Board Initiatives I Have Known

The terminology of pedagogy is an intersting animal. Though I'm sure you must be familiar with each of the concepts here, you or your board may refer to them differently. "A rose by any other name..." and so on. Here are but a few of those I try to employ into my daily routine:

Learning Targets, Achievement Criteria and Agendas
Each of my lessons begins with a listing of learning targets, achievement criteria, and a daily agenda. How the learning targets are framed is a discussion still in progress. The general consensus is to re-phrase the ministry learning expectations into language that is student-friendly. At my school, we have discussed the possibility of using report card comments as learning targets and/or critical thinking questions. I'm not sure how to phrase my learning targets yet, so there will probably be a combination of all three techniques represented in the lesson plans posted here.

Achievement criteria refers to the measurable evidence the teacher will collect during and after the lesson that proves the students have met each of the learning targets. This can be as simple as a show of thumbs up/thumbs sideways/thumbs down by the students, exit cards, or some other diagnostic or formative assessment tool collected and assessed by the teacher.

Agendas save you from having to answer the question of "what are we doing today" as each and every one of your students rolls into class. Eventually, they get the hang of looking at the board when entering the class before asking you questions.

Gradual Release of Responsibility
 If you have experience with teenagers these days, especially if you teach, then you know that they are reluctant to think for themselves and take chances. I explain the concept of gradual release of responsibility to my students as I use the technique. What this means is completing a task multiple times. The first time, the teacher models the task. The next time, students complete the task with the teacher's help and in pairs or small groups. The next time, the student completes the task with the teacher's help and on his own. The teacher takes in the formative piece and offers written (and/or verbal) feedback by way of assessment. The next time students complete the task, it is on their own and with minimal help from the teacher. The final time the task is completed, the teacher has released responsibility of completion entirely to the student. Students hate this technique, but they eventually realize it's for their own good and in order to help them become independent critical thinkers (though you may have to remind them of this each and every time).

Differentiated Instruction
The concept of differentiated instruction means different things to different people. Essentially, it means teaching according to students' learning styles, that much is clear. But it is how this is interpreted that causes much grief in teaching circles. Most agree this does not mean providing each student with an individual learning plan, but teaching a variety of ways in order to appeal to as many learning styles as possible. This means that, though it may be okay to stand in front of the class and ask them to copy notes from the board or make their own notes as you lecture once in a while, it should not be your primary means of delivering a lesson. Not all students are literary learners; you must also conduct lessons that will reach your kinaesthetic learners, your visual learners, your verbal learners, your mathematical learners, your spatial learners, your auditory learners, and so on. I have found that I rarely use the chalkboard anymore, which, in my opinion, is a good thing.

How do you know the types of learners you have in your class? At the start of the semester, I carry out a learning skills inventory lesson that I will outline here. This lets you know the proportion of visual learners to linguistic learners to auditory learners, etc. It also shows the students that you are interested in the way they learn and in seeing each and every one of them successful at the end of the semester.

Assessment Of/For/As Learning
This is also something I'm sure many of us do, though the terminology of it seems to change every decade or so.

"Assessment For Learning" refers to the diagnostic and formative work we do daily in class. Again, for the sake of common terminology: diagnostic assessment refers to any work that is not counted in the final tabulation of marks but that teachers are assessing for student achievement of expectations. This is often completed at the start of a unit to see how much students already know about a topic so the teacher is not teaching materials with which students are already familiar, or in the middle or at the end of a unit to see if students are on track and if the teacher is okay to move forward in the curriculum (i.e., that expectations have already been met).  Formative assessment describes work that is the scaffolding, practice and planning for the work that will be taken in and assessed at the end of the unit. The teacher collects this work and offers feedback, but does not usually assign a mark. If a mark is assigned, it is for reference only and is not counted in the final tabulation of marks.

"Assessment Of Learning" refers to the final, summative work that is collected at the end of a unit. This is generally an extension of the formative work, or the final, polished, independent piece produced after modelling the activity during formative assessment stages. Summative work is assigned a mark and is counted toward the final tabulation of marks.

"Assessment As Learning" refers to the metacognative work that students do throughout the semester. This is often in order for students to assess their own learning and set learning targets of their own for the next unit or stipulated length of time. The teacher may collect the work and provide her own feedback, though this is not required. This work is intened as student self-reflection in order to help them improve their learning technique and figure out what works best for them in the learning environment.

Why Gender Matters

A few years ago, my board began an initiative based on the findings of Dr. Leonard Sax which found that boys learn differently than girls. The theory behind this work is that boys' brains are different than girls by virtue of anatomy and rate of development, which affects how they learn (Sax 14). In order to help boys to be successful, Sax suggests the teacher employ the following techniques when teaching boys:

• Sit down next to boys when helping them, spreading out the materials in front of you while adopting a shoulder-to-shoulder stance. Avoid eye contact unless disciplining and don't smile (Sax 86).
• Avoid small group learning (Sax 87).
• Speak loudly; seat boys at the front of the class as boys don't hear as well as girls (Sax 88).
• Make sure the work is relevant and has intrinsic interest or boys will not complete their work (Sax 81).
• Boys are more kinaesthetic than girls and they enjoy competition as this is similar to the way they play (Sax 83). This should be taken into consideration when planning lessons.

Sax suggests that coed classes shortchange boys and girls because they learn differently and mature at different rates (Ripley 5). Boys are less likely to ask for help in mixed gender classes lest they be perceived as being less cool or appear as stupid in front of the girls in the class. Boys were also more likely to act out when they were in mixed gender classes in order to cover for their shortcomings (Sax 242). In order to test Sax's theories and collect data, grade 9 students are separated into three streams for the core curriculum: all girls classes, all boys classes, and mixed gender classes. Students follow through with the same stream until graduation. Last year I had the pleasure to teach classes in each of these streams and the results were eye opening.

While teaching the all boys class, my observation was that boys are indeed less mature than girls. Whereas girls are most always prepared for the lesson and expect to take notes and to have homework, many boys routinely attend class without paper, pencil or notebook. Contrary to what you might think, boys tended to be less independent than girls, and it was a constant struggle to get boys to operate independently of the teacher and each other. Routine was difficult to establish and the smallest disruption in the class (be it a call from the office, an unexpected remark or a sneeze) set the whole class into a frenzy. That's not to say that the all boys class wasn't without its rewards. The boys were very social which meant it was easy to build a rapport with them (much easier than in the all girls class). Once the rapport was built, they were eager to complete any and all activities, be it paper and pencil work or a kinaesthetic activity. Occasional surprise rewards for scholarly behaviour helped motivation (as did the occasional threat to call home). On the whole, the experience was entirely enjoyable.

That's not to say that this method of instruction doesn't have its detractors. Some people suggest that, if the teacher uses instructional techniques that accommodate the learning styles of both genders, there is no need for same-sex classes. They argue that there is the potential to stereotype, making assumptions about how the group will learn as a single body, rather than as individuals (Rutka), but this negates another concept my board has embraced, that of Differentiated Instruction (which I will discuss in my next post).

The purpose of this blog is to document the journey I took this past semester while teaching the dreaded Shakespeare/Drama unit in my grade 10 academic, all boys English class, as well as my continuing journey as I teach the all boys class in the coming year. I have chosen to focus on the Macbeth unit, as it is one I enjoyed teaching, and one I thought worked well. I may expand this in the future to include essay writing, short stories, and To Kill a Mockinbird, time and response permitting. I will try to include as many references as I can and apologize in advance for those I have misplaced and cannot provide. If you recognize your own un-cited work, please let me know and I will correct the problem immediately. If this blog helps you to teach Macbeth or any Shakespearean unit in your class, whatever the gender make-up, please share it here as well.

Works Cited
Ripley, Amanda. Who Says A Woman Can't Be Einstein? Time Magazine. 27 Feb 2005. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032332-1,00.html>. 2011.

Rutka, Mari. A case against single-gendered schools. The Toronto Star. 31 May 2011. <http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1000395--a-case-against-single-gendered-schools>. 2011.

Sax, Leonard. Why Gender Matters. Random House: New York. 2005.