Accessible Teaching Tips (Shared by Mindshift KQED)

 

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Shared by Mindshift: mindshift@kqed.org

 

How to Get Students Thinking About Their Own Learning: Edutopia

From: https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-get-students-thinking-about-their-own-learning?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Fall+24&utm_id=Fall+24&utm_term=thinking+learning&utm_content=practitioner&fbclid=IwY2xjawGrQnVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHYXWN3cA2ZAxkv-tJE5qrgOm7poP9DM0lhvcdOBc77K4CffmLkBYjaWxfQ_aem_fv7ZjdSrmqBkpdmylwedTg

Brain-Based Learning

How to Get Students Thinking About Their Own Learning

When students begin to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning, they develop self-regulation and can set more ambitious goals.

By Nina Parrish

May 5, 2022

Davor Pavelic / Ikon Images

As a special education teacher and K–12 tutor, I found that students were often told what to learn but were rarely taught how to learn, which had the potential to leave them stuck, anxious, and disengaged. My desire to teach students strategies they could use to develop their own agency and independence led me to write my book, The Independent Learner.

Metacognition refers to a student’s knowledge of their own thought process. A metacognitive thinking process allows students to self-regulate and direct their thoughts, behaviors, and actions toward their goals. As early as kindergarten, teachers can instruct students in how to build their metacognitive skills through a process of planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning. Once students reach third grade, they can begin to use these strategies with increased choice and independence.

Planning

When students begin working without a plan, they become easily confused and overwhelmed by the task. They may give up, get distracted, or become off-task very easily. Taking time to plan can help students avoid these issues. Planning can include previewing the task, setting goals, deciding how to approach the task, and connecting to previously learned information. The following strategies help students to plan.

Building prior knowledge: Teachers can help students build prior knowledge by connecting new information to what students already know. This might look like having students brainstorm in groups to answer a question, watch a short introductory video clip or demonstration, or look at and discuss pictures or objects related to the topic that will be studied. A strong foundation of background knowledge can help students to accurately make predictions and prioritize information during the lesson.

Goal setting: Having students set goals and track progress is linked to a 32 percent increase in achievement. Teachers can help students to set short-term goals related to the skill they are learning as well as the student’s long-term personal goals and values.

Planning the process: We have all had the experience of setting goals, only to lose the motivation and follow-through necessary to make them a reality. Teachers can help students think about the changes they need to make in their daily behavior and habits in order to get from where they are now to where they want to be. Students can make a plan or checklist and use this to monitor their daily progress or the baby steps toward their goal.

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Monitor

Students who are having trouble monitoring don’t know when to seek help or may be overly dependent on the teacher to make sure they are doing their work correctly. They may lack a sense of self-efficacy or the belief that their efforts affect their actions or fail to change their approach when it is not working. When a student is monitoring their learning, they are assessing their level of understanding and trying to determine whether the strategy they have selected is working. The following strategies help students monitor.

Metacognitive talk: When students are learning a new skill, the teacher can model thinking aloud to make the thought process visible for students. This helps them to develop the complex thinking skills necessary for that subject area. The teacher can encourage students to use discussion to construct knowledge instead of just participating to display what they know. Strategies like think-pair-share or visually explaining the steps of their thinking help students to understand that there are many ways to approach a particular problem or task.

Analyze, prioritize, summarize: Students can be taught various methods of summarizing information and isolating key facts, details, and keywords. One method that students enjoy is a one-pager.

Diversify: When approaching a new learning task, it is important for students to know many ways to solve a problem or approach the skill. Strategies that mix verbal and visual information make learning more memorable. When students are familiar with many strategies, they have the tools necessary to exercise their own agency in selecting what works best for them.

Evaluate

If students are not evaluating their learning, they often do not understand how to use strategies in other contexts or for future problem-solving. They may know that they got something wrong but are not able to tell you why or what they should do differently next time to avoid that same issue. To evaluate their learning, students consider whether the strategy they chose worked and what they would change for next time. The following strategies help students to evaluate.

Assess: Testing should be used during learning, not just once learning is complete. Students can create their own practice tests or test questions, or teachers can use pre- and post-tests with clickers to find out what students know, help students to prioritize important information, and assess learning during the lesson.

Seek feedback: In the classroom, the teacher acts as a coach to students, providing information about learning goals and progress. Successful feedback should not shame students or focus on personal qualities but instead should answer these questions:

• What am I working toward?
• What progress have I made so far?
• Where do I go from here?

Reflect and revise: After assessment, self-assessment, or feedback, students reflect on whether the strategy they are using is working. Then they decide what changes they need to make. Students may also consider areas where they need to seek out help. When they revise, students consider what did not go so well and fix it. They should be able to explain their mistake or what did not work and then select a strategy to correct their work. As you might notice, this starts the metacognition cycle back at the planning stage.

The only way to make learning truly relevant to each student is to teach the tools and strategies they will need to take a more active role in their learning. Incorporating metacognitive skills and self-regulated learning strategies has helped my students to become more independent, engaged, and capable of exercising their own agency.

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You are Still Some Child's Best Hope

 From: https://www.facebook.com/helpateacher

STEM and STEAM Resources

 

 

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Primary Source: Culturally Responsive, Inquiry-Based Investigating History Curriculum

From: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/ed-magazine/24/10/history-curriculum-making?blm_aid=234263333

 

Ed. Magazine

History in the (Curriculum) Making

Two (Harvard Ed School) alums help teachers help students with Primary Sources

• Posted October 29, 2024
 
• By Lory Hough

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
 
• Learning Design and Instruction
 
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education
 
• Nonprofit/Organizational Leadership
 
• Teachers and Teaching

Just before COVID hit, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) put out a bid for organizations to write a new history and social studies curriculum for grades 5, 6, and 7. Until then, it had been difficult for teachers to access comprehensive curriculum for those grades that aligned with the state’s 2018 history and social studies guidelines. Teachers often had to pull together lessons themselves, piecemeal. They wanted more support.

Watertown-based Primary Source put in a bid and won the contract. Led by alums Deborah Cunningham, M.A.T.’95, and Jill Stevens, M.A.T.’94, with colleague Susan Zeiger, the small nonprofit spent the next three and a half years researching and writing before launching Investigating History. The culturally responsive, inquiry-based curriculum includes 350 original lessons, plus slide decks and handouts supporting each lesson. Grade 5 focuses on U.S. history, and grades 6 and 7 are a world geography/ancient history curriculum that addresses each world region. The content is free and includes professional development training. In October, Cunningham and Stevens sat down to talk about the process, why there was a need, and how teaching tough subjects is doable.

Teachers really pushed for these curriculum resources.
Cunningham: Yes, for teachers, there had been a lot of time going into curricular preparation. In a professional development session last year in the Boston Public Schools, a teacher came up to me afterward and said, thanks for this curriculum. For the first time I feel like the teacher I want to be because I don't have to spend every night gathering things. I have time to focus on other critical issues. I think it really saved them a lot of time and gave them some support and guidance.

Stevens: I would also add that what contributed to teachers wanting the resource is that most of the resources and textbooks they previously had available to them didn't cover many of the topics that are in the 2018 framework, at least in any sort of depth. The resources that their school districts provided weren't able to meet the need. That was an important part of it.

As you worked on the new curriculum, did you run ideas by teachers for feedback?
Cunningham: Teachers around the state were critical advisers. One of the ways they were really helpful was helping us to understand that this is the first time in sixth grade that students engage in a sustained study of a distant time and place and really encounter a culture that, in many cases, is not known to them. You do have immigrant students who come in and bring knowledge with them, but in many cases, this was the first deep dive in ancient history. There was a lot of advice that teachers gave us around teaching about culture for the first time. How do you talk about this? How do you help students empathize with people far away and long ago? The work of developing a mindset of openness and appreciation was important.

The Investigating History team (L-r): Jill Stevens, M.A.T.’94; Deborah Cunningham, M.A.T.'95; and Susan Zeiger

Photo: Courtesy of Deborah Cunningham

You also reached out to scholars?
Stevens: We worked really closely with scholars. Some of the content was content that, on its surface, might look simple or that we had a fundamental rudimentary understanding of, but we worked with scholars to make sure that it was historically accurate. Having a history of the entire ancient world in sixth and seventh grade is really important for learners because as they move through their education, they encounter topics like colonialism and imperialism. To have a foundation of societies throughout the world that was culturally responsive, that was important to us.

Cunningham: Some of the topics were not extremely familiar to Massachusetts teachers and fairly new to us as well. When we wrote the unit on Southeast Asia and Oceania, for example, there weren't a lot of teachers around the state that we could consult with despite the fact it had been in the framework for a little while. We found consultants at the University of Hawaii Manoa and in Sydney, Australia. We really had to dig a little and find people who knew the region well, who could support the work there. We also had a wonderful adviser here at Harvard, Ingrid Ahlgren, who is at the Peabody Museum and is an expert on Oceania.

What makes the curriculum different from other resources?
Cunningham: First, it's an open-source curriculum that is completely free to educators throughout the state and completely endorsed by DESE so educators can trust it and feel supported in teaching it. That means that every resource in the curriculum either is an open source resource or it was something we gained permission to use. Also, until recent years, there wasn't necessarily enough material out there about various cultures and, to some extent, fifth grade-appropriate U.S. history material. It is only in recent years that so many organizations have put material online and digitized. We're in a moment where this is newly possible. For example, the fact that we could incorporate virtual tours of places like the ancient palace of Persepolis or Angkor Wat in the heyday of the Khmer Empire. These options were not out there before.

How else is it unique?
Cunningham: It's a student-centered curriculum. Students are the ones delving in. Students are the ones having discussions, and in some cases teaching one another. Students are the ones doing the research. And teachers have all the tools they need to introduce context and keep things accurate. They have a slide deck that goes with every lesson and every handout that they need, plus additional teacher guidance handouts. They have a list of resources, background articles, and videos so they feel ready and confident to teach the lessons, but ultimately, they are supporting the kids in doing the work of learning.

Stevens: I remember when my daughters, who are now in their 20s, took fifth-grade history. They had wonderful teachers, but they spent a lot of time taking notes on who won what battle and who flanked left and who flanked right. They didn't really learn a lot about the everyday people who participated in the revolution or about how the accomplishments of America may not have benefited everyone who was living in the United States at the time. I think that's another thing that's unique about Investigating History in terms of historical empathy and perspective, for the fifth-grade unit in particular.

We're hit constantly by misinformation and disinformation, so any skills they can have about how we know things, how we know things to be true, whose things we know, whose perspectives we have access to, these are all just building blocks for a participatory democracy.

Deborah Cunningham, M.A.T.'95

Your U.S. history curriculum includes diverse perspectives and content. Has there been any pushback?
Cunningham: When the curriculum was released officially last school year, it dropped without controversy, which, given the partisan state of U.S. history in the nation, was a minor miracle. I think that because it had been so thoroughly vetted both by scholars and by teachers and so carefully thought out by us, it really has been successful and made teachers feel safe in bringing in a lot of perspectives in a way that are responsible and accurate.

Stevens: There's a unit on the Ku Klux Klan in the fifth-grade frameworks. There was a lot of thinking about how to have students study that part of U.S. history in a way that was age appropriate, but also help them understand what happened in the United States after the Civil War. One of the nicest compliments I think we got was from a professor at Clark University who reviewed the curriculum for us, and he said, if everybody who came into my classroom in college knew what these fifth graders are supposed to know from doing this curriculum, I would be very pleased.

How do you teach something like the KKK to fifth graders?
Stevens: I ended up building that lesson around a quote online from a gentleman [Yemi Toure] on memories of living through Jim Crow. He said something like, “I used to say I grew up in the Jim Crow South, and I don't say that anymore. Now I say I grew up in the loving arms of the Black community.” What I developed was this interplay between what was happening in society, in fifth-grade appropriate terms — having students understand what the Ku Klux Klan was, why it was started, and what its goals were. And then counterbalance that with how the Black community was responding to that kind of violence in supporting each other — looking at the Black church, looking at the Black press.

Why is it important for students to fully investigate history?
Cunningham: It's so critical for them to know how to think deeply about what they're reading and consider the source of the information in a sophisticated way. We're hit constantly by misinformation and disinformation, so any skills they can have about how we know things, how we know things to be true, whose things we know, whose perspectives we have access to, these are all just building blocks for a participatory democracy.

Stevens: I would add it’s a good building block for living in a diverse and pluralistic society, particularly with the type of rhetoric we're hearing today about different groups who are coming into the country. For example, there's a whole lesson on the Haitian Revolution in the fifth-grade curriculum so that students know something about Haiti and its history when they hear these sorts of ideas in the press. The inquiry-based model is really helpful as a civic tool to understand that you need to ask questions to truly understand something instead of just accepting things on face value.