While You Were Paying Attention to the Strugglers. . .

When we dive deeply into our student data, we learn so much about the kids we teach. It’s fascinating to put together the clues of a student’s assessment history. We notice trends in performance, uncover weaknesses, and make plans to rescue those who are struggling the most. We develop remediation plans. We target specific standards to emphasize and reteach. We identify the objectives most missed by our students and redesign entire lessons to make sure our kids learn what they don’t know. We become that guy from the sappy little parable, walking along the shoreline and frantically flinging starfish from the beach back into the water, determined to save as many as we can.

Meanwhile, the gifted kids in our classrooms often go unacknowledged, ignored, and unchallenged.

Helping struggling students grow is one of the most important things teachers do, but every student deserves to make at least one year’s progress during one year of school. While we are scrambling help our neediest, what are we doing to meet the needs of the kids who already get it?

Education has no finish line where kids get to stop and rest, satisfied that they know all there is to know and have learned everything. When we cap off instruction, putting a ceiling over our students, growth is stifled. Bright students become disengaged, bored, and apathetic. Some of them turn their attention to mischief-making and become your worst classroom management problems because gifted kids who want to cause trouble are often very skilled at doing so.

Gifted education guru Carol Ann Tomlinson says that differentiation, ultimately, is an act of empathy. Educators put themselves in the position of each student in the classroom and figure out what everyone needs. Then, they try their hardest to take care of each one, not because they are told to do so but because they know it's the right thing to do. 

It’s not easy to meet the needs of every student in a mixed-ability classroom, and secondary educators tend to be much less accommodating to diverse learners than our friends in elementary. Traditionally, secondary classrooms are a one-size-fits-all model, where every student receives the same instruction and does identical assignments. One popular solution to this—though not one I think very highly of—is to always have some extension work for students who finish early. This solves the problem of keeping every kids occupied, but the extra work seems more like a punishment than a blessing to the high school gifted student who soon figures out the way to keep from having to do more is to work more slowly. When the extension work is a meaningless diversion unconnected to the curriculum (puzzle pages, logic problems, crosswords, etc.), the purpose is clearly babysitting rather than growing learners. Elementary teachers understand that good teaching sometimes looks like a three-ring circus, with the teacher checking in on everyone and providing appropriate attention at just the right time to keep everyone progressing.

One of the ways I prefer to think about providing appropriate experiences for gifted learners is to consider depth and complexity:  How can this content, skill, or subject be viewed more deeply and in more complex ways?

Depth and complexity can appear in many guises, some of which can be uncovered by asking yourself questions like these:

• What does this look like when the experts do it?
• What’s the next step or the next level in producing a more advanced product or thinking about the topic?
• What do people who study this professionally argue or discuss?
• What moral or ethical issues are associated with this topic?
• What is ambiguous about this subject?
• What words do experts use to talk about this topic? 
• Are there exceptions to the rule, plausible non-examples, or variations you didn’t teach to the entire class but that are worth exploring?
• Who are some of the important thinkers, doers, or innovators in this field?
• What are some articles, books, or primary sources that would provide interesting additional understanding of the topic?
• What do your students wonder about this topic that could be explored more deeply?
• What does this topic look like in another locale, in a later time period, in a different situation, of from a different perspective?
• What influenced this? What did this influence?
• What’s the counter-argument, point of disagreement, or opposite viewpoint?
• How does this topic connect to other topics you’ve studied, to other subjects, or to the wider world?

Sometimes, differentiation for gifted learners is as simple as offering some choices that intrigue the students and pointing them in the direction of the right resources. The option to explore at a level that provides a worthwhile challenge—not more work but different work—might hook some of your gifted learners. Who knows? Some of your struggling learners might take up the challenge, too.

By all means, take care of your special ed kids, your English language learners, your at-risk students, and your underserved populations. Just don’t forget to also take care of your gifted and talented students. As much as anyone in your classroom, they need you to push them and motivate them to keep growing as learners.

How MASTER Teachers Close Class

What happens during the last five minutes of your class? Do students pack up early and form a line at the door like they’re waiting to board a Southwest Airlines flight? Does the bell ring mid-activity as you shout out some final reminders and students sprint toward the door?

If you’re not using the last few minutes of class to its fullest potential, you’re missing out on some opportunities for powerful learning. MASTER teachers can use this handy acronym to plan intentionally to end class powerfully. 

Metacognition

Wrapping up class with a metacognitive reflection—whole-class or individual—can help students reflect on what they learned and how they learned it.  When students explain their thinking, they reinforce strategies for success. For instance, after a lesson during which students struggled together to solve a tricky problem or to work their way through a piece of challenging text, you could call a quick class meeting to debrief the day’s lesson by having the class brainstorm the strategies they used to overcome the difficulty. The resulting list of how to approach a complex problem or decipher a dense piece of writing can become an anchor chart on display for future reference. Students can look over to the anchor chart for some tips when they next encounter challenges.   

Assess

It only takes a few minutes at the end of class to collect a bit of formative data that can help drive future instruction and interactions with your students Ask students to answer a question or two on an exit ticket and hand it to you on the way out the door. Give them a quick quiz using your favorite digital tool to see what they know. See if students can explain a key idea from the lesson or—better yet—answer the day’s Essential Question in a few sentences. Collecting tiny bits of info from each student allows you to see which students have mastery and who needs more help. You can also design a formative assessment that gives students immediate feedback on their own learning; that way, you won’t be the only one who knows whether some reteaching or further practice is called for.    

Summarize

Recapping the major ideas from the lesson reinforces the main points, providing the kind of repetition that makes learning stick. Research shows that summarizing is one of the most powerful strategies in helping student learn. A 25-word GIST statement about the day’s lesson, a two- or three-sentence summary on a notecard, or an oral summary on a digital tool such as Flipgrid makes students separate the important ideas from the minutia. Pro tip: Though it’s much easier and quicker to summarize learning for your students, having them summarize themselves yields a bigger payoff. I’m a big fan of a paired summary: turn and explain the main ideas of today’s lesson to your neighbor. Then call on some neighbors to recap what they heard for the entire class.  

Teaser

I know I’m late to the game, but I’m currently listening to the Serial podcast. Each episode ends with an exciting hint about what new aspects of the mystery will be uncovered in the next installment. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait a week like the original listeners did because after I hear the teaser, my appetite is eager for what comes next. Savvy teachers know the power of the provocative preview. Tempting students with a bit of trivia, a cliffhanging question, or the promise of something exciting in tomorrow’s lesson will tap into their natural curiosity and have them thinking about your subject after they leave the room. Who knows? Some may even do a little reading ahead or research on their own to find out more before they return to class.    

Emphasize

Talk show host Jerry Springer always took a moment at the end of the insanity of each show to address the audience with a final thought, a piece of wisdom that gave a “so what” to whatever madness his viewers had endured for the preceding hour. Emphasizing a takeaway was Springer’s way of sending his viewers off with something they could use in their lives. The same strategy can be an effective part of your class closure routine. With so much intense learning happening in your room, some students may have a hard time discerning the difference between the nice-to-know and the need-to-know. The final moments of class give you the opportunity to draw attention to big takeaways from the lesson, to clarify points of confusion, and to send your students forth into the world with a significant idea to remember.  

Reflect

How do we improve if we never stop to think about how to improve? Self-reflection is one of the most important and most overlooked aspects of education. Most students, after leaving your classroom, won’t give your subject a second thought until they see you next time. They certainly aren’t going to look up from their game of Fortnite and think, “You know, I didn’t revise my essay very well thoroughly today in English class, so tomorrow I will probably want to devote some time to look at sentence variety in my paper.” The last few minutes of class is the perfect time to switch gears and shift into reflective mode. I love the Plus/Delta Reflection: students reflect on what they know or did well from the learning experience (that’s the plus) and then on how they need to grow or change going forward (the Delta). You could also ask students to set a short-term goal for next class, write down what they did well and one thing they want to work on, answer specific questions about how they learned or performed, give themselves a numerical rating, write a note to the teacher about what’s going well and where they need help, or complete a sentence stem that asks them to reflect on their progress. Revisiting the reflection the next day is a perfect way to begin a new day of learning. 

Stop wasting the waning moments of class. Wring every drop of learning out of your lessons by incorporating effective lesson closure. A little prior planning (and remembering to set a reminder alarm) is all it takes to add an extra step that makes the learning sizzle rather than fizzle.

Dress Rehearsals

My friend Megan is getting married this Saturday. On Friday evening the members of the wedding party will convene for a rehearsal. They’ll run though the wedding service so everyone knows where to stand, where and how to walk, what to say, and how to hand off things like rings and bouquets to other people at appropriate moments in the wedding. Running through  the logistics of a wedding beforehand is standard practice; no one would think twice about having a run-through before the big day. A dress rehearsal helps ensure that the wedding runs smoothly, minimizes anxiety for the bride and groom so they won’t make fretful faces in the wedding photos, and keeps the Man of Honor from embarrassing himself during the ceremony. Practice, as they say, makes the wedding perfect.

Teachers sometimes forget the importance of rehearsing as part of their planning for instruction. We look over a lesson plan and then wing it when the kids show up. Sometimes we can pull that off; other times, our lack of prior practice results in misconstrued instructions, awkward transitions, logistical confusion, and unclear explanations.

All too often, our planning looks like this:  “Okay, so. . . the students will do the opener quickwrite and then move into the Socratic Seminar. After that, they’ll fill out the exit ticket if there’s time.”  

Sketchy “planning” of this nature leaves so many unanswered questions. What are you going to do to hook the students at the beginning of the period? How long should the quickwrite take? Are students going to share or process the quickwrite in any way? How will you transition to the Socratic Seminar, including moving furniture and humans? What kind of instructions will the students need before starting the seminar? What will your role be during the discussion? What happens if the Socratic Seminar runs off track?  How much time will you allow for the discussion so that you have time for the exit ticket? Will you do any kind of debrief on the Socratic Seminar itself to encourage future improvement in student academic conversations? How will you reset the room at the end of the discussion? Will that happen before or after the instructions for the exit ticket? What do you need to say about the exit ticket?  How will students turn in their exit cards? What will you do with the exit cards after you collect them? What kind of preview of tomorrow’s lesson will pique your students’ curiosity?

Leaving these questions to chance means there may be some less-than-stellar moments in what could be an outstanding, highly effective lesson. Talking and walking through the lesson can improve the likelihood that you’ll say and do the right things to achieve the results you desire.

Asking two big dress rehearsal questions when you are planning can set you up for success:  

1.  What will this lesson look like? Asking this question prompts you to consider the many visual and logistical factors that are a part of any well-planned lesson. Before kids come into the room, it’s wise to rehearse—or at least talk through—these things:

• Materials you’ll need and how they’ll be distributed
• Written information your students will see:  learning objectives, learning targets, or focusing questions; daily agenda; handouts; other print materials; audio-visual components
• Room setup
• Student movement and interactions
• Transitions from one activity to the next
• Use of technology and multimedia (The middle of class shouldn’t be the first time you click on a link to see if it works.)
• Approximate times for each component of the lesson
• How students will be grouped
• What successful participation by students will look like

2.  What will this lesson sound like?  Have you ever thought you understood something and only realized the gaps in your understanding when you attempted to explain it to someone else? Rehearsing what you’re going to say decreases the odds that you’re going to flub your explanation. Teachers who consider what their lesson will sound like practice many things:

• Giving instructions
• Explaining concepts or terms
• Building anticipation or buy-in for a lesson
• Telling a story with an instructional purpose
• Asking effective questions
• Promoting student talk
• Providing verbal feedback
• Conferencing with students
• Opening and closing class effectively
• Correcting students
• Responding calmly and consistently to student misbehaviors

When teachers consider what a lesson will sound like, they think through other aspects:

• The desired noise level at various points in the lesson
• The quantity of student talk vs teacher talk
• What student talk should sound like
• Ways to get the desired outcomes for student talk

Effective team planning can involve rehearsing and discussing all these things. We grow better by learning from one another. You will often find that someone else’s idea is better than your own. Hearing colleagues explain a concept, introduce a lesson, or model an effective teacher-student conference can help you prepare for your own instruction, perhaps incorporating elements of their delivery into yours. Teams can troubleshoot  by thinking together about what a lesson that exists on a curriculum document will look like and sound like in an actual classroom. Rather than assuming that every member of the team has the same vision of what the written lesson should look and sound like, making sure everyone is on the same page by rehearsing together increases every teacher’s success, which increases every student’s success.

And speaking of success, Megan, I hope your wedding is all you’ve dreamed it will be. Enjoy your special day (and your rehearsal before that).