Strong teams regularly self-assess how well they function within their norms – the hopes and dreams for how they are when together. As we learn and grow together, we pause to reflect, revise, and recommit to strengthen our teams by reviewing our community norms.
We commit to collaboratively design the agenda for each team meeting and that the agendas are shared ahead of the meetings. (ALT)
We commit to fostering a growth mindset with our learners and ourselves. We embrace the power of yet. (Carol Dweck)
We commit to use technology as a tool for learning and not as a barrier between us. (ALT)
We commit to speaking about our learners as if they are in the room with us. (Katherine Boles, Harvard)
We learn, i.e., we have permission to change our minds. (Elizabeth Statmore)
We agree to ask for and offer the umbrella of mercy. (Tim Kanold)
We serve all learners. Teams committee to take responsibility, together, to differentiate to help all learners learn and grow.
Don Wettrick asked how might we offer time for learners to act on their imaginative ideas to create prototypes, products, and new outcomes.
Manny Scott challenged us to serve the whole child. How might we offer hope to every learner?
Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Stefani Hite shared their latest research and learning around purpose driven instruction and challenged us to collect evidence of impact.
Carol Ann Tomlinson and Michael Murphy encouraged us to level up in our ability to differentiate. Do we have both short-term and long-term goals for our learners?
Carol Dweck asks how might we focus on learning and offer feedback that is observational instead of judgemental.
Shauna Peeples highlighted the power of positivity. How might we send message containing love and purpose?
Nina Culbertson and David Griffith discussed CASEL’s social-emotional competencies and needs for all to thrive.
Kami Thordarson and Karen Wilson facilitated an interactive session for leaders embracing design thinking in their daily practice. How might we use the DT iterative process to impact all learners in our care?
Move the fulcrum so that all the advantage goes to a negative mindset, and we never rise off the ground. Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset, and the lever’s power is magnified— ready to move everything up. (Achor, 65 pag.)
“When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)
How are we intentionally teaching growth mindset? How might we coach ourselves and our learners using Carol Dweck’s first steps to changing your mindset?
Step1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”
Step 2. Recognize that you have a choice.
Step 3. Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice.
Step 4. Take the growth mindset action.
“Mostly though, I feel it in a changed attitude toward failure, which doesn’t feel like a setback or the writing on the wall anymore, but like a path forward.” (Coyle, 217 pag.)
How might we empower learners to deepen their understanding?
After creating and administering common assessments, the next question is perhaps the most challenging: “Are students learning what we think they are supposed to be learning?” (Ferriter and Parry, 75 pag.)
What if our learners are grasping the content, but they are struggling to communicate what they know and how they arrive at a conclusion?
How might we make our expectations clear? What if we empower our learners to take action on their own behalf?
What if our culture embraces the three big ideas of a PLC?
Learning is our focus. Collaboration is our culture. Results guide our decisions.
Our #TrinityLearns 2nd grade team sat down together last week to analyze the results of the most recent common assessment. While our young learners are grasping the basic concepts, we want more for them. We want confident, flexible thinkers and problem solvers. We want our learners to show what they know more than one way, and we want strong clear communication so that the reader can follow the work without to infer understanding.
Teams at this point in the process are typically performing at a high level, taking collective responsibility for the performance of their students rather than responding as individuals. (Ferriter and Parry, 77 pag.)
As a team, these teachers sorted their students’ work into four levels, shared artifacts of levels with each other, and planned a common lesson.
Laurel Martin (@laurel_martin) explained to our children that the artifacts they analyzed were not from their class and that they belonged to a class across the hall.
Here’s the pitch to the students from Sarah Mokotoff’s (@2ndMokotoff) class:
Don’t you just love the messages: Be like scientists. Make observations. Offer feedback on how to improve.
Here’s what it looked like as the children analyzed artifacts from another 2nd grade class:
Once the analysis was complete, our teachers facilitated a discussion where the children developed a learning progression for this work.
We created these together after looking at student work samples that were assigned at each level. Our kids were so engaged in the activity; they were able to compare and give reasons why work was at a level 3 versus a level 4. It was really good to see! I believe this will empower them to be deeper thinkers and gradually move away from giving an answer without showing their thinking and work.
Here’s what the students in Grace Granade’s (@2ndGranade) class developed:
More from Kerry Coote:
After we helped them develop the learning progression, we conferenced with each child looking at their math assessment. They automatically self-assessed and assigned levels for their thinking. Many scored themselves lower at first, but the activity of crafting the learning progression helped in making sense of explaining their thinking! Today in math a boy asked me – “so Mrs. Coote, what are those levels again? I know the target is Level 3, but I want to use numbers, words, and pictures to get to level 4.” It is all coming together and making sense more with these experiences!
In their morning meeting the next day, one of Kathy Bruyn’s (@KathyEE96) learners shared the poster she made the night before.
Don’t you love how she explained the near doubles fact and her precise language? Wow!
Since we focus on learning and results, this team offered learners an opportunity to show growth.
This is an example of leveling up after looking at our assessment. Initially, [he] used the learning progression to rate his work at level 3. After reading my feedback, he added words to his next attempt to show his additional thinking.
Before the class developed the learning progression:
After the class developed the learning progression:
Can you see the difference in this child’s work, understanding, and communication?
A growth mindset isn’t just about effort. Perhaps the most common misconception is simply equating the growth mindset with effort. Certainly, effort is key for students’ achievement, but it’s not the only thing. Students need to try new strategies and seek input from others when they’re stuck. They need this repertoire of approaches—not just sheer effort—to learn and improve. (Dweck, n. pag.)
Kudos to our 2nd grade team for reaching for the top stages of the seven stages of collaborative teams! Learning is our focus. Collaboration is our culture. Results guide our decisions.
How might we continue to empower learners to deepen their understanding?
What if we press forward in the face of resistance?
For me, the most frustrating moments happen when a learner says to me I already know how do this, and I can’t learn another way.
Me: Can’t or don’t want to? Can’t yet?
A growth mindset isn’t just about effort. Perhaps the most common misconception is simply equating the growth mindset with effort. Certainly, effort is key for students’ achievement, but it’s not the only thing. Students need to try new strategies and seek input from others when they’re stuck. They need this repertoire of approaches—not just sheer effort—to learn and improve. (Dweck, n. pag.)
What if we offer a pathway for learners to help others learn, and at the same time, learn new strategies?
What if we deem the following as essential to learn?
I can demonstrate flexibility by showing what I know more than one way.
I can construct a viable argument, and I can critique the reasoning of other.
The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does. (Coyle, 19 pag.)
How might we provide pathways to target the struggles to learn new strategies, to construct a viable argument, and to critique the reasoning of others?
What if we press forward in the face of resistance and offer our learners who already know how to do this pathways to grow and learn?
The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does. (Coyle, 19 pag.)
When learners are thrashing around blindly, how might we serve as refuge for support, encouragement, and a push in a new direction? (And, what if one of the learners is me?)
Many days we stand in the intersection of struggle and hope.
We can observe our children carefully and look into their eyes and say, “Can I tell you what a great person you are?” and follow-up with concrete examples of the way they give amazing hugs and how kindly they treat their friends. This is the stuff of our most important relationships: Aiming to understand and be understood. (Lehman, Christopher, and Kate Roberts)
… some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset. They focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills, and in their classrooms a weird thing happened. It didn’t matter whether students started the year in the high- or the low-ability group. Both groups ended the year way up high. It’s a powerful experience to see these findings. The group differences had simply disappeared under the guidance of teachers who taught for improvement, for these teachers had found a way to reach their “low-ability” students. (Dweck, Carol)
Move the fulcrum so that all the advantage goes to a negative mindset, and we never rise off the ground. Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset, and the lever’s power is magnified— ready to move everything up. (Achor, Shawn.)
To pursue bright spots is to ask the question “What’s working, and how can we do more of it?” Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: “What’s broken, and how do we fix it?” (Heath, Chip and Dan Heath)
And so the challenge of our future is to say, are we going to connect and amplify positive tribes that want to make things better for all of us? (Godin, Seth)
Move the fulcrum. Pursue bright spots. Amplify to make things better.
How might we teach the power of yet? Is it in the culture of our classroom and our school? What if we include a norm that gives permission to add “yet” to any sentence that has “cannot” in it?
How are we raising our children?Are we raising them for now instead of yet?Are we raising kids who are obsessed with getting A’s?Are we raising kids who don’t know how to dream big dreams?
Here are some things we can do.First of all, we can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent.That has failed.Don’t do that anymore.But praising the process that kids engage in:their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance,their improvement.This process praisecreates kids who are hardy and resilient.
What if it is as simple as adding the word yet? How might we change our future?
As we continue to learn and act to deepen learning, empower learners, and work on the edge of capability, how might we ignite effort and confidence?
What skill-building really is, is confidence-building. First they got to earn it, then they got it. (Coyle, 134 pag.)
What if we use actionable feedback to embrace struggle, seize opportunity to learn, and celebrate success?
Now we’ll look more deeply into how it can be triggered by the signals we use most: words. (Coyle, 132 pag.)
How might we improve our feedback and choose words carefully to send a spark?
And according to theories developed by Dr. Carol Dweck, Engblom’s verbal cues, however minimal, are just the kind to send the right signal. Dweck is a social psychologist at Stanford who has spent the past thirty years studying motivation. She’s carved an impressively varied path across the field, starting with animal motivation and shifting to more complex creatures, chiefly elementary and high school students. Some of her most eye-opening research involves the relationship between motivation and language. “Left to our own devices, we go along in a pretty stable mindset,” she said. “But when we get a clear cue, a message that sends a spark, then boing, we respond.” (Coyle, 135 pag.)
What if the target the actions taken on a pathway to success? How might we highlight effort to ignite deep practice and serious effort?
Praising effort works because it reflects biological reality. The truth is, skill circuits are not easy to build; deep practice requires serious effort and passionate work. The truth is, when you are starting out, you do not “play” tennis; you struggle and fight and pay attention and slowly get better. The truth is, we learn in staggering-baby steps. Effort-based language works because it speaks directly to the core of the learning experience, and when it comes to ignition, there’s nothing more powerful. (Coyle, 137 pag.)
The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does. (Coyle, 19 pag.)
What if we teach how to reach? How might we offer targeted struggle for every learner in our care?
Investing time in teaching students how to learn is never wasted; in doing so, you deepen their understanding of the upcoming content and better equip them for future success. (Jackson, 19 pag.)
If we are to harness the power of feedback to increase student learning, then we need to ensure that feedback causes a cognitive rather than an emotional reaction—in other words, feedback should cause thinking. It should be focused; it should relate to the learning goals that have been shared with the students; and it should be more work for the recipient than the donor. (Wiliam, 130 pag.)
When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)
What pathways to learning are illuminated in order to highlight learning = struggle + perseverance?
How might we teach and learn more about perseverance? I wish we could rephrase the first Standard for Mathematical Practice to the following:
I can make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them.
Just the simple exchange from problems to tasks make this process standard a little more global for learners. What if we encourage and expect productive struggle?
Some struggle in learning is good, but there is a key distinction to be made between productive struggle and destructive struggle. Productive struggle allows students the space to grapple with information and come up with the solution for themselves. It develops resilience and persistence and helps students refine their own strategies for learning. In productive struggle, there is a light at the end of the tunnel; learning goals not only are clear but also seem achievable. Although students face difficulty, they grasp the point of the obstacles they face and believe that they will overcome these obstacles in the end.(Jackson and Lambert, 53 pag.)
How might we make a slight change during the learning process to challenge our learners, to promote productive struggle, to persevere, and to learn, through experience, critical reasoning?
But many people are petrified of bad ideas. Ideas that make us look stupid or waste time or money or create some sort of backlash. The problem is that you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones. Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants–we all fail far more than we succeed. (Godin, n. pag.)
What if we reframe “failure” as productive struggle and perseverance?
Level 4:
I can find a second or third solution and describe how the pathways to these solutions relate.
Level 3: I can make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them.
Level 2:
I can ask questions to clarify the problem, and I can keep working when things aren’t going well and try again.
Level 1:
I can show at least one attempt to investigate or solve the task.
We cannot emphasize enough the power of feedback. Given the right kind of feedback, struggling students can gauge how they are doing and determine what they need to do to get to mastery. It can help students quickly correct their mistakes, select a more effective learning strategy, and experience success before frustration sets in. (Jackson and Lambert, 68 pag.)
How might we highlight many paths to success? What if we make paths to success visible enough for learners to try, risk, question, and learn?
When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)
Jackson, Robyn R. (2010-07-27). How to Support Struggling Students (Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching series). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.
Experiments in Learning by Doing 