Benjamin L. Stewart: July 2015

Sunday, July 26, 2015

A Mission for Unity and Coherency

Always looking for a teachable moment, Choice Stifles Learning for Educators (Whitby, July 25, 2015) gives me an opportunity to speak to writers taking composition and academic writing about the importance of unity and coherency.

Paragraph 1

What is it about a mandated, contractually obligated, professional development conference that inspires some teachers and completely turns off many others? Why do some teachers glow with excitement at conferences and many others complain as they go through the motions? Is it the conference itself, or the attitude of the educators attending, or a combination of both?

The first paragraph provides a hook by asking three consecutive questions. The first question provides context by limiting the types of professional development (PD) conferences as not being a choice a teacher makes (i.e., conferences are required); it suggests that conferences are appealing to some educators, and not for others. The second question restates the rheme from the prior sentence, making it sound as if the main idea of the essay (i.e., the thesis) vaguely relates to the differences in opinion when attending a conference. However, the third question offers a dichotomy that insinuates the reason for these differences in opinions about conferences has to do with both the conference itself and the attitudes of the attendees.

A hook should align with the main thesis of the essay. The rest of the essay speaks mainly about conferences and slightly about educators but not related to ideas found in this paragraph. Also, mentioning that PD conferences are mandated clouds the overall thesis for this essay.  Just being forced to attend a conference is reason to be turned off and may have nothing to do with the conference or how it is organized. The hook (the entire first paragraph) lacks unity both in terms of the rest of the essay and within the paragraph itself.

Tip: Begin your essay with a hook but limit it to one question, famous quote, or important statistic or fact.  Develop the rest of the introduction paragraph by providing context or background and conclude with a strong thesis statement. As a general rule, avoid questions throughout your essay... answer the questions instead!

Paragraph 2

When it comes to professional development for educators, conferences are believed to offer a great deal of choice with usually a seemingly wide array of sessions and workshops for educators to choose from to fill their blank schedules for a full day of learning. That is at least what is in the minds of the conference planners as they spend a huge amount of time planning these events. They seem to concentrate on the how and what of education, but fall short of the why.

The second paragraph provides more context and speaks to the problem of conferences focusing more on the how and not the why of education. Notice how the hook (prior paragraph) does not align with this paragraph. One of the first two paragraphs are off-topic (lacks unity). Also, notice how the use of passive voice in the topic sentence (...conferences are believed...) fails to disclose who the agent is. Do teachers or conference organizers believe this? Then in the next sentence, the writer kind of suggest conference organizers. Incoherent.

Tip: Provide context, background information, or problem in the introduction paragraph. This sets up or should lead right into your thesis statement, which concludes your introduction paragraph.

Paragraph 3

The why refers to why we do things in the first place? Without at least discussions on that subject of why we should, or should not do certain things in order to examine their relevance, we might find we are doing things just because that’s the way they have always been done. To simplify an example: that is why we teach keyboarding and not typing. There are no longer any typewriters, but keyboards abound. Of course all of that goes out the window with mobile devices where thumbs and pointer fingers rule the keys. The point is that we examined why we were teaching typing, and found that we needed to teach something else to stay relevant, keyboarding.

The third paragraph attempts to expand on the why of education that was introduced in the prior paragraph and concludes with an example. The topic sentence is vague because it is still not clear who we are: educators, conference organizers, administrators, instructional designers, parents, etc. As a question, it is not clear why the reader should ask why about education. If this was not just a mistake in punctuation, it is the opposed of what the main point of this paragraph is - that the reader should consider why teachers educate. The example that concludes this paragraph does not go far enough in contrasting the reasons for teaching typing class vs. keyboarding class. The example seems to suggest that the we pronoun refers to educators.

As it relates to the first paragraph, why teachers teach typing or keyboarding has just as much to do with curriculum planning and policy than actual instruction. For this reason, paragraph three does not align with paragraph one which seems to be about decision-making among educators, forcing educators to attend conferences, and conference organizational choices. Lacks unity.

Tip: Avoid questions as topic sentences. Instead, create claims as topic sentences that are 1) not questions, 2) not commands (imperatives), and directly align to the thesis statement or the overall thesis of the essay. Avoid the we pronoun when its antecedent is not clear. Unless writing a narrative, it is usually best to stay in the third person.

Your mission: Take a look at the rest of the paragraphs of this essay and choose two to comment on. Provide an analysis similar to the discussion above. Your instructor will suggest where to post your response for others to comment on from a discourse perspective.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

What's the link between formative assessment and anticipating student challenges?

I was asked recently about formative assessment and anticipating student problems in a recent Google+ Community chat, so I thought I would create a blog post.

Could you give some examples of what you mean by the "formative assessments" you said you build in to your planning? And I'm curious as to how you go about "anticipating student challenges"...how and what kind of challenges?

Wiggins and Mctighe (2005) posit (and I would agree) that assessments include standardized exams, in-class exams, quizzes, academic prompts, performance tasks, and informal discussions. Informal discussions might occur around homework, student portfolios, Socratic Method, among others. Broadly speaking, all assessments can be broken down into two categories: formative and summative.

Summative assessments are often associated with standardized tests; they are defined as any assessment that measures learning. They measure what knowledge and skill sets the student has acquired in the past. When teachers assign grades, they usually (but not always) are applying summative assessments.

Formative assessments set out to promote learning, and in contrast to summative assessments are more prospective or forward-looking. The most common example are informal discussions with students that are intended to help them achieve something they could not do before. When teachers are in class, they constantly observe students who are struggling and thus make adjustments to either their teaching practice and/or they suggest to learners to make adjustments to their learning tactics. This is an example of formative assessment...we are assessing and tweaking the educational design in order to help students learn more effectively, efficiently, and through higher engagement.

I mentioned before that exams were "usually" considered summative assessment - but they don't have to be. Dynamic assessment is a term used to describe how teachers use the results from student exams, for example (which are typically summative assessments) as a type of formative assessment. Teachers build a lesson (i.e., a learning experience) around common problems reflected in the results that came from the results.

So, formative assessment techniqually can be any type of assessment, but it is what you do with the test, exam, informal discussion, etc. that matter. The purpose of formative assessments is to create better learning experiences; the purpose of summative assessment is to measure learning. In formal education, both are important, but my philosolphy leans on having more formative assessment than summative. As in the case with dynamic assessment, anything can be turned into formative assessment.

As for anticipating student challenges, there are two perspectives to consider: the novice practitioner and the expert practitioner. The novice teacher perhaps will lack at being able to anticipate certain student challenges. So, what I would suggest is to record or share classroom experiences as often as possible and inquire about what others are doing. One's personal learning network (PLN) can come in handy when using social media to share experiences with others in this regard. Simply asking questions to others often can create a discourse around working towards a possible solution - make learning transparent. Then, complement this with what the literature (research) states.

The expert practitioner perhaps can anticipate more problems that students are likely to face. But since each group of students is unique, being a reflective practitioner and sharing one's experiences with others (like in the case of the novice) can also be beneficial.

For me, being a reflective practitioner and sharing my experiences with others has helped me cultivate my own PLN in a way that helps me become better as an educator. I often reach out to my PLN when it comes to student challenges. These challenges are often linguistic, technological, and managerial when it comes to when, where, and how they set out to achieve the objectives of the class. I receive a lot of good information via my PLN and this has helped me learn how to be more in-tune with my students. For me it's just paying attention to the types of feedback that I repeatedly give (i.e., formative and summative assessments) and then reflecting on and sharing what I learn as often as possible. This is the approach I currently take.