Standard 4: Student Learning

Teacher leaders facilitate student learning through evidence-based practice informed by research. They understand and apply research in child and adolescent development, cognitive development, and general and specialized pedagogy. They encourage critical reading, writing and thinking in the learning process. They foster instructional and evaluation methods that embrace variety and authenticity. They promote student reflection and self-assessment. They encourage colleagues and students to take on leadership roles and work in teams. Indicators are:

ReadWriteThink Lesson

Supporting Documents for RWT Lesson Hadley
From RE5730 Reading and Writing Instruction for Intermediate and Advanced Learners
NOTE: The requirements for this assignment were that all supporting documents be described and then created.  That is why there are two artifact for this part of the standard.

Context:

This assignment required the graduate students of the class to create a series of lessons based on the formatting, structure and submission guidelines required by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teacher's of English joint currriculum website called ReadWriteThink. ReadWriteThink is centered on a website that allows teachers to search for curriculum resources, activities and interactives from a single Internet platform. The requirements for submission of a lesson to  the website are demanding. The lesson must be supported by research-based practice, provide all sources, be clearly aligned to an IRA or NCTE standard, include all materials and handouts, explain how the educational theory relates to the practice and include an estimated amount of time to complete the work. The goal of creating a lesson is for teachers to use it without creating any new material.

Rationale:

This assignment meets the criteria for this standard because the lessons are built on a foundation of research-based practice. But even more than that -- this is a real teaching-world assignment. It requires not just a research base, but also thought and planning on how the research will transition into actual classroom practice. So many teachers resist change or innovation because it is not presented in a format that shows the direct relationship between scholarship and practice and the eventual payoff for the extra time invested. Instead of offering a menu of strategies designed to meet some teaching objective or correct some perceived shortcoming, these lessons narrow the focus to research on a single topic or strategy and then link it through statements, outlines, plans, materials, handouts, Internet links and teacher materials to the daily act of teaching.

I carried out this assignment in my current teaching position as an advanced foods and apparel specialist in a traditional 9-12 high school. I learned many things from this work -- the most important being that I had not been putting enough careful thought into the planning of my lessons. The level of detail and thought that went into the planning and creation of these lessons was well above what I had been doing as my habit.

My courses are outlined in a Course Guide that outlines the standards (broad ideas) and the objectives (detail-oriented teaching goals) that make up the content area material to be taught. I have relied heavily on those course guides, which is proper, but I had not been giving deeper thought into how the objectives worked together to form the whole standard. I realized with this ReadWriteThink lesson that I had been teaching the parts -- but not spending enough time in showing students how those parts added up to the whole.

The way the RWT lesson is structured requires thinking about the whole and its constituent parts up front. I believe this has had a profound affect on the way I present material to my students. I talk regularly now with my students about "the big picture" and then we talk about how the key terms, facts and concepts of our objectives fit into that big picture.

Another benefit came in a return of time. I found that that upfront work paid itself back in the execution phase. Because these lessons had been meticulously planned -- the execution was relatively easy. It also freed me up from being an explainer of instructions to an actual teacher who could probe, prompt, nudge, needle and question.

Another way that this work meets the requirements for this standard is that it has caused me to step up my use of technology in the classroom. I took this class the semester that I finally got some student computers for use in my classroom. I was very excited to have 11 computers for student use -- but once they were working I came to a stark realization. Because I'd been teaching for five years without them -- I didn't have a lot of lessons that used computers. Before that, I had to sign up for computer time in a lab or the media center. I had to plan for a specific day (no matter what disaster befell the day before) and register for the machines by half periods. That meant that I might only have 45 minutes on the computers and that we might not even be ready when the computer time came.

So for about four weeks, the computers sat mostly idle in my room. Then along came the RTW lesson. During my work creating it, I discovered a wealth of interactives on the website that would allow students to create, experiment and manipulate our classroom content in a variety of ways. I began having them create foldables and stapleless books featuring our vocabulary words. Our professor offered us additional points for using the lessons in class and writing a reflection on how it worked. I taught two lessons and found that with the research to practice format and the in-depth planning, my students were more engaged, our learning was more effective and I was a better teacher.

I am pleased to say that my computers have not been idle since. Each week, I add to my stock of computer-aided lessons. Technology is becoming an integral part of my classroom practice. I credit the RWT lesson with pushing me to begin the work necessary for the integration.

Action Research Study Final Research Paper
From RE5040 Teacher as Researcher

Context:

This was more than an assignment --  it was a day-and-night marathon of reading, reflection, planning, research, revision, revision, revision, execution and analysis.  Students used the text, Action Research: A Guide for the Teacher Researcher by Geoffrey Mills. We read the text, and as we worked through each chapter, we carried out the tasks that were described and explained. In a brief overview, students were required to make a statement about an observation from their classroom, reflect deeply on the statement and its causes and effects, research the topic, formulate a plan to carry out research in the classroom, implement the research plan, gather data, analyze data, draw conclusions from the data and discuss the findings and implications from the results and analysis.
Products from the work included a visual and audio presentation which was uploaded to a website for all students to review and a joint research paper that presented the action research project from beginning to end. Dr. David Koppenhaver was our able guide. Some weeks he nudged us; some weeks he prodded, and when we needed it, he kicked us in the pants.

Rationale:

This course really had only one assignment. Carry out an action research project. It ended up being an all-consuming endeavor that challenged me in ways that nothing else I was asked to do in graduate work did.  This class kicked my butt, robbed me of sleep regularly, inspired my three-year-old to ask me one evening when I was going to get out from under the laptop, crowded my weekends, and blew my mind.

We were asked to reflect on something in our classroom we wanted to improve or look at carefully. I knew immediately what I wanted to study. I had been mulling over an on-going issue in my classroom for years. Each semester, I have felt like I need to cram an unmanageable number of key terms into my students heads. They need the vocabulary words so they can discuss, work with, understand and then use our content area concepts. I have been continually dissatisfied with the vocabulary work. I felt it was spotty on my part because I was dissatisfied with the results, that students resisted it because they found it boring and that there were far too many terms that students needed to learn.

In the Entrepreneurship unit alone in Foods 2, there are 50 key terms that my students need to know. Entrepreneurship is one of five standards that must be covered in the course, so that 50 is just a drop in the bucket. My generally poor, rural students come to me with weak vocabularies and poor or nonexistent learning strategies. All of this makes vocabulary study difficult and frustrating for me and the students. It doesn't help that terms like food-borne illness, gluten, ovenspring, inventory management and demographics are the most difficult kind of words to teach -- unknown words for an unknown concept.

I conducted this research with a direct and immediate goal of improving the vocabulary strategies and work I assigned and my students' work with their key terms. I had an eye on the future as well. I hoped to be able to share my results and some new and effective strategies with my colleagues.

One of the more valuable tasks that we carried out was a literature review. In reviewing numerous scholarly articles on vocabulary theory, strategies and studies, some common themes emerged. My partner and I used these themes to devise a research-based series of activities to use with students in vocabulary work. Our study results were mixed. My partner's data showed clear improvement in vocabulary scores with intervention. My data was mixed. Further study of the data showed that I had introduced an unintended intervention in my baseline weeks -- hands-on work.  My students loved and hated the work. They loved working on the computers on our classroom Wiki. They loved using pictures to go with their key terms and playing games with the words. They liked to sort word and definition cards, and they definitely did not like to use concept maps. By the end of the study, many of them reported more positive attitudes toward vocabulary study and said the strategies they had learned really helped. I gave an attitude survey before and after the intervention. One question was, "When a teacher says we are going to study vocabulary, I feel ..." One girl who wrote "scared" in the blank before the intervention answered "good" for the same question after the study had concluded.  That made all the work worth it.

So what is the product of my learning from this class? I'm not sure even now I can put my finger on the totality of what I learned. I'm just beginning to suspect what I learned. But I do have a glimmer. I had always considered myself a reflective practitioner. I remember puffing up when one of the vice principals who had done an observation in my classroom noted that I was a reflective practitioner. And then, I did think about what happened in my classroom and wonder how to make it better, more compelling and more real. One of my first strategies when faced with a classroom or curriculum dilemma was to start looking for a book or article to read. But my reflection was flighty. If I had a particularly difficult to manage class -- I would read about classroom management. If I had a new prep that involved group work, I would read about cooperative groups. I learned from those experiences -- but not like I have learned from this one. It has been trial by fire -- and I feel I have come out on the other side, singed but wiser.

I think that I learned what my students must feel like with me sometimes. When they say, "Slow down, Ms. Hadley, we don't understand." When they say, "Ms. Hadley, it's easy for you -- you're a teacher." When they say, "Why do you have to talk so fast Ms. Hadley?" When they say, "Ms. Hadley we just don't get it." I felt just that way some weeks. I would make an attempt at our task and then get the feedback and start pruning and revising, sometimes to the point of nearly starting over. But that was an essential process. It was like every week's work was a rough draft -- and with Dr. Koppenhaver's very pointed feedback, I gained clarity on the purpose through the revision. Sometimes I would be halfway through the next week's work when I would have this moment when I suddenly understood the previous week's work perfectly.

I learned I have a long way to go. I learned that I can conduct research. Who would have imagined that I could collect quantitative and qualitative data? I learned that a fourth grade teacher and a high school teacher can guide and support each other. I learned that if you are going to code data at the Optimist Park during your children's baseball and softball practice you need a lot of paperclips, so your quizzes don't blow away in the wind. And I was reminded that it is good to write in pencil when outdoors. That way if it rains, your ink doesn't run down the page.

I learned that I can do a whole lot more than I ever believed was possible.

All of this has inspired me to continue with action research. Looking back on my research study, I can see the rough edges. I see the places where I didn't plan well enough, think well enough and do well enough. I have hatched a plan with Dr. Koppenhaver to continue the work of studying vocabulary acquisition in my content area beginning next school year. With more practice, I hope to smooth out the rough parts and produce research and findings good enough to publish.