Rethinking Planning: Asking the Right Questions

I used to think that planning for instruction meant sitting the team down with a blank calendar and a three-ring binder full of lessons from past years and fitting the old activities onto the new calendar, perhaps replacing some activities we’d grown tired of with new ones. After that, we’d delegate duties (who will write the test? photocopy the handouts? count the supplies? reserve computer labs?) and set a meeting date to plan for the next unit. Perhaps we’d have casual conversations from time to time about an upcoming lesson--sometimes one that was coming up next period!--but overall we didn’t have much curricular team talk after the planning meeting.   

We certainly never discussed why we were teaching what we were teaching and how our students would show understanding of unit objectives. In fact, our learning objectives seldom ventured out of the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and there wasn’t an overarching “so what?” to our units.  In English, we taught novels which were ends in themselves (with accompanying character lists, study guides, author background lectures, teacher-provided term lists, and Scantron tests).  The “objective” was to study Of Mice and Men, not to use the novel to teach some concept or skill that had any real-world relevance beyond the walls of the ninth grade English classroom. In the adult world, no one really cares if you can recall the names of the characters in the novel unless you’re on a competitive trivia team.  

I’m not trying to trivialize what we were doing. We had the best of intentions, and our students certainly left our classrooms with more knowledge than they had when they entered. But the world of education has changed since the days when I first started teaching (when Beanie Babies were a new fad, the Spin Doctors were a big thing, and America had not yet become infatuated with Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe). What I believe about instruction today is that students need to learn how to think, how to connect their learning to the world, and how to perform the kinds of skills that will allow them to adapt to a world that is changing rapidly. The content I teach and the texts my students read are merely vehicles to help students uncover what curriculum gurus Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe call “Enduring Understandings.” My lessons, then, should not be a series of isolated activities but a carefully constructed sequence of experiences leading to a final student product that provides evidence of student understanding.         

With that end in mind, I’ve come up with a list of questions that I would use to plan lessons individually or with a team. The questions work equally well whether I’m a teacher following a district curriculum or crafting one of my own.

Why am I teaching this lesson? What are the goals of this lesson?  

This question presupposes there’s already a unit plan in place that is focused on Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings that are relevant, meaningful, and have a degree of complexity. The unit itself will have Learning Targets that are measured by some kind of CAP (Culminating Assessment Product) that requires students to transfer their learning to a new, preferably real-world context.  Once all of that is in place, it’s important for the teacher to examine each specific lesson to see how it contributes to the overarching goals of the unit. If the teacher doesn’t know the overall purpose of the lesson, the lessons will have less meaning and direction for the students and might feel like (or actually be) a series of isolated activities with no end in mind.

How am I going to make the purpose clear to the students?

No matter how well the teacher knows what’s going on, the lesson lacks relevance if the students are left in the dark about how it fits into the bigger scheme of things. Don’t be afraid to let your students know the why behind the lesson. What skills and knowledge are they gathering, and why will this knowledge be useful down the road?

What are the kids going to be doing?

The teacher has probably mastered the content and skills already. The most important thing is to let the students wrestle with the skills and concepts in a safe environment. The kids should be doing most of the thinking and most of the work. This, however, doesn’t happen by accident. The well-prepared teacher preplans questions, collaborative learning opportunities, and deliberate student-focused experiences to assist students in uncovering the Enduring Understandings of the unit. If the teacher has to tell the students what the EUs are and what they should be thinking about them, that pretty much defeats the purpose. If the answer to the question, “What are the kids going to be doing?” is, “Listening and copying down what I say or what is on the PowerPoint,” I’d wager that the teacher is going to be disappointed at the students’ performance of the CAP at the end of the unit.   

How am I going to pull this off smoothly?

Like planning a party, a well-prepared teacher has thought through every aspect of the class period before the bell rings. How will I manage materials effectively? How will I move from one activity to the next? What problems can I foresee, and can I prevent them? What will students do when/if they finish before others? What will I do for students who will need further challenge or enrichment? How can I provide additional scaffolding for struggling students? What types of  movement and state changes can I incorporate to keep my students alert and engaged? Where can I add some AVID WICOR strategies? What examples and models do I need to provide to help students understand expectations? Where are places in the lesson cycle where I need to pause for some reflection or discussion on how the learning is going and how it can improve? Questions like these embody the real art of instruction, and they are well worth the time teachers invest in examining them during planning.

How will I know whether students get it?

The CAP should not be the first moment when you know whether a student knows what’s going on. And students shouldn’t be surprised to discover at the end of the unit that they didn’t understand what they were supposed to have learned. Informal assessments along the way can help you and the students know what they understand and what they need help with. These can be as simple as a thumbs up/thumbs down signal, an exit card, or a quickwrite. Effective formative assessment is a high-impact strategy that can help the teacher know where the instruction needs to go next. Also, make sure your assessments are congruent with your unit goals. There’s no need to give a picky plot-recall test on A Tale of Two Cities if you’re using the novel with the end goal of examining archetypes. It confuses the students because it muddies (or ignores completely) the stated learning targets.

As you’re planning and preparing for lessons with your team or individually, try out these questions and see what difference they make. Our district has instructional coaches in many content areas. Don’t hesitate to call on us for assistance with planning.  It’s part of our job, and we enjoy helping you and your students see results.

If you want to read more about unit planning, I recommend getting your hands on a copy of The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units by Wiggins and McTighe. It’ll help you understand the “why” behind the district’s curriculum design process. There are copies floating around your campus.  

I wish you the best as you maximize your planning to foster the most productive student learning possible.

 

 

Stifling the "Gotcha" Monster

Wile E. Coyote and I have a lot in common.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I used to hope that the Roadrunner would finally be caught by his lovable arch-rival. As a child, I sat glued to the set each Saturday morning yearning for the moment when my Warner Brothers anti-hero would finally find the perfect Acme device to give that smug little bird what he deserved. 

When I grew up and became a teacher, I took a little bit of Wile E. Coyote with me. 

Maybe I have a heightened sense of justice. I want hard work to be rewarded. I’m devastated when I hear the news that people took shortcuts that paid off and that hardworking people didn’t win. When watching Law and Order: SVU, I’m outraged when Olivia Benson and her crime-fighting partner du jour don’t catch the perp or when the clearly-guilty bad guy is found innocent due to some glitch in the legal system. 

In the classroom, this crusade for justice manifests itself in the “gotcha.” Like the coyote, I have toiled relentlessly to reward only the students who completed their homework, who read the assigned passage, who studied for the test, and who showed up to my class prepared. I’ve even set tricky traps for them: diabolically difficult quiz questions, endless hoops to jump through, and crafty assessments. Justice, after all, must be served, right?

Here’s just one of many examples from my own life. Back in a previous decade, we made all the freshmen in English read my favorite novel, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Some of you reading this, no doubt, shudder at the thought of that experience, which is challenging even to the most stalwart readers. The vocabulary is tough, the sentences unwieldy, and the plot labyrinthine, involving an enormous cast of characters. I knew that students were flocking to the Cliff’s Notes in droves, and I was convinced that many students weren’t really reading the book, updating their character list, recording unfamiliar vocabulary words (with definitions, the sentence Dickens wrote, and a sentence of their own) in their notebooks, and writing summaries of the book’s 59 chapters. To keep my students accountable, I crafted daily reading-check quizzes. 

By the time we got to Chapter 29, my coyote-esque behaviors had spiraled out of control. On the reading quiz for that chapter, I included a question asking the name of the servant Pip hires to work for him in London. The character, Pepper, is only mentioned by name once, and he is referred to maybe three times in total in the novel. He was not, however, mentioned in the Cliff’s Notes, so that made him a perfect candidate for a “gotcha” question on the quiz. 

The result: Most of my students got the question wrong, vindication for my theory that they weren’t reading the book carefully. I had separated the readers from the not-readers!

The other results were more damaging than a simple ten points off on a daily grade. Conscientious students flipped into panic mode and began reading and rereading, focusing on minute details instead of seeing the big picture and enjoying the plot. Students who were struggling to read but were giving it their best effort gave up hope because their work was not being rewarded. And some otherwise-honest students resorted to full-fledged cheating to get the answers from classmates because they saw no other path to success. Cutting corners became a necessary survival strategy for many.


I had unwittingly delivered the message that the most important goal in reading a novel was to memorize every tiny facet. I had reduced the reading experience to a trivia game. And many students became disheartened, discouraged, and resentful. 

Through the years, the “gotcha” monster showed up in many contexts. In reader’s workshop in my English class, I lost sight of the goal--to foster a lifelong love of reading in my students--because I was too worried about catching the hooligans who were trying to trick me into thinking they were reading their self-selected books each day. I wasn’t going to be that clueless teacher who let them gloat about pulling one over on me. Consequently, what should have been a joyful exploration of literacy became a drudgery for them and a source of stress for me. Buried beneath mounds of reading logs, journal entries, and vocabulary lists, my students and I turned reading into a torture.


Instead of being Wile E. Coyote, perhaps I should have tried to be like Tom Sawyer with his famous whitewashed fence, kicking back and enjoying myself while convincing my students to do the tough work I wanted them to do. Surely I should’ve taken some consolation that many of my students finally found the fun in reading rather than punishing them by setting up roadblocks and traps.


I wish I could tell you that I banished the “gotcha” monster completely. If I told you that, I’m sure my students would resoundingly disagree. I think a challenge is important, and I want my class to be rigorous. But I keep coming back to this idea: Rigor doesn’t mean more work.  

Middle school and high school are not college. Students are learning how to learn. They are challenging themselves and being challenged. They are growing as learners and thinkers as their brains continue to develop. While I should reward their efforts and applaud their progress, I’ve realized that I need to question whether my assignments and assessments intentionally or inadvertently stand in the way of their growth and discourage them from going further.


I’m particularly mindful of this in the world of honors and AP classes. Though these classes are designed to make students college-ready and, in the case of AP, actually to expose them to college-level work, I have to remember that I’m still teaching teenagers. Each trap I set may deter a student from attempting the challenge of my class.


That’s the thing I love about AVID. As we open our classroom doors to introduce more students to rigorous coursework and encourage them to challenge themselves, we retain the mindset that it’s important to scaffold the learning. We provide the necessary support and encouragement to help them succeed, and as they develop the skills, we gradually remove the scaffolding. The AVID strategies provide multiple pathways for students to experience their learning through writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. Using these strategies and developing a growth mindset along with my students turns me into a cheerleader for their learning rather than a nemesis.


Instead of expending energy on catching every student misstep like some diabolical game of educational Whac-a-Mole, I’ve tried to focus on providing the best experience for the majority of the students. Making my classroom a safe and fun place to learn has become a top priority. I constantly have to check myself to make sure my inner coyote hasn’t taken over.


Having 28 students reading, writing, thinking, and enjoying themselves while doing it seems much more important than catching the two who aren’t. And maybe the experience will become so contagious that the less engaged students will pick up a brush and start whitewashing the fence along with the rest of us.

2016: The Year of...

Did I ever tell you about the time I thought I was cooking quinoa but instead mixed up a big batch of boiled chia seeds?  It was an honest mistake. I had scooped quinoa and chia seeds that afternoon into separate bulk bags at Sprouts, written down the code (but not the name of the item) on each twist tie so the checker could charge me correctly, and brought home my healthy purchase to cook. Wanting a delicious and healthful savory side dish to go with my meal, I looked up the instructions online for cooking quinoa (1 cup quinoa, 2 cups water; boil 20 minutes) and started making dinner.

Unbeknownst to me, I inadvertently scooped out a heaping cup of chia seeds instead of quinoa.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the culinary experience of chia seeds. In the last several years, they’ve been moved from growing green “fur” on ceramic pets (Ch-ch-ch-Chia!) to being praised by Dr. Oz and other health food gurus for their nutritional value: high fiber, protein, calcium, antioxidants, and more. In their uncooked form, the seeds look like, well, grey-colored quinoa grains. When you mix them with liquid, however, they begin to form what scientists have best been able to describe as “sludge.” Most websites recommend adding a teaspoon or two to your protein shakes, soups, or snacks. I boiled an entire cup.

As soon as I noticed the gelatinous pan-full of chia goop and realized my mistake, I had two options: 1.  I could throw the chia away and start over, or, 2. I could try to do something with my creation.

Option 1 seemed like the best choice at first. After all, I had failed at my attempt to cook quinoa to accompany the chicken breast that was baking in the oven. I did not come up with the correct response, and there was no way to turn this into a palatable savory side. No one wants to eat chicken with chia phlegm for dinner. But if I abandoned my creation, how would I dispose of it? I didn’t trust that my not-Hefty kitchen trash bags would safely contain the mass all the way to the dumpster, and any attempt to wash this glop down the sink would surely end with an expensive visit from a plumber.

Option 2 presented some fun challenges. I recalled vaguely seeing Chia Seed Pudding on the dessert menu at a restaurant, and I wondered if I could make something similar. What might happen if I tried to turn this accident into a not-so-bad-for-me after-dinner treat? I added a little milk, some sugar, and some vanilla and continued to boil. The mixture thickened even more to a lovely puddinglike consistency. I removed the pan from the heat, scooped the pudding into dishes, and cooled it in the fridge.  And you know what?  It was delicious, so much so that I made it again later on purpose.

In our classrooms, I’m afraid we often create students whose only choice  when faced with a challenge is Option 1.  In their minds, there’s a right answer, a correct result, one path to a solution, a single definitive interpretation. If they don’t come up with the lone answer the teacher is seeking, then they’ve failed. They can start over or simply give up.

What if we helped students embrace Option 2? Education, after all, should be about a search for knowledge and understanding. Students should cultivate a playful curiosity.

In fact, I’m decreeing that in my world 2016 is “The Year of Playful Curiosity.” I hope the students and teachers I work with open their minds, banish their insecurities, and wonder “what if?” along with me.

Imagine what would happen in English classes if students trusted their own ideas and didn’t feel compelled to run to the internet to find out what The Scarlet Letter really means. What if they got excited by examining a sentence or paragraph from a book they were reading just to explore what the author was doing with words? They might even try playing with words in similar ways in their own writing.

What if classes raised more questions than answers? What if teachers didn’t predetermine the “right” answer to the essay or discussion question beforehand but only decided what criteria would demonstrate a successful response? What if students grew accustomed to playing around with ingredients, with numbers, with ideas, and with concepts in a safe and exciting environment?

The Understanding By Design framework our district uses for unit planning (Wiggins and McTighe) stresses real-world application, experiential learning, meaningful performance expectations, variety of experience and methods, and creation of meaning rather than accumulation of knowledge. Unit planners determine an acceptable outcome to measure learning and then design the learning experiences students need to reach that outcome. The best units won’t move students in a lockstep fashion to a uniform result; they will allow students to explore, grapple with concepts, play around with ideas, try them on for size, return to the drawing board, and wrestle their way to an acceptable solution. There’s ample room for playful curiosity in these UbD units.

When I think of playful curiosity, I think of one of my favorite English professors from my Southwestern University undergrad days, Dr. Debbie Ellis. Clad in Birkenstocks and sporting an unruly cascade of blond hair so long she could sit on it, Dr. Ellis loved to pose playful questions. I recall with delight answering essay questions on tests (that’s right; her tests were actually fun) in her intro to literature, Chaucer, and Shakespeare classes:  “Who was the most villainous character in all the short stories we read?” “How would the plays have been different if Shakespeare had switched the fool, Feste, in Twelfth Night with the fool, Touchstone, from As You Like It?”  Dr. Ellis didn’t have a correct answer in mind. In fact, she celebrated the unexpected and well-defended unusual response. After each test, she compiled a handout with excerpts from her favorite responses; seeing your answer made the handout was a mark of accomplishment and a source of pride.       

Our world today makes achieving a state of playful curiosity a struggle. When you can google any factoid you seek, watch a video instantly of someone performing most any task, ask a question online and get a response, and cut and paste someone else’s idea and try to pass it off as your own, taking the time to wonder, to play, to try, to fail, to revise, to retry, and to explore seems almost wasteful. But isn’t this where the real learning occurs?

If we’re going to make this playful curiosity thing happen in 2016, we’re going to have to unprogram our students. We are going to have to change their mindsets about school, and, in many cases, we’re going to have to change some of our own mindsets and break old habits.

I invite you to jump on my bandwagon, to embrace the idea of playful curiosity, and to re-envision what your classroom will be like in 2016. I don’t have all the answers about how to do this, but I’m curious to see what they might be. Let’s play around and figure it out. We might end up with sludge, or we might end up with something new and awesome!