Cultural shift in middle school teaching and learning
February 5, 2010
by Christine Yeres
At last Tuesday’s board of education meeting, the middle school principals, Martin Fitzgerald of Bell and Martha Zornow of Seven Bridges and their respective science department chairs described to the board members the steps they have taken this year to further shift the culture of their schools away from teacher-delivered content toward student-initiated inquiry.
The goal at both schools, explained Zornow, is “a release to independence, putting students in charge of their own learning, giving students choice and control over the way they acquire and process information and demonstrate mastery.”
The starting point: The board’s strategic question
According to Bell Middle School principal Martin Fitzgerald, the middle schools use the board’s strategic question—“How do we ensure that all students think deeply, support their thinking, apply problem solving skills and actively participate in their learning as they acquire content knowledge?”—as a “tuning fork” for conversations about the decisions they make. With the strategic question as a touchstone, he explained, administrators “are able to challenge some idiosyncratic practices [of teachers], understanding that we’re a 5-8 system within a K-12 system” that should provide a coherent educational experience for students.
Zornow, “How do you get an experienced, capable, passionate faculty to know if they are helping students to think flexibly and problem-solve? One thing that was very clear to me as I got to know the teachers in my school is that top-down instruction [from administrators to teachers], ‘Do this,’ doesn’t sell. It has to come from collaborative work [based on the belief that with any change], it’s what we all want.”
According to Zornow, in addition to department meetings within each school, administrators and teachers from the two schools meet periodically to set “attainable, measurable goals,” and to learn from one another “to work on specific goals that float organically out of the work the departments are doing, and that are directed more toward flexible thinking [and away from] rote learning or reports.” Progress toward those goals, he said, “looks slightly different between our buildings, but we’re walking in the same direction in different ways.”
Teachers learning from teachers
Each middle school has created a way for teachers to learn from one another’s practices, while hewing to their common goal as defined by the board’s strategic question. Zornow explained, “Administrators do walk-throughs of one another’s buildings. We thought it would be valuable for teachers to do it for one another.”
Bell’s Fitzgerald described his school’s “department chair walk-throughs,” in which three department chairpersons together visit teachers in their classrooms to observe and later to provide feedback on how the goals of the board’s strategic question are being advanced.
Seven Bridges’ version of the walk-through is slightly different, said Zornow. Ten committees of teachers have been grouped by subject. For example, the “science” group this year, she explained, “consists of four science teachers, one consumer science teacher, one physical education teacher and a teaching assistant with strength in science.” This group’s goal was to find different ways in which students might show that they have master content. As a group, they visit classrooms and report back to a larger group of faculty and administrators on their observations and suggestions of ways to strengthen student independence and critical thinking.
In pursuit of flexible thinking in students
In pursuit of flexible thinking in students, Zornow said, administrators encourage teachers to ask themselves, “Am I always saying, ‘Yes, good answer!’ or is there a better way, such as ‘Well, what do you think?’ or ‘Is there another position?’ or ‘Do you agree?’” Another priority for administrators, he noted, is raising students’ own awareness of how they learn best.
Teachers and administrators constantly try to figure out, she explained, “how to take a lesson or assessment and ‘tier’ it so that students can say to themselves, ‘I’m a visual learner,’ or ‘I want to do this report in an opera or in rap,’ and show in various ways that they have mastery. [This gives students] more choices while still demonstrating mastery of the central question that the teacher has identified.”
Board member Jay Shapiro asked in response: “Listening to you about these different approaches makes me wonder what happens to the concept of the textbook? If it’s not gone, it certainly doesn’t have the central role that is used to have.” Zornow agreed with his assessment.
Instead, she said, teachers are being trained to ask themselves, “What essential understanding do [we] want the student to walk away with and how do you know that the student has that?” She described an English class she visited in which some eighth graders who had been able to choose from three different books—Fahrenheit 451, The Chocolate War and A Separate Peace—were all talking about alienation from society, the common basis for discussion of all three selections.
Fitzgerald added, “And there’s tremendous rigor involved [in the process]. Some people think we’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but [our curriculum] is still content-based. But rather than [passively being told things], students are more actively engaged in their learning.”
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Lyn McKay explained that the curriculum is defined by the curriculum maps established by the district. “They’re pretty specific and we’ve reached consensus [about the content of the maps] across the schools at each grade level, by subject. So we have to be thinking in terms of what essential question [teachers and students are exploring], what’s the content, what are the specific skills we wish to impart within the context of the curriculum map. (See links to maps, below.)
Student awareness of individual learning styles
Board member Alyson Gardner Kiesel asked whether middle schoolers were self-aware enough to know what kind of learners they were. Zornow reported that she had witnessed “some very explicit teaching going on” in a sixth grade class directed by one guidance staff member and the school psychologist in which students filled out an inventory of their learning styles and strengths while actively discussing their assessments. She heard them tell teachers, “I lean toward visual,” or “I lean toward auditory.” In conclusion, Zornow stated, “students asking themselves ‘How do I learn best?’ is a side of self-advocacy that is very much in the forefront of teachers’ thinking.”
Board chairman Jeffrey Mester asked whether assessments were really capable of truly measuring what students know, especially for students whose strengths might be visual or oral.
Zornow responded that once students begin to understand their learning styles and strengths and weaknesses, there are ways to apply that knowledge to be able to tackle “the icky things, like tests, that they have to do anyway. This self-awareness is very empowering.”
Fitzgerald added, in response to Mester’s question, “I think you speak to the flaws of testing. The state is about to include visual presentation as one of its new standards in the ELA [English Language Assessment]. But is testing about diagnosing learning or is it about rank ordering and measuring? Our students do exceptionally well in [state] tests, but we want to be a bit more complicated and find the best way for each student to learn and understand the material. But the reality is that students will be expected to [take standardized tests] as part of school. We don’t want them to be driven by tests, but to have them understand that it’s something they will be asked to do as part of their learning experience.”
Kiesel suggested that if students are accustomed to acquiring knowledge in a comfortable way, it might follow that they will feel more comfortable in being assessed in it, and “demonstrate mastery more effectively.”
Science teachers demonstrate what the shift in pedagogy looks like in the classroom
Bell Science Chairperson Sarah Geronimo and Seven Bridges Science Chairperson Fred Ende walked the board through their departments’ joint efforts to identify what higher level thinking looks like in the classroom. The keystone of their presentation was a visual that they created, an upside-down pyramid, that they believe will help students to achieve mastery of scientific content.
Higher-level thinking begins, explained Geronimo, with students simply reporting or telling information. It is followed by the ability to explain the information, and then by making connections or asking other questions about the information, then finally, students gain the ability to teach the information to someone else.
Seven Bridges’ Ende described their creative process. “We started looking at this last March and worked on it over the summer. Our goal was to find a tool to help students to deepen their thinking—something both departments felt was very valuable—and then actually put it to use.” They created a chart that spelled out the steps people take toward mastering material. Each step appears on a different band of color. The steps read as follows:
1. Yes, I know it.
2. Yes, I know it and can explain it.
3. Yes, I know it, can explain it, and can connect it to other ideas.
4. Yes, I know it, can explain it, can connect it to other ideas, and can design further questions about it.
5. Yes, I know it, can explain it, can connect it to other ideas, can design further questions about it, and can teach it.
Ende said that although given the increasing length of each successive sentence the pyramid could have gone either way, pointing either up or down, it made sense to have the ultimate goal occupy the top spot, so the pyramid balances on its point.
Once they had articulated these steps and created the pyramid graphic, Geronimo said, “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be powerful if the same visual were in all the science classrooms as a tool to enable students to push themselves and think more deeply?’ We’ve only used it a short while, but kids have begun to make it their own. A student might say, ‘I can think of a connection,’ or, working in groups, we hear students saying to another student, ‘Gee, I like the way you explained that. Can you connect it with something else?’”
“[The benefits of the pyramid] show too in [students’] ability to write in science. Instead of the two sentences that I might have gotten in September, I get two pages, with diagrams,” Geronimo explained. Science teachers refer to the pyramid to remind students to check themselves for mastery. According to Geronimo, a teacher might say, “When you’re finished studying, go through the pyramid and find yourself. Then see if you can get yourself to the next step. That might mean you need to go back and study some more.” Or a teacher might ask a student to assess his or her lab report against the checklist of the pyramid.”
Ende noted that, as a scientist, he is naturally curious “to see how students react to this [pyramid chart] from year to year. Some teachers use it as a way to review for assessments, others are building it into projects.”
Board members show their mastery of the topic “the board of education”
Science teacher that he is, Ende was prepared to show board members an example of the pyramid’s usefulness for students who are gradually internalizing its elements into their learning.
Ende: Imagine yourself as a student. Our topic is “the board of education.” How many of you know what the board of education is?
Board member Janet Benton: The governing body of the school district.
Ende: Can it be connected to other ideas? Where might you see similar bodies throughout life?
Board President Jeffery Mester: Corporations.
Benton: The town board.
Ende: That requires a mental step. Now if you want to know more about the board of ed?
Mester: How to get on it. (Quickly followed by) How to get off it!
Ende: And then, can you teach others about it?
At the conclusion of this simple exercise, Ende explained, “You have to be able not only to know the material yourself, but to express it so that others will understand it too. It’s not so much about every student getting up to that top level, but for every student to monitor their own thinking and get further along in their critical thinking.” And in addition to the pyramid’s value for students, creating the chart, he told board members, had helped teachers “to look at the great things we do and modify them in ways to hit on some of this.”
For example, Ende said, “with a student-generated lab report, instead of focusing on the process of generating a lab report, we might focus on the ‘connecting it to other ideas,’ step 3 of the pyramid.” He gave as an example a student who called her lab report on animal behavior, “Doggone it, that’s annoying.” In her report she sought to determine which of the following would irritate her dog the most: the sound of a doorbell ringing, being teased by goldfish crackers or someone jumping rope. “Some might consider these random ideas,” said Ende, “ but it allowed the student to generate questions from a context that’s true to her. Students connect it to other aspects of their lives outside of school, which is what we want. It allows students to take scientific writing and put it in a context that’s relevant to them.”
Kiesel noted, “The chart isn’t specific to science,” then asked Ende, “Can you see kids applying it to other subjects than science? Should it be in every classroom?” Zornow responded, “Science [department teachers] developed it for scientific thinking and hypothesis development in grades 5-8. I picked science [to come tonight] because they had such a great visual. If it were everywhere it might become diluted. But maybe this will be an inspiration [for other departments to develop ways of advancing the district’s goals].”
Zornow asked Ende, “Did you find the work of putting together [the pyramid chart] valuable for casting new light on your teaching?” Ende responded, “yes, and the departments were given a lot of rein in what they wanted to explore as long as they answered the board’s [strategic] question, so there was real ownership by teachers. Departments will share the pyramid. It’ll be nice to just let it flow and see where it goes.”
Geronimo added, “Our students will take it with them when they leave middle school. I won’t be surprised to see the same prompts in an English class, and in writing or some other subject.”
Students’ need for feedback
Board member Gregg Bresner asked how teachers balance collaboration among students with facilitation by teachers. “How much feedback do students need?” Fitzgerald responded, “We’re trying to build a culture here; it’s not just strategy driven. One of my colleagues showed me a statement, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast.’ We’re trying to build a culture of learning and inquiry.”
Fitzgerald continued, “Looking through some eighth grade science journals [that students keep], I was very impressed by the teacher’s written comments in the journals, ‘Had you considered . . .’ and ‘This is a strong argument because you present X, Y and Z. How would you make it stronger?’”
But, Fitzgerald said, he saw something that impressed him even more. “A student had drawn a little pyramid in the bottom corner of one page of the journal. Next to it there was an arrow drawn by the teacher, who had written on it ‘From what I’ve seen, you’re here.’ And another arrow on which the teacher had written, ‘Now how would you get there?’ The beauty of the work is that [the pyramid chart] even makes feedback more coherent, rather than getting a ‘four’ or a ‘good.” After all, where does that take you?”
“As we gradually ask teachers to give up the locus of control,” observed Superintendent David Fleishman, “it’s a real challenge. When I first started teaching, when I would give up control to students, I’d hear, ‘Hey, mister, why aren’t’’ you giving notes today?’ Even colleges are working with their professors on how to give up control so that students do more of the work. It’s hard to do because of traditional assessments and state tests, but [there’s a better way than] throwing information at kids and hoping it sticks.”
“We give oral and written feedback,” noted McKay, “but there’s also much more oral feedback [than before], so you see more conferencing with students. That’s part of the shift in the work of teaching.”
Ende added, “One of the best things about being a teacher is that you can continually ask questions. Rather than students asking questions and teachers giving answers, this frees up the teacher to move around and conference with groups of students [who are working independently] or with individual students.”
“As we build independence in our students,” Zornow concluded, “we want to move students away from working for the teacher’s ‘Great job!’ towards [the student himself or herself saying], ‘I attacked this problem through perseverance and flexible thinking’—and that’s great.”
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For Science curriculum maps, click below:
Science Grade 8
Principal of Bell Middle School, Martin Fitzgerald, and Seven Bridges Principal, Martha Zornow
Sarah Geronimo, Bell Science Department Chair, and Fred Ende, Seven Bridges Science Department Chair
The “Student Understanding Pyramid”
