Engagement and Learning

So, I'm planning to start posting more about my Professional Growth plan here.  I'm going to do some research (reading and studying, as well as "action-research") about engagement and its links to learning.

I hope the links are obvious.  What I'm after are the specific ways that I can promote engagement for my students - who are, of course, specific people.

The reading list is long and somewhat difficult.  I'm planning to include the challenging theoretical research on engagement as well.  I'd like to really make this count, and I think a superficial reading based on secondary interpretation of research findings will not suffice.  I enjoy the challenge of reading difficult theoretical text.  I'm finding more and more that I'm reading "beneath" myself.  Which, of course, can be a lot of fun.  But I don't want my overdeveloped literacy skills (from years of grad school) to lapse.  And I might as well use them for something useful.

So here's an initial list of sources on engagement.  For this list, I'm focusing on books.  And I'm not going to include full bibliographical information yet.  I don't think it's necessary in this context.  And, at this point, it's supposed to be a weird list.  My goal isn't reading what's "expected" (or only that), but to read as widely as I can.

• Schlechty, Philip.  Engaging Students.
• Bugess, Dave.  Teach Like a Pirate.
• Marzano, Robert et al.  The Highly Engaged Classroom.
• McGonigal, Jane.  Reality is Broken.
• Stager and Martinez.  Invent to Learn.
• Zhao, Yong.  World-Class Learners.
• Schmoker, Mike.  Focus.
• Pink, Daniel.  Drive and To Sell is Human.
• Darling-Hammond, Linda et al.  Powerful Learning.
• Keene, Ellen Oliver.  To Understand.
• Beers and Probst.  Notice and Note.
• Lehrer, Jonah.  Imagine.
• Wagner, Tony.  Creating Innovators.
• Robinson, Ken.  The Element.
• Maiers, Angela.  Passion-Driven Classroom.
• Ferlazzo, Larry.  Self-Driven Learning.
• Hattie, Doug.  Visible Learning for Teachers.
• Lemov, Doug.  Teach like a Champion.
• Vygotsky, L.S.  Mind in Society.
• Loomans.  The Laughing Classroom.
• Willis.  Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student learning.
• Stronge.  Qualities of Effective Teachers.
• Archer.  Explicit Instruction.
• Whitaker.  What Great Teachers Do Differently.
• Bomer.  Time for Meaning.
• Wilhelm.  You Gotta Be the Book.
• Hillocks.  Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice.  
• Gambrell et al.  Best Practices in Literacy Instruction.
• Calkins et al.  Pathways to the Common Core.
• Gardner.  The Unschooled Mind.
• Himmele and Himmele.  Total Participation Techniques.  
• Layne.  Igniting a Passion for Reading.  
• Kittle.  Book Love.
• Tovani.  So What do they Really Know?
• Dewey.  How We Think.
• National Research Council.  How People Learn.
• Wilhelm.  Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry.
• Anderson.  10 things Every Writer Needs to Know.
• Echevarria.  Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners.
• Miller.  The Book Whisperer.
• Wormeli.  Fair Isn't Always Equal and Summarization in Any Subject.
• Wilhelm.  Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension.
• Diller.  Practice with Purpose.
• Farr.  Teaching as Leadership.
• Copeland.  Socratic Circles.
• Erickson.  Concept-Based Curriculum.
• Winebrenner.  Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom.
• Kingore.  Differentiation.
• Kagan.  Kagan Cooperative Learning.
• Saphier and Gower.  The Skillful Teacher.  

I won't promise that I'm reading everything on the list.  I hope to consult many or most of these, and then some.  I'm hoping that I'm researching widely and deeply.  And some of these I've already read and already used.  But I think going back through my shelves and digging up books that I used to think about more often is a good habit, and will help me try many different things and think critically about their effectiveness.

Teaching LIke a Pirate

So, a few months ago, I started hearing a lot about this book - Teach like a Pirate - on Twitter.  I decided to check it out, and I got my hands on a copy.  Two days later, I finished reading it.  

This was unprecedented for me.  I had never read a "teacher" book in only two days before.  Usually, it takes at least a week, even during the summer.  Sometimes much longer.  But I found this book to be both readable and short.  Mr. Burgess isn't as engaging and quirky as someone like Tom Romano or Barry Lane, but I still finished his book much faster than those other guys.  

Another surprise?  It was useful.  And not just in a theoretical way.  I know that I enjoy reading books that help me understand instruction or engagement better, but this provided helpful tools for planning engaging instruction that I could use the following day.  

This is starting to feel too much like a paid endorsement, so let me summarize what I don't like about the book:

• Many of the strategies suggested focus on delivery of lectures or content.  It often feels like "sage on the stage" paradigm stuff.  
• Not enough of the book seems to focus on ways to get the students taking control and responsibility.  
• It sometimes feels like a "one size fits all," "all my kids are the same," "let's teach everyone the same way" thing.  Not always.  

Perhaps these are my biases coming through, as a middle school teacher reading a book written by a high school content-area teacher (Burgess teaches history).  Perhaps these things are there and I'm not seeing or remembering them.  And perhaps these things are not the point of the book, really, so it might not be fair to fault the book for not including everything about everyone.  After all, the book focuses on engagement, and apart from the above, it does so quite well.  

Perhaps the most valuable section, for me, was his discussion of how he encourages his own creative ideas.  I learned a lot from reading about this, and I continued that study beyond the book.  

Some time after reading and enjoying the book, I found the #tlap hashtag and book discussions.  I also found the author participating in these book discussions (as @burgessdave).  I met a lot of great people as I continued to show up for these chats, and I really learned to look forward to this hour of discussion of engaged, passionate teaching with a growing group of dedicated, connected teachers.  

I just finished participating in a very large (hundreds of teachers from all over the country), very productive (almost 2,000 tweets in one hour) chat centered around a book study of this book.  Chicago-area teacher Paul Solarz is moderating this chat - (http://psolarz.weebly.com/tlap.html), and I'm looking forward to participating more.  

I think it's one of the best educational Twitter chats out there, and I encourage everyone who is interested to participate.  

Integrating Disciplines in Middle School

Hmmm . . . I thought it was time to post something about how to "cross the line" between subjects in my classroom(s).  This is something that I've wanted to do since I started teaching middle school, and something that I have done in medium-sized and small ways over the years.  I'd like to start planning/playing with ways to do this in larger, more meaningful, and more useful ways next year.  

After all, as I have been telling people, your seventh year of teaching is supposed to be your best year.  And this is going to be my seventh year.

So, I'm going to talk a little about how our school day is set up, and then talk about what I've done to integrate disciplines, and then talk about some other ways to integrate (I hope).

My school is a 6-8 middle school with "teams," in the sense that students are assigned to a small group of teachers from whom they receive all of their "core" instruction in reading, math, science, and social studies.  For example, my 7th graders attend my reading class, my teammate's math class, and then either my social studies class or my teammate's science class.  (We trade science/social studies groups every six weeks.)  There are 20 minutes of "flex" time at the end of the last block class that we use variously for intervention, extended instruction, silent reading, or other related activities.  Then, at the end of the day, students have a "home base" period of forty minutes with a "home base" teacher - usually a core teacher, like me.  

Of course, the students don't spend the entire day with their "team."  The first three periods of the day - in the case of seventh graders - are "exploratories."  All students have gym class during one of those periods.  They attend two other classes that change every trimester (12 weeks).  So, a student might have Technology, Gym, and Art for the first three periods of the day before they come to Reading, Math, and science/social studies.  

This is the gist of the schedule - there are a lot of complications for bilingual or IEP students.  

So, I'm sure you can see where we throw in the "integration."  Typically, we experiment with cross-disciplinary learning in "flex" or "home base" time.  There are two problems with this.  First, all of our bilingual students are in extended bilingual reading/communications class during flex time, so any instruction given during this time will exclude them.  Second, many of our optional music programs (band, orchestra, chorus, and the various offerings within each of these) pull kids out of home base two or sometimes three times a week for practice.  So, often we are missing several members of class during home base.  And those days vary - some students miss four out of five days a week of home base, because they are in band and chorus, for example.  So, no matter how awesome the activity is that we offer, we will not be able to reach all students, except on Friday.  And that's not a very effective amount of instructional time - 40 minutes a week, at the end of the day on Friday.  

We've done a lot of "study skills"-type lessons, and some "learning how to learn" lessons on things like concept-based learning (big ideas, essential questions, facts vs. concepts, etc.).  We've done some technology lessons to help familiarize students with the tools (Garage Band, iMovie, Keynote).  We've also done some basic literacy skills practice with things like summarizing.  We also talk about current events (most often via CNN Student News).  But we tend to shy away from rigorous instruction because so many students are pulled out, and because it sometimes can be perceived as "punishing" students for participating in activities like band, something that I really believe in and want to support.  

So far, the best use of this time has often been some kind of "study hall," where teachers have the flexibility to work with students who need a little extra help.  We've also experimented a little with peer tutoring during this time, though the pull-out programs often limit our human resources and have limited our effectiveness with this program.  This is something that we really want to develop more, regardless of other initiatives.  It's a really cool idea, and many students have expressed an interest in being tutors.  (Though often very few seem interested in being tutored.)

So, what are some ways that we can combine disciplines better?

We've started teaching reading strategies in science and social studies classes.  For example, I teach annotating strategies and assign annotation in social studies class.  It helps students deal with the abstract ideas in our economics curriculum, and it helps me see their thinking more clearly as they are trying to make sense out of the text.  This often slows us down, but I think we are getting better results from a slower, more methodical approach with unfamiliar, abstract ideas like the "invisible hand."  (I try not to call it that - with so many language learners, metaphorical terms can really be misleading.  There is no giant hand that directs markets.)

Two (related) big ideas that seem appropriate here are project-based learning and genius hour or 20% time (also called Google time).  The former focuses on larger, multi-disciplinary projects through which students are learning as they work, and applying the learning to a larger context, as they would in a real project outside of school.  The latter is based on a business practice at Google, where employees are given a significant chunk of their work time to pursue their own "pet projects" that they care about, then present those projects to managers.  The idea is that students will be much more engaged - and learn much more - if they choose the topic and are given adequate time, tools, and support to learn about it.  

I've pledged to try Genius Hour again this year, and I hope to work on several projects over the course of the year.  I'd also like to give students much more time and more opportunity to share and collaborate on these projects.  

Are there other, medium-sized ways to work across disciplines?

I think the "academic" or "study skills" approach is valid, but that it shouldn't be merely limited to the "home base" or "flex" time we have at the end of the day.  We have common academic vocabulary lessons, focusing on words like "specific" that are useful in almost all disciplines.  This is a good way of synergizing, and helpful for students and teachers.  Looking for opportunities like this can really be helpful.  I taught a lesson on brainstorming, for example, during home base.  This type of thing can really be helpful in several classes.  Research skills can really help, as can note-taking.  

So, I think the answer is to look for medium and large-scale chances to integrate.  

Some notes from Larry Ferlazzo's SELF-DRIVEN LEARNING

I picked up a copy of this book not too long ago, and I've been slowly making my way through it.  It seems like Mr. Ferlazzo has done a lot of homework on motivation and engagement, and he has a lot of psychology research to support his explanations of how to motivate kids.

Some of what he talks about is familiar to me, but here are some things (and the interesting names for them) that I've already learned:

- the Progress Principle - people are very motivated by seeing themselves grow or make progress toward a goal.

- the Zeigarnik Effect - once people start something, they tend to want to finish it.

- the Hawthorne Effect - people do better and work harder when they think they are being watched, and also that people will work hard to do better at something if they feel they are an important part of something (and not hard at all when they don't think they are an important part)

- the Losada line - positive feelings have a big impact on learning and retention, but criticism/negative feedback, though necessary, can counteract positive feelings.  The Losada Line is the optimum balance of positive comments and negative feedback or criticism - about three positive comments or interactions for every one criticism.

Those are some of the most interesting for me.  I was also surprised at how much of a positive effect that "gratitude letters" - letters about what students are thankful for - can have on so many things.  (Something I'm going to try next year.)

I like correlating this book with Dweck's MINDSET, so I'll try to keep updating and looking for connections.