
didn’t answer one question until she changed the classroom management activities.
But she said now the student really likes to respond, and she feels, she said, “I’ve
always felt like I needed to do more to connect with my students, but I didn’t know
what to do. And now I know what to do.” So I want to talk about the things that
coach did with the teachers.
There are some key questions that we always ask ourselves as we work with
teachers and around classroom management. Has the teacher thought out and
taught the expectations? Is there a positive ratio of interaction in the classroom? Is
time on task better than 90 percent? Does the teacher provide sufficient
opportunities to respond?
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There’s a framework that my colleague, Randy Sprich, has developed that really kind
of helps us look at those questions. His framework is a summary of 80 years of
behavioral research. And Randy has done work on behavior for more than 30 years,
one of the founders of all kinds of things in Oregon that make a big difference in
students’ lives. And the way he sums up his research is this: “What’cha gotta do is
screw around with some variables and hope you get lucky.” That’s really what it
comes down to.
And his framework is that when you look at classroom management, you have to
look at the structure of the class. You have to look at how students are taught
expectations for behavior responsibility. You have to look at the way in which the
teacher observes and supervises student behavior, how they interact positively with
kids, and how they correct the students. I want to talk about all five of those things,
and then give people a chance to ask some questions about them.
First one is structure. If I’m looking at what’s happening in a classroom, there are
some basic things that I want to look at. How is the classroom laid out? How does
the school day begin and end? or the lesson begin and end? How do students move
from transitions, that is, move from one activity to the next? What does the overall
order of the room look like?
In terms of the structure of the room, a simple thing is to make sure the teacher has
maximum access to the students so that if they need help, they can go over and
intervene. Or if they need to correct students or praise students, they’re immediately
able to get over and give the kids some feedback. You can feel it in the classroom,
and I’m sure many of the teachers that might be listening today know this. If there’s
a part of the room you can’t get to, that’s kind of divided off from you, you can feel
that group of people who sit in that section of the room are going to be off task. You
can feel like energy is zapping out of the room. So, you really need to make sure
your room is maximally laid out for access to the teacher.
Then you need to look at the way the room looks. If you want to the students to feel
safe, secure, and calm, your room has to look safe, secure, and calm. It can’t be just
messy and chaotic. It has to have a certain order and structure to it. And when you
have those things in place, it’s going to increase the likelihood that things will be
safe.
Then there’s the structure of activities. Let’s say you’re in an elementary school, and
the kids are going to write in their journals. How do the students get up and get their
journals? How do they go up and get materials? How are materials handed out? All of
those things make a difference in terms of structuring a safe and civil kind of
classroom environment.
Second thing [inaudible phrase] teacher expectations. My understanding of the
literature on classroom management is of all the things that are in the literature, the
one that is crystal clear is that if you want a safe, productive, and pleasant learning
setting, you have to teach the students the expectations. You have to lay out for
them what is expected for every activity, every transition. If you don’t tell the
students, “This is what I expect of you in terms of how we work together when we’re
doing test taking, or when we’re doing group work, or when we’re doing direct
instruction,” this isn’t what we expect the students don’t know what to do, and they
sort of think, “well, whatever I want to do is fine because there really aren’t any
clear expectations.” [Note: The second part of this sentence was unclear.]
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And those expectations, again, Randy Sprich has worked out a great way of looking
at it. First thing is conversation. What kind of conversation’s acceptable or
unacceptable in the situation? How do students ask for help? And what do they do
when they need help? Can they just stop working? Or what can they do? In some
classes, students set their text book on their desks to communicate that they need
help, simply because raising your hand might take you 10 minutes, and the student
doesn’t work when their hand’s up. What is the actual activity? Why is it important?
And what do students need to do during that activity?
What kind of movement is allowed? Can you get up and sharpen your pencil? Can
you get a drink in the hall? Can you go ask somebody across the room for help? Can
you get a dictionary?
What kind of participation is allowed? Can you have a little slobber experience with
your desk during the class? Or do you need to sit up straight and raise your hand?
Or can you blurt out answers? And there are no real guidelines on exactly what
needs to happen. Sometimes one teacher allows an awful lot of flexibility with
respect to conversation or participation. Another teacher might say, “I need to have
more kinds of restricted movement.”
You can also involve the students in the development of the expectations. I know a
teacher in Topeka who created, with her students, a Students’ Bill of Rights, by
asking them how many times they thought they could be disrespected, how many
times they thought they could be interrupted. And then from that conversation, she
created the expectations involving the students.
The important thing is kids need to know the rules of the game—How is it played?
What are the expectations? If they’re not clear on the expectations, they’re going to
be confused, and they’re going to find themselves in trouble, and they won’t even
know, really, why they got in trouble. It’s just a matter of being fair with the kids.
Next thing is in the STOIC acronym is observe. From the teacher who’s managing
class well, you often hear this little phrase, “He has or she has eyes in the back of
her head.” They can see things. They’re very observant of what’s going on in the
classroom. One thing we try to do is help teachers be aware of more things they can
be watching for.
For example, simply watching for praise-worthy behaviors. We kind of are wired to
look for things that upset the flow of the class or kids who break rules. And
sometimes we lose sight of the importance of seeing students doing things right. And
so to watch for students who are working on task, doing what they’re doing, giving
them lots of praise is a key thing we want teachers to observe for.
Observing for engagement is another critical piece in this. I would say one of the
things that separates a great teacher from a less-than-great teacher is their ability to
read the engagement of the class. If you’re able to see engagement and lack of
engagement, then you can’t ignore it. You have to change the teacher because
what’s going to happen sometimes is they’re not going to be engaged. But if you’re
very aware of what it looks like when your kids are with you, and when they’re not
with you, you keep adjusting your teaching practices until they’re engaged. So, to
find ways to look at engagement is key.
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And there’s so much you could do, with respect to dispositions. [inaudible phrase]
difficult day for students, it’s not a good day to ask somebody to speak up loud to
the group. Does it look like somebody was defeated, a little bit, by a comment? Or
did they look proud over the way they accomplished something? So read the
students’ dispositions. And then, of course, teachers have to pay attention to rules
and expectation violations, and whether the students are engaged and respectful in
constructive interactions.
The next part of STOIC is interacting positively. And the key here is if you want
students to be on task, to follow the rules, and to be in the class the way you want
them to be, you have to make sure you pay attention to them for doing the things
you want.
We did one study where we looked at what happened in the classroom. And even
though the recommendation is at least 3 to 1—sometimes people say 5 to 1—praise
statements for critical comments, we did one study where we looked at every special
education classroom in middle and high school classes—over a hundred students—
and the ratio was 1 to 6. In other words, for every single praise statement that was
given, there were six criticisms. So, the next thing we want teachers to be aware of
is how well they praise students. Do they interact positively? And by ‘praise,’ I don’t
mean just that they’re speaking nicely to the students. They’re not saying, “Johnny,
you’re such a great kid. Please get back on task.” It’s how they spend their attention.
Are they attending to students when they’re doing the kind of behaviors they want?
Or only attending to students when they’re doing the kind of behaviors they don’t
want? If all you do is attend to kids who are off task, or breaking rules, or not acting
appropriately, what you tell the kids is “when you act on task, when you do what I
ask you to do, when you’re working hard I’m going to ignore you. But if you screw
up, I’ll be right there, right away.” And that’s not what you really want to
communicate. You want to communicate, “To get my attention, the best way is to do
what we need to do in this classroom.” And the teacher’s attention is a very valuable
variable in the classroom.
The last thing is corrections. I think, sometimes, we fall for the myth that if we just
had better consequences for student behavior, that the kids would get in line. And I
think that’s unrealistic. The reality is the structure of the classroom, teaching
expectations, the way you observe, interacting positively and reinforcing what you
want—those things are way more important than correcting student behavior.
However, you can’t ignore correcting student behavior. You have to correct it when it
happens. You have to keep consistent corrections in place. What we suggest
teachers do—and if they work with a coach, that’s especially a good way to do it—is
sit down and list all the common types of misbehaviors they have to correct, and
then identify what the consequence is going to be. What are they going to do? You
don’t want to have a teacher who’s trying to figure out all the time what they should
do when they have students bugging each other, or off task, or breaking the rules,
or not acting in accordance with the expectations. So they need to think through,
ahead of time, so when it happens in class, they can calmly, smoothly, and,
immediately give the feedback to the students of what they need to do. Something
like 90 to 95 percent of the things that happen in a class that might interrupt the
flow of instruction that require corrections—those things a teacher should be ready
for so that they can give students positive feedback when they’re on task, but
especially correct them, smoothly, when they’re off task.
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Now, next slide if you’re following along out there, shows a diagram we use to give
teachers feedback. I won’t go into all the details, but it’s a simple way of taking the
pulse of the class. We do three observations, and we look at variables—Time on
Task, Opportunities to Respond, Ratio of Interactions, Disruptions, and the Daily
Reality Scale.
And what we expect is that, for example, for Time on Task. You want to get up to at
least 90 percent of the kids being on task during the class. Simple thing is if you can
increase Time on Task from 70 percent to 90 percent, you've increased learning from
70 percent to 90 percent.
Opportunities to Respond, we’re looking at having frequent opportunities to respond
in the classroom. And if Time on Task is low, let’s say lower than 70 percent in the
classroom, one way to increase Time on Task is to increase Opportunities to
Respond. If there are more questions, more time for the kids to turn to each other,
opportunities for them to write notes down on a whiteboard and respond or just
speak out answers, the kids are going to be a lot more engaged.
Then Ratio of Interactions is how much time do we praise the kids? How many times
do we actually give the kids positive feedback and positive reinforcement for doing
what they’re doing?
We’ve also found—and we haven’t analyzed our data too thoroughly yet, but it’s
pretty clear—that as Ratios of Interactions go up, that is, the amount of praise goes
up, the amount of Disruptions goes down. And it’s almost amazing how if you get a
lot of criticism, you get a lot of Disruptions. But as we’ve changed the amount of
Ratios of Interactions, where teachers are praising kids more, the number of
Disruptions goes down. And the Daily Reality scale is just a way of us stopping to
say, “Are the students acting in accordance with what the expectations are in the
class?” That is, are they doing what was taught to the kids with respect to
expectations? So that represents the first of the Big Four, which is developing a
positive classroom by zeroing in on a few key things—the Structure of the class,
Teaching the expectations, Observing for the right things, Interacting positively, and
Correcting, smoothly and fluently, during the lesson.
Now I’m wondering, do we open it up for questions at this point?
MODERATOR: Yeah, we can open it up to questions. Would you like to find out the
answer to some of the questions that we have posed, here?
J. KNIGHT: That would be great.
MODERATOR: Okay. We would like to know—we will, again, use your telephone to
answer this question, based on what has been discussed today—Do you think the
quality of instruction matters when it comes to preventing dropout? And this is a Yes,
No question, 1 on your telephone touchtone keypad for Yes, and 2 on your telephone
touchtone keypad for No. We’ll give everybody a second to answer. All right, and it
looks, overwhelmingly, that the answer to that first polling question is a resounding
Yes. And then we’ll ask the second question here, since we’re still speaking on
classroom management. Are your teachers well prepared to handle classroom
management issues? Again, 1 on your telephone keypad for Yes, and 2 for No. And
we are seeing the exact opposite effect here, Jim. I would say, at this point, about
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95 percent of our participants are saying No, that their teachers are not well
prepared to handle classroom management issues.
J. KNIGHT: Wow.
MODERATOR: So, we will go ahead and close down this poll, and then we will open
up our question portion of this program. Again, if you have a question that you
would like to ask us, via the telephone, or, excuse me, via the Web, you can do so
by reaching me at [email protected]. And if you would like to ask me a question on
the phone, all you have to do is press Star 1 on your phone’s touchtone keypad, and
that will put you into our question queue, and I’ll be able to open your line and you
can ask Jim a question directly. When your turn comes up, I will ask you a question
by your city and the first name of the person who registered at your location. If your
question happens to be answered while you’re in line, simply pressing the # key will
take you out of the queue. And remember, if you’re on a speaker phone and it’s at
all possible, pick up the handset or move as close as possible to your phone when
you ask a question. And in case you should accidentally disconnect, just dial back in,
re-enter your pin number, and you will be immediately reconnected to the program.
So, if you have a question for Jim, go ahead and press Star 1 now.
All right. We’ll give people a few minutes here. Jim, it looks like we have a quiet
group out there today, so if you would like to continue with the second portion of the
program, we will then open it up again for questions when we’re done.
J. KNIGHT: Sounds great. And what we can do is stop after Content Knowledge,
and I’ll be happy to talk about either behavior or content knowledge. And I’m just
really curious to hear what other people’s perspective is on these things. And this is
just one opinion. There are lots of good opinions out there.
If you look at our little map, if you’re on the slide where the map is, we’ve just
finished [inaudible] behavior. And so I said the Big Four is about focusing our
attention on high-yield teaching practices that encourage positive behavior.
And the next thing is the focus on essential content. And it’s our thinking that—it’s
kind of like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but it’s not that simple—but that if you
don’t address classroom management issues, then the rest of it really doesn’t
matter. That is, no matter what you do outside of classroom management, if the kids
are way off task and struggling, it’s going to be hard to do much else in that
classroom because the kids won’t be on task. If they’re not learning, they’re not
learning. It doesn’t matter what you do. So, our thinking is that you need to at least
have something ready to do with respect to classroom management. That’s Phase I.
However, you could make a strong argument that if you increase the quality of the
activities and learning that the kids do, that the classroom management issues will
take care of themselves. And I’m not really, totally, committed to the notion that you
have to do classroom management first, and then content, and then instruction, and
then formative assessment. They all kind of flow in together. But one way of thinking
about it, at least, is that it’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The version for safety
would probably be classroom management.
The second thing is content knowledge. Let’s say that the classroom is under control,
kids are there, they’re engaged, they’re positive, they enjoy being in the classroom.
Well, then, what do you do about content knowledge? Well, we feel that it’s critical
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for pretty obvious reasons, that the teacher zones in on the most important parts of
the content. It’s not really going to be great if you have an on-task group learning
the wrong content. Let me give you an example of what I mean by the importance of
content knowledge.
I don’t know how people listening feel about this, but I’ve had lots of people explain
how to use various software programs on the computer. And the people who explain
it to me, they know the software inside out. They know every little permutation of
what this little click can do on my mouse on my computer. But as I listen to them go
through all the content, I hear so much information—and maybe it’s something to do
with the way I learn—but I have a hard time processing all the information they give
me. And what sometimes happens is I just sort of sit there and pretend I’m listening,
but the truth is I don’t have a flippin’ clue what they’re talking about. They lose me.
Even though they know so much—they know the content inside out—there is so
much information that I kind of get lost. And sometimes that happens in the
classroom. The teacher might know every little thing there is to know about
grammar and want to explain every little detail to students. But what happens is the
students can’t really keep up with the expertise of the teacher. Even though the
teacher knows the content well, they haven’t sorted out what’s most important and
put the most important information up front—that’s the core knowledge.
And we really think the second thing a teacher wants to look at is, “Have I got the
right information? Do I know what’s most important? Do I emphasize it so the kids
can get it?” Now, there are lots of tools that you could use to do that to zone in on
the most important things. Well, we use the thing called the unit organizer, and
there’s a diagram of the unit organizer here in the packet of slides. I’m going to sort
of talk a little bit about it, but let’s just look at two parts.
In the middle of the unit organizer, you’ve got an algebra class, and it’s focused on
math vocabulary, mathematical properties, learning to evaluate and write algebraic
expressions, 1-step and 2-step equations, and then how to graph and solve
inequalities. And in this particular class, the teacher has identified seven core
questions that she feels get to the essence of what the class is all about. Compare
and contrast algebraic expressions. What’s a variable? How do you make an equation
true? How do you graph, write, and solve inequalities? All those kinds of things.
Now, the idea is that if the students can answer those seven questions, those
students should be able to ace the final assessment. That is, they should know the
unit if they know those key things.
And then there’s a diagram that’s on the next slide, which goes on the back of the
form the kids get. And on that slide, what we’ve got is all the information students
are going to learn during the unit. Now, we give the kids the unit organizer, up front,
and they see that first page up front, with the map on the front. And then as the unit
progresses, they complete the back page. They add in the vocabulary, they fill in the
properties, they write in the different kinds of information, whatever the teacher
thinks is most important, they co-construct it with the students. In this way, the
students know exactly what’s key. They know what the key things are, what are the
core questions, and what’s really, really critical for the student to understand the
content. Now, a lot goes into identifying those core questions and those core units.
But we found if a teacher sits down and carefully thinks through how to map out her
unit, how to identify the core questions, they get a lot more accomplished, and the
students are along on the journey with them because they co-construct the
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organizer. They have this kind of living syllabus they keep going back to and
watching as they construct the classes, they work it through. And the teacher has to
think through, “What is most important? What’s essential here?”
Another thing we look at with respect to content knowledge is has the teacher
thought through the core foundational concepts? We have a little routine we use to
do that. For example, the core concepts in language art class—there might be
somewhere between five and 10 core concepts like symbol, metaphor, voice, scene.
You might talk about literary genres, like a tragedy or a comedy. You might talk
about different periods, like the romantic period. Maybe grammatical concepts, like
subject and verb. But with concept knowledge, we feel it’s critical that the teachers
identify the five, 10, and, possibly, up to 15 core concepts the students have to
learn, and [inaudible phrase] some kind of teaching routine to ensure the kids
master those concepts, they know them inside out, they can tell you any time what
they are, and they know what they are. As a teacher, you have to spend a lot of time
thinking through what’s most important, and then make sure the kids get that kind
of stuff.
And then, we also think it’s important for teachers to be able to identify the structure
of the content. So first off, “How do we map the content? What are the core
concepts?” And then, “What’s the structure of the content?”
For example, we might look at—and this comes from a development tool that David
Scanlon developed called the “Order Routine”—we might look at the sequence of
events in a class. We might say, “Okay, in the events leading up to the Civil War,
how did all those get sequenced?” And have the kids learn how to create a timeline,
going from the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican War, and working their way to the
Confederacy being formed. Or we might teach the kids to use a cycle kind of
sequential organizer, like the water cycle—precipitation leads to evaporation, leads
to condensation, leads to precipitation—and show kids how to create that kind of
organizer.
Or we want students to compare and contrast. You might have them compare
different types of triangles, and look for similarities and differences, and teach kids
how to look for that particular structure to the content, look for similarities and
differences as they put it together. Or, we might want students to learn how to
compare and contrast using the classical device called the [inaudible] diagram or
some other kind of diagram. Or sometimes they’re just describing the structure, the
atmosphere, or the hydrosphere, or the lithosphere in the descriptive organizer
we’ve got. Or sometimes they want to look at problem solution organizers that say,
underneath this content, there’s problem solution.
Now let me tell you why these different types of organizers and being aware of these
things, let me summarize them again. It’s problem solution, description, compare
and contrast, and sequence. If you can teach students to look for those patterns in
the content, it makes it way easier for them to answer the core questions. Let’s say
you had a question that said, “How did Huck’s childhood lead to events later on in his
life? Compare and contrast the relationship Huck had with Jim to the relationship Jim
has with his master, or something like that.” Well, when you get those questions that
students are aware of, being aware of a sequence, or being aware of content, or
aware of compare and contrast, they’re able to use those structures to process the
information and to make sense of it.
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They also sort of play around with it. They understand what it’s all about. For
example, when my son, Ben, who’s now 16, was about three years old, I was
pouring him a glass of water, and I said, “Ben, which glass do you want?” And there
was a short, fat glass, and there was a tall, skinny glass. And Ben said, “I want the
big glass.” I said, “Okay, Ben, which one’s the big glass?” You know, always the
teacher, there was my son, I had to give him a little lesson. And he said, “I want the
big one.” “Which one’s the big one?” “Well, that’s that one right there,” and he
pointed to the tall, slender one. I said, “No, Ben, that’s not actually the big one.
Watch this.” So I filled up the water in the tall, slender glass, and got it full. Then I
took the fat, short glass, and I poured all the water from the tall, slender glass, and
there was still a lot of space in the glass after I used the tall, slender one. And then I
said to Ben, “Which one do you want?” He said, “I want the big one.” “Which one’s
the big one?” He said, “I want the little one.” But he understood the concept. He got
it, because we played around with it until he got it. And when you give students
these content structures, and they become aware of it, they get to play around with
the content until they get it.
But to get there, the teacher has to do some deep thinking. We have to say, What
are my core questions for this class?” Maybe they identified 12 core questions for the
class. And then, What are my questions for each unit? And then, How do I map the
unit? And then, What are the core concepts? And, How can I make sure the kids
understand the core concepts? How do I put that all together by identifying content
structures?
Through all this, it’s very helpful to have an instructional coach who can work with
the teacher to do the kind of things that need to be done, to develop a unit organizer
[inaudible phrase] identifies the key questions and maps the content, and to work
with them to help them learn how to work on developing these with the kids.
Now, there are other content-enhancement devices that have been developed at the
University of Kansas—Course on Lesson Organizers, Concept Comparison and
Anchoring devices, a Question Exploration Guide, which unpacks questions for kids,
Vocabulary Routines, routines to guide kids through textbooks, the Framing Routine.
But the real question is this, the teacher who’s zoned in on what matters for content
has to ask a basic question, and the question is, What is the legacy I want to leave
with these students? If I run into this student 15 years from now at Disneyland, and
she says, “Hey, I remember you. You’re the person who taught me this,” what do I
want to make sure they remember? What is it I want them to leave the class and
never forget? And you need to think that through carefully. What are the core
questions? What are the core concepts? How do I map it? What are the content
structures? But that deep thinking—if you take the time to do that deep thinking, it’s
gonna pay back in great benefits later on because your kids will be zoned in on key
content.
So, if you look at our little map now, the first question was classroom management.
What can be done with respect to classroom management to increase the likelihood
that the class is on task? And I talked about the STOIC framework.
Well, the second thing is how do you focus on essential content? Well, it’s identifying
your questions. It’s mapping the content. It’s identifying core concepts, and then
mapping the content underneath that through the use of those content structures
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that we talked about. And we’re up for our second set of questions. So I’m open to
hearing from the group on any other questions they want to hear.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you, Jim. And, again, at this time, if you have a
question, or if you’d like to make a comment, all you have to do is press Star 1 on
your phone’s touchtone keypad, and that will put you into our question queue. And,
again, when your turn comes up, I’ll call on you by city and the first name of the
person who registered at your location. So if you have a question, go ahead and
press Star 1 now. All right, Jim, we have a caller on the line. And this is Susan’s site
from Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City, your line is open.
J. KNIGHT: Hi, Susan.
MODERATOR: You may have your mute button on, Salt Lake City.
SUSAN: Yes, thank you, I do.
MODERATOR: There you go.
SUSAN: Okay, on the classroom management feedback form, how do you score the
Daily Reality Scale? Is that a judgment, sort of a cumulative feeling? Is it quantified?
[overlapping voices]?
J. KNIGHT: That form comes from a book that Randy Sprich, Wendy Renke, and I
created, called Coaching Classroom Management. And in the book, there’s a form
that, if you follow the CHAMP acronym of Conversation, Health, Activity, Movement,
Participation, there’s a form where you would write down on the form—this is direct
instruction, or this is group learning, or this is a lab, or this is the [inaudible]
seminar—whatever might be going on in the classroom.
Now the teacher, if she’s developed the expectations for that activity, and the person
who’s observing the class—and sometimes the kids observe their own class and give
themselves feedback, sometimes the teacher just fills it in for them. But there’s a
scale from 1 to 5 for each of those things.
So let’s say it’s test taking, and you’ve got conversation, help, activity, movement,
participation. Now you could pick any other variables you wanted to zone in on,
those just happened to be the ones that we use. Well, if it looks like every student,
almost every student, close to every student understands what the expectation is for
conversation, and they’re acting according to it, the score is a 5 on the [inaudible]
form. If it looks like none of the students are acting consistently with the
expectations—they don’t know what they are, they’re blowing off the expectations,
then the score is a 1. If it looks like half-and-half, the score is a 3. And if it’s
somewhere between half-and-half and none, it’s a 2. And if it’s somewhere between
half-and-half and everybody, it’s a 4. Do you follow what I’m saying, Susan?
SUSAN: Yes.
J. KNIGHT: So we just do it, and there are lots of ways you can do it. In some
classes, teachers will give the kids an exit ticket, where at the end of an activity,
they’ll just ask them, “How do you think we did on our expectations today? I want
you to rank us on 1, 2, 3, or 4 for this particular activity.”
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Sometimes if a teacher’s working with an instructional coach, or some kind of coach,
the coach can do the observations. Sometimes the teachers do the observations
themselves. If they’re in there by themselves, they can stop and say, “How did it
go?” Then the important thing is the next day, the next time they do the activity, the
teacher says, “You know, last time we did this activity we did really well on
conversation. But there was a lot of movement that was inconsistent with the
expectation. Who can tell me what our expectations are for movement?” “That’s
this.” “That’s right.” “Well, we need to do better this time, and so I want to make
sure we zone in.” So the teacher has to really keep those expectations clear.
Something I didn’t mention about it is that they should be posted in the classroom in
some way. In some classes, a student is given a job of every day turning, they’re
like the expectation person. So they go up, and they put the expectation up on a
flipchart, they just flip to a certain page, or maybe there’s a notebook that lists the
expectations, or they’re on overheads, and they revisit the expectations up front. But
the Daily Reality Scale is just sort of an observation-based scale from 1 to 5.
SUSAN: Thank you very much.
J. KNIGHT: Sure.
MODERATOR: All right, and thank you for that question. And those are all the
questions we have at this time. You can go ahead and continue, Jim.
J. KNIGHT: Okay. Well, start thinking about your questions out there, folks. It’s
kinda lonely in here.
Okay, next thing is instruction. Assuming that the classroom is well-managed, and
the students are on task, and it seems fairly safe, and you’ve got something like 9
out of 10 kids on task most of the time, and assuming the teacher has thought
through their content carefully, and they’ve thought through, What are my core
questions? How do I map my units? What are my core concepts? And what are the
content structures? That’s gonna mean they have a deep understanding of their
content, and they know what’s most important, and they’re putting what’s most
important up front. They’re making sure that what the kids remember is the legacy
they want them to remember.
Well, in the next piece of this sequence is zoning in on some key pieces of
instruction. What are some key things related to direct instruction? And we have
some basic questions, that is, Is the teacher modeling instruction effectively? And,
Does the teacher ask a wide range of questions from different cognitive levels? How
do they give constructive feedback? How do they organize their instruction at the
beginnings and endings? And do they scaffold instruction really carefully?
For modeling, we really like the work of Anita Archer from California. Anita has talked
about “I Do It, We Do It, You Do It.” I should tell you that there’s Ed Ellis, from
California—excuse me, not California, but from Alabama—he’s at the University of
Alabama, and he’s modified it a little bit. And he takes advantage of his living in the
South. And he calls it, “I Do It, We Do It, Y’all Do It, You Do It.” But we’re going to
focus on “I Do It, We Do It, You Do It.”
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Now when I grew up, the first teachers I had were my parents. And one of the first
things I learned was, growing up in Canada—where I lived much of my life—was how
to play hockey.
And what my dad would do—we lived on a farm—he would take me down to the
pond, and he would show me how to play. And his thing was, “Okay, Jim. Let me
show you what to do first, you watch me, and then I’ll watch you, and we’ll see how
it goes.” And so, for example, to skate backwards, Dad said to me, “Jim, you have to
cut little C’s in the ice. You have to make your skate kind of cut a backwards C.” And
then he would show me what to do, and I would watch him. And then I would take a
shot at it, and he’d give me feedback. And the same thing with shooting a puck and
catching a pass. He’d say, “When you catch a pass with the puck, you have to pull
your hand back like a shock absorber.” And so if the puck came to the stick, he’d pull
it back. I’d watch him do it, and then he’d give me feedback on how I did it.
[inaudible phrase] give me feedback. So it was always modeling first, and then
practice. Now, it was just me and my Dad, so there was no “we do it” part. It was
just I would do it, and he would give me feedback. But if you think about the way
you learn lots of things, usually somebody shows you first. And if they show you
well, there’s a good chance you’ll master it.
But there are some key things that need to happen in that modeling part, and things
that kind of need to be avoided. The main thing in the “I Do It” part is you want to
make sure you show the kids exactly what you’re thinking, and you’re explicit about
what’s happening. You don’t leave the modeling part too quickly. I’ve observed
hundreds of teachers—maybe thousands of teachers—and I’m the same as them. We
have a tendency to jump out of that modeling part too quickly and go right to having
the kids practice. Well, what you really want to do is do it slowly enough and
carefully enough when you’re modeling, whether it’s a reading strategy, or math
problem solving, or whatever it might be, how to write a topic sentence, how to
brainstorm. You really want to say, “Watch me do it. You should be watching me
carefully. I’m going to demonstrate this for you. And then when I’m done, I want you
to practice and do it, as well.”
Now the “We Do It” part is this. Let’s say I was modeling how to find the main idea
in the passages I read. I would say, “Watch me go through this first paragraph. I’m
going to find the main idea. Watch how I do it.” And then I might tell the kids about
looking in the first sentence or looking for repeated ideas. I might ask a question
like, “What’s the paragraph all about and what’s it say about what it’s all about?”
And I’d think out loud, and the kids would be with me. And they’d be watching what
I do. Then I’d say, “Now let’s us do it together.” And I would call on different
students. And I know my students well enough that I can say, “This student can give
me maybe a more detailed answer than another student, but I’d make sure
everybody’s involved.” And, basically, we’d do the practice attempt together as a
group.
Then after I’ve modeled it, after the kids have practiced whatever it is we’re going to
do—let’s say finding a main idea—then I have them practice on their own so I can do
a quick assessment of how well they’re doing, if they’re mastering and learning the
particular skill.
Now, whenever kids are learning something, they’re going to practice. We think it’s
good that the teacher models first, the students practice together with the teacher
until it looks like the students are ready. If we’re doing paragraphs of finding the
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main idea—the example I gave—we might do many attempts together in the “We Do
It” phase before I have them practice on their own.
Now, the “Y’all Do It” part that Ed Ellis has added is that after we do the “I Do It”
and the “We Do It,” he has the kids work together in teams and practice with two of
them together on an activity. And then they do the independent practice.
For us, one of the most important things you can zone in on in terms of improving
instruction is to look at how the teacher does modeling. Does she model effectively?
Do the kids get it while she models? And is the teacher taking sufficient time to
ensure that it happens?
What happens if you’re too quick with the modeling is that the students who already
know it, get it. But the kids who really could benefit from the modeling, get left
behind. And you want to make sure those students are feeling success. You want to
build in, you want to ensure success by doing a careful model so the kids can get it.
If you do that, there’s a greater chance they’re going to be successful.
Another thing you can look at with respect to questioning is the level of questions
being asked in the classroom. We did a study a couple years ago in a school district,
and we looked at hundreds of questions. What we found was something like 70 to 80
percent of the questions are the lowest level. If you look at Bloom’s Taxonomy—we
like to call him the man who invented thinking—but at any rate, Bloom has got these
levels of knowledge. And the first level of Knowledge and Comprehension objectives
is simply replying back the content. And I’m not going to go through all of these,
because I think anybody who’s gone to school has learned them. The main point of it
is that when you sit down with teachers and have them analyze with us, “What are
the level of questions that are being asked?” If all your level questions are simple
knowledge and comprehension questions, what that means is very little thinking is
going on when the kids reply to their questions.
So a simple thing we do is we use a question chart. And you’ve got an example in
your packet of what we do. We go into the classroom we observe the teachers, and
we write down every question they ask. And then together with the teacher, we sit
down and we say, “Let’s look at the level of the questions you asked.” We say,
“Here’s question one. What level was that?” And then we co-construct, with the
teacher, other questions that would get the higher level kinds of instruction. What we
find is teachers do want to have higher level questions at the analysis and synthesis
level. It increases the kind of quality of conversation, and the thinking that takes
place in the class. And it’s a pretty easy thing to do, just to zone in on these kinds of
things.
Other instructional procedures we might focus on would be the beginning and the
ending of a class—advanced organizers and post organizers. When I first started to
teach, I told the students a very simple trick. I said, “I’m going to begin every class
with an advanced organizer, and it’s going to have these certain attributes. It’s going
to say why we’re learning, what we need to do in order to learn, and what I expect
of you today, in terms of being good students, in terms of being on task and
learning.” And I’d lay out exactly what should happen with the advanced organizer. I
taught my kids “this is what an advanced organizer should look like.”
And then I said to them, “If I don't do the advanced organizer right, if I miss one of
these things we’re looking for, I’m going to put a dollar into a jar, and that money is
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going to be our end-of-school-year party.” And so the students really wanted me to
review the advanced organizer right away, of course, and then they watched very
carefully. And the thing was they watched the advanced organizer very carefully, but
you can bet that I learned it really quickly myself. I didn’t like taking that money.
Now, we would’ve had an end-of-the-year party anyway, but nonetheless, every
time I missed something I was reminded immediately by the students, to where it
became a habit. I always began the class with an advanced organizer that was
crystal clear, that the kids could follow; otherwise, I paid for it, literally.
Same thing with post organizers. I said, “The end of the class, these are the things
we’re going to do. We’re going to review the content. We’re going to review the key
things we want to remember. We’re going to talk about our next class, and how this
connects to the next class.” And if I forgot one of those, the students would call me
on it. And they watched carefully, and they got great pleasure in helping me become
better at advanced organizers and post organizers.
Now, if you look at the psychology textbook or your Psychology 101 course,
somewhere in there they talk about the importance of first impressions and the last
time you meet someone. That’s the primacy and recency effect. And that’s why
advanced organizers and post organizers are really key—they lay out for kids what’s
going to happen; they summarize what’s going to happen. In my experience,
sometimes those last 45 minutes—which the psychologists would tell us are the most
important time in the class—are kind of wasted. Kids start to get restless, and they
want to go, and they line up. And as soon as the bell goes, they go out the door. We
think teachers have to realize that the bell doesn’t end the class. The teacher ends
the class. And they have to make sure that there’s structure and routine in the way
the kids leave, otherwise they won’t remember some of the key things.
Now, as far as constructive feedback, Frank Klein—who’s a magnificent researcher
and good friend of mine, who was at the Center for Research and Learning for
several years—he’s identified some core things related to feedback. What he says is
when you look at ineffective feedback, it’s usually one of two different kinds. What
you might have is very vague, general comments. For example, good effort; try
harder next time, or you need to work on proofreading. Or you’ll have a paper that
has massive amounts of corrections on it, but with no guidelines on what to do.
The student looks at the vague comments. They go, “Well, I’d like to do better, but I
really don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” And if they look at the paper that has all
of the red marks all over it, and everything marked up as needing to be improved,
they look at it and feel discouraged. Sometimes they give up. What Frank Klein
said—and what his research supports—is that when you give constructive feedback,
what you want to do is you want to give the kids lots of praise. First off, always find
something that’s gone well. And then you zone in on the broad category of error that
the students have been struggling with. So for example, if it’s a writing passage and
the kids are struggling with organization, or with finding their voice, you give them
really clear directions on that particular category. You don’t nail every possible
problem that’s in the piece of writing. You make sure you praise the kids first, and
then you give them specific feedback in a particular category of error. And then you
tell them how to fix the problem.
Sometimes we do that, and by giving general feedback to the class we say, for
example, we might have different highlighters and put a yellow or a red or a green
highlighter on our comments. So we say, “If you’ve got the yellow highlighter, I
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really want you to listen. This feedback is for you.” So several kids get the feedback.
Sometimes we do the 1 to 1, where we say, “This is how you need to remedy this
situation.” But you want to zone in on a category of error that needs to be improved.
And, you want to give students direct feedback on how to improve it.
Now sometimes you have 36 kids, you have a huge class, there’s all kinds of things
going on, what do you do? We do a thing called “Feedback on the Fly,” where we just
talk to students for 15–30 seconds. As we’re handing out an assignment or as we’re
giving kids something they’re going to work on, we say, “I’m going to come back and
see you in a couple of minutes and give you some pointers on what to do.” And then
in that short period of time, give them direction on how to resolve this big category
of error that they’re focusing on. We also give them direct, specific feedback on
praise, of how they’re doing well.
Also, another way to increase the quality of instruction in the classroom is to crank
up the quality of the assignments. There’s a great work on quality of assignments
called, “The Quality Assignment Routine” here at the center that’s been done. And in
that study, what we looked at—not by me, but what I read about afterwards—is the
importance of planning out an activity to make sure it ties back to what’s compelling
to the students, and that they understand what they have to do to be successful, and
that you’ve built in ways to get around the roadblocks, and they understand the
criteria for how they’re going to be evaluated, and that it’s innovative, exciting, and
compelling. I’ve seen some really great, great assignments that have been
developed in light of that.
For example, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Teachers there, physics teachers, take
students to the local amusement park, and they give them all these calculations to
do while they look at all the rides. And the kids get to actually take the rides, but
they’re there for physics. So it’s fun, and they love going there, but they learn all
these different practical applications of their content. And that’s the idea of a quality
assignment, something that’s rigorous enough to move kids forward, and compelling
enough to capture their interest and their enthusiasm.
Then I’ve done studies on integrating different kinds of learning activities, especially
in some classes that have block scheduling. So we build in different kinds of learning
activities, many of which are pretty familiar to the audience here—cooperative
learning activities, like turn to your neighbor and jigsaw. We think it’s really a good
idea to put in front of a group different kinds of provocative objects—we call them
thinking devices. It could be a film clip; it could be a newspaper article; it could be a
cartoon, but you catch the audience’s attention, the student’s attention. You put this
thing in front of them, and then you have conversation.
Now, the way you ask questions can make a big difference. If you want conversation
from the students, your questions have to have two attributes. One of them is they
have to be open-ended. But a second thing is questions that are going to generate
conversation can’t be questions that are right or wrong answer kinds of questions—
they call them judgmental. You want a non-judgmental question, like How would this
work in your home? Or, What’s another way of looking at this? Or, How did you feel
as you watched this? Or, What did you think about this? What’s another way of
looking at this? Simple, open-ended questions that the people can’t be wrong when
they answer them. If you want conversation, you can’t tell students they’re wrong.
You have to give them these open-ended, non-judgmental questions.
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For example, let’s say I show a film clip, and I say, “How would you feel if you were
the child in this clip and the parent was talking to you this way?” and the student
says something. I can’t say, “No, you’re wrong; you don’t feel that way.” The way
the person feels is the way they feel. And when you have open-ended, nonjudgmental questions, there’s a good likelihood that you’re going to get more
conversation. If you have right or wrong answers, as soon as one student gives a
wrong answer, kids are not going to raise their hands. Their hands are going to go
down.
Now, when kids are learning important things that have right or wrong answers, and
the purpose of the question is not to just check comprehension, but the purpose of
the question is to make sure the kids get the information right, well then you ask
right or wrong answers, [inaudible] close-ended questions. There are lots of different
types of questions and lots of different situations. But if the purpose is conversation,
open-ended, non-judgmental is key.
Then there’s experiential learning. Whenever we can give kids a chance to role play,
or somehow do the thing they’re learning, it’s a really cool activity, even if it’s just
plain manipulatives. But the more they can sort-of experience the learning, it’s
great. Or building in opportunities for the students to reflect, to fill out a journal, to
think about how they’re going to apply the learning back to their lives, or building in
stories. And, increasingly, I’m convinced that stories are a critically important piece
of what can happen in the classroom.
I did a study a few years ago with adult learners, and I interviewed 80 people across
Canada. I asked them about their university professor—these were all people who
had jobs, but they were going back to university. I did interviews in three different
provinces in Canada, over 80 people, as I said. And the number one thing I heard in
those interviews is the teachers they remembered in the universities, the professors
that worked for them were the ones who told stories, because the stories gave
people an anecdote or something to stick their content to that made it memorable.
And the same goes for even elementary, middle, and high school, that if you build
stories into your lessons, if you make stories a part of what goes on, you’re going to
be more engaging. So, those are some of the things we’d say about instruction. You
can do lots of things with respect to instruction.
But if you zone in on modeling, if you look at the kinds of questions that are asked, if
you look at advanced organizers and post organizers, the kinds of assignments, and
then if you look at how the class is made to be a conversational environment where
there are thinking devices, and there’s experiential learning, cooperative learning
and so forth—you put those things together, you start to have a pretty exciting
classroom where there’s a lot going on.
And now I’m waiting for the next set of questions, Jessica.
MODERATOR: All right. If you have a question, again, Star 1 will get you into our
question queue. And we’ll wait and allow people a few moments to enter our
question queue. Star 1 on their phone’s keypad will do that. And again, if anybody
has questions that they would like to submit at any time, they can reach me at
[email protected]. Jim, we’ll give people just a few seconds here.
J. KNIGHT: Yeah, maybe while we’re waiting I’ll just say, Jessica, that our idea is to
try to zone in on the most important things. And so we’re looking at, with respect to
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if we’re going to work with teachers, and work on instruction to focus on classroom
management content or instruction, we’re trying to zone in on what are the things
that are going to have the biggest payback in the classroom? Now, it always starts
from a positive perspective, and our whole approach to coaching is one of
partnership, respectful interchange between teachers. And we really feel these are
kind of like the little knobs you could turn that are going to make the biggest impact.
MODERATOR: All right, and we have no questions at this time, Jim.
J. KNIGHT: Okay, they’re so riveted by this content they can’t come up with
questions. Okay. We’re going to move on to the fourth thing, which is formative
assessment. This is where it all kind of comes together. Richard Stiggens has been a
consultant on our project, and what he says is this, “A teacher should be able to look
out into the classroom and know where every student in the classroom is. And every
student in the classroom should know where they are.” And that should be your goal.
I should be able to look out and know where my kids are, and they should know
where they are. And there are lot of ways that that can happen. But you want to
make sure that there is this sense that we know what the general projection is here,
what’s going on.
Let me tell a story that kind of illustrates how I came to understand the importance
of Formative Assessment. When I was going through Christmas holidays a few years
ago, my son, Ben—he seems to be the one that’s popular in my stories—he had a
new Nintendo game, and he and his brothers played on it. But Ben, in particular,
played nonstop. And he learned over the holidays tons of stuff. By the time it got to
be about three or four days after Christmas, he was coaching his high school—Ben
was in elementary school, probably grade three or grade four—he was coaching his
cousins, who were in high school, how to do it. He’d say, “Jump up and down three
times here, and you’ll get some coins, and then go around this corner and this is
going to happen.” And I thought it is astonishing how much this kid has learned in
three days that he can coach his high school cousins on the content in a flash. It was
amazing how much he learned. And the reason he learned was that he was
constantly getting feedback on what he was doing. Every second along the way, he
always knew how many points he had, he knew how he was doing, he knew where
he was going. And I’ll talk more about why it’s engaging.
But that is the same thing that I want to have happen with instruction. I want the
kids to be hooked on getting feedback on how well they’re doing, even deeply
involved in using the materials and learning the materials as they move forward. And
if I do that, there’s a much greater chance the kids will be engaged in the content,
excited about where they are, and also, I’ll know how well the class is going, how
well the class is progressing.
So there are some basic questions we ask with respect to formative assessment.
“Does the teacher understand the teaching targets?” In other words, has the teacher
thought through what is the purpose of this unit, of this lesson, and of this course?
And write those targets up as propositions, as sentences. Now, there are lots of ways
to do that. We’ll talk a bit about it in a second, but it’s key that you know what
you’re striving after.
I’ll tell you another little story. I was [sighs]—like many of you, I’m sure—very busy
one day, and I had a million different things to do. But one of them was that night I
had to get on a plane and to fly up to Wisconsin. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t get a
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flight into Wisconsin. I had to fly into Chicago and then drive up. And I didn’t think
too much about it. I had too many things to do. I was working on the plane. But I
knew I had to drive up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I knew that’s where my presentation
was the next day. So I kept driving, and got my car, and rented and took me awhile
to get out of Chicago. And I drove through Milwaukee, and about an hour-and-a-half,
two hours later, I finally hit Oshkosh, and I hadn’t even looked up my hotel. So as I
got into Oshkosh, I told myself I had this little sixth sense, I could find my hotel. I
thought “I really know how to do this.” And, sure enough, there was a motel there in
Oshkosh, and I pulled into the parking lot and said, “Well, I’d better check my papers
here just to make sure I’m in the right place.” So I called the hotel that I was
supposed to go to and said, “Is this the hotel I’m supposed to go to?” The person on
the other line said, “That hotel is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” I had driven two hours
out of my way because I didn’t stop to check to see where I was going to go. And
when I went all that way, I realized I’d wasted four hours going up and back, and
had I just checked where I was supposed to go, it wouldn’t have happened.
Now, the same thing happens in the classroom. If I don’t think carefully about my
destination—what is the long-term goal I’m going to accomplish—I can end up way
off track. One teacher told me, “It’s not too good if you’re teaching the Pilgrims in
May, in a U.S. history class. You really need to get further along than that.” But if
you haven’t thought through your destination, it’s going to get you in trouble.
Now, I want to say a bit about the idea of challenges and skills, goals and feedback.
And this comes from [inaudible phrase] [inaudible phrase], who wrote a great book
called Flow. What he did is he gave people little pagers, and the pager would go off
every so often during the day. There were seven different samples of the day, and
people would fill in little surveys on what they were doing at that particular time. And
what he found on those surveys—and [inaudible phrase] over 100,000 from all over
the world, Japan, North America, Europe, everywhere—what he found was when
people are enjoying themselves they have these two things going on. They have an
activity they’re doing that is sufficiently challenging for the skills that they have. And
they have goals, and they get feedback on how they’re doing. In other words, if I
have an activity I’m doing that’s so challenging that I’m intimidated by it, I feel
anxiety and fear. Or if I have an activity that I’m really, really skilled for, and I’ve
done it a millions times and I know it inside out, I’m going to be bored. But if it’s
challenging enough to push me a little bit, then I’m going to be engaged in the
activity. A balance between challenge and skills.
And then he said we need to have goals and feedback. So for goals, I mean, it
doesn’t matter what the goal is, it doesn’t matter what the feedback is, it just
matters that I know that I’m getting feedback on how well I’m doing. For example,
that I get the ball in the hole with only four strokes, instead of seven strokes.
Feedback, and have a goal. Doesn’t matter what the goal is; what matters is that I
get feedback [inaudible phrase]. So engaging activities like Ben’s little video games
have these two attributes. A goal and feedback, and challenges and skills, all
balanced out.
The same thing is going to happen in the classroom. If a teacher feels, or a student
feels that they have the skills to accomplish what needs to be accomplished, but
they’re being challenged a little bit, but they have that right balance of challenge and
skills, and that they have a clear idea of what the goal is, and they’re getting
feedback on their movement towards the goal, and if the goal counts—and that’s a
very important thing—but if the goal counts to the student, and they get feedback on
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how they’re doing, and they believe the feedback is telling them how they’re going to
do, they’re going to likely be engaged by the learning. Now, if they don’t give a rip
about the goal, it doesn’t matter. And if they don’t believe the feedback is important,
it’s not going to matter. If they don’t see a relationship between the feedback and
achieving their goal, they’re not going to like it. But when there’s a goal and
feedback and they can get it, they’re going to be pretty excited about that. That’s
what you’re striving for with the lesson.
That means feedback has to be pretty immediate. You can’t wait two weeks to give
feedback on an essay to have the kids be excited about it. And that means the kids
really have to understand clearly what the goal was, and why it’s important. And
they have to believe they can achieve it. But when you put those things together,
you [inaudible phrase] to get engagement.
So there are lots of things you can do. For example, if I’m a coach working with a
teacher on formative assessment, I might have the kids start to use whiteboards in
the classroom, just to give a quick answer to a quick question. I want to get a sense
of how kids are doing all the time, and what’s happening. But mostly, it’s about a
whole process of deeply thinking about my goals, and what’s going to happen. Now,
if a teacher has developed a unit organizer or a course organizer, and they’ve
already thought through their core questions for their course in their unit, all the
teacher has to do to get clear on her propositions for the class—her answers for the
class—is to write out answers to the unit questions. So for example, if one of my
questions was, What are the causes of the Civil War? Or, Compare and contrast the
North and the South during the Civil War, the teacher, ahead of time, thinks through
“these are the answers I want the kids to strive for.” And then, sometimes using the
unit map, constantly involve the students in assessing how well they’re progressing
towards achieving those propositions. Stiggens suggests sometimes teachers put the
propositions around the class so they can see what they’re striving for, what they
need to know, and how well they’re doing.
Of course, there are other things that can be done, too. Developing high-quality
assessments that involve the students, and that is have the kids helping you put
together the different kinds of assessments they want to do. What’s the best way for
them to be assessed? There could be all kinds of things that might happen with
respect to that. They could be giving presentations. They could create a videotape.
They could do a Pod cast. They could simply be filling out an exit ticket at the end of
the class. They could do thumbs up, thumbs down during the class. But you want to
make sure they know exactly how well they’re doing as they’re progressing.
I’ve talked to many, many children who say, “Oh, I’m doing great in that class”
because they had an assignment that was worth 10 out of 10, and they got 9 out of
10 on that one assignment. But there are several other assignments worth 100 and
200 points, that they didn’t do so well on, and they think because they did well on
that one assignment, they’re not doing so well. [Note: This sentence was unclear.]
You want the kids deeply involved in the process.
Now, at the Center for Research on Learning, where we have strategies to teach kids
how to write sentences or paragraphs, or how to learn how to decode words, or how
to paraphrase, or whatever, we build in a [inaudible] process right into what happens
so kids can plot their progress. They know, to the decimal point, how well they’re
doing, and how well they’re progressing so they can see exactly where they are.
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But in summary, formative assessment is not a unit test at the end of the unit. It’s
an ongoing, almost, quite possibly, daily process that involves the students, and
getting clear on where we’re going, and monitoring how quickly we’re doing, and
how we’re progressing as we work our way through and make the whole thing
happen.
And that’s, pretty much, the Big Four. We look at those big things. How do we focus
our attention on key aspects of teaching? And for us, it’s those four things I’ve talked
about.
First off, classroom management. We want to know, Has the classroom been set up
to be safe and secure? Are kids aware of the expectations? Are they constantly being
praised in authentic and appropriate ways? Has the teacher zoned in on the key
content? Do they know the key questions and the unit maps, and so forth? Are they
focused on key pieces of instruction? And are they assessing students along the way
to achieve what they’re [inaudible]?
We feel if you’ve addressed these four things—that is, if the classroom is safe and
positive, and kids are on task, if the teacher knows the most important content, if
she or he uses effective teaching strategies to make sure kids get it, and if you
assess the students along the way to see if [inaudible] got it—if you’ve got those
four things in place, you’re going to have an environment where students are going
to be learning. You’re going to know because of formative assessment. They’re going
to be encouraged. They're going to feel successful. They’re going to want to stay in
school. And you could really pick any one of these parts of the framework as a jumpoff point for looking at working with the teachers.
I should say just a couple more things, and then I’ll turn it back over to Jessica. But
one of them is I think it’s naïve to think a teacher can do all this work on their own.
Teachers need some kind of professional learning that’s highly supportive to help
them accomplish it. In some cases, like for example, classroom management, it’s
almost like developing a new personality. You’re developing new habits, and you
really need a partner, shoulder-to-shoulder with you, to make it happen. And we
really believe coaching, or professional learning communities, but, in particular,
coaching, seems to be a way in which you can provide that kind of support where
you have someone who comes in, who decreases the amount of work you have to
face, and helps prepare the materials, maybe models for you, maybe gives you
feedback, who works like a peer to help you accomplish these things. But if you put
it all together with peer support, a coach who’s there to help you, who does the hard
work for you because you’re too busy—most likely, if you’re a teacher, you’re not
sitting around wishing you had less time because you’re already overwhelmed—a
coach can make a big difference in terms of making the whole thing happen.
At any rate, that pretty much sums up what I wanted to say about instruction. It just
is four lenses you can look at to try to make sense of where you are and what you
can do to move forward.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you, Jim. And we will, again, open the phone lines.
Star 1 will put you into our program. We’ll allow people to enter that way. And while
we’re waiting, we did have a couple of questions come in via email.
J. KNIGHT: Great.
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MODERATOR: The first. In implementing the Big Four, at what point in the school
year would be best to initiate these strategies? At the beginning of the school year,
or can you do this at any point?
J. KNIGHT: I think you can do it at any point, but especially with classroom
management, it’s really great if the teacher can be ready to go at the start of the
school year. You know, anyone who’s taught a few weeks knows those first few
weeks are really critical. And so if there’s some way in which a person can think
through their expectations and be ready to teach them at the start of the school
year, that’s kind of an ideal scenario.
Now, the trouble is, you can’t always do that. And so then what do you look for?
Well, then it’s sometimes a good idea to say, “I’m going to look for a natural break in
the school year to make a big change.” Let’s say I’m struggling—just pick classroom
management again—I’m struggling with classroom management. I’ve got to bring
this class back together, and I’ve got a coach who’s working with me to support me
on this. What we’ll do is we’ll go away for Thanksgiving, and then when they come
back after Thanksgiving, the class is going to look different. I’m going to change the
way it looks, and I’m gonna say it’s a new beginning.” And if you can’t do it
Thanksgiving, you do it after Christmas. If you can’t do it after Christmas, you do it,
possibly, after March break. But the best way to introduce a major change in
classroom management is when there’s been kind of a natural break in the school
year. Every time the kids have been away for a few days and they come back, that
can make a big difference.
A lot of this stuff, though, I wouldn’t say you have to do it at the start of the school
year. I mean, formative assessment, people could start working on that now. I
mean, they could really think through, I mean, you always should be thinking
through “What are my goals for the class?” “How can we assess how well the kids
have done?” And “Where do we go with respect to this?” And to some extent, you
really can’t learn this stuff in the abstract. You really have to try it out in the
classroom, and make adjustments, and have someone to work with who’s a
sounding board to think it through.
MODERATOR: All right. Our next question here. How are these variables especially
important to keep high school students engaged?
J. KNIGHT: Well, I think it’s all, it’s really pretty, I’m kind of struggling here
because I’m not sure which variables, because there are so many variables. The Big
Four, I think, they apply in high school or elementary school. I think they probably
apply, even more so, in high school than they do in other places, particularly, in the
instruction. I think you want to make sure that the learning experience for students
is an engaging experience so they don’t just come in and turn off. So the use of
those partnership learning structures of cooperative learning, stories, thinking
devices, encouraging a respectful conversation in the classroom, looking at
assignments that are directly related to students’ interests and that are compelling.
And then the formative assessment, where you’re constantly letting students know
how well they’re doing, giving them feedback. In my experience, it’s going to be just
as important in high school as it is in elementary school. The trouble is, you really
have to have thought the plan through pretty early on so you can give kids feedback
on how well they’re doing. They can drop out of a class, like algebra, pretty quickly,
and then it’s really hard to get back into it. So you want to be able to do that
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formative assessment along the way so you don't let them slip. And once they fall
too far behind, sometimes it gets too late. You want to, ideally, have some kind of
support network for them, too.
MODERATOR: All right, Jim. We have had several questions that have come in
along the same line. A lot of people are curious about sharing this information with
the rest of their staff. And maybe I’ll let you address that. A couple have asked if
they could use some of the slides, or the best way to present this to some of the
staff within their school systems.
J. KNIGHT: Well, the whole idea of the presentation is to get the word out. And I
think that what I would say is that I’d be really comfortable with people sharing the
framework itself, of behavior, content, instruction and formative assessment as a
framework for looking at things. And then, within that framework, you could put any
number of different things. It could be Fred Jones’ work on classroom management.
It could be Marzanno’s work on classroom management. Under content you could
talk about curriculum mapping, or you could talk about understanding [inaudible
phrase]. And under instruction you could look at, again, Marzanno or Charlotte
Danielson’s work on that. Under formative assessment, I really like Stiggens’s work.
But you could go in lots of different places.
And you could go deep on that material. But to go deep, you probably need to look
at some kind of intensive professional support. We chose to work with Randy
because we think his work is just awesome in terms of classroom management. And
our center has done the work on content enhancement. So if people want to go
deeper and pursue it, they probably need to connect up with someone who can
provide the professional learning support. They can respond to me about the stuff
I’ve talked about, or they can look at other people who do similar kinds of work.
But I think the framework is out there, the idea is that people would look at it. Now,
if they just wanted to read more about the Big Four, particularly this is my little plug
here, but my book on instructional coaching comes out in a couple weeks from
Korman Press. You can go there to their Web site, and there are two chapters on the
Big Four that you can read there and learn more about that as well.
But I really think it’s not real rocket science. Classroom management, content
knowledge, basics of instruction, formative assessment, and in that framework,
people can use whatever tools they’ve got. Likely, there are a lot of good things in
the school district that are already working on that. The real kicker is going to be if
they can give them support to implement that.
MODERATOR: All right. We have a final email question here. Again, Star 1 will put
you into the conference. And we still have several minutes if you would like to
address or make a comment to Jim. But our final email here is, What type of games
can we expect when the Big Four are implemented with fidelity? What has your data
shown about improvements in behavior and academic success?
J. KNIGHT: Well, we haven’t ever put it all together where we can say, “This is
what happens when all four of these things happen.” I can tell you that—this is sort
of working backwards—there’s data on all of these different interventions. We were
particularly focused on classroom management this year. But the formative
assessment piece is one of the most powerful, has some of the most powerful data in
support of it. And if you went to, just type in Richard Stiggens and look at what they
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put out with respect to literature on formative assessment, you’re going to see a lot
of information there.
There are tons of studies on the importance of modeling, for example, in the
classroom, with respect to instruction and each of the content enhancement devices.
When we’ve done the studies that were conducted on content enhancement, there
usually was about a 10–15 percent gain on student achievement scores. Now, that is
more compelling when you think that there are already many kids are going to be
pretty high, as it is. So it’s particularly with kids who are struggling, that you’re
going to see the biggest gain.
This year with behavior, we’re doing what’s called a multiple baseline. We have a
coach working with six teachers, and we’re watching those six teachers. And then we
work with two, and then two, and then two throughout the school year. And what
we’re seeing if we can pretty well get teachers up to 90 percent on task behavior
from wherever they might’ve been, if we can get them up to where they’re praising
the kids much more than a 5:1 ratio, if we’re able to see increases on time on task,
increases on ratio of interactions, I mean, the classes look significantly different. And
the data is showing it, in terms of the variables we’re looking at.
I think the question people always want to say is, “Well, if we do all this, will the
scores go up in our school? Will we make AYP?” And the honest answer is darned if I
know. It’s just not that simple. You could adopt the Big Four, but is the principal in
support? Is the principal in favor of it, and do they believe in it? And is there a coach
or some kind of professional learning to support teachers? You can’t just do a little
training and expect it to happen. Just to zone in on the classroom management, it’s
intensive. It takes time. It takes a lot of high-quality professional development.
But when you do these things, there are lots of success stories. There’s a school in
Maryland—Bohemian Manor Middle School in Cecil County—where two years in a
row, they’re the only school to make significant gains on their student achievement.
And they’ll tell you it’s because of the work the coach has done on some of these
factors, in working with really supportive principals in that setting. And they’ve been
able to make the greatest gains in the district.
So it can happen, but there’s a lot that goes into meeting AYP. And this is just
instruction. There’s parental involvement, and there’s community outreach, and
there are tutoring programs, and many other things that are also really important—
possibly more important. Instruction is just one variable. But you can make a big
difference if you zone in on the key things.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you so much, Jim. At this time, we have about five
minutes left, and I would like to turn the program back over to Dr. Loujeania
Williams Bost for her closing comments.
DR. L. WILLIAMS BOST: Thank you, Jim, and we’d also like to thank our listening
audience today. Jim, either they are absorbing all of this information like I am, here,
or it’s so overwhelming, or a third scenario is that they’re already doing these
wonderful things that are going to improve instruction. But we all know at the end of
the day one of the key aspects of graduating from school with a regular diploma is
having mastered the academic content. Content is necessary in order to accrue the
appropriate credits to move to graduation. And, certainly, emphasizing ways to
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improve instructional practices within the classroom goes a long way in helping
achieve this goal.
Again, we’d like to thank the audience today for listening, and we appreciate your
feedback, as always. And stay tuned again for our next teleseminar coming in May of
2007. We’ll be sending you details later. Thank you.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you so much, Loujeania. That will conclude today’s
National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities program titled,
“The Big Four: A Framework for Improving Instruction That Leads to School
Completion,” presented by Jim Knight.
If we didn’t get to your questions, or if you have additional questions, you will find
Jim’s contact information included in your materials today. We do encourage you to
fill out your paper evaluation form and submit it to the fax number on the bottom of
that form. Or you may complete that online by going to the evaluation Web site
address, which is in the upper right-hand corner of your paper evaluation form, and
that’s included in your handouts.
Today’s program is copyright 2007, by NDPC-SD, all rights reserved. Thank you so
much for joining us for today’s program. Please enjoy the rest of your day, and you
may disconnect now.
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