Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

Preventing Rigor Mortis: Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction

Warm Up: “Totally Like Whatever, You Know?” A Poem by Taylor Mali www.taylormali.com What has happened to our conviction? Where are the limbs out on which we once walked? In case you hadn't noticed, Have they been, like, chopped down it has somehow become uncool with the rest of the rain forest? Ya know? to sound like you know what you're talking about? Or do we have, like, nothing to say? Or believe strongly in what you're like saying? Has society just become so filled with these Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you conflicting feelings of, you know, duh, know?)'s and (you know what I’m saying)’s that now we've just gotten to the point where we’re have been attaching themselves to the ends of our just, like …totally…you know....um. . . just like sentences? whatever! Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? So actually our disarticulationnnnn. . . ness Declarative sentences - so-called is just a clever sort of . . . Um…sort of…you know… because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be uh…it’s a, it’s a thing to disguise the fact that we are true, ya know? as opposed to other things that were, the most aggressively inarticulate generation to like, totally…not. come along since . . . They’ve been infected by this tragically cool and you know, a long time ago! totally hip interrogative tone? As if I’m saying don’t think I’m a nerd just because I implore you, I entreat you, and I challenge you: To I've noticed this; ya know? this is just like what I’ve speak with conviction. heard, this is word on the street. To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks I have nothing personally invested in my own the determination with which you believe it. opinions, I'm just inviting you to join me on the Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper bandwagon of my own uncertainty? sticker, it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.

You gotta speak with it, too.

What does this poem have to do with our session today about Academic Rigor? National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

Self-Assessment: How Academically Rigorous is Your Instruction? 1- Rarely or never 2- Occasionally – once or twice a week 3- Often – at least 50% of the classes I teach 4- Always - every class, every day

To what extent do you …

The Rigor of Our Questions & Tasks Plan your questions in advance to ensure a variety of higher-level and lower-level questions 1 2 3 4 Ask follow up questions to push scholar’s thinking (Stretch It) 1 2 3 4 Review and test your lesson aims/objectives against the higher levels of Bloom’s 1 2 3 4 Assign tasks that require higher-levels of student thinking (Bloom’s top 4 levels) 1 2 3 4 Assign higher-level tasks that require application in a different context 1 2 3 4 Systematically call on students whose hands are not in the air (e.g. cold call) 1 2 3 4 Monitor the ratio of teacher talk to student talk/work 1 2 3 4 Create optional or extension activities for scholars who are excelling 1 2 3 4 Write unit assessments in advance of teaching the unit 1 2 3 4 Assign a volume and rigor of work that really makes your students “sweat” 1 2 3 4

The Rigor of Our Standards for Scholar Responses Ask scholars to cite evidence when providing evidence or making a claim 1 2 3 4 Insist that students provide a “right is right” response to questions (100% accuracy, use of technical vocabulary, proper grammar, etc) 1 2 3 4 Provide an exemplary student response before asking students to do work 1 2 3 4 Define in advance the clear criteria for excellence for evaluating student work (e.g. rubrics) 1 2 3 4 Post and discuss a top-quality example and show how it aligns with the criteria for excellence 1 2 3 4 Align your feedback to the standard of excellence or quality work sample 1 2 3 4 Provide a rubric or other clear guidelines to evaluate the quality of class discussions 1 2 3 4

The Rigor of Our Accountability & Support for Top Quality Work Stick with or cycle back to students when they do not get the right answer initially 1 2 3 4 Require students to correct/adjust his/her oral responses when it is incomplete/partially correct 1 2 3 4 Insist that students re-do work written work when it has not met your standard 1 2 3 4 Require students to re-take assessments when they score below an 80 1 2 3 4 Systematically provide tutoring or other support to scholars who are not successful 1 2 3 4 Circulate, review student work, and give feedback during class to 100% of students 1 2 3 4 National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

Session Aims  GTWBAT articulate the five Academic Rigor essential understandings  GTWBAT use several Academic Rigor “power tools” to up the rigor in their classrooms on three key dimensions  GTWBAT reflect on where to focus your own development and develop a plan to close your personal implementation gap.

The Key Question:

EU #1: Truly preparing our students for ______in college will only happen if our students are successfully doing academically rigorous work in ______subject, K-12

EU #2: You can only assess the rigor of instruction by looking at what the students are doing – how much are they sweating? What is the ______and the ______of what they are being asked to do?

EU #3: What is Academic Rigor? The academic Rigor of your instruction is a combination of:  The rigor of the ______you are asking students to do  The rigor of your ______ The rigor of your ______for top-quality work

Questioning Tools from Lemov’s Taxonomy:

______reminds us not to stop with simple, correct answers but rather to push students to answer ______that extend knowledge or test for reliability.

______refers to how much cognitive work the students do relative to how much you do as the teacher. A successful lesson pushes that cognitive work out to students as soon as they are ready.

Power Questions to “Up” Your Ratio:

 ______/ Explain your reasoning: “How did you come up with that answer?”  ______: “Why did you choose that operation?” National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

 ______: “Where did you find support for that answer in the text?”  ______: “So the next step is to combine the sentences with a … what?”  ______: “Ok, what do I do first?”  ______: Play dumb. Make mistakes. “I am the Puppet.”  ______: Play back the tape for students (“You said …”) or make an if/then statement: “If the slope were three over four, that would mean up three, right four.”

Clip Notes: Stretch It and Ratio Clip # Questions the teacher asked / other moves to “up” the ratio

EU #4: Really upping the rigor of your instruction requires careful ______.

Higher-Order Tasks: Marzano’s Three Levels: • Type I: Tasks address basic details and processes that are relatively easy for students

• Type II: Tasks address more complex ideas and/or require higher-levels of student thinking

• Type III: Tasks address more complex ideas and/or require higher-levels of student thinking AND require students to ______. National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

EU #5: You need to set scholars up for success in performing academically rigorous tasks – you have to ______the learning. You need to teach/guide students through the more advanced thought process required by the higher level tasks. Then you ask them to apply these skills/concepts in ______to assess whether they can do it on their own.

Let’s Try Together …

Type II (Guided) Assignment: Contrast the feelings and beliefs of Character A and Character B and how these different feelings and beliefs led them to take different actions.

Type III (Independent) Assignment: ______

______

Now You Do This One …

Type II (Guided) Assignment: Evaluate whether this lab procedure follows the scientific method and explain why or why not.

Type III (Independent) Assignment: ______

______

Rigorous Standards for Student Work

High Standards for Oral Responses: Right is Right

Remember: The quality of ______is even more important than the quality of the questions! You need to make sure to keep the bar high.

Right is Right is about the difference between partially right and all the way right, between pretty good and 100% o Be encouraging but hold out for college prep answers o What are examples of encouraging responses?

Format Matters o Rich, detailed responses o Use of appropriate vocabulary National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

o Complete sentences o Correct grammar, No Like!

Clip Notes: Right is Right

Clip # Questions the teacher asked / other moves to “up” the ratio

Rigorous Standards for Class Discussions Notes from Socratic Seminar Materials and Clip – What did you notice the teacher do to increase the quality of student responses?

Rigorous Standards for Student Written Responses • The rigor of your scholars’ responses will be driven by the rigor of the ______you set for them. • Setting your scholars up for top-quality work has two components: • ______• ______

Partner Evaluation Activity • How does each example set a high standard for written student responses? National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

• What would you change to make each example a stronger tool for enabling scholars to complete high quality written work? National Charter Schools Conference Upping the Academic Rigor of Your Instruction, Dacia Toll

Rigorous Support and Accountability for Top-Quality Work • Do students know that the only work you will ______is rigorous, top-quality work? • Strategies: “Re-Do” on the spot as you circulate during independent practice “Re-Do” of Exit Tickets (or other work) as additional homework Intervention group for scholars who “Re-Do” work during lunch / after-school, etc. Students who fail weekly assessments need to re-take until they receive a passing grade and/or they need to re-work problems they missed for homework ______

Commitment Time  o What is one way you are going to increase the rigor of the questions/tasks you ask students to complete this year? o What is one way you are going to increase the rigor of the standards you have for student responses? o What is one way you are going to increase the rigor of your support and accountability for top- quality work?

What I will do:______

How I will make sure I do it: ______