Expanding My Instructional Repertoire

Expanding My Instructional Repertoire in U.S. History

Process of Improving and Expanding My Instructional Repertoire

As a teacher, it is imperative to continue growing and learning along with your students. There are always ways we can improve, and through my time at MSU and my field experience at Grandville High School, I was able to expand my instructional repertoire by implementing a new strategy to solve a problem I was finding with my students.

Finding and Addressing a Class-wide Issue

What is an underlying classroom issue?

One of the main issues in my U.S. history class was that many students did not write thorough responses to questions. The students’ responses tended to be vague with a lack of evidence, examples, and detail. I believed that their vagueness meant that they also had a lack of interaction with the material, which was reflected in their summative assessment grades.

I thought that one of the issues was that students weren't held accountable for their responses. We only checked to see if they completed their work, not if they were really thinking about the material and what concepts and themes were important to understanding the past and present; if the students knew we didn’t read and evaluate their responses, they probably didn't see a purpose in providing thorough responses. However, even if the students did want to improve, they would have found it difficult since we didn’t give them feedback, so students also didn’t know what was expected of them or how to improve by themselves. By providing some feedback, I hypothesized that students' responses would improve, they would interact more with the material, they would feel as if their learning experience was being valued, and that we were invested in their learning beyond the test by challenging them to improve.

Brief Overview of Instructional Strategy

The strategy I used in order to engage students with the material more was by providing effective feedback using P.E.N.: Positively identify a strength, be Explicit, and identify or help the students with the Next steps in order to improve their skills and claim formation. I would encourage this deeper thinking by being specific and avoiding vague comments, showing valuing of student work through my comments, providing time for students to act upon advice, and using models to show desired outcomes. My goal was that the effective feedback would encourage students to practice thinking more deeply and thoroughly through providing examples, evidence, and detail in written and verbal form. Fred Wiser says that "the feedback we give to students should be for one primary purpose -- to keep them on course so they arrive successfully at their predetermined destination (the attainment of skills, attitudes, and behaviors)", which is exactly what I want to do. I want to build the students skills in history, especially since up until now, the skill they have been working on has been memorization. By giving feedback instead of evaluation, the students have a chance to assess their own performance based on a rubric that I created. My field instructor Rebecca Bush suggested that by creating a rubric, the students know what is expected of them, then when I give them feedback, the students will understand how they can improve upon the rubric. In order to prepare my students, Robert Marzano suggests that teachers "provide examples of work to help students better understand what high quality work looks like", so on the back of the rubric, I placed an example of a response that answered only a part of the compelling question.

The goals of the approach was to challenge and encourage students to continue their learning by giving them focused, explicit attention to their needs. Through my comments, my goal was for students to think more deeply about the concepts through their writing initially, then move on to vocalizing their claims through discussion. If students took the time to think deeply about topics, then the students would have more of an understanding of the content in the summative assessments. If students improved their writing and verbal skills in an argument and reasoning formation, then students would also be better prepared to communicate their thoughts in their lives beyond school.

Resources

Bellon, Jerry, Bellon, Elner, & Blank, Mary Ann. Teaching from a Research Knowledge Base: A Development and Renewal Process, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992.

Brookhart, Susan M. How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students. ASCD, 2008.

Bush, Rebecca. Field Instructor.

Marzano, Robert. Classroom Instruction That Works. ASCD, 2008

Miser, W. Fred. “Giving Effective Feedback”.

Rationale

If effective feedback is “a teacher’s response to student work with the intention of furthering learning”, then without feedback that is effective, how can students show growth beyond memorization skills that usually dominate social studies (Brookhart)? “Effective feedback is most strongly and consistenly related to achievenmet than any other teaching behavior…regardless of ”grades, socioeconomic status, and school setting”, so I believe this strategy will aid my students develop their claim formation, writing, and verbal skills by giving them the feedback they need to improve (Bellon, Bellon, and Blank). My field instructor and social studies consultant Rebecca Bush explained the importance of effective feedback in the improvement of grades since it provides students the knowledge of how to improve and learn. Effective feedback not only helps with grades, but it also is a way to get to know your students academically while trying to help them improve. Effective feedback will also teach students that learning takes practice and time. This effective feedback will be a scaffold for students as they build up their confidence and abilities for writing as we move from short answer writing about specific evidence of historical claims to essay writing of historical arguments.

Action Plan

Baseline data: Claim

Due to lack of scaffolding and effective feedback, my students are not thinking critically about the content. By giving my students effective feedback on formative assessments, I will encourage more in depth responses and thinking to help with summative scores and reasoned written and verbal responses.

Baseline data: Sources

-Student written responses

-Summative assessment scores

-Video of classroom discussion

Baseline data: Lens(es) of Analysis and Scales

Student Written Responses and Summative Assessment Scores: I will use a rubric to help analyze students written work and learning targets to help analyze student assessment scores, so I know what I am expecting of my students and my students know what is expected of them. Through the unit we will be practicing how to analyze evidence and after we have gone through all of the evidence, I will analyze their written response about the compelling question of the unit. I will have the students send me an electronic version of their writing so I can make comments in the margins. After making revisions and submitting their revised written response, the students will be taking their multiple choice summative assessment, and I will analyze their summative scores.

Lens: Deeper engagement with content.

Scale: Rubric score and assessment score

Video of Classroom Discussion: I will assess their verbal responses to discussion questions based on a rubric that includes using evidence, examples, and detail to explain their reasoning and argument. I will do this once in the unit.

Lens: Discourse patterns: reasoning and evidence.

Scale: look at number of interactions, how many times they ask questions and explain evidence.

Baseline data: Analysis

Based on my classroom observation and grading of assignments and assessments students are not held accountable for their work nor are they challenged to think about the material beyond memorization. Lecture and reading out of the textbook were the main ways students gathered information, so students wrote down exactly what the instructor had on the board while providing answers on tests that were given to them. Students who struggle with memorization lack content knowledge and struggle with summative assessments. Students are often not asked to think critically or in depth, nor are they provided the opportunities to do so. For example, the students had never participated in a discussion, so they do not get to voice their own thoughts on the topics.

Instructional Plan

I formed my unit around a compelling question:

Compelling Question:“Were the social, political, economic, and cultural issues and events of the 1950s more representative of a decade of progress or one of stagnation?”

I created supporting questions to help my students think through the material:

Supporting Question #1: What were the significant social, political, economic, and cultural readjustments (changes) that occurred in the U.S.after WWII in the 1950s?

Supporting Question #2: Did every American have equal access to the attainment of the “American Dream” of the 1950s?

I formed the unit in a way for students to get practice analyzing evidence in order to prepare for their written responses. We analyzed evidence to make claims to help us answer the compelling question.

For example, after we analyzed every piece of evidence (charts, photos, music, etc.), I talked with the students through how various pieces of evidence could either be used as evidence for progress or stagnation. We talked about how various aspects of each type of evidence supported or refuted common held beliefs about the 1950s – whether the 50s were an era of prosperity or one of stagnation. That written claim was a formative assessment that I gave effective feedback on for my students. This plan helped students build the skills necessary for understanding and interpreting history by asking questions, investigating evidence, making claims, and forming arguments based on the claims. My goal was that with providing students feedback on their written claim, students would feel encouraged, excited, and prompted to take my suggestions to use in future writing and verbal claim and argument formation. In history, it is imperative to investigate in order to answer questions we have of the past in order to understand the present, but students will always need to explain their claims and arguments in and outside of school, and this would aid students' ability to communicate effectively with the people around them and the people reading their writing.

Classroom Environment Plan

In order to prepare the students for the new norms and routines of my unit, I created various new handouts. For example, I created a visual organization of the steps of historical thinking (background context => ask historical question => look at evidence => make claims about each piece of evidence => see how the evidence interacts/notice change & continuities/analyze causes and effects => form argument). I also created a tracking sheet for students to see how I organized the unit and see how everything connects. The change in the format of how the class taught will be challenging because more will be asked of them – they will no longer be inactive participants in rote memorization and learning – but they will be challenged and asked to think for themselves and build skills that they need in life, and by allowing students to use their own voice, I believe students will be encouraged to actively participate and resist less. This routine is part of the foundation of the unit and will be a part of their learning every day. Every day I hope to build up their confidence and skills in using their own voice. Every day I will remind them of the skills they are learning along with the content, and the benefits of this type of learning.

Data Collection

Student Written Responses

Some students took advantage of the feedback on their written responses while others did not. Some took advantage of getting feedback by turning in their response on time; however, some did not use my suggestions to improve their responses, and just turned in the response they had turned in to me when I gave them feedback. For those students who turned in their written responses, received feedback, and revised their written responses, they improved on the final written response. For the students who didn't turn in their written response for feedback, they did not receive the suggestions that could have helped them receive an improved grade. The students who didn't change anything despite turning in their written response for feedback, didn't receive a better grade, but they didn't necessarily receive a failing grade.

Here is the rubric with the example I gave the students and used to give feedback and grade the students' written responses:

For easier viewing to compare with the data, here is the rubric:

Here is a sample of student #1 SC's written response after feedback. She received full credit:

Here is the data I collected from 5 students. Their written response scores before and after my feedback:

Discussion

The day after the students submitted their final, revised written response, I had the students discuss the compelling question for 9 minutes. The goal was that the students would discuss the compelling question by using evidence to back up their claims. I put the students into two circles so students would feel more comfortable speaking in front of their peers. Although, I found this difficult to facilitate the discussion when one group found a lull in the conversation and I was listening or helping the other group. There were some lulls in the discussions despite me having 3 other questions they could talk about on the board when they felt the discussion needed some expansion. In the video, in 1st hour, there were some major lulls in the discussion, in 2nd hour, there were more students engaged in the conversation, and in 6th hour at first there were only a few students dominating the conversation, but then they started adhering to some of the discussion guidelines, for example, asking for someone's thoughts and opinions and saying if they agreed or not, and there was less moments of silence and more conversation using evidence to back up their claims, a goal I wanted them to achieve. While I don't know how the students would have done before writing their response to the compelling question and receiving feedback on their writing, I can see a correlation between writing about the compelling question using evidence and seeing the students use evidence in their discussions effectively since many of them referred to their responses on their computers.

Summative Assessment Scores

Here are the summative assessment scores of the unit before the one I taught (Unit 7), and the unit that I taught (Unit 8). As you can see from the graph, most students did worse on Unit 8. Although, there was one student (student #2 AL) who did improve. From looking at the data of the summative assessment scores, it seems as if the effective feedback strategy did not go as far to improve their overall summative assessment score. I will reflect on the factors that could have contributed to this in the Reflections and Conclusions section.

Reflections & Conclusions

Written Response Scores

As seen in the chart, the students written responses improved if they took advantage of the feedback I gave them. Students improved on identifying and explaining skills important in the field of history, such as citations, change and continuity over time, providing evidence, and explaining the significance of the evidence. So I can say with taking advantage of the feedback I gave them, students historical writing skills are starting to improve.

Discussion

Reflecting on the discussion, I think it could go better in the future, because 90% of the students had not had a discussion before, and I could have gone over the discussion norms and expectations in more depth and asked them for suggestions of discussion norms and expectations to encourage participation. However, it was interesting to see the different outcomes of the discussion in the different hours. While participation could have increased over the day because of the time of day, I think it may have also been the students who made up each of the classes. The students in 1st hour have always done the best academically -- they have a system for themselves that works for them and they usually like to work independently. 6th hour on the other hand has always struggled the most academically, but they are much more engaged when asked to participate, especially when it is an activity they can interact with each other.

Summative Assessment Scores

While the summative assessment scores show an overall decrease in summative assessment scores between Unit 7 and Unit 8, there are a variety of factors that could contribute to that decrease. First, the change in the style and format of the unit can sometimes be difficult for students, especially since they had a regular routine before. Another factor would be how quick Unit 7 was, since it lasted only about a week, compared to my unit that lasted for about a month with all of the snow days we had. I am also usually against going over the answers to the study guide word for word, and that was the routine prior to my unit. Even though I had warned the students, I'm not sure they were prepared. However, I also could have prepared them better during my unit in a few different ways, for example, I focused a bit too much on aspects of the unit that the students would not be tested on, for example teens and music instead of material from the Cold War. I also could have aligned the final assessment more with my unit so the students could see more of a connection between what they learned and what they were being assessed on.

Conclusion

While I did not achieve my big learning outcomes of students improving on their summative assessments, I do believe students' historical writing skills improved, which is something they had never worked on before. However, I want to continue using effective feedback, because I believe these skills take time to develop, and with time and improvement of unit planning on my end, students will grow and learn in ways that will benefit their overall grade eventually. While I didn't find that effective feedback helped improve their grades immediately, I did find that I learned some more about the students in my classes -- learned more in order to brainstorm new ways to help my 6th hour by engaging them more in classroom activities while perhaps adapting lessons for 1st and 2nd hour in ways that would better suit their learning.

As I continue my teaching, I will continue to request feedback and communication from my students so I understand how they think I could help them more. For example, in the future, I would like to give more time for the students to work through the writing response in class, so I can give more of them the space to respond to the feedback, which is a part of the "effective feedback" strategy that I could have improved on. I think if the students had more time in class to write and respond, more students would have taken advantage of the feedback and perhaps would have received improved scores. I think one aspect of my teaching that I can continue to work on in general is going more in depth and giving more time with activities so the students will get more out of the concepts, content, and ideas we discuss.