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John Ross

For the Sake of Argument | American Federation of Teachers - 0 views

www.aft.org/...friedrich_bear_fox

LanguageArts Writing PBL AuthenticIntellectualWork

shared by John Ross on 27 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • NWP’s approach to argument writing starts with having students understand multiple points of view that go beyond pros and cons and are based on multiple pieces of evidence, which ultimately enables students to take responsible civic action.
  • Participating in a conversation is central to our understanding of argument. Before students develop a solid claim for an argument, they need to get a good sense of what the range of credible voices are saying and what a variety of positions are around the topic. Students have to first distinguish between credible and unreliable sources, and then identify the range of legitimate opinions on a single issue. This initial move counters the argument culture by seeking understanding before taking a stand.
  • Many schools, especially in high-poverty areas, are accustomed to professional development providers that materialize for a short period of time, promise success, and then disappear. The NWP, however, relies on well-established local Writing Projects to provide professional development, believing that local teachers are the best teachers of other local teachers. This relationship helps break down resistance to change.
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  • The C3WP framework rests on what are known as “cycles of instruction” that integrate the program’s three essential components: instructional resources for teaching argument writing, formative assessment tools, and intensive professional development—all developed by teachers for teachers.
  • Each C3WP instructional resource describes a four- to six-day sequence of instructional activities that focuses on developing a small number of argument skills (e.g., developing a claim, ranking evidence, coming to terms with opposing viewpoints). Ideally, teachers will teach at least four of these resources each year to help students gradually improve their ability to write evidence-based arguments
  • 1. Focus on a specific set of skills or practices in argument writing that build over the course of an academic year.
  • rather than attempting to teach everything about argument in a single unit
  • 2. Provide text sets that represent multiple perspectives on a topic, beyond pro and con.
  • A text set typically:Grows in complexity from easily accessible texts to more difficult;Takes into account various positions, perspectives, or angles on a topic;Provides a range of accessible reading levels;Includes multiple genres (e.g., video, image, written text, infographic, data, interview); andConsists of multiple text types, including both informational and argumentative.
  • 3. Describe iterative reading and writing practices that build knowledge about a topic.
  • 4. Support the recursive development of claims that emerge and evolve through reading and writing.
  • 5. Help intentionally organize and structure students’ writing to advance their arguments.
  • there is no single “right” way to organize and use evidence in an op-ed.
  • 6. Embed formative assessment opportunities in classroom practice to identify areas of strength and inform next steps for teaching and learning.
  • C3WP engages teachers in collaboratively assessing students’ written arguments to understand what students can already do and what they need to learn next.
  • Most participating schools and districts, including those in the original evaluation, are underresourced, are under pressure to raise test scores, and often experience high teacher turnover.
  • John Ross on 27 Jun 19
     
    Being used in Norton City, one of the VA4LIN divisions.
John Ross

Putting it Back Together Again: Reframing Education Using a Core Story Approach A Frame... - 2 views

frameworksinstitute.org/...page18.html

CommunicationsPlan TechPlanning

shared by John Ross on 08 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Traps are often habits of a field or common media practices and, as such, can be difficult to notice and even harder to avoid.
  • Traps are eminently plausible ways of framing an issue that, upon investigation, fail to achieve the desired effect, or even turn out to do more harm than good.
  • 1. The Innovation Trap.
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  • the idea prevails that innovative reforms can only happen outside of the traditional public school context.
  • They do so by painting a stark picture of public schools mired in bureaucracy and stuck in old models of education, and non-public or quasi-public institutions as incubators of reform.
  • Communicators should avoid falling into this trap by actively avoiding business and consumerist language like “efficiency.”
  • Most importantly, communicators should resist using analogies and comparisons between the public education system and private industry in discussions of reform.
  • 2. The Crisis Trap.
  • the education system as a system in crisis.
  • the education system is not providing students with the skills they need for employment.
  • Rather than appealing to crisis, communicators should be honest about the scope and scale of the problems facing the education system, but also put forth viable reforms and solutions that can address those problems.
  • 3. The Revolution Trap.
  • revolutionize, “blow up” or reinvent the education system
  • Such calls are likely to cue the strongly nostalgic views that make Americans resistant to changing the education system and likely to go “back to the basics” as the preferred solutions
  • To avoid this trap, communicators should replace calls for complete transformations, and dramatic statements about reinvention and revolution, with more measured language.
  • Communicators can also avoid this trap by recruiting frame elements such as Pragmatism, Ingenuity and Remodeling to establish change as significant, yet feasible.
  • 4. The Lack of Process Trap.
  • Communicators should not fall into the trap of leaving process invisible and focusing only on problem or solutions statements. Instead, they should provide clear explanations of how learning occurs, with Explanatory Metaphors such as Pollination Points, Cooking With Information and others.
  • readers looking to the news for an understanding of how children learn are left empty-handed.
  • 5. The Classroom Bubble Trap.
  • In the first type of story, the classroom is sealed in a bubble and separated from external factors
  • In the second type of story, administrative and policy aspects of the education system are politically motivated and transpire “downtown,” far removed from the everyday concerns of the classroom.
  • Communicators can avoid falling into this trap by connecting policies to instruction and vice versa. For instance, rather than painting a close-up portrait of a vibrant classroom and an inspiring teacher, “widen the lens” to include the professional development, curricular decisions and funding structures that made the effective instruction possible.
  • 6. The Technology Trap.
  • The public, however, has limited understandings of the role that technology can play in improving educational outcomes, and modeling digital resources as “faster, fancier” books reinforces the public’s understanding of passive instruction.
  • communicators should take care not to appeal to technology as a value, or assume that members of the public have clear understanding of the ways in which technology can be a part of improving education and learning. Instead, communicators should explain the pedagogical benefits of technology using the Explanatory Metaphors recommended in earlier sections.
  • 7. The Opening Up Schools Trap.
  • Erasing the boundaries between the learning that happens in the school and that which takes place in out-of-school settings violates the public’s dominant Compartmentalized Learning model.
  • Instead, communicators should focus conversations of learning space on learning rather than space. For example, the Pollination Points metaphor emphasizes that effective learning requires movement between places, and helps communicators lead with learning to set up considerations of space.
  • 8. The Flexibility Trap.
  • Communicators should be wary of extolling the virtues of flexible, student-centered classroom spaces without careful framing.
  • This trap can be avoided by framing different understandings of learning through the use of the metaphors described above before introducing ideas of student-centered learning.
  • 9. The Motivation Trap.
  • Communicators often talk about how education reform proposals should increase student motivation. Communicators should be aware that members of the public view motivation in a very different way than is often intended in these messages. For members of the public, motivation is an internal characteristic that is distinct from social context.
  • The metaphors above that highlight the role of context in effective learning — mainly Charging Stations and Pollination Points — can be used to avoid this trap.
  • 10. The Multiple Assessments Trap.
  • simply appealing to “multiple” assessments will trigger the public’s Every Child is Different model, which cues a hyper-individualized understanding of assessment that can lead to disengagement with the issue.
  • Also, without dislodging the understanding that assessment “is” summative assessment, calls for “multiple” assessments may inculcate support for adding even more summative assessments to school systems.
  • To stay out of this trap, communicators should focus on explaining the essential characteristics of an effective approach to assessment, and why these components are important; the Explanatory Metaphor Dashboard, Windows and Mirrors is helpful in this task.
  • 11. The Fairness Trap.
  • the public understands fairness in highly individualized terms. Standardized tests are fair because they treat everyone the same and allow for competition. Or, they are unfair because “every child is different” and has a different “learning style.”
  • To avoid this trap, use the value Human Potential, which pulls forth the public’s belief that all children deserve equal opportunity, but without the unproductive side effects of fairness frames.
  • Alternatively, use the value Fairness Across Places to establish fairness at a population level.
  • 12. The “Achievement Gap” Trap.
  • it does not explain to the public why and how disparities exist, nor how addressing education disparities benefits all stakeholders who comprise the system.
  • With this gap metaphor, the public interprets inequitable outcomes as the result of individual effort or achievement, and “closing the gap” becomes a threatening proposal that will unfairly benefit “underachievers.”
  • To avoid this trap, explain how structural inequities create different contexts, which then contribute to differential outcomes. The Charging Stations Explanatory Metaphor is helpful in this task.
  • John Ross on 08 Sep 17
     
    "In the following section, we identify communication habits that "trap" public thinking in unproductive evaluations and judgments. Traps are eminently plausible ways of framing an issue that, upon investigation, fail to achieve the desired effect, or even turn out to do more harm than good. "
Katy Fodchuk

Educational Leadership:Getting Personalization Right:The Genius of Design - 1 views

www.ascd.org/...The-Genius-of-Design.aspx

#geniushour ##personalized #project-basedlearning

shared by Katy Fodchuk on 10 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • Genius Hour begins with the idea that students should actively create their learning rather than passively consume it. It allows students to make decisions about every aspect of the learning, including the strategies they want to use when developing a new skill, the pace of their work, the materials and resources for the project, and the format for the products they'll create.
    • Katy Fodchuk
      Katy Fodchuk on 10 Aug 20
       
      definition of genius hour
  • The unifying concept is a sense of wonder and curiosity. To tap into these qualities, we use the following guiding questions: If you could learn anything in school, what would it be? What are you most interested in right now? What do you care about deeply? What are your passions and interests? What nagging problem would you like to solve? If you could make anything, what would you make?
    • Katy Fodchuk
      Katy Fodchuk on 10 Aug 20
       
      Guiding questions to tap wonder and curiousity
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